Here we are, trapped between Halloween and Election Day. Good thing we have some interesting biztech news, or there would be nothing fun to do.
—Memjet, the San Diego-based startup developing super-fast color inkjet printing technologies, says it is launching its on-demand printing technology for the label and packaging markets at the Pack Expo International 2010 Conference, which began yesterday in Chicago. As I reported in July, Memjet has developed what CEO Len Lauer calls “truly disruptive” technology—its print engine technology is used in the SpeedStar 3000 label maker, which prints high-resolution product labels at a rate of 12 inches per second.
—New sources of online data this year will total 1.2 zettabytes (or 1021), Facebook has more than 500 million subscribers, and there are 85 million Twitter “tweets” per day, according to Darryl McDonald, Ohio-based Teradata’s executive vice president of development and marketing. McDonald, who was in San Diego last week for the 2010 Teradata Partners User Group Conference & Expo, says those are all examples of the “tsunami” of unstructured data that innovative retailers and other businesses can take advantage of as part of the “socialization of data.” More than 3,000 people—a record crowd—attended the conference last week at the San Diego Convention Center.
—The William J. von Liebig Center at UC San Diego, the City of San Diego, San Diego State University, and Cleantech San Diego launched the second San Diego Cleantech Innovation and Commercialization Program last week. A $50,000 grant was awarded to each of three cleantech projects for proof-of-concept studies and prototype development, and the von Liebig Center’s business advisors will assist the innovators prepare and execute a plan to commercialize their technologies. The winners are: Doug Grotjahn of SDSU for technology to make hydrogen from water; Yuvraj Agarwal of UCSD for technology to reduce computers’ energy consumption; and Stephen Bennett of UCSD for advanced climate and meteorology solutions for business decisions.
—San Diego’s Connect, the non-profit organization for technology and entrepreneurship, was among four groups honored last week by the U.S. Commerce Department’s 2010 Innovation in Economic Development Awards. Since the California Governor’s Office of Economic Development designated San Diego as one of California’s seven Innovation Hubs (iHUB), Connect has served as the leader of San Diego’s local iHUB effort. The federal economic development award singled out Connect as an exemplar in regional innovation clusters.
—An ad hoc group of 30 San Diego CEOs have signed an open letter to local voters concerning their views on Proposition 23, an initiative on the California ballot tomorrow that calls for suspending the state’s landmark clean energy law, known as AB32. The letter urges voters to vote against the proposition, saying the state mandate to develop clean energy and clean technology solutions has created more than 500,000 new jobs and $9.1 billion in private equity investments in the state. The signers include Envision Solar CEO (and San Diego Xconomist) Robert Noble; Startup Circle CEO Robert Reyes; SafeList CEO Karim Pirani; Camille Sobrian; Connect CEO, Mario Larach; Kai Bio Energy CEO; and EcoDog CEO Ron Pitt.