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/

Seeding your Web 2.0 Company

MITX and K&L Gates sponsor a panel discussion on obtaining small seed investments for startups focused on Web-based software, with speakers including Christian Heidelberger, CEO, Nexaweb; Sim Simeonov, partner, Polaris Venture Partners; Michael Spataro, vice president of partnerships, Visible Technologies; and Austin Westerling, partner, Charles River Ventures. From MIT’s event description: “Web 2.0 startups are … Continue reading “Seeding your Web 2.0 Company”

Google Rejects Claims of Jarg-Northeastern U Lawsuit

Google says a patent-infringement lawsuit filed last year by Northeastern University and Waltham, MA, startup Jarg is without merit, according to a story yesterday in Ars Technica. As we explained back in November, the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall, TX, alleges that Google’s technique of … Continue reading “Google Rejects Claims of Jarg-Northeastern U Lawsuit”

Biotech Tuesday

Event host Seth Taylor writes: “Since February 2002, BiotechTuesday has been inviting people from the Boston biotechnology community to trendy spots around town. A variety of industry professionals attend each month, including entrepreneurs, investors, attorneys, scientists, and journalists. No lectures—no agenda. Some call it networking, others just good fun, and the event offers both.” More … Continue reading “Biotech Tuesday”

The VC View on What’s Hot & What’s Not

ACG Boston hosts a DealMakers Breakfast where top venture capitalists—including Steve Ricci of Flagship Ventures, Nina Saberi of Castile Ventures, and Bryce Youngren of Polaris Venture Partners —discuss the sectors that will produce the “next big thing.” Moderated by Mike Oliveri, publisher of the Boston Business Journal and Mass High Tech. Members $50, non-members $100. … Continue reading “The VC View on What’s Hot & What’s Not”

Guidester, Inventor of “Searchandising,” Hires New CEO and Moves to Boston

Big-box retail stores and grocery stores are silent battlegrounds, where product manufacturers bid against each other for coveted positioning in the most visible locations, such as the “end caps” of each aisle, or at customers’ eye level on store shelves. On the Web, the closest analog to a store aisle is a search result page—and … Continue reading “Guidester, Inventor of “Searchandising,” Hires New CEO and Moves to Boston”

Closing the Back Door: Veracode Verifies Software Code One Bit at a Time

Many companies know that they need outside help evaluating software for security flaws, whether it’s code they’ve written themselves or software they’re considering buying from a third-party vendor. But few organizations (or their vendors) are willing to let the actual source code for their applications leave their premises, over concerns about potential copying and theft. … Continue reading “Closing the Back Door: Veracode Verifies Software Code One Bit at a Time”

Ze-Gen Arranges $2.5 Million in Venture Debt

Boston-based waste gasification startup Ze-Gen, which we profiled in August, has closed on $2.5 million in “venture debt” from Palo Alto, CA-based Pinnacle Ventures, the company said today. What’s venture debt? We wondered too, so we asked John Harper, Ze-Gen’s vice president of finance. “It is essentially a corporate loan,” Harper says. “Often, as in … Continue reading “Ze-Gen Arranges $2.5 Million in Venture Debt”

Microsoft Passed Over Cambridge Enterprise Search Firm Endeca Before Acquiring Norway’s Fast

A Microsoft product manager says the software giant evaluated several companies selling advanced search tools for businesses, including Cambridge, MA, startup Endeca, before deciding to offer $1.23 billion for Fast Search & Transfer of Oslo, Norway, which has a 200-employee outpost in Needham, MA. But that may be just as well for Endeca, in light … Continue reading “Microsoft Passed Over Cambridge Enterprise Search Firm Endeca Before Acquiring Norway’s Fast”

Maine Wind Farm Gets Green Light, But Project Leader Says Cleantech Efforts Face Too Many Snarls

The wind in New England blows mainly against big green-energy projects. At least that’s the assessment of Matt Kearns, an audibly frazzled project manager for Newton, MA-based UPC Wind. Despite winning final approval last week for the creation of New England’s largest wind-energy installation, now under construction on a ridge in northern Maine, Kearns says … Continue reading “Maine Wind Farm Gets Green Light, But Project Leader Says Cleantech Efforts Face Too Many Snarls”

The Greater Boston Innovation Map

New England’s exponential economy grows faster than Xconomy can chronicle it. But we try our best—and in our first six months of operation, we’ve published detailed profiles of more than 125 local companies and organizations across the entire gamut of commercial technologies. Altogether, we’ve trained our uniquely personal, hyperlocal lens on hundreds of people and … Continue reading “The Greater Boston Innovation Map”

Sirtris Anti-Aging Drug Generates Buzz, But May Already Be Old News

Cambridge, MA-based Sirtris Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SIRT]]) generated a flurry of media coverage, and a moderate stock gain, this week after announcing the first evidence that its formulation of resveratrol, a naturally occurring anti-aging substance found in red wine, helps to control symptoms of diabetes in humans. But it’s unclear that the study results—which were not … Continue reading “Sirtris Anti-Aging Drug Generates Buzz, But May Already Be Old News”

IT Matters: Nicholas Carr on Utility Computing, the Dangers of Internet Culture, and the Google Brain

In 2003, Nicholas Carr, then the executive editor of Harvard Business Review, sparked an enormous debate (and enraged quite a few technology vendors) with an HBR article entitled “IT Doesn’t Matter.” Because every company now has access to the same commodity computing hardware and software, Carr asserted, big IT investments no longer confer a competitive … Continue reading “IT Matters: Nicholas Carr on Utility Computing, the Dangers of Internet Culture, and the Google Brain”

IT Matters: The Complete Nicholas Carr Interview

On January 8 Xconomy published an edited version of my January 4 interview with Nicholas Carr, author of the new book The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google. What follows is the unedited transcript of that interview. Xconomy: You said you sent the finished version of the book off to your publisher … Continue reading “IT Matters: The Complete Nicholas Carr Interview”

Biotech in France and the United States

The French American Chamber of Commerce sponsors a seminar on “Biotech Industry: Differences and Opportunities in France and the U.S.” Speakers will include Eric Halioua, senior manager at Arthur. D. Little; Frederic Chereau, vice president, Genzyme; Bernard Malfroy-Camine, executive VP, Proteome Systems; Ronald Renaud, CFO, Idenix Pharmaceuticals; and Al Sokol, partner, Edwards, Angell, Palmer & … Continue reading “Biotech in France and the United States”

Zink Debuts Inkless Printing at CES—The Technology That Might Have Saved Polaroid

What if printers became so small that you could attach one to the back of a television, a video game console, a camera, a digital photo frame, or even a cell phone? And what if these tiny printers never required ink—just tiny little packs of paper? You’d have the makings of a rebirth in instant-print … Continue reading “Zink Debuts Inkless Printing at CES—The Technology That Might Have Saved Polaroid”

PeerApp Raises $3 Million for P2P Video

PE Week Wire reported this week that PeerApp, the Newton, MA-based peer-to-peer (P2P) video distribution startup that we covered on December 12, has collected $3 million in new venture funding. The round was led by existing investors Pilot House Ventures, Evergreen, and Cedar Fund. The company’s proprietary server technology helps Internet service providers mitigate the … Continue reading “PeerApp Raises $3 Million for P2P Video”

One Laptop Foundation Blasts Intel, Says World’s Children are Mission, Not Market

Apparently, the global village ain’t big enough for both Intel and Nicholas Negroponte. The giant chipmaker said Thursday it had pulled out of Negroponte’s Cambridge-based One Laptop Per Child Foundation (OLPC), which is building a sub-$200 laptop for use by children in developing countries. Intel, with its $300-ish Classmate notebook computer, has its eye on … Continue reading “One Laptop Foundation Blasts Intel, Says World’s Children are Mission, Not Market”

Spark Capital Puts $5 Mil into 5min

“How-to” is one of the hottest sub-genres in Internet video, with several startups such as Austin, TX-based Expert Village, Barcelona’s Sclipo, and Los Angeles-based Videojug springing up specifically to serve the do-it-yourself crowd. But when the guys at Boston’s Spark Capital decided to invest in a how-to video company, they wound up going all the … Continue reading “Spark Capital Puts $5 Mil into 5min”

Boston-Power Recharges with Big Investment for Safer, Longer-lasting Lithium-Ion Batteries

As many of our readers know, the X in Xconomy stands for “exponential,” referring to the rapid rate at which technologies such as semiconductors and genomics evolve and in turn transform our economy and our daily lives. Unfortunately, the batteries in the information devices we carry everywhere these days aren’t one of those exponential technologies. … Continue reading “Boston-Power Recharges with Big Investment for Safer, Longer-lasting Lithium-Ion Batteries”

Live Gamer Aims to Civilize the Gray Market for Virtual Goods

In a now-famous June 17 New York Times article entitled “The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer,” technology writer Julian Dibbell detailed the surreal existence of workers in China who spend twelve hours a night scrambling for treasure inside the massively multiplayer online (MMO) gaming environment World of Warcraft. The laborers collect virtual coins from … Continue reading “Live Gamer Aims to Civilize the Gray Market for Virtual Goods”

Kayak, SideStep Will Travel Together in Rare East-Buys-West Acquisition

In one of the largest venture-backed deals of the year, discount travel search site Kayak.com, based in Norwalk, CT, has raised $196 million to purchase rival SideStep of Santa Clara, CA. While the two companies’ websites will continue to operate separately, according to a press release issued today, the combined organization will control the Web’s … Continue reading “Kayak, SideStep Will Travel Together in Rare East-Buys-West Acquisition”

Avid Names Greenfield New CEO

Avid Technology, the Tewksbury, MA-based maker of industry-leading tools for video, film and audio editing and 3-D animation, announced Wednesday that interim CEO Nancy Hawthorne (who replaced former CEO David Krall in August) has been succeeded by former GXS and Peregrine Systems CEO Gary Greenfield. Avid is widely considered by investors to have flubbed its … Continue reading “Avid Names Greenfield New CEO”

Hobnox Offers Intelligent Music Videos for the “Empty V” Crowd

Many bands have hours of video documenting their performances and their touring adventures, but their options for getting this material out to fans aren’t very broad. There’s MTV on the professional end and MySpace on the popular end, and not much in between. But now Hobnox, a German company that has set up its U.S. … Continue reading “Hobnox Offers Intelligent Music Videos for the “Empty V” Crowd”

A Big Drop in the Bucket for Drupal

Apparently, the days when a computer science graduate student can invent some cool Web software and raise a few million dollars to build a company around it are not over. Brand new (less than a month old) North Andover, MA, startup Acquia announced yesterday that it’s raised $7 million to market software and services in … Continue reading “A Big Drop in the Bucket for Drupal”

Virtualization Player GlassHouse Registers for $100 Million IPO

GlassHouse Technologies of Framingham, MA, which provides data center management consulting services and Internet-based data backup services, registered Tuesday for an initial public offering that the company hopes will raise up to $100 million. The company is a player in the red-hot market for corporate server virtualization, helping customers to plan and manage virtualization projects … Continue reading “Virtualization Player GlassHouse Registers for $100 Million IPO”

Plying Poop Power in Portsmouth

Hogs and dairy cows in the United States produce nearly 3 billion pounds of manure a day, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s over 1 trillion pounds per year—an unimaginable, truly Augean heap of waste. Unfortunately, farmers can’t simply divert a few rivers, as Hercules did, to wash it all away. But technology … Continue reading “Plying Poop Power in Portsmouth”

GEO2 Technologies Passes Clean-Diesel Filter Test

In Massachusetts alone, particulate-heavy diesel pollution helps cause 450 premature deaths, 700 heart attacks, 9,900 asthma attacks, and 60,000 missed work days every year, according to the Diesel Pollution Solution Coalition, a Boston-based environmental group. A bill before the state legislature would attack that problem by requiring all heavy-duty diesel vehicles owned, operated, or contracted … Continue reading “GEO2 Technologies Passes Clean-Diesel Filter Test”

The Challenge of Commercialization

The Boston Entrepreneurs’ Network sponsors a dinner and panel discussion on how companies can focus on defining customer needs while avoiding the pitfall of developing products that merely seem “cool.” Panelists include Jeffrey Bentley, CEO of CellTech Power; Michael Kuperstein, founder and CEO of Metaphor Solutions; and Edmond Walsh of specialty IP law firm Wolf, … Continue reading “The Challenge of Commercialization”

The Outlook for Technology Stocks in 2008

TIE-Boston’s Capital Markets SIG sponsors a panel with Ken Winston, technology analyst at Pioneer Investments, and Richard Lee, senior technology analyst at Westfield Capital, focusing on the major themes that will attract the interest of technology investors in 2008. Tickets $15 for TIE-Boston members. More information here.

When Startups Fail: Christopher Herot Talks Frankly About Zingdom’s Shutdown

Part of the reason high-tech entrepreneurs are attracted to Silicon Valley is the perception that it’s a place where risk-taking is encouraged. West Coast venture capital firms not only excuse failure, so this perception goes, but celebrate it: if a high-tech entrepreneur doesn’t have a couple of tanked companies on his resume, he probably wasn’t … Continue reading “When Startups Fail: Christopher Herot Talks Frankly About Zingdom’s Shutdown”

Microsoft Delivers Surprise Early Challenge to VMware

We’re all used to hearing from Microsoft (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MSFT]]) that big software releases will come later than promised, so it was a bit of a shock yesterday when the company said its “Hyper-V” virtualization technology—a part of Windows Server 2008 originally expected early next year—is ready for evaluation now. The news took some of the … Continue reading “Microsoft Delivers Surprise Early Challenge to VMware”

All (User-Generated) Content Doesn’t Want to Be Free: A Q&A with Cambridge Startup RightsAgent About Its New Approach to Copyrighting

You know that little “CC” you see here and there on the Web, in the margins of blogs or attached to photos on Flickr? It stands for the Creative Commons license, and until now, it’s basically been a way for content creators to say, “I don’t approve of traditional copyrights, so I’m just going to … Continue reading “All (User-Generated) Content Doesn’t Want to Be Free: A Q&A with Cambridge Startup RightsAgent About Its New Approach to Copyrighting”

Gamers, Grog, and GAMBIT: Singapore’s Video Game Industry Looks to MIT for Innovation

All fall I’ve been trying to free up time to attend Boston PostMortem, a gathering of Boston-area video game developers held once each month at The Skellig, an Irish pub in Waltham. When it turned out that a team from MIT’s GAMBIT video game program would be presenting at PostMortem this Tuesday, I persuaded Bob … Continue reading “Gamers, Grog, and GAMBIT: Singapore’s Video Game Industry Looks to MIT for Innovation”

IRobot Turns Packbot Into Roving Mapmaker

Military robotics powerhouse iRobot (NASDAQ: [[ticker:IRBT]]) said yesterday that it’s ready to sell a version of its Packbot robot equipped with laser detectors that will help soldiers build real-time maps of hazardous terrain or buildings without sending personnel into danger. “Situational awareness” is one of the big buzz phrases in modern robotics. If it is … Continue reading “IRobot Turns Packbot Into Roving Mapmaker”

Top Honors for 2K Boston, Harmonix at Spike TV Video Game Awards

Boston-area video game developers cleaned up at the Spike TV Video Game Awards in Las Vegas last weekend. Bioshock, the Xbox 360 first-person shooter game that we lauded back in August, garnered the Game of the Year award for local studio 2K Boston. And the Cambridge-based MTV subsidiary Harmonix Music Systems won Studio of the … Continue reading “Top Honors for 2K Boston, Harmonix at Spike TV Video Game Awards”

PeerApp, Pando Collaborate to make Peer-to-Peer Palatable to ISPs

When it comes to peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing systems such as BitTorrent and Gnutella, the technology world has a like-hate-love relationship. Content owners such as TV networks tentatively like them, since they make it cheaper to get high-bandwidth content like video out to viewers over the Internet. Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast hate them, … Continue reading “PeerApp, Pando Collaborate to make Peer-to-Peer Palatable to ISPs”

The Akamai Protocol: Firm Rewrites Internet Rules to Speed Up its Network

Cambridge-based networking company Akamai has placed more than 28,000 of its content distribution servers around the world, creating a kind of meta-Internet atop the real Internet. And now, to make applications work across that network faster, the company is replacing the standard communications protocols that make the Internet work—namely, the Transport Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) … Continue reading “The Akamai Protocol: Firm Rewrites Internet Rules to Speed Up its Network”

MERL Looking Haggard: Ramesh Raskar Leaving Mitsubishi For MIT Media Lab; Two Others Also Depart

The surge of major researchers leaving Cambridge’s Mitsubushi Electric Research Laboratory, which we first reported in July, was only the beginning of what’s looking like a steady flow. Today, we have three more departures to report: • Ramesh Raskar, an expert in computational photography who will join the Media Lab in the spring of 2008 … Continue reading “MERL Looking Haggard: Ramesh Raskar Leaving Mitsubishi For MIT Media Lab; Two Others Also Depart”

BBN to Build Translation System for DARPA

BBN Technologies of Cambridge said today that it has won a $5.67 million contract from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects agency to develop prototype optical character recognition and translation software for mobile devices and laptop and desktop computers that will turn printed and handwritten foreign-language text documents into English, including hard copy, PDF files, … Continue reading “BBN to Build Translation System for DARPA”

Mzinga Knows Harnessing the Wisdom of Crowds Takes Wisdom—and Work

“Crowdsourcing.” It’s often discussed in the business world as if it were a cheap and easy way to get groups of online volunteers to take over once-costly functions such as customer support. But the folks at Mzinga, in Burlington, MA, understand that the story is a bit more complicated. For one thing, creating and managing … Continue reading “Mzinga Knows Harnessing the Wisdom of Crowds Takes Wisdom—and Work”

Seamless: Computational Couture at the Museum of Science

From the museum’s website: “Fashionistas and techies unite at SEAMLESS, a fashion show and celebration showcasing emerging designers from around the globe and functional creations that push the boundaries of wearable technology. The Museum transforms into a catwalk for “computational couture” as models strut groundbreaking clothing to live media performances by video artists sosolimited and … Continue reading “Seamless: Computational Couture at the Museum of Science”

MIT Entrepreneurs Club

All members of the MIT, Harvard, and Wellesley communities are welcome at the weekly Tuesday night meetings of the MIT Entrepreneurs Club. Members and guests give 3-10 minute presentations on science and technology startup ideas and get 10 to 20 minutes of intense feedback. More information here.

Clean Diesel—One Way to Meet Higher CAFE Standards

The House of Representatives yesterday passed an energy bill that would require automakers to raise the fleet average fuel efficiency for passenger vehicles to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. It’s unclear what parts of the bill might ultimately become law, given strong opposition in the Senate and at the White House to other provisions … Continue reading “Clean Diesel—One Way to Meet Higher CAFE Standards”