cleaning

The venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, long an investor in clean tech and global firms, is launching a $250 million fund to invest in Chinese companies.

According to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the fund is called the KPCB China Fund II. Unsurprisingly, it's the firm's second such fund. In 2007, KPCB launched its first China fund, raising $360 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

KPCB Managing Partner Ray Lane told the Journal in May that the China and U.S. teams will work closely together and that the opportunities to invest … Read more

As freeware system cleaners go, Magix PC Check & Tuning Free offers a good balance. Some such tools are designed to be as easy to use as possible and give you few options and not enough information about what they're doing to your system. Others overwhelm beginners with options and detailed scan reports, and they often make it too easy to delete the wrong things. The freeware version of PC Check is designed to be easy to use yet useful to people with widely varying skills, yet it also lets you perform cleaning and tune-up operations separately as well … Read more

Famed tech investor Vinod Khosla and his venture firm, Khosla Ventures, announced today the firm had closed a $1.05 billion venture fund, one of the largest new venture funds this year.

The Khosla Ventures IV will make early-stage investments in the areas of clean tech, IT, mobile, and Internet technology, with half the fund going toward clean tech, he said.

"We have identified the 'Clean Dozen' companies in clean tech that can achieve unsubsidized market competitiveness and the 'Cool Dozen' categories in Internet and mobile in the post-PC world such as big data, emotion, interest graphs and consumer … Read more

The poo problem has vexed pet owners since the first wolf started hanging around early human encampments. Wouldn't it be sweet if that pile of pup waste just disappeared? A new invention promises to turn Fluffy's excrement into ashes.

The AshPoopie is the brainchild of scientist Oded Shoseyov from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is aiming to reduce the huge number of plastic bags full of poop that end up in the trash all over the world.

A built-in pooper scooper on the bottom picks up the offending material. It combines it with the contents of a replaceable cartridge and what looks like a set of rotating paddles. At this point, some patented incinerating magic happens and out comes sterile, odorless ash. It's a poop blaster!

… Read more

Four months after it was releaed in June at Apple's WWDC, iOS 5, the next major version of the software that powers Apple's iPods, iPhones, and iPads, will release today. By now, you're probably ready for the handy new features, tweaked UI, new Twitter integration, and everything else (read what we've learned so far of iOS 5), but is your iOS device ready?

To make sure your iPhone is set up for the launch of the latest iOS, we've put together a step-by-step guide for making sure it is primed for the update.

Editors' note: … Read more

Google has created a $75 million fund with Clean Power Finance, a company that offers financing for residential solar panel installations.

The investment will enable 10,000 homeowners to install solar panels on their homes.

The upfront cost is the largest obstacle to installing residential solar panels, and solar installation companies don't always have the means to offer financing. Clean Power Finance seeks to overcome that hurdle by offering installers a way to provide financing to potential customers, while also giving companies without ties to the solar community a way to invest in the industry.

Google, the investor in … Read more

We know school's already in session for most kids, but it's still September, so it's not too late to do a back-to-school-related post. At least we hope we're not too tardy.

Anyway, we spotted these school-themed tablet/smartphone "smart" Toddy cloths on the company's Web site and were mildly amused. They're made out of premium microfiber that's treated with a microbe shield, have a plush side to clean and silk side to polish, and are machine washable in cold water. A single Toddy will run you $9.99, but if you … Read more

Entrepreneur Brad Hines' first solar company crashed and burned, but he's already started another venture, a story which offers cues on how the entire green-tech sector can reinvent itself in tough times.

In 2005, Hines left his work as a NASA engineer to build a radically new and powerful type of rooftop solar collector. But even after taking in tens of millions of dollars from top-shelf investors, the company, Soliant Energy, ultimately failed and its intellectual property was sold off, reportedly at bargain basement prices.

Now Hines is at work on another solar startup called Thermata with a whole … Read more

Flash cookies are tiny pieces of software that Web sites place in your PC to store log-on data, passwords, and other personal information to save you the trouble of re-entering it all every time you visit the site. Many Flash cookies also store information about your Web browsing habits and other private data you may not want to share. Flash Cookie Cleaner is a small piece of portable freeware from ConsumerSoft. It identifies Flash cookies in your system and gives them the opportunity to delete them, if you want to. Of course, some cookies are good for your system, and … Read more