Based in San Mateo, Calif., the startup provides developers with tools to foster mobile gaming communities. Using PlayHaven, developers can claim existing communities or create their own, either online or in-game for iPhone apps. One promotion method, the PlayHaven Exchange Network, allows developers to cross-promote their games in similar games, allowing for increased discovery and downloads.

Playhaven previously raised seed funding from Tandem Entrepreneurs and LaunchBox Digital.

Reposted from: http://deals.venturebeat.com/2010/07/19/playhaven-gets-1m-to-help-developers-promote-mobile-games/

“This commercial project represents our latest effort to identify real opportunities in the solar market,” said Laurence M. Downes, chairman and CEO of NJR. “By maximizing underutilized space to provide clean, renewable energy in the state, we are effectively leveraging our expertise to help provide savings to our customers as well as meet our state’s renewable energy goals, create jobs and grow our company. We will continue to build on this progress and look for new opportunities in the solar and renewable energy markets that will benefit our customers, company and state.”

Recognizing the value of green buildings and potential energy savings for its tenants, Adler, a New Jersey family-owned and operated development company specializing in warehouse and flex space, will lease over 900,000 square feet of roof space to NJRCEV for a period of 20 years, helping reduce its facilities’ carbon emissions by 3,200 tons per year. Tenants of the buildings will be offered a Power Purchase Agreement from NJRCEV that is lower than their current utility rates.

United Solar is a leading global manufacturer of UNI-SOLAR(R) brand light-weight, flexible, thin-film, low-impact and low-profile solar modules and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Energy Conversion Devices /quotes/comstock/15*!ener/quotes/nls/ener (ENER 4.67, -0.01, -0.21%) . The building specific, roof-friendly project was developed using United Solar’s operational knowledge and technical proficiency as well as its thin-film technology.

Investments made by NJRCEV will qualify for a 30 percent federal investment tax credit. In addition, the energy produced will be eligible for Solar Renewable Energy Certificates (SRECs), which can be sold to Load Serving Entities in New Jersey to meet their renewable energy requirements. Additional return on investment will be provided by the Power Purchase Agreement payments from tenants.

It is estimated that up to 65 construction jobs will be created as a result of this project. The systems atop the four buildings are expected to be completed and in operation in September and October 2010.

New Jersey Resources, a Fortune 1000 company, provides reliable and renewable energy and natural gas services including transportation, distribution, and asset management in states from the Gulf Coast to the New England regions, including the Mid-Continent region, the West Coast and Canada, while investing in and maintaining an extensive infrastructure to support future growth. With over $2.5 billion in annual revenues, NJR safely and reliably operates and maintains 6,700 miles of natural gas transportation and distribution infrastructure to serve nearly half a million customers; develops and manages a diverse portfolio of more than 2.3 Bcf/day of transportation capacity and 50 Bcf of storage capacity; and provides appliance installation, repair and contract service to approximately 144,000 homes and businesses. Additionally, NJR holds investments in midstream assets through equity partnerships including Steckman Ridge and Iroquois. Through Conserve to Preserve(R), NJR is helping customers save energy and money by promoting conservation and encouraging efficiency. For more information about NJR, visit www.njliving.com.

Reposted from: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/njr-clean-energy-ventures-announces-rooftop-solar-project-with-adler-development-and-united-solar-2010-07-15?reflink=MW_news_stmp

by Helen Leggatt

ben and jerry logo.jpgAccording to reports on both mad.co.uk and newmediaage.co.uk, the iconic Vermont-based premium ice cream maker is dropping its regular email newsletter after customers aired their preference to be contacted via social media channels.

The last email newsletter went out last week and customers are now encouraged to interact with the brand via Twitter and Facebook. The decision appears to fly in the face of recent research that suggests social media and email have a symbiotic relationship.

But Twitter and Facebook aren’t the only weapons Ben & Jerry’s have in their social arsenal. What started out as a hippy brand is now dishing out dollops of digital interactivity and fun via its website and mobile offerings.

Their latest move is “Moo Vision”, featured on the brand’s iPhone app “Scoop of Happiness”. The augmented reality feature lets consumers use their iPhone camera to interact with the product packaging for a range of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavors.

For example, by pointing the iPhone camera at the packaging for the New York Super Fudge Chunk flavor consumers are taken on a virtual tour of New York. Participants can share their adventures via Facebook and Twitter.

Reposted from: http://www.bizreport.com/2010/07/ben-jerrys-drop-email-in-favor-of-social-media-marketing.html#

Careful, SMB owners, it seems social media isn’t just for chatting anymore. According to new research from the recruiting platform Jobvite, 73.3 percent of business owners say they have used social networking channels as a way of recruiting new hires. Even more impressive, 58 percent of those polled said they had actually hired a prospect they discovered through a social network. Newspaper classifieds and online job boards? Please. The times they are a’changin’.

Jobvite president and CEO Dan Finnigan said:

“While the economy begins to recover, companies looking to make new hires are seeking the most cost-effective, efficient ways to find new talent. Job boards launched a revolution in recruiting more than 15 years ago. And now, social networks are doing the same—but in a targeted way. Through social recruiting, companies are learning they can find the best talent efficiently, without making a major investment.”

For those companies participating in social media, using the networks to scout out and recruit new hires is a natural evolution. The relationships business owners can create with customers also extends toward business contacts. With people sharing their lives on these social networks, it makes it easy for recruiters or business owners to get a feel for a prospect. You can watch how they perform in social situations, how they handle conflict, see their hobbies and interests, get access to their work history, and much more. It’s the perfect head hunting tool for the modern era.

When it comes to the social network that converts the best, not surprisingly LinkedIn came out on top. Nearly 80 percent of companies said they used LinkedIn when recruiting new employees, with 90 percent of those who used it being successful finding and hiring a new employee. Facebook and Twitter were used 55 percent and 45 percent of the time, respectively, with 27.5 percent and 14.2 percent leading to hires.

If you want to use a social media net for hiring, where you should start?

1. Search for potential job candidates using specific keyword searches: LinkedIn allows you to search profiles based on industry, company, language, company size, or other criteria. If you have a paid account, there are additional breakdowns like seniority level, years of experience, etc. On Twitter or Facebook you can search by company name, industry keywords, or combine your zip code with other job-related keywords.
2. Monitor status updates of your contacts: One of the best features added to LinkedIn was the Twitter-like status update because it allowed contacts to share more about what they were doing in their business. Keeping tabs on these updates is a good way to find out who’s looking for a job, who started on a new project, etc.
3. Build relationships with candidates: The same way you build relationships with customers, build relationships with candidates you think you may be interested in hiring. By establishing that level of trust and openness right out of the gate, you’ll help each other to learn more about one another and any opportunities to work together.
4. Screen candidates: When someone is active on social networking sites, it gives you quite a bit of information to use about that prospect. For example, as I mentioned earlier, you can get a glimpse at how they handle conflict situations, how well they engaged people, how they handle customer service issues, the kind of things they’re passionate about, where they went to school, what their hobbies are, etc. Use this information to help you find someone who will be a match with your organization. Befriend the social media background check.

Repost from: http://smallbiztrends.com/2010/07/looking-to-hire-fire-up-the-social-networks.html

By Alison Diana
InformationWeek
July 15, 2010 11:23 AM

Facebook today has about 150 million mobile users, up 50% from the 100 million mobile users it boasted in April, and the social networking giant plans to pump up the volume on its smartphone initiatives to further boost adoption in this rapidly growing segment.

“We want to turn this whole mobile platform into a Facebook. Mobile is fast becoming our growth lever,” Eric Tseng said in a presentation at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat 2010 conference in San Francisco. “As we begin to continue to expand, we’re starting to go into geographies where phones are the predominant way you access the web. Mobile is a way we can get users to be aware of and engage with social services.”

In May, Facebook launched 0.facebook.com, a mobile site that includes all the key features of Facebook but is optimized for speed. Initially available through more than 50 mobile operators in 45 countries, today Facebook has agreements with 66 mobile operators in 56 countries, Tseng told attendees.

Recently the company created a mobile-only capability that eliminates the need for a computer. Previously, new users needed a PC to create their account.

Understand virtualization costs to analyze true TCO
The ROI Of Virtualization

“We were blocking ourselves from getting millions of new users in countries like India,” said Tseng.

Another path to expanded mobile adoption involves making it easier for users to locate apps, he said. Over the next few months the company will hone in on a platform strategy that developers can use to distribute their mobile applications, Tseng said at MobileBeat. The company also plans to update the application programming interfaces (APIs) for its Android and iPhone apps, he said.

“Inevitably, app stores will become more social. As we get more apps, that’s going to be great. But the average user isn’t going to go through thousands of apps on their phone,” said Tseng, who was part of Google’s Android development team before joining Facebook earlier this year.

People who interact with Facebook on their mobile devices are more engaged with the site than those who connect via PC, according to Facebook. In fact, they are twice as active than non-mobile users, Facebook said.

Reposted from: http://www.informationweek.com/news/smb/ebusiness/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225800222&subSection=All+Stories

The green sector has a reason to celebrate during a red, white and blue weekend. President Barack Obama used his weekly video address to announce $2 billion in stimulus funds for solar power companies. The plan is to employ thousands of people while making solar technology competitive with fossil fuel sources of energy.

The new funding will be split between Spain-based developer Abengoa Solar and Colorado-based panel maker Abound Solar in the form of low-interest loan guarantees (pledges that the money will be delivered when certain requirements and milestones are fulfilled).

Abengoa will receive $1.45 billion for construction of its Solana solar thermal development in Arizona. Its technology uses mirrored troughs to concentrate sunlight on a limited number of solar modules, lowering the costs of generation by saving on silicon and other pricey materials, while simultaneously boosting efficiency.

The company already has a power purchase agreement with regional utility APS — slated to serve 70,000 homes — and all the permits it needs to start building. This project alone is expected to create 1,600 new jobs. At 280 megawatts, Solana will be the world’s largest solar power plant when it’s brought online in 2013.

It will also be the first facility in the U.S. to store some of the energy produced. This is a big deal, considering that one of the biggest hurdles standing between solar and broader adoption is that it is intermittent. If plants can store up solar power that is generated but not in demand, then it can be made more reliable — and cheaper.

It sounds strange for the U.S. to be shelling out so much to a European company, but Abengoa has agreed to buy the bulk of its components from domestic suppliers. This should generate even more American jobs, Obama says.

The other $400 million loan guarantee went to Abound, which manufactures thin-film solar panels. It will use the money to construct two new plants, dramatically upping its capacity, and adding on 2,000 temporary and 1,500 permanent jobs in Colorado and Indiana.

On top of that, the new Indiana facility will convert an old Chrysler factory — yet another example of antiquated automotive infrastructure being used for green purposes. Just last week, hybrid vehicle maker Fisker Automotive got approval to turn a defunct General Motors plant into a manufacturing facility.

Reposted from: http://green.venturebeat.com/2010/07/05/obama-shines-on-solar-power-with-2b-in-new-funding/

Facebook Credits are heading offline and coming to hundreds thousands of outlets in Asia in a deal that could boost the company’s social gaming revenues on the continent.

The social network is partnering with MOL, the Malaysian online payments company that bought Friendster. The company facilitates about $200 million in transactions a year in the region.

One of MOL’s subsidiaries will become a payments provider for Credits, allowing Asian users to exchange the Malaysian company’s virtual currency MOLPoints for Credits. On top of that, users will be able to buy Credits from 500,000 outlets including 7-Eleven stores and cybercafes throughout Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Australia and New Zealand.

Because credit card penetration is lower throughout these markets, offline prepaid cards will help on-board paying social gamers in what has become Facebook’s fastest growing region.

Reposted from: http://social.venturebeat.com/2010/07/07/facebook-mol-deal/

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt wouldn’t publicly deny that the company is set to hatch a rival social network to Facebook during a speech today in London, adding fuel to rumors that the search giant may launch a social service called Google Me later this year.

“That would be a product announcement, and I won’t say,” he said in response to a question about whether the service existed at The Guardian’s Activate conference today.

The company is reportedly hard at work building a competing service after several failed attempts at launching successful social products. Facebook is increasingly looking like an emerging threat to advertising revenue with 1 million sites plugging into its platform.

In the last two years, Google has started to take social networking seriously after considering it an afterthought for much of its early history. The company launched an e-mail based social sharing network called Google Buzz earlier this year, but it hasn’t dented the traction of rival products like Twitter and Facebook.

Quora co-founder and former Facebook chief technology officer Adam D’Angelo (who isn’t affiliated with Google) commented on the rumors over the weekend, saying that the company realized Buzz wouldn’t be sufficient. The company would have to build a full-fledged social network and attract a large number of engineers to work on it, he said.

Still, Schmidt said Facebook and Google weren’t all that comparable. Search and social, at this point, are still pretty distinct paradigms for consuming information.

Reposted from: http://social.venturebeat.com/2010/07/01/schmidt-google-me/

The U.S. Department of Energy announced today that it will be funneling $67 million into 10 projects working on capturing the carbon dioxide produced by coal-fired power plants. Over the next three years, these projects will be developing ways to make current carbon capture techniques work with existing power plants.

One of the biggest challenges with carbon capture is that the equipment is often unwieldy, energy intensive, and expensive. Many power plants haven’t wanted to take on the extra costs, nor pump more of the energy they generate into these efforts. The goal behind the new funding is to reduce these costs by 30 percent for coal plants.

Carbon capture is one of the Obama administration’s major cleantech missions. The president has outlined objectives to make this type of technology cost effective within the decade and to establish between five and 10 demonstration-scale projects by 2016. A number of different methods are being tried, including carbon solvents, membrane filters and absorption systems.

Here’s a rundown of today’s funding recipients:

- American Air Liquide ($3 million): Coupling a membrane filter with cryogenic processing technology to see if cooler air temperatures can enhance membrane performance.

- Gas Technology Institute ($3 million): Developing hybrid separation methods that use a combination of absorption and membrane technologies.

- 3H Company ($2.7 million): Using a non-aqueous solvent to separate carbon dioxide into two liquid phases, the company will be setting up a demonstration facility at a power plant operated by utility E.ON in the U.S.

- Akermin ($2.6 million): Claiming to capture up to 90 percent of the carbon dioxide released from flues with a special solvent formulation, the company will work to deploy its technology to filter 2,000 liters of gas an hour.

- ION Engineering ($3 million): Using an ionic liquid as a solvent instead of water, ION claims it can reduce the energy it requires to run by 60 percent and cause less corrosion.

- University of Illinois ($1.3 million): Investigating the use of carbonate salt as a solvent for absorption-based, post-combustion carbon dioxide capture.

- URS Group ($3 million): Looking into concentrated piperazine as a solvent for absorbing carbon dioxide from flue gas released by coal-fired power plants. URS says its method offers faster absorption rates and lower volatility.

- Membrane Technology and Research ($14.7 million): Constructing a 1-megawatt membrane capable of capturing 90 percent of carbon dioxide from a coal-fired power plant that releases 20 tons of carbon dioxide a day.

- Siemens Energy ($8.9 million): Designing, installing and operating a pilot-scale plant at the TECO Energy Big Bend Station. Siemens plans to use an amino acid salt formulation as a solvent.

- ADA-ES ($11.1 million): Refining the design of a commercial post-combustion carbon dioxide capture technology for a 39-month pilot-scale test.

Full descriptions of all of these projects can be found here—> http://www.energy.gov/news/9194.htm

Reposted from: http://green.venturebeat.com/2010/07/07/energy-dept-handing-out-67m-to-speed-carbon-capture-technology/

SafetyWeb is acquiring internet security firm Odojo today as it tries to combine child safety and mobile security services. The move is part of an attempt to enable parents to monitor how their children participate in social networks.

Denver-based SafetyWeb acquired Odojo for an undisclosed price. SafetyWeb focuses on providing safety, identity, and reputation protection service for parents. Odojo provides firebreak technology, which allows parents to monitor their kids’ social networks for inappropriate content and leaks of personal information.

SafetyWeb launched in May, giving parents the ability to monitor social network activity in real time. It lets parents access its reports from anywhere, using any internet connected computer or phone. SafetyWeb recently raised $8 million in funding from Battery Ventures and First Round Capital, on top of an earlier $750,000 round.
July 6, 2010 | Dean Takahashi

SafetyWeb will use Odojo to add search abilities to its monitoring, allowing parents to monitor certain words on their kids’ social network pages such as “drugs,” “sex” or “suicide.” Odojo says it has a bunch of sensitive words in its database, as well as algorithms for sorting. That gives parents a deeper layer of analysis for spying on, er, monitoring their kids.

Mike Stemple, founder of Odojo, will join SafetyWeb as an advisor. The service will soon roll out features such as the ability to incorporate data from cell phones, game consoles, criminal background checks and geo-location services. The service costs $10 a month for the first child.

SafetyWeb was founded in 2009 by Michael Clark and Geoffrey Arone. SafetyWeb has 12 employees, while Odojo has six. Competitors include SocialShield and MyChild. SafetyWeb has more than 2,000 affiliates distributing it.

Reposted from: http://deals.venturebeat.com/2010/07/06/safetyweb-acquires-odojo-for-monitoring-kids-social-network-activity/