Pasadena-based eSolar, the Google-backed thermal solar energy startup, is announcing today that it has hired on a new Vice President of Engineering, Craig Tyner, Ph.D. eSolar is backed by more than $140M in funding, from Google, Idealab, and Oak Investment Partners. According to eSolar, Tyner joins the firm from Sandia National Laboratories, where he spent more than 30 years. According to eSolar, Tyner's career has been spend advancing and deploying solar thermal technology.

Carlsbad-based Aptera, the electric car startup backed by Google and Idealab, is delaying delivery of the firm's vehicles to customers, according to a letter to customers. Aptera raised $24M in a Series C investment from Google, Idealab, Esenjay Investments, The Simons Family, and The Beall Family Trust back in July. Tags: google green cleantech auto electric aptera automotive ide According to Aptera, it missed its goal to deliver its first production 2e vehicles by the end of 2008, and is moving its volume production launch to October 1 of 2009. The firm said

Pasadena-based eSolar , the solar thermal power technology firm backed by Idealab and Google, said late Friday evening that it has inked a deal with China to build at least 2 gigawatts (GW) of solar thermal power plants in that country. Tags: esolar china power thermal energy idealab google solar plant electric electricit According to eSolar, the deal--which lasts for the next 10 years--was signed with with Chinese-owned electrical power equipment manufacturer Penglai Electric. The firm said groundbreaking on its first, 92 megawatts will occur this year.

eSolar is venture backed by Google, Idealab, and Oak Investment Partners. Tags: esolar executive solar energy thermal ideala Pasadena-based eSolar , a developer of concentrating solar thermal power technology, said today that it has appointed John Van Scoter as its new Chief Executive Officer. Van Scoter was most recently at Texas Instruments Alternative Energy Strategy, and has a 25-year career at Texas Instruments.

Aptera, which is building lightweight, composite electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, is funded by Idealab and Google, among others. Tags: aptera motors automotive cleantech energy idealab steve fambr Steve Fambro and Chris Anthony, two of the founders of Carlsbad-based Aptera , have been ousted from the company, according to a report on Wired.com today. Wired said that Fambro and Anthony were ousted in a confrontation with the company's board, and come after recent layoffs at the firm. (Photo:

Pasadena-based EI Solutions, the solar power integrator arm of Idealab-backed Energy Innovations, has been acquired by a Chinese photovoltaic module manufacturer, Suntech Power Holdings. EI Solutions was a wholly owned subsidiary of Energy Innovations, which is backed by Idealab, MDV Mohr, Davidow Ventures, and Westlake Venture Partners. The solar power integrator was known for its installation Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. According to Suntech, it is will rename EI Solutions as Suntech Energy Solutions.

In results of a clever blind test of search engine queries, Google is running slightly ahead of Bing and Yahoo, but not by much. Idealab experiments for the search engine Snap proved this many years ago. Google's conumser-facing advantages aren't so much the algorithm as the brand. This shouldn't be too surprising. The algorithm itself can be approximated.

Santa Monica-based Factual , the new data focused startup run by Gil Elbaz , the co-founder of Applied Semantics , which invented Google's AdSense technology, is announcing the investors in the firm this evening. According to Elbaz, the firm has a number of very high profile investors backing the the firm, including Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz, Bill Gross of Idealab, Danny Rimer of Index Ventures, Esther Dyson, the Founder Collective, Gunderson Dettmer, Lee and June Stein, former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos, Miramar Venture Partners, Demand Media' Richard Rosenblatt,

So here's the Hot List for 1/1/2009 - 1/15/2009 Top 5 Posts The 7 Ways to Get Traffic on the Web Why You Need To Lead A Tribe - Seth Godin LA Gets Dugg, Hammered, Screwed How To Get The World Excited About Your Business –The James Siminoff Interview Viral analytics and metrics - go viral young startup Top 20 Keywords SEO Metrics Marketing Social Media Alelo Google Yahoo Mahalo MySpace Tech Coast Angels Idealab Mission Ventures Clearstone Hollywood Santa Barbara Venice San Diego Santa Monica Twiistup

At at time where nearly all advertising was purchased on a CPM (cost per thousand) basis and not very measurable this was a huge innovation that should be credited to Bill Gross, the founder of IdeaLab.  But But of course Google eventually became the massive winner in this category. Google has made a lot of noise in this space and will apparently sell all of its display One of the investment themes I’ve been focused on in the past 3 years has been Performance-Based Marketing.  When When I started investing the US advertising market was $300 billion with only 10% of