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/

Permabit: Storing Enterprise Data Unerasably, At Bargain Prices

If you ate on your best china every night, flew first class even on puddle jumpers, and habitually drove your Mercedes rather than your minivan to the grocery store, it would be a lot like what most big companies do with their data, according to Tom Cook. More and more of the information that e-commerce … Continue reading “Permabit: Storing Enterprise Data Unerasably, At Bargain Prices”

Akamai Mum on Presidential Video Plans

Rather than sending President Obama’s weekly Web video address to YouTube for hosting, as it has in past weeks, the White House published last Saturday’s video on its own website, Whitehouse.gov, which is hosted by Akamai. But an Akamai official says the company can’t comment on whether the widely discussed decision signals a permanent turn … Continue reading “Akamai Mum on Presidential Video Plans”

Highland Program Offers No-Strings Stipends to Student Entrepreneurs

With the departure of Paul Graham’s Y Combinator startup school, Boston-area entrepreneurs have one less local source for seed funding and mentorship. With the advent of a Boston clone of Boulder, CO-based TechStars, they have one more—so things have evened out. But Highland Capital Partners‘ “Summer@Highland” program has been a constant in the area throughout … Continue reading “Highland Program Offers No-Strings Stipends to Student Entrepreneurs”

Digital Reef’s Similarity-Based Search Helps Corporate Data “Speak For Itself”

Sometimes (just sometimes) it pays to look behind the jargon in press releases. One glance at yesterday’s coming-out-of-stealth-mode announcement from Boxborough, MA-based Digital Reef, which starts off talking about “massively scalable unstructured data management platforms” and “capabilities [that] improve eDiscovery outcomes,” was enough to make even a nerd like me want to tune out. But … Continue reading “Digital Reef’s Similarity-Based Search Helps Corporate Data “Speak For Itself””

VCentrix Scooped Up by Momentum

Bedford, MA-based vCentrix, which hosts voice-over-Internet services for businesses, is becoming part of Momentum, a provider of white-label digital voice services based in Birmingham, AL, according to an announcement from Momentum today. “In such a fragmented market, both companies feel that hosted voice applications are entering a period of consolidation, and Momentum is well-equipped to … Continue reading “VCentrix Scooped Up by Momentum”

New Business Association Looks to the Future of Kendall Square, “The Product Cambridge Offers to the World”

Companies, merchants, and residents in the Kendall Square neighborhood of Cambridge banded together last week to form the Kendall Square Association, a non-profit group whose mission, according to its new president Tim Rowe, is to “improve, protect, and promote” the technology-saturated neighborhood. After several months of informal discussions, representatives from dozens of area organizations, including … Continue reading “New Business Association Looks to the Future of Kendall Square, “The Product Cambridge Offers to the World””

Is E Ink Working on Hearst’s New E-Reader?

According to a report today in Fortune, publishing giant Hearst Corp., owner of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the San Francisco Chronicle, and many other prominent newspapers and magazines, is developing an e-reading device similar to the Amazon Kindle 2 and the Sony PRS-700. Kenneth Bronfin, head of Hearst’s interactive media group, wouldn’t give Fortune details about … Continue reading “Is E Ink Working on Hearst’s New E-Reader?”

Massachusetts Technology Industry Needs a New Deal, Not a New Brand

If Silicon Valley didn’t exist, Boston would have to invent it in order to have someplace to feel inferior to. That’s the thought that occurred to me when I read an article in the Boston Globe last week about the Information Technology Collaborative. This new posse of industry, government, and academic leaders met in Cambridge … Continue reading “Massachusetts Technology Industry Needs a New Deal, Not a New Brand”

Kindling a Revolution: E Ink’s Russ Wilcox on E-Paper, Amazon, and the Future of Publishing

Almost as soon as Amazon released the Kindle e-book reader in November 2007, I settled in to wait for the Kindle 2. Like many other observers, I thought Amazon had made a good first stab at building a usable e-book device, but that it needed a sleeker profile, better ergonomics, new features such as text-to-speech … Continue reading “Kindling a Revolution: E Ink’s Russ Wilcox on E-Paper, Amazon, and the Future of Publishing”

uLocate Launches Where on Android

Boston-based uLocate announced today that its Where platform, a collection of “widgets” allowing access to location-based services and information on mobile devices, will be available for T-Mobile’s G1 phone, the first mass-market phone that runs the Google Android operating system. Where, which is already available for the Apple iPhone, Blackberry smartphones, and other devices, is  … Continue reading “uLocate Launches Where on Android”

IBM Builds Critical Mass at “Mass Lab”; Aims to Mix Acquired Subsidiaries Without Dissolving Them

IBM’s sweeping project to consolidate its local software divisions at renovated campuses in Littleton and Westford, MA, is more than just a physical reorganization: it’s a chance for the company to craft a new identity for itself in Massachusetts, according to one of Big Blue’s top executives in the state. “I think we are one … Continue reading “IBM Builds Critical Mass at “Mass Lab”; Aims to Mix Acquired Subsidiaries Without Dissolving Them”

$11.5M C Round Flows into Rivulet

Herndon, VA-based Rivulet Communications, which has a research and development center in Portsmouth, NH, said today that it has secured $11.5 million in Series C funding, courtesy of investors ATA Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Performance Equity Management, and Scorpion Capital Partners. Rivulet makes software used by hospitals, media organizations, and government agencies to share live or … Continue reading “$11.5M C Round Flows into Rivulet”

Tizra Puts Publishers Back in Control of Their E-Books

For traditional print publishers, the fact that more and more people are buying book-length works online and reading them on their laptops, iPhones, or Kindles is both encouraging and anxiety-provoking. The rise of e-books opens up potential new markets. But it means publishers have to figure out the best way to share their content electronically—and … Continue reading “Tizra Puts Publishers Back in Control of Their E-Books”

The Travel Channel and SnapMyLife: TV Experiments with Mobile Social Media, Gingerly

People seem to eat up the platefuls of food-related programming fed to them by cable networks like Lifetime, The Travel Channel, and the Food Network. Will cell phone owners do the same? The folks at SnapMyLife, the mobile photo-sharing community run by Needham, MA-based Mobicious, hope to find out. Last year the company formed a … Continue reading “The Travel Channel and SnapMyLife: TV Experiments with Mobile Social Media, Gingerly”

Buzzwire Launches User-Driven Mobile News Site

A growing number of online media companies offer mobile-friendly versions of their articles or videos, often resizing or stripping down the material to make it more easily accessible on smaller screens, and at lower bandwidth. But if you’re a cell phone owner who wants to spend a few minutes scanning mobile sites, there’s a problem. … Continue reading “Buzzwire Launches User-Driven Mobile News Site”

Polaris Surveys Founders on Dilution

Sim Simeonov, a general partner at Waltham, MA-based Polaris Venture Partners, is conducting an online survey to find out how much stock dilution technology startup founders generally experience between the creation of their companies and the all-important exit event. “There are rules of thumb but there is no good data about what happens to common … Continue reading “Polaris Surveys Founders on Dilution”

Plinky: The Cure for Blank Slate Syndrome

If you feel it’s time to share something online but can’t think of anything to say, it might be a sign that you’re dull. If you try too hard to craft a bon mot for your blog or some table talk for your Twitter stream, in other words, you might just be inflicting your insipidness … Continue reading “Plinky: The Cure for Blank Slate Syndrome”

Sky Is Limit for Bankrupt Skyward

Skyward Mobile, a Wakefield, MA, startup developing a platform that lets users play games and read e-books on their cell phones, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection yesterday, according to a report in the Boston Business Journal. Not to be confused with Stratham, NH-based Skyward Innovations, a company working on mobile travel-related applications, Skyward Mobile … Continue reading “Sky Is Limit for Bankrupt Skyward”

Verenium, BP Form Joint Venture to Build Biofuel Plant in Florida

Verenium (NASDAQ: [[ticker:VRNM]]), a Cambridge, MA, startup whose proprietary microbes break down high-cellulose material like sugar cane into ethanol, said yesterday that it has established a joint venture with British Petroleum (NYSE: [[ticker:BP]]) to build commercial-scale biofuel plants in the United States. BP, which owns 50 percent of the new company, is contributing $22.5 million … Continue reading “Verenium, BP Form Joint Venture to Build Biofuel Plant in Florida”

Defending the U.S. Cyber Castle: Core Security’s Tom Kellermann on Internet Attacks and Obama’s Strategy

Last week President Obama tapped Melissa Hathaway, a former Booz Allen Hamilton consultant and top aide to President Bush, to undertake a sweeping 60-day review of the country’s computer security posture. Once that review is complete, the 40-year-old Hathaway could be in line to be named the nation’s first assistant to the president for cyberspace—or, … Continue reading “Defending the U.S. Cyber Castle: Core Security’s Tom Kellermann on Internet Attacks and Obama’s Strategy”

North Bridge in $15M OfferPal Round

Waltham, MA-based North Bridge Venture Partners is part of a $15 million Series B funding round for OfferPal Media, according to a company announcement today. OfferPal, based in Fremont, CA, targets consumers who use social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo, and MySpace with commercial offers customized based on their profiles and friend lists. The lead … Continue reading “North Bridge in $15M OfferPal Round”

TechStars “Entrepreneurship Boot Camp” Comes to Boston: An Interview with Co-founder David Cohen

You lose some, you win some. Less than four weeks after Paul Graham’s unceremonious announcement that his formerly bicoastal startup school Y Combinator would be taking up permanent residence in Mountain View, CA, ending a tradition of summer sessions in Cambridge, MA, a new startup program is coming to town: Boulder, CO-based TechStars. Founded in … Continue reading “TechStars “Entrepreneurship Boot Camp” Comes to Boston: An Interview with Co-founder David Cohen”

MIT-Trained Entrepreneurs Create Businesses With $2 Trillion a Year in Sales, Kauffman Report Says

It’s no secret that the Massachusetts economy benefits from the presence of large, prestigious, star-studded universities and the companies started by their faculty and graduates. In fact, these universities take every opportunity to remind people of their importance: Just a few weeks ago, Harvard put out a report taking credit for nearly $5 billion in … Continue reading “MIT-Trained Entrepreneurs Create Businesses With $2 Trillion a Year in Sales, Kauffman Report Says”

Public Radio for People Without Radios

I have a bunch of wireless devices at home, but none of them are radios. And if I’m at all typical, then the radio business has a big problem. For broadcasters, getting radio programming to people like me, who find most or all of their news, information, and entertainment on the Internet, is challenging enough. … Continue reading “Public Radio for People Without Radios”

Usama Fayyad on ChoiceStream’s Effort to Save Online Display Ads from Irrelevance

If you’re like me, you don’t pay much attention to display ads on the Web—the big “banner” and “skyscraper” ads that run along the top or the side of many media sites. The problem is that few of these ads are for products or companies that interest me, so I tune them all out. Well, … Continue reading “Usama Fayyad on ChoiceStream’s Effort to Save Online Display Ads from Irrelevance”

Alexandria Wins Zoning Change in East Cambridge, Removing One Obstacle to Huge Biotech Park

An ambitious plan by Pasadena, CA-based Alexandria Real Estate Equities to create a 16-acre biotech park in East Cambridge, MA, moved one step closer to being realized last night. By an 8-1 vote, the Cambridge City Council approved a rezoning request from Alexandria that will allow it to build taller, denser buildings than those previously … Continue reading “Alexandria Wins Zoning Change in East Cambridge, Removing One Obstacle to Huge Biotech Park”

Dell Launches Zink-based Printer

Waltham, MA-based Zink, known for commercializing an inkless printing technique originally conceived at Polaroid, is providing the technology behind a new ultra-mobile wireless printer from Dell. Called the Wasabi, the $149 printer is similar to the Polaroid PoGo mobile printer, which also based on technology licensed from Zink; it’s about 5 inches long, 3 inches … Continue reading “Dell Launches Zink-based Printer”

FetchDog Retrieves $4M

Portland, ME-based FetchDog—a shopping and blogging website focused on dogs and dog-related merchandise and co-founded by actor Glenn Close and her husband David Shaw, former CEO of IDEXX Laboratories and Ikarian Holding—announced yesterday that it has closed a $4 million funding round. The investors included Portsmouth and Hanover, NH-based Borealis Capital Partners and Keene, NH-based … Continue reading “FetchDog Retrieves $4M”

Forrester Cuts 50

Forrester Research (NASDAQ: [[ticker:FORR]]), the Cambridge, MA-based technology market research firm, said yesterday it will deal with the economic crunch by cutting 50 positions, or about 5 percent of its global workforce. But the move comes after a big hiring surge in 2008; even after the cuts, the company will still have 14 percent more … Continue reading “Forrester Cuts 50”

As Unemployment Rises, “Service Networking” Startups Find Niche Matching Workers With Odd Jobs

When a good idea is ready to be born, it can surface in several minds at once. That appears to be what’s happening right now around Boston, as four local Web-based startups launch online marketplaces that match people willing to do small jobs with people who need jobs done. In each case, the founders point … Continue reading “As Unemployment Rises, “Service Networking” Startups Find Niche Matching Workers With Odd Jobs”

Amazon Launches Kindle 2

At a press conference this morning in New York City, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos officially unveiled the Kindle 2, the second version of the Seattle-based e-retailer’s popular e-book reading device. Like its predecessor, the Kindle 2 features an electronic-paper screen devised by Cambridge, MA-based E Ink. But Bezos detailed a number of new features, including … Continue reading “Amazon Launches Kindle 2”

Atlanta TV Group is Backchannelmedia’s First Paying Customer

Boston’s Backchannelmedia, whose “clickable TV” system embeds links in broadcast TV signals that consumers can activate with their remote controls to receive information about a program or a product via e-mail, said today that Gray Television (NYSE: [[ticker:GTN]]) of Atlanta will roll out the Backchannelmedia system to its 36 local broadcast stations. That brings the … Continue reading “Atlanta TV Group is Backchannelmedia’s First Paying Customer”

Clean Energy Council Expands Executive Retraining Program

Breaking into the cleantech business brings lots of unique challenges—and to equip more entrepreneurs to handle them, the New England Clean Energy Council (NECEC) launched a fellowship program last April aimed at retraining CEOs from the information technology, life sciences, and telecom worlds. A dozen former CEOs spent the summer of 2008 learning the energy-industry … Continue reading “Clean Energy Council Expands Executive Retraining Program”

SiOnyx Expands to Oregon

Beverly, MA-based SiOnyx, the developer of “black silicon” solar and imaging devices that we profiled when it came out of stealth mode back in October, said last week that it has opened a West Coast engineering center in Beaverton, OR. Leading the Oregon office will be Homayoon Haddad, SiOnyx’s new vice president of device engineering, … Continue reading “SiOnyx Expands to Oregon”

How I Declared E-Mail Bankruptcy, and Discovered the Bliss of an Empty Inbox

I’m not one of those people who thinks you can measure a person’s power, talent, or importance by the number of e-mails or phone calls they get every day. So it’s not a boast—indeed, it’s more like an embarrassed confession—when I say that by early January, my Gmail inbox had swelled to almost 15,000 messages. … Continue reading “How I Declared E-Mail Bankruptcy, and Discovered the Bliss of an Empty Inbox”

1366’s Campaign to Make Better, Cheaper Solar Cells Gets Boost from Department of Energy

1366 Technologies, the Lexington, MA-based MIT spinoff working on ways to manufacture cheaper, more efficient photovoltaic (PV) cells, said today that the Department of Energy’s Solar America Initiative has selected the company for a performance-based award worth up to $3 million. 1366 president and CEO Frank van Mierlo says the company will get the money … Continue reading “1366’s Campaign to Make Better, Cheaper Solar Cells Gets Boost from Department of Energy”

Sugar Beyond the XO Laptop: Walter Bender on OLPC, Sucrose 0.84, and “Sugar on a Stick”

Many people wouldn’t touch coffee or cereal without sugar. And the XO laptop would be useless without Sugar—the standard, Linux-based graphical interface for the little green laptop, nearly a million of which have been distributed to classrooms in developing countries by the Cambridge, MA-based One Laptop Per Child Foundation. While OLPC and Microsoft have been … Continue reading “Sugar Beyond the XO Laptop: Walter Bender on OLPC, Sucrose 0.84, and “Sugar on a Stick””

Collapse of Innovative Spinal Technologies was Years In the Making, Sources Say; CEO Responds

[Updated, see below.–WR] Our stories last week about the shutdown of Innovative Spinal Technologies, a Mansfield, MA, company that raised $75 million in private funding to market devices for stabilizing injured spines, prompted a number of IST’s former employees and business associates to contact Xconomy to help flesh out the details of the company’s demise … Continue reading “Collapse of Innovative Spinal Technologies was Years In the Making, Sources Say; CEO Responds”

Boston VCs Pour Cash into Cash4Gold’s Superbowl Spot

If you were watching the Superbowl yesterday, you may have seen the tongue-in-cheek ad in which down-on-their luck celebrities Ed McMahon and MC Hammer hawked Cash4Gold, a Pompano Beach, FL-based metal refinery that sends customers checks for mailing in their unwanted gold, silver, or platinum jewelry. An e-mail about the ad circulated this weekend by … Continue reading “Boston VCs Pour Cash into Cash4Gold’s Superbowl Spot”

Millipore Buys Guava

Billerica, MA-based Millipore (NYSE: [[ticker:MIL]]), a maker of equipment for life-sciences research and pharmaceutical manufacturing, says it will acquire Guava Technologies of Hayward, CA, under an agreement announced today. Millipore says it will pay $22.6 million for Guava, which makes flow cytometry and cell assay systems, including systems for counting CD4 T-cells in HIV/AIDS patients.

Nuance Still Stalking Zi

After its last bid to acquire Calgary, Alberta-based Zi Corporation (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ZICA]]) for $0.40 per share expired on Friday, Burlington, MA-based speech technology giant Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: [[ticker:NUAN]]) now says Zi has until February 13 to respond to its offer. The board at Zi, which makes software for quickly typing text into mobile devices that … Continue reading “Nuance Still Stalking Zi”

Governor Patrick Tours Cambridge Innovation Center

Companies headquartered at the Cambridge Innovation Center, a rental office facility where scores of Boston-area entrepreneurs have gotten their ideas off the ground, played host to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick this afternoon. Patrick and other officials—including Massachusetts Life Sciences Center president Susan Windham-Bannister and Greg Bialicki, Patrick’s choice to replace outgoing Secretary of Housing and … Continue reading “Governor Patrick Tours Cambridge Innovation Center”