Quick: Name a consumer passion that generates twice as much revenue as Hollywood movies; in which virtually all of the participants, by definition, have disposable income and an ambition to improve their performance; and which counts among its devotees millions of business executives who carry around gadgets like smartphones.

If you named golf, you were correct. So it wasn’t a stretch for four young tech entrepreneurs from Portland, ME, to pick the sport as the target market for a mobile application that takes advantage of the built-in GPS features of modern smartphones like BlackBerrys and iPhones.

Called AccelGolf, the app duplicates the functions of expensive dedicated GPS golf scorekeepers/rangefinders, showing players the distance to each hole. But it also goes a step beyond, analyzing users’ own play, as well as a large database of historical data from other players, to advise them about the right club to use in each situation. (See the video below.)

The company behind AccelGolf, mCaddie, was one of nine startups to graduate from the TechStars startup boot camp in Boston last summer, and quietly announced this month that it has raised $600,000 in angel funding. It’s beta testing its app on a group of more than 40,000 golfers right now, and plans a public launch of the app when golf season starts in earnest this spring. But it’s spreading the funding news now because “we wanted to let people know we’re still alive and working hard to build the best sports analytic platform out there,” says CEO William Sulinski.

Sulinski says he’d like to reveal the names of the startup’s angel investors, but can’t since each is affiliated with a large public company. However, two of the investors were among mCaddie’s mentors at TechStars, he says.

“TechStars has done an absolutely amazing job of bringing together mentors and investors and generating investor interest for us,” Sulinski says. “We had angel investors as mentors who were … Next Page »

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Royal Bank of Scotland is leading a group of investors providing $376 million in financing for Boston-based First Wind‘s project to build a 97-turbine wind farm in Milford, UT, the company announced today. The other lenders include Banco Espirito Santo, Banco Santander, BNP Paribas, CoBank, HSH Nordbank, KeyBank, Société Générale and Credit Suisse. Separately, First Wind said today that Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection has approved its proposed 40-turbine Rollins Wind project in Penobscot County, Maine.

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First Wind of Newton, MA, said today that it has filed a permit application with Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection to build a 34-turbine wind farm in Aroostook County in the state’s northern tip. The 1.5-megawatt turbines, which would be placed near the town of Oakfield, would generate power for up to 20,000 homes, according to the company. First Wind, which we profiled in January 2008, already operates the 57-megawatt Stetson wind project and the 42-megawatt Mars Hill project, both in Maine.

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Fairchild Semiconductor (NYSE: FCS) of South Portland, ME, said last week that it will cut its worldwide employee base by 1,100 jobs, or about 12 percent, as part of a restructuring plan intended to help the chipmaker weather the economic downturn. There was no word on how many of the layoffs will affect Fairchild employees in Maine, but Fairchild said the cuts would not affect its strategic R&D projects. We’ve updated the Boston Tech Layoff Tracker accordingly.

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It’s not just about lobsters, vacations, and Stephen King. Maine’s technology community is booming. On Wednesday, TechMaine, the state’s trade association for the tech sector, announced the winners of its 5th not-quite-annual (they skipped a year) Technology Awards. The awards highlight the achievements of tech firms across the state. We thought you’d be interested to learn a bit about the winning companies and what they do—we certainly were. So without further ado…

CxO of the Year:
Peter Murray, CTO and co-founder
Quantrix (Portland, ME)
Business modeling software that replaces 2D spreadsheets and business intelligence tools

The Governor’s Award for Technology Company of the Year:
Blue Marble Geographics (Gardiner, ME)
Mapping software that manages, analyzes, and displays geographic information

Technology Innovator of the Year:
Jeremy Knope
RainStorm Consulting (Orono, ME)
Web-based software for enterprise website management

Gazelle Company of the Year:
CLYNK (Scarborough, ME)
Recycling services and management of recyclables

New Technology of the Year:
Parco Merged Media (Portland, ME)
Receiver and antenna enclosures for RFID location systems

Also at the gala, which took place in Portland, ME, TechMaine trotted out its Best of the Web awards. Just a bit about these websites and their designers—be sure to check them out yourself:

Arts & Entertainment:
www.mymetromama.com
For moms on the go
Insyt New Media (Farmington, ME)

Corporate Image:
www.susancollins.com
Innovative political campaign site
Maine Coast Design (Searsmont, ME)

Non Profit:
www.tanzanianchildrensfund.org
Financial support for the Rift Valley Children’s Village in Tanzania
Integra Strategic Technologies (Portland, ME)

e-Commerce:
www.fetchdog.com
Community site for dog owners
Fetch Enterprises LLC (Portland, ME)

And yes, there were lobster cakes served at the gala. Some things in Maine should never change.

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The wind in New England blows mainly against big green-energy projects. At least that’s the assessment of Matt Kearns, an audibly frazzled project manager for Newton, MA-based UPC Wind.

Despite winning final approval last week for the creation of New England’s largest wind-energy installation, now under construction on a ridge in northern Maine, Kearns says the regulatory and political barriers to placing major cleantech facilities in the region are high enough to scare off all but the most persistent and well-funded entrepreneurs.

“The uncertainty and the costs associated with that uncertainty are pretty overwhelming, frankly, in many cases,” says Kearns, who has spent the last several years shepherding UPC’s Stetson Mountain wind farm project past the cautious scrutiny of state, county, and federal agencies, not to mention local residents and environmental groups.

“Regardless of the fact that we have had a success here, we find that the hurdles are so high, and New England is such a complicated place to do business, that it takes a full-time, highly skilled and coordinated group to make it to the finish line,” Kearns says.

UPC Wind first eyed Stetson Mountain as a potentially viable wind-farm site almost five years ago, according to Kearns. As the proposed 38-turbine project drew closer to final approval, it faced growing questions from environmental groups such as Maine Audubon, which worried that the 392-feet-tall turbines would harm birds and bats migrating over the ridge (which is about seven miles southwest of Danforth, ME). Audubon threatened to testify against the project before Maine’s Land Use Regulation Commission, which is in charge of zoning for unincorporated wilderness areas in the state.

But after UPC agreed to make design changes and conduct post-construction studies of bird and bat mortality, the group withdrew its objections, and in fact recommended approval. “It took a constant conversation between all the parties, including key groups like the Natural Resources Council of Maine and Maine Audubon, to help us figure out where to be and why,” says Kearns. “I don’t think anybody would describe the process as easy.” The land use commission approved the company’s petition to rezone the land for industrial use in November and voted unanimously to give the project the final go-ahead on January 2.

When completed later this year, the facility is expected to produce 57 megawatts of peak electricity, eclipsing UPC’s 28-turbine, 42-megawatt wind farm in Mars Hill, ME, as New England’s largest. But if every wind project required five years between conception and permitting, few wind developers would bother, Kearns suggests. “We’re really pleased that we’ve gotten this far, and we think it’s in large part due to the support we saw from the commissioners,” he says. “But in comparison to the … Next Page »

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