Storage: More Deals Coming? (From Barron’s) An Oppenheimer analyst predicts which storage vendors might be looking to buy soon. I think he’s onto something in terms of data warehousing being a hot capability.

Quest Sees Opportunity in Cassandra (From MarketWatch) Quest seems to be setting itself up for success among progressive customers. The latest partnership with Riptano around Cassandra comes on the heels of Hadoop integration and the purchase of Surgient.

2010 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle is Here (From Gartner Blog Network) Industry watchers love/hate Gartner’s various Hype Cycles, but we all look at them. Assuming you find some value in the model, what do you think about where the various cloud technologies landed?

IBM Transforms U.S. Open with Cloud Computing (From CIO Update) This is a story every year around U.S. Open time, but now we’re seeing IBM’s newfound analytics focus shining through. The amount of data available makes for a very rich tennis experience.

Oracle’s Hurd for Phillips Swap: What’s the Customer Relations Impact? (From ZDNet)
Speaking of Oracle and Mark Hurd, here’s a take on how Hurd will fare on the customer-relations front compared with Charles Phillips, the man he’s replacing. Looks like it’ll be a wash.

For more cloud-related news analysis and research, visit GigaOM Pro.

The research, published in Nature Materials this weekend, shows off a process called the “photon enhanced thermionic emissions (PETE)” that can make a solar cell convert light into electricity and also capture the heat for the same purpose. Calculations by the researchers, led by materials science professor Nick Melosh, show that a PETE solar device could help convert more than 50 percent of the sunlight and heat into electricity under concentration.

The research makes use of a process called thermionic energy converters that was first developed in the 1950s, and NASA and its counterpart in the Soviet Union at the time were exploring the idea to create high-power generators for deep-space missions. But the technology was never commercialized back then.

The Stanford researchers say they have found a way to combine the thermionic process and the use of semiconductors, which are building blocks for solar cells, and create a device that works best in high temperatures. Traditional solar cells only make part of the light spectrum to generate electricity, and the process actually generates heat, which is considered a waste and can also threaten the performance of solar cells. Finding a way to harvest the heat could lead to a more efficient and robust solar electric system.

The researchers first coated a piece of the semiconductor gallium-nitride (which can withstand high temperatures) with the metal cesium, but they didn’t achieve the high efficiency they wanted. The researchers are now looking at using other semiconductors, such as gallium-arsenide. A PETE device could have a higher efficiency than the theoretical maximum of roughly 30 percent for silicon and be comparable to the 41-42 percent triple-junction cells that have been developed in labs, the researchers say.

Gallium-arsenide, incidentally, already is a key ingredient in triple-junction solar cells used by concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) developers, such as startup SolFocus. A CPV system uses mirrors to concentrate sun light hundreds of times onto solar cells, but it doesn’t use the heat. Instead, the systems have designs that dissipate the heat, so that it doesn’t cook the solar cells.

The triple-junction cells used by CPV companies can make use of a broader light spectrum than silicon cells, so less of the sun’s energy becomes waste heat. The commercially-available triple-junction cells can hit close to 40 percent efficiency (under high concentration). Spectrolab has created a cell in the lab that could do 42 percent under high concentration.

Although a PETE device could convert heat into electricity, the process still leads to waste heat. The Stanford researchers propose to combine a PETE device with a solar thermal converter system, similar to the kind being used in large solar thermal plants that are being built in the deserts of California. The combined PETE/solar thermal system can “operate at temperatures exceeding 200 °C, enabling its waste heat to be used to power a secondary thermal engine, and boosting theoretical combined conversion efficiencies above 50%.”

Both CPV and concentrating solar thermal technologies are both emerging technologies because neither has captured a big chunk of the solar energy market. SolFocus recently completed a 1-megawatt system at a community college in California, and that was the largest CPV power plant in the country. Solar thermal technology developers such as BrightSource Energy and Abengoa Solar have gigawatts of projects under development in California, Nevada and Arizona, but none has broken ground yet.

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Green IT Overview: Q2 2010

Image courtesy of Nature Materials.

While my client and I are still happily using Google Wave for project collaboration, I am seeing more rough gaps — albeit ones within my new technology tolerance as an early adopter — that I would like to see filled in future versions of the product.

Of course, as a technical writer, my Google Wave wish list is very document-centric:

• Table Support. Perhaps it is because I use tables a lot in my technical documentation, but I wish that Google Wave would support tables to the level that Google Docs does. Table support could be supplied natively or through a gadget or extension. The lack of table support in Google Wave is a real disadvantage for those of us who want to collaborate on moderately complex documents via Google Wave.
• Spell Checker. I’d like to see Google Wave include a spell checker in a future release either natively, as an extension, or as a gadget.
• Microsoft Word Compatibility or Integration. My first project with Google Wave started out with my client and I using it to pass Word documents back and forth. Then as our level of comments and opinions on the document and its content grew we tried to work on the drafts natively in Google Wave. My initial cut-and-paste experience from MS Word into Google Wave was not so favorable, because of how Google Wave treated the XML underlying the original Word document. While a better cut-and-paste experience that doesn’t mangle the copy would satisfy me for a bit, my more ambitious wish is a way to upload Word documents directly into the body of a new or existing Wave, so that I and other collaborators could edit and create new text in real-time with Google Wave’s editing tools.
• Document Version Control. While this wish is probably best fulfilled by a Google Wave extension, there needs to be a level of document version control where when if I attach a document to a Wave, it can store multiple versions of the same document, instead of me having to blow away the document each time before I attach a new version of it to my current Wave.
• Email and/or RSS Alerts. A web browser is the first thing I open after I login into my PC in the morning and it the last thing I close out of when I log off for the night. Still I would like to see Google Wave include some type of email and or RSS alerts so that when a Wave changes collaborators would be notified automatically. Email alerts would especially be handy for those times I am on a client site and may not have access to Google Wave because of security restrictions that the organization has in place.
• Access via the Google Mobile App. The Google Mobile App is popular on both the iPhone and BlackBerry. It would be good to see Google Wave access via the app at some point in the future. I am a big proponent of mobile access to collaboration applications. But mobile access to Google Wave — while well done on the Waveboard iPhone application — is much too limited at the current time for teams who need constant access to their collaboration platform in order to stay in sync with project information.

My wish list is drawn from my initial Google Wave experience. What’s on your Google Wave wish list?

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How can you find a way (and the time) to do more good in the world, while still keeping up with the demands of our businesses? One solution is to focus on one trait at a time.

First, make a list of all the positive traits you would like to have (generous, responsible, helpful, supportive, etc.).

Under each item, list ways you can incorporate more of that particular trait into your daily life. For example, if you want to be more responsible within your community, you might consider sponsoring an area youth program or volunteering to maintain a local park.

Finally, set aside time each day and week to devote to your commitment. Even 15-30 minutes a day can make a big difference. If you could commit to just 15 minutes a day, five days per week, at the end of the year, you would have contributed more than 65 hours of your time to improving the world around you. That’s more than a week and a half of your attention!

Many times, we put off getting involved and doing things that we really want to do because of the belief that there just isn’t enough time. On top of that, we think that the time we do have isn’t enough to make any kind of difference, but even small contributions add up. If we can find ways to give back in even the smallest ways, we can make big changes in the world around us.

In what small ways can you make a difference in the world around you? Share your tips for getting involved while still keeping up with your business and other commitments.

Image from Flickr by laRuth.

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A genie, a load of balls, and an ancient labyrinth come together to create a frustrating, but fun, puzzler.

One of the big boys in the movie biz, Warner Bros., has been solidly churning out iPhone apps for the past few months. Most of these apps have been global franchises, though, including Terminator Salvation, Watchmen and — the double whammy of brand-names — LEGO Batman.

Without a movie, cartoon series, or line of toys, Stuck Genie is an entirely original game. Containing 73 puzzles, the game challenges you to complete each one and earn the highest score.

You Look Like You’re Stuck

It’s immediately clear that the game is worthy of the Warner Bros. name. It’s bright and colorful, instantly pleasing to the eye and, although it’s not an established brand, the game has an artwork style that is very much its own.

The attention to detail, especially important from such a big publisher, pervades almost every aspect of the game. Even the name-entry screen is fun, finding you spinning an alphabet wheel, and dragging letters around to spell your name.

Musically, the game features a chill-out soundtrack pinched straight from the beaches of Ibiza. It’s absolutely out of character for a puzzle game — especially one featuring a mischievous cartoon genie.

And yet it works: When the puzzles get tougher, the mellow background music makes it feel more like you’re chillaxing, as opposed to seriously flexing your cognitive problem-solving muscles.

Control Your Inner Genie

Before jumping into the first level proper, there’s a tutorial section. The tutorial explains the basics: By tapping and dragging, you control an orange ball moving through a labyrinth.

Your aim, in each level, is to collect the other balls dotted around the maze. The mazes are incredibly simple, and collecting the balls is achieved simply by colliding with them.

The real challenge is that the balls stick to your orange ball as you collect them; your shape grows and changes with each added ball. Maneuvering through the maze becomes tougher as you collect each ball, and forward planning is key to solving each puzzle.

Misadventures in the Maze

My sojourn through the freaky genie’s labyrinth hit a major roadblock, though. Closing the app to take a break, due to a tough level, I returned hours later to be sent back to the start of level one.

Apparently, Stuck Genie features no auto-save functionality. This means that to save, you have to exit the game by first pausing it and then clicking exit (which instigates a save). Simply tapping the iPhone’s Home button will exit, but it won’t save.

Furthermore, after working my way back to the tough level I’d been stuck on, I discovered that there’s no rest or rewind button. This is an all but essential feature for this genre of puzzle game.

To reset the level, you have to open the menu and select rewind; it doesn’t ruin the game, but it’s an oversight nonetheless. Far more preferable would be, say, tapping the genie to use a magical time-reversing crystal, or even just a plain old rewind/reset button.

Summing Up

There’s something about the cartoony yet ornate artwork, which, when melded with the Café del Mar-esque chill-out soundtrack make for a very mellow but challenging puzzler.

This mellow vibe is immensely important in Stuck Genie’s case, because some of the puzzles had me literally roaring with frustration — the good kind of frustration, though, when you know you’re being beat by a devious puzzle and you’ve just got to solve it.

Despite being so much fun from the off, the difficulty curve was unexpectedly steep. Nevertheless, fans of challenging puzzlers should download Stuck Genie and get stuck in immediately.

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While in Hong Kong on a business trip recently, Oliver Goh was on his laptop playing around in a virtual world, when he realized he’d left the water running in his home back in Switzerland. He noticed this because the virtual world contained a recreation of his Swiss residence that pulled information about the home’s energy and water consumption in real time. The gauge that measures water use was blinking. No problem: After his avatar hit the right button, the real-world water valve in Switzerland turned off.

That’s one of the applications of the OpenShaspa Home Energy Kit, available starting tomorrow from the startup that Goh co-founded, also called Shaspa. Created with open-source components like Arduino circuit boards, the kit comes with a system that can monitor and control home power output with wireless sensors, and connect this data to mobile phone and Internet applications. (After reading Katie’s story on another open-source energy tool, ACme, Goh says he plans to add an OpenShaspa device driver that supports it.) Sensors for gas, water and other utility resources can be integrated into the control system, as well.

Other energy management systems can be controlled via cell phones or the web, but in what could be a first, OpenShaspa can be hooked up to a virtual world created with OpenSimulator, an open-source spinoff of Second Life, to a simulated recreation of your home. Not just a cool widget for MMO geeks, Shaspa’s developers believe that modeling energy consumption data in 3D could make it more comprehensible and easier to manage. (It could even be used for a “World of Greencraft”-type game envisioned by a Stanford professor.) And Goh noted an additional benefit of running OpenShaspa from a virtual world: You can ask an avatar friend to look after your real-world house while you’re gone.

The kit includes a “Social Energy Meter,” which as the name suggests, makes all this energy consumption data publicly available online, where it can be collectively analyzed, tracked and compared on Twitter, Facebook, Google and other systems. Shaspa also has plans for a corporate version. Goh tells me 17 residential homes in the UK will launch an OpenShaspa pilot program this June.

Image courtesy of Shaspa.

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Makayama’s Newspaper(s), an app that provides consolidated access to a variety of major international newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and, formerly, The Sun, was the app in question. It was The Sun, a popular UK daily, that caused the app to be initially rejected to begin with. As regular readers of that paper are likely aware, topless models are regularly included in one of its sections. Topless models are still a big no-no for the App Store, despite recent relaxation that has seen the rapid proliferation of bikini-clad models in a number of apps.

Even though Apple blocked the inclusion of The Sun in this iteration of Newspaper(s), they were careful to leave the door ajar for later on. According to iLounge, Apple told Makayama in their rejection letter that resubmitting the offending content once iPhone 3.0 is released, with its improved parental control features, would be appropriate. The new parental control options should, in theory, allow parents to control what kind of apps and content children have access to on the device, much like the blocking filters available on most cable/satellite boxes.

With the inclusion of such features, Apple should have no problem passing the onus of content filtering on to parents, which would let them focus on other issues when it comes to the App Store approval process. They might have to implement some kind of ratings system, like the ESRB does for video games, but once appropriate guidelines are established, they can be mostly hands-off.

Does this mean the floodgates are open for “Adult-only” type apps? There seems to be a market for them, considering the success of even pretty terrible apps like iGirl. I don’t think it would fit Apple’s corporate image to allow a proliferation of X-rated content, though, so they probably won’t allow things to get out of hand. On the other hand, hopefully, they can avoid things like the recent NIN: Access snafu or the rejection of a Tweetie update that seem to have a very negative effect on the public’s perception of the Apple brand.

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Of course, it also didn’t help that, just last Tuesday, MTI received a letter from Nasdaq warning of an impending and involuntary delisting. So MTI is quitting Nasdaq just in time to avoid getting kicked off (the company said it was thinking of delisting even before Nasdaq’s warning).

Nasdaq pretty much bends over backwards to make it easy for companies to stay on the exchange. Once a stock is listed, it needs to meet at least one of three criteria: Net income from continuing operations of $500,000 in the last fiscal year, $35 million in market value of listed shares, or $2.5 million in stockholders’ equity. MTI had a net loss of at least $9.6 million for the past three years, a recent market cap below $5 million and, as of December 2008, $1.5 million in stockholder’s equity.

It gets worse. In MTI’s annual report to investors last week, PriceWaterhouseCoopers expressed concern about the company’s ability to continue to operate as a going concern.

The catalyst driving these unhappy events is MTI Micro, a subsidiary making methanol fuel cells as an alternative to lithium-ion batteries in portable devices. The biodegradable fuel cells used a proprietary technology called Mobion; the company intended to start selling Mobion products this year. In 2007, executives were confident about getting its fuel cells to market. Just last fall, the company was busy making them at once smaller and more powerful.

But the cost of developing and commercializing the fuel cells was crippling. At the end of 2008, MTI Micro helped build up a deficit of $118 million and left the company with $252,000 in working capital. As MTI said in its annual report:

“Because of these losses, limited current cash, cash equivalents and securities available for sale, negative cash flows and accumulated deficit, the report of the Company’s independent registered public accounting firm for the year ended December 31, 2008 expressed substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

That’s after MTI raised $1 million by selling 1.1 million shares of Plug Power last year and raised $2 million by issuing convertible notes to a board member and others. But without more funding from the government or private investors, MTI said it “does not expect to continue to fund MTI Micro’s portable power source business.” MTI’s other operations can make it through December with the cash on hand, but MTI Micro looks to have enough to keep operating into this month.

MTI said its stock is likely to continue trading on the over-the-counter or the pink sheets markets.

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The angel fund is a for-profit venture that the Clean Energy Fund, a nonprofit founded with $30 million from the Pacific Gas and Electric Company bankruptcy, launched last April. Susan Preston, the angel fund’s general manager, said the fund raising is taking longer than expected because of the recession. “We’re working very hard at it, but it’s a struggle right now, no question about it,” she said. “We’re talking to lots of people all over the place, and everyone is saying, ‘We’re sorry, we agree with what you’re doing, but we just don’t have money right now.’”

The dramatic economic downturn has been such a shock that investors have become “like deer in the headlights,” Preston says. “You know you should move, but just can’t see how — that’s the best analogy I can think of for how people are feeling right now. If we can get them to move away from the headlights,” there will be a much more prosperous time ahead, she said.

Preston argues that early-stage startups are a good investment in the downturn because of their countercyclical nature. In other words, because companies are a few years away from an IPO or an acquisition, they could be well-poised to take advantage of an economic recovery down the road. “When you have a very early-stage company, you can have greater flexibility about when you decide to pull the trigger on a liquidity event,” she says, adding that startups are a good deal right now. “We can take advantage of valuations … and continue to organically grow these companies until we’re ready and the market’s ready for them.”

She thinks a time of cleantech acquisitions — read “exits” — is coming. “As cleantech becomes an increasingly important part of the economy, many companies will be looking for ways to expand in the market, and one very easy way for them to do that is through acquisition,” she says. “I actually think it’s a great time to be having investment activities. But it’s tough getting people to see that right now.”

The fund is looking at energy-efficiency technologies, such as lighting and energy-management software and components, she said. It also is considering technologies that could take advantage of anticipated new policies, such as technologies that calculate companies’ carbon footprints, which could work with a carbon cap-and-trade program. The fund in October announced investments in efficient-lighting startup HID Labs, biofuels company Allopartis Biotechnologies and an undisclosed solar company.

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