Sacramento News Meme

It's been a while since I've blogged on this site and I thought I'd add a little update. Still have this Blogger based blog after all these years even with the new upstarts Tumblr and Posterous doing some interesting innovation in the micro blogging space. It seems Twitter has grabbed my attention and become a real source for curated content and social networking.

Built a little side project this week. A Sacramento News and Blog Meme in the style of Digg or Techmeme. Currently aggregating 14 local news sources mostly tv, newspapers, and a couple web only news sites including my 3 in the Metro Media network of course.

The site Sacramento Meme is updated hourly and includes voting buttons and top this month and top this year views. It will be interesting to see how a local aggregator/meme would generate some interest and if a community develops around it. I haven't started curating the content yet, but that's an easy next step if there's interest. I'm curious to see if users will be interested in curating themselves through the submissions and voting features which is much better than pure aggregation I think.

Hard to tell if there's strong enough interest in Sacramento based news to support a aggregated/curated site, but I think this is where news is going along with Branded media which I think I'll devote another post to as I've been thinking a lot about the future of media and Branded media seems to be the next logical step. I'll explain more later.

The Clean Technology Challenge

In 2006, venture investors pumped $1.28 billion into clean technology companies in China, Europe, Israel and the U.S., the group said today. That’s about double the $664.1 million invested in 2005, according to the research, which was compiled the data with help from Ernst & Young.

Today, Dow Jones Venture One has released a more precise definition to what is meant by “clean technology.”

Companies that directly enable the efficient use of natural resources and reduce the ecological impact of production. Areas of focus include energy, water, agriculture, transportation, and manufacturing where the technology creates less waste or toxicity. The impact of cleantech can be either to provide superior performance at lower costs or to limit the amount of resources needed while maintaining comparable productivity levels.

Where is Sacramento on the Clean Tech map? If area leaders want this region to be branded the Clean Tech epicenter it's time for more action and less talk. Based on the discussions in local circles there is broad support for the concept. Maybe we need a real challenge to do something. Here's a start.

Venture Capital in Sacramento - Invest 20% of your Portfolio in Clean Tech.
Local Government & Business - Go Clean. 100% Clean energy by 2010.
Builders - Build 20% of your New Homes with Clean Energy sources.
SARTA - Incubate Clean Tech and Offer $$$ for companies in Clean Tech to move to Sacramento

Any more?