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Piazza founder and CEO Pooja Sankar

Piazza, the social network that lets college students and instructors discuss material online, has closed on $6 million in a new Series A funding round. Piazza’s service is meant to counteract study group snobbery and eliminate students’ fear of asking “dumb” questions. Read more »

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Image courtesy of iFixit.

A tear-down of the new Apple TV reveals that the device loads a whopping 8 GB of Flash memory. Wait, didn’t Steve Jobs tell us that we won’t download any movies to the device? That’s because he wants to keep those 8 GB for apps. Read more »

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Texas1

When it comes to the future of smart meters, don’t look to California — set your eyes on Texas. The Lone Star State lags California in sheer numbers of meters deployed, but has taken a lead in supporting them with regulations and funding. Read more »

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The venture industry is contracting at the moment, with overall dollars going into venture capital funds shrinking by 57 percent in the second quarter from the year before. Amid this background DFJ Mercury, a Houston-based affiliate fund of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, raised a $70-million second fund. Read more »

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Nobody likes high-voltage transmission lines running through their backyards, not even in the energy-loving heart of Texas. Recently a group of landowners (the Heart of Texas Landowners Coalition) persuaded the state’s regulators to force utility Oncor to reroute a $100 million transmission line around their property. Read more »

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The folks at KEMA have created an interesting report on the smart energy market in Texas, which weighs in on some interesting myths, trends, and survey data about the smart grid and consumers. Here’s 10 things you need to know from KEMA’s smart energy report: Read more »

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Two years ago energy baron T. Boone Pickens had visions of building the world’s largest wind farm in the Texas Panhandle, starting with a $2 billion order of wind turbines from General Electric. That project was put on hold indefinitely last year, but there are new […] Read more »

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Updated with additional info from ActaCell: Lithium-ion battery startup ActaCell has just added the state of Texas to its corral of high-profile backers. The state is providing a “pre-seed award” of $250,000 to ActaCell, according to a release from the Austin-based company this morning, and putting […] Read more »

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Twitter has finally implemented Lists, a much-needed feature. Assuming you have Lists enabled (and Twitter is still rolling it out, so some folks won’t have access to it yet) there is now a Lists button on every person’s page; its really easy to use. You might […] Read more »

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Bigger in Texas: The state senate in Texas is considering so many proposals to boost state incentives for solar power this week that the entire legislative session has been dubbed the “solar session.” The state aims to ramp up solar production and dominate the sector. –NYT’s […] Read more »

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Gemini Solar Development scored its first deal this week, and it’s for one of the largest solar photovoltaic plants in the country — a 30-megawatt plant in Austin, Texas, that’s expected to go online by the end of 2010. The unanimous approval of the project by […] Read more »

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Austin could get one of the biggest solar photovoltaic plants in the country if a deal is approved between Gemini Solar Development and the city-owned Austin Energy. But the planned 30-megawatt project comes as some companies are scaling back their sun-powered operations and laying off staff, […] Read more »

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In the Money: VantagePoint Venture Partners said in Davos this weekend that it plans to invest more than $1 billion in 10 to 15 cleantech startups over the next 24 to 30 months. — Reuters Will the Real U.S. Auto Industry Please Stand Up: From 1900 […] Read more »

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Updated: Cisco on Friday said in a filing that it planned to close its Broadband Telephony Services unit in the Richardson, Texas, office and will lay off 129 employees between Oct. 8 and Dec. 12. The networking giant filed this information with the Texas Workforce Commission […] Read more »

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I live in Texas, where during the tech bubble folks were walking around saying that it was nothing compared to the real estate crisis of the late 80s. So now seemed like a good time to chat with Austin Ventures, which has been investing in the […] Read more »

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After eight years trying to convince Dallas that it could only keep watering its lawns in a drought if it would pipe in water from West Texas, everyone’s favorite billionaire T. Boone Pickens has officially put his water pipe dream on the back burner. Instead, Pickens […] Read more »

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Last week, when the FCC published an order aimed at halting the collection of and reporting on the quality of telephone service on a nationwide basis, we were pretty disappointed, as it came off like the agency was just throwing in the towel on real regulation […] Read more »

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The two-month grace period is ending for Time Warner Cable customers in Beaumont, Texas, who are part of the ISPs tiered broadband trials. A spokesman for Time Warner Cable declined to comment but confirmed that residents would soon see bills reflecting the $1 per gigabyte overage […] Read more »

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Don’t mess with lawyers, and especially don’t poke fun at them for bad behavior or allege that they may have committed improprieties with a court. You’d think Richard Frenkel, a fellow lawyer, would understand this rule, but the Cisco IP director still attacked a few patent […] Read more »

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New England-based demand-response company EnerNOC is heading into the Wild West of Texas! It has inked a deal with the state’s Electric Reliability Council to participate in a blackout prevention program that goes beyond large industrial users. As a Texas resident, I’m all for blackout reductions […] Read more »

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Less than a week after the New York Times celebrated Texas’ dominant position in wind power, a cool, still day dawned. The cold weather drove residents to crank up the heat, but the lack of wind to turn turbines pushed the state’s electric grid into emergency […] Read more »

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The New York Times got all excited about Texas wind power this weekend. The piece stood in stark contrast to a Wall Street Journal article last year that noted some of the contentious issues and rampant speculation surrounding the building of 20-story turbines in the middle […] Read more »

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With this entry, Chris Poteet joins the WWD team as a contributing writer. Look for his posts every week. Welcome, Chris! -Ed Every once-in-a-while I find an application like Jott that truly revolutionizes the way I organize my life. We all write notes on pieces of […] Read more »

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One of the drawbacks to “going bedouin” is that you end up balancing your laptop on a series of coffee shop tables, rather than inhabiting your own desk. That’s probably why we find things like the Mini Desk attractive, no matter how expensive and impractical they […] Read more »

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Driven by the inability of page views to properly measure people’s use of sites with streaming video and AJAX, Nielsen/NetRatings is switching to ranking websites by time spent. Now, how’s about those offsite widgets… (Associated Press) “What constitutes a view?” we asked a couple weeks ago, […] Read more »

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Looks like common sense is finally prevailing in the for-fee Wi-Fi business. Boingo Wireless, a Wi-Fi aggregator is launching a flat rate Wi-Fi plan for the entire planet, which seems like a first step in Wi-Fi price war, and that is just great, repeat great news […] Read more »

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How does a meme start? It has less to do with craft and more to do with who you know and where you find them. In this case, some second-degree acquaintance pays attention to CollegeHumor, introduces me third-hand to the “Dramatic Chipmunk” thread — and even […] Read more »

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For decades, Apple has included two Apple logo stickers with its hardware and software packages, giving customers a way to publicly display their love or appreciation of Apple products. But even Apple fanatics only have so much car exterior to plaster, leaving most of these stickers […] Read more »

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This morning WSJ reported that News Corp is pulling the plug on its satellite-based Internet service. Hughes Electronics had embarked on an ambitious plan to deliver broadband to consumers and businesses using satellites made by Boeing. Seems News Corp executives have doubts about the financial viability […] Read more »

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Looks like change of scenery has not helped equipment maker Tut Systems even a little bit, as the company extends its losing streak to yet another quarter. bq. The company lost $4.4 million, or 22 cents per share, compared with a loss of 2.2 million, or […] Read more »

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