Twitter creator wants to give away Square, his credit card payment gadget

Twitter was just the beginning. After dreaming up the innovative communication medium, Jack Dorsey is looking to revolutionize another core aspect of society -- money.

On Tuesday, Dorsey announced his new start-up, Square, which will let anyone with a cellphone or iPod become a merchant and accept credit card payments.

Square is a small plastic device that plugs into a gadget's headphone jack. Buyers swipe their credit cards through the machine, which then transmits the payment data to an application running on a connected iPhone or iPod Touch. (Android and Blackberry apps are in development, and computer software will be available later.)

You don't have to have the Square gadget or app to pay. You just need a credit card and an e-mail address to receive a receipt.

A select few cafes and small vendors are among Square's first beta testers. Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea in Venice will be one of the first in Southern California, starting as early as next week.

Beginning sometime early next year, Dorsey wants everyone to use Square.

"I think we're going to give the Squares away for free," Dorsey said on the phone from San Francisco on Tuesday, "because they're pretty cheap for us to make."

Skyline Solar taps auto parts maker for power plant components

Machines that used to stamp out car parts are now making arrays for solar panels. Credit: Skyline Solar.

Skyline Solar, a Silicon Valley start-up, has become the latest green energy company to tap the struggling auto industry’s manufacturing muscle.

The company announced today that components for its solar power plants were being made in a Troy, Mich., car factory operated by Cosma International, a division of auto manufacturing giant Magna International.

The same machines that stamp out doors, hoods and other car body parts are now making long metal arrays that hold Skyline’s photovoltaic panels.

“It’s literally just carving out a piece of an existing facility and putting through a product that for all intents and purposes could be a new make and model of the next family sedan,” said Bob MacDonald, Skyline’s chief executive.  “Every time there’s a new model year for a Ford Mustang, they have a tool and die set they put into this press. So you just have a different tool and die in there that forms a new shape for Skyline.”

The bottom line, said MacDonald, is that Skyline has slashed its capital costs by taking advantage of Cosma’s existing manufacturing capability. He said Skyline of Mountain View, Calif., has contracts in place for small-scale solar farms. He said he could not divulge the details of those contracts but noted that Skyline has begun to receive shipments of arrays from Michigan.

It’s also a good deal for Cosma, whose parent company has agreed to acquire Opel from General Motors.

“Renewable energy trends and forecast data suggest significant growth potential for this market -- we expect to participate in this growth potential,” Tracy Fuerst, a Magna spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

Fuerst said the company was manufacturing components for other solar companies, which she declined to identify because of confidentiality agreements.

Skyline is not the first solar start-up to beat a path to the Motor City. In September, Stirling Energy Systems of Scottsdale, Ariz., inked a contract with a Detroit-area company called Tower Automotive to make metal support structures for Stirling’s solar dishes.

The same month, solar panel and equipment makers agreed to set up shop in an abandoned Ford factory in Michigan.

 -- Todd Woody

Energy-efficient LED bulbs to light U.S. homes

Would you pay $39.95 for a light bulb?

Didn’t think so. But what if it used 90% less electricity than a standard incandescent bulb, cut greenhouse gas emissions and saved you an estimated $280 over its 25-year lifespan?

That’s the challenge facing Dutch start-up Lemnis Lighting today as it begins selling the American version of what apparently is the world’s first dimmable LED bulb compatible with home light fixtures.

LEDs -- light-emitting diodes -- are semiconductors that glow and are the great light hope for slashing carbon emissions from lighting, which consumes about 19% of energy production worldwide.

Lemnis says its Pharox60 LED lasts six times as long as an energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulb. But unlike CFLs, LEDS don’t contain toxic mercury.

Most often found in electronics equipment or in commercial lighting, LEDs tend to cast a cold light. Lemnis founder Warner Philips said the start-up spent considerable effort to engineer its 6-watt bulb to give off the warm white glow of a 60-watt incandescent.

“What we’ve been working on is to combine the ability to get a warm white light from an LED along with the energy savings,” said Philips, a great-grandson of the founder of the Philips lighting and electronics conglomerate.

“The final challenge is, how do you get people to understand that $40 for a light bulb is not expensive?” he added. “From Day One, they start to save money. The energy savings over the bulb’s lifetime vastly exceeds its cost.”

Philips said one solution would be for utilities to finance the cost of swapping a home’s incandescent bulbs for LEDs and add a fee to customers’ monthly bills. The utilities would profit if lower electricity demand allows them to avoid the expense of building power plants, he said.

And that $39.95 price? That’s a special offer -- the bulb retails for $49.95 -- good until Dec. 31. But Philips said he hopes sales will allow the price to remain at $39.95.

Lemnis, whose U.S. headquarters is in San Francisco, has sold 2.5 million LED bulbs in Europe and aims to sell 10 million worldwide by the end of 2010.

As production ramps up, Philips expects the price of the bulbs to fall. And the company has found one heavyweight early adopter: Google distributed 25,000 of Lemnis’ 5-watt LED bulbs to its employees on Earth Day this year.

-- Todd Woody

Green technology tops venture capital funding

Tesla Roadster is charged through a power plug at the Frankfurt Auto Show. The maker of the electric car got $82.5 million in venture capital funding in the third quarter. Credit: Frank Augstein/Associated Press

Green technology attracted the largest share of venture capital in the third quarter with global investments rising to $1.59 billion, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Cleantech Group and Deloitte.

That’s a 10% increase from the second quarter but still down 42% from the same period last year.

Dallas Kachan, managing director of the Cleantech Group, said the third-quarter numbers are preliminary and he expects total investment to have risen by 15% to 20% when the final figures are calculated.

“Clean tech continues its recovery despite the lowest level of venture capital investment overall since 1997,” said Kachan. “Clean tech has gone from a niche category to 27% of all venture investment. It eclipses the amount being currently invested in biotech and software.”

In a sign that government policy is driving green tech investment, the biggest deals of the third quarter were for companies that have been beneficiaries of federal loans and grants.

Silicon Valley solar panel maker Solyndra raised $198 million and also scored a $535-million loan guarantee to help finance construction of a solar module factory. Electric carmaker Tesla Motors, meanwhile, both took in $82.5 million in venture capital funding while receiving a $465 million low-interest government loan to help it build a factory to produce its Model S sports sedan.

“Large government grants are opening the floodgates for venture capital,” said Kachan.

 --Todd Woody

Could this be the end of electric power cords?

From the time of Thomas Edison, scientists have been trying to develop a system that would send electric power through the air without wires.

Now a Massachusetts company, WiTricity, says it will have just such a system on the market in about 18 months. The company, which has been developing its technology based on the work of MIT physicist Marin Soljacic, made the announcement at the prestigious TEDGlobal conference that ended Friday in Oxford in the U.K.

The company showed how a transmitting unit, which could be placed in a wall, could power a television set several feet away. The chief executive of the company, Eric Giler, also showed how the system could wirelessly charge a G1 cellphone equipped with an antenna unit so small it could fit inside the phone case.

An iPhone was part of the demonstration, too, but that phone's innards are so closely packed that the antenna had to be attached to the outside of the case.

Giler said the WiTricity system works on something called resonant magnetic coupling and is safe for humans. And on an environmental note, he said it could not only eliminate power cords but also tons of batteries used yearly to power household devices.

WiTricity showed a version of the technology in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Intel also is working on a wireless electricity system.

-- David Colker

Photos: Top, Eric Giler, chief executive of WiTricity, shows a cellphone that charges without the use of a  power cord. Credit: BBC. Bottom, a wireless electricity system uses a unit embedded in a wall to supply electrical power to devices in the room. Credit: WiTricity

Teched-out for Coachella? Try talking on sunshine

Recording sets, blogging live, posting Twitpics, checking apps, not to mention making good old-fashioned phone calls — the Coachella Valley Arts and Music Festival is hardly unplugged, no matter how far out in the desert. That said, finding an outlet to recharge your phone might be tricky. But finding sunshine won’t.

That’s where the FreeLoader Portable Phone Charger comes in handy. A little bigger than a deck of cards, this device uses solar panels to capture the sun’s energy and convert it into electrical current to power your phone, iPod and even most digital cameras and gaming systems. The charger, made by British company Solar Technology, operates on a lithium battery that should be charged three or four times before optimal usage. It goes for about $50.

Hey, when you're not at Coachella, the FreeLoader could make an excellent addition to earthquake kits.

-- Alexandra Le Tellier

Le Tellier is an editor for the new publication Brand X.

California plans to crack down on power-hungry TVs

That 52-inch, flat-screen TV on the family room wall may have a terrific picture, but there's a big drawback: It's an energy hog.

State regulators are getting ready to curb the growing power gluttony of TV sets by drafting the nation's first rules to require retailers to sell only the most energy efficient televisions starting in 2011.

The consumer electronics industry opposes the regulations, expected to pass in mid-2009, and claims that they could remove some TVs from store shelves and slightly boost sticker prices.

But the California Energy Commission is looking for ways to relieve the strain on the power grid. Officials say the standards, once fully in place, would reduce the state's annual energy needs by an amount equivalent to the power consumed by 86,400 homes.

During a peak viewing time when most sets are on, such as the Super Bowl, TVs in the state collectively suck up the equivalent of 40% of the power generated by the San Onofre nuclear power station running at full capacity. Televisions account for about 10% of the average Californian's monthly household electricity bill.

Some manufacturers could struggle to meet the new standards, particularly those that make plasma TVs. And the regulations could create a "gray" market, sending consumers intent on buying power-hungry models to Amazon.com and other Internet retailers based outside the state.

Read the full story here.

-- Marc Lifsher

Photo: Flat-screen TVs at Wilshire Home Entertainment in Thousand Oaks. Credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

Water-saving gadget does Cyber-Rain dance

CORRECTION: A previous version of this post said that, for homeowners who have more than an acre, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California offers a $630 rebate for each acre. The $630 rebate is for each water-saving device.

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It's another hot summer, and California is officially in a drought, according to the Governator. A Los Angeles company has come out with a water-saving solution.

The doodad, called Cyber-Rain XCI, attaches to sprinkler systems and wirelessly looks up online weather forecasts to determine how much to water the lawn. Hot, humid days will see Cyber-Rain doling out more water. Cool, cloudy days would result in less watering. And, of course, the gadget lays off the drink entirely on rainy days. Since it's a connected device, you can control the schedule and monitor the water use on a PC.

About 70% of household water consumption comes from outdoor watering, according to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. That includes water used in pools, power-hosing driveways and washing cars, as well as to keep the garden green.

One study by the Irvine Ranch Water District found that weather-based irrigation gadgets saved households more than 40 gallons of water a day, skimming roughly 10% off their total water use, according to Lynn Lipinski, spokeswoman for the MWD.

Cyber-Rain is made by a company of the same name founded by Los Angeles entrepreneur Reza Pourzia and funded by Funk Ventures in Santa Monica and Momentum Venture Management in Pasadena. It sells the gadget for about $350 on its website, as well as at Smart Home.

Price too much to swallow? Water districts around the country offer rebates on qualifying products. The MWD, which covers most of Los Angeles, gives an $80 rebate to homeowners who buy Cyber-Rain or one of a dozen other sprinkler controllers that qualify, if the landscape being watered is less than an acre. For those who have more than an acre, the district rebates $630 for each device. The district has put up a website where consumers can look up rebate information, apply for rebates and learn how to conserve water.

We haven't played with the device yet. Once we have, we'll post a follow-up on how things went and, if we're really good, how much green we were able to save while still keeping our garden green.

-- Alex Pham

Photo courtesy of Cyber-Rain