Will Fisker’s investors sue?
Reuter’s investigative piece about the failed electric car startup Fisker Automotive is more fodder if Fisker’s investors plan on taking their complaints to the courts. Read more »
Tesla recalls around 800 Model S cars with weak seat bracket
Tesla does a minor recall of several hundred of its Model S cars for a weak seat bracket. Read more »
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The first 3D-printed battery is as tiny as a grain of sand
photo: Harvard
The tiny interlocking combs of specialized ink could power human implants, drones and cameras. Each microbattery is thinner than a human hair. Read more »
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GE’s industrial internet focus means it’s a big data company now
photo: Stacey Higginbotham
As it tries to make inroads into the internet of things GE has decided it will become a big data company, building Hadoop-based software to help its customers automate their industrial assets. Read more »
Dead battery relief: New York gets solar phone charging stations
photo: Pensa
New Yorkers soon will start seeing strange kiosks popping up in parks and other public places. They should be welcome sights, though, since anyone can plug their phones into them for a quick battery refresh. Read more »
The reviews are in: Everybody loves the new MacBook Air’s battery
Apple said the new MacBook has the longest battery life of any of its notebooks. Well, according to the first users, that claim is true. Here’s a roundup of the best Air reviews. Read more »
Smart window startup View raises another $60M led by Corning
Smart window startup View (formerly Soladigm) gets a new big backer in glass giant Corning. Read more »
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Elon Musk: Tesla to demo battery swap technology on Thursday
Tesla CEO Elon Musk says Tesla will demo battery swap technology at its design studio near LA on Thursday night. Read more »
Solar-powered phone screen could boost battery life
photo: SunPartner Group
A French startup plans to debut the thin, transparent screens in consumer phones next year. Cars, buildings and billboards could be next. Read more »
Why Siemens has had a hard time selling its solar tech
Siemens is planning a big layoff after it couldn’t find a buyer for its solar thermal technology, for which it paid $418 million in 2009. Read more »
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Bringing the Internet everywhere will need clean power
Connecting the ends of the Earth with internet access will require tapping into various types of clean power. Google’s Project Loon is just the latest wacky way to use renewable energy to connect the world. Read more »
ICYMI podcasts: Connected pets, 7 years of GigaOM and boosted battery life on MacBook Airs
Can one chip make a difference in your laptop’s battery life? Yup, and hopefully it comes to Chromebooks soon. Data from connected pets can help their health while Sony countered Microsoft well with its new PS4. Read more »
Scientists, the web is becoming your oyster
Mozilla’s ScienceLab wants the open web to transform science as much as it’s transformed the other areas of our lives. Read more »
No surprise here. Telcos hoping for big bucks from connected cars
photo: Life360
Connected cars will be a big business for cellular carriers as governments demand more embedded systems inside vehicles to meet safety demands. Tethering will also be big, but smartphone integration less so. Read more »
Chinese firms continue to scoop up VC-backed cleantech startups for cheap
VC-backed LED startup Luminus Devices has been sold off to a Chinese lighting company. Following in the footsteps of solar, electric cars, and batteries, LED technology is now also getting bought up by Chinese players. Read more »
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Facebook’s first European data center goes live in Sweden
The data center in Luleå, Sweden, is highly energy-efficient as it uses hydroelectric power. It may also prove handy in keeping Facebook on the right side of European data protection legislation. Read more »
The bright spot for the U.S. solar market in 2013: home roof tops
The growing popularity of solar leases, falling prices of solar panels and efforts to reduce the costs of marketing, sales and permitting, have steadily boosted the growth of the solar market in recent years. Read more »
Cloud computing saves energy, and here’s the data to show it
Cloud-based business software can save significant energy, according to a new report from Berkeley Lab. To prove this the researchers built a model that crunches the data around the cloud and energy. Read more »
SageCloud gets $10M to build Facebook cold storage for the rest of us
photo: Shutterstock / kubais
A storage startup called SageCloud is looking to deliver low-cost backup storage to the masses who want Facebook-like cold storage without resorting to tape, cloud services or building their own gear. Read more »
Honda, BMW experiment with the autonomous motorcycle
photo: Shutterstock / Dikiiy
Most connected vehicle technologies have focused squarely on the car, but BMW and Honda are working with the University of MIchigan and Cohda Wireless to develop autonomous driving technologies that work on two wheels. Read more »
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Comcast’s connected home now has smart thermostats, efficient light bulbs
Now part of the cable connected home experience from Comcast: a learning thermostat service and remote-controlled LED light bulbs. Read more »
With next-gen Intel chip, new Apple MacBook Air provides all-day battery life
Intel’s Haswell chip has a new home today: You can find it in the latest MacBook Air laptops from Apple, now available. Apple promises 9 and 12 hours of battery life on the two models. Read more »
Google eyes two-story Oregon data center design to maximize efficiency
photo: Google
Google plans to build two stories inside a new data center building on its campus in The Dalles, Ore. It’s yet another method of optimizing critical infrastructure for the web giant. Read more »
The internet is good for the planet, and let’s keep it that way
There’s a growing amount of research that says the Internet has a greater net positive effect on the environment than a negative one. But the research is still new and the question is very complex. Read more »
IO taps McLaren to speed up its modular data centers
Formula 1 cars make big tweaks to get little performance improvements, and with McLaren’s help, IO wants to do similar things to improve energy efficiency and performance inside its modular data centers. Read more »
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New TI chips speed charge times and extend battery life for smartphones, tablets
New Texas Instruments chipsets won’t help your device run longer on a single charge, but they will allow for 30 percent faster recharging. And the Li-Ion battery in your mobile device will last longer over the device lifetime. Read more »
Ruh-roh: Ray Lane owes the feds big ($100M) tax bill
After a couple tough years as HP chairman, Lane loses that gig and now faces a $100M tax bill from the IRS. Read more »
Al Gore: The information explosion is a tool to help solve the climate crisis
The Internet and the digital revolution can be a major player in fighting climate change, says Al Gore at a Google event. Read more »
The next era of computing is coming, and ARM’s Simon Segars is ready to profit from it
photo: Stacey Higginbotham
ARM’s future is tied to more devices with computing and connectivity trying to share data on a variety of networks. Call it the internet of things or just the obvious direction we’re heading as society. Read more »
Design could help transform the web into a hits business, and that’s not a good thing
photo: Courtesy of David Fulmer
Will design contribute to this growing trend of Silicon Valley turning into a hits-driven ecosystem, not unlike Hollywood? Read more »
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What cities, data and Yahoo have in common: Interaction matters
photo: Shutterstock / pio3
A recent study from MIT suggests the likelihood of face-to-face interactions within a city means more productivity. It seems to apply equally to companies and even data, which suggests engineers and architects of all types should take notice. Read more »
While you’re waiting for your Fairphone, here are some tips for smartphone sustainability
Fairphone has received enough pre-orders to start developing its finalized ethical Android smartphone. But even now, there are steps you can take to make your smartphone purchase more ethical and sustainable. Read more »
Nextel shutdown will leave 45,000 tons of network junk. How Sprint plans to recycle it
On June 30, the Nextel iDEN service goes offline, sticking Sprint with a heck of a lot of network scrap. Sprint, however, isn’t just throwing it all in a dumpster behind Walmart. It will recycle whatever it can’t use. Read more »
Here’s how Bill Gates’s ResearchGate investment might change the world for the better
Bill Gates doesn’t invest in tech companies very often. But with ResearchGate, a firm that stands a real chance of improving the workflow of scientists around the world, you can see why he bit. Read more »
Using data to harness social pressure can be a powerful force for good (video)
Social pressure influences everything in our lives from our habits to our clothing choices to the food we eat. It also can be harnessed as a power tool to reduce energy consumption in our homes. Read more »
Google to use wind power from Sweden to run its Finnish data center
Google’s latest clean power play takes the search engine giant all the way to a Swedish wind farm, which will eventually crank out and pump clean power across the country to a data center in Finland. Read more »
Verizon to buy Bloom Energy fuel cells for data center, switching centers in CA
Verizon is now the latest customer of Silicon Valley’s buzzy fuel cell company Bloom Energy. The trend of telecom and Internet companies increasingly turning to clean power options continues to grow. Read more »
Crowd funded: The Nikola Tesla statue officially coming to Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley will soon be getting a reminder of the power of thinking big: a life-sized bronzed statue of Nikola Tesla in Palo Alto, Calif. Read more »
For your summer road trip: 7 recommended chargers for your iDevices
Never be without power and avoid carrying a myriad of odd cables and adapters as you enjoy the summer. These multi-functional accessories provide effective charging without weighing you down or taking up half your carry-on luggage. Read more »
Silicon Valley is now paying even less attention to climate change and that sucks
Following the collapse of the first wave of cleantech investing, and an attention on digital technology, Silicon Valley has moved even further away from using tech to fight climate change. And that’s too bad. Read more »
