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Posts Tagged ‘secretary’

Over the past several years, there’s been no shortage of talk about alternative energy, and its potential to change the world. The problem is that most of it is just that — talk. But tonight, a report that aired on 60 Minutes showed one alternative that is not only real, it’s already being tested by companies such as Google and eBay. You simply have to watch this.

Bloom Energy are producing tiny fuel cell boxes they call “Bloom Boxes.” Two of these can apparently power a U.S. home (and only one for homes in countries that use less power). So how small are they? Look at the picture above, each device isn’t much bigger than a standard brick. Of course, they need to be surrounded by a larger unit that takes in an energy source (such as natural gas). But still, these units look to be about the size of a refrigerator and can easily fit outside of a home, providing it with clean, cheap energy.

Currently, these boxes cost some $700,000-$800,000, but eventually, founder K.R. Sridhar envisions one in every home — and he thinks he can get the cost below $3,000 for a unit to make that happen. And he’s talking a 5 to 10 year timeframe for this.

Naturally, there are plenty who are skeptical of something like this ever working. There have been no shortage of fuel cell ideas over the years, but none get their own segment on 60 Minutes showing working units. And none get to highlight the fact that they’re already installed at companies like Google, eBay, FedEx and others. In fact, four of these Bloom Boxes have apparently been powering a Google datacenter for the past 18 months. eBay says their five boxes have saved them over $100,000 in electricity costs over the past nine months.

Bloom Energy also has former Secretary of State Colin Powell on its board of directors, and he talked up the Bloom Boxes on 60 minutes tonight also. And the company has something in the neighborhood of $400 million in funding from the likes of Kleiner Perkins and others. Kleiner’s John Doerr is also featured heavily in the 60 Minutes segment, talking about why he thinks this company can change the world perhaps even in a more profound way that another company he backed, Google, has. Bloom Energy was Kleiner’s first green tech investment.

Again, just watch the video and decide for yourself whether to be skeptical or amazed at this point. Right now, I’m definitely in the latter camp considering this thing is already being tested out. Apparently, Bloom Energy is due for a big formal public unveiling on Wednesday in San Jose (they have a countdown up on their site) —expect to hear a lot more then.

Silicon Valley and the State Department are getting along quite well under the Obama Administration. Last year, a tech delegation traveled with the State Department to Iraq and Mexico City to see how technology can help aid the countries. As a result of those trips, the Iraqi government set up a YouTube channel and digitized the contents of its looted national museum, while Mexico set up an SMS hotline for reporting crimes anonymously. In January, Sec. Hillary Clinton held a dinner in Washington D.C. for tech innovators and luminaries to discuss how to harness the power of technology tools to promote diplomacy around the globe, what Secretary Clinton calls “21st Century Statecraft.”

Today, a group of leaders in the tech sector is joining the State Department on a trip to Russia to discuss how communications technologies and social media can be used to strengthen and broaden the ties between the United States and Russia. The State Department has recruited some big names to join the trip, including actor and social media lover Ashton Kutcher, eBay CEO John Donahoe, Twitter co-founder and Square founder Jack Dorsey, and Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior. We hear one of Kutcher’s responsibilities will be to Tweet about the trip. Topics which will be explored include how to foster entrepreneurship and how to use the Web to combat child trafficking and corruption, and use it to improve training, distance learning for remote populations, e-government initiatives, and cultural exchanges.

The delegation is led by Jared Cohen, a State Department policy staffer, Howard Solomon of the National Security Council and White House Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra. The full list of tech leaders on the trip include John Donahoe, Jack Dorsey, Padmasree Warrior, Shervin Pishevar, executive chairman and founder of Social Gaming Network; Jason Liebman, CEO and cofounder of Howcast; Esther Dyson, prolific investor and leader; Mitchell Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation; and Ellis Rubinstein, president and CEO of New York Academy of Sciences.

Kutcher, along with his actress wife, Demi Moore, are the founders of the Demi and Ashton Foundation, which works on anti-trafficking issues. Kutcher also founded his own tech company, Katalyst Media, and has been active in promoting and furthering social media initiatives.

“They are taking off their commercial hat, putting on their expert hats and becoming part-time diplomats,” Cohen tells TechCrunch. “The State Department is a connector here. Statecraft is as much about building connections as doing negotiations.”

The delegation is tentatively scheduled to meet with the Russian Ministers of Communications, Health and Education; with advisors to President Medvedev; with leaders of Russian technology and telecommunications companies; with cultural and educational leaders; and with civil society organizations concerned with health, child welfare anti-trafficking, and anti-corruption efforts.

We’re in Barcelona keeping an eye on Eric Schmidt’s Mobile World Congress keynote, where the Google CEO just disclosed an interesting fact: Google and their hardware partners are now shipping 60,000 Android handsets each day.

Whether “shipped” here means “sold to end users” or “ordered by retailers” is unclear - but regardless, it’s quite the feat either way.

If that’s a true average rate and it holds true for the next year, that works out to about 5.4 million handsets per quarter, or 21.9 million per year.

There are plenty of online auction sites that are based on a descending price model – also known as the ‘Dutch auction’ model – that allows bidders to purchase items only when it drops to a price they’ve indicated are willing to pay for it.

Adding another one to the fray, Las Vegas-based Pricefalls is emerging in public beta today with $400,000 in seed funding from a number of private investors and a 21-year old CEO who founded the company as a junior in college.

The student/entrepreneur in question is Elliot Moskow, who started the site out of frustration when he noticed his eBay storefront wasn’t actually generating a lot of sales for items he listed although he was still paying listing fees to put them up there. Moskow teamed up with Peter Schaefer and Chad Casey, alumni from the Bates College in Lewiston, Maine where he is a junior, and launched the service in private beta in January 2009. Today, the site is launching in public beta.

Here’s how it works: sellers can list items free of charge in a variety of categories ranging from books to real estate property and determine a price ceiling, which is the highest price they think someone will purchase an item for. The bid starts at this price, and sellers can set a time from 1 to 7 days during which buyers can ‘catch it’ at that price. After that timeframe, the price will gradually decrease at set intervals until it reaches a price floor, which is the lowest price the seller is willing to have his or her item purchased for.

Listing and relisting items is free, and if an item isn’t sold the seller doesn’t pay Pricefalls anything. Depending on the ultimate selling price, Pricefalls makes money by charging fees on completed sales.

Pricefalls received $400k from private investors, the second largest being Gary Jacobs, President, Corporate Strategy, General Counsel and Secretary of MGM MIRAGE. The startup has recruited Mike Inman (an former senior exec at MGM MIRAGE, Entertainment Publications and IAC/InterActiveCorp) as well as real estate investor turned entrepreneur Matthew Jacobs to their Board.

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The Internet got in a bit of a tizzy this weekend when it was reported that Twitter was banned from being accessed from inside the White House. What is this, Iran, some wondered? But have no fear, despite what White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told C-SPAN, Twitter is apparently not entirely blocked and they’re working to open it up more, Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton told Mediaite today.

Here’s where the confusion apparently comes from. Access to Twitter’s website is blocked on most White House computers, but that’s only for security and recordkeeping reasons for the time-being. Apparently, the White House is working with the White House counsel and the Office of Administration CIO “to review and relax these restrictions,” Burton says. And, more importantly, it is apparently not official policy of the White House that staffers are not allowed to tweet, and some do so from their own web-connected devices.

And there are computers that can post to Twitter in the White House right now via HootSuite, which you see from time to time as the source of official White House tweets. But most of the official White House account tweets are done by the new media team (consisting of Director of New Media Macon Phillips and Online Programs Director Jesse Lee), from the new media offices are in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (which is next door to the White House). President Obama’s account is apparently handled by the DNC.

So there you go, while it is hard to tweet from inside the White House right now, it’s not impossible, and they’re trying to make it easier. It’s just a matter of recordkeeping and, quite literally, national security right now, which seems understandable.

And the White House wants you to know that it likes Twitter. It tweets about it not once, but twice today. First, to clear up the banning issue. And second, like a good Twitter user, to promote itself to try to get a million followers.

Lastly, it seems Burton has a good sense of humor about the whole thing. When asked to name some White House staffers that tweet, he replied:

I have an account that I follow on my personal blackberry but I don’t actually twitter myself. It’s more to keep track of what Diddy and Perez Hilton are up to all day.

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Doug Aamoth here in Boston at the 2009 RoboBusiness Expo with some fodder for the “Robots Will Eventually Rise Up and Kill Us All” debate.

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iRobot NOT working on autonomous killing machines