LED Lighting’s Big Expansion

September 21, 2010

There is no shortage of emerging competition in LED lighting. Capacity is rising, prices are falling and some of the world’s biggest chipmakers appear ready to do battle.

This week LED kahuna Cree promised to spend $135 million expanding production at its North Carolina fab. It earmarked another $392 million for a new facility in the state and is said to be considering facilities in the low-cost labor markets of China and Malaysia.

Inside Bridgelux's new Silicon Valley fab

General Electric is ramping up its own production, as is Samsung, LG Electronics, Philips and Osram.  In China, about 55 producers are pumping money (some of its state funds) into their own plants.

Even India wants to get in on the act. De Core Science and Technologies is said to be gearing up for LED production at as many as two locations

Don’t forget Bridgelux, a promising U.S. producer that on Monday showed off a Silicon Valley fab where it has big plans for expansion. The company has the capacity to make 5,000 wafers a month and hopes to expand that five fold. About 180 new workers are expected by next year.

The growth should enable Bridgelux to more than double revenue next year from this year’s $30 million, says CEO Bill Watkins.

The industry’s expansion has an obvious motivation. Some estimates suggest a $19 billion worldwide market for LED lighting by 2014. There is big money to be made.

But with the steady expansion around the world, the danger of over capacity and commoditization rises as well.

Clean-room workers in the Bridgelux plant

The excitement of a massive LED market has attracted growing enthusiasm from venture capitalists. Money has poured into companies across the market spectrum, from software makers to hardware designers, including Luminus Devices, Superbulbs, Terralux, Digital Lumens, Albeo, LEDEngin. Bridgelux itself has raised $113.5 million.

There will be more to come.

5 Comments | news | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet

Low Power Ethernet Coming

September 20, 2010

Representatives of technology firms such as Broadcom, Cisco Systems and others are expected to ratify a low-power Ethernet standard that could cut energy use 60 percent or more in basic networking functions.

The ratification of 802.3az is anticipated on Sept. 30 after four years of work, says Wael William Diab, a technical director at Broadcom and vice-chair of the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet working group. The standard will allow chip and gear makers to put physical layer, or PHY, circuits into a sleep mode during the microseconds between packet transmissions.

Physical layer connections are the most basic in networking equipment, primarily handling the streaming of raw digital “bits” among devices. Diab said the introduction of a PHY-level idle mode should enable equipment makers to simultaneously turn off other parts of a router, switch or gateway, leading to more power savings.

Broadcom already has pre-standard products in the market.

The challenge to completing the standard was finding an effective way to awaken gear when packet traffic resumes. The energy-saving feature will be incorporated in new, not existing, equipment.

2 Comments | news | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet

Contour Energy Claims Big Improvements In Next Gen Lithium Battery

September 20, 2010

Contour Energy Systems joined the ranks of next-generation lithium-ion battery producers Monday by announcing its first product.

The company said it will begin shipping a coin-shaped non-rechargeable cell battery for the consumer, industrial and medical markets in the fourth quarter. It claims its carbon-fluorine based battery offers improved energy density, greater efficiency in extreme temperatures and better peak performance because of its high discharge rate.

The Azusa, CA, company that has raised close to $30 million said in an interview it also is conducting “advanced” research to develop a rechargeable battery for broader markets – suggesting efforts to address the large opportunities of electric cars and grid storage.

The race to develop a more capable lithium-ion battery has been accelerating recently, with companies such as Panasonic earmarking substantial resources. The reasons are obvious. Utility-scale grid storage alone could become a $1.1 billion market for lithium batteries by 2018, according to Pike Research. Electric-car battery sales will dwarf that – rising to $8 billion by 2015.

Contour’s present strategy is to target niche applications where margins and profitability are greater, says CEO Joe Fisher. The company claims its products show an eight-fold improvement over current batteries in high-demanding applications.

While the carbon-fluoride technology Contour uses has been around for about 30 years, it has suffered from limited capacity and poor performance at low temperatures. The company offers improvements to these deficiencies that are the result of collaboration between CalTech and the French National Center for Scientific Research. Contour came out of stealth in March and changed its name from CFX Battery.

Its first coin cell will target applications in tire pressure monitoring, defibrillators, unmanned aerial vehicles, military radios, and water and gas meters. Separately, it has a contract with NASA to develop batteries for space flight.

Contour’s $30 million in funding came from the venture firms CMEA Capital and USVP and from Schlumberger. CMEA also is an investor in the battery maker A123 and in CNano Technology, a company developing nano-materials for lithium-ion batteries.

Contour says it anticipates raising a C round of funding early next year.

2 Comments | news | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet

CEO View: Why LinkedIn Still Matters (Video)

September 16, 2010

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner in the hot seat, trying to convince the audience that LinkedIn still matters in a Facebook world.

Don’t count LinkedIn dead… yet!

At the Demo Fall 2010 conference, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner woke up an otherwise sleepy audience, defending the unique values of his social network. LinkedIn is used by over 75 million professional users, and is adding 1 new user every second. “We connect talent with opportunity at massive scale.”

“There are primarily 3 value propositions [for LinkedIn].

  1. The ability to build your professional identity, your professional brand if you will. By virtue of creating a profile and having that profile search engine optimized, you’re going to show up at the top of search engine results. Especially if you’re maintaining a certain freshness to that profile. And the ability to carve out a piece of that digital real estate in this day and age and essentially presents to the world your experience and your skills, ultimately what you want to achieve, is pretty powerful dynamic and that creates opportunities.
  2. The ability to build, maintain and manage your network of professional colleagues, business contacts. Historically, when people thought of professional networking, they envision the guy at a conference handing out business cards as fast as he can. And today it’s very different. Professional network is essentially how business gets done. You’re relying on people within your professional network for the information and the knowledge you need to get effective and what you do; for more prospecting, certainly for recruiting, for closing all kinds of different deals. Essentially people who are relying on their network today are on a competitive advantage when compare to someone who’s not.
  3. The sharing and knowledge of information and data that enable to be more effective at the role you’re already in. And in this day and age, people are sharing so much more than they ever done previously. And one of our primary objectives is to extract as much relevancy from the information and knowledge flowing through it as possible. At LinkedIn we’re looking the signal from the stream.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | DEMO, interview, news, startups, web 2.0 | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360

HP CTO Confirms Windows 7 & WebOS Slate Tablet Release (Video)

September 16, 2010

HP CTO Phil McKinney at the Demo Fall 2010 conference

The HP Slate mystery is finally solved.

At the Demo Fall 2010 conference earlier this week, HP CTO Phil McKinney confirmed that the Palo Alto, Calif.-company will launch 2 versions of its upcoming Slate tablet.

The Windows 7 version aimed at the enterprise market will hit the market by year’s end, while consumers will have to wait early next year, probably in the first quarter of 2011, for the WebOS-powered Slate.

“Based on customer feedback, that Slate is really the item that the enterprise customers want. They have many of the Win7 applications. We’ve got a number of customers in retail, healthcare and financial services that have specific Win7 applications and yet they want that portability factor. So the Win7 Slate that comes out later this year will be aimed at the enterprise corporate customer market,” explains McKinney.

More on the video below:

Leave a Comment » | DEMO, hardware, news, software, wireless | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360

The Future Of Social Networking Communications?

September 15, 2010

What is the future of social networking?

Ask LinkedIn, the world’s largest network for professionals, and the answer is communications.

In the past year, the number of “status updates” LinkedIn circulates among its users increased 10 fold, says CEO Jeff Weiner. Up next? The company is exploring the use of instant messaging and video conferencing, Weiner said during an interview at the Demo Fall 2010 conference in Silicon Valley.

LinkedIn is exploring instant messaging and video conferencing, says CEO Jeff Weiner

The goal is not just enable people to connect but to communicate, he said.

But LinkedIn’s communications-focused vision wasn’t the majority opinion at the entrepreneurial conference. Far more social network start-ups zeroed in on the traditional notion of information sharing. While many of the business plans were not new, they did appear to be well executed – at least at this early stage of their development.

Here is a sampling of the companies at the event:

*Real estate social network site HomingCloud as a dating site for homes, apartments and condos. List a property for sale and the site will match the post with buyers looking for a similar property in the area. Once connected, the buyer can view a video and decide whether to move ahead.

“Who needs a broker?” asks CEO Tina Fine. “Now you don’t.”

*Needly of Santa Monica also wants to bring buyers and sellers together, but to sell merchandise, not real estate. People post items for sale and list items they would like to buy. Then they search the site for a match.

That site doesn’t yet have an automatic matching feature. Maybe that is version 2.0.

*Online shopping site Zappli likes to bill itself as the Facebook for merchandise. Clearly, The San Francisco company has a long way to go. But the service offers several valuable features for shoppers, including advise for buying a gift for a friend. Learn about her preferences and buying habits from the profile she posts on the site before making a purchase. Users also can get advice on products from friends.

The Facebook for merchandise is a big claim. More likely it is a feature Facebook should build into its site, but so far hasn’t.

*What about finding a new restaurant or club? Ishi Systems used the event to launch Picksie, a service that recommends places of interest based on a user’s profile. Add a review and the site learns more about what someone likes and doesn’t like.

*Then there is Copia, a social network for books. Display favorite books for friends to see and share reviews. Then create a book club. The site also has an online bookstore.

Leave a Comment » | news | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet

Profitably Unveils Cloud Analytics Service; Picks Fight With SAP, IBM, Microsoft (Video)

September 15, 2010

2 Comments | DEMO, news, software, startups | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360

[Video] FriendCaller Revisits Web Calling, No Software Needed

September 14, 2010

1 Comment | communications, DEMO, news, web 2.0 | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360

[Video] Parallels Mobile App Runs Windows On iPad, iPhone, iPod touch

September 14, 2010

Leave a Comment » | DEMO, news, software | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360

Start-Ups Think Big, Like Twitter

September 14, 2010

For many entrepreneurs, start-ups are a labor of love.

Build what you want to see created in the world is the advice offered by Twitter co-founder and Chairman Jack Dorsey to young entrepreneurs.

“I wanted my family to use it, my friends to use it,” Dorsey said. He admits falling in love with SMS, or short messaging service, technology when it first came to the U.S.

And what about the micro-blogging site today? Twitter has some “interesting” scaling issues, with massive spikes in traffic volume. “Engineering for that is very difficult,” he said at the Demo conference in Silicon Valley.

Here are several less-established start-ups at the conference hoping for similar breakthroughs:

*Delphix. The company announced the commercial release of its database virtualization software. The product is designed to save companies money on storage hardware. Big corporations have multiple storage devices holding databases and an opportunity for consolidation. Delphix has several customers, including Staples and TiVo

*Metabeam. Metabeam’s Slideshow sends information about a television show or movie to a touch-screen device, such as an iPad. Ten thousands of people are already using the product, which was announced at the show.

*E-Fuel: The company ships an at-home systems for making ethanol from biomass, such as yard waste. (But don’t think yardwaste, because you would have to come up with a way for breaking down the plant material and converting it into sugar.)

Instead, E-Fuel owners are best off relying on distributors to will sell them distilled plant sugar in liquid form. Put the sugar solution in the fermentation tank and pump ethanol into your car. Cost: $10,000.

Leave a Comment » | news | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet

« Previous Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 29 other followers