Looking for examples on how to best green your business? A central list of the companies that can get you started might help. Enter the World Wildlife Fund's Green Game Changers initiative, a so-called "crowd-sourcing exercise" that asks companies to submit examples of green policies, products and business models that cut down on environmental impact and biodiversity loss.

The U.K-based initiative doesn't officially launch until next week, but the WWF already has approximately 20 case studies on its website. Some of them are well-known--Better Place is listed as an innovator in the transportation sector--and others, like Magenn Power, are still under the radar.

Anyone can submit case studies to the site, but the WWF will be monitoring it to make sure that only credible companies are listed. If the site catches on, we imagine that it could be invaluable to companies looking for a sustainability starting point. If you want to increase your water efficiency, for example, just check out these case studies of intelligent buildings, low-water washing machines, and water recycling.

Have better examples from your own company? Submit them here and help build up the WWF's database.

Ariel Schwartz can be reached on Twitter or by email.

Fast Company's Adam L. Penenberg tweets the breaking news about a verdict against Ford in the death of rising Mets star Brian Cole. As reporters lagged behind on the story, Penenberg discovered a new media use for the 140-character format.

When a rural Mississippi jury awarded $131 million to the family of a star New York Mets prospect killed when his Ford Explorer rolled over in 2001, there were no reporters present, no bloggers, TV crews or radio stringers. In this age of instantaneous media, when being first is celebrated more than being right, and wire services like Bloomberg trumpet beating the competition by nanoseconds, there are still those rare moments when a major story breaks and no one is there to report it.

And this was a major story. It involved a top New York Mets prospect, Brian Cole, who former Mets General Manager Jim Duquette predicted would become a major league star, joining Jose Reyes and David Wright as the cornerstones of the team for years to come. Cole was traveling from spring training when the Ford Explorer he was driving rolled over, killing him. His cousin, also in the car, walked away from the accident relatively unscathed.

There are a number of reasons why this case is special: As any plaintiff's attorney will tell you, death cases are almost always worth far less than injury cases. It's simple math: Paying for 30 years of care for a quadriplegic--it can reach several hundred thousand dollars a year--costs far more than paying most people's estimated lifetime earnings. Cole's case was different. The Mets stipulated that it had projected that Cole would be a star and earn more than $100 million in salary over his career. Then you had the defendant: Ford, which normally settles these kinds of cases. The third wild card was the plaintiff's lead attorney, Tab Turner, a one-man litigation machine who has settled more than $1 billion in rollover cases with Ford over the past two decades. He is perhaps Ford's greatest nemesis.

So you have a $131 million verdict against a major corporation by a jury that found that one of its most popular (and profitable vehicles) was essentially defective, a future NY Mets star whose life was tragically cut short, a top litigator, and no media coverage?

Enter Twitter and an idea expounded upon recently by William Gibson in a New York Times op-ed piece. His subject is Google and its CEO Eric Schmidt's controversial statement that people want Google to tell them what to do next. He suggests that Google is not just a very big corporation but us, "individual retinal cells of the surveillant." Social media's like that. Usually journalists report. Twitter responds. And then journalists, particularly on the 24-hour cable news networks, trot out social media chatter as self-congratulation or faux populism. In this case, social media was the vehicle by which the most relevant reporting rose to the top--the rare instance when the most trusted name in news was Twitter.

I found out about it when a representative of Tab Turner called me minutes after the jury came back with the verdict. In 2003 I had published a book, Tragic Indifference, which detailed the whole Ford and Firestone debacle of the late 1990s into 2001. Turner played a major role in the narrative, and Michael Douglas optioned the book with the intent to produce a movie and star as Tab Turner. (It's still in what Hollywood suits call "deep development.") When I searched online for articles on the verdict, there were none. The only mention of Ford on The New York Times home page was an advertisement for the Ford Fusion. Nothing on the wires, blogs, or Google News.

So I got on Twitter, dashing off a two-hour burst of tweets about the case and why it was big news. I told the horrific tales of rollover accident victims and shared some of my reporting on the Ford Explorer, which Ford's own internal documents showed was dangerously unstable. I offered context for the verdict, linked to previous articles on two earlier trials that had ended in hung juries, and berated journalists for not getting on the story. I was live tweeting my reporting and analysis simultaneously, using micro blogging as my publisher, which was, as the Muck Rack Daily would put it the next day, "a very interesting use of Twitter."

Partway through my Tweetapoolaza, the first news story--a tiny article--appeared on a local Mississippi newspaper site. Then came an Associated Press piece and a post on ESPN. The New York Daily News tweeted me back, promising me they were on the case. The next day, though, there was only a brief three-sentence mention of the case and muted coverage of it elsewhere. Most of it was of the "he said, she said" sort of journalism: a lede ($131 million verdict against Ford the fact the two sides settled before punitive damages could be accessed), a quote from Tab Turner speaking for the family, and a quote from Ford blaming the driver. Other stories focused on Cole as a baseball prospect. None of them explained what the real problem was: The Ford Explorer.

There is ample proof that more than 4 million Ford Explorers were dangerously unstable and prone to rolling over at far higher rates than other vehicles, including other popular SUVs. In fact, according to government accident statistics, one in every 2,700 Ford Explorers built between 1990 and 2001 (when Ford finally reengineered the vehicle) rolled over and killed at least one person in the car.

The figures for the Ford Bronco II, the precursor of the Ford Explorer, are even more frightening: one in 500 Bronco IIs ever produced was involved in a fatal rollover. But you won't find many publications willing to go there. Perhaps they are fearful of losing Ford advertising dollars.

Here's a portion of my tweetstream in reverse order to make it easier to read, telling the story 140 characters at a time (some typos have been cleaned up):

----

Adam L. Penenberg is author of Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today's Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves. A journalism professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, Penenberg is a contributing writer to Fast Company. Follow him on Twitter: @penenberg

Tack on Burger King to the growing list of companies who are cutting ties with Sinar Mas, a major palm oil producer that has been accused by Greenpeace of destroying millions of acres of Indonesian rainforest and peatlands. Burger King joins Nestle, Kraft, and Unilever in ditching the company, which recently tried to varnish its reputation with a questionable self-commissioned environmental audit.

Sinar Mas's audit may have actually hurt the company--according to Greenpeace, it confirms that the company has been illegally clearing peat and operating without proper permits. And Sinar Mas's damning self-audit is partially behind Burger King's decision. The fast food giant explains in a recent announcement:

All 176 Burger King restaurants that rely on Sinar Mas palm oil will transition to a new supplier. That's not a huge loss for a global company like Sinar Mas, but it probably won't take long for other fast food chains to follow suit. After all, no company wants to be the target of a Greenpeace campaign.

Ariel Schwartz can be reached on Twitter or by email.

Twitter's traffic skyrocketed 33% over the summer, according to one survey. Meanwhile Digg's influence was fading even before its controversial makeover.

Late yesterday Twitter announced that it had 145 million registered users--impressive, at around a third of the number of Facebookers and comparable to the number of people Apple's just opened up its new music-based social network Ping to.

But a more meaningful measure of Twitter's growth is how many people are using it, and a new survey has revealed that Twitter's seen nothing less than staggering growth over recent months. In August, Twitter processed some 2.64 billion tweets--that's 85 million per day--up 33% over the figure for May. The August figure is more than double January's figure, of 1.23 billion tweets, in fact.

In other words, Twitter's growing at an incredible rate, and its users aren't just blindly signing up and not taking part--they're actively using the system, no doubt leveraging all the new uses it's being put to (like news reading, photo sharing, celebrity access, trend spotting and Web story discovery). That last aspect is the killer one, when you look at the fortunes of another famous (possibly paradigm-defining) Web story discovery network: Digg. As revealed by statistics generated by Gawker's marketing team, Digg has moved from being the dominant traffic driver among its peer services in October 2009 to coming in in fourth place after Facebook, Twitter, and Stumbleupon. The growth of Facebook in the stats is expected, Twitter's growth burst is evident, and Stumbleupon's increasing importance is something of a surprise (possibly biased by the particular sharing tech highlighted on Gawker's sites), but the clear loser is Digg.

And then the new Digg arrived, and a comparison with Reddit shows that things may have got even worse in the last week. Even when you discount the amusing/irritating hijacking of New Digg's frontpage by Reddit (thanks to angry Diggers) Reddit's grabbing big chunks of Digg's traffic.

So here's what we think is going on: Digg may have been early in the social net/web reffering game, but the entire social net phenomenon has since grown. Facebook has been steadily adding in new powers almost every week. Twitter has hit a nerve among Netizens, probably by keeping things extraordinarily simple, adopting new tech (like its new iPad app) and co-opting newly invented uses discovered by its users into official systems. Digg hasn't particularly innovated or listened to the requests of its users and has gone from being crowdsourced to what Mark Suster of VC firm GRP Partners recently called "mafia sourcing." Now that Digg is trying to open its system back up, the mafia isn't happy.

A new generation of fans will have to work hard to bring Digg back into the limelight. But they'll be tempted--as the numbers bear out--to pour their time into Twitter or Facebook, which continue to leave Digg in the dust.

To keep up with this news, follow me, Kit Eaton, on Twitter.

Only a few are deployed, but thousands are helped.

Global aid giant, Mercy Corps, has partnered with the high-tech manufacturing and engineering company, ITT Corporation, to distribute portable water treatment systems to Pakistan in the wake of the flood crisis. The system being deployed is innovative in that few are needed, yet thousands of people are helped. According to Randy Martin of Mercy Corps and Bjorn Euler of ITT, the systems have already provided clean water to 110,000 Pakistani flood victims and only five water treatment systems are in place.

"The portable, self-contained water-filtration devices take impure water from a variety of sources including rivers, lakes, and wells and remove bacteria and contaminates via sand, charcoal, etc. Water is then injected with chlorine and stored in 10,000 gallon pillow tanks. Each pillow tank is either unloaded in bulk via tanker truck or distributed via tap stands. Each pillow tank can connect to four to five tap stands," Martin and Euler tell Fast Company.

Mercy Corps has a solid track record of responding effectively under such crises, but their purpose of being in Pakistan and in partnering with ITT is also to systematically assess the country's short and long-term needs. ITT is providing the funding for the initial needs assessment.

The equipment was designed by ScanWater but purchased by ITT. They are "not specifically designed to respond to floods, but are serving NGOs well for this purpose on the ground in Pakistan. ITT initially deployed three systems to Mercy Corps and has also loaned two systems to other international relief organizations working in Pakistan. These systems are useful in any emergency where water-related disease is a threat. In January, ITT and Mercy Corps deployed these same systems to Haiti following the earthquake."

Google looked to have stolen a march on the smart Net-connected TV market when it revealed its integrated Google TV a few months back. Now we're seeing prototypes at the IFA electronics show ... and suddenly Google's offering is looking lost among the competition.

Sony's Google TV device is the one that's garnered the most press attention, and it's a great example that we can almost use to preview how Google TV will look and feel to most consumers. The TV unit itself is nothing particularly remarkable in a crowded market that's evolved so quickly its left Joe Public's head spinning: It's a full-HD (1,920 by 1,080 pixels) display, 40-inches on the diagonal, and with a pretty neutrally-designed slim black plastic chassis. But this TV isn't all about the TV itself--it's about how it works. Inside is the necessary processor, memory, and connectivity hardware to drive Google's Android-powered TV service. Also included is Chrome for browsing the Web, niceties like Google Maps, and it's even Flash compatible, in a nose-thumbing exercise aimed at Apple. The UI has been polished to make it compatible with normal TV-viewing options, so you can make a browser window transparent to let a TV show shine through your Web searches, and there's a "Quick Search Box" system which integrates searches on the Web and among your TV resources.

Sony was reportedly reluctant to let people see the units in full-on Googling action, instead demoing features like Picasa photo integration and services like YouTube.

But Google's competitor LG, which is promising a news conference tomorrow--September 4th--to announce its own Google TV efforts, also demonstrated its own rival system at IFA: Netcast. The firm has been demonstrating TVs carrying the system, which has had a serious overhaul and now rests on four design watchwords: "easy," "fun," "more," "better." As well as similar Net-connected benefits to Google's system, it comes with a smart remote control that works a little like a Wiimote, and provides a more "natural" way to interact with the TV along with added extras like a coloring book for kids. LG's TV can even stream content from the unit to other gadgets.

And since Google's TV hit the headlines, Apple's arrived on the scene, as rumored, with its own new set-top box. Though it's services are in many ways simpler than the sophisticated things offered by Google TV or NetCast, concentrating on core streaming TV and movie content and a few extra frills, the hardware is cheap, comes with that fabulous Apple cachet, and is simple enough to appeal to Grandmas everywhere. It's also running on an Apple A4-powered board, which makes us ponder if its simple UI isn't actually built on a modified iOS operating system (found inside the iPhone and iPad). And this makes us wonder if Apple won't be bringing a full-on App Store experience to the Apple TV at some point--bouncing Google TVs and LG's efforts right to the bottom of the market. The same thinking has even resulted in some industry analysts suggesting Apple's TV box is a primer technology, so Apple can test the market before building its very own hardware-integrated TV units in the coming year or two.

And now there's even news that Yahoo's partnered with a Turkish firm Vestel to bring Yahoo Connected TV to 40 more countries from early 2011. So while TVs at IFA may seem to be all about Google's technology, in the coming months it looks like Google will have to significantly up its game to stay relevant in a wholly new market for the company.

To keep up with this news, follow me, Kit Eaton, on Twitter.

MasterCard is eyeing the emerging middle classes of women in Asia and Cambodia is as good a test case as anywhere else -- and it offers a CSR branding point.

Cambodia has been attracting a fair amount of corporate and "social business" interest in local seamstresses. Socially motivated businesses like Eve Blossom's Lulan Artisans and Elizabeth Kiester's Wanderlust, both for-profit social enterprises that use the talents of marginalized seamstresses, have set up shop here. But now two larger and much more corporate players have entered the scene: MasterCard and the ultra chic Hotel de la Paix, which begs the question of why now and why the focus on women?

Answer: purchasing power.

Goldman Sachs published a report last year highlighting the growing global middle class and the increasingly leading role of women in making financial decisions. The findings are true especially in Asia, where such economies as Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines are expected to grow and increase its middle class populations considerably.

Cambodia is not too far behind and MasterCard is smart to jump in now. The credit card company has been doing research on the subject of female purchasing power in Asia and based on their findings have been rolling out female empowerment programs across the region.

Over the next few months, according to the press release, "MasterCard will donate USD50 towards the reconstruction of Hôtel de la Paix?s Sewing School, for every room bill paid with a MasterCard card." The partnership is also a branding point for the hotel, as guests are taken to see community sites to get a glimpse of local Cambodian life. Essentially, MasterCard is making its name known to the very women who will shortly join the growing middle class with their own businesses and thus have more money to spend.

"I know that de la Paix has been actively involved in helping train women in sewing for quite some time, as well as being involved in social programs throughout Cambodia," Elizabeth Kiester, who relocated to Cambodia in 2008 after a successful career as Creative Director at LeSportsac and a Senior Editor at Jane magazine tells Fast Company. She set up her socially conscious, summery, clothing line in Siam Reap after moving there. She partners with marginalized female seamstresses and just launched a collection for J. Crew. "I think what they're doing is amazing, and I welcome the efforts--I would love to utilize some of their seamstresses some day!"

Little work opportunities exist for women in Cambodia, one of the world's least developed countries, and they're often found working on construction sites. "Sewing and crafting is indigenous to Cambodia, but also sewing offers women, in a country where perhaps they are not yet 'equal,' a chance to own and run their own businesses, which otherwise they may not have the opportunity," Kiester says.

The partnership between MasterCard and Hotel de la Paix may sound like straight-up corporate social responsibility, the same stuff you've heard before, but actually, it's rare to find a set of players and causes that fit so well together. The financial incentive is gravy.

While MasterCard is looking for a way into the female market and continue its CSR efforts in an emerging economy, Hotel de la Paix gets to add an angle to the hotel that doesn't make it look so out of place as a high-end hotel in a desperately poor nation (in fact, this may just fight off some heavy criticism and also encourage local stakeholder buy-in). It's not that similar types of partnerships haven't been done before, but in this case it's been done well, which takes a fair amount of pizazz and a sprinkle of innovation.

Samsung's new Galaxy Tablet is the answer to Apple's iPad, but it's barely competent--which is precisely how Samsung rolls. A history of merely satisfactory products proves the point.

Samsung is one of our Most Innovative Companies for good reason--their microchip and memory business is one of the best in the world, and the company is definitely on the shortlist of most dominant consumer tech companies. They sell the most TVs, are second only to Nokia in worldwide cellphone sales, and fall in the top five in just about every other corner of the industry. Yet Samsung's consumer products consistently underwhelm.

Samsung is safe. They wait to see what works and release their own pretty good, decently performing version at a fair price. But that's not the stuff of greatness. Here's what we mean.

September 2010: Samsung Galaxy Tab

Answer to: Apple iPad

The Apple iPad was a was a new breed of tablet with a new philosophy: No longer would a tablet be a convertible laptop with a touchscreen. The iPad uses a mobile processor, mobile operating system, mobile wireless card, and forgoes a physical keyboard. Samsung's takeoff is a smaller device (7-inch screen, compared to 9.7-inch), but also packs a mobile processor, mobile OS, mobile wireless card, and a thick-bordered capacitive touchscreen.

Both devices offer stiff competition to ebook readers as well, with Apple launching iBooks and Samsung embracing Borders's Kobo software.

Is the Galaxy Tab an iPad competitor? Sure. It looks pretty good, and might even be better for reading than the iPad (mostly due to size and weight reductions). But nothing in particular sets it apart--it's not breaking new ground, it's merely what you thought it'd be. It's quintessentially Samsung: a B+.

August 2010: Samsung Epic 4G

Answer to: HTC Evo 4G

Samsung's Epic 4G, one of its "Galaxy S" Android smartphones (a different Galaxy S phone is headed to Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint--the Epic 4G is Sprint's), is probably the best smartphone available for Sprint right now. But it's still an example of Samsung's "good enough" mentality.

HTC's Evo 4G garnered tons of buzz and huge sales, despite the major handicap of subpar battery life that was mentioned ad nauseum in every review. The Evo 4G was the start of a new breed of phone: With a huge 4.3-inch touchscreen, advanced media capabilities, a great custom version of Android, and top-of-the-line guts (including Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor), the Evo 4G was bound to be a big seller. But it was also the very first 4G phone in America, taking advantage of speeds closer to broadband speeds at home than to the usual 3G.

Samsung's Epic 4G, which followed a few months later, was the second 4G phone in America. It too had top-of-the-line internals and a custom Android OS, and has also sold quite well. Its superior battery life and hardware keyboard make it arguably a better phone than the Evo 4G. But it's not a Big Deal. The Evo 4G was a Big Deal.

The Epic 4G doesn't go out on a limb, and doesn't inspire excitement. When we talk about the phones that have made Android the success it is today, we talk about the T-Mobile G1, the Motorola Droid, the HTC Droid Incredible, and the HTC Evo 4G--the phones that took Android a step further into the future. The Epic 4G will never be in that pantheon. It's a very well-made phone, but that's all it is.

June 2010: Samsung TL500

Answer to: Canon S90

The Canon S90 is a marvel of engineering, an endlessly surprising little wonder. It's Canon's line in the sand: This, says Canon, is the best point-and-shoot camera in the world, and we don't have to prove it with meaningless stats.

The S90 cost a whopping $430 upon release, offering only 10MP--a ballsy move, considering cameras like Kodak's C180 offer 10.2MP for only $80. But the S90 also packed the same high-end sensor as the larger, more expensive G11. It has been a big success. Canon took a risk and pulled it off. It abandoned the fruitless megapixel war--photogs and Canon know a 14MP camera is absolutely not guaranteed to take better photos than an 8MP camera. But the general public doesn't. Enter Samsung.

A few months after the S90, Samsung announcing the TL500. It too is an expensive ($450) point-and-shoot offering just 10MP. It's an extremely well-performing, thoughtfully-styled camera that will blow a 14MP Sony out of the water, with a few extras (like a swiveling AMOLED screen) thrown in for good measure. It's a very nice product, and it should sell quite well. But it will not be, nor was it ever intended to be, a smash hit, spoken about with awe amongst the tech nerds. The S90 already broke this ground--the TL500 simply follows along.

Fall 2009: Samsung Hummingbird Processor

Answer to: Qualcomm Snapdragon

Qualcomm's Snapdragon, a very low-energy 1GHz processor, is the muscle of choice for modern Android phones like the HTC Droid Incredible, Google Nexus One, Dell Streak, and Sony Xperia X10. It's also the mandatory minimum power behind Microsoft's upcoming Windows Phone 7 line.

The Snapdragon isn't the only game in town, of course--Texas Instruments has a competing 1GHz chip found in the Motorola Droid X and Droid 2, and Nvidia's Tegra, while underused, is often linked to upcoming tablets. But the Snapdragon powered the first 1GHz Android phone, the Google Nexus One, and is the undisputed champion of the Android world.

Samsung, being a chipmaker as well as a consumer gadget maker, has their own version--a 1GHz chip based, like the Snapdragon, on the ARM A8 core. Samsung's chip is called the Hummingbird, and was announced about six month after the first Snapdragon phone (though the first Hummingbird-powered device wouldn't come out for a few months after that). The Hummingbird is what powers the Galaxy S phones, as well as the Galaxy Tab tablet. What are people saying about it? That it's "just about as good as a Snapdragon."

April 2009: Samsung P3

Answer to: Apple iPod Touch

Apple's iPhone is like the friendliest virus you could imagine, wreaking delightful havoc through Apple's catalog. Apple's first tablet? A big iPhone. The newest iPod Nano? A teeny iPhone (sort of). The iPod Touch? A phone-less iPhone.

Giving customers the ability to get the groundbreaking iOS interface, along with all those great apps, without the expense or hassle of a monthly phone bill made the iPod Touch a huge success. And with one great success comes a Samsung product in its wake.

Samsung's portable media players were always pretty good--nice design, fairly priced, excellent sound quality--but never particularly innovative. Ditto the P3, Samsung's pretty-good PMP released in April 2009. With a super-thin brushed metal design, great sound quality, extensive format support, and big touchscreen, it looked like an iPod Touch killer.

Except it wasn't. With no Wi-Fi, the P3 couldn't download apps (thus restricted to a bunch of mostly-useless widgets that came pre-packaged) and its interface wasn't as smooth or stylish as Apple's. The P3 was a totally competent portable media player--certainly more capable than the iPod Nano, say--but its lack of ambition and willingness to be merely good doomed it to the "not an iPod" bin.

These are just a few examples, meant to show an overarching theme to Samsung's products. There are a few Samsung releases that don't follow the mold: Samsung's TVs are excellent, and the company (for better or for worse) is at the forefront of 3D technology--although to be fair, only minor spec details separate Samsung's offerings from those of Sony, Panasonic, LG, Vizio, and the rest. On the other hand, the Omnia II, a Windows Mobile smartphone, and the Behold II, an earlier Android smartphone, were both complete disasters.

But for the most part, Samsung seems content to sit back, only releasing a product if there's already been a similar one that's seen significant success. The company is generally reliable, releasing reasonably styled, reasonably priced, reasonably functional products. But in a world where companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, HTC, and even Amazon are willing to step up and release groundbreaking products they believe in even though they may not succeed, Samsung's reluctance to wow us just doesn't cut it.

Dan Nosowitz, the author of this post, can be followed on Twitter, corresponded with via email, and stalked in Brooklyn (no link for that one--you'll have to do the legwork yourself).

AMD just revealed the chip architecture that'll be at the core of the company's future products: Bulldozer for high-end computing, and Bobcat for lower-power demands. We spoke to Bobcat's chief architect about the chips, the market, and how he sees the future.

Bobcat is, by AMD's own press info, destined for "low power markets" like netbooks and nettops and it's "cloud-client optimized." Very much in the mold of Intel's Atom, which it is designed to compete direclty with, the CPU has a "small die area" and is designed to be flexible so it can be used in numerous devices. But Brad Burgess was careful to note that "Bobcat is also critical to our strategy of combining traditional CPU cores, like Bobcat, and graphics processing capability onto a single chip." This is a strategy that's very much in vogue with chip design at the moment since "That?s where improving the user experience really comes into play because graphics processors can do so much more than gaming; they are actually great at general purpose processing as well." Bobcat is also the foundation of a whole line of "Fusion" chips, which marry CPUs and GPUs into a single unit--it's a huge part of the company's future. 

We asked Brad what set his company's chips apart from their competition, and while he was reluctant to compare figures directly, Burgess noted Bobcat is "unique because we have focused on power management not just in terms of implementation tricks or clock gating, but rather we have put significant effort into reducing power all way down to fundamental microachitecture decisions." Its reliance on out-of-order process management is also key--providing "one of the biggest performance advantages" over in-order processors (in which commands are simply processed in the order they arrive, meaning if one is computationally "expensive" it can hold up a whole string of later, but smaller, commands).

But the future of computing isn't as clear-cut as it has been for recent decades, where Moore's law saw ever faster, more powerful, more electrical power-hungry chips cramming more and more transistors into a square millimeter of silicon. In particular two new pieces of thinking have been changing the markets: Desktop supercomputers, or servers, powered by smaller, less energy-hungry chips and multifunction "heterogenous" chips that act as both central processor and graphics processor.

"In terms of delivering a 'supercomputer on your desktop,'" Burgess highlighted that it's "actually possible today with the incredible processing capability of graphics technology, such as our ATI Radeon HD 5000 series graphics cards. With multiple Teraflops of compute power, we are seeing customers running applications on their desktops that would have been classified as supercomputers not too long ago." But he agreed that the new trend of using chips like Bobcat in servers and powerful many-cored desktop machines was an "interesting concept." Could his chip be used like this? "It could," he conceded, "but we will watch the market very closely before making any decision."

Meanwhile another revolution, headlined by things like the new Microsoft Xbox CPU/GPU dual-purpose processors, is going on. AMD is in a prime position to capitalize on this as it's got expertise in designing both types of processor (unlike Intel, as pretty much anyone who's ever had to rely on Intel's "integrated graphics" solutions will attest). AMD is in fact in a "unique position" to do this, but the real trick to finesse this sort of tech is to integrate "this technology in a way where the people who program applications don't see any difference" Burgess thinks, with the tech intelligently mapping specific tasks to the right resources all by itself. And this is interesting, given that lots of emphasis is currently placed on clever code exploits (for unusual number-crunching tasks like encryption) being crafted to make the most of the powerful chips in GPU cards. 

So what about the distant future? Some noise is being made about optical chip interconnects, and you can just about argue that the fiber optics inside USB 3.0 and LightPeak are a first step toward replacing silicon with "light chips". But Burgess, who should know, thinks we shouldn't rule out CMOS and silicon just yet, thanks tot the raw "economics of manufacturing." The existing "workhorse of the industry is plain-old CMOS" and while there will ultimately "be more mainstream applications for optical computing, but for the near-term, the economics of semiconductor manufacturing will keep us on a more traditional path." 

To keep up with this news follow me, Kit Eaton, on Twitter.

NASA's prepping its Solar Probe Plus mission for a firey sundive. It's no theatrical stunt--it's all about science and understanding how our sun works, which doesn't make it a bit less awesome.

Sometime before 2018, a NASA mission dubbed Solar Probe Plus will rocket into the skies over Earth, spin speedily through the inky, starry void for a hundred million miles, and then it's programmed to crash. Into the sun. Well, not exactly crash, but its mission is no less spectacular than this.

Solar Probe Plus is, as NASA notes, "unprecedented." It's in its early stages of planning, and NASA's just completed an important milestone: Selecting five scientific payloads from a field of thirteen which were shortlisted last year. These five missions will measure electrons, protons and helium ions in the solar wind, produce amazing wide-field 3-D images of the Sun's corona, detect the electromagnetic shock-wave concussions and fields in the solar atmosphere, sample and detect the elements in the atmosphere and attempt to work out the heliosphere's origins. 

But while the surface of the sun sizzles along at a few thousand Celsius, the solar atmosphere itself is a toasty million-plus degrees--so how will the car-sized spacecraft survive? By not going to deep, primarily--it's going to fly into the atmosphere at an altitude of about 4 million miles. Up here its "revolutionary" carbon-carbon composite heat shield (made from similar material to the Space Shuttle's tiles) can protect it from temperatures up to 1,400 Celcius, which is 700 times hotter than the room temperature where you're reading this. It'll even fend off the electronics-crippling effects of radiation.

It's important to perform this science for two reasons: Firstly, the Sun's weather affects Earth more than you may think, and its even responsible for killing communications satellites in orbit. And secondly because it's in the spirit of pure curiosity: We still don't understand much about our nearest and dearest star, even down to exactly why its atmosphere is hotter than its surface.

Plus the mission is exciting. Lika Guhathakurta, one of the program scientists, uses an irresistible sci-fi reference to promote it in NASA's press release: "This project allows humanity's ingenuity to go where no spacecraft has ever gone before." But we think there's a better one, which will have instantly popped into your mind if you're a Douglas Adams fan. Remember Disaster Area, the loudest rock band in the history of music itself? Remember their impossibly black stuntship, destined to plunge into the sun at the climax of their stage show?

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To keep up with this news follow me, Kit Eaton, on Twitter.

"Ping ping ping ping ping -- ping ping ping (ping ping ping)".

Luis Suarez has a dream, and it’s one that many of us with our overloaded inboxes could well buy in to — a world without e-mail.

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Hope everybody knows we're keeping score. Here's how start-ups are looking heading into the September stretch run:

Booyah, the mobile gaming company behind the extremely successful location-aware MyTown, launched a new iPhone app called InCrowd leveraging Facebook Places. NEW RANK: #88

Things just keep getting worse for Digg. Its users are still in revolt over its new design, its site has been unreliable, it is getting called out by a former employee, and it just plain isn't as big a deal as it used to be. NEW RANK: #89

Fusion Garage, maker of the Joojoo, suffered a major set back in its lawsuit with Michael Arrington and TechCrunch. And, to top it all of, it is still Fusion Garage, maker of the Joojoo. NEW RANK: #1,732

New York City education technology startup Knewton won the prestigious Technology Pioneers award from the World Economic Forum. So did Foursquare, SecondMarket, Scribd, OpenDNS, and a handful of other startups, but we can't dedicate this whole list to Davos, so Knewton it is. NEW RANK: #55

Startup-that-isn't-a-bank-but-provides-banking-services BankSimple raised a series A from a top notch set of investors, and strikes us as a neat idea. NEW RANK: #208

Foursquare competitor Loopt landed the best check-in offer we've ever heard of: 2-for-1 plane tickets to Mexico. The deal helped Virgin America to its fifth-biggest day in sales ever. NEW RANK: #62

Twitter's authentication update broke a number of third-party apps. It sent out its announcement two days too late, without realizing what day it was. It also announced that it has registered 145 million accounts, so poor communication skills don't seem to be a dealbreaker. NEW RANK: #8

WiThings, the French startup behind the scale that lets you periodically tweet out your weight, raised $3.8 million, which makes that success of Blippy sound expected and completely undepressing. NEW RANK: #308

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Smart Decisions is supported by Mercedes-Benz.

Good news New York City startups: It's never been easier to raise money to get your company off the ground.

One plugged in digital media exec told us, "If you can't get money for your startup right now, then there's something wrong with you." Other people in the scene basically confirmed this, but added a few caveats.

Chiefly, getting quality capital is as challenging as ever. And big brand name VCs aren't changing their pace of funding.

However, New York City is awash in capital for early stage startups looking for smallish (under $1 million) sized rounds. There's a lot of "hedge fund guys" looking to invest in tech startups in New York right now, says one New York investor.

"If you're a hedge fund guy you're used to billions. And when you see valuations in the millions, it seems like nothing to invest," says this investor. But he adds, the hedge fund guys don't get the technology business. Taking their money, therefore, he argues is less valuable.

Of course, he's talking his book, but he says he walked away from investing in a startup after some hedge fund guys made the valuation out of whack. The terms were more favorable for the startup, but it would have scared off later round investment, he says.

A VC we spoke with touched upon the idea of later round investment. He's seeing a lot of angel funding cash out there, but he thinks some startups are getting funding before they're ready for it, or deserve it. And when the startups go looking for a series A or B round, they might find that getting that later round is much more challenging.

One person we know who has a startup trying to raise money was floored at how easy it was to get a small slug of cash. It was basically a short phone call with a potential investor who said, "I've heard good things about you from people I trust. When you're ready for me to invest, just call me back."

The growth in early stage funds in New York is being driven by a few factors say the people we spoke with.

1. The New York tech scene is flourishing. And coverage of it is too, thus investors are interested.

2. Some of the people that had successful New York based startups in the early part of the decade are investing in New York startups now.

3. Wall Street types are willing to spend money on startups.

4. It's easier than ever to do a lightweight startup. You don't need much money for many web based companies. If you need less money, it's easier to get funding.

5. Companies are acquisitive again. Google has purchased 25 companies in 12 months. Facebook is acquiring at a decent clip. Even Apple is buying some companies. And there's many other companies stepping up their M&A.

Add it all together, and the city is looking quite "frothy," according to our digital media exec friend.

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We asked people on the street what they think of daily deals company Groupon. Most of them hadn't heard of it. But once we explained what the company does, most of them got pretty excited. That's probably why Groupon revenues are supposedly going to reach $500 million this year. Watch above.

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Few industries are more badly in need of disruption than textbook publishing.

Every semester, students fork over masses of cash for extremely expensive textbooks. Teachers choose the books, but students pay for them, so the incentives to compete on price aren't what they should be. Then, every few years, publishers make a few minor tweaks, issue a new edition, and send the resell value of the textbooks down to near zero.

Enter Chegg, a Santa Clara startup that has been crushing it for the past few years by providing students with an alternative: textbook rentals.

Chegg offers students the opportunity to pay well below cover price for books that they then return when the semester or school year is over. Chegg then rents them back out to a new batch of students.

That simple idea has brought Chegg $144 million in venture funding since 2007. Simply put, the company is crushing it.

So how does it all work? We spent some time with it, and took a look at:

How to save money by renting your textbooks on Chegg →

How to make money selling your old textbooks to Chegg →

How to make money promoting Chegg to your friends →

Or:

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See Also:

• Textbook Rental Startup Chegg Is A Money Machine
• Netflix-For-Textbooks Startup Chegg Hires A CFO From Netflix's Board

5min Media, a New York startup that syndicates premium video content to publishers in niche markets, just gave its video games offering a huge boost by signing up gaming megasite IGN as a content partner.

5min offers web publishers a way to include relevant video next to all of their content without doing any ongoing work. Publishers embed a piece of code in their templates, and 5min automatically provides relevant videos to each new article. Ad revenues are split between content providers, publishers, and 5min.

It's a promising model: 5min served up 130 million streams in July (116 million U.S.) to 42 million unique viewers (27 million U.S.), and claims its ad inventory has been sold out all year. The company has been able to build up a huge library of over 200,000 videos in the verticals it serves. The new deal is a huge move in gaming, as the News Corp owned property is by far the biggest publisher in the vertical.

To achieve huge scale on the distribution side, we expect this has to become a self-serve process, since smaller publishers are the least likely to produce or license premium video content on their own. 5min won't say anything specific about its plans on this front yet, but it's something to watch for.

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See Also:

• Little-Known Startup 5min Media Is Killing It In The Niche Video Market

BankSimple, a new type of technology-focused, online-only banking startup cofounded by an early Twitter employee, has just completed a round of venture funding, SAI has learned.

First Round Capital's Josh Kopelman, IA Ventures' Roger Ehrenberg, and Village Ventures' Matt Harris led the round, which will close shortly. Angels including Ron Conway joined in.

The startup was founded by CEO Josh Reich, CFO Shamir Karkal, and CTO Alex Payne, one of Twitter's first employees, and the man who predicted that new features on Twitter's home page would eliminate the need for desktop clients.

BankSimple says its goal is to "automate the hard parts of banking and make it easy for our customers to understand and manage their money." Since there are high regulatory barriers to entry in banking, BankSimple isn't a bank itself, but rather works on an affiliate model, depositing its customers' money in other, FDIC-insured banks. It issues a single ATM/Debit/Credit card, and offers some neat high tech features like the ability to cash checks using your smartphone.

BankSimple has two main selling points: simplicity, and, especially, transparency. The company is born from outrage at the revenue model of existing commercial banks: sticking their customers with hidden fees and penalties. BankSimple insists it won't do any of that. And, because it won't have any physical branches to support, it can afford to be telling the truth about that.

Of course, the startup has a huge hurdle to clear in earning consumers' trust. Even if we don't like our banks, they are huge names, and we can hand them our life savings secure in the knowledge that they won't steal or lose it outright. But if it can get past that, this could be a huge opportunity. Many consumers, especially younger, more technologically-inclined ones, don't have much use for physical banks, and we'd rather not pay for them.

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See Also:

• Twitter Previews The Redesign That Will Make You "Not Want To Use A Desktop Client"
• How Richard Branson And Virgin Should Revolutionize Retail Banking

It’s a cliché to note that the internet has completely changed business. For big companies and small, the web has allowed businesses to be more efficient, advertise better, and scale faster.

However, the impact is not uniform. While technology has revolutionized the travel, advertising, jobs and financial services, some industries still seem to be chugging along unscathed by the web revolution.

The real estate industry is one of them.  Yes, classified advertising has migrated to the web in the form of real estate search, but the sell side of real estate may be web’s biggest relative laggard.

There are several reasons why technology adoption has lagged the Real Estate brokerage industry. 

Brokerages compete with each other not on their differentiated offerings, but simply by bringing on more agents.  And agents are typically attracted by brand and commission split.  So as a broker, that’s where you spend your money.  Developing technology based differentiation is low on the list of priorities because brokers and agents are not technologists, and the “off the rack” options don’t fit the needs of the real estate community anyway.

The “one size doesn’t fit all” problem is particularly acute for real estate sales.  Real estate is a different beast because there are two sales that need to happen prior to closing a transaction.  First, the home owner needs to be “sold” so the agent gets the listing, and then the home buyer needs to be sold the home.  Any complete technology based selling solution needs to take into account both parts of the sales equation.

Layer on top of this, a solution that needs to span online and offline media and be local in nature, and it’s no wonder real estate sales has been such a late adopter of technology.

However, never before has there been such an opportunity for an industry to embrace technology.  Social networking allows the real estate brokerage to tap into their contacts and the contacts of their agents and clients.  And analytics software can measure marketing response and determine what’s effective and ineffective – and direct ad dollars to where there is the biggest bang for the buck.  And structured real estate data can dramatically improve matching buyers to sellers, and reduce transaction costs for clients, all the while improving overall margins for the industry.

However, to do this, Real Estate brokerages need to embrace their inner CTO and become technology companies first, and sales organizations second.  Until this happens, this industry will continue to lag the opportunity in front of them.

Doug Perlson is the CEO of RealDirect, a technology driven real estate company.

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The World Economic Forum, best known for its annual conference in Davos, announced its annual Technology Pioneers awards today, given out to the tech startups around the world that the Forum deems the most innovative.

This year's winners include location-based social network Foursquare, illiquid asset trading platform SecondMarket, music streaming service Spotify, education startup Knewton, and DNS service provider OpenDNS.

The winning startups will be honored at the next conference in Davos.

Past winners include Google, PayPal, Mozilla, and Twitter. Of course, plenty of companies you haven't heard of have won too, but that's still impressive company to keep.

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See Also:

• The Only 10 Important Things Said Today In Davos
• Foursquare Is Still More Popular Than Facebook Places ? At Yankee Stadium, At Least
• Meet The People Who Buy And Sell Silicon Valley Every Day

TechStars, one of the best known and most successful startup accelerator programs, is expanding to New York City. Applications are now open for its inaugural NYC class, which will start in January.

TechStars founder and CEO David Cohen is temporarily relocating to the city to oversee the innaugural class; angel investor David Tisch is signed on as the New York City director.

TechStars now operates in four cities, but only has one active class at any given time, and limits its class-size to 10 companies, which David says is essential to giving each startup all the mentorship it needs.

The new program has a very impressive line-up of investors and mentors, with an emphasis on NYC VCs, angels, and entrepreneurs. Investors include Union Square Ventures, DFJ Gotham, AOL Ventures, First Round Capital, FirstMark Capital, IA Ventures, RRE, Ventures, and Lerer Ventures (and we could keep going). Mentors already signed on include Dennis Crowley, Chris Dixon, Fred Wilson, Albert Wenger, Zack Klein, and Sam Lessin (again, we could keep going).

Just a few weeks ago, New York's first accelerator program, SeedStart, graduated its innaugural class. Now it already has company. That's great news for New York tech.

See also: The 5 Startups That Just Graduated From SeedStart

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See Also:

• Your Chance To Join VCs and Entrepreneurs At SeedStart's Workshops
• Contrary to Reports, Seed-Stage Investing Alive and Well in NYC
• 5 Startups Graduate From New York's Answer To Y-Combinator

We've recently published several articles discussing the use of convertible debt in financing seed and early-stage companies.

Why?

It's all a response to a Twitter update by Paul Graham, founder of the Y Combinator, which consults early-stage and seed companies. He tweeted:

“Convertible notes have won. Every investment so far in this YC batch (and there have been a lot) has been done on a convertible note.”

It garnered so much attention in the VC world because the value of convertible debt versus traditional financing rounds is controversial.

In fact, there's even disagreement as to what kind of convertible debt--capped or uncapped-- is best for investors and entrepreneurs.

Here's the deal:

• A convertible debt is a type of financing that has three distinct characteristics: It doesn't give the investor any legal authority in the company, thereby reducing legal fees associated with the investment (from near $40k to just $5k), and it defers valuation to the next round. In return for the risk the investors incur, they are offered a significantly upgraded rate when investing in future rounds of financing.

• A capped convertible debt essentially sets boundaries for that significantly upgraded rate, while still avoiding negotiations on an (often premature) evaluation of the seed or early-stage company. That cap helps avoid the conflicts of interests that arise between a VC and a company in the eventual valuation of a company.

• Meanwhile standard equity financing sets strict parameters on the companies valuation, gives investors legal sway with the direction of the company, and has legal fees that can reach $40k.

Obviously, Paul Graham is happy to see that entrepreneurs and investors are increasingly agreeing upon convertible debt structures. Chris Dixon, an investor in early-stage companies, also likes this trend. Albeit, with the caveat that the convertible debt financing is capped. He argues that although investors don't get as much legal power, he believes it builds a level of trust between VCs and entrepreneurs that's crucial to the success of companies.

Meanwhile venture capital investors Seth Levine, Mark Suster, and Fred Wilson, aren't so hot on this trend. All three note the symbiotic relationship between investors and entrepreneurs. Investors aren't trying to fleece entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs are dependent upon those same investors for financing and expertise.

Essentially, they believe the growing popularity of convertible notes is overly favorable towards entrepreneurs and therefore throws off the delicate balance between VCs and startups. That, they fear, jeopardizes a market that's currently flush with venture capital dollars. 

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See Also:

• Raise Money Now. There Are Storms Ahead
• If Founders Are Going To Screw You, Then You Made A Bad Bet On People
• Why I Don't Like Convertible Debt