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While Google’s recent eco kick has largely focused on issues like installing solar panels for its offices and offering biodiesel commuter shuttles to its employees, the search company just joined a broader green push with members of the computing industry. At Google HQ Tuesday morning,
Google, along with Intel and a dozen or so tech companies announced an initiative to drive more energy efficient computing.

It’s partly a ‘look at how green we are’ PR move, but if the plan can save as much energy and reduce as much green house gas emissions as the companies are suggesting — 54 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions cut per year, and a savings of $5.5 billion in energy costs — well, then we’re all for that. Google co-founder Larry Page made a quick appearance to push the plan, saying “this could really help the world.”

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We hadn’t talked to the Cyworld US team in awhile, so we stopped by their San Francisco offices this week to play catch up. The South Korean social network that launched in the U.S. last August, told us they are planning on launching a mobile application for the U.S. market in the first quarter of 2008.

Cyworld is still working out the details, but the application will likely end up as an app for one of the mainstream U.S. carriers. Considering their parent company SK Telecom already has a relationship with Sprint (via Helio) and T-Mobile USA’s parent company in Germany, those two carriers are a good bet for a possible U.S. rollout.

And while the mobile app is awhile away, the company seems to be finally gathering a little traction in the US. At the end of April 2007, Cyworld had a little over one million unique visitors a month, according to comScore. The company also told us it currently has 250,000 members and is growing at about 22% per month.
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More geoweb tools for Google. Geo-tagging photo site Panoramio announced on its blog this morning that it will be acquired by Google for an undisclosed sum. Google posted the news on its blog last night.

The company is a one and a half year old startup based in Spain. Co-founder Eduardo Manchón writes:

“The integration of photos from Panoramio in Google Earth has been so successful since John Hanke suggested it that we see the acquisition of Panoramio as a natural consequence.”

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Some city-wide Wi-Fi networks are being launched and few residents are using them. And then there are the planned muniFi networks that are stuck in the purgatory of logistics and bureacracy — perpetually ‘in the works’ but with missed deadlines and unsure futures.

The Palo Alto Daily News says the plan to build a Wi-Fi network for Silicon Valley is “mired in delays.” Construction of the network hasn’t started yet, cities have yet to sign certain important agreements, and the test network which was expected to be ready as early as February, won’t be ready until sometime in the summer. Optimistic? After all June is knocking on the door.

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We almost skipped the NetSquared convention this week, given the 21 web-based projects presenting are all not-for profit organizations. But hey, GigaTeam needs to feel all warm and fuzzy sometimes too.

So we spent a few hours watching pitches from social organizations that used the conference to swap resources, look for funding, and compare notes on how to make their web projects more effective. There were a lot of really admirable people with helpful ideas, but not a lot of high level web knowledge. I guess that was the whole point of the show.

The highlight of the show is the cash prizes for the organizations that were voted the best. I thought the voting outcome was spot on. Here’s the winners, and three interesting do-gooder web sites you should check out: Continue »

There might be a lot of money flowing in Silicon Valley right now — four startups announced that they’ve been acquired just today. But for some of the big tech companies, and their employees, times aren’t so good.

Motorola said today its going to cut another 4,000 workers, in addition to the 3,500 the company announced in January.

Update: Now add Dell to the list of companies makig cuts. On Thursday Dell said it will lay off 8,000 workers over the next year.

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It’s a good morning to be a social media web startup. First Fox Interactive Media sends out a release officially announcing it’s buying both photo sharing site Photobucket and slide show widget creator Flektor. Then CBS announces that it’s bought music social network Last.fm for $280 million.

Whoa, media sharing madness. While FIM didn’t disclose terms of its deals, Photobucket has been rumored to have gone for $250 million and TechCrunch says Flektor is in the $10 to $20 million range.

Peter Levinsohn, President of Fox Interactive Media, told us in a phone conversation Wednesday that Photobucket and Flektor are part of the company’s growth and monetization strategy, along with FIM’s recent acquisition of Strategic Data
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Update: Google launched a street view mapping feature for several cities this morning at the Where 2.0 conference, and GigaTeam is pretty excited about checking out the views around our own San Francisco digs. We just chatted with John Hanke, Google’s Director of Google Earth and Google Maps, after his presentation at the conference and he had some interesting details to add.

He said while Google is using a partnership with Immersive Media to create the street level mapping service, Google has also been driving its own cars around the Bay Area and collecting the street level views here. Hanke wouldn’t go into too many details around the vehicles themselves, but if anyone sees any Google-mobiles with high tech photo gear around the Bay, snap a pic and send us the photo.
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