farm

After a bit of a delay, FarmVille creator Zynga has announced plans to go public.

The company filed its Form S-1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today. According to the company, some of the shares will be sold by Zynga, while the remaining shares will be sold by "certain stockholders." Zynga has enlisted Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch, among other investment banks, to act as underwriters.

According to The New York Times, citing "a figure used to calculate the registration fee," Zynga is expecting to raise about $1 billion … Read more

Google is putting $102 million into the large wind farm in California using a financial model it hopes will attract more money into wind projects.

In a company blog today, Google said its latest investment in the Alta Wind Energy Center follows the $55 million it put into the same facility last month and brings Google's total investment in renewable energy to $780 million.

Google and Citibank are investing in Alta V, an extension to the Alta Wind Energy Center, which is expected to have a generating capacity of 1,550 megawatts when completed. It also will have a dedicated transmission line built, the Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project.

"We've now invested $157 million in 270 megawatts of clean, wind energy generation at AWEC. That brings our total invested to more than $780 million, with approximately $700 million invested this year alone," said Rick Needham, director of green business operations. "All in projects that not only provide us attractive financial returns but also help to accelerate the deployment of over 1.7 gigawatts of clean renewable energy."

By investing in the project, Google will benefit from the federal tax credits available to investors in renewable energy projects. Google and Citibank will own the Alta V wind farm but then lease it to Terra-Gen Power, which will manage and operate the project under a long-term contract.

Google's push into renewable energy, which started in 2007, has shaken up the world of renewable energy financing by showing that corporations other than banks can make money in these types of projects. Google hopes the leverage lease model it is using at the Alta Wind Energy Center will encourage new types of investors to consider wind, Needham said. … Read more

Japanese urban planning can be pretty horrible, especially in large cities: A riot of neon signs and electrical poles combined with a lack of greenery have created some truly ugly cityscapes. Panasonic and eight partners hope to change that a bit with a new super-green smart town set to open in 2014.

The Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town (SST) is aimed at reducing CO2 emissions by 70 percent compared with 1990 levels.

The completely networked town will be a 19-hectacre subdivision built on a former Panasonic plant site some 30 miles southwest of Tokyo. It will house about 3,000 people whose lives will revolve around being energy conscious: the 1,000 homes and other buildings will have solar panels to generate electricity and smart appliances, as well as home fuel cells. … Read more

Google and its partners cleared the first major hurdle with U.S. regulators today to build a $5 billion transmission line that would transport electricity from wind farms off the Atlantic coast.

The companies backing the project can earn a 12.59 percent return on their equity investment in the proposed power line, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ruled.

The project, which consists of two parallel transmission lines stretching from northern New Jersey to southern Virginia, could transport up to 6,000 megawatts of electricity that would provide power to 1.9 million households.

The transmission lines would each extend 250 miles along the mid-Atlantic coast. The electricity carried by the lines would connect with the main electric grid at onshore sites in New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia.

The project still needs approval from the Interior Department, several state agencies, and the regional power grid operator, PJM. The project's backers are Google, Good Energies, a private firm, and Japan's Marubeni Corp.

The companies hope to have the first phase of the transmission line operating in 2016.

The transmission line project will help the mid-Atlantic states meet their goals to… Read more

Denis Dyack, a longtime developer and founder of game studio Silicon Knights, doesn't see a healthy future for social gaming.

"It is damaging traditional gaming for sure but...how it's going to work out is anyone's guess," Dyack said in an interview with Industry Gamers published yesterday. "The trend that I see is it's probably going to be one of the biggest bubbles and explosions that our industry's seen in a long time and I think when it crashes it's going to crash very hard."

Dyack told the gaming publication … Read more

I have friends who play FarmVille. I find them very strange. They seem to believe there is some sort of joy to be obtained in caring about animals that don't exist. A little like Bigfoot-seekers.

However, Lady Gaga appears to understand them very well.

For, according to FarmVille maker Zynga, she has decided to create her own farm, creatively named GagaVille.

You might think that her Gaganess is merely having a little fun, communing with the virtual farming community to show her green credentials.

You might think Donald Trump's hair is made of gruyere. Because Gaga is reportedly using her new online Ville to release songs that you won't be able to hear anywhere else.

… Read more

Demand Media, which operates sites such as eHow and Livestrong, has been hit hard by Google's algorithm changes, the company revealed yesterday.

"In February and April, we experienced two major algorithm changes," Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt said during his company's first-quarter earnings call yesterday. "For eHow, here is the impact: as compared to the levels before the first February change, we saw a net decline in search engine referrals of 20 percent."

Google's algorithm update gives less weight in its results to so-called "content farms" that provide low-quality, quick answers … Read more

Is your idea of driving hell someone sitting in the passenger seat telling you how to drive?

Well, here's something even more fun: an iPhone app that grades your driving and tells you if you if you're a danger to society.

State Farm, the fine upstanding insurance company, has launched a Driver Feedback app that acts as your driving schoolteacher.

According to State Farm, the three parts of your driving that need to be measured are, wait for it: acceleration, braking, and cornering.

Strangely, this omits staring at people out of the window, nodding off at the wheel, and talking on your iPhone while on the road.

This little demon of an app needs only to be activated before it gives you a score at the end of every journey you take. Which, for some, would surely rank alongside having your eyebrows being bitten away by a rabid centipede.

It is entirely understandable that companies are creating apps for everything they can think of to somehow inveigle their way into people's increasingly smartphoned lives. … Read more

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded:

The white iPhone 4 launches at long last

Yahoo sells off Delicious to the founders of YouTube

Microsoft admits a security breach on the Xbox

Google adds new voice features to the Chrome browser

State Farm Insurance launches an app that will tell you if you drive like a jerk