Green Plug
Green Plug, develops a chip that enables real-time collaboration between electronic devices and their power sources, using the Green Plug Universal Power Protocol (UPP). Green Plug is the developer of Green Talk - a digital protocol for real-time communication between devices that require power and their power sources. This technology allows for the charging of multiple DC powered devices with differing power requirements from a single power supply. 

Celsias Project
Celsias launched last year as a blog to fight global warming that has grown in traffic by 65% each month. They are launching “Celsias Project” here at DEMO. It allows participants to create a project and become a project leaders, so people can join and support it. Celsias Project offers a set of online tools to help the project leaders and the projects supporters to raise funds and reach their goals. Read more from my previous article.

Find all the sources, and discover more consumer electronics news and reviews at Ubergizmo.com.

“In addition to changing the light bulbs, it is far more important to change the laws and to change the treaty obligations that nations have,”

Right,Al Gore. former Vice President of the United States, today known as an environmental activist

“Whoever is elected is going to have a different position and a better position. But let’s be clear: whoever the leaders are, this issue is going to be dealt with responsibly and effectively only when there is a sufficient degree of urgency on the part of the people themselves.”

These two statements from Al Gore were made in the context of world market turmoil and the impact it has had on the content of the Davos discussions, shifting the attention away from global warming.

In an earlier article, I shared Michael’s Oppenheimer’s concern for that very issue, what Elke Weber calls the limited worry pool. The real danger is that world leaders and their people get distracted from the urgency of the climate fight, by an ongoing flow of crisis, as is the case currently with the financial markets. Tomorrow it could be a war, or a terrorist attack, . . .

This reminds me of this family I saw years ago as a therapist. One of the children had been killed by the boyfriend’s mother, and she had gone on with her life trying not to burden the other siblings with her grief. The big issue in the family was the message she had sent to the other children, that she did not seem to value the life of their dead sibling, and hence their own lives. Every week the family came, and presented with yet another crisis, that ‘could not be ignored’. In the mean time, nothing changed and the family became increasingly at risk of disintegration. Not until I realized what was really going on, and I stopped reacting to each weekly crisis did we start the real work. Same thing with global warming. World leaders need to realize that there will always be a new crisis. However, the one crisis that supersedes all others is global warming. Nature cannot wait. Markets will return to normal. Wars will end. The damage that’s being caused to our living ecosystem is on its way to being irreversible.

By lamarguerite, a valued contributor

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Each week, Atelier reviews what is trendy on the web magazine of our great expert contributor. Ubergizmo.com is dedicated to consumer electronics news and reviews.

Amazon MP3 Store goes International

Online retailer Amazon.com now holds the distinction of being the only retailer to offer DRM-free MP3s from all four major music labels - that, and in addition to thousands of other independent labels worldwide. These offerings are now no longer limited to the US only, but internationally so the rest of the world can get on with their lives without being tied down to some sort of pesky DRM music on their respective audio players.

1.1 Billion Cellphones Sold Worldwide in 2007

That’s the result from a study done by Strategy Analytics. That’s an increase of 10% from the Billion phones sold in 2006 and the growth is expected to continue to 1.24B phones for 2008. The growth in unit shipped is driven by emerging regions, where Nokia leads. I thought that Motorola had dropped at the forth place, but here’s what the studay says:
1/Nokia
2/Samsung
3/Motorola

Treo 800w Specifications Leaked

Well look here - after hearing news of Palm’s intention to close down the majority of their retail stores, along comes more information of the upcoming Treo 800w’s specifications. A case of a little bit too late, perhaps?

Netflix on Video Streaming on Mac, Video-on-Demand

Netflix recently announced its quarterly results, and discussed about the idea of having video streaming (Instant Watch) on the Mac. Again, it comes back to a digital rights management (DRM) issue: 

“To date, the only widely used DRM format for the Mac has been Apple’s own FairPlay system, which has not been licensed to any third parties. This has so far limited the Netflix service to Windows alone” (electronista)

Video on demand can be seen as a threat to Netflix and many are wondering if the rental company should create its own VoD system. At the moment, the company dismisses the idea, but it’s hard to tell if it really believes that DVD discs will hold their own for the foreseeable future, or if they simply do not want to validate an concept that is harmful to their business.

LawnBott Gets Upgrade

For those who do not yet have kids who are old enough to mow the lawn as a chore, fret not. There is the LawnBott LB3200 that not only goes about its task without complaining or asking for higher wages, it is also Bluetooth-enabled, allowing one to control it remotely from a cell phone or laptop. You will first need to include the perimeter wire to set the boundary before unleashing the LawnBott LB3200. Capable of cutting on slopes up to 30 degrees in an area as large as 38,000 square feet, it will automatically return to its dock once it is running out of juice or when the job is complete. Don’t worry about coming home to a shredded pet as there’s a free-floating 360-degree bumper, a blade-stop sensor and an onboard alarm system to prevent untoward accidents. Is the Lawnbott LB3200 worth $3,250?

SpaceShipTwo & WhiteKnightTwo Unveiled

Designs for SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo from Virgin Galactic were unveiled, ushering in the age of private spaceflight to the masses (or at least those who could afford it, that is). Currently, the SpaceShipTwo stands at 60% complete with test flights due later this year while the WhiteKnightTwo is 70% completed. The latter will also hold the record for being the largest all carbon composite plane when finished - in comparison, the Boeing 787 is just 50% carbon composite. Some key features of SpaceShipTwo include :

Designed to re-enter the atmosphere at any angle, it can correct itself. I wonder if there must be some sort of physical fitness test future passengers must go through before stepping onboard.

Glowing Skateboards Patented

Check out these glowing skateboards from Photon Light Boards. These will definitely increase the cool factor as you blaze through town performing all your ollies and tricks to impress the ladies. These boards can be purchased pre-fitted with LEDs in a range of setups, or for those who want something more personal, there is always the option of a custom setup. The boards alone are pretty expensive, ranging from $95 to $200 minus trucks and wheels, with the higher price point pointing towards an obviously more complex design. These skateboards are rechargeable thanks to a sleekly mounted powerpack and plug. View the video of the Glowing Skateboards here.

Wrong Number Generator

I know that April Fool’s Day is still a long way off, but the Wrong Number Generator is always good for a laugh (or two). Plug it into the phone jack and you’re good to go - perfect to set up the entire office for some laughs when dealing with a particularly difficult colleague. No idea on how it works, but it will automatically change the number you dial, although there is a 25% chance that the call will go through properly in order to prevent the victim from complaining about a consistent defect of wrong numbers. Of course, most folks these days already have a cell phone so chances are this will only be good for a couple of wrong numbers. Rest assured, emergency lines such as 911 will always dial correctly. The Wrong Number Generator retails for $89.

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Social Networks made a big splash, and we are still trying to recover from the hype (where is Facebook going?). But while it is nice to share pictures and videos, this is not much more than entertainment and another cool way to waste time.

Meanwhile I also see the workforce getting organized and social networks with a purpose. There was the grassroot movement during the previous presidential election, the voting machine incident with Diebold against a network of activists as described by Yochai Benkler in "The Wealth of Networks". And all this is now getting corporate: I watched the coworking movement start in San Francisco and expand all over the Globe, I see efforts at the infrastructure level, such as FON, and I see discussions around social networks of business development consultants, CFOs, developers, designers, tech support experts, etc… Soon you will be able to do business by just getting resources from the relevant network. You will pick them from each other based on their rating, how far they are from people in your direct network and how much they cost.

Michel Bauwens talks about P2P civilization and Xavier Comtesse talks about Direct Economy (and even Direct Anything)

I see the emergence of a world of guilds of specialists, similar to the ecosystems that John Seely Brown describes in his book "The Only Sustainable Edge".

Ultimately, I see a lot of opportunities: if this is where we are going, what else do we need to make the guilds system completely functional?

By Marc Dangeard, a valued contributor for Atelier North America

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In 2007, local online advertising was an $8.5 billion market. Analysts are announcing a 48 percent increase in 2008, bringing it to $12.6 billion. Internet companies understood what significant adjustments it takes to lead the local online advertising market. Newspapers are going down and losing market share.

Pure-play Web companies now have the largest share of the local online-ad market. A pretty significant turn over for newspaper companies who were enjoying a 44.1 percent share of the $8.5 billion local ad-market, and are now down of 10.7 points which let them today a 33.4 percent share. Internet companies have now 43.7 percent of market share, according to Borrell Associates, a consulting firm that tracks local advertisings. (Directories such as the Yellow Pages have 10.1% and local television outlets 9.3%)

Newspapers are feeling the biggest effects of this competition.

Online-ad revenue at newspapers made up no more than 7.1% of total revenue in the third quarter of last year, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

“Newspapers are tied too closely to defending their print products and have not seen the Internet as an innovative and competitive tool to go out and compete,” explains Gordon Borrell, chief executive of Borrell Associates.

Web companies now rule the market for local ads online, forcing newspaper publishers to rush to change the way they sell ads.

The majority of the radio stations and TV stations, newspapers, cable companies, are still pinning their hopes on their traditional sales teams being able to specialize in the digital market, and create and sell new online ad packages.

An explanation coming from the Wall Street Journal could be the following: Local media companies, because they are based in the communities they serve, would seem to have an edge over Internet sellers when it comes to persuading the diner or corner hardware store to take out an ad. But they have largely failed to convert that advantage into sales. Instead of tailoring their sales to local businesses, many newspaper companies initially focused on selling ads to bigger advertisers who were already buying space in their print products.

While this strategy allowed them to quickly and cheaply create a customer base for their online ventures, it also limited their growth, because they weren’t expanding their customer base.”

“Many newspapers also hurt themselves by simply plopping their papers online instead of creating new Web sites that offered advertisers something they couldn’t get in print. Meanwhile, Web companies such as Google and Local.com are growing rapidly because they have made it cheap and easy for local companies to take out ads,” says Journalist Emily Steel.

What will become of the local online-ads market in 2008?

The popularity of local search and online video advertising will drive most of the growth, confirmed by a recent study from Borrell Associates.

“Key advertising segments for 2008 will continue to be the “Big 3” classified categories of automotive, recruitment and real estate, with online political marketing holding promise for local sites as state and presidential campaigns heat up,” says the report.

More than a year ago, Yahoo! came up with a plan with about six newspapers to establish a nationwide online-ad sales network. Since then, other newspapers have joined the alliance. This year, papers in the alliance aim to sell more-sophisticated ad offerings, such as behaviorally targeted ads, thanks to Yahoo! Technology that they will take advantage of and use on their Web sites.

Meanwhile, 300 newspapers, recently represented by a group of 11 newspaper companies, formed a partnership with real-estate site Zillow.com to strike into more real-estate classified ads.

So what we expect for this coming year are papers making the decision to form and join more profound alliances with their major competition in order to survive. And even thought giant Internet companies are starving for the growth they observe in the local market, they are also finding benefits to partnering with local media businesses to reinforce their own efforts.

But with a spending for local online ads expected to grow 48% next year to $12.6 billion, the opportunity is still there for newspapers. And what could be necessary is a greater investment in an independent online sales force that would continue the growth these properties have enjoyed for the past few years.

Mathieu Ramage
Media and Editorial Manager of Atelier

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First the French, now the Norwegians . . . According to a recent Reuters‘ announcement, “Norway says aims to go carbon neutral by 2030”:

The plan includes offsetting Norwegian emissions by spending around 3 billion crowns ($553.1 million) per year to combat deforestation in developing countries. Forests act as a sink for CO2, the main greenhouse gas blamed for causing global warming.

Under the Kyoto Protocol curbing greenhouse emissions, countries do not get credit for the effect of their own forests, but they can get credits by planting trees in developing lands.

“The parties now think it is realistic to assume reductions in Norwegian climate gas emissions of 15-17 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents by 2020 when forests are included,” the government said in a statement.

Three million metric tons of that reduction would come from Norway’s forests absorbing carbon, it said.

The initial target was to cut 13-16 million metric tons of CO2.

Achieving the target will require cutting Norway’s total emissions by two-thirds domestically, the statement said.

Environmental groups said the deal was too vague, and Oil and Energy Minister Aaslaug Haga acknowledged: “We don’t know how we will achieve the goals yet, and that is challenging.”

A “significant sum” of money will be earmarked for investment in renewable energy, mass transport and measures to reduce emissions from the transport sector, while tax on diesel fuel will rise by 0.1 crowns ($0.018) per liter and on gasoline by 0.05 crowns, the government said.

“Both carrot and stick will be used to promote more environmentally friendly behavior and to reduce climate gas emissions,” the centre-left coalition said.

Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen of the Socialist Left (SV) party said the policy would lead to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions both in Norway and abroad.

“The agreement gives Norway a far-sighted climate policy that can stand independently of shifting governments,” Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said in the statement.

MOON LANDING

Stoltenberg, who heads the Labour Party, has said Norway’s policy on cutting CO2 emissions is the world’s most ambitious and he has likened the challenge of fighting climate change to a “moon landing” for the 21st century.

Norway, with a population of just 4.7 million, is the world’s fifth-biggest exporter of oil and Western Europe’s biggest exporter of natural gas.

Endowed with rivers and waterfalls, it gets almost all its own electricity from non-polluting hydroelectric stations. But the Nordic country aims to begin burning natural gas for power generation in the future to satisfy growing demand.

The government wants emissions from such power plants to be captured and buried, a technology still under development.

“The agreement implies technologies that are not known yet,” Stoltenberg told a news conference.

The government said it would spend an extra 70 million crowns ($12.91 million) this year on research into renewable energy and carbon capture and storage this year, and funding for such research would rise to at least 600 million in 2010.

My first reaction was Wow! Kudos to the Norwegians. If they can do it, why can’t the rest the world, and the U.S. especially, follow? Upon closer look, I am uncomfortable with their plan however. Too much is left up to chance, including relying on not yet existing technologies. Also too much of their anticipated reductions will be the result of carbon offsets - reforestation in developing countries. They could be more specific with possible reductions from existing solutions. So, yes, I agree with the environmental groups. The plan is way too vague.

By LaMarguerite, a valued contributor of L’Atelier North America

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This week, Atelier reviews what is trendy on the web magazine of our great expert contributor. Ubergizmo.com is dedicated to consumer electronics news and reviews. (click pictures to enlarge)

Apple Macbook Air

Yes, the rumors were true, Apple has launched the Macbook Air, an ultra-light 13.3” laptop that does not have an optical drive. This will give Sony much needed competition in the uber-thin laptop category. In this post, we will tell you if the SSD upgrade makes sense and we compare this laptop to the Sony Vaio TZ to see if Steve Jobs is overselling the MacBook Air, or not. Click on the title to see the full post.

Form Factor
0.16 to 0.76 x 12.8 x 8.94 inches (0.4 to 1.94 x 32.5 x 22.7 cm)
3lbs (1.36 kg)
The Specs
1.6 – 1.8Ghz Intel Core 2
1.3.3 widescreen LED 1280×800 pixel
2GB of RAM
80GB HDD or 64GB SSD
Optional external optical drive
Integrated Intel Graphics

Steve Job’s comparison with the Vaio TZ is not really fair because that one includes an optical drive. I like the better display on the Vaio, but the display size is a little detrimental to the keyboard ergonomics. It is pointless to argue on the details, both laptops will offer a similar experience, but I think that Apple wins on the cool factor and on the price. Honestly, at somewhat equal configuration, the Vaio TZ is just too expensive, by a large margin. The Macbook Air wins.

Should you get the SSD version?
Solid state drives (SSD) are cool these days, but should you get one? In theory, they do have some benefits:
Battery life improvement
Better shock resistance
Faster handling of many small files (seek time)

However, I don’t know anyone who “needs” to spend $1299 on a 64GB SSD (and a slightly faster CPU) to reach the grand price of $3100. Honestly, you won’t even feel the CPU difference. Now, I do know a lot of people who “want” an SSD. You got it: “need” and “want” are two different things. I would not recommend this upgrade.

Design Compromises
I started by writing “design flaws”, but the points below aren’t flaws, they are compromises. I’m talking about the fact that the battery is sealed and about the concealed ports (USB, micro-DVI…). The sealed battery might be an issue in the long run, when it will hold less and less power or if it dies.

Update: The MacBook Air battery costs $129 and Apple will change it for you - hopefully right away, but I don’t know for sure.
I don’t yet know what Apple’s policy about this (will they change it for you?), but this is something that buyers should look into.

Conclusion
I welcome the entry of Apple in the super-thin laptop category because it will put pressure on Sony to get their act together and stop the overpricing of their Vaio line of laptops. Even at $1800, it is difficult to find an equivalent sub-notebook that is cheaper, even from Asus (U1 Series, S6FM Series). For windows users, I bet that it’s possible to install XP or Vista, but we should see the first test pop up on the web soon. We will keep you posted.
Do you you want/need this laptop, why? What’s your take on it and what else would you like to know about it?

MacBook Air Battery Replacement A Cinch 
Wile everyone thought that the MacBook Air battery replacement process would be complicated, AppleInsider thinks otherwise. They claim that there is no need for special tools or knowledge if you want to swap out the MacBook Air’s battery. All you need to do is uncover the MacBook Air’s bottom cover, unscrew the battery from the chassis and unplug it from the circuit board with a tug. It is not soldered onto the board like many believed. From the sounds of it, it will probably take less than three minutes to perform this little operation. You could, of course, settle for Apple’s $129 MacBook Air Out-of-Warranty Battery Replacement Program that requires approximately 5 days to complete.

Panasonic 103-inch HDTV: 15 units sold in 2007 
Last year at CES, the top Plasma manufacturer claimed that they were selling their 103-inch “by the hundreds” … at a $80 000 to $50000 price tag since its launch in 2006, I can imagine why the real number is only 15 units for 2007. One customer from the Middle East got five of them!

In my opinion, the world’s largest commercially available TV is more of a marketing investment than a real source of revenues for Panasonic, a bit like Formula1 cars for automotive manufacturers. That’s why they did it again by releasing a 150-inch this year.

Transcend 32GB 133X CompactFlash Card 
Transcend takes the spotlight again with its 32GB 133X CompactFlash Card, making it the largest ever for a device in its class. While you drool over the specifications below, there isn’t any official word with regards to the price and availability of this 32GB monster. Serious shutterbugs will definitely be aiming to lay their hands on one of these babies though.
High-speed 133X performance
Dual channel flash interface
CF Type I
Supports IDE PIO mode 6 and Ultra DMA mode 4
Read/write speeds up to 45MB/16MB per second
Fully complies with the new CF 4.1 standard Hardware ECC (Error Correction Code)
ATA interface
Low power consumption
Multi-platform compatibility
RoHS Compliant
Lifetime Warranty

iPhone Gets Diamond Case 
They say that diamonds are a girl’s best friend, and apparently the same holds for an iPhone case with this sample from Case-Mate. Handcrafted with 42 pieces of diamonds encrusted in 18-carat gold, this Diamond Case will hit your bank account for massive damage - to the tune of $20,000 more like it. Of course, those with a whole lot less money can always settle for the limited edition $90 carbon-fiber case.

Contact Lens with Display 
Who would’ve thought that the realm of science fiction has been blurred with a group of University of Washington engineers having successfully developed contact lenses that are capable of displaying various details such as the number of an incoming call on your cell phone. The display is superimposed on the outside world, and with further maturity of the technology, it can be used by drivers to view the display speed of the vehicle or even by pilots to see the plane’s condition when flying. I’m more excited about the use for this in a video game than anything else since we already have dashboards in the respective cockpits on both car and plane. Web surfing on this would be interesting too, but don’t get caught with your pants down (literally or otherwise) while surfing for off limits websites during office hours.

Lotus Notes heading for iPhone 
Looks like Lotus Notes will soon hold the honor of being the first official iPhone third party application, with folks at IBM saying that "we have a lot in common [with Apple]. We’re going to cross-pollinate." The inclusion of Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony would definitely make the Mac more of a threat to Microsoft Office, and with the iPhone picking up all this productivity software, it can finally rest easy the next time someone refers to it as being a smartphone. Word on the street has it that a formal announcement is in the works really soon.

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The time we spend sorting through e-mails we receive each day becomes insane, and hardly leaves us some time to run our business.

Because too many people are aimlessly hitting on the “reply to all” button, or copying too many people on trivial messages, like inviting 100 colleagues to partake of pizzas in the conference room, our inboxes are now blown up partially because of what it’s called “colleague spam”.

According to the Radicati Group, a Palo Alto, Calif. market research firm, the average business e-mail user received 126 messages a day in 2006, up 55% from 2003. By 2009, they are expecting to spend an alarming 41% of their time just managing e-mails!

New companies are flourishing with a software solution, helping sort the overflow.

Silicon Valley start-ups like ClearContext and Seriosity Inc. are particularly focusing on the problem of internal e-mail overload.

ClearContext of San Francisco, Calif., came up a few months ago with a new line of software products for $89.95 that uses algorithms to rapidly analyze a user’s e-mail.

How does it work?

The software determines which contacts and messages are the most important to you, and forward those that are not so important into folders. Thus you don’t have to read your e-mails on the fly when they pop-up in your mailbox. You are also offered the possibility to forward other e-mails to subordinates and be notified later if they don’t reply. You can also have e-mails of your choice routinely redirected away from your inbox.

The color-coding function helps you instantaneously see which messages you should respond to first. You can pick your own colors for incoming messages from senders you categorized in big group of recipients, and to whom you don’t respond often. You might mark them in green, purple, or whatever else color. If you have an email from your spouse or your nanny, go ahead and mark it in red.

There’s other way to customize the software. Other functions allow you to quickly archive important messages and create audit trails. The software lets you hit one button on a message to move it to a folder holding documents related to a specific case, rather than having to manually drag and drop the message with a computer mouse.

Of course, I assume that you would use ClearContext if you are already reasonably organized and prone to filing your messages away, instead of just letting them pile up.

Are you more of an “e-mail filers” or more an “e-mail pilers”?

Microsoft Corp. categorizes e-mail users by calling us either “filers” or “pilers”.

Filers do their very best to end up their day with an empty inbox. Meanwhile, pilers “are super-messy desk people. They’ve got 5,000 items in their inbox, most of them unread,” says Microsoft’s Mr. Kennedy.

For pilers, Microsoft improved Outlook a few months ago with a new search feature. These messy e-mail users can now search through bulky folders or inboxes to find a specific message. “These people are in pain”, says Mr. Brezina, co-founder of Xobni Corp.

Xobni is a San Francisco based company which has received $4.2 million in funding from venture capitalists. The company aims to assist people in the most efficient way for them to organize and search the e-mail and personal-contact load they already have.

Xobni’s solution is to place a set of features on top of pilers’ e-mail inbox, such as quick links to set up appointments, “profiles” of online contacts complete with photos.

A thousand people are globally testing the Xobni’s product – including salespeople, recruiters and marketing managers who use e-mail frequently- and expects to release it broadly early this year.

Nowadays, e-mail deluge is considered a real workplace issue, more than traditional e-mail spam.

Mathieu Ramage
Media and Editorial Manager, Atelier North America

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A survey released last month reveals that about half of the online adult population has looked up themselves or someone else online, up from 22 percent in 2002. The amount of information about ourselves that is available on the Web seems not to be an issue for 60 percent of us.

This very interesting study reveals that 47 percent of Internet users have searched for themselves online, 36 percent said they have searched on the Internet for a person with whom they’ve lost touch, and 9 percent have looked up information on the one they were dating.

It seems that women are a bit more likely than men to research someone they are dating or someone they are about to meet. And on the other hand, more men than women have looked up friends, someone from their past or a colleague or competitor. 53 percent, for a majority under the age of 50, have looked up an acquaintance on the Web.

“The increasing amount of personal information online has drawn attention among privacy advocates, who worry about how it could be used and who controls it. Most recently, they decried a new Facebook advertising program that broadcasted its users’s online purchase and other online actions to their friends and network,” wrote Ellen Lee, a San Francisco Chronicle writer. The Pew report suggested that most Internet users are not concerned about their personal information online.

Among adults who have a public social-networking profile, 60 percent said that anyone who happens upon it can see, and have not felt compelled to limit it. While 38 percent have taken steps to control it, it’s been found that the same percentage restrict access to their friends.

“People aren’t being super cautious about what they’re doing or presenting online,” explains Mary Maden, co-author of the report and senior research specialist with Pew.

A new way in the final round of a recruiting process for employers is to search online for someone they were about to hire or work with. And 11 percent of them are doing it. Valuable recommendations from job hunters are to not post photographs or personal information that could hurt their chances with employers.

The conclusions, published by Pew Internet & American Life Project, reflect how everyone is sharing always more of their lives on the Internet, and how so-called “Web 2.0 sites” such as Youtube, Facebook and Flickr are encouraging their users to post home videos, photographs and personal profiles online, including private data ranging from their favorite dates to their mobile phone number.

Reminds me sadly theses stories where women find out, through Myspace, about their boyfriends cheating on them.

Mathieu Ramage
Media and Editorial Manager of Atelier North America

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The U.S. market for the biodiesel has grown over 50% every year since 2004 and will reach $1 billion in 2008. There’s today over a thousand of retail pumps all over the country when only 350 in 2005. Biodiesel IPOs are happening, and opportunities flourish. “Biodiesel is the rock star of fuels”, says Will Thurmond, author of Biodiesel 2020: A Global Market Survey. “It has moved from Woodstock to Wall Street.” Will 2008 be year of the biodiesel boom?

It’s not complicated to figure out why is all of this happening.

Biodiesel is 30 percent more fuel-efficient than gasoline, which in turn is 30 percent more efficient than ethanol.

Ethanol produced in the United States comes from a single feedstock, corn. In another hand, biodiesel has many sources: the oil of seed plants like soy and canola, french-fry grease, and animal fat. That indicates that the market can condition a price increase in any one raw material.

Solazyme, a South San Francisco biotech firm, has even started making biodiesel genetically modified algae. Better yet, biodiesel can be manufactured in large quantities today – unlike fuels such as hydrogen.

The entire production blasted up from 25 million gallons in 2004 to 250 million last year.

Nearly 100 new plants are now under construction; even Chevron has joined in, cutting the ribbon on a 20-million-gallon plant in Galveston, Texas, in May.

The biggest actor in the biodiesel market is Renewable Energy Group (REG), an offshoot of a 3,000-member Iowa farm cooperative.

REG accounts from 27 percent of U.S. biodiesel production and, thanks to its relationship with the soy growers, says it can increase its total capacity to 340 million gallons by the end of 2008. The company sells branded SoyPower fuel through a nationwide network of stations, some operated by grocery monster Safeway. REG should be the first biodiesel company to hit Wall Street, having filed for an IPO in July 2007. But REG won’t be the last: Also mulling a stock offering is Seattle-based Imperium Renewables, founded three years ago by former commercial jet pilot John Plawa. Imperium operates the largest American biodiesel plant and plans to cut a production business deal with Washington’s canola farmers.

For all that production capacity, biodiesel is still an infant industry.

It currently accounts for less than 0.5 percent of the total us diesel –fuel market. So there will likely be plenty more REGs and Imperiums. “It’s such an entrepreneurial success story,” says Jenna Higgins, communications director at the National Biodiesel Board, a trade association. “Most of the companies out there are small businesses. There really aren’t any traditional paths to success.”

As a perfect example, Philadelphia based Fry-o-Diesel, founded by Yake business graduate Nadia Adawi. The startup has a patent pending on a process it developed to make fuel from trap grease, which restaurants currently pay to have hauled off.

An estimated 495 million gallons of trap grease gets trashed every year. “We’re working with something that’s essentially a pollutant,” Adawi says. “But it makes a great fuel.” She is currently talking to investors and hopes to build a 3-million-gallon plant this year.

The past few months have seen plenty of major corporations rush to hop on the biodiesel bandwagon. In July 2007, U.S. Steel announced that it will use a 10 percent mix of biodiesel at its plant in Gary, Ind. Berkeley-based Clif Bar has started subsidizing employees who drive biodiesel cars.

Any diesel car can run on bio-diesel, with no conversion necessary. This year just 4 percent of US passenger cars run on diesel, but analysts expect that number to rise fast, in lockstep with rising oil prices.

J.D. Power Automotive Forecasting predicts that diesel’s share of the market will increase to more than 10% by the middle of the next decade – fueled in large part by the surge in biodiesel’s production and popularity.

Mathieu Ramage
Media and Editorial Manager of Atelier North America

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