Solar-powered kiosks in Africa offer groceries, light and electricity

The German-designed SOLARKIOSK aims to be a vital source of electricity and resources for those living in off-grid communities.
  Italy has already trialled solar powered utility kiosks in the form of Turin’s Smart Booth scheme. Taking this idea a step further, the German-designed SOLARKIOSK aims to be a vital source of electricity for those living in off-grid communities.

According to the team behind the project – which includes members of Berlin-based GRAFT architects – some 1.5 billion people still live in areas where there is no access to electricity. The SOLARKIOSK is a small booth that harnesses energy from the sun in order to provide communities with electricity. Having successfully launched its first booth near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, residents can now access facilities such as mobile phone and car battery charging, refrigeration, music, TV and internet. The electric lights also provide a safer and cheaper alternative to the kerosene lamps often used by families in off-grid areas, which give off hazardous fumes. Electric cookers can help stop the deforestation that occurs to provide wood for heating food.

The startup aims to place networks of these kiosks in off-grid communities. Each one will be operated by a member of the local community, who will be trained on programs run by the company at high schools and universities in the area. These courses will teach them how solar power and solar products work and give them the skills to successfully run a small business. These operators can then employ others and pass on their knowledge.

SOLARKIOSK projects could cut the danger and costs associated with non-electric fuel consumption, provide employment and learning opportunities and give communities a place to socialize and connect with the outside world. Plenty of inspiration here for eco and socially-minded entrepreneurs!

Website: www.solarkiosk.eu
Contact: welcome@solarkiosk.eu
Spotted by: Murtaza Patel - Springwise

Browser plug-in hides products associated with child labor

Now available for Safari and Google Chrome, aVOID helps consumers stay away from products associated with the exploitation of children.
We’ve already seen a mobile app focused on rating brands’ attitudes toward child labor, but recently we came across a like-minded browser plug-in that goes further. Now available for Safari and Google Chrome, aVOID helps consumers stay away from products associated with the exploitation of children.

Created through a campaign by German Earthlink, aVOID currently works with all major online shops in the US, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, including Asos, Yoox, Amazon, Target, Macys, Zalando, Google Shopping, Frontlineshop and Otto. Users simply install the plug-in – which will be available for Firefox in the near future, the company says – and then shop online as usual. Using data from Active Against Child Labour, the plug-in automatically filters out products associated with child exploitation, helping consumers avoid such products altogether.
Brands have long recognized that a significant proportion of shoppers are ethically motivated. How could you help them find what they’re looking for — or avoid what they’re not?

Website: www.avoidplugin.com
Contact: info@earthlink.de
Spotted by: Murray Orange - Springwise

Logitech dévoile un clavier entièrement lavable

Logitech vient de dévoiler le Washable Keyboard K310, un clavier filaire qui dispose de la particularité de pouvoir être passé entièrement sous l'eau pour faciliter son nettoyage. Dommage qu'il ne passe pas au lave-vaisselle.

Pour peu qu'on grignote devant l'écran ou qu'on ne se lave pas toujours les mains avant de l'utiliser, un clavier peut être sale, voire très sale, parfois plus sale qu'une cuvette de toilettes. Et dans ces cas-là, un petit nettoyage s'impose, mais ça n'est pas toujours simple de nettoyer la saleté en profondeur : non, ce constat n'est pas celui d'une publicité pour un produit ménager, mais du Washable Keyboard K310, le nouveau clavier fraîchement présenté par Logitech.

Ce périphérique a la particularité de pouvoir être entièrement immergé dans l'eau. La marque le présente même comme étanche jusqu'à 28 cm, mais un petit passage dans l'évier de la cuisine devrait suffire pour enlever toute trace de saleté. Conçu pour être lavé, le K310 dispose de touches dont les caractères ont été inscrits au laser et dotés d'un revêtement anti-U.V, deux précautions qui leur évitent d'être effacés par un nettoyage.

Compatible avec Windows XP, Vista et 7, ce clavier USB est d'ores et déjà proposé aux USA au prix de 40 dollars. Il sera commercialisé en Europe en octobre, à un prix équivalent en euros.

Source: Clubic

Waste Management bets on turning trash into sugars

Finding new and profitable ways to recycle the trash it collects has guided the investment strategy of Waste Management, which recently put money into a startup that can turn some of the garbage into sugars for making plastic and other products.

Waste Management has been a particularly active venture capital investor in the trash-to-energy space, and that focus has prompted it to invest in Renmatix, which turns biomass, such as agricultural wastes, into sugars for making fuels and other chemicals.
Renmatix increased its most recent round of investment from $50 million to $75 million and now counts the trash hauling giant as both an investor and a research and development partner, reported VentureWire Wednesday. Waste Management wants to use Renmatix’s technology to convert trash into sugars to replace petroleum for making plastics and other products.
Pennsylvania-based Renmatix announced the $50 million round in January this year and noted that German chemical giant BASF put $30 million into that round. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers also is an investor.
Sugar is a key ingredient for biofuels and other chemical products. Its market potential has attracted more investors in recent years mainly because the government is spending billions of dollars to build a market for alternative fuels. Early on, many biofuel producers had to figure out their own processes for breaking down the tough cell walls of plants and other biomass to make cellulosic sugars and then converting the sugars into fuels.
In fact, there were hardly any companies that focused only on making only cellulosic sugars back in 2008, when an investment banker told me thenthat producing those sugars alone could be a great opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors. By the way, these sugars aren’t the same stuff that sweetens coffee or powder donuts.
Other companies in the cellulosic sugar market include Virdia, which announced a $20 millionventure capital investment from Khosla Ventures and others earlier this year and a package of $75 million in loans and up to $155 million in tax breaks from Mississippi to build a processing plant there.
Renmatix’s technology uses “supercritical hydrolysis” to produce sugars, a process the company says is cheaper and faster than some of the other technologies. The company has been running a demonstration plant in Georgia.
For Waste Management, Renmatix becomes one of a now long list of companies that it backs (check out our post about Waste Management’s investment strategy) so that it could find new and profitable uses for the trash it collects.

Source : GigaOM

Grocers’ digital dreams: Sainsbury’s launching VOD, Tesco ending MP3

Supermarkets already dominate much of physical entertainment retail – now they are arming themselves to compete on internet screens. In the latest chapter, Sainsbury’s is tapping Rovi to fight Tesco’s Blinkbox, while Tesco cans music downloads for We7′s streams.

The UK’s number-three supermarket is preparing to turn itself in to an online movie and TV rental service, as it vies with with leader Tesco on digital devices, just as they have in the aisles.
Sainsbury’s is contracting video tech firm Rovi to power video on demand and for download in a service due to launch later this year under its new Sainsbury’s Entertainment brand.
Rovi promised paidContent “a transactional-based model that supports the sale and rental of premium titles versus a subscription-based service”. The service will launch initially on web and Sainsbury’s says it wants to take it later to internet TVs, Blu-ray disc players, smartphones and game consoles.
Sainsbury’s movie and TV offering will go head-to-head with Blinkbox, which Tesco acquired a majority of last year. Expect to see each supermarket competing with Netflix, Amazon’s Lovefilm, BSkyB and other dedicated VOD brands on internet TVs next year.
Like Blinkbox, Sainsbury’s will eschew the subscription model, allowing it to offer PPV movies for sale or download on the same day as DVD release, rather than months later.
We would expect Sainsbury’s to explore following the way in which Tesco intends to grant online access at no further cost to customers who have bought equivalent discs in-store.
Supermarkets are now major retailers of books, movie and TV DVDs, and music. Now they are building up capability to maintain that position in digital consumption, mostly through acquiring vendor operators in each category…

	TESCO (#1)	ASDA (#2)	SAINSBURY’S (#3)
MP3	Closing	-	Global Media Vault
MUSIC STREAM	We7	-	-
MOVIE/TV	Blinkbox	-	Rovi
E-BOOKS	Adobe Digital Editions	-	aNobii, Global Media Vault

After Tesco acquired a majority of plucky but unpopular online music streamer We7 earlier this year, it will now close its MP3 download store on September 1 after eight years, paidContent discovered.
The chain will not tell whether it is planning a new download store or will switch attention from MP3 to We7′s streaming personalised radio access, which it already links to from its website.
Although Sainsbury’s is fulfilling its movie and TV service by an outside contract, it has recently acquired aNobii and Global Media Vault to satisfy its MP3 and e-book retail initiatives in-house.
While Sainsbury’s and Tesco arm themselves in digital, the UK’s number-two supermarket, Walmart’s Asda, is notable for its lack of activity in the space.

Source : Paid Content

IBM squeezes more power from new solar cell

The more sunlight a solar cell can convert into electricity, the cheaper the solar power. Companies like IBM are turning to new materials to try to break efficiency barriers for solar cells.

Wringing more solar electricity from low-cost materials is a major focus for scientists and those who want the world to get away from using fossil fuels for electricity. Researchers at IBM recently announced that they were able to do just that with a new type of compound that uses cheaper ingredients than what goes into some of the solar panels today.

The researchers reported in Advanced Energy Materials that they fabricated solar cells with copper, zinc, tin and sulfur (CZTS) that for the first time could convert 11.1 percent of the sunlight that falls on it into electricity. That’s a 10 percent improvement from the 10.1 percent efficiency IBM achieved last year and published in Progress in Photovoltaics.

The more electricity you can squeeze from the same set of materials, the lower the generation cost. So increasing the efficiency of solar cells is important to lower the price of solar electricity, which is currently more expensive than generating electricity from coal or natural gas. Coal and natural gas technologies have already benefited from decades of improvements, so replacing them with equally cheap power will take time.

Researchers at IBM and elsewhere are exploring the use of the CZTS compound partly because zinc and tin are more abundant and found in more diverse regions in the world than indium and gallium, which are used to make some of the solar cells today. Recent conflicts over rare earth elements have shown that the path to building a world of clean energy technologies, such as batteries for electric cars and wind turbines, can have major geopolitical roadblocks.

I caught up with IBM’s solar researcher David Mitzi, who also is a co-author of the new paper on CZTS, earlier this year to find out why IBM is investing in CZTS research. Aside from the benefit of cheaper and more available materials, the CZTS compound, because of its crystal structure, also could lead to thinner solar cells than those made with silicon, which is the most common material for making solar cells today. Thinner cells means using less materials and doing so, presumably, at lower costs.

The pace of efficiency improvement in CZTS cell research since the mid-1990s also is a big draw for IBM, Mitzi told me. In 2008, the most efficient CZTS cell achieved 6.7 percent efficiency, and IBM reported a record 9.7 percent efficiency in 2010. A year after that, the company pushed that figure to 10.1 percent.

Mitzi and his fellow researchers are gunning for 15 percent efficiency in order to position CZTS cells competitively against other solar cell technologies. Several companies that produce copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) solar cells are getting efficiencies in the mid-teens. First Solar is making solar cells in the lower end of the mid-teen range but claims to be on its way to increase that to 17.3 percent some day. Most of the silicon solar cells can get a bit higher efficiency except for SunPower, which is rolling out cells that can hit 24 percent at times.

The goal is to get to 15 percent in about two years, Mitzi said. Achieving that milestone won’t be easy, he acknowledged. Being able to get higher efficiency isn’t enough. Figuring out how to make those high-efficient cells cheaply is key, and that will involve a lot of trial and error in designing and running factory equipment.

IBM isn’t interested in making and selling CZTS cells though. The company is working with partners that might one day commercialize IBM’s research. The partners include Solar Frontier (a CIGS solar cell maker), Tokyo Ohka Kogyo (a semiconductor equipment supplier) and DelSolar (a silicon solar cell maker).

While IBM marches forward, another company that has been working on its own CZTS cells seems to be stumbling. AQT Solar is reportedly looking for a buyer of its intellectual property and equipment. AQT was focused on developing CIGS solar cells before switching to using the CZTS compound. Earlier this year, AQT’s CEO, Michael Bartholomeusz, talked about commercializing the CTZS technology in 2013.

Source : GigaOM

Vicarious gets $15M to search for the key to artificial intelligence

Founders Fund and Dustin Moskovitz’s Good Ventures have led a $15 million round in a company that is trying to replicate the intelligence of the human brain in software. Vicarious’ goal is to help humanity thrive by inventing the algorithm to create to intelligent machines.

Vicarious, a startup trying to discover the rules that govern intelligence, has raised $15 million in a first round of funding from tech luminaries including Good Ventures, the fund created by Facebook Co-founder Dustn Moskowitz and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. The money isn’t to help commercialize its technology however, it’s basically R&D spending for a big tech undertaking.
Vicarious wants to build a series of algorithms that mimic the way the mammalian brain processes and applies information — in short it wants to build software that will grant computers intelligence. The first concrete product the Union City, Calif.-based startup aims to build is a human-like object recognition system, but this is something that co-founder and CTO Dileep George estimates is three to four years away. Apparently the long time frame is just fine with investors, and what makes Vicarious such an audacious bet.
CEO and Co-Founder D. Scott Phoenix explains that the company isn’t focused on commercialization anytime soon as a means to preserve the research into building a truly robust set of intelligence algorithms, as opposed to an industry specific algorithm that leads to limited artificial intelligence — some kind of idiot savant. “We will continue working on solving the core problem.” Phoenix says. “I think it has held back AI when others have tried and found something that works well in a particular domain and then they refine that. Then the tech gets more narrow over time.”

The human brain is computing’s Mt. Everest

Building computer hardware or software modeled on the human brain is the kind of big tech problem that Peter Thiel, a former PayPal executive and a partner with Founders Fund has called on entrepreneurs to do. In this case he’s putting money where his mouth is. And the brain as a computer is like the Mt. Everest of computer science problems. When compared with CPUs or even newer forms of silicon brains, the brain is a far more efficient processor. From a Scientific American article comparing the human brain to IBM’s Watson AI project:

So a typical adult human brain runs on around 12 watts—a fifth of the power required by a standard 60 watt lightbulb. Compared with most other organs, the brain is greedy; pitted against man-made electronics, it is astoundingly efficient. IBM’s Watson, the supercomputer that defeated Jeopardy! champions, depends on ninety IBM Power 750 servers, each of which requires around one thousand watts.

Thus in both hardware and software the search for a silicon brain has absorbed researchers. “We want to help humanity thrive,” says Phoenix. “Human progress is limited by the number of people and their training to solve big problems, so by understanding the core algorithms that produce intelligence we can build computers that are 30 billion times faster and dramatically increase the rates of problem solving on behalf of humanity.”

To build a better AI you don’t need to map the brain.

There are countless research efforts seeking the same thing as Vicarious, but they are going about it in different ways. For example, both IBM and HP are trying to build out a silicon version of the brainin order to create neural computers capable of processing information in different ways– more akin to how humans do it. IBM actually showed off the first chips capable of cognitive computing last year.

IBM’s Watson

IBM also has another effort at AI, although a much less literal one than the hardware efforts. Watson takes loads of text on a certain topic and then has algorithms that help it detect the probability of a relevant response when people ask questions of that material. IBM is building anew business model around offering Watson as a service to help in the medical and financial fields.
Google also is delving into research that ties into artificial intelligence and machine learning. A recent research paper on training a computer to “recognize” an image of a cat without outside supervision is a type of AI. And while George of Vicarious explains that its research is different because it is broader and will be capable of learning from moving images as opposed to stills taken from videos, the core idea is related.
There are plenty of other companies attempting to offer at least the veneer of artificial intelligence from Apple’s Siri technology to startups such as ai-one, which is building a software development kitto add AI to other apps. And plenty of other companies are using the fruit of cheaper access to lots of data to make programs and predictive models that look like intelligence.
But computers today rely on people to tell them what to do — that’s what programming is for — but giving them the ability to recognize patterns and then relate those patterns to an understanding about how the world works frees them from the constraints of programming. Of course, once they have that freedom it’s unclear what that means for computer science, programming and the current job market. It’s also unclear how far that freedom can really take a computer. Just giving it intelligence won’t mean it can “think” for itself.
Either way, Vicarious is a startup playing in a field with giants, with a big idea about changing the world.

Souce : GigaOM