It was a busy week for San Diego’s innovation economy, with reports on new products, new deals, and some insights into how startup companies can survive virtually. So read on!
—Zeebo, a new San Diego-based company, launched its game console, entering a multi-billion dollar industry dominated by the Wii, Xbox, and Playstation. Backed by Qualcomm, Zeebo uses a Qualcomm chipset that allows users to connect over a cellular network (instead of broadband or Wi-Fi) to purchase and download games—much like Amazon’s Kindle.
—The U.S. cleantech industry is said to be benefiting from an “Obama bounce,” based on the billions of dollars designated for renewable energy and cleantech spending in the federal economic stimulus package. So it seemed like a good time to put together a comprehensive list of San Diego cleantech companies.
—Pure Bioscience of El Cajon, CA, told Xconomy’s innovation journalism fellow, Juha-Pekka Tikka, the company expects hundreds of products based on Pure’s germ-killing agent, silver dihyrdogen citrate, to soon hit the market. Pure later announced it has found an Indian distributor to immediately begin marketing Enviroguard, a disinfectant cleaner, in India.
—A special committee of the board at San Diego’s Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker: HEPH]]) fired founding CEO and namesake Richard Hollis for cause and named the company’s chief operating officer, James Frincke, as interim chief executive.
—During my recent stopover at San Diego’s DriveCam, CEO Brandon Nixon explained how the company, which began with a dashboard-mounted video recorder, has evolved into
