BLOCKBUSTER Total Access click to activate coupon for $10 off your first month. Free Information on EVault 1-866-928-0735 Chrome on New PC’s Fabric Never Gets Wet Satellite Radio is Dead SDR News is a Daily (M-F) Technology Podcast with Tech News Highlights from Slashdot, Digg and Reddit Click Here to Sign Up for the SDR Newsletter Prefer a Direct Download ? (mp3) Download today’s show. SDR News Links If a news item has disappeared from the Del.icio.us list above, try the full list here. Thumbnail Views: Via Thumblicio.us SEARCH ANY STORY YOU HEAR ON THE PODCAST Nine Lives of Radio by Andrew McCaskey Satellite is Going to Need All of Them The biggest news story of today is the prediction of the demise of Satellite Radio within the next two years, advanced by Roger Elgan at Datamation. Elgan is a fan of the exclusive content that suits his tastes that’s not available on AM/FM radio. But he thinks the world is moving to fast for satellite radio to keep up, and notes that Sirius XM has $3.4 billion in long-term debt, $1 billion of which is due next year — $300 million of that due by February. Here are the reasons: Every smartphone with mp3 - like the iphone - is a satellite radio competitor. And, that smart phone goes along for the ride in the car. Automobiles are mp3 ready - not only with mp3 jacks but increasingly with mobile broadband- just the wifi hotspot needed by the smartphone. Add in purchased mp3 tracks - or if you don’t like that, fire up Pandora. Podcasting kicks talk radio, and real-time podcastcasting like Blog-Talk radio removes the one advantage for local news and sporting events. Plus, downloadable time shifting as a bonus. And the biggest source of new satellite subscribers ? Purchasers of new cars, especially GM, Ford and Chrysler. Looks like a pretty grim list. But, as the Ken Burns PBS special Empire of the Air pointed out, radio (in terrestrial form, at least) has been knocked down for the count before. And each time it has reinvented itself in some way, and morphed into another form that aligned with the needs of the market. If satellite radio was the Great White Hope of radio in the late 20th Century, that might have been life number seven or eight. There are not many left. Contact Us CES 2008 Coverage for Tech Podcast Network Papervision - Augmented Reality Watch Today’s Video Episode Click to view videos submitted or recommended by other SDR podcast listeners. . . If you find a YouTube video that pertains to one of our news items, or have produced an item that would be of interest to SDR listeners, please send us the link slashdotreview{at}gmail.com Save $10 on any order of $50 or more at GoDaddy.com! Be sure to sign up for our upcoming roundtable. We will be using GoToMeeting. Also, be sure to check out GoToMeeting. Why? Because you can hold meetings right over the Net — from anywhere. Plus, you can hold all the meetings you want for one flat rate. To get your free 30-day trial , visit www.gotomeeting.com/techroundtable. Take 10% off any order at GoDaddy.com! Code SLASH Take $5 off any $30 order at GoDaddy.com! Code SLASH2 .com Domains $6.95 at GoDaddy.com! Code SLASH3 More blogs about SlashdotReview… Slashdot Review by Email - Sign up here: Enter your Email Powered by FeedBlitz Less

cleantech, energy, startups Gregory T. Huang wrote: I pinged energy expert Jesse Berst, the managing director of Redmond, WA-based GlobalSmartEnergy, to get his take on EnerG2, the venture-backed energy-storage startup we profiled earlier today. EnerG2 has developed a nanotech approach to building better batteries and “ultracapacitors” for storing electricity. Berst, an Xconomist, replied with some insights into the startup’s prospects for becoming a major player in the electricity economy (you can read more about this here and here), and the main challenge it faces. Berst first emphasized the importance of EnerG2’s core market. “Energy storage is the choke point of the electricity economy,” he writes. “Whether you want electric vehicles, a smarter, more reliable grid, or simply a laptop that lasts all day on a single charge, it is the lack of cost-efficient storage that stands in your way.” He then gave a bit of context to the problem EnerG2 is solving. “Although we’re making progress, it is largely incremental—squeezing out more efficiency from approaches that have been known for decades. If EnerG2 has found a new way to store energy, and a way that can achieve industrial scale, the world will beat a path to its door.” “That said, it should be prepared for skepticism,” Berst writes. “Every few years a new startup appears claiming radical improvements in storage. So far none of them have been able to move to real-world applications in quantity.” Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS Less

cleantech, startups, Analysis Gregory T. Huang wrote: Two weeks ago, Xconomy broke the news of the Seattle startup EnerG2’s $8.5 million first-round venture deal with Kirkland, WA-based OVP Venture Partners and Palo Alto, CA-based Firelake Capital Management. Today, the energy storage and advanced materials company is officially announcing its approach and giving the story behind its financing. I had a chance to speak in-depth with EnerG2 chief executive Rick Luebbe and OVP venture partner Rick LeFaivre about the company, its strategy, and what it could mean for the future of cleantech ventures, particularly in the Northwest. As we reported before, EnerG2’s technology originally comes from the University of Washington. It revolves around synthetic carbon powder and “nanocomposite” materials that have novel properties on the molecular scale, such that they are extremely efficient at storing various kinds of energy—electricity, natural gas, and hydrogen, to name a few. I wanted to find out more about how the technology works and how it will be commercialized (think better batteries for tools, vehicles, and mobile devices), but I also wanted to hear the deeper story about the ideas and motivations of the key players and how the deal came about. The story goes back to 2003, when Luebbe and his business partner Chris Wheaton first got into the energy game. Luebbe had been the co-founder and CEO of the Seattle software firm Hubspan, while Wheaton had been vice president of North American operations at Silicon Valley-based Loudcloud (now part of Hewlett-Packard). “We got interested in energy storage because we recognized no matter which direction the energy economy went, storage would be a critical, critical component,” says Luebbe. And whether it was electrical storage or gas storage, local or mobile applications, the future was in energy. “I really enjoyed my previous career from a business perspective, but I didn’t have same passion I have for clean energy,” Luebbe adds. Luebbe and Wheaton began looking for renewable energy technologies at the University of Washington that were practical and could be readily commercialized. “We weren’t interested in science projects,” says Luebbe. At the same time, they thought “the most practical way to enter the space was to find a technology that was a market changer,” he says. In other words, they had to swing for the fences. So they met with various department heads at the UW, and were introduced to Guozhong Cao, a professor in the materials science and engineering department, and his graduate student, Aaron Feaver. Cao and Feaver were focused on developing novel materials to generate and store energy. It was a good match. The status quo in energy-storage technology, roughly speaking, is that you try different natural materials and see if they work. What Cao and Feaver did was use advanced nanotechnology and …Next Page » Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

Roundup, deals, VC Gregory T. Huang wrote: Heading into Election Day (have you voted yet?), the deal flow has really picked up in the Northwest. Cleantech and energy were the big winners this week, followed by Web software and biomedical hardware. —Xconomy broke the news of Seattle-based EnerG2, a startup out of the University of Washington, raising an $8.5 million Series A round led by Kirkland, WA-based OVP Venture Partners and Palo Alto, CA-based Firelake Capital Management. EnerG2 is an advanced materials company focused on energy storage technologies. We plan to bring you the full story when the parties agree to talk. —Mercer Island, WA-based Napera Networks closed a $6 million round led by OVP Venture Partners, which had provided seed financing for the company as well. The terms of the deal had not been announced previously. Napera develops network-security technologies for businesses. —Ascentium, a Bellevue, WA-based Web design and marketing firm, raised additional funds from WestRiver Capital, based in nearby Kirkland. The amount of the funding was not disclosed, but Ascentium said it’s continuing to invest in talented workers and business expansion worldwide. —Kashless, the Seattle-based startup from ex-Imperium Renewables CEO Martin Tobias, raised a $5 million Series A round from RRE Ventures. Tobias hasn’t said much about what Kashless is doing, but it seems to involve recycling, reuse, and sharing online. He emphasized RRE’s forward thinking in cleantech-meets-software, and said we’re heading into a “nuclear winter” for funding. —Not technically a Seattle deal, but Kissmetrics, a Web analytics startup founded by Neil Patel, raised $800,000 from Silicon Valley-based True Ventures and other investors. Patel, who’s based in Orange County, CA, is an investor in several Seattle-area companies and is on the board of BuddyTV, ICanHasCheezburger, CultureMob, LiquidPlanner, and Optify. —Sonosite (NASDAQ: SONO), a Bothell, WA-based maker of portable ultrasound machines, bought back $60.3 million worth of convertible notes it owes investors, as Luke reported. The notes give investors the option of getting their returns through debt payments from the company, or by converting the notes into stock. —NxtGen Emission Controls, a Burnaby, BC-based “syngas” company focused on reducing emissions and optimizing the burning of fuels, closed a $15.4 million Series B round led by the Altira Group. Other investors included Itochu, an unnamed Japanese auto maker, and returning investors Yaletown Venture Partners, GrowthWorks Capital, BC Advantage Funds, and Polygon Financial Investments. —Seattle-based Second Avenue Partners participated in a $33 million Series B funding of Ice Energy, a Colorado-based cleantech company that helps manage air-conditioning electricity usage. Second Avenue was an original investor in the firm. The Series B round was led by Energy Capital Partners, based in Short Hills, NJ, and San Diego, CA. —InEnTec, a waste-to-fuels company based in Bend, OR, received a $150 million equity commitment from Lakeside Energy and American Securities to build a waste gasification plant in Michigan, as Luke reported. InEnTec’s technology originally comes from MIT and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. —Luke also reported that Vancouver, BC-based Yaletown Venture Partners raised $65 million in the initial close of its second fund (which it says will grow to $100 million in the next 12 months). The money will be used for cleantech and info-tech investments in Canada and the U.S. Pacific Northwest. —Glassdoor, the Sausalito, CA-based online job site co-founded by Zillow CEO Rich Barton, raised $6.5 million in Series B funding from Sutter Hill Ventures and Benchmark Capital. Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS Less

deals, VC, cleantech Gregory T. Huang wrote: Xconomy has learned that EnerG2, an advanced materials company in Seattle, has closed an $8.5 million round of Series A financing, led by Kirkland, WA-based OVP Venture Partners and Palo Alto, CA-based Firelake Capital Management, according to multiple sources familiar with the deal. The news suggests that energy venture deals could be hot, even in the midst of a cold recession. EnerG2 was founded in 2003, with technology from the University of Washington. The company is developing novel materials—synthetic carbon powder, carbon monoliths, nanocomposites, and others. It intends to use the stuff for applications like natural gas storage, hydrogen storage, more efficient solar cells, and “ultracapacitors” to replace traditional batteries, according to its website. EnerG2 is targeting customers in industrial, consumer electronics, and automotive sectors who need more efficient energy storage. The startup is led by CEO Rick Luebbe, chief operating and financial officer Chris Wheaton, and vice president of research and development Aaron Feaver. Feaver did his undergraduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (always nice to acknowledge a fellow Illini alum), and came to the Seattle area in the late 1990s to work at Boeing. He co-founded EnerG2 while pursuing his Ph.D. at the UW, working with Guozhong Cao, a professor in the materials science and engineering department. Feaver and Cao’s work included research on material-processing techniques to create new electrochemical properties at the nano scale (billionths of a meter). In 2004, EnerG2 formed a partnership with Cao to study carbon-based nanomaterials for storing energy and other applications. The work was initially funded by a $240,000 grant from the Washington Technology Center, a state-supported economic development agency that finances applications of university research. EnerG2 has also been funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the UW Center for Nanotechnology. The EnerG2 venture deal speaks volumes about the commercial promise of energy storage technologies, and the vibrancy of the local energy startup scene—particularly for technologies coming out of the UW. It also strikes me as a very smart deal for OVP, which has at least four cleantech companies in its portfolio—Carbonflow, Coda Genomics, M2E Power, and Tigo Energy—but none in the Seattle area until now. The 25-year-old venture firm has a couple of nanotech investments as well, but they are more on the biology side. OVP couldn’t talk about their latest deal just yet, but I hope to follow up with them in-depth soon. Comments (1) | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

Materials that change temperature in response to electric fields could keep computers--and kitchen fridges--cool. Less