A new IBM supercomputer opened at Brown University’s Center for Computation and Visualization in Providence, RI, today is 50 times faster than Brown’s next best machine and is the most powerful computer in Rhode Island, according to an announcement from IBM (NYSE: IBM). Researchers at Brown and other institutions intend to use the 1,440-processor machine to model subjects such as the genomes of ocean-going microbes, the mechanics of human and animal movement, and the topography of other planets. Brown ordered the multimillion-dollar supercomputer in June; its exact cost hasn’t been disclosed, but IBM and Brown are calling it “a shared investment.”

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Long before San Diego was known as a hub of telecommunications innovation or for its proliferation of biotech companies, it was a leading center for the development of deep underwater technologies.

During the 1960s and ’70s, scientists from the U.S. Navy laboratories on Point Loma and UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography founded numerous startups with technologies derived from underwater sensors, acoustics, and signal processing techniques that had been developed for the Navy’s cat-and-mouse games with Soviet submarines. Robotic technology that the Navy had developed to recover a hydrogen bomb from the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea in 1966 led almost directly to the formation of Hydroproducts and Ametek Straza, two companies that made deep ocean ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles) in San Diego during the 1970s. Hydroproducts and Ametek Straza faded from San Diego, however, after they were acquired by bigger companies that wanted to introduce ROVs to the offshore oil and gas industry.

It might not be apparent on the surface, but much of that expertise in subsea technologies remains in San Diego today, according to Leonard Pool, who founded Sidus Solutions in 2000 to develop deep underwater pan-and-tilt camera systems and related ROV positioning equipment. Pool, who is moderating a panel discussion today on “marine technology as an important growth industry” for San Diego, says close to 150 companies continue to ply their trade here.

Alvin Diving off California

“When the U.S. Navy decided that San Diego was going to be a port for submarines, all these companies sprang up,” Pool tells me. “We do get looked at as a cottage industry.” He says these companies have thrived, despite a post-Cold War decline in defense funding for new submarine-hunting technologies. One likely reason, Pool says, is that the “oil and gas community continues to look at San Diego as a hub for subsea technology development.”

Pool’s panel discussion is part of “The Maritime Collaboration Summit,” a two-day conference organized by the Maritime Alliance, a San Diego non-profit industry group, aboard the tourism ship Inspiration Hornblower. The summit, which ends today, is intended to increase awareness of San Diego’s importance as a hub for technology innovation, and to encourage collaboration between the scientific community and commercial maritime innovators, according to Michael B. Jones, president of the Maritime Alliance.

“Right now, the maritime community in San Diego is very fragmented with little visibility or public understanding of its importance,” says Jones, who also heads …Next Page »

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From all outward appearances, Cambridge, MA-based data warehousing appliance maker Dataupia and its founder Foster Hinshaw have both been through near-death experiences this year. Heart problems forced to Hinshaw to step down as CEO in January. Dataupia’s board brought in not just a new leader, Tony Sirianni, but a new strategy, concentrating on selling software rather than integrated hardware-software packages.

But the strategy didn’t seem to be enough to stave off the effects of the recession: by June, as we reported, the company had laid off the majority of its staff and was seeking new financing in order to stay alive. In August, reports surfaced that the company had been reduced to a skeleton crew and was selling off its assets. Many database industry observers put the company into the dead pool.

But appearances can be deceiving. Hinshaw is back as CEO, the company’s workforce has stabilized at about 30 (half the number from one year ago), and the startup’s difficult period is behind it, according to an announcement set to be released tomorrow. “After taking a hiatus following a medical surgery, [Hinshaw] is back to lead the Company into a high growth phase,” the announcement says.

That “hiatus” language is a bit of a gloss on the actual situation, which I understand much better after having spoken with Hinshaw himself at length today. Most importantly, Hinshaw—who is widely considered to be the father of the data warehousing appliance business—says that he has fully recovered from coronary artery bypass graft surgery. “I’m out hiking now and doing my normal stuff, which is beautiful,” he says. “It was a long recovery, but it’s amazing what they do.”

But Hinshaw also says that while the recession caused some bumps for the company, including the big wave of layoffs, the rumors about Dataupia’s troubles were far out of proportion to reality. “I don’t want to quote Mark Twain, but some folks on their way out may have said some things that were very hypey,” he says.

Like Hinshaw’s previous company, Netezza (which went public in 2007), Dataupia started out selling data warehousing appliances—very fast servers preloaded with the software needed to help companies such as wireless operators sort through terabytes of historical customer data to discern patterns and extract intelligence. And with Hinshaw back in the saddle, that is once again the company’s emphasis.

But under Sirianni’s leadership, Hinshaw explains, the company steered for a while toward selling the software designed for Dataupia’s hardware as a standalone product. The attraction of this strategy was that it necessitated much lower research and development costs, Hinshaw says.

“With an appliance, you can drop it into a customer site and literally within days you are up and running, which is a powerful story, but the R&D costs are fairly high,” he says. “So there is always the question of whether you want to spend on that R&D, or just take the software and let the customer do the integration” into their existing IT systems.

Whether or not the software strategy was justified, it didn’t boost sales in the way the company would have liked, Hinshaw says. A horrid economic climate was at least part of the problem. “I’m not saying that Tony or the board did a bad job. I interviewed Tony myself,” he says. “But the economy certainly didn’t help any of this stuff.”

While there’s ongoing debate within the industry over the “tools” versus “appliances” question, Hinshaw says he’s personally convinced that …Next Page »

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Just when I thought venture deals, especially for software and tech companies, had headed south for the winter (or longer), the Northwest erupted with a slew of financings in the past week.

—But first, some serious biotech. Kirkland, WA-based OVP Venture Partners led a $30 million Series B round for Fate Therapeutics, a San Diego-based stem cell company with ties to the University of Washington, as Luke reported. Existing investors Arch Venture Partners, Polaris Venture Partners, and Venrock Associates also participated in the funding, as well as three strategic corporate investors—Astellas Venture Management and Genzyme Ventures were named.

—Seattle-based DocuSign, a maker of software to automate and control the process of electronic signatures, received a strategic investment from Second Century Ventures, the VC fund of the National Association of Realtors. The funding amount was undisclosed, but the money will be used to accelerate and extend DocuSign’s efforts with real estate customers.

—Beaverton, OR-based Avnera pulled in an $8 million equity round from undisclosed investors, according to a regulatory filing. The company’s previous investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Jafco Ventures, Intel Capital, and DAG Ventures. Avnera was founded in 2004, and designs novel chips for wireless audio applications.

—Seattle stealth startup Doxo raised $5.25 million in equity financing, according to a regulatory filing and media reports. The investors were not disclosed, but David Feinleib of Mohr Davidow Ventures was listed on the SEC form as a director.

—Bellevue, WA-based Enroute Systems, a developer of software that helps companies manage their parcel-shipping logistics, closed a Series A funding round worth $810,000 from Keiretsu Forum, Zino Society, Puget Sound Venture Club, and angel investors. Next up, Enroute is looking …Next Page »

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San Diego-based Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) says Panoramic Power, a wireless sensor startup based in Kidron, Israel, is the winner of the first QPrize, the incentive prize competition launched earlier this year by Qualcomm Ventures. Panoramic Power has developed energy monitoring wireless technology that enables a company or institution to deploy Smart Grid technologies within their existing facilities. Panoramic Power, which previously won $100,000 as a QPrize regional winner, was awarded another $150,000 and the opportunity to compete in a global business plan competition held at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

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The San Diego-based Cannon Power Group says it has received $19.4 million in federal renewable energy grants to help fund construction of a 400-megawatt wind farm in Klickitat County, WA, about 110 miles East of Portland, OR. Total investment in the project will be more than $1 billion. When completed, the Windy Point/Windy Flats project will be one of the largest wind farms in the nation, producing enough electricity for more than 250,000 homes per year. The project power has been designated for use by California municipalities.

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[Corrected 11/11/09, 3:15 pm. See below] Qualcomm chief operating officer, Len Lauer, says the San Diego wireless chipmaking giant is working across a broad front of technology development to accommodate a surge in wireless data traffic.

“The mobile Internet has arrived,” Lauer says in the opening keynote talk yesterday at the 2009 3G CDMA Americas Regional Conference. With more than 4 billion wireless subscribers around the world now—including 885 million 3G phone users—Lauer says the growth in wireless data is reflected by a roughly one-third increase in revenue reported over the past year by Verizon, AT&T, and other major carriers.

[Corrects to say Lauer was comparing monthly data traffic in 2014, not monthly growth in data traffic] By 2014, or just five years, Lauer says  worldwide mobile data traffic in one month will exceed total mobile data traffic for all of 2008.

Qualcomm founder and former chairman and CEO Irwin Jacobs and his son Paul Jacobs, who is Qualcomm’s current chairman and CEO, sounded a similar theme when they warned of capacity constraints last month during a keynote appearance at the CTIA Fall 2009 conference in San Diego.

In addition to the increasing demand for mobile data from smart phones and netbooks, Lauer says the trend can only accelerate as new wireless device categories proliferate, especially in what he calls machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. Examples of M2M technology developers include CardioNet, a Pennsylvania wireless health company that uses wireless sensors to continuously monitor heart patients for irregular heartbeats; wireless smart grid technologies being deployed by electric utilities (including San Diego Gas & Electric), and eBook devices like Amazon’s Kindle.

“Other operators are seeing this as a viable market, but it is going to take awhile to develop,” Lauer says, citing estimates that 229 million M2M cellular connections are forecast for 2013. “We do see from Qualcomm’s standpoint this being a very large opportunity for our chips.”

To cope with the surge in wireless data traffic, Lauer outlined a range of technology advances that Qualcomm has underway:

—The latest generation of advanced wireless receivers, which include updated revisions to the EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized) telecommunications standard (part of Qualcomm’s CDMA2000 family), operate …Next Page »

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Life Technologies (NASDAQ: LIFE), the Carlsbad, CA-based provider of biotech instruments and lab supplies, says it has agreed to acquire Woburn, MA-based BioTrove, which has developed a high throughput gene expression and genotyping analysis system. BioTrove, which withdrew plans to raise $75 million in an IPO last year, says the flexible array format of its OpenArray technology enables researchers to perform more than 3,000 PCR or qPCR gene expression assays at a time. Financial terms were not disclosed.

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The Litl Webbook, a new home media computer unveiled by Boston-based Litl last week, officially ships to buyers starting today. The $699 device, which is available from Amazon and directly from Litl’s website, has already attracted a wide range of reactions, from Netbook Choice’s “intriguing” to Engadget’s “unbelievably overpriced.” Xconomy was the first to cover Litl’s destealthing last week.

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It was a busy week for local technology news.

—Two teams from San Diego and a third from Northern California demonstrated their development of advanced chemical sensor prototypes that are tiny enough to be found inside ordinary cell phones. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is funding the Cell-All program, with a goal of basically creating an anti-terrorism app for cell phones that would enable authorities to crowd-source chemical detection.

—MaxLinear has filed for its initial public stock offering. The Carlsbad, CA-based fabless chipmaker, which specializes in designing semiconductor-based television receivers, intends to raise about $100 million through its IPO. The market may be de-frosting a bit, with 47 IPOs so far in 2009, compared with 45 last year, and 272 in 2007.

—ProQuo, a San Diego-based Web 2.0 company that was founded in 2007, was quietly shut down after taking in a total of $15 million in venture capital from Menlo Park, CA-based Draper Fisher Jurvetson and San Diego-based Mission Ventures. ProQuo was never able to validate its business model; its website offered consumers a way to remove their names from mass-mailing lists for free, and the company planned to sell its optimized lists back to mass marketing companies.

—San Diego’s wireless industry group, CommNexus, celebrated the opening of EvoNexus, its free high-tech incubator, by announcing the selection of three more startup companies: EcoATM, MicroPower Technologies, and TetraVue. CommNexus CEO Rory Moore says EvoNexus is believed to be the first incubator that is completely free for startups—that is, it doesn’t even require an equity stake in participating companies, as most incubuators do.

—Jitterbug, the San Diego wireless provider that puts an emphasis on simplicity, has acquired MobiWatch, a Waltham, MA-based startup developing mobile personal emergency response services. A regulatory filing shows that Jitterbug’s parent, GreatCall, provided 630,000 shares of common stock to MobiWatch and its shareholders in a deal valued at $107,100.

—San Diego-based Networkfleet is using its technology to help companies that operate fleets of vehicles go green by monitoring engine emissions and ensuring that vehicles are operating efficiently. Co-founder Diego Borrego told me the company also expects to be a player as consolidations sweep through the fleet tracking industry.

—EcoDog, a Vista, CA, cleantech startup that has developed a device that helps homeowners sniff out savings in their electric utility bill, was named best of show at GadgetFest, the annual fall competition sponsored by CommNexus, the San Diego wireless industry group. EcoDog founding CEO Ron Pitt won over the crowd when he declared, “My product is the only product up here tonight that saves you more money than it costs.”

—San Diego-based cleantech startup EESG is looking to raise $1.2 million to expand the 10-employee company’s sales staff, purchase inventory, and ramp up public relations and marketing. The company’s founders told me they have raised about half so far, including $300,000 from Longboard Capital Advisors, a green investment firm based in Santa Monica, CA.

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Kent, WA-based LaserMotive has won $900,000 in a NASA competition to build a small prototype device that one day could help lead to a commercial “space elevator,” a cable that could transport cargo to and from outer space. The news was reported by the New York Times and other outlets. LaserMotive, a laser power-beaming company, is led by Thomas Nugent and Jordin Kare, who both also work with Bellevue, WA-based Intellectual Ventures. The power-beaming project and competition was reported by TechFlash earlier today.

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I was chatting with a couple of local investors at the TechStars (seed fund and mentorship program) event in Seattle on Wednesday. They thought the VC panel discussion of the startup climate and culture in different cities around the country was boring. If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, they said, that’s just where you are, and you deal with it.

But au contraire, mon frère—as a journalist and outside observer—I view those comparisons across different innovation clusters and their respective histories as a way to generate some good stories and insights. On the panel, there were certainly some constructive (and at times controversial) things said about the entrepreneurial climate in Seattle, Boston, and Boulder.

Here are a few edited highlights from the panelists, several of whom bring an outside perspective to their current cities:

Brad Feld of TechStars and Foundry Group gave a brief history of the startup scene in Boulder, CO—useful for any city with entrepreneurial aspirations. “When I showed up in ’95, what I found was on the software side you had a lot of smart engineering talent but you didn’t have much else. A handful of entrepreneurial companies in storage and cable infrastructure. Not much in the way of entrepreneurial executive leadership other than from these pockets. In the mid-90s, because of the counter-culture community—and the Internet was purpose-built for places like Boulder—you had a lot of people who were independent, very smart, doing their own things suddenly intersecting with a medium that allows you to be anywhere. It’s 100,000 people plus 25,000 college students. A pretty small town, but it has the largest percentage, per capita, in the United States of computer scientists and PhDs. Yet there wasn’t a broad wave of entrepreneurial experience,” Feld said.

“In the mid-to-late 90s, there was huge activity around the Internet. Anybody with a pulse could get a company started. The predictable thing eventually happened, there was a lot of wreckage. But from ‘95-2001, Boulder had imported a lot of executive talent—CEOs, VP sales, engineering leadership. We also had a lot of entrepreneurs who had one or two companies in that cycle. So by 2003, people were starting to come back and get re-engaged in entrepreneurial activity. There were probably 50-plus people that made $10 million or more, so there was enough of an angel community. There was critical mass around this. But what was missing was something that tied the community together. There was the endless cocktail party circuit of entrepreneurs. Eventually people got bored and stopped going.”

That led David Cohen, Feld, and others to form TechStars in Boulder. “It cemented this notion of first-time entrepreneurial activity is the core of the ecosystem. What was needed was fresh meat into the system. We got a lot of new, young people into the community,” Feld said. “The other thing was that one of the hardest things for first-time entrepreneurs is to have an engaged relationship with an experienced entrepreneur. We found we were creating this thing that integrated the whole value chain of entrepreneurs. It really energized the existing entrepreneurial activity around a thing.”

Chris Sheehan of CommonAngels then gave his thoughts on the Boston innovation scene. [Disclosure: Chris is on Xconomy’s board.] “In the IT ecosystem in Boston, there are a number of things going on,” Sheehan said. “It’s a wonderful place for universities and colleges. MIT has been the granddaddy in terms of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. But what I’m seeing is a fresh set of energy coming …Next Page »

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The moderators of San Diego’s 9th Annual GadgetFest kept saying during Tuesday night’s showcase for new technology products that past winners have gone on to even greater glory and success. That may or may not be good news for the Motorola Droid that goes on sale tomorrow at Verizon stores nationwide. After making a cursory appearance at CTIA and perhaps elsewhere, the Droid debuted its impressive features and ended the evening as runner-up.

GadgetFest moderators Ken Rutkowski and Andy Abramson reminded the audience that Grand Central, a GadgetFest winner three years ago, was acquired shortly after the 2006 event by Google (and has since been transformed into Google Voice). They also pointed to Motorola’s Q Phone, Sling Media’s Slingbox, and the Truphone as paragons of GadgetFest virtue. All three devices were introduced at GadgetFest instead of the CTIA or other major trade shows, according to CommNexus, the San Diego wireless industry group that sponsors the event.

So expectations were high. But the Droid, with all its iPhone-slaying hoopla, finished the GadgetFest competition in a dead-heat with EcoDog, a local cleantech startup that trotted out Fido—a device that helps homeowners sniff out savings in their electric utility bill. The GadgetFest judges ultimately proclaimed EcoDog this year’s best in show after the Vista, CA-based company received perceptibly more-boisterous applause from the audience in the Irwin M. Jacobs Qualcomm Hall at Qualcomm’s San Diego headquarters.

At the end of the show, while the judges were deciding how to resolve the tie, one of the moderators asked EcoDog founder and CEO Ron Pitt if he had anything more to say. He replied, “My product is the only product up here tonight that saves you more money than it costs.”

So what are the up and coming gadgets that got previewed at GadgetFest? Here’s a rundown, just in time for the Christmas shopping season:

—TelCentris, the San Diego-based provider of unified communications services, presented an update to its VoxOx system, which aggregates voice over Internet technology, text messaging, instant messaging, serial conferencing, file sharing, and e-mail onto one user interface. As TelCentris executives explained to me in July, the company makes most …Next Page »

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Somebody forgot to tell John Chuang that it’s impossible to create a new kind of home computer these days.

Either that, or he didn’t listen. Because Chuang, a serial entrepreneur who made his first fortune in the staffing industry with Boston-based Aquent, has built a gadget that looks deceptively like a laptop but works nothing like any computer you’ve ever used. From the hardware to the user interface to the activities it supports, the new machine created by Chuang’s Boston-based startup, Litl, rejects three decades of convention and makes the Web, not the computer and all its software and operating-system encrustations, into the real show.

Litl took the lid off its so-called “Webbook” computer today after more than two years of top-secret development work. The device’s purpose, Chuang says, is to take advantage of the Web’s newfound maturity as a medium for digital entertainment and productivity and make it far simpler for people at home to access all those goodies—including photos, videos, news and weather, and Web apps—without having to manage files or desktop applications.

“We didn’t want to build anything that already existed, or something with just marginal improvements,” Chuang says. “PCs have served a great purpose, but we wanted to take a crack at a different type of computer that would be for and of the Net.”

I visited Litl’s offices yesterday and had a chance to try out the Webbook, which goes on sale today at Amazon and at Litl’s website. (The price is $699, and Litl expects to ship the first units to consumers next week.) Beyond its laptop-like appearance, there isn’t much that veteran computer users like me will find familiar about the device. There’s no desktop, no windows or menus or files or folders, no multitasking, no long lists of third-party software applications to buy. There isn’t even a hard drive or a CD/DVD drive.

While the Webbook is definitely a computer—with a 1.6-gigahertz Intel Atom processor, a gigabyte of RAM, a Wi-Fi card, a Webcam, and a nice graphics chip inside—it’s also got a good dose of TV mixed into its genome. It has a separate remote control, its display can be folded almost all the way back so that it stands up on a table or countertop like an easel, and it has a cord that connects it with no fuss to your flat-screen TV, so you can see what you’re doing on a really big screen.

In other words, the Webbook breaks all the rules of personal computing. And while it may be the perfect machine for consumers who just want to get on the Internet and have no use for all of a traditional PC’s bells and whistles, Chuang is likely to face an initial wave of skepticism from heavy computer users and technology industry insiders. They probably won’t grok how a machine that doesn’t even have software, the way we’re used to thinking of software, could still be useful.

But Chuang doesn’t seem to care much about what the digerati think; his device isn’t designed for them. Or to put it more accurately, it’s designed for their coffee tables and kitchen counters, rather than their offices or their backpacks. “We’re about shared processing, not local processing,” he explains. For tasks that require lots of local processing power, like video editing, power users are still going to want and need a traditional multipurpose computer. But if they just want to …Next Page »

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EvoNexus, San Diego’s free high-tech incubator, announced that it has enrolled three more startup companies during ceremonies yesterday that officially marked the opening of its new facility.

CommNexus, the San Diego wireless industry group, announced five months ago that it was leading the creation of the free and “no strings attached” startup incubator, to be headed by wireless industry executive Cathy Pucher. EvoNexus, which is structured as a nonprofit organization, plans to eventually house 10 to 12 technology startups; it named its first three startups less than two months ago.

CommNexus and EvoNexus have both moved their offices into part of a 25,000-square-foot commercial office building that was previously occupied by San Diego-based Leap Wireless, (NASDAQ: LEAP), which sells prepaid discount mobile phone service through its Cricket Communications subsidiary. By providing the office space to EvoNexus for one year at no cost, Leap made the largest single contribution of more than three dozen companies and individuals that donated in-kind services and cash to the incubator, according to Pucher.

“San Diego is an innovation economy,” Leap CEO S. Douglas Hutcheson told the crowd. “We’ve spawned more new companies in San Diego than I think anyone would have believed, and it’s vital that we support that.”

For the startups that are lucky enough to get selected, the incubator provides free office space, including utilities, Internet service, office equipment, and volunteer business mentoring for up to two years.

“Other cities don’t recognize the collaboration that we have here,” San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders told a lunchtime crowd of roughly 150 people who attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the incubator. The mayor was joined by other local dignitaries and industry officials, including CommNexus board chairman John Major, the former chairman and CEO of two San Diego wireless companies, Novatel Wireless and Wireless Knowledge. “As we entered into the recession of recessions, a lot of non-profits hunkered down, and frankly that would have been the easy thing for us as well,” Major said. “But that’s not the way we operate.”

Pucher, the incubator’s executive director, told me …Next Page »

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[Updated 11/2/09 with additional details about 3rd-generation laptop design, see page 2] After the October 24 announcement that the Internet Archive is about to make 1.6 million e-books available free to children with XO Laptops from the One Laptop Per Child Foundation, we decided it was time to catch up with OLPC’s founder and chairman, Nicholas Negroponte. The organization has been through drastic changes of late, including a round of layoffs early this year necessitated by disappointing holiday 2008 sales and the pullout of major sponsors, and the subsequent spinoff of its sales and education-software efforts. But last time we talked with Negroponte, back in January, he had ambitious plans for rebooting the One Laptop effort, with an emphasis on getting the computers into new markets.

We wondered how the organization was progressing toward some of the goals Negroponte had laid out in the January interview. Last week, he took time on a recent plane trip to respond to a set of written questions. We’ve reproduced them below, with a few explanatory comments appended.

Of perhaps greatest interest, Negroponte told us the organization has scrapped plans unveiled in May 2008 for an e-book-like second-generation XO laptop, instead focusing on an upgraded version of the current XO and designs for a “3.0″ version of the device that will be “more like a sheet of paper.” And whereas the XO was once described as the “hundred-dollar laptop,” Negroponte said experience has indicated that the total cost of ownership for the device, including Internet connectivity, is closer to $1 per week per child. This amount is “high” but “not outrageous,” in Negroponte’s view; he says discussion in most countries where OLPC is operating has shifted away from whether the machines aid education efforts and toward how to pay for them.

Xconomy: What do you see as the main significance in the Internet Archive making e-books available for the XO Laptop?

Nicholas Negroponte: A further example of why olpc (lowercase) is not just education as we knew it and how learning opportunity can reach the most isolated places in the world.

[Editor's comment: As Negroponte explains below, the organization is actually two separate bodies now---the One Laptop Per Child Association, which builds the XO Laptop, and the One Laptop Per Child Foundation, whose mission is to stimulate grassroots technology and education efforts in developing countries. Both groups are undergoing a rebranding of sorts, switching from OLPC to the lowercase "olpc."]

X: You had set as a goal back in January one million digital books. Looks like you overshot. Do you have a new goal? Five million?

NN: No. The next few million do not matter. It is like laptops. There are over a million in the hands of kids in 19 languages and 31 countries. The next million are …Next Page »

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There’s a big argument over whether venture capitalists and even angel investors are doing as many early stage or small deals these days. The general sentiment is that no, they aren’t. Since we began our monthly roundup of Massachusetts venture deals back in June, however, we’ve argued that the data doesn’t support that view: virtually every month, the number of seed and Series A rounds has topped the number of later-round financings, and often by a wide margin.

Now comes what could be another blow to the small-deal naysayers: new data on the extremely small deals—those between $100,000 and $1 million—that typically aren’t reported in financing tabulations. As my colleague Greg Huang, Xconomy’s Seattle editor, wrote in his own look at small deals in the Northwest earlier this week: “Though small in size, these investments need to be included along with the bigger deals that get more press, if you want a more complete picture of the funding landscape in the innovation community.”

It turns out there were 10 of these “under the radar” high-tech deals—7 in Massachusetts, 2 in Connecticut, and 1 in New Hampshire (see table below)—in New England in September, according to data supplied by our partner ChubbyBrain, a New York-based information services company that tracks VC, angel, and other investments in private companies.

Six of the 10 deals involved equity investments; the remaining four were debt financings. And they spanned a wide range of fields from medical displays to tracking tags to new approaches to education. To me, the most interesting was OmniGuide, a Cambridge, MA, company we’ve written about before that took in $249,999 (you gotta wonder why that figure). OmniGuide, which raised $1.8 million in May, $25 million last year, and some $50 million before that (it’s a long story, go here), makes highly precise optical laser scalpels; its chairman is Analog Devices founder Ray Stata, and the CEO is MIT materials scientist Yoel Fink.

As the parent of two teenagers, I was also highly interested in the Westonian Group, which raised $170,250. The Westonian Group doesn’t appear to have a website, but it is the company behind Abroad101, a website for sharing information about study abroad programs.

Here, then, are our 10 “under the radar” deals from September.

Carrot Medical (Waltham, MA)                 Equity           $635,000
Ultra-high-definition displays for medical images

SoundTag (Braintree, MA)                         Equity          $535,000
Tracking tags for priority shipments

TenMarks Education (Newton, MA)          Debt            $350,000
New approach to math, science, and English education for children

SpecPage (Attleboro, MA)                           Equity          $313,000
Product marketing information exchange for food service and janitorial industries

SeeClickFix (New Haven, CT)                    Debt              $265,000
Technology for reporting and tracking non-emergency issues via the Internet

OmniGuide (Cambridge, MA)                   Equity             $249,999
Designs and manufactures highly precise optical laser scalpels.

Validus DC Systems (Brookfield, CT)         Debt              $204,000
Direct current power infrastructure for data and telecom centers

Paneve (Florence, MA)                                 Debt               $175,000
Software and hardware to reduce the costs of delivery and display of video media content

Westonian Group (Weston, MA)                Equity             $170,250
Company behind Abroad101, an interactive online community around study abroad programs

EnerTrac (Hudson, NH)                               Equity              $125,000
Fuel, oil, and propane tank monitoring products

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They are the deals that slip through the cracks unnoticed. They are worth less than $1 million, but at least $100,000. Though small in size, these investments need to be included along with the bigger deals that get more press, if you want a more complete picture of the funding landscape in the innovation community. And there were at least 16 of these deals in the Northwest in September (see table below), according to ChubbyBrain, a New York-based information services company tracking VC, angel, and other investments in private companies.

It’s probably too soon to talk about trends, because this is the first month we’ve had access to ChubbyBrain’s data on these smaller deals, which were compiled from regulatory filings, user submissions, and other sources. But here are some quick observations.

About two-thirds of the deals (11 of 16) were equity investments, while one-third (5 of 16) were debt financings. Half the investments (8) were in software companies, while about a quarter each were in biotech/medical (4) and cleantech (3) firms. The majority of the deals were in the Seattle area (10), but a significant number were near Portland or in Oregon (6). Anecdotally, all those breakdowns seem consistent with the deal flow we’ve been seeing and reporting on in the Northwest for the past year or so. The data didn’t include the investors or the stage of the investments.

Without further ado, here are the 16 “under the radar” deals from last month:

Vantos (Seattle)                                            Equity        $873,487
Investigation software

InEnTec (Bend, OR)                                     Equity        $800,000
Cleantech fuels

WA 32609 (Redmond, WA)                           Equity         $800,000
Biotech

Inson Medical Systems (Bellevue, WA)      Equity         $642,536
Biomedical drug delivery

Napera Networks (Mercer Island, WA)         Debt           $600,000
Networking software

Acucela (Bothell, WA)                                    Equity         $439,603
Biotech drugs

Adometry (Kirkland, WA)                               Equity         $400,000
Analytics software

Smilebox (Redmond, WA)                              Equity         $399,999
Consumer software

Asemblon (Redmond, WA)                             Debt            $386,000
Cleantech/materials

Ohio River Clean Fuels / Baard Energy (Vancouver, WA)    Debt            $245,000
Cleantech fuels

Safetec Compliance Systems (Vancouver, WA)                    Debt            $235,000
Software for chemical compliance

Second Porch (Portland, OR)                          Equity         $225,000
Social software

SynapticMash (Seattle)                                    Equity         $200,000
Educational software

Silere Medical Technology (Kirkland, WA)      Debt            $120,000
Medical devices

BallLogic (Portland, OR)                                   Equity         $100,000
Consumer devices

Site 9 (Portland, OR)                                          Equity         $100,000
Web development software

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Enigma Diagnostics, a UK-based medical diagnostics startup, plans to close its current U.S. office in San Francisco and open a new office in San Diego as its U.S. headquarters, according to chairman and CEO John McKinley.

McKinley outlined Enigma’s development of rapid molecular diagnostic technology in a presentation yesterday at the annual investor conference organized by Biocom, the San Diego life sciences industry group. The company has developed a desktop-size instrument based on advances in PCR (polymerase chain reaction) technology, which McKinley says can identify certain pathogens in less than 45 minutes. Amid concerns over the H1N1 swine flu outbreak and other infectious disease, McKinley says, “There currently is nothing in the market like our pending technology.”

Enigma expects to make an official announcement about its new San Diego office next month, McKinley says, and he estimates the company will have 30 employees here by mid-2010. He tells me he decided to establish an American beachhead for Enigma Diagnostics in San Diego because, “It’s a diagnostics center for the U.S. The pool of labor is certainly here.”

Among the factors that McKinley cited is the presence of Life Technologies (NASDAQ: LIFE), the Carlsbad, CA, company that was formed in last year’s merger of Invitrogen and Applied Biosystems, as well as Quidel (NASDAQ: QDEL), and Stratagene, a San Diego business that is now part of Santa Clara, CA-based Agilent Technologies.

Enigma ML device

McKinley says Enigma, a venture-backed company founded in 2004, first developed a rugged military version of its diagnostic machine for field detection of biological agents under funding from the UK’s Defence Science Technology Laboratory. The company’s investors include the UK’s Porton Capital Group, GlaxoSmithKline, and the UK Government Science Technology Laboratory.

The company intends to first win approval for its automated Enigma ML “mini laboratory” in Europe by next September. Following that, McKinley says Enigma intends to ask the FDA to waive requirements under CLIA, or Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments, which would enable the device to be operated in U.S. hospitals, clinics, and other point-of-care facilities.

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San Diego-based Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) says it has established a separate wholly-owned subsidiary, Qualcomm Innovation Center, (QuIC), to ensure that certain open source software operates seamlessly with Qualcomm technology.

The company says it has transferred experienced software engineers to the innovation center, where they will focus on open source initiatives such as Linux and Webkit, and on open source operating systems like Symbian, Android, and Chrome. Job postings on the company’s website indicate the center is based in San Diego and Boulder, CO. In a statement released early today, Qualcomm did not say how many engineers its QuIC subsidiary will employ

The company’s initiative is aimed at consumer products that run open source software, enabling Qualcomm-based technologies to keep pace with shifting opportunities in open software as they emerge by optimizing the performance of mobile operating systems and the software applications that run on them.

The wireless technology giant said QuIC’s board of directors has named Rob Chandhok, senior vice president of software strategy at Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, as QuIC president. Chandhok plans to address the Symbian open source community at a conference in London Wednesday.

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