Ramping and Scaling Concentrator PhotoVoltaic (CPV) Systems. Expanding manufacturing from 0.5 MW (MegaWatt) in 2008, to over 10 MW shipped in 2009, and 50 MW capacity by 2011. Well, it is clear anyone reporting on Tuesday’s “ Haywood Dorland Energy Capital, LLC, Invests in SolFocus, Inc., the Leading Developer of Advanced Concentrator PV Solar Technologies ” didn’t do their due diligence. Today with “ SolFocus Raises over $77 Million in Series C Funding ”, SolFocus Inc.

From ITNews, ‘France’s largest entertainment group Vivendi, has reportedly taken over Zain Africa with a $12 billion bid, ending speculation regarding the future of the ailing telecoms giant. The Monitor in Uganda reported that the move signals an ironic return for the French firm which was forced to sell its stake in its Kenyan operation after the second tech bubble burst in 2003.

9Jul 2009 Raising money for a startup company or small business is never easy, and in the credit-crunch era, it’s especially challenging. Since we’re starting a new round of fundraising to finance the expansion of NewWest.Net, I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic, and I’ve got a few tips to share. In the technology and Internet businesses especially, when people think of raising money, they generally think of venture capitalists.

While venture capitalists pass on companies for many reasons, one of the most common reasons is that they don’t think the opportunity is “big enough”.  What does this mean?  It means that even if the company executes as planned, the VC doesn’t think the exit will be large enough to generate the VC-sized returns.  This determination is based on the venture capitalist’s “fund math” and their expected returns model.  It means that VC doesn’t think he will make a big enough return by investing here.What

It isn’t the sexiest startup in Silicon Valley, but San Francisco based OpenDNS just closed one of the most competitive venture capital deals in recent history. Top tier firms Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners came out the winners. The company will announce a second round of financing from both firms shortly. The deal size and valuation isn’t being disclosed. David Strohm from Greylock and Michael Goguen from Sequoia join previous investor Halsey Minor and CEO Nand Mulchandani on the board of directors.

Cc:Betty, a free service that helps organize group email threads, is the latest startup to catch the Twitter bug. The email collaboration service is integrating with Twitter, so that users of the service can tweet in and out of a of the collaboration platform, as well as see each other’s latest tweets. Cc:Betty routes, parses, and organizes email conversations in a simple at-a-glance dashboard so you never have to scour your inbox to find the bits and pieces of a long thread.

Some months back, I had the pleasure of hearing an old friend give a talk at Harvard Law School. I met David Post a dozen years back, when his research at Temple Law School brough him to Tripod , the internet startup where I was working, to talk with us about his theories of internet governance. It was fascinating to hear him talk about his new book and find myself transported back to the kitchen of our old office space (the top floor of a plastics factory in Williamstown, MA), talking with David about the idea that online communities should govern themselves.

As some of you might know, the VC4Africa.com initiative is now one-year old. In celebration of this milestone, VC4Africa has been registered as a contestant of the Idea Blob contest. This is a chance for the VC4Africa community to win USD 10.000. Don’t worry, the money doesn’t go into private pockets Instead, the money will be used to pay the salaries of young developers in Kampala, Uganda. These funds mean the community can add new tools (Afridex.net) and improve the functionality of the VC4Africa.com community.

The longest recession in a generation is making deal-hunting a lot more pressing for consumers and a San Francisco Bay Area-startup called Spreezio is trying to cash in on it. The premise of the site is simple: local consumers log in, search for a service they’re interested in like buying a TV or a pizza, request some perks like free delivery or 15 percent off, and wait for nearby businesses to respond with offers. Local merchants who are part of Spreezio make counter-offers and then the buyer picks the best one.

VentureBeat’s team of experts has selected 14 finalists for our MobileBeat2009 Top Startup Competition. We’re revealing the full list at our conference on July 16, but here are some teasers about the seven finalists for the top “mobile services” category and seven finalists for the top “mobile applications” category. Criteria included needing to be less than three years old. Of the more than 100 qualified applications, 53 were from new companies or products (companies that are either operating in stealth mode or wanting to make a new product launch at MobileBeat).