More obama Stories

In planning to work from home, we consider in detail the technicalities, the home office setup, and all the fun, exciting things we’ll do to fill in all that extra time we’ll have. This is, after all, a lifestyle change, and there’s a lot to think […] Read more »

When General Motors set out to find a new chief financial officer, it looked far beyond the ranks of company insiders that the car company has historically tapped for leaders. But while the man hired for the job — former Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell – hails from […] Read more »

The issue of green jobs has risen once again to the top of the pile in Washington, D.C. in recent days: Most recently, the White House announced a plan on Wednesday to create “tens of thousands of jobs,” the Wall Street Journal reports, by providing $5 billion […] Read more »

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Obama Nobel Speech: Climate Action Needed for Peace: “In accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo today, President Obama touched briefly on the issue of climate change, lumping it in with a laundry list of ‘soft’ issues like economic security, food security, and education.” — Grist […] Read more »

More than 7.2 million jobs have been lost in the U.S. since the start of the recession, and President Obama sees home retrofits for boosting energy efficiency and the expansion of highly competitive stimulus programs for green energy projects as two of the keys for turning […] Read more »

Arguably, Zoho is a competitor of Google’s, since both include web-based document creation and editing tools among their product offerings. That hasn’t stopped Zoho from offering integration with Google products in the past, and today it introduces full Google Docs compatibility, a move which shows it […] Read more »

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It has been a long time coming. Google’s Chrome web browser has been available on Windows for over a year, while Mac users have been left with three options — take their chances with a nightly build of the open-source fork of Chrome (dubbed Chromium), use […] Read more »

Obama Heading to Copenhagen: The White House announced today that President Obama will attend the UN climate talks next month in Copenhagen “and commit the U.S. to a short-term emission reduction target ‘in the range of 17 percent’ below 2005 levels, providing new momentum for negotiations […] Read more »

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At the Apple iPod event this past September, the iPod nano got a video upgrade, but despite rumors to the contrary, the iPod touch didn’t get a similar treatment. The Internet was ablaze with expectation thanks to the appearance of a number of iPod touch cases […] Read more »

The award of hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and loans for electric vehicles, batteries and charging infrastructure in the last few months has provided a major boost for companies working in the space. That’s true for Scottsdale, Ariz.-based ECOtality, whose subsidiary eTec (with several […] Read more »

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President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao this week launched a joint effort to “reduce oil dependency, cut greenhouse gas emissions and promote economic growth” through accelerated deployment of electric vehicles — an effort that needn’t exist in opposition to “green mobility efforts.” Nor should it […] Read more »

Dutch to Try Road Tax Alternative: The Dutch government has approved a plan to replace the annual road tax on cars with mileage fees in an effort to reduce traffic congestion and vehicle emissions. Starting in 2012, GPS devices will be used to monitor vehicles, tracking […] Read more »

The idea of modeling government funds after venture capital has swirled, in various forms, around the Obama administration since back in the campaign days. Now comes the latest twist: The Obama administration has named a former VC, Jonathan Silver, to head up the Department of Energy’s […] Read more »

The $10 million in winnings for the Automotive X Prize competition can provide a welcome influx of cash for the DIY garage-based team, startup or even a more established automaker that builds the best 100 MPG car with a minimum 200-mile range, based on a number […] Read more »

Feds Open Another Spigot for Clean Energy: The Treasury Department has announced that it’s allocating $2.2 billion in bonds to support the efforts of 805 small-scale clean and renewable energy projects across the country. Most of the bond money will be used to support solar, wind […] Read more »

Game On for Climate Policy: The Obama administration today presented “an energetic unified front on behalf of climate change,” in Congressional testimony and two stimulus funding announcements. Obama will need to bring more of that A-game in order “to make good on his promise to act […] Read more »

Two Spanish Apple sites are reporting that the latest build of Apple’s upcoming update to its Mac OS X Snow Leopard software contains references to as-yet unreleased new models of MacBook Pro. Build 10C531 lists “MacBook Pro 6,1” and “MacBook Pro 6,2”, an indication of major […] Read more »

Recently, Simon reported on a couple of interesting studies looking at the use of collaboration technologies in the workplace, Forrester’s “The State Of Workforce Technology Adoption: US Benchmark 2009” and Frost & Sullivan’s “Meetings Around the World II: Charting the Course of Advanced Collaboration.” Both reports […] Read more »

Yes Men Take It to the Hill: The climate-minded Yes Men stunt group offered up another prank today, just a day after punking the Chamber of Commerce with a fake press announcement — this time showing up on Capitol Hill in Survivaball suits to hector Sen. […] Read more »

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” — Confucius The bottom line for every business owner is this. If you can’t keep customers and clients, your business will fail. Ironically, we tend to forget this fact by getting caught up in the […] Read more »

Green jobs have become a sort of mantra of late among the political left, with supporters looking to clean-energy sectors to produce companies hungry for new hires and help ease the pain of the economic downturn. Today research firm Clean Edge, known among other things for […] Read more »

TiVo Gets Blockbuster On Demand; users can rent popular new release movies a la carte. (release) GlideTV Launches the “Couch Mouse;” combines keyboard, mouse and AV remote functionality into a small handheld device for those connecting their PCs or PC-like devices to their TV. (GlideTV) ViVu […] Read more »

EU Clean Energy Growth, Now Tracked Online: “The European Commission this week launched an open-access online tool to monitor the development of about a dozen low-carbon technologies in the trade bloc.” — NYT’s Green Inc. Chamber Credits/Blames Environmentalists for Resignations: Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue […] Read more »

White House Details New Auto Standards: According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Obama administrations new proposed fuel efficiency and emission standards will translate to an average “real-life fuel economy” of about 32.7 miles per gallon for U.S. cars and trucks in 2016.  — […] Read more »

Google’s Solar Mirrors: If You Want Something Done Right, Do It Yourself: If the cleantech industry isn’t delivering enough innovation, we’ll start building it ourselves, Google’s green guru Bill Weihl suggested this week. The search engine has a “handful of dedicated full-time green engineers” working on […] Read more »

Automakers Eye Fuel Cells for 2015: Auto companies Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Renault, Nissan and Toyota have issued a joint letter of understanding today saying they anticipate a “few hundred thousand units” of fuel cell electric vehicles will be commercialized. — Green Car […] Read more »

Epic Fail: International climate talks taking place in Copenhagen this December are in danger of collapse as a result of the economic recession, complexity of the issues at hand, and “suspicion” between developed and developing countries. — Wall Street Journal Health Care Tactics Needed for Climate […] Read more »

U.S. President Barack Obama addresses America’s schoolchildren today at 12 p.m. ET. He’ll welcome kids back for the school year and encourage them to take personal responsibility for their education. The speech will be primarily distributed online: streamed live on whitehouse.gov and also on Facebook, which […] Read more »

Time Warner Cable Hires Former Joost CTO; Jason Gaedtke will most likely help the cabler with its TV Everywhere plans; TWC had reportedly been in talks to buy Joost, but that didn’t happen. (Light Reading) Some Preliminary U.S. Open Stats; during the first two days of […] Read more »

UPDATED Solar startup Solyndra, which makes tube-shaped thin-film solar panels, already managed to break new ground this year — snagging the first loan guarantee under a long-delayed Department of Energy program. This morning, however, the groundbreaking is literal. Just up the freeway from its headquarters in […] Read more »

Mobile Banking, Solar Power Put to Work for Water Distribution: A community in Musingini, Kenya, is working with Safaricom and Grundfos Lifelink to implement a solar-powered, pay-for-use water vending system using smart cards and mobile phones. — NYT’s Green Inc. Plug-in Prius on Deck: Toyota plans […] Read more »

A dozen wind and solar projects have just snagged hefty grants from the Department of Energy — not enough to cover the entirety of their projects, but enough, the agency hopes, to get investors to pony up more capital. Among today’s big winners is Spain’s Iberdrola […] Read more »

We’ve followed the travails of Nina Paley, whose beautiful, animated film, Sita Sings the Blues, was hamstrung by sticky copyright restrictions (more here). But Paley persevered and during a recent talk at the Workbook Project’s DIY DAYS in Philadelphia, she did what so many other web […] Read more »

The party’s over: Obama administration officials have announced that the cash for clunkers program will shut down on Monday at 8 PM (EDT). That’s the deadline to trade in an old gas guzzler in exchange for a rebate of up to $4,500 on a new, more […] Read more »

Less than two months after the Department of Energy gave Tesla Motors the green light for $465 million in low-interest loans, the electric car startup has identified its first project for the funds: setting up a powertrain assembly facility and new headquarters at the Stanford Research […] Read more »

Cozy Coda-Goldman Sachs Connection: Former treasury secretary Henry Paulson, onetime chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, recently invested in electric car startup Coda Automotive and joined the advisory board. Coda’s ties to the firm run deeper than that: CEO Kevin Czinger and co-chairman Steven Heller […] Read more »

At least until Tuesday –  that’s the most optimism that the Obama administration could muster this weekend about how long the depleted cash for clunkers program will last without approval of additional funds from the Senate. As we noted last week, the House fast-tracked a bill […] Read more »

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