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Terrafugia, a start-up created by Lemelson-MIT Student Prize winner Carl Dietrich and colleagues at MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, is aiming to show off what it calls the Transition "personal air vehicle," a vehicle resembling an SUV with retractable wings, to the EAA AirVenture Conference in Oshkosh, Wis., at the end of July.

About thePlatform

What we do

We help you manage your broadband media in an uncomplicated and smarter way. Log in to our hosted system, to upload and publish your media. It's easy, but not simplistic—we also give you tools to syndicate, protect, sell, and advertise against your content. In addition, we've developed our technologies in a way that lets you use the systems you already have—such as web site content management—and add new technologies as you need them.

Acumentrics is one of about 40 Massachusetts firms developing fuel cell technology that someday may power everything from military outposts to cellphones. The basic workings of fuel cells were discovered in the first half of the 19th century, with the first practical fuel cell invented about a century later. In subsequent decades, NASA greatly advanced the technology, using it to generate electricity during space missions.

More recently, soaring oil prices and growing environmental concerns have boosted interest and investment in fuel cells, with Massachusetts firms attracting tens of millions of dollars in venture capital. Acumentrics, however, is among the closest to commercializing its technology, according to the Renewable Energy Trust, which invests in the state's alternative energy industry.

"They have proven the basic technology and developed a commodity product that can go into a house," said Karl Jessen, economic development officer at the Renewable Energy Trust. "They are certainly going to be one of the first to market."

Color images can be a rich redundant source of identification information. Unfortunately, many engineers have found by bitter experience that most commercially available software provides easy, robust, color-based recognition for only the simplest color situations. Based on this, they take for granted that increasing complexity of colors, boundaries etc. must inevitably lead to corresponding increases in time and resources necessary for application success. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Using powerful statistical methods, WAY-2C software provides easy to use classification, verification, and anomaly detection tools, as applicable to complex textured and/or multicolored fabrics and natural scenes as they are to the simplest single colored object. WAY-2C's natural train-by-show method works equally well whether images come from conventional video or still cameras, thermal imagers, multispectral or even hyperspectral sources.

Your phone is now a broadcasting implement. MyVox is opening up a new set of APIs today that will let Web developers add voice notes and audio advertising to any Web application. Instead of making people record their voice on their PC mic or upload an audio file, with MyVox, they use their phones as their mics instead. Website visitors can simply call a number on their regular phones and follow the voice prompts to record a note or message.

Some examples of applications that can make use of this voice functionality are: adding voice notes to Google maps, recording a voiceover for a Flickr slideshow, creating a RockYou widget that lets people’s friends leave voice comments on their Facebook page, recording vocals for a WeMix song or a Blabberize video, or even turning your iPhone into a voice recorder. Check out this gallery to get a sense of these and other applications. For instance, you can see how a Google map with voice-enabled push pins looks like here. Just click on one of the push pins and pres play. You could narrate a tour of landmarks or points of interest. To create your own map with voice notes, go here, click on “Add Marker,” select the push pin abd click on “call in audio.” Once you are done, save the map to generate a unique URL.

MyVox is operated by VoodooVox, which makes money from playing in-call audio ads to people while they are on hold. The more call volume it can generate, the more audio advertising inventory it can sell. But instead of making Website visitors suffer through audio advertising, only people who use the service to create a voice track will hear an ad when they call in. And Web developers will get a cut of any advertising dollars associated with their applications. Sounds like fair trade.

Creating GeoSyncUp, a new Android Application

Shook labs is creating a simple to use utility that will allow everyday people to be more efficient in their daily activities. Corporations and other organizations have been realizing the benefit gained from efficient operations. We at Shook Labs are offering the ability for individuals to gain from the advanced technologies and concepts that larger organizations benefit from.

The algorithms and information required to do this have been available for some time now. We just needed a platform that we could offer them on, we needed a network to connect them on, and we needed devices that could handle the required processing. Google and the Open Handset Alliance are working to meet these needs through the Android platform. Shook Labs’ has identified this opportunity to offer efficiency to everyday people by utilizing the Android platform.

Stay tuned to ShookLabs.com for more updates.

Cielo Group extends the reach and frequency of use of branded, interactive mobile applications.

Cielo Group publishes, hosts and manages mobile “advertainment” applications that connect consumer brands and media companies directly with subscribers across the broadest set of cell phones. Unlike conventional text-message-based services, Cielo’s handset-resident applications allow


our clients to:

Boston Micromachines Corp. has received a Department of Defense grant to develop a device to prevent friendly fire incidents.

The Watertown, Mass.-based company has received $750,000 through the DoD's Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR) for the project. The company is teaming up with Boston University to advance its Secure Communicating Optical Ultra-small Transponder (SCOUT). The device will use an active mirror to rapidly identify friendly soldiers, vehicles or aircraft.

The concept was developed under a previous grant through STTR. The new two year grant project will bring the concept into production and demonstrate functionality.

Zink Imaging is one of the Boston area’s most promising startups, and peHUB has learned that it just raised a large round of institutional funding. Actually, change that to read: peHUB has learned that Zink finally raised a large round of institutional funding.

Zink had been in talks more than a year ago for a $70 million round to be led by Polaris Venture Partners, but the deal ultimately fell apart. The company nonetheless continued to work on its inkless printing technology, and recently secured enough debt to purchase a manufacturing facility in North Carolina. It also managed to publicly introduce its technology at Demo 07 (video after the jump).

But now Zink has closed on a $25 million VC round led by Petters Group Worldwide, which will be used to build up inventory prior to its initial product rollout. If Petters sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same company that bought Polaroid from One Equity Partners last year. And for one additional degree of separation, Zink spun out of Polaroid back in 2005. So it’s like getting the family back together.

Zink is essentially working on the holy grail of printing, which is to reduce the number of moving parts. It has created a 12-layer piece of plastic paper – very similar in feel to traditional Polaroid photo paper – that is enabled with a heat-activated color-release mechanism. What this means is that a Zink printer just needs to heat up certain parts of the paper, and the high-resolution image appears. No ink. It also can insert this technology within CD burners, in order to create high-quality graphic labels.

Moreover, Zink has developed a tiny mobile printer (think i-Pod sized) that can connect directly to digital cameras, camera phones, etc. Most folks may not care for such immediate printing, but field technicians would. No ink. No ribbons.

The company did not respond to requests for comment.

Grazr, the mini OPML browser that puts mortal widgets to shame, just launched version 1.0. The Grazr team is led by founder Michael Kowalchik and Adam Green - who as CTO at Andover.net, the parent of Slashdot and many other sites, took the company to its IPO. What are they up to today? Something very forward looking. I really like Grazr and I think the company’s plan for the future is very smart.

Grazr is a service that displays OPML files (outlines most commonly made of bundled RSS feeds) in an easily read format that you can interact with inside the Grazr box. It’s a joy to use; flip through the embedded Grazr display on this page by clicking on title links and using the left sidebar or arrow keys to go back up a level in the outline. It’s literally a way to graze dyanmic information nested in outline form.

Green told me that the company has enough money to last through next spring or summer; they’ll go back to their angel investors in Winter and raise some more if they need to. Then they’ll be ready when the web has wrapped it’s collective mind around this sort of service as far more than a widget for sticking on MySpace. At that time they may monetize co-branding, enterprise Grazr servers behind the firewall, or still other options that will solidify in time.

I think this is a company with a great chance of playing a very important roll in the future of the web. As Green said to me today, if HTML was the architecture of Web 1.0, RSS is the architecture of Web 2.0. I couldn’t agree more and I can’t wait to see what this service that was once a little widget grows up to be.

Event based social network Going.com has taken an additional $5 million in funding, in a round led by the sites original investors General Catalyst Partners and Highland Capital Partners.

Going.com recently passed 500,000 users, up from 200,000 users in early June and an impressive feat considering the service currently only operates in four cities: New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco.

George Bell and Bob Davis from General Catalyst and Highland Capital respectively will remain on the Going.com board of directors.

Going.com competes with Minglenow, Socialzr and LateNightShots. Going.com was previously known as HeyLetsGo.

CHiL Semiconductor

CHiL Semiconductor Corp. is a fabless semiconductor company that designs, develops and markets intelligent mixed-signal products for the power conversion and management markets. Founded to leverage patented technology that has been under development since 1999, CHiL is headquartered in Tewksbury, Mass. and operates a design center in Ottawa, Canada. The company is well funded by leading venture capital firms:

Highland Capital Partners

IDG Ventures Boston

iD SoftCapital Inc.

A group of environmentally oriented entrepreneurs has landed in an unlikely spot: the coal business.

Their company, GreatPoint Energy, is commercializing a technology to convert coal to natural gas--turning one of the dirtiest fuels into one of the cleanest.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based start-up is in the process of raising a large round of funding to finance its expansion, which will include construction of a demonstration plant next year, company executives told CNET News.com.

It has already raised two rounds of funding totaling $37 million from venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Khosla Ventures, Advanced Technology Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Like many recently formed clean tech companies, GreatPoint Energy is resurrecting a technology--in this case so-called catalytic gasification--that was never fully commercialized. Because of today's higher energy costs and concern over global warming, executives say that process is again worth pursuing.

The company recently completed a trial in a plant in Des Plaines, Ill. It now projects that it can create natural gas cheaper than current market prices--while minimizing the environmental impact of coal.