silicone

At TechCrunch50, sexy yields to sensible

SAN FRANCISCO--At some point during the TechCrunch50 conference it became evident that the Web 2.0 floodgates are no longer open.

Maybe it was when conference co-organizer Jason Calacanis asked one of the panels of judges what they'd thought of a round of pitches from just-launched social-networking start-ups like inbox aggregator Threadsy and photo-sharing iPhone app Clixtr. Sean Parker, the Napster co-founder and former Facebook exec who will be portrayed as a "Silicon Valley bad boy" in the film adaptation of Ben Mezrich's dot-com scandal tome "The Accidental Billionaires," leaned his elbows on the … Read more

Solar start-up squeezes more juice from silicon cells

1366 Technologies, a spinoff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says it can produce a very efficient solar cell from silicon which will be in the market in two years.

The Lexington, Mass.-based company on Monday plans to disclose the details of its Self-Aligned Cell (SAC) architecture, a set of technologies it has developed to convert 18 percent of sunlight to electricity with polysilicon, the most common solar cell material. Engineers forecast that they will be able to hit 19 percent efficiency in the next nine months without adding significant cost to existing processes, said Ely Sachs, chief technology … Read more

Why 'Joe Facebook' wants to cash out

Was there an unexpected rush of Facebook employees looking to cash out their stock? Yes, says BusinessWeek's Sarah Lacy, who said that the $100 million buyback orchestrated by investor Digital Sky Technologies has been oversubscribed. Which means that a fair number of employees have been looking to cash out some stock even though it may be worth far more down the road when (and if) Facebook goes public. It's the sort of thing that would've left pre-IPO Googlers feeling awfully sheepish.

But what's more surprising, Lacy found, is that the high demand for Facebook cash-outs seems … Read more

Google's Varian: Search scale is 'bogus'

Google's Hal Varian would likely have raised an eyebrow at a term paper submitted by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on the search market.

Varian, currently on leave from the University of California at Berkeley to serve as Google's chief economist, thinks a lot of the arguments advanced by Microsoft in justifying its 10-year deal for Yahoo search are, in a word, "bogus." Microsoft has said that it needs "scale" to compete in the search market against Google, saying that larger amounts of traffic and data allow it to improve the quality of its search … Read more

New GPS platform aims to save batteries

CSR has unveiled a new GPS architecture that it says will let portable devices be constantly location-aware without draining their batteries.

The architecture, SiRFstarIV, was announced on Tuesday along with the first product to use it, CSR's GSD4t receiver for mobile phones and other portable devices.

Mobile phones increasingly have GPS (Global Positioning System) as a feature, for navigation and other location-based services. However, current GPS architecture is a major contributor to battery drain--a situation CSR is hoping to fix.

The U.K.-based company, which has generally concentrated more on Bluetooth chip design, bought GPS architecture firm SiRF … Read more

Totally cool silicone steamer basket

I'm a big fan of silicone cooking gadgets. I'm also a fan of healthy eating--I love to steam vegetables to serve alongside whatever we're eating for dinner.

I'm less of a fan of steaming things on the stovetop, what with the Houston humidity and all. So the microwave is my method of choice, but that means I have to find a steamer basket that's microwave-safe.

The Trudeau silicone vegetable steamer is flexible, so it'll fit into most microwaveable bowls (and pots, if you live in a more temperate climate). It's also heat-resistant to … Read more

VCs more confident about recovery

Venture capitalists are the latest group showing more confidence in an economic recovery that will revive business, according to a quarterly survey released Thursday.

For the second quarter, the Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index showed an uptick, hitting 3.37 on a 5-point scale, up from the previous quarter's mark of 3.03. This is the second consecutive rise since the index dropped to a five-year low in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Based on an ongoing survey of San Francisco Bay Area venture capitalists, the index measures their confidence level in the market for initial public offerings … Read more

Road Trip kickoff: The garage where the HP legend began

(Editor's note: This post serves as a starting point for Daniel Terdiman's Road Trip 2009, which kicks off Sunday. See below for more details on his trip.)

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Sometimes, when things are huge, it's easy to forget that they come from the most humble of backgrounds.

Such is the case with Hewlett-Packard, one of the biggest technology companies in the world. It has a massive headquarters in this central Silicon Valley town, but like the stuff of legends, it got its start 71 years ago in a tiny garage in the middle of an otherwise … Read more

(Almost) waterless washing machine on its way

Just a cup of water and a bit of detergent. That's all that needs to be added to a virtually waterless washing machine from British company Xeros that's poised to hit the North American market.

The dirty job is done by small nylon beads that pull stains off garments and lock them into the nylon's molecular structure. The beads don't even seem to suffocate easily--they can continue to absorb dirt over hundreds of washes.

The technology builds on research out of the U.K.'s University of Leeds and has been applied in a concept washing … Read more