Yet Another $1 Billion for Evergreen Solar, Alnylam and Novartis Extend Alliance, & More Deals

Roundup, deals, VC Rebecca Zacks wrote: I’m running out of “green” jokes to use in headlines describing the steady march of cash toward Evergreen Solar’s coffers. The latest example of that, plus a surprising number and variety of venture financings and other deals for one summer week, below. —Evergreen Solar (NASDAQ: ESLR) announced yet another large, long-term order for the photovoltaic solar panels it manufactures. This one—worth $1.2 billion—brings the Marlborough, MA-based firm’s total co
Read more…

When the robots take over, our house will be very clean

Meet my new friend: the Roomba! I love him. I love him from the bottom of my heart. He’s so adorable. As far as I’m concerned, we now have a four-being family: Me, Nick, Justice, and Theobald. Theobald is named after the patron saint of church cleaners. I promise not to buy any clothes for him, although I may have to get an animatronic chimp head for him. We haven’t even had a chance to run him yet, he’s still charging up at his base station under the couch. I will provide pictures, and p
Read more…

iRobot Releases Survey on Work-Life Balance

At the BlogHer conference cosponsored by iRobot, our favorite robotics company announced a new survey showing the difficulty families have finding time managing household chores. (I would have thought this would appear in the “duh” category of surveys, a la “Survey shows kids like sugar!”) At any rate, 49 percent say they are stressed out by household chores. Here’s the company chatter, from a guy I hadn’t heard of before, Matt Palma, veep of sales and marketing, who presumably will be speaki
Read more…

Will Auction Rate Securities Wipe Out iRobot ‘08 Profit?

iRobot disclosed a few months ago that it has about $14-16 million in Auction Rate Securities that have failed at auction. They also disclosed that they were of the student loan variety, and that they had decided not to take a charge against them because they were backed up ultimately by the federal government. HOWEVER, many companies have started taking charges against these securities of at least 20 percent and as much as 35 percent, which would mean about $3-5 million in iRobot’s case. That w
Read more…

Consumer Robotics

“Designed and developed through a close collaboration between Disney, Pixar animators and Thinkway, the Ultimate WALL·E features 10 motors, giving it a high level of movement and animation (…) An innovative touch programming system lets kids direct WALL·E simply by making patterns on the remote’s touch pad. With voice activation and a follow-me mode, WALL·E can follow the sound of a human voice and detect someone entering a room.” Read Disney’s press release on Maker Faire. - - - - - -
Read more…

Enthusiasm (!!)

This conference had truly renewed my enthusiasm for blogging! There are so many people here who are witty, intelligent, brilliant - and changing the world through words. I love the bond you feel in a room full of 1,000 women (and a few men!), and I love that it’s OK to surf the net (and answer blog comments!) during the sessions (and basically anytime you feel like it!) There’s kind of the same unity here you feel during freshman orientation of college. During the Closing Keynote tonight a hand
Read more…

Video Friday: Robot Roomba Monkey Head Edition

This is almost enough to make me want to buy a Roomba… Well, that and the fact that I’m just too damn lazy to do the vacuuming. Come to think of it, why haven’t I bought one yet? (via) Other TTB Posts Like This One: Video: G-Man Gets His Groove On Video: And So The Backlash Begins… Video: Revolutionary New Data Transfer Device Video Friday: Errr… Yeah. Stupid YouTube Videos Of The Week: The Triumphant Return!
Read more…