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<title>Haaze.com / RitorMaliks / Published News</title>
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<pubDate>Tue, 31 May 2011 07:10:57 +0000</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Primus Power funded to build grid-size flow battery]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=primus-power-funded-to-build-grid-size-flow-battery</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=primus-power-funded-to-build-grid-size-flow-battery</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 31 May 2011 07:10:57 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>RitorMaliks</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=primus-power-funded-to-build-grid-size-flow-battery</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Primus Power has raised enough money from venture investors to build a commercial-size flow battery to store energy on the power grid, the start-up said today.The company received $11 million from I2BF Global Ventures and DBL Investors, which was spun out of a JPMorgan fund to pursue &quot;double bottom line&quot; investments that earn money and address social and environmental issues. Existing investors Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield &amp; Byers and Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital also invested in this round.Energy storage on grid heats up (photos) Primus Power has developed a flow battery to provide backup power for the power grid or store solar or wind energy. A flow battery uses liquid electrolytes that flow from one vessel to another past a solid electrode, causing a chemical reaction that induces a flow of electricity. The process is reversed to store energy. Flow batteries can discharge and charge quickly and can store a relatively large amount of energy per volume, according to the Energy Storage Association. However, critics say they are complex and difficult to maintain. Primus Power said that its battery has a high power density, addressing one of the traditional shortcomings of the technology. Greentech Media reported that Primus Power's flow battery has a zinc bromine system. Primus Power said that its flow battery is low cost and can be used for many different types of applications. In 2009, it was awarded $14 million as part of the $47 million Department of Energy project to build a 25 megawatt, 75 megawatt-hour storage system to &quot;firm&quot; wind energy. It also received a research grant from the Department of Energy's ARPA-E program to develop a long-lasting electrode for flow batteries with high power density that is well suited for storing wind and solar energy. There's been a surge in interest and experimentation around grid storage over the past few years, aided by government-funded projects and research. Energy storage is considered a key technology for making intermittent wind and solar more reliable. Costs remain a hurdle to adoption as does utility regulation, which is generally geared around power plants. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Google tests game-mechanics strategies with Recyclebank]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=google-tests-game-mechanics-strategies-with-recyclebank</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=google-tests-game-mechanics-strategies-with-recyclebank</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 06 Apr 2011 07:10:54 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>RitorMaliks</dc:creator>
<category>Marketing and advertising</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=google-tests-game-mechanics-strategies-with-recyclebank</guid>
<description><![CDATA[It looks like Google has taken an interest in a start-up called Recyclebank, which offers points and rewards for &quot;green&quot; actions like joining curbside recycling programs and installing eco-friendly appliances--it's using it as a test bed for a new beta version of its Google Analytics tracking tool.More specifically, along with a consumer research company called ROI Research, Google Analytics will be parsing the progress and results of Recyclebank's impending &quot;Green Your Home Challenge,&quot; and then releasing a research paper about the whole process. The contest in question is taking place over the course of April for &quot;Earth Month.&quot;It's the first time that the Google Analytics team has done a partnership like this, product marketing manager Sophie Chesters told CNET. Google's real interest is something broader--that trendy digital buzz term, &quot;game mechanics&quot; or &quot;gamification.&quot; In the Recyclebank contest, entrants go through a virtual &quot;house,&quot; room by room, to make real-world adjustments that will help them live more sustainably and eco-consciously, and can unlock new challenges in the process as well as get ranked alongside other contest entrants on a &quot;leaderboard&quot; of top users.&quot;Gamification is quite an interesting strategy we're seeing people talk about more and more, so if gamification can be used for good, it's a great thing for Google Analytics to help with,&quot; Chesters told CNET. &quot;The fact that we're going to produce a paper on this means that the whole digital community can benefit.&quot;Google's role is to use the new beta version of Analytics to tabulate user engagement and metrics like the &quot;leaderboard,&quot; as well as &quot;providing consultancy on how to best use Google Analytics on how to reach the goals,&quot; Chesters said. They'll be able to help Recyclebank find out how people learned about the contest, how long they stuck around, and whether they've &quot;converted&quot; to Recyclebank regulars.&quot;We're really looking to determine not only what are the most effective media sources that drive engagement in the game, but we also really want to understand how gamification--specifically how the Green Your Home Challenge--is actually changing people's behaviors and getting them to broaden their reach or broaden their engagement with Recyclebank as a brand,&quot; Scott Haiges, president of ROI Research (which has been a Recyclebank partner for some time now), told CNET.The bigger story here is that gamification, or game mechanics, or whatever you want to call the insurgence in interest in applying the tactics of games to digital- and physical-world business models (a lot of it was kick-started by the hype over Foursquare) has piqued the interest of Google. Though it's a totally different division of the sprawling company, Google has been widely rumored to be launching a games portal of some sort--word of this leaked last year along with the report that Google had invested more than $100 million in social-gaming giant Zynga. But there's been little further detail for almost a year now.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Just how pretty are iPad 2&'s graphics The Infinity Blade test shows]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=just-how-pretty-are-ipad-2rsquos-graphics-the-infinity-blade-test-shows</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=just-how-pretty-are-ipad-2rsquos-graphics-the-infinity-blade-test-shows</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>RitorMaliks</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=just-how-pretty-are-ipad-2rsquos-graphics-the-infinity-blade-test-shows</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Apple chief executive Steve Jobs promised that the iPad 2&amp;'s processor is twice as fast as the original iPad&amp;'s and that its graphics performance is nine times better.Now that the results are coming in, it&amp;'s clear that the performance is good but varies widely by application. One of the most demanding apps on the original iPad is Epic Games&amp;' Infinity Blade sword-fighting game (pictured above). Tests show that the revised version of Infinity Blade for the iPad 2 has far more graphics detail than the earlier version, according to AnandTech, a tech gadget site run by uber geek Anand Lal Shimpi.In any given scene, there is far more graphical detail, lighting, and shadows on the iPad 2 version. Jagged lines that appeared in the earlier version no longer appear in the iPad 2 version. That could be enough to make graphics aficionados fall in love with the iPad 2, but it might be a subtle difference for less picky users. AnandTech&amp;'s older and newer images are shown at the bottom of this story, so you can see the subtle improvements for yourself.Other benchmark tests also show that the iPad 2 pretty much blows away the Motorola Xoom. That&amp;'s important to people who want to be able to buy a tablet computer that lasts for a while and can run demanding apps.AnandTech said that the A5 processor in the iPad 2 is 50 percent faster than the original iPad&amp;'s A4 processor in browsing the web. In other synthetic tests (meaning theoretical benchmarks as opposed to real application benchmarks), AnandTech was able to surpass Apple&amp;'s claim of 2x faster CPU (central processing unit) performance.The A5 includes a PowerVR SGX 543MP2 graphics core from Imagination Technologies. Based on a review of the architecture, the graphics core has more than twice the compute horsepower of the PowerVR SGX 535 used in Apple&amp;'s A4 chip. On top of that, there are four times as many pipelines, or processing paths. And as the chart on the right shows, the A5&amp;'s texture filtering performance is better as well, about three times better than the original iPad and significantly faster than the Motorola Xoom.Based on the GLBenchmark 2.0 test, AnandTech found five to seven times faster performance on the iPad 2 compared to the iPad on a number of other graphics tests. On one test dubbed Egypt, the Apple chip in the iPad 2 is 3.7 times faster than the Nvidia Tegra 2 in the Xoom.Another tech site, Iosnoops, says the actual clock speed of the A5 isn&amp;'t 1 gigahertz as with the A4. Rather, both cores run at about 890 megahertz, although the speed varies based on the app running.Check out the graphics in the original iPad version of Infinity Blade below, and in the iPad 2 version below that. You&amp;'ll notice, for instance, there are better lighting effects on the warrior&amp;'s shield in the foreground.Next Story: Interest in iPad 2 far outstrips interest in rival tablets Previous Story: Here&amp;'s the first movie shot with iOS devices and edited on an iPad 2PrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: iPad 2Companies: AnandTech, ApplePeople: Anand Lal Shimpi          Tags: iPad 2Companies: AnandTech, ApplePeople: Anand Lal ShimpiDean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat. Have news to share Launching a startup Email: tips@venturebeat.comVentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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