Monday, September 24, 2007

Inexpensive solar panels nearly ready for commercialization


We've been inching closer to low(er) cost solar panels (for the mainstream public to enjoy) for some time now, and apparently, AVA Solar Inc. is just about ready to start cranking out units that "will cost less than $1-per watt by the end of next year." The technology was reportedly developed by Colorado State University's Professor W.S. Sampath, and production is slated to begin soon in a "200-megawatt factory" that could employ some 500 individuals. Of note, it was said that the "cost to the consumer could be as low as $2 per watt," but even that figure purportedly rings up at about half the cost of current options.

[Via Slashdot, image courtesy of CSU]

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Big Brewers Gut Ad Spend, Sell More Beer

Augustine: Notice the point about spending less, yet their sales increased.  There is another example from a credit card company where they cut ad spending by 4/5ths (80%) and not only did they see no decrease in new cards acquired, in fact they got more cards acquired and higher spend in the same time period. While this was still a relatively small example that needs time to corroborate, it is a data point to illustrate the utter lack of effectiveness of traditional forms of advertising in this day and age.

As more and more of these examples come to light, it will further accelerate the "mass exodus" of dollars from traditional media -- funny how it's referred to as "measured media" -- to other forms of marketing, including online -- funny how it's referred to as "unmeasured media."



Source: http://adage.com/article?article_id=120644

Big Brewers Gut Ad Spend, Sell More Beer

Exclusive: Miller and A-B Move More Money to Unmeasured Media

Spend less on measured media, reap more sales.

That's appears to be the lesson from the big brewers, long among the steadiest and most stalwart users of traditional mass media, who are now pouring their ad dollars elsewhere at a froth-inducing rate.
Beer spending
Source: TNS Media Intelligence
According to TNS Media Intelligence, top brewers cut measured media spending a whopping 24%, about $131 million, during the first six months of 2007, following a 12% cut during 2006. At the same time, the brewers insist they haven't cut spending at all -- and in many cases have increased it.

They maintain those beer bucks are flowing into less-traditional sponsorship and promotional activities that services such as TNS don't pick up on. Moreover, as a result of the influx of smaller brands into the big brewers' portfolios, more of their ad budgets are being channeled into local media, which the brewers say TNS doesn't measure either.

Successful strategy
The net effect is the disappearance of nearly one in four dollars from measured media. Oh, and one other thing: As measured media has dropped off the charts this year, brewers' long-struggling sales trends have improved.

"We're not walking away from traditional media by any means, but we're using it more intelligently," said Jackie Woodward, VP-marketing services at Miller Brewing Co. "Some of those new uses are not things that TNS is going to measure."

Indeed. TNS figures show Miller's spending fell by $36 million, about 36% in the first half, even though while Ms. Woodward said outlays increased ahead of revenue growth vs. the same period last year.

An example of Miller's new approach, Ms. Woodward said, was a Miller Chill-themed sketch that appeared on NBC's "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" a few weeks ago. The sketch showed Mr. O'Brien's bandleader, Max Weinberg, starring in an absurd, obviously fake Japanese ad for Chill (which, incidentally, is not available anywhere in Asia). Because the ad was embedded in the show -- and, because it didn't say anything remotely positive about the brand, wasn't clearly an ad -- it was unlikely to be detected by media measurers.

Bar events
Other examples of Miller's tactics: a High Life-themed olympics of bar games in Chicago, co-developed with Tribune Co.'s properties there, that uses a smattering of print and online advertising to fuel a wide array of promotional events, as well as Miller Genuine Draft's "The Craft" concert series.

Beer marketers note that measuring services such as TNS tend to undercount outlays on local media, which is becoming a more crucial part of their strategies as they increasingly depend on import and craft brands that generally don't have national distribution.

"Brands like Stella Artois and Beck's obviously require a lot of local support, and it's not reported accurately, in our opinion," said Mark Wright, VP-corporate media for Anheuser-Busch, which earlier this year took over U.S. distribution and marketing of InBev's stable of import beers. "Actually, it's not my opinion; it's a fact that they have [spending estimates] wrong."

Mr. Wright said A-B's heavy investment in local sports programming -- including its position as the dominant alcohol player in stadium signage -- also tends to be undercounted. He said the only reduction in A-B's spending for this year was based on the absence of the Olympics, of which A-B is a major sponsor, compared with 2006. But that wouldn't account for the $50 million, or 21%, decline reported by TNS.

Shipments up
TNS, for its part, said it is measuring the use of traditional media by brewers accurately but that it's not uncommon to see steep declines in measured spending from marketers who target younger consumers, as brewers do.

"It's a broad generalization, but the advertisers and the categories that experience the largest declines are generally the companies whose customers skew younger," said Jon Swallen, senior VP-research at TNS. "Any smart marketer is going to identify where their customers are and try to reach them there."

On the latter point, the brewers appear to be succeeding: According to Beer Marketer's Insights, which was first to report the apparent spending declines, brewer shipments rose 2% during the period in which measured spending cratered, a healthy clip by the mature beer industry's modest standards.

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Breaking: Online Backup Startup Mozy Acquired By EMC For $76 million

Online storage startup Mozy, headquartered in Utah, has been acquired by EMC Corporation, a public storage company with a nearly $40 billion market cap. EMC paid $76 million for the company, according to two sources close to the deal.

We first covered Mozy in January 2006 as part of an overview of the current generation of online storage solutions. The company has a dead simple way for users to back up their computer hard drives online. Download their software (Mozy supports both Windows and Mac machines) and the backups occur slowly over time. If there is ever a problem, you can restore your hard drive from Mozy's servers.

Mozy's chief competitor is Carbonite, another company we've tracked over the last couple of years. Carbonite has raised $21 million in venture financing.

Mozy, by contrast, raised just $1.9 million in capital. The round, closed in May 2005, was led by Wasatch Ventures, with participation from Tim Draper and Novell co-founder Drew Major.

That's quite an exit for Mozy - $76 million on just $1.9 million raised. It's almost identical to StumbleUpon, which was acquired by eBay earlier this year for $75 million after raising just $1.5 million in venture capital.

Rumors circulated a year ago that Mozy was close to being acquired by Google for significantly less than this. The company eventually passed on the deal, which must have been a tough call. They clearly made the right choice in waiting.

Look for an official announcement of the Mozy acquisition in the next few weeks. Congratulations to Josh Coates, Mozy's CEO (who refuses to comment on the deal), and the rest of the Mozy team.

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10 Universities Paving The Way For Cellulosic Ethanol

The key to cracking the code for cellulosic ethanol — biofuel made from non-food crops and plant byproducts — could be under development in a university lab near you. While researchers have spent years trying to figure out how to effectively produce the alt-fuel, universities across the country have recently been working on moving the ball forward.

Here's our picks for 10 schools making significant strides in cellulosic ethanol research and production:

University of Tennessee (Knoxville, Tenn.): Last week, the executive committee of the University of Tennessee Board of Trustees approved a business partnership with Mascoma Corp. to jointly build and operate a five-million-gallon-per-year cellulosic ethanol biorefinery. The partnership is a result of the UT Biofuels Initiative, an effort to grow the biofuel industry in Tennessee.

University of Florida (Gainesville, Fla.): The University of Florida recently said it will build a cellulosic ethanol plant at a Florida Crystals Corp facility. The plant will be a research and development lab as well as a commercial facility and will produce between one and two million gallons of fuel each year. The plant is financed by a $20 million state grant. The school's Bioprocess Engineering Research Laboratory also has a sustained research program on biogasification of biomass; additional work in cellulosic ethanol is being done through the Florida Center for Renewable Chemicals and Fuels.

Iowa State University (Des Moines, Iowa): DuPont (DD) pledged $1 million to Iowa State University's New Century Farm. For info on other cellulosic ethanol initiatives at the school, check out their Office of Biorenewables Programs.

Purdue University (West Lafayette, Ind.): Chemical engineers from the school are working on a eco-friendly cellulosic ethanol production process that they say is more efficient than traditional methods and also suppresses the formation of carbon dioxide. Separately researchers from the University say they have an insight into the structural changes cornstalks go through in the ethanol-production process, which could "establish a viable method for large-scale production of ethanol from plant matter."

University of California, Davis (Davis, Calif.): Last year, Chevron Corp (CVX) announced that it would fund up to $25 million in research at UC Davis over five years to develop affordable, renewable transportation fuels from farm and forest residues, urban wastes and crops grown specifically for energy. UC Davis is also home to a lot of cleantech activity, including The California Biomass Collaborative, a statewide collaboration of government, industry, environmental groups, and educational institutions.

Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, Ga.): Chevron has also teamed up with the Georgia Institute of Technology with up to $12 million in funding for research to make cellulosic biofuels and "hydrogen viable" transportation fuels. The school has also partnered with Atlanta-based startup C2 Biofuels.

University of Massachusetts Amherst (Amherst, Mass.): Microbiology professor Susan Leschine, a leading authority on cellulose digesting microbes, founded SunEthanol. The company licenses microbe technology Leschine developed at UMass that converts biomass into ethanol using an efficient carbon-neutral process. In August, we chatted with SunEthanol's CEO Jef Sharp about the company's Series A funding.

University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, Calif.) & the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Urbana, Ill.): Let's not forget Berkeley and Illinois, which in February jointly received a whopping $500 million from British Petroleum (BP) for biofuels research. The funding is being used for the creation of the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), which will initially focus its research on biotechnology to produce biofuels, including ways to turn field waste, switchgrass, and algae into transportation fuels.

University of Minnesota (Minneapolis): Researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a way to convert sawdust and waste biomass directly into a mixture of gases, called syngas, that either be burned to generate electricity or made into liquid fuels.

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Sunday, September 23, 2007

Why knockoffs are good for fashion

James Surowiecki (author of the great book The Wisdom of Crowds) has a fantastic, tight little article about copyright and fashion in this week's New Yorker. Fashion designs aren't covered by copyright, and this means that couture designs are knocked off and sold at huge discounts in department stores and shops like H&M within seconds of appearing on the runway. This upsets many designers, but there's plenty of evidence that it's good for the industry as a whole -- the knockoffs sell to people who'd never buy the couture originals, so they don't really cannibalize sales; what's more, by making a hot new look ubiquitous, the knockoffs contribute to making it look tired and boring, which creates the market for next season's clothes.

This reminds me of the story of database copyrights, which exist in Europe and not the in the USA. Advocates for these monopolies argue that a copyright spurs investment and makes the industry bigger. But the fact is that the European database industry has stagnated over the past 25 years, while the US industry has grown 25-fold, and the biggest difference between the two is that European firms can prevent competition by using the database right.

Even though the evidence is that a database right has retarded the industry and limited growth, European database firms still profess a great love for their regulatory monopoly, and American firms still bemoan its absence.

The recipients of regulatory monopolies are like kids getting candy: they all believe that they need more, and nothing will convince them otherwise. But monopolies end up costing the public and the next generation of creators: by limiting competition in databases, Europe has created a smaller and less useful database industry. By encouraging competition in fashion, the world has created an easy means for all of us to get cheap clothes, while creating a huge amount of investment in the "next thing," making it easier for new designers to break into the field.

Designers' frustration at seeing their ideas mimicked is understandable. But this is a classic case where the cure may be worse than the disease. There's little evidence that knockoffs are damaging the business. Fashion sales have remained more than healthy--estimates value the global luxury-fashion sector at a hundred and thirty billion dollars-- and the high-end firms that so often see their designs copied have become stronger. More striking, a recent paper by the law professors Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman suggests that weak intellectual-property rules, far from hurting the fashion industry, have instead been integral to its success. The professors call this effect "the piracy paradox."

The paradox stems from the basic dilemma that underpins the economics of fashion: for the industry to keep growing, customers must like this year's designs, but they must also become dissatisfied with them, so that they'll buy next year's. Many other consumer businesses face a similar problem, but fashion--unlike, say, the technology industry--can't rely on improvements in power and performance to make old products obsolete. Raustiala and Sprigman argue persuasively that, in fashion, it's copying that serves this function, bringing about what they call "induced obsolescence." Copying enables designs and styles to move quickly from early adopters to the masses. And since no one cool wants to keep wearing something after everybody else is wearing it, the copying of designs helps fuel the incessant demand for something new.

Link (Thanks, Scott!)

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