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At a ceremony attended by San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee, Greenstart showcased its first four investments in green tech.

The green-tech incubator, which has been described as a Y Combinator for green tech, had announced in June it was looking for ideas that could produce what is known as fast startups--small, nimble companies that are "capital efficient and capable of generating revenue in 12 months or less."

Yesterday afternoon, Greenstart announced its first picks.

The Picowatt from Tenrehte Technologies is a Wi-Fi-enabled plug with the ability to collect and send data over a home network. It enables electronic … Read more

Audi today announced the all-new Audi A8 will have a starting price of $78,050. The Audi A8L will start at $84,000.

Audi A8 gets 17 miles per gallon in the city, 27 mpg highway, which puts it on par with the Mercedes-Benz S400 hybrid. It's also better than the fuel-economy numbers for the BMW 7-Series hybrid and six-cylinder models, Audi said in a news release.

Audi also announced the R8 4.2 quattro, which gains 10 more horsepower for 2011 and will have a base price of $114,200--unchanged from the 2010 model price. The Audi R8 … Read more

If you're a person who would gladly relinquish the task of parking your car to a computer, there may be a Volkswagen in your future.

Last weekend, Volkswagen Group of America and Stanford University's School of Engineering hosted a dedication ceremony on the Stanford campus for the new Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Laboratory (VAIL) that included the "first ever" autonomous parking demonstration by a driverless car.

The car, a VW Passat called Junior, was developed jointly by VW and Stanford and is the same one that finished second in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. Driverless cars have … Read more

First car built around an iPhone, Audi's TT grows some bigger ones, Cadillac's V cars are safe for now, and where to find Bluetooth that sounds great.

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What do you get when you take the Audi TT, yank out the 2.0-liter turbo-four, and drop in a 2.5-liter TFSI five-cylinder? Audi is going to show us when it unveils the Audi TT RS at the 2009 Geneva Auto Show.

The TT RS will also feature Audi's quattro permanent all-wheel drive system, chassis and suspension upgrades, and better brakes to balance out the extra power.

Make the jump for more details and photos of the Audi TT RS.

Intel will bring out a new Core-architecture processor for lower-cost ultra-thin laptops later this year, according to Intel sources at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The processors will distinguish themselves by targeting a price segment below pricey ultra-portables, which typically start at around $1,500 and range all the way up to $3,000--and higher in some cases. The processors will not compete with the Atom processor that powers Netbooks, which usually top out at $500.

In this sense, the new chips will be comparable to Advanced Micro Devices' recently announced Athlon Neo processor for ultra-thin laptops priced … Read more

Sony's newly revamped ultraportable laptop, the Vaio TT, is a well-needed reminder that not every tiny laptop needs to be a low-cost, low-power Netbook-style system.

In fact, the Vaio TT is about as far from the standard $500 Netbook as possible, given the relative physical similarities. The TT's highest-end configuration (named the TT190UBX), includes not only an Intel ULV (ultra-low voltage) processor, but a whopping 4GB of RAM, and even an internal Blu-ray recordable optical drive. The real star power, however, comes from an unprecedented 256GB solid state hard drive, which jacks the price up to an equally imposing $4,300. Naturally, less expensive versions are available, ditching the Blu-ray and giant SSD drive.

The Vaio's 11-inch screen follows the 16:9 aspect ratio trend we've seen in new 16- and 18-inch laptops (including, naturally, Sony's new multimedia laptops). The 1,366x768 resolution isn't too far removed from the 1,024x600 found on most Netbooks, but the extra RAM and Intel Core 2 Duo processor makes a difference, allowing it to run Windows Vista smoothly, instead of XP. … Read more

It looks like the leaks were pretty much dead-on, and Sony does indeed have a brand-new ultraportable laptop called the Vaio TT. It's a thin, lightweight 11-inch model, available in two different shades of black, plus red or gold.

We're especially interested in the Vaio TT because it's the successor to Sony's Vaio TZ line, one of our all-time favorite ultraportable laptops, and a reminder that even though they're similar in size, there's a big difference between what a $500 Netbook and a $2,000-plus fully featured ultraportable laptop can do.

Sony says the new system has a lightweight carbon-fiber chassis that weighs about 2.87 pounds and measures less than one inch thick. Unlike Netbooks, the Vaio TT (and other ultraportables such as the Toshiba R500) has room for an optical drive, and there's even a Blu-ray option. Yes, that seems rather pointless, but at least there's an HDMI output for sending the Blu-ray signal to a larger display. Solid state hard drives are also available, including dual 128GB drives (making for a sizable 256GB of SSD storage).

The basic Vaio TT runs about $2,000, while the Blu-ray version is $2,700. A version with a single 128GB SSD drive will cost $2,750. The system is available for order starting today, and should ship to retail stores sometime later this fall.… Read more

We've seen a bunch of new laptop models from Sony in the past couple of weeks, including the 15-inch Vaio NS, the 14-inch Vaio CS, and the whopping 18-inch Vaio AW.

Sony's apparently has one more new laptop model in the offing (that we know of), and this one is on the opposite end of the spectrum from the 18-inch Vaio AW. It's the ultraportable 11-inch Vaio TT, and according to the online rumor mill, Sony is going to officially announce it sometime Monday. … Read more