VentureBeat |
- Entrepreneur Corner: Separation agreements and product development advances
- iPad 2 teardown shows the winners and losers among Apple’s suppliers
- Sweet revenge? Sean Parker may be bidding for Warner Music Group
- Tech companies line up quickly with ways to help Japan
- GameMaki helps you find fun challenges
- Apple faithful gather for iPad 2 launch (video)
- What you need to know about Tesla’s future
- Japan gets free wi-fi from FON until quake emergency ends
- Flexible solar panel maker SoloPower raises $13.5M
- Flash 10.2 heads to Motorola Xoom, other Android devices March 18
- Sony launches first free-to-play online game on PlayStation Network
- Socialize: Monetizing social media this month in NYC (VentureBeat Discount)
- Dell is again number two in the PC market, with a little help from iPad
- On the GreenBeat: Toyota sells 3M hybrid cars, Progress Energy drops $500M for smart power grids
- Why SXSW’s party in Austin matters
| Entrepreneur Corner: Separation agreements and product development advances Posted: 12 Mar 2011 08:00 AM PST Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner: 5 things to include in a separation agreement – There can be bad blood when someone leaves a company involuntarily. To prevent a former employee from poisoning the market for your company, a detailed separation agreement is essential. Attorney Curtis Smolar lists five things you’ll want to be sure to include. Data-driven future looms for product development – Just like the advertising and marketing worlds have been able to make tremendous advances from modern data gathering services, so too can the product side of a company. Niel Robertson, founder and CEO of Trada, says today’s tools can give startups a big advantage – if they’re used correctly. 8 problems every startup should anticipate – Startups are like marriages. They start full of idealistic dreams and run head first into reality. Martin Zwelling, CEO of Startup Professionals, runs down eight problems you can expect to face in the early days of your company. Uncommon ways to pitch potential investors – The fight for venture capital money is tough – and the old methods don’t always work. Shawn Parr, CEO of Bulldog Drummond, lists a number of methods that might help your chances. Weekend warriors discover the pivot – Long before he started Idealab, Bill Gross started educational software Knowledge Adventure. In this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture, Gross tells how sending employees in the field resulted in a critical discovery.
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| iPad 2 teardown shows the winners and losers among Apple’s suppliers Posted: 11 Mar 2011 11:51 PM PST
The teardown reveals the components inside the tablet computer and who made them. The information is instructive because Apple’s suppliers could generate a lot of sales providing parts for the iPad 2, which is likely to sell in the tens of millions of units. Getting a peak inside the iPad 2 is like looking inside an engineering marvel, where everything has its place and it’s packed as tightly as possible to save on space and costs. Broadcom is one of the clear winners, since it has several chips in the device. They include a Broadcom BCM5973KFBG microcontroller for the touchscreen, a Broadcom capacitive touchscreen controller, and a Broadcom combo chip that handles Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and FM tuner functions. That’s the same chip as used in the iPad and iPhone 4.
Of course, companies such as Intel, Nvidia, Marvell and more would love to be inside this machine. But no such luck this time around. It also has 512 megabytes of LPDDR2 random access memory, or the main memory that stores data when the machine is running programs. It has a 9.7-inch LED backlit multitouch display and a couple of cameras. It has a mono sound speaker, not stereo. The lithium ion polymer battery is a 3.8 volt 25-watt-hour unit which gives the machine its 10-hour operational battery life. This particular device has Toshiba NAND flash memory that has 16 gigabytes of storage. Other models have 32 or 64 gigabytes of flash. It also has a Dialog Semi power management chip and a Texas Instruments touchscreen line driver. There is also a Cirrus audio codec. STMicroelectronics makes both the accelerometer and the gyroscope chips that enable you to control the machine by tilting it in different directions. As for ease of repair, iFixit rates the machine at 4 out of 10. Companies: Apple, Broadcom, iFixit, St Microelectronics, Texas Instruments, Toshiba
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| Sweet revenge? Sean Parker may be bidding for Warner Music Group Posted: 11 Mar 2011 10:46 PM PST
Parker is a dynamic character in Silicon Valley, so much so that he was played by Justin Timberlake in the Oscar-winning The Social Network film, based on the Ben Mezrich book “The Accidental Billionaires.” AllThingsDigital is reporting that Parker is considering putting his money into a consortium to buy Warner Music Group. He is not yet part of the formal bid, but is aligned with a group led by investors Ron Burkle and Doug Teitelbaum. Warner’s owners are expecting to get $2.5 billion or more for the company. Parker disrupted the music industry while at Napster, which was a free music-sharing site that helped destroy the CD business. Parker co-founded Napster in 1999, went on to address book startup Plaxo, and guided Facebook in its early days. That latter job gave him a stake in Facebook that is now worth a ton of money. Forbes estimates his net worth is $1.6 billion. Parker is an advisor and investor in Spotify, the streaming music service which has 7 million active users in Europe. But it hasn’t launched in the U.S. yet because it hasn’t cut deals with two big music labels, Universal Music Group and Warner. By buying Warner, Parker could solve one of his problems. Companies: Facebook, Napster, Plaxo, spotify, Universal Music Group, warner music group People: Sean parker
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| Tech companies line up quickly with ways to help Japan Posted: 11 Mar 2011 09:24 PM PST
While the quake and tsunami in Japan were devastating, it’s heartening to see companies move fast to publicize ways to help. It certainly seems like the response is coming in faster than it the past. The Red Cross has made it dead simple to make donations on its web site or by texting REDCROSS to 90999 to make an instant $10 donation. The Mobile Giving Foundation also lets you donate $10 simply by texting Japan, Tsunami or other words to different numbers. You can make the donation on behalf of three different charities in the U.S. and another three in Canada. Zynga also moved fast to partner with Save the Children’s Japan Earthquake Tsunami Emergency Fund and it also set up donations through its social games on Facebook. With CityVille, citizens can plant a limited edition sweet potato crop to feed their population and stock their restaurants. Zynga is donating 100 percent of the proceeds to the fund. It has also set up similar donations with Cafe World, FrontierVille, Words With Friends, Zynga Poker and zBar (which sits atop a Facebook game). Vonage, a provider of voice-over-internet-protocol communications, also said it will waive per-minute calling charges from 830 pm March 11 until 830 pm (EST) March 18 for customers call from their Vonage home phones to Japan. Microsoft also said it has begun providing free temporary software licenses to all impacted customers, partners, non-profits, governments and institutions involved in disaster relief efforts. It is making Exchange Online available for no cost for 90 days to business customers in Japan. It has also listed ways to help on its disaster response site and it is creating imagery of the areas affected with Bing Maps. Meanwhile, Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley Disaster Management Initiative has collected a consoritum of techies to work together on disaster management and humanitarian assistance. CrisisCommons has put together a Wiki page to coordinate volunteers to support crisis-response agencies helping out quake victims. We’ll keep adding to this document as more ways to donate come through. Companies: Microsoft, Vonage, Zynga
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| GameMaki helps you find fun challenges Posted: 11 Mar 2011 06:29 PM PST
The basic mechanics of the site look pretty straightforward. Users can post suggestions for worthwhile activities and assemble some of those activities into a set of suggestions called a GameMaki. Then if you're looking for something to do, you can browse the site or see what your friends posted, vote suggestions up or down, and add items to your to-do list. Once you actually do the activity, you claim it on the site and win points and badges. With its application of game mechanics to real-world activities, particularly the way it awards points and badges, GameMaki has probably taken some inspiration from location-based app Foursquare — and Foursquare includes activity tips too. The difference, as pointed out by co-founder and chief executive Keith Ng, is that GameMaki isn't tied to your location, so you can include activities that take place anywhere, like "Run 10 miles." (Foursquare has dipped its toe into rewards that aren't tied into location check-ins, but I don't think it has gone very far in this direction.) That's not to say that GameMaki challenges can't be location-specific. The company has created a special set of activities related to the South by Southwest conference that's just starting up in Austin, and most of them involve visiting a particular location, whether it's the GameMaki booth or the conference kick-off party. I've played with the site, and the challenges definitely cover a lot of ground — they include everything from "revive the 80s tomorrow" to "abstain from shopping this weekend" to "create your own variant of Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night." That could be an advantage, if GameMaki users find lots of fun suggestions that aren't available elsewhere, but it also risks making the site feel a little random. GameMaki opened to the public today, and it's still in beta testing. Ng said his team is also working on a mobile application. The site was created by Singaporean startup Socialico. Investors include Myspace founder Brad Greenspan's Social Slingshot Fund and Robert Bong, the chief executive of UCSI University in Malaysia. Companies: GameMaki People: Keith Ng
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| Apple faithful gather for iPad 2 launch (video) Posted: 11 Mar 2011 05:30 PM PST
There was no sign of Apple’s chief executive today, though. It was just the fans. The doors opened promptly at 5 pm Pacific time. It looks like, at least at this store, Apple workers will be earning overtime. Judging by reports from around the country, the die-hard Apple fans are out in force for the iPad 2 launch. Apple has 236 stores across the country that began selling today, and the device is also available at other stores including AT&T, Verizon, Best Buy, Target, and Wal-Mart. Will it be enough to keep Apple dominant? Last year, Apple snagged 83 percent of the tablet computer market. But there’s more competition this year from the Motorola Xoom, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the RIM PlayBook, the HP WebOS tablet and a bunch of other tablets coming to the market soon. Purchases today are limited to two per customer. For those who don’t want to wait in line, Apple started taking online iPad 2 orders on Friday. Those orders are expected to ship in two to three weeks. The iPad 2 is 33 percent thinner and 3 ounces lighter than the original iPad that debuted a year ago. So far, the iPad 2 has gotten great reviews, but most are advising original iPad owners not to upgrade. The line for this store was actually bigger than the line for the iPhone 4, which debuted last summer. Companies: Apple People: Steve Jobs
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| What you need to know about Tesla’s future Posted: 11 Mar 2011 02:42 PM PST Electric-car maker Tesla Motors announced this week an update to its plans to deliver its Model S sedan, a hotly watched launch for the company. It’s not just electric-car fans who are itching to hear the progress on the Model S (pictured), which starts at $57,400 before federal tax incentives. Investors are watching the Model S’s progress closely too. This represents the first time Tesla is building a car from scratch, and the company aims to ramp up to a capacity of 20,000 of Model S cars a year by 2013. Investors are looking for Tesla to hit the benchmarks it has set for itself. Tesla has to get the $42 million former NUMMI factory up and running, train hundreds of new hires and actually become a successful startup in the auto manufacturing business. The factory is meant to be a future ground for other Tesla models, too. But most crucially, Tesla needs to deliver the Model S on time. The car is due out in mid-2012. Capstone Investments analyst Carter Driscoll told VentureBeat today that Tesla’s earnings last quarter was “okay,” and the company’s gross margins are improving (26 percent for last year, compared to 9 percent in 2009), but he still considers the stock overvalued. “They still have a long road to execute,” Driscoll said. He’s something of a skeptic, though — last year he issued a price target of $22 for the stock, causing it to slide. It’s now trading around $24. Here are some key points to keep in mind as we track Tesla’s progress this year and next: TSLA stock still has a great deal of short interest Tesla’s stock still continues to attract a lot of short interest, or investors seeking to profit from a drop in its price. As of Feb. 28, Tesla’s short interest was nearly 10 million shares, while its average trading volume was 2 million shares. That means buyers looking to bet against the stock outnumbered sellers nearly five to one. Tesla will have to start paying back its loans by 2013 The company received a $465 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy last January. Up to $101.2 million was available under the first term loan facility to finance 80 percent of the costs for its powertrain facility. The remainder, $363.9 million, was intended to finance up to 80 percent of the development and manufacturing facility for the Model S. The loan advances for the powertrain facility can be repaid in 28 equal quarterly installments starting on Dec. 15, 2012, according to SEC filings. If Tesla takes advances for the powertrain facility after that date, then it will owe the cash in 26 equal quarterly installments starting on June 15, 2013. All outstanding amounts will be due on Sept. 15, 2019. The cash it owes for the Model S funds will be repayable in 40 equal quarterly installments starting Dec. 15, 2012. If it takes advances out of that loan facility after that date, then the advances will be due in 38 equal quarterly installments starting on June 15, 2013. All outstanding amounts under the Model S Facility will be due and payable on the maturity date of Sept. 15, 2022. In the case that Tesla can’t meet those payments, though, it’s unlikely the DOE would allow the company to default. The DOE recently restructured its loan terms for troubled solar company Solyndra, including extending the amortization period for the loan, according to VentureWire. It expects to increase revenues by 40 to 50 percent this year The company is targeting high growth this year. It will be looking for revenues in 2011 to hit $160 million to $175 million. It also expects Roadster sales to grow. It’s unclear how many Model S prototypes have been built The company has completed at least one prototype by January, and CEO Elon Musk says he drives a prototype to work every day. Carmakers need to build at least 20 prototypes just to pass crash test ratings. With the Model S due out in mid-2012, Tesla arguably needs to have a full fleet of validation prototypes built soon. The company wants to raise $150 million to fund the Model X Tesla is looking to raise another $150 million, likely through a secondary market offering, to fund the development of the Model X, an all-electric SUV due to be unveiled this year. Driscoll points out that will add to Tesla’s debt load. Some have wondered whether all of the cash will go towards the Model X or, in reality, to complete the Model S. Tesla plans to sell another car for $30,000 in the next few years Musk said in January that Tesla will build such an electric car within four years, so that means such a car would be due out by 2015. The price point would be pretty impressive for a luxury carmaker like Tesla — the Nissan Leaf starts at $32,780. With loan payments come due in 2013, don’t be surprised if the company will look to raise more cash to fund the development of the mystery car. Companies: Tesla, Tesla Motors People: Carter Driscoll, Elon Musk
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| Japan gets free wi-fi from FON until quake emergency ends Posted: 11 Mar 2011 02:00 PM PST
The wi-fi networks will open up for everyone in order to help Japanese residents displaced or affected by the earthquake communicate more effectively. That includes the use of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, which have become critical during national emergencies as tools for communication — such as when protesters swarmed Egypt, calling for the country’s top leader to resign. Twitter also became one of the most widely used tools for protesters during Iran’s 2009 national election. Japan was rocked by an 8.9-magnitude earthquake on the Richter scale — which is a logarithmic scale, meaning that an extra 1 point on the scale means the quake is about 32 times more powerful. The earthquake rocked the northeastern portion of the coast and generated a tsunami warning across the country — which also reached portions of the United States, including Hawaii. The quake was the strongest to hit Japan in at least a century and generated a tsunami as high as 33 feet that flooded northern towns. The quake was followed by a 7.1-magnitude aftershock FON’s humanitarian offering could also prove to be a fantastic way to generate some positive buzz for the hot-spot service. The free wireless should be really helpful for Japanese citizens, seeing as a number of the country’s cloud-based services — where programs and services are run on remote servers — were disrupted following the quake. Residents are posting videos of the quake on the CitizenTube channel on YouTube and using the service to reach out to friends and families across the world. Google Person Finder is also available to help people get information about loved ones. There are two types of FON users — members and non-members. Members sign up and receive a FON hotspot that broadcasts their home wireless signal to a wireless network for other FON members and non-members. Those members can tap into any other FON hotspot for free. Non-members pay a subscription fee to access any of the FON hotspots across the country. The Madrid, Spain-based company was founded in 2005 and has more than 3 million wi-fi hotspots globally. FON is backed by Google, Skype, Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital. Companies: Fon
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| Flexible solar panel maker SoloPower raises $13.5M Posted: 11 Mar 2011 01:10 PM PST
SoloPower manufactures photovoltaic cells, which capture sunlight and convert it to electricity, on a flexible surface that can be bent and placed just about anywhere. They’re called thin-film solar panels, but they are typically less efficient at capturing sunlight and converting it to electricity than hard wafer-style photovoltaic cells. Thin-film solar panels are usually able to convert about 15 to 20 percent of the light shining on the panel into energy. SoloPower recently snagged a $197 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a thin-film solar panel factory in Wilsonville, Ore. It also raised $51 million in its fourth round of funding and a $20 million loan from Oregon’s state government. The company still plans to raise an additional $6.5 million, according to the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Hudson Clean Energy Partner and Convexa AS also participated in this round of funding, according to the filing. VentureBeat has contacted SoloPower for confirmation and additional details about the recent round. Companies: solopower
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| Flash 10.2 heads to Motorola Xoom, other Android devices March 18 Posted: 11 Mar 2011 12:30 PM PST
That's good news for owners of Motorola's Xoom tablet, as it launched without Flash support two weeks ago. As the first device running Android 3.0 "Honeycomb" on the market, the Xoom landed too early for Adobe to release an updated version of Flash for that OS. Flash 10.2 fixes that. The update brings Flash support to Android 3.0 devices, and it will upgrade previous Flash software on Android 2.2 and 2.3 phones and tablets. Motorola says that the Android 3.0 version of Flash 10.2 will be a beta release, meaning it's still a work in progress. Flash 10.2 features better speed improvements on newer phones and tablets running dual core processors, including the Xoom, Motorola Atrix, and LG Optimus 2X. It will also be able to take advantage of graphics accelerated rendering of Flash videos, games, and other content. The updated Flash also brings exclusive features to Android 3.0, including hardware acceleration for high-definition videos (which will reduce CPU stress), and deeper integration with Android's web browser rendering engine — which will speed up web page scrolling and will allow Flash content to run right in the browser. Adobe has also included improved software keyboard support, which will let developers better optimize Flash applications that require keyboard inputs for mobile touchscreen interfaces. Adobe didn't say when Flash 10.2 would land on other mobile platforms, most of which are still waiting for Flash 10.1 appear. The company previously said that Flash will be available on BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7, WebOS, and Symbian platforms, but thus far it has only managed to deliver a beta release for WebOS. As Adobe continues to improve its support for Flash on mobile devices, and as mobile hardware steadily improves, Apple's arguments against including Flash in the iPhone and iPad — mainly, that it’s a battery and performance hog — are beginning to seem increasingly trivial. It may not happen this year, but I wouldn't be surprised if Apple ends up embracing some form of Flash in the future.
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| Sony launches first free-to-play online game on PlayStation Network Posted: 11 Mar 2011 11:47 AM PST
The launch shows that the free-to-play business model — where users play a game for free and pay real money for virtual goods — is catching on with in the console world. Sony Online Entertainment, the division of Sony that makes MMOs, previously published DC Universe Online on the PlayStation Network. But Free Realms, which has 17 million registered players on the PC and Mac, is the first free-to-play MMO to be slated for the PS 3’s online network. With two major MMOs coming to the PS 3, Sony is trying to differentiate its platform from Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which has no such MMOs on tap. John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment, said that Free Realms continues to break new ground in the game industry. Sony is pushing retail sales of DC Universe Online at the same time it is embracing the free-to-play business model with Free Realms. Free Realms is a fantasy-role-playing world that competes with the likes of World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online, but its content is lighter and it is geared toward a younger audience. The world is pretty diverse. You can train as a ninja, play soccer, battle pirate ships, cook a meal, enter a demolition derby, mine for gold, pursue a quest, and train exotic pets. You can socialize with friends, play mini-games, go on adventures and share your achievements. Sony promises you can get into Free Realms quickly and easily from the PlayStation Store. You can create a character and jump into the world within minutes. There are 15 types of careers to choose and more than 30,000 combinations of clothing. The free-to-play business model got another boost with game maker Gazillion announcing today it would shift to that model. Sony also has the Sodium free-to-play game in its Home virtual world on the PlayStation Network, but Sodium isn’t an MMO and is more like an arcade game. Companies: Sony, Sony Online Entetainment People: John Smedley
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| Socialize: Monetizing social media this month in NYC (VentureBeat Discount) Posted: 11 Mar 2011 11:29 AM PST
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| Dell is again number two in the PC market, with a little help from iPad Posted: 11 Mar 2011 11:13 AM PST
Acer was suffering from declining netbook sales — people who previously bought netbooks started looking into tablet computers such as Apple's iPad. The momentum for consumer PCs, Acers strong segment, is waning. Meanwhile, corporate demand remains strong, and that is Dell's core business. Hewlett-Packard is still the number one PC maker, with 13.6 percent sequential growth from the previous quarter. Dell’s shipments remained flat, but Acer's fell 12.9 percent. Overall, the PC market has rebounded from the recession of 2009. Global PC shipments in the fourth quarter of 2010 amounted to 93.1 million units, up 5.7 percent from 88.1 million in the third quarter of 2010, and a 4.7 percent increase from 88.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2009. PC shipments during the fourth quarter hit a new quarterly record, blowing past the previous high of 88.9 million units set in the fourth quarter of 2009. The growth came from desktop computers. "Desktop sales in the fourth quarter were buoyed by strong corporate demand," HIS iSuppli analyst Matthew Wilkins said. "The corporate PC segment continues to outperform the consumer market as companies replace systems with newer, faster, more efficient computers." Companies: Acer, Apple, Dell, Hewlett Packard People: Michael Dell
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| On the GreenBeat: Toyota sells 3M hybrid cars, Progress Energy drops $500M for smart power grids Posted: 11 Mar 2011 10:19 AM PST
Toyota announces that it has sold 3 million hybrid vehicles. The car company has 18 hybrid models, which use a mix of conventional fuel and electric power to increase fuel efficiency. It first launched its hallmark electric car, the Prius, in 1997. The company is on track to sell 1 million hybrid vehicles each year. Progress Energy will drop $500 million into developing smart power grids in North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. The grids in Florida and the Carolinas will provide electricity to around 3.1 million customers. Progress Energy will use IBM’s WebSphere software to manage its smart grids — electricity grids that are more efficient operationally and can save power and money. The last smart grid program IBM piloted shaved 15 percent off typical power consumption in North Carolina. BP buys majority stake in Brazilian biofuels developer for $680 million. The company paid for an 83 percent stake in the Brazilian ethanol manufacturer. It is the largest deal in BP’s alternative energies unit to date. BP has tried to diversify into biofuels over the past several years amid concerns of political unrest in the Middle East, one of the largest suppliers of oil. Xtreme Power, DTE Energy launch solar power project at Michigan Ford factory. The deal will bring $5.8 million to Xtreme Power, a provider of smart energy storage units. DTE Energy’s installations will generate 500 kilowatts of power, which will be stored in Xtreme Power’s 750-kilowatt storage system — enough to power 100 homes for a year. Solar panel manufacturer Suntech Power posts strong fourth-quarter earnings. The company made $945 million in the fourth quarter of 2010, up 61.9 percent from the same quarter a year earlier. Shipments of photovoltaic cells, which capture sunlight and convert it to electricity, were up 87.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010 when compared to the same quarter a year earlier. Suntech made $2.9 billion in 2010, up 71.4 percent from 2009. Companies: BP, DTE Energy, Progress Energy, Suntech, Toyota, Xtreme Power
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| Why SXSW’s party in Austin matters Posted: 11 Mar 2011 10:09 AM PST
That’s the insight I’ve gathered from years of attending South By Southwest Interactive, the annual conference/festival/five-day rave held every year in Austin in conjunction with the more established SXSW film and music festivals. (You can show your veteran status, or fake it, by calling it “South By.”) The streets of Texas’s capital city are swarming with San Franciscans; I knew a half-dozen people on my JetBlue flight. So why do so many people pick up and hang out in Texas for a week? Because they have jobs to fill, and the people they need are all here. I’ve called SXSW a “pointless party” and ridiculed it as “spring break for Web developers.” But there’s something to be said for getting out and meeting people in a new place, unmoored from your usual routines. Sure, there are panels, but it’s really about the hobnobbing in the Austin Convention Center’s long, long hallways and the parties that roll into the night. People are trying to connect on a deeper level around shared passions — here, mostly consumer Web startups and the possibilities that unfold when you connect social experiences with the Internet. It’s not about the products that launch at SXSW. I have sympathy, even admiration for startups brave enough to run the SXSW gauntlet of skeptical, demanding geeks in the hopes of getting dubbed the next Twitter or Foursquare, to name two startups that won buzz here. But really, if you can find one great developer at a party, consider it a win. Yesterday, right before I grabbed my bags and headed to the airport, I moderated a panel at the Unleashed Talent conference in San Francisco on the topic of recruiting. One of the panelists, Ethan Bloch, the founder of Flowtown, a startup that aims to turn your most passionate customers into a virtual sales force for your product, struck me as singularly obsessed with recruiting. Bloch told the audience he spends 90 percent of his time recruiting, doing everything from writing scripts that monitor GitHub, a collaborative source-code repository favored by Ruby on Rails programmers, for the most productive users to scanning Dribbble, a design-sharing site, for creative user-experience types. In a similar vein, Peter Kazanjy, the CEO of professional-reviews site Honestly.com, mentioned during the panel that he’d built SocialLink, a FireFox Web browser add-on that helps users find a LinkedIn connection on Facebook or Twitter. (Among other things, this helps you evade a charge LinkedIn imposes to send messages to users that aren’t in your professional network.) Other panelists, like BranchOut founder Rick Marini and Top Prospect’s Rotem Perelmuter, emphasized the importance of constantly recruiting by mining social graphs, the mapped-out connections between people on social networks like Facebook. (Not surprisingly, their startups help you do just that: BranchOut is a professional network, not unlike LinkedIn, but one that lives within Facebook as an app, while Top Prospect helps companies extend the referral rewards usually given to employees for a successful new hire to their wider circle of friends and acquaintances.) Jobvite CEO Dan Finnigan pointed out that this approach is singularly effective: Referrals that come through employees’ social networks are 12 times more likely to result in a hire than over-the-transom applications. And they’re cheaper, too — the cost of a referral hire might be in the range of $3,000 to $5,000, while a professional recruiter could easily start at $20,000 to $25,000 per completed hire. (At the panel, venture capitalist Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners sarcastically quizzed Bloch on his recruiting productivity, finally getting Bloch to admit that for all the time he’d spent since January scouring websites for “world-class” candidates, he’d only made one hire so far. But at those rates, I’d say Bloch’s doing okay.) Against that backdrop, a conference pass, a plane ticket to Austin, and a few nights in a hotel seem cheap. So party on, South By geeks. If you can make just one whip-smart, talented new friend whom you bring back home to headquarters, you’ve paid your own way. (Oh, and by the way, VentureBeat is hiring.) Companies: BranchOut, Flowtown, Honestly.com, Jobvite, Top Prospect People: Dan Finnigan, Ethan Bloch, Peter Kazanjy, Rick Marini, Rotem Perelmuter
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As soon as the 
The device has some previously known components. It has a 1-gigahertz dual core Apple-designed A5 ARM-based processor. That chip is most likely fabricated by Samsung, but the teardown doesn’t reveal who made the chip. The A5 processor has manufacturing dates of late January and mid-February, which means that production was gearing up at the last possible minute. The chip has a built-in graphics system from Imagination Technologies.
Sean Parker might be part of a 
Technology is making it easier to marshal a response to natural disasters, as we’re seeing unfold today with relief efforts and charitable donations for Japan.
Looking for something fun or educational to do this weekend? A just-launched site called 
The line snaked around the corner. Apple employees handed out bottles of water. (You figure they can give that much back to fans who are willing to drop $499 to $829 on the iPad 2).
After a little cheering and a countdown, the doors opened and the crowd walked in.
FON, a company that manages a large network of wi-fi hotspots, is 
SoloPower, a maker of flexible thin-film solar power panels, has raised $13.5 million in its fifth round of funding from Crosslink Capital and others, 
The next major update for Flash on Android mobile devices, version 10.2, will hit the Android Market on March 18, 
Free-to-play online gaming is coming to the PlayStation 3. 
Socialize
Dell CEO Michael Dell probably doesn't mind the success of iPad. 
Here's some of the latest action happening today on the GreenBeat:
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