Nvidia Steps Up Startup Investment Effort

March 10, 2009

Today, Nvidia announced the launch of its GPU Ventures Program aiming to identify, support and invest in early stage companies leveraging its graphics processors, in areas like video and image enhancement, scientific discovery, financial analysis and 3D interfaces.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker expects to invest between $500,000 to $5 million in about five startups this year and provide additional support to market, develop and even sell their products.

Prior to the GPU Ventures Program, Nvidia invested in several startups including Acceleware, Keyhole (acquired by Google for Google Earth), Mental Images (later acquired by Nvidia), MotionDSP and Right Hemisphere but didn’t have a formal structure to find, manage and nurture its investment effort.

Nvidia plans to host its second annual Emerging Companies Summit in the Fall of 2009, showcasing startups leveraging the chipmaker’s graphics and visual technologies.

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Posted by TechPulse 360

Google Adds Global Warming Data To Google Earth

February 20, 2009

Battling global warming is a worldwide problem, so what better place to understand it than on a worldwide satellite map?

Project Vulcan climate data is added to the global mapping program

Project Vulcan climate data is added to the global mapping program

Google on Friday released a “plug-in” download for its Google Earth showing which states and counties generate the largest volume of greenhouse gases.

The plug-in relies on data from Project Vulcan, an effort to measure the impact of global warming led by Kevin Gurney, an assistant professor at Purdue University, according to a company blog post.

The overlay shows which U.S. states and counties have the highest and lowest emission rates per capita. It is also identifies the sources of those emissions: driving, home heating, etc.

“The results produced by Project Vulcan are publicly available, but they are not easy to analyze for a non-scientist, so during my 20% time at Google I have created dynamic maps of the Vulcan data,” said Site Reliability Engineer Simon Ilyushchenko.

Google engineers get to spend 20 percent of their time on projects of their own design.

Find the download here.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Google Earth Goes Skiing (Virtually)

December 22, 2008

Ok. So its Christmas and we’re all thinking more about the holidays than the office.

Google Earth has ski reports

Google Earth has ski reports

In keeping with the holiday spirit, I spied a new Google feature that lets you know which European ski resort has the best snow. So far it is limited to the Alps regions of Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Italy. At least that’s a start.

The pop-up is available in the Gallery folder under Travel and Tourism of Google Earth.

The information comes from bergfex, which aggregates data from the resorts themselves.

Let’s hope Colorado and Utah are next.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

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