Everett, Wash.
Published: Sunday, September 28, 2008

News-rating service Digg Inc. digs in

 Digg Inc., an Internet startup that specializes in rating news stories, is making a little news of its own with a $28.7 million round of financing. The investment announced Wednesday should squelch recurring rumors of a sale to Google Inc. or Microsoft Corp.

"That's part of the message. We want to be independent," said Jay Adelson, Digg's chief executive. "We have only completed about 15 percent of all the ideas that we have. I don't think anyone could offer us a better deal than us going alone."

The money provides Digg with the means to pursue an international expansion and a hiring spree that is supposed to double its work force to 150 employees by the end of next year. Digg also plans to move into larger digs in San Francisco early next year and promote its brand more aggressively.

Highland Capital Partners and three previous Digg investors -- Greylock Partners, Omidyar Network and SVB Capital -- are providing the latest infusion. All told, Digg has raised $40 million since Kevin Rose started the service four years ago.

Rumors that Digg hoped to sell for $200 million to $300 million began circulating last year, with the buzz building in recent months amid unsubstantiated reports that the company was talking to both Google and Microsoft.

Digg would hold some appeal for both.

For instance, Google has experimented with a system that lets people vote on the quality of its Internet search results. If Google were to embrace the concept, Digg's methods for identifying the Web's highly rated stories and photos could become invaluable tools.

And Microsoft already has financial ties to Digg. The software maker sells online ads for Digg under a three-year deal that expires in 2010.



LEDs to light up Dell's laptops: Dell Inc. is switching to mercury-free light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, to illuminate laptop screens starting in mid-December, a move aimed making the computers softer on the environment and easier to recycle.

Dell said the LED displays consume less energy (43 percent less for 15-inch screens) than ones lit with CCFL -- cold cathode fluorescent lamps -- the technology that is standard in Dell's existing notebook computers.

The laptops shipping in December with LED screens represent about two-thirds of Dell's notebook sales, and include Latitude E models and two Precision mobile workstation models.

The Round Rock, Texas-based company said LED backlit displays will be standard in at least 80 percent of the laptops it sells by the end of 2009 and in all its notebooks by the end of 2010.

Dell's promise to use only LED displays in two years one-ups Apple Inc.'s 2007 commitment to get rid of the less-expensive fluorescent displays "eventually." Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple uses LEDs in its MacBook Air, its 15-inch MacBook and one configuration of the 17-inch MacBook Pro, plus all iPods and iPhones.



Sony's PS3 players can catch up on news, weather: Sony Corp.'s U.S. video game division is adding a slick visual program to the PlayStation 3 game system that delivers news headlines, weather reports and webcam views from around the globe.

The new touches come as an upgrade to Folding(at)home, an earlier PS3 feature that benefits Stanford University's protein research project. Users donate a bit of their PS3's processing power when they're not gaming to help researchers study the effects of protein folding on diseases.

Using the new program, "Life with PlayStation," Sony makes the effort more interactive. A PlayStation owner can now use the game controller to soar around a glowing Earth and zoom in to nearly 60 major cities for headlines and weather reports.

Google Inc. provides the headlines in the bottom corner of the screen. When a headline is selected and clicked, a browser launches and navigates to the full story.

The Weather Channel provides the temperatures for each city and the University of Wisconsin even chipped in with detailed cloud cover data to give the slowly spinning globe more realism.

Users will be happier with the webcam views -- which include wide shots of urban districts in San Francisco and Berlin -- if they've got a big display: It's fairly lackluster on screens 27 inches or smaller.

The Associated Press
© 2009The Daily Herald Co., Everett, WA