M-Files does away with traditional folder structures, relying entirely on metadata to help people find documents (think iPhone rather than Windows), and it works across cloud, on-premise and hybrid installations. The service has been around for a good 8 years and has picked up some very serious customers indeed, ranging from AstraZeneca and Pandora to Northrop Grumman and the UN Environment Program.

“Everyone says that metadata is important, but quite often it’s something users have to add when they are storing documents,” CEO Miika Mäkitalo told me on Tuesday.

“Our M-Files system is a metadata architecture, which gives excellent benefits for end users … You can [organize] documents by customer name, project, proposal date and so on, and if you choose to find a document you will always find the latest version – they might be different paths but they all lead to the same document.”

The fresh cash infusion will be used to push M-Files further into the U.S. in particular, Mäkitalo said: “We want to continue growing aggressively. We want our channel sales function to skyrocket in the coming years.” He added that, although the U.S. and Finland account for most of M-Files’s existing customers (of which there are thousands), there are many elsewhere in Europe and in Asia, too.

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Seagate's Momentus XT hybrid drive is already on the market.

A new Apple patent published Thursday by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (via Patently Apple) reveals plans for a new type of hybrid drive that combines the benefits of both platter-based and flash storage. A hybrid drive isn’t a new concept; I recently upgraded my 2009 Mac mini with a 500 GB version from Seagate. But Apple’s patent application reveals some innovative ideas about how to use a flash/spinning drive combo.

Smarter data insurance

The key new element in Apple’s patent application has to do with a system for detecting environmental conditions in a computer’s surroundings, and then changing which portion of the drive it writes to based on those conditions. That would allow it to temporarily store information on the flash portion of the drive, if conditions detected are determined to potentially pose a high risk for data written to the platter drive. Hard disk drives are much more sensitive to shock, changes in orientation, ambient temperature or magnetic signals, so this could in theory protect valuable data from being lost due to drive errors.

Fast, capacious and cheap

Meanwhile, the platter-based drive can operate in normal conditions, providing lots more storage per dollar for customers. Flash-based storage will continue to drop in price, but it still has a long way to go before it can compete in terms of per GB cost with platter-based drives. Capacities in Mac computers using hybrid drives could theoretically far outstrip those currently available from flash drives, while also offering some of their performance benefits. Hybrid drives can keep often-accessed data on the flash portion of the drive, to make operations like booting, shutting down and opening applications consistently speedy.

Intel is deploying its Smart Response hybrid drive technology in some gaming laptops later this year, and should expand it to more mainstream computers throughout 2012. It’s a technology that companies are beginning to see the value of, since it can bridge the gap between platter drives and SSDs, which have yet to really become available in storage capacities high enough at prices low enough to justify mass-market usage for mobile PCs.

Desktops likely targets

Apple’s targets with this tech, if it ever does put this patent into practice, will likely be its desktop iMac and Mac mini line. That’s because the space requirements for the drives will make them unable to fit within the case of a MacBook Air. I also believe that, as reports have suggested, Apple is planning to move to ultraportable form factors across its line of notebook offerings. If that happens, SSD will probably also be the storage option of choice in those machines, with Thunderbolt serving as a means to connect to larger external drives when they’re needed.

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Rare earth element mine in Mountain Pass, Calif. Image courtesy of USGS.

Molycorp, a company that controls one of the largest deposits of rare earth elements (a group of metals used in many green technologies) outside of China, is off to a rocky start on the public markets after pricing its shares below expectations, raising $393.8 million in its IPO on Thursday.

The company reined in its ambitions and priced shares for its IPO this morning at $14 apiece, down from the $15-$17 per share price range estimated earlier this month. The stock debuted on the New York Stock Exchange at $13.25, and has hovered mostly between $12.10 and $13.00 during today’s trading so far.

Based in Greenwood, Colo., Molycorp aims to use proceeds from the IPO to modernize and expand its Mountain Pass, Calif. rare earth project (a more than 50-year-old mine where Molycorp stopped removing ore in 2002 after it had problems with radioactive waste spilling into a nearby lake), and also acquire a rare earth metals and alloys producer. The U.S. has, since the 1990s, imported almost all of its rare earths from China.

These rare earth metals are used for a variety of growing markets including hybrid vehicle batteries, wind turbines, compact fluorescent light bulbs and magnets for electric vehicle motors, as well as consumer electronics and defense technologies like smart bombs and guided missiles. But U.S. lawmakers and government authorities have been concerned that China’s government could limit exports of the metals.

Most recently a group of 20 senators sent a letter to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu calling for the Department of Energy to open and expedite its loan guarantee program for projects meant to increase U.S. production of rare earth elements, warning that a “crisis” in the supply of these metals could “jeopardize our ability to deploy key clean energy technologies and reach our broader energy policy objectives.”

After seeing its first loan guarantee application “summarily rejected” by the DOE, Molycorp filed a second request in June for a $280 million guarantee, and the company is hoping today’s IPO will help strengthen that application by “substantially [alleviating] equity funding and liquidity concerns that the DOE might have.”

But as Molycorp’s reined-in pricing for today’s IPO indicates, the company debuted in a difficult market. While battery maker A123 Systems delivered the largest IPO of 2009 (raising $371 million) and electric car maker Tesla Motors’ $226 million IPO in June was the largest venture-backed public debut of the second quarter, several other greentech IPOs have been canceled or postponed this year.

Solar company Solyndra, for example, which had been aiming to raise as much as $300 million in an IPO, said last month that it had opted to raise $175 million from existing investors instead due to “going uncertainties in the public capital markets.” Other greentech companies that have withdrawn plans to debut on the public markets in recent months include geothermal developer Nobao Renewable Energy and amorphous-silicon solar panel maker Trony Solar.

Molycorp, which plans to re-start mining operations at Mountain Pass in late 2010 and reach full-scale production (40 million pounds of finished rare earth products per year) in 2012, says it expects to spend as much as $511 million through 2012. And as the company acknowledges in its latest SEC filing, selling its shares at $14 apiece in the IPO “will not be sufficient to fully fund our business plan……and there can be no assurance that we will be successful in raising the incremental capital needed to fully execute our business plan on terms acceptable to us, or at all.”

In contrast with A123, Tesla and the renewable energy companies that have pulled IPO plans, Molycorp is very far from a pure greentech play. It’s even further from the venture capital model of growing a business. The company’s history traces back to 1950, when a firm named Molybdenum Corporation of America (MCA) bought mining claims at the Mountain Pass site. After about 25 years of production, MCA changed its name to Molycorp, Inc. and by 2005 it had merged with Chevron Mining. Then in 2008, a new Molycorp — this one privately held — was formed to purchase the Mountain Pass deposit from a Chevron.

Yet as with A123 and Tesla, an investment in Molycorp’s stock is still partly a bet that nascent greentech markets will take off. All three companies have a history of losses and not one profitable quarter between them. Molycorp has run its business at a loss since inception in June 2008, including $28.6 million in losses last year, and it expects to “incur substantial losses for the foreseeable future.”

And as Molycorp notes in its filing, lack of growth, delays in commercialization or unexpected costs in the markets for electric vehicles, wind power equipment, compact fluorescent bulbs and other clean technology products (as well as “the general automotive and electronic industries”) could adversely affect the company’s revenue and financial condition.

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This comes on the heels of two other longstanding legal battles over hybrid technology finally coming to a close, with Ford and Toyota each reaching settlement agreements this month in patent disputes with a company called Paice LLC. All of these cases come at a time when automakers are jockeying to carve out a piece of the nascent green car segment, not least of all in China’s fast-growing auto market.

According to Australia-based IP law firm Griffith Hack, filings for patents covering hybrid technology have been “increasing roughly exponentially” across much of the industry in the last few years, although the Clean Energy Patent Growth Index from intellectual property law firm Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti suggests a more gradual climb.

The couple involved in the GM corporate espionage case — a former GM engineer named Shanshan Du and her husband Yu Qin — are accused of stealing thousands of GM documents and trying to pass the information along to competitors through a company they set up called Millenium Technology International, according to a release from the FBI.

Several months after Du left GM, the indictment (which is a charge, not evidence of guilt) says the couple “moved forward on a new business venture to provide hybrid vehicle technology to Chery Automobile.” Today Wuhi, China-based Chery (a company with ambitious plans for electric cars) tells Reuters, however, that it “had no idea about this issue,” adding that it seems “strange” that the company’s name is “being linked to this matter.”

Based on “preliminary calculations,” GM estimates that the information in documents allegedly stolen by the couple is worth more than $40 million, according to the FBI. John Voelcker over at Green Car Reports notes that the automaker sells only around 10,000 vehicles per year with its two-mode hybrid system, which was designed for large SUVs and trucks. In December, the company plans to roll out the Chevy Volt, an extended-range electric sedan that by some estimates has cost well over a billion dollars to develop.

Images courtesy of General Motors

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This new integration is possible through the use of a third-party app,  DataSynch OnDemand for FreshBooks & Salesforce. Made by Pervasive Software, it’s available in the Saleforce AppExchange and costs $19.95 per user per month.

The app synchronizes data between FreshBooks and Salesforce, providing the ability to:

• Insert Salesforce accounts into FreshBooks as clients and vice versa
• Use Salesforce to generate estimates and invoices in FreshBooks and vice versa
• Automatically create FreshBooks invoices/estimates when an opportunity is marked as “closed-won” in Salesforce

This Salesforce integration adds to a very long list of applications now integrated with FreshBooks. The company seemingly wants to integrate its product with as many other apps as it can; indeed, it was one of the founding members of the Small Business Web initiative, which seeks to build closer ties between its members’ apps. It’s a smart policy to have, because users are increasingly faced with a “patchwork quilt” of web apps (GigaOM Pro link, sub. req.) that focus on very specific tasks. Using such a varied number of tools can prove cumbersome and result in “data silos” if vendors don’t provide easy-to-use integrations via the use of APIs, so the efforts of FreshBooks should be applauded. It’s just a shame this particular integration (a much-requested feature) is only available though the use of an app that requires paying a significant monthly fee.

What integrations between apps would you like to see?

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Enterprise 2.0: Web Apps and the Patchwork Quilt Problem

Formerly called Mobile Energy Solutions, Proterra makes drive components and energy storage systems for electric and hybrid buses, delivery vans and other commercial models, as well as the vehicles themselves, and on Wednesday it announced this new investment from MK Energy and Infrastructure.

Based in Golden, Colo., 6-year-old Proterra first announced plans back in February to set up an assembly plant in Greenville, S.C., by 2011. CEO Jeff Granato said at the time that the plant would be the company’s first full-scale facility. Today the company announced that it aims to break ground on the project in 2010, ultimately gaining capacity at the site to make 2,500 units per year of its EcoRide BE-35 (battery electric, 35 feet long) bus model for deployment in the U.S. and internationally.

According to a report last month from The Greenville News, Proterra now expects the Greenville project to cost $30 million to $36 million, down from earlier estimates of between $42 million and $68 million. The company has reportedly set up temporary manufacturing in the area (with the city of Greenville paying for the lease) and plans to produce six buses there this year while the new, larger plant is under construction.

The BE-35 bus uses an electric propulsion system from UQM Technologies, and it has a lightweight composite body. Proterra has designed the vehicle to juice up within 10 minutes at fast-charging stations (pictured at right) placed along the bus route.

Amid unprecedented levels of public funding for green vehicle and component manufacturing projects, it has become all too common for greentech startups to tout grand manufacturing plans — only to sit in limbo awaiting approval of federal funding. But a Proterra spokesperson told us in February that the company’s South Carolina project would be different. A private equity investment was already “being finalized,” she said, and incentives had already been secured at the state and local level for the project.

Proterra could also benefit indirectly from government funds that have already been doled out. Earlier this year the company told us that as many as 21 transit agencies around the country had requested government funding for the purchase of more than $400 million worth of Proterra vehicles.

Stimulus funds in the U.S. and a government push for electric buses in China has helped to buoy the market for next-gen green vehicle technology in mass transit applications, and draw the attention of more than a few entrepreneurs.

Photos courtesy of Proterra

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Clearleap Claims 10 Million Cable Subscribers; one year after launching its web-to-TV technology, Clearleap is now delivering content to more than ten million video subscribers via deals with half of the top ten cable and TV operators in the U.S. (Beet.TV)

U.K. Antitrust Body Won’t Investigate Project Canvas; the U.K. Office of Fair Trading won’t investigate Project Canvas, the joint venture to bring Internet content and new video-on-demand services to television. (Wall Street Journal)

US Court: RapidShare Not Guilty of Copyright Infringement; the popular file-hosting service RapidShare is not guilty of copyright infringement, the United States District Court, Southern District of California has ruled. (TorrentFreak)

Technicolor to Develop TiVo Set-top Box; Technicolor has announced plans to develop an advanced, TiVo-ready high definition set-top box for customers, by porting the TiVo software onto its DSI803 PVR hardware platform. (Broadband TV News)

PopBox and RealD Bring 3D TV Into Homes; a licensing agreement between PopBox and 3D technology provider RealD gives consumers three dimensional content on their television through an Internet-connected box in the home. (MediaPost)

Whiskey Media Uncorks Screened.com; the digital media company launched in 2007 by CNET co-founder Shelby Bonnie, has launched Screened.com, a content site focused on video entertainment that will rely heavily on user participation. (AdWeek)

It’s been a long time coming. The Obama administration has just finalized the country’s first ever national regulation to curb greenhouse gas emissions and raise the bar on efficiency requirements for new cars and trucks. The move could push automakers to incorporate more green technology into their lineups, from more efficient fuel-injection systems to start-stop engines to hybrids and all-electric vehicles.

Under the new standards, first proposed last year, manufacturers must achieve an average of at most 250 grams of carbon dioxide per mile for their fleet by the 2016 model year. According to a statement from the Transportation Department this morning, that would mean a fleet average of 35.5 MPG if all of the emission reductions came from improvements in fuel economy (other options might include controlling air conditioner coolant leaks).

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), meanwhile, has set fuel economy standards to gradually increase starting with the 2012 model year, reaching 34.1 MPG by 2016. According to DOT, the effect will be to “reduce fleet-wide greenhouse gas emissions by approximately five percent every year.”

As the Detroit Free Press reports, the feds estimate that the new rules will “raise the average price of a new vehicle by less than $1,000 in the 2016 model year.” But the EPA says an average buyer of a 2016 model could potentially save up to $3,000 on fuel over the life of the vehicle.

Federal agencies say they received more than 130,000 public comments in response to their September 2009 proposal for this rule, “with overwhelming support for the strong national policy.” According to a survey from the consumer advocacy group Consumer Federation of America released late last year, just 44 models for the 2010 model year (4 percent of all EPA-rated vehicles for the year) get 30 MPG or more — despite widespread consumer interest in more fuel efficient vehicles.

It’s not just consumers who have backed the uptick in MPG requirements. Environmental groups have supported the regulation, which Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood described today as “the most aggressive fuel economy standard ever set in the United States for car and trucks.”

Car manufacturers got behind the notion of a single national regulation, rather than having separate rules for the Transportation Department, EPA and the 13 states that followed California’s tougher standard. Dave McCurdy, President and CEO of the Automobile Manufacturers Alliance — which represents Toyota, GM, Ford, Mazda, Mitsubishi and other automakers — cheered the new regulation in a statement Thursday, commenting, ”A year ago, the auto industry faced a regulatory maze resulting from multiple sets of inconsistent fuel economy/greenhouse gas standards.”

Having a firm idea of what vehicle standards will look like for the next six years is important for automakers weighing investments in green car technology. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in a statement today called the program “a win for automakers and drivers, a win for innovators and entrepreneurs, and a win for our planet.”

Whether and how much car companies end up betting on young entrepreneurial ventures for this tech remains to be seen, however. It’s no small feat persuading an automaker to adopt MPG-boosting technology from a company that hasn’t had time to gather data about how their systems function long term. But a slew of startups (like Achates Power, Alphabet Energy, EcoMotors and others in our chart of upstarts building green car tech for a pre-electric world) aim to seize the opportunity in coming months and years.

Of course, plenty of room for improvement remains. The 35.5 MPG standard marks a major step toward cleaning up the U.S. transportation sector and cutting back on fossil fuel consumption. But as McCurdy points out, “now we need to work on 2017 and beyond.”

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Beige Alert

Accenture, which surveyed 1,850 consumers in North America as well as Germany, France and Italy, notes that just over a third of the respondents (36 percent) named higher gas prices as a reason to purchase a greener car. Responses from participants who have driven a hybrid or electric vehicle (EV) suggest today’s green car makers need to step up their game in order to really impress consumers on factors beyond fuel economy.

While I’m generally impatient to see fuel economy improvements with each new generation of vehicles (although how to measure and rate that efficiency is a tricky question for plug-in models), Accenture’s survey respondents who have driven hybrids and EVs were pretty happy with their fuel efficiency. Respondents rated fuel efficiency “very good to excellent.” By contrast, they rated “the ride, performance, style and maintenance as good at best.”

In a market where these models are going up against other mid-range to high-end vehicles, and a time when most consumers (according to today’s survey) want more than a leading fuel economy rating, that may not be good enough for mass market success.

This survey comes as the latest indication of an important role in next-gen green cars for information technology — an area where many automakers are already racing to develop cool services and platforms (To learn more, come check out the panel I’m moderating at our Green:Net conference on April 29 in San Francisco on Connected Cars.)

According to Accenture, however, automakers (original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs) probably won’t be able to beat out the competition going solo. To create vehicles with “distinctive capabilities,” Luca Mentuccia, managing director of Accenture’s Automotive group said in a statement today, both automakers and their suppliers need to start building strategic partnerships.

Image courtesy of D.so’s photostream Flickr Creative Commons.

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Perry also had another warning for the cable industry: Government has stepped in before to enforce competition and decouple infrastructure from services. The phone business went through this transition, and power companies have been facing similar regulations, he said. Could cable be next? Will Congress eventually force cable companies to open up their pipes for competitors to sell programming? “It certainly happened to many other businesses,” he mused.

Of course, cable isn’t the only gatekeeper in this newteevee world. Device makers increasingly hold the key to over the top platforms, deciding which services to include and which to leave out. So how will Panasonic deal with this responsibility? I decided to find out and ask Perry a few more questions.

Perry acknowledged the role cable TV has to play in the future of video distribution, but also said that consumers are increasingly treating it like a dumb pipe to run over-the-top video services, which could eventually solve the problem of decoupling without any regulation. So what does cable need to do to keep its customers from cutting the cord? Unbundle programming, he said, and offer choice without unnecessary barriers like cumbersome content protection. “The average consumer doesn’t want to steal content,” he told me. “The average consumer wants convenience and flexibility.”

Speaking of choice: Panasonic has started to incorporate various over-the-top services into its devices through its Viera Cast platform, which Perry described as a walled garden. He told the audience of the TV of Tomorrow Show that Panasonic might eventually move towards an open platform. At one point, he even predicted that it would be “no question that there’s eventually (going to be) browsers on TVs.” Perry was a little more careful when I wanted to know a few more details, but he did tell me that Panasonic will try to offer as much content and choice as possible. “We are not trying to funnel or control the consumer,” he added.

Related content on GigaOm Pro: With TV Apps, Over-the-Top Video Gets New Backers (subscription required)