01.31.06

VCTaskforce Event: Edge Expansion

Posted in Technology Ventures, Events at 4:38 am by Ray Wu

I am putting together an event on edge expansion in the evening on 02/08. The main theme is that with explosion of high-speed broadband and enhanced wireless connectivity, edge devices such as cell phones, PDAs and laptops are increasingly used to replace desktop PCs as the preferred consumer devices for information gathering and sharing. Technologies and services such as SMS, RFID, P2P (ie. Skype, Groove Network) have made business and consumer connectivity more real-time and cheaper to operate. Because of that, the central server scalability model may not be the best solution for all consumer applications, and a lot of new business of models will come because of that. We have a terrific group of panelists:

Jay Eum: Managing Director of Samsung Ventures
Venky Ganesan: Managing Director, Globespan Capital Partners
Salil Pradhan: CTO, RFID and Sensor Network Research, Hewlett-Packard
Jui Tan: Partner, BlueRun Ventures

Here is the URL: http://www.vctaskforce.com/vconly/vconly_2005_10_25.html. Join us, it will be a great event!

01.05.06

Wireless Power

Posted in Technology Ventures at 4:59 am by Ray Wu

I was sitting in a conference one day. After 2 hours of keyboard pounding, my computer ran out of power. It was very awkward to find an electric outlet in a large conference room, and plug in my power cord which never seems to be long enough. With today’s wireless technology, won’t it be cool if we can just transfer power wirelessly? Well, there is a startup in UK called Splash Power that provides powering solution to mobile phone and portable electronic devices without wires. The company is funded by Benchmark Capital and Cambridge Angels. I don’t foresee this energy source to become large enough to charge all devices with all the spectrum limitation, but it is still a very cool step forward. With today’s energy dependency, energy source, like nano and biotech, will become one of the few interesting investment targets to look at…

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