Brazil: Venture Capital's Next Hotbed?

Brazil: Venture Capital's Next Hotbed?
Investments in Brazilian startups are surging, but high taxes and strict labor laws could hamper returns

(Source Business Week, Technology, Investment) Brazil is best known around the world for soccer, samba music, and supermodels. Now it's emerging as an attractive destination for investment capital.

At a June 25 conference in New York, a Brazilian venture capital trade group announced some impressive figures. As of the end of 2008, local and foreign investors had committed $28 billion in venture and private equity capital to Brazilian companies, said Luiz Figueiredo, president of the Brazilian Association for Private Equity & Venture Capital. That's up from $6 billion in 2004, amounting to a hearty 50% compound annual growth rate over the last four years. Investors have financed 500 Brazilian companies to date with venture or private equity capital, and there's $12 billion left to invest over the next few years from that $28 billion kitty.

Venture and private equity players see ample opportunity in Brazil, which boasts a stable financial system and a strong base of local investors. But the country's business challenges, including high taxes and restrictive labor laws, could hold back growth.

The conference on investment opportunities in Brazil was hosted by the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce and drew more than 150 investors, executives, and technologists. An initial public offering and a large investment underscored the event's theme.

On June 25, Brazilian stock exchange Bovespa hosted the world’s largest IPO this year, a $4.3 billion offering by Brazilian credit-card processor VisaNet. The same day, Boston private equity firm Advent International announced that it has bought a 50% stake in Brazilian holding company PAP for $142 million. PAP controls Kroton Educational, a fast-growing education company. It was Advent’s fifteenth investment in Brazil since 1997. Read Article... http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2009/tc20090628_830521.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_top+stories

Hydrogen-powered car

Hydrogen-powered car

(Source New Scientist)A concept car unveiled in London, UK, releases nothing more toxic than water.

Common GPS could help better track airline flights

Common GPS could help better track airline flights
GPS tracks phones, cars, but not planes; Air France crash renews call for end to radar systems

CHICAGO (AP) -- Get lost in the woods and a cell phone in your pocket can help camping buddies find you. Drive into a ditch and GPS in your car lets emergency crews pinpoint the crash site. But when a transcontinental flight is above the middle of the ocean, no one on the ground can see exactly where it is -- in the air, or worse, in the water.

The disappearance of Air France Flight 477 and its 228 passengers over the Atlantic Ocean this week has critics of radar-based air traffic control calling on the U.S. and other countries to hasten the move to GPS-based networks that promise to precisely track all planes. Current radars are obsolete more than 200 miles from land.

"The technology's there -- we've had this stuff for 15 years and little's happened," said Michael Boyd, a Colorado-based airline analyst. "My BlackBerry can be used to track me, so why can't we do it with planes?"

U.S. officials have discussed setting up such a network since the 1990s and the technology is being tested in parts of the country, including Alaska and off the Gulf Coast. A few carriers, like Southwest, already use GPS to help planes make quicker landings that burn less fuel.

But full implementation, estimated at a cost of $35 billion, has languished amid funding delays and disputes over technical complexities. Although Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has said the project will be among the Federal Aviation Administration's top priorities in the Obama administration, the existing radar system is likely to remain for at least another decade.

"It's a crude system they're using now," said Robert Poole, an aviation expert with the free market-oriented Reason Foundation. "For 100 dollars, you can run down and buy a GPS system, put it in your car and know exactly where you are. But planes don't have it."
Read Article...
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Common-GPS-could-help-better-apf-15434824.html?sec=topStories&pos=3&asset=&ccode=

The Dell Adamo, trendy, high-tech, fashionable and sexy

adamo moby dell, http://www.adamobydell.com/us

Dell hopes PCs can't be too rich or too thin
Tuesday March 17, 12:02 am ET

Monsieur, you're getting a Dell: PC maker uses couture to sell luxury laptops in recession
The way it came on the scene, it could have been a rare perfume or a designer handbag, undaunted by the roilingeconomy.

The first rumors of it surfaced in December on a lifestyle magazine's blog. A few weeks later, it was spotted in the arms of runway model Hollis Wakeema in a Las Vegas hotel.
Then came its Web site: Black and white fashion photos fade in and out as cool piano notes drop and melt into a warm, smooth beat. Prepare to fall in love, the site reads.

Now, go buy the laptop.
Specifically, Dell Inc.'s new $2,000-and-up laptop. The computer maker was entering the ultra-thin notebook race Tuesday with the Adamo, from the Latin for "to fall in love with."

The aluminum-body laptop comes in two colors, "onyx" and "pearl." It boasts a 13-inch screen and, with a depth of less than two-thirds of an inch, is thinner than both Apple Inc.'s 0.76-inch MacBook Air ($1,800 and up) and Hewlett-Packard Co.'s 0.7-inch Voodoo Envy notebook (from $1,900).
Even the customer support package goes upscale. Dell will guarantee the same team of service representatives for $99 for a year or $349 for three.
Dell, known for affordable, no-frills computers, leaned away from consumer-electronics tropes and toward the seductive imagery of couture as it designed a marketing campaign to fit the Adamo. The leap Dell is asking consumers to make from its core brand would be a risk in any economy, let alone the worst recession of the personal-computer age. PC sales are sliding and the lone bright spot in the market appears to be small, inexpensive "netbooks," Adamo's polar opposite.

A Smarter Planet, getting from A to B. (IBM)

(IBM) Smart Planet, a smarter planet, getting from A to B.

Clogged roadways need new approaches
Next time you're stuck in traffic ground to a halt, think about this: as smart as our cars have become, our roadways are about to get a whole lot smarter.
It's certainly needed. Cities everywhere are battling an increase in demand and an inability to build sufficient infrastructure to cope. For example, in the U.S., as population grew nearly 20% between 1982 and 2001, traffic jumped 236%.
Building new roads and new lanes often just isn't possible any longer, but building intelligence into the roads and the cars—with roadside sensors, radio frequency tags, and global positioning systems—certainly is.
In Stockholm, a new smart toll system has reduced traffic and carbon emissions by impressive percentages.
In London, a congestion management system has lowered traffic volume to mid-1980s levels.
In Singapore, a traffic prediction system is helping re-route and manage traffic citywide, preventing major back-ups and congestion.

IBM issues rosy 2009 outlook
BUCKING the trend of high-tech competitors, IBM posted a 12 per cent gain in fourth-quarter profit and gave an upbeat outlook for 2009.
Although facing "an extremely difficult economic environment," IBM said it expects to continue to benefit from the increasing profitability of its software and services businesses. Despite the global slowdown, IBM said customers are continuing to sign up for outsourcing and other services contracts.

IBM Global Innovation Outlook (Download PDF)

IBM Driving Innovation, new technologies and ideas (Download PDF)

Detroit's North American International Auto Show, focus on Technology

Detroit's North American International Auto Show, focus on Technology
The Detroit show - which opens Jan. 11-13 to the media and Jan. 17-25 for the public

Detroit in January is still The Big One, for North America.

The focus is on New Technology, not much on the Bailout.
The North American International Auto Show 2009 is where the global automotive community comes together to catch up on the latest. Join more of your peers from around the world at the industry’s most substantive annual event. In addition to 60 new vehicle premieres – including some of the automotive world’s most eagerly anticipated – you’ll gain unprecedented access to more of the industry’s top leaders and thinkers in one place than anywhere else in the hemisphere.

2009 Detroit Auto Show: International Car of TheYear Awards
Nissan GTR 2009 International Car of the Year


Motor Trend 2009 Car of the Year: Nissan GT-R - The best video clips are right here

TrendHunter luxury electric cars from GM

Luxury Electric Cars - GM Builds Cadillac Converj (GALLERY)

(TREND HUNTER) General Motors’ new model, the Cadillac Converj, is an exciting luxury twist on highly anticipated Chevrolet Volt. The Converj, just like the Volt (using Voltec technology), is able to travel 40 miles,… [More]