Monthly Archives: September 2009
PayPal Co-Founder Luke Nosek Joins Halcyon Molecular
Luke Nosek is a co-founder at PayPal and is a Managing Partner at Founders Fund. Nosek wants to move from the Internet and new media sector and get into science. Nosek is joining Halcyon Molecular, a human genome sequencing firm as a founding president.
Halcyon plans to sequence complete human genomes in less than 10 minutes at a cost of $100. This is a much smaller price and smaller amount of time than currently existing genome sequencing labs. Nosek will continue to lead The Founders Fund’s genomics investing division. Peter Thiel will be joining the board of directors at Halcyon Molecular too.
Halcyon will be competing with 23andme, a genomics company founded by Anne Wojcicki, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Halcyon even received a $2 million aberration corrected STEM electron microscope on loan from the U.S. DoE.
Cazoodle Shopping Search Launches Service For Electronics
Cazoodle Inc. is a start-up company that spun out of a project at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC). Cazoodle was founded by Professor Kevin C. Chang and a research team of undergraduate/graduate students. Cazoodle is located at EnterpriseWorks, an incubation facility based on the Research Park at UIUC.
Cazoodle uses semantic search technology to connect consumers with offers on various merchant websites. Cazoodle already has apartment search services and they launched the electronics service earlier this week at the DEMO conference.
Cazoodle is one of many services that finds deals online for electronics, but the website does more to sort deals. Cazoodle also has a service called Shopping Caddy that brings up additional information when searching for products to make sure you’re getting the best deals. Cazoodle has been self-funded thus far.
Categories Cazoodle Inc., Kevin C. Chang, University of Illinois
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Reza Saleh Arrested For Insider Trading With Perot-Dell Deal
This past Wednesday, the U.S. securities regulator charged Reza Saleh for insider trading in Dell’s acquisition of Perot Systems. Saleh made $8.6 million in profits by purchasing stock options ahead of the acquisition deal. Saleh sold them when Perot Systems stock soared on the day of the deal.
Saleh learned about the upcoming deal when working for a Perot Systems-related company. Perot Systems was bought out for $3.9 billion. The SEC filed a complaint with a federal court in Texas to freeze Saleh’s assets.
Saleh bought 9,000 Perot Systems call options at the time of the insider trading scheme. Saleh also told a Perot director that he knew about the deal when he was trading.
Categories Dell Inc., Perot Systems, Reza Saleh
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CallSpark Preps You For Sales Calls By Grabbing Social Media Data
CallSpark is a start-up that prepares you for making sales calls by grabbing social media content of your clients. It finds the latest updates from Facebook, Twitter, WhitePages and Salesforce.com. Statuses and information is updated in the customer relationship management (CRM) service CallSpark.
If you don’t have the phone number of the person that you want to call, then CallSpark searches through the web to see if it can find it. CallSpark also has an iPhone application and a mobile website for other smartphones. The company did a presentation at the DEMO conference and is based in San Francisco, California.
Categories CallSpark
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Fisker Automotive Receives $528.7 Million Loan From Department of Energy
Fisker Automotive Inc. is a U.S. based start-up company that is going to sell hybrid vehicles. The company recently secured a $528.7 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy. The funds will be used to fund production of their low emission cars.
“Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles could revolutionize personal transportation and cut our dependence on foreign oil, not to mention give us cleaner air and less carbon pollution,” stated Energy Secretary Steven Chu. Tesla Motors recently received $465 million in Energy Department loans this past June.
Fisker Automotive will use $169.3 million to finish the development and production of the Karma, a $87,900 plug-in hybrid sedan. The rest of the funds will be used to build the next-generation vehicle called Project Nina.
By 2012, Fisker plans to sell 75,000-100,000 cars per year. Fisker has an engineering office in Pontiac, Michigan. “This conditional loan represents a significant step in America’s future,” stated Fisker CEO Henrik Fisker, “help restore the U.S. as an auto industry leader.”
Local Dirt Connects Local Buyers and Sellers Of Meat and Dairy
Local Dirt is a website that connects buyers and sellers of locally grown produce, including meat and dairy. Large scale farms and organic food is an industry worth about $18.3 billion, but local businesses suffer from competition as a result. This is a problem that Local Dirt wants to solve.
Local Dirt is free for buyers and costs $360 per year for sellers. The distributors are charged $720. Local Dirt does not mark up for food prices and does not charge commissions either. Buyers can search for products and nearby producers.
The website can send invoices back and forth between both parties. Sellers contact customers directly to arrange the pickup. Local Dirt distinguishes themselves from competitors by staying up to date.
Categories LocalDirt
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Predator Unveils VX360 Extreme Camcorder
EXTREEEEME WEBCAM!!! Predator has designed a new webcam that can take impacts and stand wetness. The new webcam with an LCD screen is called the Predator VX360. The webcam can stand water that is 3 meters deep. The camera can be worn as a headband and is lightweight.
Categories Predator, Predator VX360
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Burt Launches Ad Analytics Service Rich
Burt is launching a new advertising analytics service called Rich. Rich breaks down all advertising data on a single page tailored towards creative agencies. Some of the questions answered on the single page include “Was the ad visible?” “Did someone see the ad?” and “What did they do then?”
Rich was launched at the DEMO conference earlier this week. Rich also shows what the click-through rate was on ads. One of the unique features that Rich has is “view-throughs” which shows how often ads are actually seen. Rich also has a “visibility” feature that shows whether ads were placed on a website where people could see it.
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Hiroo Iwata Invents Robotic Walking Tiles To Predict Movement
Hiroo Iwata is a virtual reality researcher that developed moving cubes using pressure-sensitive fabric and ultrasonic sensors for predicting movements. The cubes shuffle according to the movement of the human standing on the cubes. This essentially creates an “infinite walkway.”
The cubes are a bit slow but as the technology is refined, more realistic virtual simulations can be created. Iwata works at the VR lab at the University of Tsukuba.
Categories Hiroo Iwata, University of Tsukuba
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Article One Partners Crowdsources Whether Patents Are Valid
There are some companies out there that file for patents and then sues major companies for violating them. Sometimes the patents are irrelevant to their business which is why it makes things seem pretty unfair. Article One Partners launched a new business that encourages users to question whether certain patents are valid or not.
Article One has recently launched a new feature where clients can post requests for patent study or requests for “prior art.” Anyone that submits evidence for an invention that has been preceded by an earlier invention will be rewarded. Over 7 million patents have been issued since the 1790′s so there are chances for questionable inventions to slip through the cracks.
Another problem with patents that exist today is that foreign inventions can invalidate U.S. patents. Generally patent search engines index English language patent documents. This is why the web crowd becomes increasingly important when it comes to patent validation. In terms of revenue that can be earned, any expert that proves that a patent is inaccurate will receive $50,000 per research project and share 5% of Article One’s net profit.
Since Article One launched, CEO and founder Cheryl Malone said that since the company beta started in November 2008, about 33% of the studies have submitted invalidating evidence.
Categories Article One Partners, Cheryl Malone
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