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/

EMC Reportedly Acquiring Online Backup Startup Mozy for $76 Million

As broadband Internet connectivity spreads, the data pipes into homes and small businesses are becoming wide enough to regularly send large amounts of data to the cloud of servers on the Internet, making online data backup a real business. The niche has attracted a growing list of startups—with the usual selection of funny names, such … Continue reading “EMC Reportedly Acquiring Online Backup Startup Mozy for $76 Million”

Reed Sturtevant: New Force for Microsoft in Boston is Veteran of Many Startups

If anyone can bring a startup sensibility to a software giant like Microsoft, it’s Reed Sturtevant. The MIT dropout, who left his position as CTO at over-50 social networking site Eons on Friday to spearhead a new Cambridge-based development team for Microsoft, has been CEO or CTO of at least eleven technology startups. Some of … Continue reading “Reed Sturtevant: New Force for Microsoft in Boston is Veteran of Many Startups”

Funders Commit $100 Million More for GreatPoint’s Coal-to-Gas Technology

Not so many decades ago, natural gas was considered a nuisance—a dangerous explosive to be vented from underground pockets and flared so that miners and drillers could get at the good stuff, oil and coal. But today natural gas is seen as coal’s cleaner cousin, and one Cambridge startup, GreatPoint Energy, has spent the last … Continue reading “Funders Commit $100 Million More for GreatPoint’s Coal-to-Gas Technology”

LocaModa: Outfitter for “The Web Outside”

It takes cajones to say your company is going to be “the Google of” anything, whether it’s the “the Google of personal finance” or “the Google of lunch trucks.” But that’s the phrasing used by Stephen Randall, CEO of Somerville startup LocaModa, which he says is on its way to becoming “the Google of the … Continue reading “LocaModa: Outfitter for “The Web Outside””

BioEngine: One Step Closer to Artificial Liver Device

For almost as long as surgeons have been transplanting organs such as hearts, livers, and lungs, they’ve been frustrated by the scarcity of available organs, and have imagined a future where artificial organs might ease the shortage. One local transplant surgeon, Massachusetts General Hospital’s Joseph Vacanti, has spent more than twenty years working toward that … Continue reading “BioEngine: One Step Closer to Artificial Liver Device”

Boston Blogtoberfest 2007

Graphic artist / designer / marketer / blogger Jenny Frazier of Alleyesonjenny.com and JennyFrazierDesign.com is organizing this second annual beer bash for Boston bloggers. She’s calling it “a chance to put down the mouse, step away from the keyboard, and meet some of your favorite Boston bloggers face to face in a casual setting.” Register … Continue reading “Boston Blogtoberfest 2007”

Mobile Entrepreneurs: Social Networking Good, Carriers Bad

On Monday night Orange Labs Boston (which is actually in Cambridge) hosted the fall’s first Mobile Monday Boston event, the Beantown version of a tradition that began in Helsinki, Finland, in 2000 and has now spread to 50 cities around the world. A panel on social networking applications led by Orange Labs’ director of commercial … Continue reading “Mobile Entrepreneurs: Social Networking Good, Carriers Bad”

My Speech in Second Life: Moshing with Metaverse-Molders

Note to self: Next time you give a keynote speech in Second Life, tickle your avatar every once in a while to keep it awake. I was slightly embarrassed yesterday at Life 2.0, a virtual conference organized inside the virtual world Second Life by multimedia publisher CMP, when I realized that I’d been lecturing for … Continue reading “My Speech in Second Life: Moshing with Metaverse-Molders”

Nokia Assimilates Boston Mobile-Marketing Firm

Enpocket, a privately held Boston multimedia advertising firm that has created mobile websites and text-messaging-based marketing campaigns for the likes of CNBC, Ford, and MTV, will be acquired by Finnish mobile technology giant Nokia (NYSE: NOK), the two companies announced today. Enpocket was formed in September 2001 as a spinoff of U.S.-based online media technology … Continue reading “Nokia Assimilates Boston Mobile-Marketing Firm”

Blogging from Walden Woods with Utterz

Would Henry David Thoreau have been a blogger? I think he might have been. And if he’d had a cell phone and a voice blogging service like Utterz—launched today by Maynard, MA, startup RPM Communications—he could have blogged all of Walden right from his little cabin in the woods. Thoreau is on my brain because … Continue reading “Blogging from Walden Woods with Utterz”

Xconomy Correspondent to Keynote Life 2.0 Summit in Second Life

Xconomy chief correspondent Wade Roush will give the opening keynote talk for this week’s Life 2.0 Summit inside the virtual world Second Life. Produced by CMP Technology/Dr. Dobb’s Journal, Life 2.0 is a quarterly virtual conference on metaverse technology and best-practice for software developers and business stakeholders seeking to understand and use Second Life and … Continue reading “Xconomy Correspondent to Keynote Life 2.0 Summit in Second Life”

With PicoCricket, MIT Spinoff is Out to Prove Computer Toys Aren’t Just for Boys

As a boy growing up in the early 1970s, I owned my share of plastic space toys, robots, ray guns, and construction sets. But one of the toys I remember most fondly was my grandmother’s “Make-It Box,” a picnic basket full of household items such as empty oatmeal cartons, egg crates, paper-towel rolls, pipe cleaners, … Continue reading “With PicoCricket, MIT Spinoff is Out to Prove Computer Toys Aren’t Just for Boys”

Fine Art on your Phone: Boston Museum Goes Mobile

You don’t have to go to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to appreciate its amazing array of paintings, prints, sculptures, and artifacts: thanks to an aggressive digital-capture effort, the MFA has the largest image database of any art museum in the world, all freely browsable on the Web. And now, you can even … Continue reading “Fine Art on your Phone: Boston Museum Goes Mobile”

Transforming Celebrity Blog Gossip into the Stuff of Fantasy

First there was fantasy baseball: competitions where participants buy rosters of athletes at the beginning of the season and watch their imaginary teams rise and fall in the “standings” based on the real players’ statistics. Then came fantasy football, fantasy basketball, fantasy name-your-sport, fantasy investing (e.g. The UpDown) and even Fantasy Congress—in short, a fantasy … Continue reading “Transforming Celebrity Blog Gossip into the Stuff of Fantasy”

VMware Snaps Up Swiss Software Suite, Sees Stock Swell

Stock in VMware (NYSE: VMW), the skyrocketing subsidiary of Hopkinton-based storage-systems giant EMC (NYSE: EMC), blew past analysts’ expected ceiling today after the company announced the acquisition of Dunes Technologies, a Swiss startup that makes software that automates the management of virtualized computing systems. VMware stock briefly peaked at about $82 per share—well above the … Continue reading “VMware Snaps Up Swiss Software Suite, Sees Stock Swell”

Rich Stew at Web Innovators Bash

If you’re hungry for a taste of Web 2.0 technology, Boston style, just attend one of the Web Innovators Group meetings, hosted every other month or so by David Beisel, a vice president in the Cambridge office of Menlo Park, CA-based venture firm Venrock. Last night’s gathering, the 14th in the series, filled the second-floor … Continue reading “Rich Stew at Web Innovators Bash”

The Fourth Screen: Frame Media Turns Digital Picture Frames into Information Portals

When content producers want to brag about their multimedia strategies, they often say they’re getting their material out to “all three screens,” meaning TV networks, Internet video sites, and Internet-enabled mobile phones. But while it might not be on your radar screen yet, there’s an emerging “fourth screen” showing up in some homes and offices: … Continue reading “The Fourth Screen: Frame Media Turns Digital Picture Frames into Information Portals”

Apple and Starbucks to Boston: Drop Dead (When it Comes to Music)

My, Apple makes life fun. Every week there’s something new to awe at, or argue about; something kindly or incredibly innovative that the company has done, and something crazy-making. Today I’m feeling grateful to Mr. Jobs for offering $100 in store credit to people like myself who bought the 8-gigabyte iPhone for $599 two months … Continue reading “Apple and Starbucks to Boston: Drop Dead (When it Comes to Music)”

Tech Networking Nirvana on Lansdowne Street

My ears are still ringing from the din last night at Tequila Rain, where hundreds of local digerati gathered for the first TECH Cocktail Boston. Aside from the the Nintendo Wii boxing matches sponsored by Waltham-based search company ZoomInfo and the free vodka-and-Red-Bulls, the most head-pounding thing about the gathering was its sheer size and … Continue reading “Tech Networking Nirvana on Lansdowne Street”

That Dinner You Charged on Your iCache at Hamersley’s: $360. Not Having to Worry About Stolen Credit Cards: Priceless.

If you live inside a Norman Rockwell painting or a Frank Capra movie, then perhaps everyone you interact with knows you by sight and can vouch for your identity. But in the real world, we tote around all sorts of digitally encoded data to verify that we’re entitled to carry out our daily business: the … Continue reading “That Dinner You Charged on Your iCache at Hamersley’s: $360. Not Having to Worry About Stolen Credit Cards: Priceless.”

The UpDown: Fantasy Stock Investing with Real Money at Stake

A handful of websites have turned user-generated content into figurative gold: think YouTube, which started with $11.5 million in venture capital, convinced a few hundred thousand amateurs to upload their home videos, and got purchased by Google for $1.65 billion. But now a trio of Harvard Business School students has launched a Web business designed … Continue reading “The UpDown: Fantasy Stock Investing with Real Money at Stake”

$12.3 Million Second Round for Quattro Wireless

As more content migrates to the mobile Web—websites customized for the smaller screens of cell phones and other mobile devices—all of the Web’s usual mechanisms for monetizing that content are also migrating, or being recreated. Waltham, MA, startup Quattro Wireless is one of the companies in this space, helping publishers create websites customized for mobile … Continue reading “$12.3 Million Second Round for Quattro Wireless”

Go East, Young Man: How Clean Tech Drew Two Venture Insiders from the Bay Area to the Bay State

If there is a central incubator for “clean-tech” businesses, it’s California. Stiff environmental regulations, generous tax incentives, top-ranked research universities and national labs, abundant capital, a huge potential market, and a Governator who takes global warming for real make the Golden State the nation’s undisputed leader in renewable energy innovation. Of the 10 investment firms … Continue reading “Go East, Young Man: How Clean Tech Drew Two Venture Insiders from the Bay Area to the Bay State”

MIT Plans to Win DARPA Robot Car Challenge

Driving in urban traffic is a stupendously tricky task demanding a constant stream of split-second, almost subconscious decisions. In fact, if you give it too much thought—Am I driving inside the lane markers? How much space should I give the car ahead of me? Who got to this intersection first? Is that old lady going … Continue reading “MIT Plans to Win DARPA Robot Car Challenge”

Adobe Snatches Up Stars from Crumbling Mitsubishi Lab—Creates Boston Research Outpost

Adobe Systems, the San Jose, CA-based company whose graphics and visual design programs are used by millions of people every day, has hired at least three prominent Boston-area computer scientists away from Cambridge’s troubled Mitsubushi Electric Research Laboratory (MERL) to form Adobe’s first significant research outpost outside the West Coast. And more MERL researchers could … Continue reading “Adobe Snatches Up Stars from Crumbling Mitsubishi Lab—Creates Boston Research Outpost”

Sure, You Can Watch Video on Your Phone—If You Can Find It; Andover-based Veveo Wants to Help

Some of the time we spend viewing video on the Internet is time stolen from older types of media consumption, such as watching network television. But thanks to broadband-connected mobile devices, Internet video is also filling up those interstitial moments when we weren’t previously jacked into the mediasphere—on the bus, for example, or at the … Continue reading “Sure, You Can Watch Video on Your Phone—If You Can Find It; Andover-based Veveo Wants to Help”

Accord Could Re-Ignite MIT’s Clean Energy Business Plan Competition

Imagine if the Oscars, the Tonys, the Nobels, and the Pulitzers were all announced on the same day. The individual prize winners, no matter how stellar, might get a bit lost in the glare. Followers of New England’s renewable-energy sector feared something like that might happen this spring, when local groups conducted not one but … Continue reading “Accord Could Re-Ignite MIT’s Clean Energy Business Plan Competition”

Merger Brewing Between New England Energy Innovation Collaborative, Clean Energy Council

The “green” energy business is growing so quickly in Massachusetts that it will soon leapfrog textiles to become Massachusetts’ 10th-largest industry, according to a survey released earlier this month. In the latest sign of the ferment, the leader of the New England Energy Innovation Collaborative (NEEIC)—a non-profit group launched by the venture-capital community last year … Continue reading “Merger Brewing Between New England Energy Innovation Collaborative, Clean Energy Council”

Online Marketing for Dummies—and for People with Better Things to Do

I know plenty of people who have all of the ingredients for business success today, save one. They have a keen talent. They can turn out cool products or services. They know how to line up financial backing and keep account books. They’re “people people,” meaning they actually like to interact with others all day … Continue reading “Online Marketing for Dummies—and for People with Better Things to Do”

Conduit Labs: “Bored of the Same Old Social Networks, Virtual Worlds, and Massively Multiplayer Online Environments”

Here at Xconomy we’re keeping a long list of recently funded, stealth-mode technology startups that have potentially interesting stories to tell but aren’t quite ready for real publicity. It’s certainly encouraging to see so many new ventures springing up in the neighborhood. But it can also be frustrating to realize that it might be weeks … Continue reading “Conduit Labs: “Bored of the Same Old Social Networks, Virtual Worlds, and Massively Multiplayer Online Environments””

Reminiscing on the Roomba

iRobot, Boston’s (well, Burlington’s) very own robotics company, announced its newest line of Roomba robot vacuum cleaners today. The company’s intrepid saucer-shaped gadgets, which zoom across carpets and hardwood floors bouncing off walls and other obstacles until they’ve sucked up every last crumb and cat hair, have already won fame as history’s most successful consumer … Continue reading “Reminiscing on the Roomba”

EMC Stock Shows Upward Movement as VMware Rockets into $60s (Wed. Update—Make that $70s)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Update of Wednesday, August 22: We can’t help but watch with some astonishment this morning as VMware continues to climb ever higher. By noon, the stock was up another nearly $7 a share (10.5 percent for the day), to $72.80. EMC had inched up another 45 cents, to $19.73. Below is our original … Continue reading “EMC Stock Shows Upward Movement as VMware Rockets into $60s (Wed. Update—Make that $70s)”

Internet Media Sharing That’s As Simple as Turning on a TV

If you fancy yourself an amateur TV network exec, the Web now has any number of tools to help you create and broadcast your own personal multimedia channel. I’ve tested several, including SplashCast, Vizrea, Veodia, and Bubbleshare, and have several more on my list to try, such as MixerCast, Flektor, Stickam, Ustream, blip.tv, Vpod.tv, Kyte.tv, … Continue reading “Internet Media Sharing That’s As Simple as Turning on a TV”

Vlingo’s Adaptive Speech Recognition Promises an End to Typing on your Phone Keyboard

It’s the technology journalist’s downfall: The hot technology that you suspect isn’t quite ripe but you can’t help writing about anyway. In 2003, when I was a senior editor at MIT’s Technology Review (and, in the interest of full disclosure, Bob was editor in chief), speech recognition and natural-language processing were firmly in that category, … Continue reading “Vlingo’s Adaptive Speech Recognition Promises an End to Typing on your Phone Keyboard”

Quincy Company to Launch Year’s Second-Coolest Xbox Game

Don’t bother trying to call or e-mail me Tuesday morning. I’ll be in line at Best Buy waiting for my copy of Bioshock. The video game industry’s hype machine long ago anointed Halo 3, due in the United States on September 25, as the favored blockbuster for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console this year. But if … Continue reading “Quincy Company to Launch Year’s Second-Coolest Xbox Game”

Former MIT Scientist’s Company Puts 64 Processors on a Chip

For two years, chipmaking biggies AMD and Intel have been locked in the Battle of the Multi-core Chips. First Intel pitted its Xeon and Core 2 chips against AMD’s dual-processor Athlon 64, and now both companies are doubling the stakes, with Intel releasing the Quad-Core Xeon and AMD about to bring out a four-processor chip … Continue reading “Former MIT Scientist’s Company Puts 64 Processors on a Chip”

MIT Enterprise Forum Energy Special Interest Group

From the sponsors’ website: “Do you want to start a clean energy company, but don’t know where the market opportunity lies? Do you have an interesting clean energy technology but are looking for new markets where it might be used? Do you want to enter your exciting new technology in the 2008 Ignite Clean Energy … Continue reading “MIT Enterprise Forum Energy Special Interest Group”

Local Virtualization Firm Hoping to Ride the Wave of VMware’s Success

“Virtualization” and “sky high prices” seem to be going hand-in-hand this week. First came EMC (NYSE: EMC) subsidiary VMware’s mind-boggling IPO on Tuesday, the hottest stock debut since Google. Then, yesterday, came word that Citrix, a business software company that makes applications running on backend servers appear as if they are running on customers’ desktops, … Continue reading “Local Virtualization Firm Hoping to Ride the Wave of VMware’s Success”

Civilizing the Rental Market with Web 2.0 Tools

There are few things in life more stressful than finding a decent apartment—or, if you’re a property owner, finding a decent tenant. It’s often one of those frustrating situations where each party has to make a decision without sufficient information. Is this landlord charging a reasonable rent for the neighborhood? Will this guy pay up … Continue reading “Civilizing the Rental Market with Web 2.0 Tools”

Big Blue to Gather Software Brains in Littleton

IBM’s eight Massachusetts offices—most, the legacies of the local software companies the company has acquired over the years—are scattered around Boston like chips on a poker table. And now the company is about to rake them in. Big Blue (NYSE: IBM) said Tuesday that it will shift 3,400 jobs to a split campus paralleling Interstate … Continue reading “Big Blue to Gather Software Brains in Littleton”

Investors Light Fire Under VMware; Will it Spread to Other Virtualization Companies?

Shares of enterprise software maker VMware (NYSE:VMW) opened today at a stunning $50, a 72 percent increase over the level at which parent company EMC (NYSE: EMC) priced the subsidiary’s initial public offering yesterday. The stock fluctuated as the morning progressed but remained high, trading between $48 and $55 during the first hour of business … Continue reading “Investors Light Fire Under VMware; Will it Spread to Other Virtualization Companies?”

A Second Life for Windward Mark as Linden Lab’s New Cambridge Outpost Looks to the Sky

If you’ve spent any time in Second Life—or any other virtual world, for that matter—you know that the serious attractions are on the ground, not in the sky. The sky simply isn’t a priority for most virtual world-builders, who usually have their hands full just simulating players’ avatars and their interactions with virtual objects such … Continue reading “A Second Life for Windward Mark as Linden Lab’s New Cambridge Outpost Looks to the Sky”

Renewable Energy Clambake & Forum with Rep. William Delahunt

The Southern New England Enterprise Forum, a new organization based at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, will host a clambake and networking event focused on renewable energy at the Advanced Technology Manufacturing Center in Fall River. Rep. Bill Delahunt of the 10th District of Massachusetts will keynote the event, legislative calendar permitting. Tickets $20 via … Continue reading “Renewable Energy Clambake & Forum with Rep. William Delahunt”