President Barack Obama is famous for his affinity for his BlackBerry and science fairs, but the tech love goes a lot further than that. Todd Park, the U.S. chief technology officer, today described the President as having a “very high geek quotient” with a “go go go” attitude when it comes to new tech initiatives — which, yes, he likes in and of themselves, but more importantly as a means to an end.

The comments were made during a fireside chat at TC Disrupt in New York, where Park along with U.S. CIO Steven VanRoekel also announced the government’s big plans for opening up its data and courting developers.

“He is focused on how technology and data help you get the right healthcare for your family, pick the right college for your kid, help keep your kid safe, make the best decisions on save energy bill,” said Park. “It’s tech as a means to an end.”

At the sidelines of the stage, Park told me that when he and VanRoekel proposed the whole idea of open data to the President, he got very fired up and wanted to act fast. “He loved it. The first thing he said to us was ‘Go, go, go!’” he said.

But, yes, he is a bit of a geek, even still. On the subject of Obama and science fairs: “He hangs out five times as long as needed.”

VanRoekel noted also that how technology is an important factor in how people should conceive of economic recovery going forward. “When you look at U.S. history, the majority of Fortune 500 companies were founded in bad economic times,” he said, and at the same time they have been marked by “inflection points” in technology that helped to catapult these companies forward. “We have an opportunity to seize that [model] again,” he said.

As for the government itself, there is a general sense of risk aversion prevalent among of public servants when it comes to technology, VanRoekel admitted. That will play out especially with the proposed Data Act, which will put a lot of requirements on public servants. The two are trying to stem the possible tide of dissent early on with this: “I want to have conversations with Congress right now,” said VanRoekel, who wants to know: “What is the burden put on federal agencies in this process?”

But Park added, “If you can figure out a way to release their mojo, they can do amazing things.”

An interesting connection that he drew here was that public servants, by definition, are not motivated by money — something he said that he noticed characterized the best entrepreneurs when he was still in the private sector (he had a long carrer as a consultant at Booz Allen and also in health tech):

“When I was in the private sector one characteristic that differentiated the best entrepreneurs from the others was that they were not in it for the stock options but for a mission, to deliver something that was helpful… Every entrepreneurial journey it turns out is like this.”

While we all need water to survive, colleges and universities across the U.S. are betting that their students can survive without water of the bottled variety. As Bloomberg recently reported, more than 90 universities, including Brown and Harvard, are banning or restricting the sale of plastic water bottles. Considering that bottled water represents a $22 billion industry in the U.S. and that more than 9 billion gallons were sold last year, the actions of these universities aren’t likely to scare “Big Water,” as they represent just a fraction of sales. But it makes an important statement about bottled water nonetheless.

And let’s be honest: Whether or not you’ve recently hugged a tree, buying branded tap water in a plastic bottle for $1.50+ a pop seems … well … completely #$%^&-ing ridiculous — unless of course your village has yet to secure a reliable source of potable water. In that case, we understand. But, with colleges (and apparently Concord, Massachusetts) moving to or actually banning bottled water, a Pennsylvania-based startup, called Evive Station, has developed an innovative, ergonomic solution for providing campuses (and beyond) with a better alternative.

Like cellphone recycling startup, ecoATM, Evive has decided to go with the kiosk approach to the bottled water problem. With design help from Daedalus, the startup developed its “stations” to provide campuses with the world’s first on-site bottle cleaning and filtered water-dispensing service.

That doesn’t sound that cool, says the 16-year-old cynic in you. And you’re right, plenty of universities and organizations provide what are known as “sinks” and “dishwashers” and “hydration stations” often called “water fountains.” Fair enough. But even if you buy a plastic water bottle and use it once, it can get filthy pretty quickly, and sticking it in the dishwasher isn’t a workable solution.

So, what’s cool about Evive is that they offer users double-walled stainless steel reusable bottles, which means no more plastic, and lower carbon footprints. In turn, their kiosks filter municipal water, offer unlimited re-filling and cleaning of those steel bottles by way of a patent-pending process that only takes a minute. And everything other than the bottles are free.

The stations are also designed to dispense bag-in-box concentrated, flavored water drinks, hot beverages, and multivitamin options, so that pale, sickly looking college students that haven’t seen the light of day as they cram for exams can get their daily dose of vitamins.

But, seeing as the service is free, that Evive is offering to install these stations on campuses for free, and is sweetening the deal with something called the “Precycling Grant” — which essentially means that the more students use the station, the more Evive gives back to the university — you might wonder whether this is purely mission-driven or whether Evive actually has a business model. And that’s where it gets interesting. Or crazy, depending on your point of view.

During the minute that students wait for Evive Stations to clean and fill their water bottles, the kiosks’ 32-inch high-def screens serve them interactive advertisements, internship opportunities, campus messaging, and offers. Evive Co-founder and CFO Jason Yablinsky tells us that the team wants to use advertising to offset the costs. Students go to Evive’s website, create a user profile, at which point the site asks them for some relevant demographic info. After checking appropriate boxes, they receive a redemption code which is linked to an RFID tag inside their new bottle.

Each time they go to a kiosk, they scan their bottle’s tag, and the cleaning and re-filling begins. The demographic data they collected from the student on their site is connected with the RFID tag, and they’re then served targeted ads that are relevant to their age, the classes they’re taking, what year they are, etc. While those ads and job opportunities play on the screen, students can request more information or post/tweet messages to their social media profiles linked to their user profiles.

Evive also plans to make space both on the kiosks and the water bottles distributed to students available for branding (which it’s offering for free now, but for purchase down the road), as well offering discounts and deals at local restaurants or coffee shops that will be relevant to hungry students looking for a bite, for example. Along with proximity ads that display digital billboards when someone walks by the station. Plus, they plan to offer realtime tracking of the amount of plastic bottles saved from the landfill, which campuses can then display to feel good about how green they’re becoming. Good PR for them as well as saving them from the cost of distributing bottled water.

There’s obviously a lot going on — a lot of moving parts in the Evive user experience — and that may make it a tough sell for some universities. And, really, Evive is attempting to blend a number of different industries and operations in one — beverage distribution, cleaning, campus/organizational services, steel bottle manufacturing and distributing, and so on. It’s an ambitious project, but one that the team is hoping has enough appeal in cost-savings and sustainability that it will outweigh the rest.

Evive has enlisted Flextronics — an electronics manufacturing services provider which counts Cisco Systems, Eastman Kodak, HP, Motorola, Dell, Oracle, and more as customers — to produce its kiosks. The startup has also raised $2 million in seed funding to get the ball rolling, and is currently in the process of closing a much larger Series A to help it expand to universities across the country. The team is tentatively planning to be in up to 30 universities by the year’s end.

Right now, Evive is testing its system at West Virginia University, where it’s placed four stations in various buildings. Over 4K students have signed up to use Evive, and the co-founders tell us that they can’t distribute water bottles fast enough. So far, they’ve had a lot of interest from both big state schools and private colleges. They aren’t ready to say who they’re working with yet, but they’ve been encouraged by the interest both from campuses, organizations, and investors.

And to that point, the team is focusing on universities now, and for the near future, but eventually wants to open up its service to businesses, corporations, and more.

What do you think? Is Evive an innovative, ergonomic solution or just full of water?

For colleges, universities, or anyone else interested in the service, check out Evive at home here, or in the video below:

Vigilent, a company that provides intelligent energy management systems for data centers, telecommunications facilities and large buildings, has raised $6.7 million in investments led by Accel Partners. This investment is part of Accel’s new $100 million Big Data fund. Angel investors including Gaurav Garg and Peter Wagner also participated in this round.

The startup’s services help data centers with energy efficiency. As Vigilent’s CEO Mark Housley explains, one of the biggest challenges companies face when managing data centers is cooling. In fact, he says cooling accounts for 50 percent of data center energy costs, and downtime (caused by cooling disruptions) can cost as much as $5,600 per minute for a company.

Vigilent equips data centers with wireless sensors for real-time data collection. The data feeds into a server which determines if/where decreases or increases in cooling are required, and then sends a signal to the correct air conditioner, turning it on or off or adjusting the variable fan speed accordingly.

Basically, Vigilent uses the power of Big Analytics to optimize energy management in data centers and telco central offices. The system analyzes Big Data from hundreds to thousands of wireless sensors deployed throughout a single data center or portfolio-wide, to deliver real-time information informing an artificial intelligence engine at the core of the Vigilent system.

This provides constant updates to dynamically control cooling and air handling resources. The system adapts and balances resources to meet demand delivering reduced energy costs, and more. Because of the massive amount of historical data collected, Vigilent also aims to detect subtle correlations further down the long tail of historic data that would otherwise go unnoticed.

“Vigilent has demonstrated a unique ability to harness data center energy-use while providing actionable, non-intuitive operational energy management insights through Big Data analytics,” said Accel partner Rich Wong. “With proven technology and a significant track record with Fortune 50 companies, we believe Vigilent will have a transformative effect on energy efficiency in critical building infrastructure.”

The company, which has seen 90 deployments throughout the U.S., Canada and Japan, is profitable, and on track to double revenues again this year. Housely says Vigilent operated energy management solutions for Verizon and reduced cooling costs by 40 to 50 percent. Other clients include Akamai, Nttdocomo, and NTT Communications.

The new funding will be used for product development, working capital and to expand further into Europe and Asia.

The company faces competition from Synapsense.

Debuting last week at the TED Conference was a new product by a pharma startup, which has largely flown under the radar. The company’s name may not be familiar, but you may have noticed its smartly designed products in drug stores around the country.

Founded in 2008, Help Remedies is a pharma startup trying to make waves in an industry dominated by Goliaths by re-imagining the over-the-counter (OTC) medication experience. The startup is doing so with a line of OTC products, or medicine kits, distinguished by minimalist, eco-friendly packaging and smart design in an effort to help reduce the overwhelming amount of product choices most consumers experience when perusing the medication aisles at their local pharmacies.

Last week, Help Remedies launched a new product called “Help, I Want to Save a Life”, an easy-to-use, DIY bone marrow donor registry kit, which is a more targeted supplement to your standard Band-Aid fix as well as the company’s already existing “Help I’ve Cut Myself” kit.

While Help typically targets minor ailments like headaches and stuffy noses, in this case the company decided to take on something larger. Richard Fine, Help CEO, explains, “Each year thousands of people with leukemia and other blood cancers need a bone marrow transplant to live, yet fewer than half receive one. This is a simple and smart idea: By making registration a part of what people are already doing, we think we can get more people to register, and in doing so, help save lives.”

Help has partnered with DKMS, the world’s largest bone marrow donor center, to process help I want to save a life kits, which contain sterile swabs and a postage-paid envelope. Using the kit is simple: The potential donor swabs the blood from their cut, and then mails the swabs in the envelope to DKMS to begin the donor registration process. The idea for the product was conceived by Graham Douglas, a copywriter at agency Droga5, after his brother, who was fighting leukemia, received a life-saving bone marrow transplant.

Douglas embarked on a decade-long search for a simpler way to encourage people to sign up as bone marrow donors — but found little success. Recently, in teaching a class at the Miami Ad School in Brooklyn, he challenged his students to come up with a smart, simple solution to finding matches for the some 10,000 people who need bone marrow transplants every year. Together, they decided that the best approach would be to (somehow) convince pharma companies to include blood swab registry kits inside Band-Aid boxes or adhesive bandages.

He pitched the idea to every pharma and adhesive bandage company he could think of, without making much headway, until he received a note from Help Remedies. The company thought that the idea represented a great opportunity to tackle something bigger.

Help CEO Richard Fine explained:

Each year thousands of people with leukemia and other blood cancers need a bone marrow transplant to live, yet fewer than half receive one. This is a simple and smart idea: By making registration a part of what people are already doing, we think we can get more people to register, and in doing so, help save lives.

After seeing the potential, which was really a no-brainer given the company’s existing product set, Help teamed up with Douglas to develop a kit, partnering with DKMS, the world’s largest bone marrow donor center, to establish the program. The team designed the “I Want To Save A Life” kits to be as simple, and easy-to-use as possible: They consist of just a few sterile swabs and a postage-paid envelope addressed to DKMS.

And thus, using the kit is easy. Say you’re shaving and you happen to knick yourself while doing so. There’s your opportunity. Users just swab the blood from their cut, drop it into the long-flap, double-sealed envelope (which makes sure the contents aren’t jeopardized before they reach their destination), and mail that sucker to DKMS to begin the registration process.

Therein lies the brilliance. Generally speaking, the friction inherent to the process that keeps people from donating is perception that they either don’t know how to do it (and aren’t told how) or that it costs too much (money, time, education) to do so. Now, for $4 Help Remedies is offering a kit of 16 bandages that can help stop all those pesky cuts — with a bone marrow donor registration kit to boot.

Plus, they’re involving some smart advertising for the campaign. All in all, it may not be application of technology in the traditional sense, but as Peter Thiel has been known to define technological progress as “doing more with less,” this is a great example of a simple, elegant solution to an important health problem.

For more on Help Remedies, check them out at home here.

Remember Greenstart, the San Francisco-based startup accelerator trying to make cleantech sexy? Well, today, it’s taking a big leap in that direction. The organization announced it’s bumping up the amount of funding its companies will receive. In addition to the $15,000 in seed funding the incubator provides, startups now also have the opportunity to receive a $100,000 convertible note.

The convertible notes are being drawn from a $6 million fund, which will cover the next 60 companies participating in the program – meaning, the next 6 classes of startups over the next 3 years. Money for the fund, which is currently half committed to, has been raised from a broad group of investors, including angels, VC’s, and even family funds, all of which are interested in supporting these types of startups, Greenstart co-founder Mitch Lowe tells us.

With the additional financing available, the hope is that Greenstart will be able to attract even more developers, he says.

“This allows the startups in the program to stay focused on customer and product development instead of hitting the streets for investors,” explains Lowe. “It should also help Greenstart attract interest from a much wider pool of innovative entrepreneurs for our upcoming programs.”

Previously, Greenstart offered $25,000 in seed funding, but lowered that to $15,000 now that the companies have the extra $100k option. They’ve also lowered the equity stake from 6 percent to 5 percent, we’re told.

Like other startup incubators, Greenstart provides mentoring, discounts, office space, etc., plus it also recently launched an in-house design practice, led by new COO David Merkoski, the former Executive Creative Director of frog design. The design practice is meant to help participating companies with their UI and UX needs – something that’s often lacking in the cleantech space.

But the extra funding is the biggest news for this relatively new organization.

“$15,000 is Ramen money,” Lowe jokes. “With $115,000, you can really make some progress.”

Greenstart just opened up applications to its Fall 2012 program today – the deadline for submission is April 11th.

Houseplants can be hard to care for, even when watered regularly on a sunny windowsill. A new device from Swiss startup Koubachi takes the guesswork out of plant care through real-time monitoring and notifications when the plant needs attention.

“Many people don’t know what plant they have and what it needs,” says Koubachi co-founder and CEO Philipp Bolliger. “You try your best and still your plant withers.”

The company’s interactive plant care assistant tucks into a pot, tracking its water, fertilizer, humidity, temperature and light levels. Just tell it what species of flora you’ve got flowering, and it’ll tell you how and when to care for it. Koubachi analyzes your individual plant’s data in addition to your care habits to provide personalized feedback via email or iPhone push notifications. It also takes into account your geographic weather data and season.

The sensor sends data into the cloud via Wi-Fi. From there, it is analyzed and synced to the web and iPhone app. The interface provides an overview of your potted plant oasis. The sensor can be moved to different pots, calibrating its recommendations to each plant’s individual needs.

Koubachi is ready to analyze more than 135 plant species. Currently, the most popular plants are the Orchid (Phalaenopsis), the Weeping Fig (Ficus benjamina) and the Dragon Tree (Dracaena marginata). The company plans to have 5,000 plants by the end of the year, and their 10-person team includes a plant physiologist focused solely on adding new species to the database. The sensor is currently available for purchase in euros, with a planned U.S. retail rollout next year.

Australian-based travel marketplace Jayride.com has lined up $400,000 AUD in seed funding for its ride-sharing service, which also aggregates transportation data. The angel funding was led by Andrey Shirben, one of the first investors in Kenshoo, a digital marketing software company. In addition to helping in the financing, Shirben will also bring his digital marketing expertise to assist the company, as well as connect Jayride with other players in the global travel sector.

Compared with other current ride-sharing and carpooling startups, Jayride’s unique angle is to provide a single interface for finding all your transportation options, including commercial transport, and combining that data with the available ride-sharing options. This way, travelers will never be in a situation where they research a route and end up without options. Instead, when there are no ride-shares found on your planned route, Jayride will show you bus schedules, shuttles, relocation cars and other transportation options.

Shirben tells us that the angel round was supposed to be for $350,000 AUD, but after he put his money in, it became overbooked by 30-40%. Within a year, Jayride plans to raise another round led by a U.S. VC firm, as it prepares to expand its geographical transport data coverage.

“Jayride is the only land-transport marketplace attacking ride-sharing this way,” says Shirben of the startup’s transport data aggregation play. “There are many ride-sharing startups around the world, but almost every one fails this simple UX test: if you search from point A to point B outside a main thoroughfare, you find no search results. This is the main limitation of ride-sharing today.”

Shirben says that after meeting the Jayride founding team, and following up over the course of a few months, the decision to invest was an easy one. “Great team, disruptive idea, lots of business potential in a huge market,” he remarks.

Founded in 2008 by Rod Bishop and Ross Lin as a carpooling site, Jayride made the move to aggregate all travel data last fall. The service currently supports Australia, New Zealand, and is coming soon to the U.K. and Ireland.

Word got around way back in the middle of 2010 that Apple was building a monster data center near Maiden, South North Carolina. Later, it was shown to be hosting a ton of Nuance software, for obvious reasons. Less widely reported was the fact that nearby, scores of acres were being cleared for a solar array.

Now, it turns out that solar array will be the largest “end user-owned, onsite” one in the nation. They’re also planning a biogas/fuel-cell facility with similar credentials.

The information comes from Apple’s latest environmental report which, it should be noted, has nothing at all to do with the environmental factors involved in the actual manufacturing of Apple goods. Nor does the “Waste and Recycling” section detail the fact that Apple is regularly rated as being among the least eco-conscious packagers and device-builders in the world. But that is all by the by. The report is a voluntary, domestic one.

The facilities, neither of which is complete (with no date set for completion), are directly adjacent to the new datacenter, which is itself in a league of its own in terms of energy efficiency. The solar array will cover 100 acres and produce 20 megawatts or 42 million kilowatt-hours annually, depending on how you want to measure it. The fuel cell installation will be 5 megawatts, providing around the same kWh.

The datacenter has been estimated to require as much as 100 megawatts, however, so the rest will, of course, be made up by the coal plants powering much of North Carolina. And saying it’s the biggest “end user-owned, onsite” facility is putting rather a fine point on it. Still meritorious, just not revolutionary.

It seemed to me that in light of recent criticism of Apple’s policies regarding its manufacturing partners abroad (including my own), it was only fair to provide this information as well. Not because Apple somehow deserves it, but because it helps give an idea of how money can and must be invested in tech. China has invested trillions and decades to creating the manufacturing capabilities it has today. It would be folly to attempt the same in the US, starting today — a US-built iPhone is not a proposal that bears any scrutiny.

But there are great advantages to locating datacenters in the US, and in investing heavily in green power. Most major companies are doing so, and almost none are opting to manufacture goods locally. At the moment, even major investments like this one are peanuts compared to the costs and scale of energy consumption and manufacturing power required elsewhere, but it’s nice to see records being set this way by Apple, even if it’s only a drop in the bucket.

The full report can be downloaded here (PDF).

Ethical Community, an online, eco-friendly marketplace (which has plans for a snazzier name in the works!), has secured a £200,000 ($316,640 USD) round of seed funding from a syndicate of angel investors, the company is announcing today. Founded in 2009, the marketplace has signed up over 850 sellers from around the world, who have now listed over 7,000 eco-friendly, organic and natural products including clothing, jewelry, health and beauty products, food and drink items, pet items and more.

The new investors include AlertMe.com CEO and ASOS.com board member Mary Turner, founding partner at Alchemy Partners, Robert Barnes, venture investor Kelvin Au, and CEO of Orange Advertising Networks, Giuliano Stiglitz.

The company was started by entrepreneurs Liam Patterson and Jason Dainter, who had the idea to connect customers to sellers in a more personal way. People want to hear the stories behind the products, explains Patterson. “To conscious shoppers, this story is more important than the visual appearance of the product,” he says.

As someone who is often the recipient of gifts like handmade, dye-free soaps and homemade jewelry, I know from first-hand experience that it’s the story that convinces the eco-friendly shopper to make their purchase. I never receive just the item in question as my gift, I also receive the card telling me about the story behind the product, as well as a personal anecdote regarding the item’s makers.

To be able to make that same one-on-one connection on the sometimes more impersonal platform of the web is a challenge, but one that seems worth the attempt. To personalize the experience, sellers can now create blog posts on the Ethical Community website to share their stories and interests, as well as post videos from their homes or workshops.

Ethical Community, which is based in the startup-friendly Shoreditch area of London, says it will use the seed funding to grow its seller and shopper base, continue its expansion plans, and launch an improved version of the site in the spring.

Admits co-founder Dainter, the focus until today has been acquiring great sellers, but now they’re working on rebranding. “To be honest, the name and brand needs a revamp, and the funding will help in that respect. Structurally, we have a lot of changes coming.”

One of those changes will involve making the video system a more predominant part of the site, and integrating it more heavily into the social feeds.

“Our brand is very much about the personal connection with buyers and sellers. Video is a great way to do that, so we’re intending to build on that,” Dainter says.

Things are going smoothly for Tesla. Their big Model X debut was a success, their cars are pre-ordered to capacity, and new business opportunities are presenting themselves. They’re still posting a net loss, of course, but that was expected and will continue for another year or so.

Here are the most salient points from their latest earnings statement, released today:

• Total Q4 revenues: $39M (up 9% YOY)
• Total 2011 revenues: $204M (up 75% vs. 2010)
• Expected revenues for 2012: $550M-$600M (mostly in late 2012)
• Operating expenses: $89M (GAAP)
• Capital expenditures: $54M (mostly building production infrastructure)
• Net Q4 losses: $81M (GAAP) or $0.78 per share on ~104M shares
• Net 2011 losses: $264M (GAAP) or $2.53 per share
• Beta Model S vehicles are being built at the nearly complete factory – 30 out of 50
• Model S betas successfully do 0-60MPH in 4.5s
• 8000 total reservations for Model S
• Model X debut caused 500 reservations, with $5000 commitment each
• Model X to ship in late 2013 at around 10,000-15,000 units per year
• New deal with Daimler to develop a new Mercedes all-electric powertrain
• There are more Tesla battery packs at Daimler and Toyota than there are Roadsters

Everything seems to be going according to plan. 2012 should see the Model S hit the streets (in July) and Tesla-developed batteries and powertrains ship in partners’ vehicles. With luck we’ll have a chance to review the car and its interesting new dash system at that time.

The full earnings report and shareholder letter can be found at Tesla’s investor relations site.

Greenstart, the San Francisco-based startup accelerator dedicated to the cleantech industry – and more importantly, to making it “sexy” enough to attract investors – announced its second cadre of of companies this week. This time around, the organization is tightening its focus to concentrate solely on the intersection of I.T. and cleantech, specifically in areas of smart grid, the built environment, consumer services and transportation.

It’s also being highly selective in terms of the startups accepted into the program. Of the 152 applicants, only five companies got in.

“We’re trying to make cleantech a little sexier in the investment community,” explains Greenstart co-founder Mitch Lowe who runs the program alongside five other entrepreneurs and greentech/cleantech believers. “Cleantech has gotten kind of a bad rap lately, and we want to show that this intersection of cleantech and I.T. has a lot of good investment opportunities,” he says.

To keep the quality of the startups high, Greenstart only selected the few startups it felt would really appeal to investors. But the plan is to ramp up the numbers so that, by next year, the accelerator will have around 12 to 15 companies per program, meaning it will work with at least 30 per year.

Despite the small size, round two is actually one startup larger than Greenstart’s first group, which only included four companies out of 129 applications. The high bar, however, has led to some success in terms of its goal of investor appeal. Of the initial four, one is approaching the close of a Series A round, two are doing mid-six figure angel rounds closing this month, and one is not yet in need of funding.

With the launch of the second cadre, Greenstart is also launching an in-house design practice which will be led by its new COO, David Merkoski, the former Executive Creative Director of frog design. The organization realized the need for design talent in this space during its first run, says Lowe.

“There tends to be a high aptitude for development and a high understanding of design importance, but so far that cleantech/I.T. connection hasn’t inspired designers to be a part of that founding team yet,” Lowe says. “In general right now, entrepreneurs are still driven to create the next Facebook instead figuring out the next Opower,” he explains. “The responsibility is on us and others to show that it’s just as exciting – if not more exciting – to do something in this category.”

Eventually, the goal is to build out a team of designers, but the program will launch with Merkoski and five junior designers and interns.

With the next cadre underway, participating startups receive all the typical benefits – mentoring, discounts, office space, etc., as well as $25,000 in seed funding. The companies (below) will demo to investors when the three month program completes. Here’s a sneak peek as to what they’re up to:

Growing Energy Labs
Founders: Ryan Wartena, Cris Wagner
Growing Energy Labs enables advanced communications between energy storage, generation and loads via their ‘micro-utility in a box’.
Twitter handle: @growingenergy

kWhOURS
Founders: Colin Davis, Greg Davis, Shobin Uralil
kWhOURS develops a mobile data collection and management software platform for building energy auditors, reducing the time and cost of performing energy audits.
Twitter handle: @kWhOURS

Ridepal
Founders: Nathalie Criou & Mark Melville
Ridepal makes it affordable and simple for any size company to offer employee shuttles.
Twitter handle: @RidePal

Scoot Networks
Founder: Michael Keating
Scoot is a stealth startup transforming local transportation.
Twitter handle: @ScootNetworks

Smart Grid Billing
Founder: Henrik Westergaard
Smart Grid Billing intelligently shifts small business and residential energy consumption off peak, selling the shifted watts as a ‘power producer’ to ISOs.
Twitter handle: @SGBill

Sony is working on a new technology that authenticates devices via the power outlet, allowing for a few interesting applications. The system, based on the Japanese Felica standard, would allow authenticated power usage, power management for cafes and offices, as well as payments for power use. The system could authenticate with the power outlet via a chip inside the laptop or device or through a smartcard that user waves at the outlet.

According to the press release, the system will allow building and home owners to control power use from a central location and ensure people aren’t using power willy nilly.

This technology is definitely something we will soon see in modern buildings, at least in terms of energy maintenance. It may feel freaky to log in your power outlet, but if it keeps us from sucking down too many jiggawatts, we’ll probably all need to get on board.

via TheVerge

Scientists at the University of Cambridge in the UK have found a way to improve the efficiency of photovoltaic cells by as much as 25% through harnessing more of the sun’s spectrum than most traditional silicon-based solar cells can.

The new design, developed at the university’s Cavendish Laboratory in the Department of Physics, can absorb both red and blue light, and generates electrons from photons at a two-to-one ratio on the blue light spectrum. Most current solar cells lose blue photon energy as heat, leaving them unable to turn more than about 34% of the sunlight they absorb into power.

The team, led by professors Neil Greenham and Sir Richard Friend, recently published results in a paper. The hybrid cells have an added organic semiconductor called pentacene, which helps harness blue light energy to strengthen the electrical current coming from the cell, making the product up to 44% efficient.

The university’s team also innovated on how the cells are made, by producing the cells in bulk using a roll-to-roll printing technique. While cheaper, more efficient photovoltaics sound promising, there remain hurdles to be overcome. The greatest costs in building a solar power plant are installation hardware, labor and land, so a cheaper solar cell is only a piece of the puzzle.

On the surface, the StartX Demo Day last night could have looked like any other accelerator pushing its latest class of startups. Nine groups got on stage and fired off presentations about how they were working on something cool, and why they deserved funding.

But it wasn’t the rash of lightweight consumer applications you often see at other demo days. These were Stanford students, particularly technical graduate students, who have been nerding out on solving real problems for years in their labs and dorm rooms, and who are now in the middle of commercializing their hard work. Big-name investors from around Silicon Valley unsurprisingly showed up to check them out.

Before I get into the companies, which ran the gamut from health care to batteries to professional networking, it’s important to understand what StartX is. It’s the non-profit accelerator arm of Stanford Student Enterprises, which is a student-run, independent organization that handles a variety of stores, directories, financial services and other businesses for students. SSE is the business branch of the student government, and it’s independent enough from the university that StartX companies get maximum freedom. They own their own intellectual property, and neither StartX/SSE nor any other entity takes any equity.

The only requirements are that at least one cofounder of each applying company needs to have enrolled at Stanford within the last three academic quarters before the application period, and that person needs to own significant equity.

The program is young — it started in 2010 and this is its fifth class. but it’s on the right track. The energy in the room was what you feel at that rare tech event where everyone present knows they’re getting in early on something big.

We’ll no doubt be covering many of the presenting companies in more detail over the coming months, but here’s a quick look at each, in the order they presented:

MindSumo: Employers want to find smart students with skills and interests that they can develop. The problem is that student resumes are normally skimpy on this information because, well, students have mostly been in school and not the workforce. MindSumo’s answer: partner with employers to create “challenges,” or sets of questions for students to answer. For example, Recology, a large recycling and trash disposal company, is currently asking “What can you do or make with glass (A LOT of it)? Propose three alternate uses for recycled glass so that we can use our resources in an innovative way and keep them from landfill!” Currently in private beta, MindSumo has already been running challenges for seven companies (some of whom are paying), with 500 or so Stanford students participating.

AgeTak: Health care data is currently separated across insurers and health care providers, which makes it hard for doctors to do comprehensive analysis of diseases and other conditions. AgeTak uses distributed databases to combine, anonymize and get user consent for data sharing. Founder Pratik Verma, who recently got his PhD in computation chemistry from Stanford, is on a personal mission here. His father passed away in 2010 from nerve cell disease ALS, which has no known causes or cures. His father’s only option was to participate in extensive clinical trials over the years, in the hopes that doctors would make breakthroughs by discovering trends among those afflicted. But, as Pratik discovered, data from patients was not being shared by researchers because it was siloed at institutions, and held back by privacy concerns.

Through AgeTak, the anonymized and aggregated data can be used by analysts, researchers, physicians and pharmaceutical companies. Insurance giant United Health is already using it for a drug claims database, and OptumHealth is using it to offer graphs that show consumers how their health care costs stack up against the average. AgeTak has already made $3.7 million in revenue; it’s headquartered in Minnesota with offices in Menlo Park and India. Check out this recent writeup by Barb Darrow at GigaOm for more details.

Zoku: If you’re trying to build a network — let’s say, to help with your new startup — you want to know who out there is doing something relevant to your needs. But it can be hard sorting through all the noise on Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites to spot the key people and activities. Zoku lets you combine your email and social networking contacts, then pick out people and actions that you want to keep track of. It uses algorithms to filter for what you care about, then shows you the signals – people who are visiting town, changing jobs, or doing anything else relevant to what you might need to get done — in a dashboard on its site.

Vi Energy: In what looks like the most ambitious technical idea out of all the presentations, Vi Energy is developing a new kind of rechargeable battery that promises to be three times cheaper and last 50% longer than anything on the market today. Over the past twenty years, lithium ion batteries have dominated, but they can be unsafe, have relatively weak capacity, and are expensive. As a mature technology, there’s only marginal improvements to be had from them. Sister-cofounders Meghali and Sonali Chopra have, with the support of top scientific researchers, already created a pilot battery that uses significantly cheaper raw materials, can be easily synthesized, and has a unique spherical morphology with conductive codings for better performance. Their lab tests already show that the new battery lasts longer than the lithium ion ones on the market today.

Breakthrough: This online mental health treatment startup has been featured before — on stage at TechCrunch 50 (Disrupt) back in 2009. It uses secure video and chat features to help people connect with professionals to get the help they need privately and immediately. As Leena noted before, clients can search for providers (including psychiatrists, psychologists and nurses) on a variety of criteria, including price, speciality (i.e. depression, schizophrenia, post traumatic stress disorder), and gender. On a provider’s page you can see his or her education, experience, pricing for services, the insurance the professional accepts, and even a video introduction of the provider explaining his or her specialities. BreakThrough certifies all providers are credentialed professionals.

TipTopMed: How much will a trip to the doctor’s cost? How much, in particular, if you don’t have a good insurance plan? That’s a question more and more Americans are asking themselves — that TipTopMed is trying to answer. Its site will show local providers, and include information about them like the upfront price, and other details about provider specialties. Users can then book an appointment, and pay online. Providers — mostly small and medium-sized businesses — want this because they lose lots of money on patients who can’t or don’t pay. The site is launching at the end of this month, and will feature a proprietary database of Bay Area health care professionals.

Smit’s Crew: The only entertainment-oriented startup out of the mix, it offers a web site and mobile app that lets venue owners (bars, clubs, etc.) create a type of loyalty program for regular patrons. The app lets customers receive advance notifications of discounts and other deals, particularly on slow nights, then buy them immediately. They then go to the establishment and show the waiter or bartender the purchase; because payment has been received, the food and drinks can be delivered immediately, without the hassle of trying to pay with cash or credit card at, say, a packed bar. Even more importantly, the app lets owners keep track of which people are visiting the most regularly and buying the most — this allows them to figure out who they should focus on providing the best service to. The “crew” concept lets customers group themselves together around specific establishments, so the venue can provide group discounts if they show up.

There were also two more health care startups that presented, but they haven’t publicly launched yet so I won’t be including them here. All in all, as you can see, this is a serious bunch of companies, that are interested in solving hard real-world problems.

Venture firms and law offices in Silicon Valley have sensed the opportunity to get in early, and they’ve rallied behind the effort. VC supporters, who provide dollars and mentorship, include Benchmark Capital, General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, Charles River Ventures and Greylock Partners. Legal backers are Cooley LLP, Fenwick & West LLP, Dorsey & Whitney LLP, Goodwin Proctor, and Orrick. Resource partners include Amazon Web Services, First Republic Bank, Fog Creek Software, Github, Rackspace and Usabilla.

And even that distant global media and advertising conglomerate that owns TechCrunch is involved, it turns out, because it provides office space and other material support. So time for a Full Disclosure: I didn’t even know AOL was involved until I got to the event this afternoon — but good job, whoever made that call at my parent company. I also attended Stanford as an undergraduate, and while I have a variety of feelings about my alma mater, I generally expect a lot out of its graduates — maybe this connection is one reason I think StartX is pretty great? On the other hand, I worked at a key campus competitor to SSE, The Stanford Daily student-run newspaper. So maybe I’m biased against SSE and so my biases all equal themselves out….

The future of easy home energy monitoring may be a little bit closer, thanks to a government initiative designed to allow consumers direct access to their energy consumption data.

The White House’s new Green Button gives utilities a way to simplify and standardize sharing usage statistics with their customers via a one-click download. Two California providers, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric, already launched the feature, adding what is literally a green button to their websites. Utility companies in other regions are expected to implement it within the next year. Customers can click the button to download their personal usage information in one place.

The interesting aspect isn’t so much in the download itself, but what can be done with it. Federal officials hope this kind of data liberation will inspire developers to build apps and services that will help customers track and reduce their energy consumption. One study showed that subjects who were given access to their data reduced their usage by 8.7% just by tracking it. At scale, this could mean an annual savings of $32 billon per year on the country’s annual $369 billion power bill.

The Green Button was inspired by the government’s success with its Blue Button initiative, which allows veterans instant access to their health care data.

Quick, what’s the second most traded commodity in the world, after oil? Sorry, no: it’s not coffee. In fact, while hard data is scant, it may well be — of all things — carbon. No, really. According to the World Bank (PDF) , the global carbon market was worth a whopping 1.42 Facebooks US$142 billion in 2010.

Mind you, it’s not like container ships weighed down to the gills with graphite are crossing and recrossing the Pacific every week. What we’re actually talking about here is the trade in carbon offsets, ie, the absence of carbon. Very Zen, no? Techies should be comfortable with this notion; I seem to recall spending less time studying electrons than I did “holes,” ie their absence, while acquiring my EE degree…

Anyway, where there’s a $twelve-figures market, there are startups fighting for a share. In particular, there’s a battle on to see who will be the primary aggregator of carbon-market data. On one side, dominating the market, I give you the Goliaths Point Carbon, a tentacle of the Thomson Reuters kraken, providing “independent news, analysis and consulting services for European and global power, gas and carbon markets,” and Bloomberg New Energy Finance, doing much the same. On the other, I give you plucky little David eCO2Market, a Paris-based startup with an algorithmic sling.

Point Carbon and BNEF crank out tomes and tomes of research analysis and offer subscription-based information tools. eCO2Market dispenses with weighty reports, and disintermediates analysts and researchers. Instead it tries to build up the biggest, most thorough, and most up-to-date database of carbon-market information, and then gives its users algorithmic tools to search, slice, dice, and organize that data themselves. The more users pay, the better the tools. (They have a free tier, too, if you’re a data geek who wants to play with what they’ve got.)

“It’s our job to take this incredibly convoluted carbon area and put it into a nice little package for investors, environmentalists, everyone, and make it as easy as possible to find projects and their participants, buy credits, or make an investment,” says Chris Draper of eCO2Market. For instance, solar-power company ToughStuff uses eCO2Market’s data to find early-stage solar projects who might be ideal ToughStuff customers.

It’s anyone’s guess whether they’ll thrive. The carbon market is in something of a fraught state right now: aside from the embarrassing theft of millions of dollars worth of carbon credits by hackers a year ago, what the World Bank delicately refers to as “regulatory uncertainty” — ie the stalled attempts to cement a successor to the Kyoto Protocol — means that the near-term future is at best uncertain.

On the other hand, this year should see the launch of the Western Climate Initiative, a cap-and-trade system involving California, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec; and in the long run, though, cap-and-trade carbon markets are probably a growth bet. Either way, eCO2Market is an interesting example of a small startup disrupting an information market by replacing human-written research and analysis with big-data aggregation, algorithms, and visualization. The optimal solution probably features both…but it says here the scale will tip further towards the latter with every passing year.

Image: Global bubble map of carbon projects, from eCO2Market.

Thirty spokes meet at a nave;
Because of the hole we may use the wheel.
Clay is moulded into a vessel;
Because of the hollow we may use the cup.
Walls are built around a hearth;
Because of the doors we may use the house.
Thus tools come from what exists,
But use from what does not.
- Tao De Ching

There’s a carousel in a small Cape Cod town that we visited this summer and the kids rode it a few times. The carousel is quite old and quite handsome and it makes a great diversion of an evening. I’m reminded now of trying to take pictures of the kids while they rode the carousel. For a while I’d wave and try to get their attention as they roared past, their laughter dopplering around the edge of the curve, and then, after four or five tries I’d give up and just watch. It’s a wheel, an endless circle, designed to delight and enthuse and distract.

Reading the recent back and forth between Stephen Fry – an Apple apologist – and Mike Daisey – an Apple user/abuser – I’m reminded of that carousel. The gist is this: Mike Daisey woke up the NPR-listening world with his long piece of Foxconn for This American Life. It was a great piece – dramatic, educational, and eye-opening – but it’s definitely nothing we haven’t seen before. Some could say that it was The Jungle of Chinese manufacturing, a tell-all with just enough outrage to make us rethink a great horror. But the problem is this: Daisey is an actor and knows how to bring out the story, just as John Steinbeck was a writer and knew how to populate the Dust Bowl with Christ figures. That doesn’t make the story less effective – it makes it more so – but it does make the story less true.

The problem is the endless circle of blame and apology. Daisey is correct in many of his assumptions, but offers a way forward that is currently unenforceable. But if you argue against Daisey’s points, you’re an apologist. But, as Paul Krugman writes:

We keep going over the same ground here. The argument can be delineated like this: Foxconn is an evil sweatshop. Apple is a huge Foxconn customer. They should change things. Two of those things are true, a third is false.

To be clear, I’m with the crowd that says that Apple is, at best, ignorant of Foxconn’s problems and at worst ignoring them. I agree things must change and Apple is in a great position to do it. But I don’t agree with the first point. I’ve seen sweat shops and Foxconn is a factory. If many of the major brands (I recall that Ford was a customer at one factory I visited) knew that their promotional USB keys were made in a building that looked like a gulag, they’d be skewered. Here’s hoping they are, one day. However, Daisey’s Foxconn story – written outside of the factory – and my own research, written inside the factory – don’t jibe. His discoveries that people get sick or are injured in factories are naive and I suspect his sample size of employees who approached him is far smaller than we realize. To go into the Foxconn factory is to see a place staffed by college-age kids and engineers who work 10 or so hours a day building electronics. There is no great Dickensian work house nor are there sad-eyed madonnas of the assembly line chained to the soldering irons. This isn’t the mundanity of evil – this is just mundanity.

Nor am I saying that Daisey’s interviewees are malingerers with an axe to grind. I’m sure their lives are ruined or much harder thanks to Foxconn. The value of Daisey’s efforts is his ability to give these people a voice in an environment that would normally quash that voice. He’s doing what artists must do – reflecting a time and place through his own lens.

My own opinion is simple: Apple needs to do more for the people in its manufacturing chain. I will not pretend that Apple can simply wave a magic wand and make every Foxconn employee rich and happy, but it has the cash and the wherewithal to further disrupt the Chinese supply chain and improve the lot of Foxconn’s employees. But I also agree with what one Gawker commenter said: “I believe Tim Cook will do more good for those employees (and already has, in point of fact) than Mike Daisey ever will.” Apple on the aggregate couldn’t care less about our existence nor does it deserve our undying respect and admiration. On an personal level there are plenty of folks inside Apple working and worrying about worker’s rights in China, but as an entity we are talking supply chains and price management. Apple makes excellent tools for our digital age, that’s it. To defend or excoriate the company is like screaming into the wind. However, through their constant rejiggering and improvements, they have essentially created a Western, ISO-compliant factory environment in a corporate culture that used to force underperforming employees to stand outside wearing a sign that said “I am a bad worker.”

What Daisey did is made us think. Did he do it the right way, using the right tools? Absolutely not. Will he improve the lot of the workers he interviewed? I doubt it. But will his efforts – and the efforts of many who came before him – help bring the Chinese worker out of penury? Sure, eventually.

I opened this piece talking about a carousel in Cape Cod, a delightfully bourgeois setting for a piece on poverty wage labor practices. I get to go to Cape Cod and put my kids on a carousel because my job involves dicking around on the Internet all day (I suspect Daisey’s does too). My one wish is that every Foxconn employee, at some point in their lives, will be able to sit down to an unhurried meal, chat with family, and maybe ride a carousel. I think it’s in Foxconn’s best interests to ensure that that happens – and soon – and I think that we’re nearly there. Things will get better, I’m sure of it, and I also feel that they already have.

Electric car drivers deserve to see their positive impact on the environment and their wallets, but the official mobile apps for the Nissan LEAF and Chevy Volt only display remaining battery. GreenCharge is a new iOS app released today that displays your car’s remaining charge, but also its current range, the local energy price, a log of its usage, and your cost and carbon reduction versus driving a gasoline vehicle. Finally, an app that shows how you’re saving both kinds of green.

The app was developed by Xatori Inc, creators of PlugShare, the largest electric vehicle charging network in the United States. It’s the second product from the Palo Alto-based company, fueled by $400,000 in seed funding and three full-time employees. CEO Forrest North engineered for Tesla and was the CEO of electric vehicle component company Mission Motors. CTO Armen Petrosian developed anodes for Amprius and was on the Stanford Solar Car Team.

Just like the official LEAF and Volt apps, the $9.99 GreenCharge wirelessly connects to your car via cell signals know as telematics. Once authorized, GreenCharge continuously records your EV’s usage creating a logbook of your total, peak, and average energy expenditure. GreenCharge ties this to local energy costs, providing the most accurate way to determine the cost of driving a electric car.

The app also gives you plenty to feel good about. You’ll see your monetary savings and the pounds of carbon offset by not driving a gas guzzler. You can put some friendly pressure on others to consider electric vehicles by sharing how much money you saved to Facebook, Twitter, or email.

Since Xatori’s PlugShare app is already free, it might make sense to add its functionality within a tab of GreenCharge for easy access. The ability to share other stats beyond money saved would useful too. An Android version of GreenCharge on the way.

A vague sense of helping the environment isn’t enough. EV sales won’t surge until their financial benefits become common knowledge.  By educating drivers and their social networks, GreenCharge could get the mainstream to plug in.

Today two musicians sat down with me to have a chat: Andy Ross of OK Go, and Eytan Oren of Eytan and the Embassy. But we weren’t there to talk music.

The dynamic duo actually built an iPhone app called InBloom — a Yelp-style application that offers up sustainable businesses and eco-friendly/dietary food retailers based on location — and sat down with me to tell us how it came to be, and what it’s all about.

The application is available now from the Apple App Store for free, and if eating healthy and loving our Mother Earth are important to you, InBloom is definitely on the top of my list of recommendations for you.

Buildings are blamed for as much as 40% of U.S. energy consumption, and while green construction is on the rise, identifying the best ways to make an older building more efficient can be a tedious manual endeavor. Retroficiency, whose aim is to disrupt the energy efficiency market, eases the process with the help of extensive data sets and predictive analytics.

Greening an old building traditionally involves a walk-through analysis or diagnostic hardware installation, but the Boston-based company’s new Virtual Energy Assessment (VEA) tool shows energy service providers which changes within the building will have the greatest impact on its efficiency. Retroficiency focuses on commercial real estate, which uses 18% of the country’s energy and spending close to $108 billion annually.

“The heavy lifting that takes weeks or months to do manually, we can do in minutes,” says Co-Founder and CEO Bennett Fisher.

Some of the things VEA might observe about a building are that the lighting turns on three hours before anyone arrives, or that heating and cooling systems sometimes operate simultaneously.

The product’s technology is largely powered by the company’s November acquisition of of Nexamp’s Clean Energy Solutions. To analyze a structure, VEA only requires the building address and a year’s worth of energy use interval data, compressing a process that can take several months into several minutes. This helps energy service providers quickly identify which buildings in their network have the highest efficiency improvement potential and what specific improvements will have the greatest impact within each of those buildings.

“Our mission is to scale energy efficiency,” says Fisher, “It’s what needs to happen if we want to make a dent in the environmental and carbon problem.”

Image by Retroficiency