More smart-grid Stories

If our appliances get too smart, can they still be unplugged? People in the UK are about to find out, as smart grid technology will make its way into their kitchens under a new government program that will give away 3,000 smart fridges in the country […] Read more »

Warner Premiere, a digital content production division at Warner Bros., will team up with director Bryan Singer’s (The Usual Suspects) production company, Bad Hat Harry Productions, to create the new live-action sci-fi series H+. The Hollywood Reporter writes that John Cabrera and Cosimo De Tommaso will […] Read more »

Computing giant IBM and French electric utility EDF will together research ways to boost the efficiency of power plants and modernize electricity infrastructure, IBM announced today. The collaboration puts them in the thick of what’s known as the smart grid industry, a potentially $65 billion market […] Read more »

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There’s at least one good outcome of the current power grid being inefficient, wasteful and unintelligent: The market opportunity for a smarter power grid will create a $65 billion industry by 2013, according to a new report out from Lux Research. Lux’s definition of the “power […] Read more »

Google said this morning that it had joined Demand Response and Smart Grid Coalition (DRSG, formerly DRAM, the Demand Response and Advanced Metering Coalition), suggesting that the search engine giant is increasingly looking into managing energy information. The coalition also said this morning it has added […] Read more »

Two startups aiming to see utilities use public wireless networks, not proprietary ones, for smart grid deployments joined forces today. SmartSynch, a Jackson, Miss.-based company founded in 1998, said it has bought up Applied Mesh Technologies (or AppMesh), a two-year-old company based in Macon, Ga. The […] Read more »

[qi:004] UPDATED: Dell Computer today announced that it will preload music from Universal Music Group into special music folders on the computers it ships. Individuals will be able to select a variety of music bundles to be pre-installed. 50- and 100-song music bundles start at $25, […] Read more »

A UK consumer group has found that nearly 1 million British broadband users have come close to exceeding or have exceeded their broadband caps according to the BBC. The group, uSwitch, also found that five of the nine Internet service providers that advertised “unlimited” access actually had caps. Read more »

UPDATED At the Itron Users’ Conference in Dallas on Tuesday, Tendril and Itron announced a networking solution that will enable two-way communication between utilities and residential customers’ energy-using devices using the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) that utilities are working to install. By integrating Tendril’s Residential Energy […] Read more »

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Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information — be it via search, email, online maps or mobile apps — but it could someday help you manage your daily energy consumption, too. At a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco last week, Google CEO […] Read more »

Kineto Wireless said today it has raised $15.5 million in additional capital, including funding from Motorola as part of a broader commercial relationship with the company’s home & networks mobility business. Read more »

Enomaly is trying to sell big business on its open-source cloud management and provisioning software by renaming it and packaging it with enterprise-level support. The software, formerly known as Enomalism, will now use the Enomaly Elastic Computing Platform as its new moniker. Read more »

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Smart energy has become a household term, but smart energy technology still has a long road ahead before it actually reaches most U.S. households. However, the residential market is ripe with opportunities (and challenges) for both established and new technology innovators to revolutionize the ways in which we use energy. Read more at GigaOM Pro »

PG&E announced the launch of its PeakChoice demand-response program this week, which asks business customers to voluntarily reduce energy use by at least 10 kilowatts during peak demand times, in exchange for incentives. Demand-response programs are gaining popularity across the U.S. as utilities try to better […] Read more »

Smart-meter deployment is happening all across the continent (and beyond) and the funding keeps rolling in, in increasingly large tranches. Trilliant, a smart-grid startup, announced today that it has raised $40 million in equity investment. The round was lead by MissionPoint Capital Partners and included zouk […] Read more »

The quiet workhorse of home energy management will be the wireless networks that will collect and deliver important energy usage data over the pipes. Eka Systems, a startup that builds wireless mesh technology for smart meter applications, has recently gotten some due recognition through a partnership […] Read more »

Science fiction writers speculate that robots will eventually take over our networks, but conspiracy theorists say our current grid is under attack from foreign hackers—conspiracy theorists and high-level intelligence officials that is, according to the cover of the National Journal. The article alleges that Chinese paramilitary […] Read more »

Intel Capital announced eight diverse investments yesterday at its annual CEO Summit in San Francisco. Amid the online video plays and Internet retail moves, there was a single cleantech investment. Intel, along with GE and Catamount Ventures, has invested an undisclosed sum into Grid Net, a […] Read more »

Have you been using the latest release candidate RC1 of version 3 of Mozilla’s Firefox browser? If you haven’t, and you’re a regular user of Firefox, you may want to consider doing so now, before the official release of the final offering in June. I’ve been […] Read more »

First we had Texas utility Oncor sign a $690 million deal for smart meters and now North Carolina-based Duke Energy has announced ambitious plans to build a statewide smart grid network. Starting in Indiana, the proposal would include more than 800,000 new digital “smart meters” — […] Read more »

Last August SmarthSynch CEO Stephen Johnston told us the company would likely be looking to raise more funds in 6-12 months. Right on schedule, his smart metering startup has raised $20 million in a round of funding led by a new huge investor, Credit Suisse. This […] Read more »

Some of us have a real addiction to buying domain names. I own about 30 myself, and I have friends with many more. If you’re in that boat, it’s worth knowing about a couple of tools that help you find open domain names quickly. Instant Domain […] Read more »

Adobe has announced a new version of Acrobat Connect Pro – their high-end web conferencing and eLearning solution. The tool (which you might remember in its original incarnation as Macromedia Breeze) is positioned for educational and medium-to-large business use. New features in this release include integration […] Read more »

Startups like GridPoint, eMeter and Silver Spring Networks are all pulling in funding to make the power grid smarter. But tech institutions, like computer giant IBM, think there’s money to be made in improving our power infrastructure, too. IBM Global Energy and Utilities Industry is heading […] Read more »

Whenever I think of some of the serial entepeneurs I’ve met–and I’ve met quite a few–I always decide that some people are simply better than others at generating new ideas. I’ve especially seen this in writing circles I’ve walked in, where some people can simply generate […] Read more »

…or so wrote Marc Andreessen, on his blog Monday. Pundits have bemoaned the impact that Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo will have on Silicon Valley entrepreneurship: In eliminating a “big startup acquirer,” Redmond is slamming shut one, and possibly two, big windows for “VC-funded exits.” You’ll be […] Read more »

Now that I have spent a little time using Office 2008 for the Mac I felt it only fair to share my brief impressions of the new office suite.  I can’t only bash the parts I don’t like and not give Microsoft credit for the good […] Read more »

Since picking up a Kindle when they first went on sale I have tried so hard to use it for my only ebook reading solution.  I love ebooks and have read them almost exclusively for years so I have been so wanting to make the Kindle […] Read more »

Last night in the taxi returning to our hotel the cab driver was quizzing Kevin and I on HD DVD technology.  He was particularly interested in the battle between HD-DVD and BluRay and which one he should get.  He was quite knowledgeable about the technology in […] Read more »

I have often alluded to the brutal price wars that are raging in the content delivery network business, driven largely by the entry of newer players including Level 3 (LVLT) and a gaggle of startups that are hell-bent on taking market share from incumbents such as […] Read more »

YouTube: Big Trouble in China? Reports indicate the video-sharing service is being blocked on the mainland just as YouTube launches in Taiwan. (Blocking: Dan Wei; Taiwan Launch: Mashable) John Furrier Leaves PodTech; founder no longer an employee but will still serve on the board. (John Furrier […] Read more »

Well, whaddya know. After we asked, earlier this month, who watches TV shows online, research firms TNS and The Conference Board have piped in with an answer: Roughly sixteen percent of American Internet households watch TV broadcasts online. “Although online television viewing is still not a […] Read more »

The open thread closes at midnight PDT (UTC -0700). Be sure to get your questions in before then! Although we at The Apple Blog like to hand down our knowledge and opinions on all things AAPL (sometimes a little too self-righteously, sure, but aren’t bloggers supposed […] Read more »

Back in March I sold my G5 tower in favor of the mobile life and have been using a 17″ MacBook Pro since then. There are a plethora of bags/totes/backpacks/etc for traveling with your laptop so there was a pretty big sea of things to chose […] Read more »

We’ve recently discussed Google’s planned acquisition of advertising company, Adscape, and now it appears that the deal is final. In a post on the official Google blog, Bernie Stolar, Adscape’s ex-chairman, announced the move over to the Internet giant. Another day in the business, right? For […] Read more »

Electronic Arts must be pretty pleased with themselves about this last weeks ELSPA (Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association) United Kingdom sales charts, and with good reason: the top 3 slots belong to them. Once again, atop the charts, is the popular FIFA ’07 title which […] Read more »

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