GigaOM » lmt

FiOS inches closer

Kevin C. Tofel — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:58:51 +0000

The boys in neon green/yellow have arrived… glad to see they brought their shovels! My guess would be that FiOS service will be available in my ‘hood by the end of August. That gives me plenty of time to figure out which plan I want. I’m leaning towards the 20 down / 5 up for around $60 a month. Thoughts?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

EEStor's Batteries Enlisted for Battlefield

Craig Rubens — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:45:04 +0000

EEStor, the much-talked about ceramic battery maker, has signed an exclusive international rights agreement with military-industrial giant Lockheed Martin to integrate EEStor’s Electric Energy Storage Units (EESUs) into military applications. This is a big win for the stealthy Cedar Park, Texas-based battery maker founded in 2001. EEStor’s claims of making a ceramic batteries that have 10 times the energy density of lead-acid batteries with 1/10th the weight and volume at half the price were met with a due amount of skepticism back in 2006. Since then the company has been tight-lipped about their potentially revolutionary technology.

The release from Lockheed (LMT) notes EEStor’s ambition of using their EESUs in renewable energy generation. “We’re building a high-tech battery that can do a helluva lot,” EEStor CEO Richard Weir told Earth2Tech flatly in a phone interview. “It sure can make wind and solar [energy] real,” he added. Weir declined to offer any other details about EEStor’s cleantech aspirations but it seems clear the energy storage company plans to make big moves in utility-level renewable power.

If EEStor’s EESU does everything they claim it can at the cost and size they cite, EEStor is poised to turn mobile energy on its head. Lockheed, stressing the goal of “energy independence for the Warfighter,” says it plans to put EEStor’s technology through the ultimate crash test: the battlefield. “The challenges and logistics of taking power onto the battlefield are significant,” Craig Vanbebber of Lockheed Martin told Earth2Tech this morning. They see EEStor’s highly efficient ESSUs solving a wide range of combat energy problems: “These could be as small as wearable power sources on soldiers to vehicular power sources to powering command and control centers,” Vanbebber explained.

EEStor also has Silicon Valley venture capitalist all-star firm Kleiner Perkins in its corner; it led a a $3 million preferred stock investment in the company back in the summer of 2005. The Lockheed agreement puts more pressure on EEStor to get its product to market. Last year EEStor was scheduled to start delivering the battery systems to Canadian electric carmaker ZENN Motors but in September pushed back commercial production dates to late 2008, which the Lockheed press release cites as the expected production date for its products.

We’ll see if the clandestine capacitor maker stays on schedule in ’08. EEStor brings ceramic battery technology to the increasingly crowded utility-level energy storage space. Just last week, Deeya Energy, the maker of huge flow batteries, received $15 million to tackle the same problem. The competition among makers is good for renewable energy generators, who will be able to leverage these new technologies for more stable green power sources.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Using Amazon Web Services To Scale Your Facebook Apps

Om Malik — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 16:29:34 +0000

You know a web 2.0 application is hitting an upward inflection point when your inbox starts filling up with the likes of “Joe Doe wants to add you as a friend on VagueSter.” Over the last few months, it’s been Facebook’s turn.

The site’s rise in traffic is in no small part due to developers being enabled to deliver their apps using the Facebook API. Here is how you can use Amazon Web Services to scale your Facebook Apps. Continue Reading.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

QubeTV: A ‘Right-Wing’ YouTube

Jackson West — Thu, 10 May 2007 07:00:21 +0000

QubeTV, the new video-sharing destination for political conservatives, recently got a wave of traffic from a link on the Drudge Report. The brainchild of Republican veterans Jeff Lord and Charlie Gerow, the site is a reaction to the perception that YouTube is biased against the conservative message. The goal is to enable “a conservative army with cameras.”

The front page features a clip from Michelle Malkin which was banned by YouTube for terms of service violations for being “inappropriate,” like due to its astringent anti-Islamic tone. Interestingly enough, another of her videos is getting help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a fair-use fight against a takedown request from Universal Music Group.

According to the March 1 announcement post from QubeTV, CEO Lord and Chairman Gerow also both work for Quantum Communications, a public relations firm. Beyond that, it’s unclear how the site is being funded — there’s currently no advertising.

User-uploaded clips can be found on the site, and besides Malkin, clips featuring politicians like Mitt Romney, broadcasters like Sean Hannity, and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation are currently available.

Otherwise, the site is fairly bare-bones, with video and photo sections as well as a basic “groups” forum. By comparison, GodTube, a Christian-focused YouTube clone which has been around a bit longer, has a much slicker and more YouTube-like interface.

What both the offline Christian and political conservative communities are experiencing is that early technology adopters often determine the tone of discussion on the site, and as Digg and YouTube have demonstrated, early adopters are a largely left-wing, atheist crowd.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

RIAA steps up file-trading suits

Om Malik — Tue, 17 Feb 2004 22:02:38 +0000

The Recording Industry Association of America continuing its bone-headed campaign against file sharers is now filing lawsuits again 531 alleged music swappers, reports CNET News.com. Just as an aside, if you know of any five to ten year old kids who are on this list, please let us know. On a more serious note, RIAA has now sued more than 1500 folks. In the same story, News.com quotes research firm, The NPD Group as saying:

New data released by NPD on Tuesday showed that by December 2003, music swapping was back on the decline. According to the group’s surveys, 21 percent less songs were traded through file-swapping networks by U.S. residents in December, compared with November 2003. About 2 percent less U.S. households engaged in music file trading at all, the group said.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.