Video: What is Web 2.0?

Here is an excellent video called "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us" by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University.

Brilliant, beautiful and informative. Tells you what Web 2.0 is. Asks you what it means.

My thanks to my friends (and the software) at Touchstone for "bringing this to my attention".

Bottom Line: Ask not what Web 2.0 can do for you; instead ask what you can do for Web 2.0?

New Chip Technology Uses Less Power

Increasing power demands for portable devices has often been cited as a driver for the adoption of advanced battery and fuel cell technologies.

Intel and IBM have just announced a new technology(CNN Money), which will allow further miniaturisation of transistors on integrated circuits: "Transistors can be made smaller, potentially doubling the total number in a given area, their speed can be increased by more than 20 percent, or power leakage can be cut by 80 percent or more."

We will see small portable fuel cells on the market within the next two years, initially as battery re-chargers. Integrated devices will take much longer to come to market.  However, display manufacturers, chip designers and advanced battery companies (Boston Power recently raised 15.6 million for their lithium ion technology) are continually raising the bar.

Bottom Line: It will happen, but it won't happen overnight.

Latest cleantech venture investment numbers

According to Ernst & Young and Dow Jones' VentureOne, cleantech investments are up 50% in the first three quarters if 2006 compared to 2005.

Total investment in first three quarters was $761.4 million, or 2.4% of the total $32 billion of venture investments.  Small, but growing fast.  Also good news was the continued strong showing of seed and early stage investments.

Two Planets needed by 2050

Usually I stick to technology and the business of getting it to market, be it hardware, software or clean-tech.  Today I am getting on the soap-box.  I want to draw your attention to a recent report by the WWF.  The BBC has an excellent summary and lots of graphics to help you get a feel for the findings.

Bottom Line: By the time my kids are my age, we will need two planets to support our current lifestyle. Indeed this is within my own life time.  The problem is an immediate problem.

Unofficial CA Cleantech Open Awards

I did a guest blog at Neal Dikeman's Cleantechblog.com in which I picked the most interesting companies that were not either a winner or 1st runner-up at the real awards ceremony.  You can read it here.