Tesla Motors is climbing a steep hill

Tesla Motors stock price is near an all time high

The nascent electric car market has many naysayers. Many suspect Tesla Motors, the poster child of the electric vehicle movement, is running on fumes and will ultimately have to pull the EV plug.

But at the moment, Tesla is driving in the fast lane. Its stock price is near an all time high because of high expectations for its Model S sedan and Model X SUV. The Model S, which is scheduled for launch in July, is the subject of a feature article in the Wall Street Journal. The Model X, slated for production late next year, is touted in recent articles in both the San Francisco Chronicle and Chicago Tribune.

Google grant helps put Mandela archive online

A Google grant has helped to establish an online archive unveiled today that includes Nelson Mandela's diaries written during his 27 years of imprisonment, and notes he made while leading the negotiations to end apartheid in South Afria. A Google blog post describes the company's support for the Johannesburg-based Nelson Mandela Centre for Memory, which has preserved the documents, photos and videos of the South African leader.

Dropbox finds inspiration in hackathon

Dropbox, a popular cloud storage service for photos, videos and documents, invited a filmmaker to document two of its engineers during Hack Week at their San Francisco office earlier this month.

YouTube debuts American Hipster channel

Dave Fine (top), Beau Lewis and Peter Furia are producing shows at their Seedwell studio in San Francisco for YouTube's American Hipster channel.

At the scruffy Seedwell studio in San Francisco's SoMa district last week, a group of young people gathered to watch a documentary about a hipster, popular Instagram photographer Bex Finch, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The loosely defined hipster subculture is the subject of a YouTube Channel, American Hipster, that releases its first shows today. Read more.

Square revamps smartphone payment app

Mobile payments startup Square has overhauled its iPhone app and added supports for Android smartphones. The revamped app is called Pay with Square.

Square was founded Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter. Earlier this month, Square launched an iPad cash register app for small merchants. Square's chief competitor is PayPal, which has payment solutions for the iPhone and point-of-sale systems for large and small businesses.

SF startup key to marketing of Hunger Games

 Startup thismoment has partnered with the leading social networks.

Back in June 2011, Lionsgate and San Francisco startup thismoment launched a series of social promotions on YouTube, Facebook and other social sites to begin the social drumbeat about the movie Hunger Games,  reports Forbes.  Read more

Nvidia launches Kepler GPU

Nvidia recently introduced its next generation Kepler graphics card. Benchmark tests indicate the GeForce GTX 680 outperforms the top GPU from its chief competitor, AMD's new Radeon HD 7970.

Facebook challenges employers asking for passwords

Facebook Chief Security Officer Erin Egan today decried the "distressing increase of reports of employers or others seeking to gain inappropriate access to people's Facebook profiles or private information." Egan emphatically declared, "You should never have to share your password, let anyone access your account, or do anything that might jeopardize the security of your account or the privacy of your friends. Read more.

Adobe announces Photoshop CS6 beta

Adobe has released a free downloadable beta of Photoshop CS6, the new version of its image-editing software. Photoshop CS6 improves the content-aware retouching features it introduced in 2010.

Google Maps posts Street View images of Amazon

Google Maps today posted ground-level images of the Amazon's Rio Negro Reserve.

YouTube offers one click video editing

A new feature has been added to the YouTube Video Editor that will automatically fix shaky or dark videos.

Silicon Valley's hottest VC is a rug dealer

Pejman Nozad is one of Silicon Valley's greatest connectors, writes Victoria Barret in the April 9, 2012 issue of Forbes Magazine. Top investors take his calls. Hit-making entrepreneurs consider him an uncle. And somewhere in between he's piling up small stakes in some of the hottest startups in the world. Nozad's path to Silicon Valley power broker, and VC investor with a net worth in the ballpark of $50 million: he sold carpets. Read more.

Telsa Motors pins hopes on affordable Model S

Tesla Motors is poised to build its first affordable car. The fully electric Model S sedan is priced to compete with the BMW 5 series and the Audi A7, reports Fast Company. Read more.

JOBS Act will impact Silicon Valley startups

This week, possibly as soon as tomorrow, the Senate is likely to pass the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act. It has already passed the House, and most of the influencers in Silicon Valley are in favor of the Act, reports CNET. Read more.

60 Minutes interviews Elon Musk

When the final NASA space mission ended last July, for the first time in three decades, the United State had no way to launch astronauts into space, reports CBS News. It was the end of one era and the beginning  of another. Instead of NASA designing the next manned spacecraft, the White House decided that private industry should design, build and fly it -- opening space to commercial development. One of the companies vying for that contract is SpaceX. Elon Musk is the founder and CEO.

SF Bay Area tech hub drives 19th largest economy in the world

Economic growth in the San Francisco Bay Area, which has the 19th largest economy in the world, has been driven exclusively by tech companies since 2005, according to a report issued today  for the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.

Nvidia touts supercomputer GPU

The directors of supercomputing labs at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory explain the growing importance of supercomputers around the world in the Nvidia video above.

Infographic shows demographics of social networks

The infographic below, created by Online MBA, categorizes the users of social media such as Facebook and Twitter by gender, age, education and income. Women, for example, gravitate to Pinterest, male geeks hangout on Google +.

Click image to enlarge

Via: Online MBA Resource

New HTML5 app allows tethering to iPhone

 

A new HTML5 app by Tether allows users to wirelessly connect their iPhone to a laptop to enable 3G Internet access.

Several months ago, Tether introduced 3G tethering for the iPhone through the Apple App Store.

"It was clear from our initial application iTether, there was enormous demand within the iPhone ecosystem," said Tether CEO Tim Burke. "It was unfortunate that Apple decided to remove our application, only 20 hours after we launched. However, this caused us to innovate. Our underlying patent-pending technology for Tether for iPhone is unlike anything on the market."

Traveling inside a black hole

Over 300,000 people have watched this video about black holes since it was uploaded to YouTube by vsauce two days ago.

Solar storm has little impact on Earth

NASA released the above video of the solar flare that erupted earlier this week, resulting in a solar storm that reached the Earth today. There is no noticeable storm damage on Earth, according to NASA.

Marc Andreessen wishes he had invested in Square

Renowned Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently talked with Emily Chang on Bloomberg West about the state of tech investments. Andreessen admits missing the boat when approached by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey about investing in his new company, Square.

Astronaut launches Angry Birds Space

NASA astronaut Don Pettit announced the March 22 release of Angry Birds Space aboard the International Space Station. The popular Angry Bird game series is made by Rovio.

"Science and education are very important to us, and we're very excited to have NASA and National Geographic as launch partners," Rovio genenral manager Andrew Stalbow told Yahoo! Games.

Facebook updates page editing

Facebook recently added new features to help users manage profile and Timeline content.

The rebirth of animated GIFs

A new PBS video charts the 25-year-old history of animated GIFs and the recent explosion in animated photography, spearheaded by the blogging platform Tumblr.

A new project called Idle Screenings takes movies like Avatar, The Dark Knight, Inception and The Hangover and creates animated GIFs,  reports Wired.

Animated GIF from the movie Inception.

Twitter, American Express to offer retail deals

Twitter and American Express recently formed a partnership to offer shopping discounts at over a dozen major retailers to users of the microblogging service.

Google centralizes Android apps in cloud-based service

Google yesterday introduced Google Play, a cloud-based hub for Android entertainment applications, including music, movie and book apps.

Square unveils iPad cash register app

Square, the company co-founded by Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter, today announced an iPad cash register app designed for small merchants.

How to extract your own DNA

The NOVA video above shows how to extract your own DNA by mixing a few household items: bottled water, dish soap, food coloring, table salt and isopropyl alcohol.

"Cracking Your Genetic Code," a PBS program set to air on March 28, explores the dawning era of affordable, personalized, gene-based medicine.
 

Flying robots play 'James Bond' theme

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania recently demonstrated flying robot quadrotors perform the James Bond theme song by playing various instruments, including the keyboard, drums and maracas, a cymbal, and a guitar built from a bed frame.

Ocean acidification rate unprecedented

Click image to enlarge

Acidity in the Earth's oceans is increasing more rapidly than at any time in the last 300 years, leading to severe consequences for marine ecosystems, reports CNET.

A machine that can smell cancer

Metabolomx's machine can diagnose cancer from a patient's breath.

Metabolomx, a 12-person outfit in Mountain View, CA., appears to be on the fast track to bring a cancer-sniffing device to market, reports Businessweek. Read more.

Zynga going solo

Zynga, the most popular social gaming network on Facebook, today announced that it plans to branch out on its own. Zynga plans to develop a satellite platform just for social games. About 12 percent of Facebook's revenue comes from Zynga games.