More imperium Stories

Judging from the flurry of venture-capital deals, big oil company investments, and attention from politicians on startups creating biofuels from algae, it might seem like the world has fallen in love with the technology to power vehicles with pond scum. But after all of the algae […] Read more »

In the summer of 2008, 2009 looked like it could be a breakout year for the next generation of ethanol. There were dozens of companies racing to be the first to churn out cellulosic ethanol made from non-food crops and plant waste from pilot and even […] Read more »

Talk about getting kicked while you’re down. Already, the biodiesel industry has seen its margins squeezed since petroleum prices plummeted last fall. Now, the news coming out of Brussels earlier this week is that the European Union plans to slap punitive tariffs on imports of U.S. […] Read more »

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Just because you’re among the world’s wealthiest doesn’t mean you’re good at investing in clean technologies. The London Times has released a “Green Rich List,” which looks at the world’s top wealthiest people that have some sort of investment in clean technology — from alternative vehicles […] Read more »

We’ve been wondering what the former CEO of biodiesel company Imperium Renewables, Martin Tobias, was going to do next. When we interviewed the serial entrepreneur and angel investor back in May at the Future In Review Conference he said he was mulling over his options — […] Read more »

One year after the vaunted opening of its 100-million-gallon-a-year, $78 million biodiesel plant at the Port of Grays Harbor, Imperium Renewables has lost its contract to supply Royal Caribbean with 18 million gallons of biodiesel annually, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported. The news –which also revealed that […] Read more »

The 10 next-generation biofuel startups that got funded last quarter were 10 of the reasons that cleantech venture investments hit a recent record. But how well are all these biofuel startups going to do in the market? We’re not sure, but Martin Tobias, angel investor and […] Read more »

We’ve discussed the hassles of dealing with multiple timezones and distributed web-working teams before. New site World Time Engine (in open beta) tries to bring order to this chaos. At root, it’s a huge database: type in a location (like “Scotland” or “Indianapolis” and it will […] Read more »

Think $4 per gallon gas is bad? Try $6 per gallon biodiesel. While the prices for gas and diesel have been climbing higher and higher, biodiesel prices have been rising, too, crunching biodiesel makers and making large diesel purchasers rethink making the switch to biodiesel. Seattle-based […] Read more »

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A lot of people have been wondering what Martin Tobias has been up to since he left Imperium Renewables, a startup he led to become one of the largest biodiesel producers in the U.S., last December. Well, surfing, for one; he runs a surf camp in […] Read more »

Virtualization holds lots of promise: Move your physical machines to virtual ones, and you’ll reclaim capacity at the same time that you make operations easier. But applications seldom run on one machine; instead they’re a combination of servers, switches and routers. 3Tera’s recently announced product road […] Read more »

There are many online project management offerings on the web including Projjex (previously covered), Basecamp, and Zoho Project. A relatively new entrant to the market is 5pm, a product is built by a very small team. Even without venture funding, the 5pm team has built a […] Read more »

Mainstream media has the first overviews of the MacBook Air available today: you can catch the high-level thoughts at USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek. These are less of a review and more of a general impression and description of the device, but two […] Read more »

I have two older Macs at home, a Powerbook G4-1.5Ghz and an iMac G5-1.8Ghz (both purchased in 2004 and now out of AppleCare). When I was given the opportunity to upgrade the DVD-burner in ether of those machines with the FastMac Optical Drive Upgrade Kit ($149.95), […] Read more »

SmugMug is one of those rare Web 2.0 companies that has the temerity to charge for their photo-hosting and sharing service. A poster child among startups that are utilizing Amazon.com’s Web Services, SmugMug has built a reputation as a quirky but well-managed startup that is profitable […] Read more »

Yesterday I received an intriguing invite from OQO to a pre-launch unveiling in London of a new product on December 3rd.  OQO will also announce something they call the Anytime/ Anywhere Computing Environment.  There’s not a lot of additional information but it sounds like a totally […] Read more »

The iPhone does a great job of displaying any website with its Safari web browser and high-resolution display. With the easy touch controls on the iPhone, navigating just about any website is a breeze. Still, websites developed specifically for the iPhone are optimal because they utilize […] Read more »

If you haven’t heard of 37 Signals’ Highrise, it’s a web-based CRM tool and is excellent at managing relationships with clients, colleagues, vendors, etc. You can keep track of emails, notes, and tasks for people. Greatascent is a new plugin for Address Book that lets you […] Read more »

Best Buy and Circuit City are offering rebates that will nab you an 80 hour TiVo Series 2 for free but you better act quickly.  Sure you can wait for one of those new shiny Series 3 TiVos but come on, these are FREE. (via TiVoBlog) […] Read more »

If we can have video on demand, pizza on demand, why not events on demand. Business 2 Blog reports that EVDB-powered Eventful is launching a new service where consumers can create a groundswell for certain concerts and events from performers. The idea is to use the […] Read more »

The New York Times: Packet8 phones also do not use the new H.264 video encoding and decoding scheme, which provides high-quality, 30-frames-a-second images with half the bandwidth requirements. In some ways, the new codec may mean to video what the MP3 compression format has meant to […] Read more »

In recent months I have become downright pessimistic about the future of voice-over-the-internet service providers, mostly because of a looming price war, and lack of killer features. Replication of ideas never bodes well for the industry. We saw that when half-a-dozen pet supply retailers came online […] Read more »

Motorola’s desire to become a consumer electronics giant might have to wait another day. Reports says that Moto and its manufacturing partner, Proview International of Hong Kong, have ended their alliance to make Motorola TVs for the Chinese market. Thank god! This was going to be […] Read more »