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| Distributed energy is the future of renewable energy production, says Ecovolve Posted: 01 Oct 2008 03:36 PM PDT
The NYC, New York-based company, founded a few months ago by a group of ambitious Princeton graduates, uses pyrolysis, a process during which organic materials are heated in the absence of oxygen to break them down and generate combustible gases, to produce energy from a wide variety of non-food feedstocks, primarily waste wood and agricultural residues. In addition to producing gases, which are readily converted into electricity, Ecovolve’s systems also make biochar as a by-product. To avoid the need for expensive gas-cleaning equipment, the company first turns its raw biomass into bio-oil, a mixture of hydrocarbons produced during the flash pyrolysis, or rapid heating, oF biomass. Though not a real substitute for oil, Ecovolve is working on improving its quality and stability to make it useful for stationary power generation applications, which could allow it to tap into the existing diesel market.
The company claims its systems are simple, customizable and cheap enough to be deployed in both developed and developing countries. Unlike other renewable energies, such as solar and wind, which are sporadic, pyrolysis provides a continuous, on-demand source of power. One more unique aspect of Ecovolve’s technology is its capacity to produce what is called “carbon-negative” energy. You’ve probably heard of “carbon-neutral” energy before — generating electricity without emitting carbon dioxide; the idea behind “carbon-negative” energy then is to make electricity while also sequestering carbon dioxide. This is accomplished by storing the carbon accreted in biomass as biochar, an inert form of carbon — which means it doesn’t release carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Jason Aramburu, one of Ecovolve’s co-founders and its technology developer, told Biopact in an earlier interview that his firm’s systems typically convert around 20 percent of raw biomass by weight into the carbon-rich material, which is 85 - 95 percent pure carbon. Processing the biomass thus actually results in fewer emissions being produced than if it were left to combust naturally or decompose, Aramburu says. Because of its high carbon content, it also becomes a highly desirable fertilizer substitute. Ecovolve’s real ace in the hole, Aramburu told me, is its reliance on distributed, or on-site, energy generation — the ability to produce electricity from many small energy sources very near to where it will be used. Right now, most countries generate their electricity in large centralized facilities — coal plants and nuclear plants, for example — which makes sense when you’re supplying the energy to large populations over long distances due to economies of scale. But what if you only need to supply power to a small village or community? In that case, it probably doesn’t make sense to build a huge facility far away from where it is needed. Factor in the costs for transportation, infrastructure, pollution mitigation and for processing the biomass sources, and you’ve practically lost all the benefits of economies of scale. A distributed energy system has the advantages of being more efficient, low maintenance, less carbon-intensive and, most important, cheaper. Processes can be automated and streamlined, reducing the need for an army of engineers and making it more likely that the plant will turn a profit. Combine this model for energy production with a cheap, plentiful source of waste feedstocks and the production of a valuable by-product, and Aramburu, thinks his company may have a winning formula. While biochar is not currently considered a valid carbon sequestration technology under the Kyoto Protocol, Aramburu hopes its cheap production costs and other benefits will speed up its adoption and make it a candidate for inclusion under a future climate treaty’s CCS provisions. The main obstacle blocking its rapid adoption and commercial-scale implementation is, ironically, also one of its main advantages: its small-scale application. Indeed, though large, centralized facilities may not offer the same benefits as distributed energy projects, big utilities and other companies may reason that the economies of scale argument trumps all others. They may also be reluctant to abandon, or reduce the use, of their existing facilities in favor of small plants, which would take time to localize and build. Aramburu told me that Ecovolve’s plants are small enough that it can easy develop and test new pilot facilities in the field. His company is currently working with two sectors — small farming and wine production — to test out its systems and to integrate biochar into their value chain. Aramburu believes developing nations in Africa and Asia, which still lack an adequate energy infrastructure (and would therefore greatly benefit from distributed energy), could eventually constitute a significant share of his company’s business. Its 25 kW systems seem to be sweet spot for local farmers, though it is also testing out a 50 kW version. While the biochar component of Ecovolve’s technology intrigues them, Aramburu said that they are a little wary since they are not sure how effective it will be over the long-term and if it will increase crop yields uniformly. While biochar remains a niche market, there are a few other companies, including Vancouver, Canada-based Dynamotive, that are pursuing a two-pronged business strategy aimed at both selling biochar and producing renewable energy. In the U.S., companies like Madison, Wisconsin-based Best Energies and Littleton, Colorado-based Community Power, are also getting into the distributed energy game. The one thing yet missing from the equation is a reliable source of funding. Aramburu said his company was still mainly focused on technology development, but that it would seek funding within the next 6 months to stage a large-scale demonstration of its system. It eventually hopes to diversify into the small-scale (less than 0.5 MW) wind, hydro and nuclear markets as well. The company is also working on its business model and is considering some variant of direct equipment sales, leasing and/or profit-sharing.
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| Netflix Watch Instantly for the Mac is fast approaching. Will Apple respond? Posted: 01 Oct 2008 01:53 PM PDT
That last bit is important. Though it’s been known that Netflix has been working on Watch Instantly for the Mac (it currently only runs on the Windows operating system), this appears to be the first timetable given. Seeing as it’s already October 1, Netflix must be pretty close to having the feature ready for Macs if it will commit to a date “by the end of the year.” Netflix Watch Instantly content, which is free to almost all Netflix members, on a Mac and on the Xbox 360 would put more pressure on Apple to make its iTunes movie store and Apple TV offerings more compelling. Apple took a big step earlier this year by offering movie rentals through the store and on the device for the first time, but selection is still rather limited, and the fact that most new releases still cannot be rented on their release date (only purchased) is an annoyance. With Netflix soon pushing 12,000+ titles at Mac computer users and in the living room via the Xbox 360 for free (assuming you have a Netflix account), Apple may have to shift its strategy once again. Mainly, like most people, I’d like to see a more robust Apple TV box. It’s a nice device, but if it could play content from Hulu, the NBC and Fox-backed online streaming content site, or browse the web (without hacks) it would be a lot better. Other living room boxes, such as the Roku (which currently plays Netflix Watch Instantly titles), are opening up to allow for more content. Then of course there’s the ultimate dream: An Apple TV with a built-in digital video recorder (DVR) and Blu-ray player. Blu-ray could happen since Apple has been on Blu-ray’s side (of the Blu-ray/HD DVD war, which Blu-ray won) for a long while, but DVR functionality is probably not too likely given the legal ramifications and Apple’s deals with the studios. |
| Microsoft embraces the cloud with Amazon’s help Posted: 01 Oct 2008 12:58 PM PDT
The Microsoft CEO previously discussed Windows Cloud under its code name Project Red Dog. While additional details were not forthcoming, the new nickname and description as a “web operating system” give some sense of the ambition involved. Windows Cloud is the latest in Microsoft’s efforts to move aggressively online; other recent moves in this area include testing a version of Microsoft Office that’s delivered via online subscription (also known as the software-as-a-service business model), as well as trying to link all of your electronic devices though a service called Live Mesh. Windows Cloud could open up another front in Microsoft’s war with Google, which launched Google App Engine, its own environment for building and deploying web apps, earlier this year. It could also make Microsoft a competitor with Amazon’s Web Services. Speaking of Amazon, support for Microsoft Windows has reportedly been a big demand among Amazon customers. Previously, EC2 was limited to Linux and other Unix-based systems. Now, as Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels says, Amazon can run “the majority of popular software systems in the cloud.” Among other things, that means EC2 now supports ASP.NET websites, and can also support a single global Windows desktop that’s accessed from multiple locations. [Photo from Kinder Mountain Rescue Team] |
| Is political debate driving people to Twitter and changing its nature? Posted: 01 Oct 2008 12:41 PM PDT
While the service claims that Fridays are normally a down day, last week, Friday marked the first Presidential debate between Republican candidate John McCain and Democratic candidate Barack Obama. Twitter notes that Friday’s overall updates jumped 18.5 percent from the previous week, with the time during the debates seeing a huge 160 percent surge in updates. More promising to Twitter though has to be the number of users who signed up for new accounts. It claims that signups rose 23 percent last Friday, with signups during the debates rising 135 percent when compared to the week prior. That would seem to make sense given the buzz and press Twitter has been receiving recently from the likes of CNN and CSPAN, which are both integrating Twitter into their news coverage. Friday also featured an event with digital media television and Internet channel Current teaming up with Twitter to showcase the debates. Former Vice President of the United States (and former Presidential candidate) Al Gore, who is one of the founders of Current, was on hand for the event. (Check out the picture below of Gore standing just in front of VentureBeat’s own Eric Eldon.) Twitter also launched its own Twitter Election 2008 site last week in time for the debates. It’s promising to add a bit of “polish” before the next debate (a Vice Presidential one) that will take place on Thursday. Certainly political debate is more intriguing (at least to some people) than mundane updates, so it makes sense that Twitter usage is surging around that. But it’s somewhat surprising that users aren’t more frustrated by the 140 character limit that Twitter imposes. Though, I guess that stops some users from being too big of blowhards or pontificators.
You can find me on Twitter here along with fellow VentureBeat writers Eric Eldon, Dean Takahashi, Anthony Ha, Chris Morrison and Dan Kaplan. Oh, and we have a VentureBeat account (for our posts) as well. [photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid] |
| HP makes a $360 million acquisition in storage Posted: 01 Oct 2008 12:13 PM PDT
LeftHand Networks is a company that allows businesses to cost-effectively manage their data remotely. Using a technology known as iSCSI SAN, LeftHand offers scalable storage on existing hardware. iSCSI is able to send SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) data over IP networks. The company also uses virtual environments to reduce disk space used for storage by up to 97 percent, it claims. This also helps it reduce power consumption. This deal is similar to a $1.4 billion dollar one Dell made last year to buy EqualLogic, GigaOM points out. That purchase was the biggest cash purchase of a private tech company. This one is significantly smaller, but perhaps that has something to do with the current economic climate. |
| Supply chain software maker Accellos earmarks $28M for acquisitions Posted: 01 Oct 2008 11:47 AM PDT |
| Boxes — where Facebook widgets go to die Posted: 01 Oct 2008 11:25 AM PDT
Granted, O’Neill’s widget is little more than a gag — it’s just a badge that users put in their profile to signal they’re literally counting the days until President Bush leaves office — so there’s a risk of making too big a deal out of one chart. But the more-than-60-percent drop in traffic that began on Sept. 11 (when O’Neill surmises a lot of users switched over to the redesign) is hard to ignore. What happened? All the badges and widgets that previously lent color and personality to a user’s main profile have been shunted into a separate section called Boxes. The Bush widget’s drop in traffic, and the shift towards a more feed- and news-focused Facebook that it implies, aren’t really a surprise. VentureBeat writer Eric Eldon has been writing about this since the redesign was announced; he argues that Facebook may have misjudged its audience by forcing a redesign that’s better-suited for serious Silicon Valley types rather than the more “fun” users who make up the bulk of Facebook’s audience. Well, it looks like the change is here, and Facebook widget-makers are in trouble. Plenty of Facebook users aren’t happy about it either.
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| Disclosure: Apple removes NDA for released iPhone apps Posted: 01 Oct 2008 10:50 AM PDT
Inevitably, something would trigger a response along the lines of: “I can’t talk about that.” Normally, that’s fine. In my line of work I get that a lot while digging for info from people working on things that are not yet released. But these Apple developers were saying this to me after their software was released thanks to Apple’s almost laughably restrictive non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Today, that NDA goes away. Anyone who visits Apple’s iPhone Developer Program main site will be greeted by a big message starting with “To Our Developers.” That is followed by the following statement:
This backlash intensified following the unveiling of the first phone based on Google’s Android platform, the G1. During its press conference, Google, T-Mobile (the first carrier for the Android phone) and others made it clear that Android was the “open” alternative to a phone that no one dared mention. The iPhone. While the removal of the NDA for released software won’t change what applications get accepted into the App Store in the first place, at least it gives the sense that Apple is attempting to be more open about its entire process. It also shows once again that Apple is willing to compromise on some things. Originally it said there would be no native application development on the iPhone, but then backtracked and went full-steam ahead with that. That gives me hope that we might see things like the ability to have applications running in the background on the iPhone eventually. The removal of the NDA is great news. I can finally get some straight answer about the logistics of developing for the iPhone! Others, like the iPhone advertising and analytics company Medialets, are already planning on opening a forum to showcase best practice techniques for developing for the iPhone, with code examples. That should be found here soon. The developer behind the popular Twitter client app Twitterrific has already posted some code on his blog.
But let’s be clear: The NDA is still very much intact for developers working on applications that are not yet released. In an eight sentence statement, Apple mentions this no less than four times. The number of times “released” is used nearly beats the number of periods in the statement. One other thing of note: In explaining why it created the NDA to begin with, Apple twice mentions others copying or stealing the technology it has built. It even notes that theft “has happened before.” It’s hard to see that as anything but a jab at Microsoft, which during the 1980s may or may not have “borrowed” certain elements from Apple to make its Windows operating system, as Valleywag notes. To be fair, Apple may or may not have “borrowed” elements from Xerox as well. |
| Gigya brings in $11M to grow widget services Posted: 01 Oct 2008 09:52 AM PDT
They serve different but related purposes: Wildfire provides a platform for other widget developers to post and share their creations with a broader audience, while Socialize provides any website with the tools it needs to incorporate social networking features (things like a newsfeed that tracks friend activity, and a panel for sharing interesting content). Even though Wildfire already serves 1,000 widget makers and is bringing in some revenue by circulating branded widgets from big names like Disney and Kimberly-Clark, Gigya predicts that Socialize will soon surpass it in value as more sites join the social-networking fray. Already, the app is able to aggregate friend data from sites like Facebook and MySpace, giving it an edge over competitor Google Friend Connect, which has not yet landed the support of the two networking giants. Socialize is also unique in that its open API allows sites to engineer their own social networking features to meet their specific needs, whereas Google’s service offers only pre-made plug and play features. DAG Ventures led the round, followed by previous investors Benchmark Capital, First Round Capital and the Mayfield Fund. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company has raised $23.5M since its inception in 2006. |
| This year’s IPO market weakest since 1977, and M&As are in the gutter Posted: 01 Oct 2008 08:08 AM PDT Even before this week’s massive financial turmoil, the environment for taking companies public or selling them was bleak. And this week’s massive plunge in the Dow will only serve to rattle nerves even more — so don’t expect much improvement for the rest of the year. There were no IPOs in the second quarter, and just one in the third. So far, this year is the weakest for IPOs since 1977. This year’s fourth quarter is unlikely to be much better. Thirty-eight venture-backed companies are currently filed for an initial public offering with the SEC, but that’s fewer than the 42 in the second quarter. In other words, the companies wanting to go public are just not getting out, and it’s unclear when they’ll be able to.
As for company acquisitions — which is the other way entrepreneurs and venture capitalists can make money — there were only 58 transactions in the third quarter, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). As you can see by looking at the chart, that’s very low by historical standards. The lower acquisition tally stems from the fact that many large companies have become uneasy about their future. And if the financial turmoil continues, venture capitalists will make fewer investments, because they’ll be spending more time with their existing companies to make sure they can be prepared for a sale or eventual IPO. The only IPO this quarter was Rackspace, valued at $187.5 million, but that company’s stock has dropped off sharply. Two companies that received US venture financing went public on foreign exchanges in the third quarter.
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Netflix made its streaming video Watch Instantly offering more compelling today with the addition of films from Starz Play, the cable network Starz’ online streaming video service. But aside from that, 
Twitter
Storage. Everyone always wants more of it, and going forward that demand will only increase. Likely knowing that, today, computer maker Hewlett-Packard made a purchase to bolster its storage offerings: 
I’ve talked to a lot of iPhone application developers over the past few months, and almost all of them have one thing in common: A fear of Apple.
The start of the third paragraph is perhaps the key. This is clearly meant as an olive branch not only to developers, but to those of us who have been frustrated writing about iPhone applications and how they are transforming the industry. There has been some backlash in the past several weeks about Apple’s restrictive policies regarding iPhone applications.
Widget distribution network 
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