Author: Wade Roush

Between 2007 and 2014, I was a staff editor for Xconomy in Boston and San Francisco. Since 2008 I've been writing a weekly opinion/review column called VOX: The Voice of Xperience. (From 2008 to 2013 the column was known as World Wide Wade.) I've been writing about science and technology professionally since 1994. Before joining Xconomy in 2007, I was a staff member at MIT’s Technology Review from 2001 to 2006, serving as senior editor, San Francisco bureau chief, and executive editor of TechnologyReview.com. Before that, I was the Boston bureau reporter for Science, managing editor of supercomputing publications at NASA Ames Research Center, and Web editor at e-book pioneer NuvoMedia. I have a B.A. in the history of science from Harvard College and a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT. I've published articles in Science, Technology Review, IEEE Spectrum, Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Technology and Culture, Alaska Airlines Magazine, and World Business, and I've been a guest of NPR, CNN, CNBC, NECN, WGBH and the PBS NewsHour. I'm a frequent conference participant and enjoy opportunities to moderate panel discussions and on-stage chats. My personal site: waderoush.com My social media coordinates: Twitter: @wroush Facebook: facebook.com/wade.roush LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/waderoush Google+ : google.com/+WadeRoush YouTube: youtube.com/wroush1967 Flickr: flickr.com/photos/wroush/ Pinterest: pinterest.com/waderoush/

Dave Morin’s Path App—A Rebuke to Facebook?

Ex-Facebooker Dave Morin’s much-anticipated Path service has launched on the iPhone. It’s built around photo sharing, and it’s being billed as a “personal network,” with an explicit limit of 50 friends, as opposed to Facebook’s 5,000. The news went out in a note to journalists tonight from Path’s public relations representatives. Using the free Path … Continue reading “Dave Morin’s Path App—A Rebuke to Facebook?”

Y Combinator Adds Buchheit, Taggar as Partners

Y Combinator, the Mountain View, CA-based venture incubator, announced the addition of two partners today, the first to join its team since the outfit’s founding in 2005. They are Paul Buchheit, a former Google engineer who developed both Gmail and the original prototype of AdSense, and Auctomatic founder Harj Taggar, who has been advising Y … Continue reading “Y Combinator Adds Buchheit, Taggar as Partners”

Airbnb Reserves $7.2M

Airbnb, the San Francisco-based online and mobile marketplace for booking unusual accommodations such as rooms in private homes, said this week (PDF) that it has raised $7.2 million in Series A funding from Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners. It’s the two-year-old startup’s first major cash infusion since collecting about $600,000 in seed funding from individual … Continue reading “Airbnb Reserves $7.2M”

Rhythm New Media Adds $10M

Independent mobile ad network Rhythm NewMedia said today it has closed a $10 million third round of venture funding. QuestMark Partners was the lead investor, and existing backers Lightspeed Venture Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures, and Rembrandt Venture Partners returned for the round. The startup said it would use the funds to expand its network of premium publishers.

RockMelt: A Great Social Browser for the Desktop, But Isn’t This the Mobile Era?

While nearly everything about the Web has changed since its emergence circa 1993—who’s using it, what types of content are available, how Web pages are constructed, how it’s all paid for—the desktop browser hasn’t. It’s still basically a big blank square that lets you navigate between Web pages, with a set of buttons and controls … Continue reading “RockMelt: A Great Social Browser for the Desktop, But Isn’t This the Mobile Era?”

At AngelPad Demo Night, Ex-Googlers Share Plans to Overhaul the Web

It seems you can’t walk a block in SoMa these days without passing the door of a new venture incubator. The latest addition to the startup-school scene is AngelPad, which announced its existence in August and has already graduated its first class of founders. Eight AngelPad companies pitched their audacious ideas to a standing-room-only crowd … Continue reading “At AngelPad Demo Night, Ex-Googlers Share Plans to Overhaul the Web”

Twilio Raises $12M Series B

San Francisco-based Twilio, a two-year-old startup offering developers easier ways to create interactive voice software for call centers and click-to-call Web apps, said this week that it has raised $12 million in Series B venture funding. Bessemer Venture Partners, a new backer, led the round, which also included Union Square Ventures, 500 Startups, and individual … Continue reading “Twilio Raises $12M Series B”

Social Gaming Network Wins $2.5M

Palo Alto, CA-based Social Gaming Network has collected $2.5 million out of a potential $3 million in venture funding from unnamed backers, according to a regulatory filing. The company makes mobile games for the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Android devices that feature real-time competition between players; its titles include “Skies of Glory” and “Vampires … Continue reading “Social Gaming Network Wins $2.5M”

Flowtown Turns E-Mail Lists into Customer Networks; Acquires Who Should I Follow? to Boost Twitter Marketing

It’s obvious, these days, that anyone who wants to sell things or build an audience on the Web should be tapping into social media channels like Facebook and Twitter, where interesting messages can spread virally and drive lots of free traffic back to a blog, site, or landing page. But knowing this and being able … Continue reading “Flowtown Turns E-Mail Lists into Customer Networks; Acquires Who Should I Follow? to Boost Twitter Marketing”

Zuora Raises $20M

Zuora, a Redwood-City, CA-based provider of subscription billing software, said today that it has closed a $20 million Series C funding round. Redpoint Ventures was in the lead, and existing investors Benchmark Capital, Shasta Ventures, Tenaya Capital, and Marc Benioff also participated. The company said it will use the funds to expand in Europe, the … Continue reading “Zuora Raises $20M”

Borrowing a Page from Facebook and Ning, BroadVision Bets the Company on the “Social Business Cloud”

Pehong Chen says he got the idea for the future of BroadVision from his kids. It was certainly clear, by 2007 or so, that BroadVision needed a new business. Founded in 1993, the Redwood City, CA-based software vendor built e-commerce applications and corporate portals during the first Internet boom. Chen, the founding CEO, took the … Continue reading “Borrowing a Page from Facebook and Ning, BroadVision Bets the Company on the “Social Business Cloud””

$8.5M for Gluster

Index Ventures is the lead investor in an $8.5 million Series B financing round for Milpitas, CA-based Gluster, the company announced today. Existing investor Nexus Venture Partners also took part in the round. Gluster makes an open-source platform for managing network-attached storage devices like those used in corporate data centers and public and private storage … Continue reading “$8.5M for Gluster”

Web Video Ad Startups ScanScout, Tremor Media Join Forces in Challenge to Hulu, YouTube

Boston-based ScanScout, which serves targeted video ads to a network of 1,000 online publishers, has been acquired by New York-based competitor Tremor Media, the two companies announced today. The combined company, which will be headed by ScanScout CEO Bill Day, hopes to form a video ad distribution network large enough to compete with Hulu, YouTube, Brightroll, … Continue reading “Web Video Ad Startups ScanScout, Tremor Media Join Forces in Challenge to Hulu, YouTube”

RockMelt Enters Browser Wars with Backing from Marc Andreessen, Focus on Facebook and Twitter

Change in the browser market, compared to newer areas like mobile apps, is truly glacial: the main trend over the past few years has been the gradual migration of Internet Explorer users (the Microsoft browser still has a 60 percent market share) to Mozilla’s Firefox (23 percent) and Google’s Chrome (9 percent). But if anyone … Continue reading “RockMelt Enters Browser Wars with Backing from Marc Andreessen, Focus on Facebook and Twitter”

Facebook Goes Deeper into Mobile, ShopWell Goes to Market, Cloudera Aims High, & More Bay Area BizTech News

We ran several terrific stories last week from Deborah Gage, a Bay Area technology journalist who filled in while I was on vacation in Alaska. (Thanks Deborah!) We also published an in-depth a look at Ideo nutrition-advice spinoff ShopWell. —Cloudera, a Palo Alto, CA-based startup offering tools and consulting services around the Hadoop open-source distributing … Continue reading “Facebook Goes Deeper into Mobile, ShopWell Goes to Market, Cloudera Aims High, & More Bay Area BizTech News”

Ideo Spinoff ShopWell Says Better Health Starts at the Supermarket; Part 3: Food as Data

These days, the simple act of going to the grocery store is a fraught and anxious affair. Americans are being told that what they choose to eat isn’t just a personal decision, but has major economic, political, and moral implications. For one thing, there’s the spiraling cost to society of food-related health conditions, from obesity … Continue reading “Ideo Spinoff ShopWell Says Better Health Starts at the Supermarket; Part 3: Food as Data”

Ideo Spinoff ShopWell Says Better Health Starts at the Supermarket; Part 2: Ingredients of a Startup

With the ShopWell concept for helping consumers make more sense of the nutrition labels on food, Ideo thought it had a winner. But while the design consultancy has many of the attributes of a startup incubator—a large flock of creative thinkers and a commitment to testing new ideas, to name just a couple—it’s not equipped … Continue reading “Ideo Spinoff ShopWell Says Better Health Starts at the Supermarket; Part 2: Ingredients of a Startup”

ShopWell, Ideo’s First Big Spinoff, Says Better Health Starts at the Supermarket

Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control shocked the nation two weeks ago with a study projecting that by the year 2050, as many as one fifth to one third of U.S. adults could have diabetes, up from just 10 percent today. Part of this increase is inevitable—a side effect of the swelling population of … Continue reading “ShopWell, Ideo’s First Big Spinoff, Says Better Health Starts at the Supermarket”

Travel Sites Go After Google, Trimble Buys ThingMagic, Digg Downsizes, & Other Bay Area BizTech News

Last week wasn’t awash in early-stage startup news—familiar Bay Area software, Web, and energy companies dominated the technology headlines. —A coalition of online travel companies including Expedia, Farelogix, Hotwire, and Sabre Holdings launched a lobbying effort to persuade the U.S. Department of Justice to block Google’s proposed acquisition of Cambridge, MA-based ITA Software. The group, … Continue reading “Travel Sites Go After Google, Trimble Buys ThingMagic, Digg Downsizes, & Other Bay Area BizTech News”

$4.2M for Carbonflow

Carbonflow, a San Francisco-based maker of Web-based software for managing and monitoring carbon emissions reduction projects, said this week (PDF) that it has closed a $4.2 million Series B venture financing round. Existing investor OVP Ventures of Seattle led the round, which was joined by @Ventures of Waltham, MA, and Clean Pacific Ventures of San … Continue reading “$4.2M for Carbonflow”

A Silicon Valley Prescription for Boston and Other Startup Hubs: Throw More Parties

A few friends have asked me how my life has changed since I moved from Boston to San Francisco to open Xconomy’s Bay Area bureau. Do you want to know the real answer? I drink more. A lot more. In the Silicon Valley technology startup world that I cover, there’s at least one cocktail party, … Continue reading “A Silicon Valley Prescription for Boston and Other Startup Hubs: Throw More Parties”

The Two-Second Advantage: Talking with TIBCO’s Vivek Ranadivé

He might not have the profile of a Jobs, Ellison, or Zuckerberg, but in a region where so many corporations are identified with their iconic CEOs, Vivek Ranadivé stands out even more than most as the face and voice of his company. The tagline at Palo Alto, CA-based TIBCO Software (NASDAQ: [[ticker:TIBX]]) is “The Power … Continue reading “The Two-Second Advantage: Talking with TIBCO’s Vivek Ranadivé”

$300K for Kiip

Kiip, a San Francisco-based mobile gaming ad startup led by 19-year-old Brian Wong, has closed a $300,000 round of seed funding from an assortment of venture and angel investors. TechCrunch broke the news and Wong confirmed the details in an e-mail to Xconomy. The stealth-mode startup’s backers include True Ventures, Keith Belling, Doug Chertok, Page … Continue reading “$300K for Kiip”

BrightSource Will Get $300M from NRG

BrightSource Energy, the Oakland, CA, company building a massive, 392-megawatt solar thermal plant in Ivanpah in California’s Mojave Desert, said today that NRG Solar, a subsidiary of Princeton, NJ-based NRG Energy (NYSE: [[ticker:NRG]]), will become the lead investor in the project, contributing up to $300 million over the next three years. The plant, which is … Continue reading “BrightSource Will Get $300M from NRG”

Adap.tv Collects $4.55M

Adap.tv in San Mateo, CA, has raised $4.55 million in equity-based financing, according to a regulatory filing. The company offers a marketplace and servers for online video advertisements. The company previously raised $13 million in a late 2008 venture round involving Spark Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and Gemini Israel Funds.

$9M for Appcelerator

Appcelerator, a startup in Mountain View, CA, that helps Web developers adapt their software for mobile platforms, said yesterday that it has closed a $9 million Series B financing round. Sierra Ventures led the round, with strategic investor eBay also chipping in, along with existing investors Storm Ventures and Larry Augustin. The company also announced … Continue reading “$9M for Appcelerator”

Competitors Claim ITA Acquisition Would Give Google an Unfair Advantage in Travel Search

[Updated, see page 2] Quite a few online travel-info companies—FareCompare, Fly.com, Hotwire, Kayak, Sidestep, TripAdvisor, and Orbitz, to name a few—get their airline fare and seat availability information from a vast real-time database called QPX, the creation of Cambridge, MA-based ITA Software. Even search engines like Bing rely on QPX for flight data. So it … Continue reading “Competitors Claim ITA Acquisition Would Give Google an Unfair Advantage in Travel Search”

Nanosys Ups E Round to $31M

Palo Alto, CA-based Nanosys, which said in August that it had raised $25 million in Series E financing from new investor Samsung Venture Investment Corporation and existing investors Arch Venture Partners, El Dorado Ventures, Polaris Venture Capital, and Venrock, announced a “second and final close” of the round today at $31 million. No additional investors were … Continue reading “Nanosys Ups E Round to $31M”

OhLife’s Daily E-Mails Motivate a New Wave of Online Diarists

This is the ninth in a series of profiles of companies funded this summer by Paul Graham’s Y Combinator startup incubator in Mountain View, CA. Dear Diary, This will be the last time I write in you. Your crisp pages and smooth leather cover have comforted me through many lonely nights. But I’ve found someone … Continue reading “OhLife’s Daily E-Mails Motivate a New Wave of Online Diarists”

Zenprise Acquires Sparus

Zenprise, a Fremont, CA-based maker of software that help enterprise manage software on employee’s mobile phones, said today that it has acquired Sparus Software, a company in France that specializes in remote management of business applications on smartphones, tablet computers, card readers, and scanners. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Zenprise collected $9 million … Continue reading “Zenprise Acquires Sparus”

$2.5M for GigaOm

Giga Omni Media, owner of the GigaOm blog and a network of other tech blogs, has collected $2.5 million in new financing from existing investor True Ventures, where founder Om Malik is a partner. TechCrunch broke the news Friday, and it was later confirmed in a blog post by Malik, who says the funds will … Continue reading “$2.5M for GigaOm”

RGB Networks Raises $20M

Sunnyvale, CA-based RGB Networks has raised an additional $20 million in equity-based funding, according to an October 21 regulatory filing. The company makes video processors and converters that can deliver video signals to multiple platforms, such as TVs, computers, and mobile devices. RGB previously raised one of the largest venture rounds of the second quarter … Continue reading “RGB Networks Raises $20M”

Evernote Snags Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins Goes Social, Zuckerberg Speaks Out, & More Bay-Area BizTech News

Companies building cloud-based services got lots of attention last week, as did those building social applications. And companies building cloud-based social applications? Watch out! —Evernote, the Mountain View, CA-based online notekeeping service with nearly 5 million users, collected another $20 million in venture backing in a Series C round led by new investor Sequoia Capital. … Continue reading “Evernote Snags Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins Goes Social, Zuckerberg Speaks Out, & More Bay-Area BizTech News”

10 Fantastic Photo Apps for the iPad

The Apple iPad doesn’t have a camera—yet. But it does have a big, beautiful, multi-touch screen. And that makes it one of the best devices ever built for browsing and manipulating images. Mobile app developers have realized this, and have created a profusion of fascinating apps for editing or simply exploring photographs. In fact, there … Continue reading “10 Fantastic Photo Apps for the iPad”

Michael Moritz Unplugged: Jamming with a VC Star at Xconomy’s First San Francisco Event

Michael Moritz, a partner at leading venture firm Sequoia Capital since 1986, has been described as the most powerful venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. Routinely ranked at or near the top of Forbes’ Midas List of wealth creators, Moritz has led Sequoia’s investments in Google, Yahoo, PayPal, YouTube, Zappos, Kayak, Sugar, and many other companies. … Continue reading “Michael Moritz Unplugged: Jamming with a VC Star at Xconomy’s First San Francisco Event”

Zoho, Where Engineers Reign, Rewrites the Rules of Office Software

It would be easy to say that Zoho, whose online office productivity software has attracted 3 million users, is the worst nightmare for desktop software makers like Microsoft and even for a newer generation of Software-as-a-Service companies like Salesforce.com. But Zoho is more complicated than that. To figure in its competitor’s nightmares, Zoho would have … Continue reading “Zoho, Where Engineers Reign, Rewrites the Rules of Office Software”

Sequoia Leads $20 Million Round for Evernote—Q&A with CEO Phil Libin

Evernote, the Mountain View, CA, startup building a multiplatform service that helps consumers organize and retrieve all the digital bric-a-brac in their lives, has just taken a big step forward, raising $20 million in a Series C investment round led by top-tier venture firm Sequoia Capital. Some 4.7 million people use Evernote’s freemium service, which … Continue reading “Sequoia Leads $20 Million Round for Evernote—Q&A with CEO Phil Libin”

$9M for Causes

Causes, the Berkeley, CA-based philanthropy startup co-founded by former Facebook executive Sean Parker, said this week that it has raised $9 million in new funding. The mezzanine round was led by Menlo Park’s New Enterprise Associates and included angel and super-angel investors Marc Benioff, Ron Conway, Karl Jacob, Dustin Moskovitz, Keith Rabois, and Founders Fund. … Continue reading “$9M for Causes”

AudioPress, Packaging Podcasts & Streaming Radio For People Stuck in Traffic, Seeks to Tap Fast-Growing Market

Something like 50 million Americans spend at least an hour a day commuting to work, which is a lot of people and a lot of time. For entrepreneurs who aspire to deliver audio content over the wireless Web, this is turning into a huge market of potential consumers up for grabs. More and more of … Continue reading “AudioPress, Packaging Podcasts & Streaming Radio For People Stuck in Traffic, Seeks to Tap Fast-Growing Market”

Former Zynga Exec Joins Maveron

Andrew Trader, one of the early executives at San Francisco-based social game maker Zynga, has joined Seattle- and San Francisco-based venture capital firm Maveron as an entrepreneur in residence, according to a Maveron announcement released tonight. Trader will be based in the firm’s San Francisco office and “will explore new web-enabled consumer service opportunities,” the … Continue reading “Former Zynga Exec Joins Maveron”

Sharethrough Raises $5M

San Francisco-based Sharethrough, which runs “social video campaigns” in which it distributes video ads across social websites, games, apps, and advertising exchanges, said today that it has raised $5 million in Series A funding. North Bridge Venture Partners and Floodgate Fund led the investment, with angel investors Ron Conway, Ron Bouganim, Steve Blank, and Auren … Continue reading “Sharethrough Raises $5M”

Mark Zuckerberg Goes to Startup School [Video]

In one of his first major public appearances since the release of The Social Network, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke onstage at Stanford this Saturday about why he started the company, why he moved it to Silicon Valley, and what he thinks about the controversial movie. (The gist of his review: amusing but … Continue reading “Mark Zuckerberg Goes to Startup School [Video]”

The $100,000 Taxi Ride, the $403M Exit for Google Ventures and iFund, CarWoo Goes National, & More Bay Area BizTech News

Columbus Day made last week a short one, but I don’t think many San Francisco or Silicon Valley innovators pay attention to this particular holiday, as there was no shortage of technology and business news. —My colleague Erin published a nice scoop about Baydin, a Cambridge, MA-based maker of e-mail management software whose founder won … Continue reading “The $100,000 Taxi Ride, the $403M Exit for Google Ventures and iFund, CarWoo Goes National, & More Bay Area BizTech News”

Abvio vs. FitnessKeeper: The Running App Founder Smackdown

If you’re a runner, walker, or cyclist, there’s a lot of great mobile technology these days to help you track your activity and stay motivated. On Friday I reviewed two apps in particular: RunKeeper from Boston-based FitnessKeeper, and Runmeter from San Francisco-based Abvio. I talked about my personal experiences using the apps, which both work … Continue reading “Abvio vs. FitnessKeeper: The Running App Founder Smackdown”