terra

For free Wi-Fi, please deposit your dog poop here

What would you do for free Wi-Fi? Mexican Internet provider Terra has teamed up with ad agency DDB to offer free Wi-Fi in public parks to dog owners who clean up after their pets.

As seen in the absurd promo vid below, owners who deposit poop in the special bins in 10 parks in Mexico City will be rewarded with free Wi-Fi, broadcast through routers shaped like doggy bones.

The more you add, the more minutes you and everyone else gets. The bins seem to have a simple scale to weigh the poop, so they would likely still work if people put rocks or trash in them instead. … Read more

LightSquared taps new merger-focused financial chief

LightSquared today appointed Marc Montagner, a veteran of major telecommunications deals, to the role of chief financial officer.

Montagner's appointment may signal LightSquared's willingness to strike a deal or partnership. One of Montagner's prior roles was the head of merger-and-acquisition activities for Sprint, helping to usher in the $70 billion merger with Nextel back in 2005. He was also co-head of Banc of America Securities' telecom, media and technology merger group.

Montagner had been executive vice president of sales, marketing, and strategy at SkyTerra, which was absorbed by LightSquared in 2010. LightSquared plans to take advantage of … Read more

Gates-backed TerraPower pitches new nuclear tech

To leap to the next generation of nuclear power technology, Bill Gates-backed start-up TerraPower is approaching countries rather than individual utilities or financiers.

Gates last week disclosed that he brought up TerraPower's fourth-generation nuclear power technology with government officials at the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology during a visit to China. "TerrPower is having very good discussions with [China National Nuclear Corporation] and various people in the Chinese government," Gates told the Associated Press.

Bellevue, Wash.-based TerraPower then said that the company has visited energy experts in the U.S. France, India, Japan, Korea and … Read more

TerraCycle launches waste-to-profit Facebook game

Could TerraCycle and Guerillapps have hit upon the next FarmVille?

The Trash Tycoon Facebook game that launched yesterday challenges players to find and recycle trash that can be used to make eco-friendly products that translate into game money and points. Its sponsors include TreeHugger and the CarbonFund.org, as well as TerraCycle.

The game, developed by Guerillapps, was a finalist at VentureBeat's GamesBeat 2011 startup contest, and you can see why. The game provides a clever introduction to the lucrative possibilities of upcycling, the use of recyclable elements to make new products. (One nit: the horrible music. I had to mute it.)

Trash Tycoon has players collecting glass, organic, plastic, architectural elements, paper, and jewelry. By using other tools like worms for composting, players are shown the kinds of useful products that can be made from recyclable goods.

The game mimics TerraCycle's real-world business model.

The New Jersey-based company is known for its recycling "brigades" in which anyone can mail in recyclable items needed by TerraCycle in exchange for two cents per item being sent to their charity of choice. Shipping for the items is paid for by TerraCycle. Using any box, participants simply print out a label for it, and mail in their items.

Using this method, TerraCycle has made the Garbage Garbage can, a garbage can made from old chip bags and the rubber elastic left over from the production of baby diapers. Other products includes bicycle chain picture frames, Capri Sun drink bag totes, pencil cases from cookie wrappers, circuit board coasters, Clif Bar duffel bags, and Kashi place mats, to name a few from its hundreds of quirky-looking products.

The game has a real-world component as well.

People who contribute recyclable waste to TerraCycle's real-life brigades and facilities will earn game points.

Just like TerraCycle's real-world product placement advertising in which it utilizes wrapper logos to contribute to product design as with its Skittles Eco Kite and Target ReTote, the Facebook game will also feature sponsorship by showing trash wrappers with various brand logos, according to Guerillapps. … Read more

More consolidation among major music labels?

Warner Music Group is reportedly entertaining acquisition offers even as the third-largest record company continues to pursue its own acquisition of troubled rival label EMI.

The New York Times reported that after being approached by buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Warner Music hired Goldman Sachs to seek out buyers. Instead of selling to KKR, Warner's management wanted to see what kind of price it could get on the open market.

Warner Music is home to such artists as Green Day, Faith Hill, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. According to the Times' story, Warner's private-equity investors want Warner … Read more

Cheetos bags, diapers remade into trash cans

The company that turned Cheetos bags into MP3 speakers is now transforming Chester Cheetah into 32-gallon garbage cans.

New Jersey-based recycling company TerraCycle is teaming up with Pioneer Plastics USA to make heavy-duty trash cans out of recycled polypropylene that was once chip bags.

The cans are 80 percent post-consumer--most of the material is from chip bags collected by TerraCycle's Chip Bag Brigade program. About 20 percent is from scraps of rubber elastic trimming that are leftover in the production of disposable diapers.

The old Cheetos and other chip bags are first shredded, and then run through a densifying … Read more

Massive Calif. wind farm gets $1.2 billion in financing

Terra-Gen Power announced Wednesday it's garnered $1.2 billion in financing to build what could be the largest wind energy project in the U.S.

The 3,000-megawatt Alta Wind Energy Center when completed would actually be a series of several massive wind farms located near Tehachapi, Calif., a city in Kern County about 116 miles north of Los Angeles.

Terra-Gen is a renewable-energy company that develops wind, solar, and geothermal projects for producing electricity. Its first phase of this Alta Wind Energy Center, called Alta Project I, already has financing. Its construction began in March and consists of … Read more

Gates-backed nuclear outfit TerraPower funded

TerraPower, a company seeking to commercialize a novel nuclear-power technology which has the enthusiastic backing of Bill Gates, has raised $35 million in venture funding.

Seattle-based TerraPower said on Monday that Charles River Ventures led the series B round, which also had money from Khosla Ventures.

TerraPower was spun out of Intellectual Ventures, the intellectual-property licensing company headed by Nathan Myryvold, to commercialize traveling-wave nuclear reactors.

The basic idea behind traveling-wave reactors is to use a small amount of enriched uranium and spent uranium fuel from traditional nuclear-power plants to produce electricity. Rather than needing to refuel every several years, … Read more

Toshiba eyes nuke alliance with Gates start-up

Toshiba is in talks with a company backed by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates to jointly develop advanced nuclear reactors, the Japanese electronics maker said Tuesday.

The Japanese electronics maker, which is also the world's No. 3 chipmaker behind Intel and Samsung Electronics, added it will restart plans to build a factory to make NAND flash memory chips as the global economy recovers.

Toshiba, which owns U.S. nuclear firm Westinghouse, said it was in preliminary talks with the Gates-backed firm TerraPower to develop so-called traveling-wave reactors, which are designed to use depleted uranium as fuel and thought to hold … Read more