Following governments in Germany, Japan and a few states like New Jersey, a bunch of nations are jumping on the solar bandwagon. Italy and Cyprus has put together an incentive package to encourage homeowners and businesses to put in solar panels. (Electricity from solar actually still costs more than conventional electricity, so subsidies are necessary to get consumers to adopt it.)

And in August, Ontario Canada will start pushing solar. It's way up North, but a low outside temperature is optimal for solar panels, explains Ron Kenedi, general manager of solar systems at Sharp, which is the world's … Read more

Bluetooth will hold its own against wireless USB, say its backers.

Phone manufacturers will continue to insert Bluetooth chips into handsets, asserted a representative from the Bluetooth SIG. This came in response from Dino Vendetti at Formative Ventures , who predicted that wireless USB would begin to displace Bluetooth in cell phones.

In part, survival will come out of convenience. "Manufacturers want one-stop shopping for product certification and they want the devices they are creating today and tomorrow to be compatible with the millions of Bluetooth devices on the market and coming to market every day," the Bluetooth rep … Read more

Bluetooth is sort of like France. Winning a war is just not it's thing.

The wireless networking standard was touted years ago as a way to connect laptops (via a cell phone bridge) wirelessly to the Internet. It got creamed by WiFi.

Subsequently, Bluetooth backers primarily envisioned it as a way to connect phones to wireless headsets or PCs. Although not everyone that has a Bluetooth phone takes advantage of the capability, adoption has been picking up.

Unfortunately, Wireless USB is getting set to knock Bluetooth out in that role, according to Dino Vendetti, who just joined VC firm … Read more

We're all aware by now that the American educational system is in a state of serious decline, but we face another problem too: Wall Street pays people too much.

Too many U.S. college students are being pulled away into management, hedge funds and other similar jobs where the main function is servicing someone else's legacy, according to David Strohm, general partner at Greylock, at the Venture Capital Investing Conference taking place in San Francisco.

Engineering and science students still seem to have start-up fever. But outside of those departments, which are seeing declining enrollments, most students seem … Read more

Plasma screens are going big, according to Takeshi Uenoyama, director of the advanced technology research laboratories at Matsushita Electric.

Fujitsu has developed plasma tube arrays that are flexible and large and appropriate as large signs, he said at the Society for Information Display, an annual gathering of display scientists, taking place in San Francisco. A display with 1000 pixels by 700 pixels measures three meters by two meters. A 2000 x 1000 pixel display measures six meters by three meters.

Although competitors, Matsushita and Fujitsu are allies in promoting plasma technology. In the home, plasma TVs are not growing nearly … Read more

Students at MIT have combined a parabolic solar panel with a generator that can be repaired with discarded auto parts to bring electricity to villages in Lesotho.

The system is sized to produce about 1 kilowatt of electricity. While that wouldn't go far in a U.S. household, it's a big change for the African nation, where only ten percent of the population has access to electricity. Heating water typically involves gathering firewood.

Samsung Electronics will sell digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) phones that can carry terrestrial TV signals through Debitel, a German carrier, starting next month.

The FIFA World Cup, which starts next month in Germany, is expected to be a major test bed for TV phones and companies like Samsung and Philips have geared up phone launches to dovetail with the event. The companies anticipate that consumers will use the phones to check out game highlights during their commute or lunch hour. Yahoo and other websites are also currently gearing up to provide up-to-the-minute reports on the tournament.

Terrestrial TV phones are … Read more

Video web sites, like everyone else these days, are looking for places to offshore some business functions. For DaveTV, a start-up founded by Rex Wong, it's the Philippines. The company, which hopes to mix contest in with the usual fare submitted by users, has hired people in that nation to watch videos so they can be categorized and, if necessary, screened out.

Why the Philippines? "Porn is illegal in India," he said. Thus, outsourcing there could lead to inadvertent legal problems.

DaveTV is also looking at ways to insert ads into video and allow individuals to more … Read more

EnerNOC, a start-up that helps large commercial buildings automatically cut down their energy use, bought Celerity Energy Partners out of Seattle on Thursday. With the acquisition, EnerNOC now manages more than 1,000 hours of electrical capacity.

The acquisition is the third major acquisition for the company, which is still private, in a year.

Academics and analysts generally point to three types of energy technology that will become more important in the future: alternative energy such as solar and biofuels; technology for burning coal and then storing the CO2 underground and technology for conservation. Simple as it sounds, conservation works. … Read more