Despite the fact that solar panels are quickly becoming a commodity — cheap and uniform — it looks like investors are still willing to put a small amount of funding into the next-generation of solar equipment. Read more »
The heat and rays of the sun aren’t just being harnessed for electricity. An early stage startup called Thermata, backed by Bill Gross’ Idealab, is looking to build a business around solar-powered boilers that produce steam for industrial processes. Read more »
Looks like investors aren’t done pumping money into solar gear startups, despite some missteps in 2010. According to a filing, thin-film solar panel maker SoloPower has raised $51.58 million in equity and security. Read more »
Gary Conley, the entrepreneur who founded concentrating solar company SolFocus, is at it again. Last month he launched b2u Solar, a startup which uses the sun’s heat for industrial applications like drying, curing and commercial baking, and is one of a crop of startups working to […] Read more »
Think small. That’s the basic design concept (if not the ambition) for Honolulu-based startup Sopogy’s concentrating solar thermal systems. The technology is essentially a condensed version of the massive mirror-and-lense setups that companies like Ausra, BrightSource, Solel and eSolel use on large swaths of land to […] Read more »
Too bad the convention hall in San Diego housing the Solar Power International convention this week has hardly any sun light. If so we’d be able to watch the innovative solar systems that are crowded into the building in action. Interspersed between giant solar panels from […] Read more »
As covered both here and on our parent blog GigaOM, Amazon’s S3 storage service had a bad day yesterday. (So, by the way, did their Simple Queue System, but an outage in that service is less noticeable to most web users). How bad? Read more »
The first annual North American solar conference kicked off on Tuesday with a lot of insight and discussion from some of the solar industry’s bigger and more well-established players (Applied Materials. SunPower). But leave it to the wily fast-moving startups to upstage the big guys when […] Read more »
The small-scale solar thermal startup Sopogy, which we reported just raised $9 million from investors including the investment vehicle of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Ohana Holdings, says that it started construction on one of its solar power farms on Hawaii’s Big Island at the Natural Energy […] Read more »
When most of us web workers choose to adopt new software applications, they’re often big, robust programs. However, if you pay attention to small, mission-critical applications too, you can find a lot of really useful gems. One of my favorite sites for trolling for these is […] Read more »
In a memo to employees aimed at addressing fears of an AOL/Yahoo tie-up, AOL chief Randy Falco today penned a truth for social networks: But despite drawing large, engaged audiences, other social networks have not been able to make the experiences relevant to users and marketers […] Read more »
Among the questions we’ve asked our panel of experts was this one: Which online video star do you think will make it big in 2008? Selections from their responses are below. We’d love to hear your take on the question or on our panelists’ predictions in […] Read more »
William Roper Jr., the new chief executive officer of Mountain View, Calif.-based VeriSign, wants to streamline the company by selling off non-core businesses. His plan — sell or shut down, something I first reported back in August. At the time, VeriSign had no plans to sell […] Read more »
The Thanksgiving family gathering yesterday was great and one I look forward to each year. It’s great to sit with the family who gathers together far too seldom and have a nice day together. This year was different in a gadgety way and I am still […] Read more »
Yes, I’m a bit of a masochist. Sometimes I do things with my computers just for the experience. When Leopard arrived, I did the quick hit activity: I upgraded right over Tiger. It worked well but that left me without the other side of the coin: […] Read more »
Intel and AT&T are teaming up to build some chips that do WiMAX and VoIP, reports Business Week. Very sketchy on details, long on corporate vision etc. AT&T and Intel have talked this up before but the article makes it seem like new news. Not so. […] Read more »
2004 is going to be remembered as a breakthrough year for VoIP, says EWeek. I said the same thing about three months ago in my Business 2.0 story, Top Technologies of the year. Nevertheless Ellen Muraskin has done a great recap and its a must read […] Read more »
