The Xbox and Kinect motion controller are again Microsoft’s brightest stars as the company posted strong earnings and 60 percent growth in its entertainment division, even though sales of its flagship Windows operating system fell slightly amid weak personal computer demand.

Microsoft posted solid gains in the third fiscal quarter this year when compared to last year. Revenue rose 13 percent to $16.4 billion, up from $14.5 billion in the same quarter a year earlier. Most of that came from Microsoft’s continued Kinectification as its video game console motion controller proved extremely popular. Revenues from Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division was up 60 percent to $1.9 billion in the third fiscal quarter this year, from $1.2 billion in the third quarter last year.

Despite Microsoft’s strong performance, Apple posted a quarterly profit of nearly $6 billion, compared to Microsoft’s $5.2 billion profit in the third fiscal quarter this year. While Apple has grown at a mammoth pace to become the second largest company in U.S. markets in terms of market cap, the company had not yet beaten Microsoft in quarterly income.

The company’s operating income was up 31 percent to $5.2 billion from $4 billion in the third quarter last year. While the company’s research and development costs didn’t grow, the company’s operating expenses as a whole rose 15 percent to $10.7 billion — up from $9.3 billion in the third quarter last year.

Office also proved essential to Microsoft’s decent showing today. Revenue from the company’s Business Division rose 21 percent to $5.3 billion, up from $4.3 billion in the third quarter last year. Microsoft said it was a result of strong sales of its Office 2010 software.

Microsoft also said its expenses will rise 3 to 5 percent next year, which could be the first hint of a financial impact from Steve Ballmer’s sweeping pay raises for all Microsoft employees. The company expects its operating expenses to be somewhere around $28 billion for the 2012 fiscal year.

Sales of its Windows operating system fell slightly — down 4.4 percent from $4.7 billion in the third fiscal quarter last year to $4.4 billion in the third quarter this year. That’s because computer sales have recently stalled as tablets have become more popular and consumer interest in personal computers waned slightly.

The company now has around $50 billion in cash and short-term investments. There were some whispers today that Microsoft might actually buy Research in Motion after the BlackBerry maker’s shares were halted in after-hours trading once Microsoft’s earnings report came out — though that’s extremely unlikely because trading resumed and the company just downgraded its outlook.

Tags: computer sales, Kinect, Microsoft Office, Office, Windows, xbox, xbox 360

Companies: Microsoft

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Google is finally making video chat a core part of the Android experience, almost a year after Apple introduced FaceTime video chat for the iPhone 4.

The company announced today that an updated version of Google Talk will bring voice and video chat to Android phones, starting with the Nexus S over the next few weeks.

We’ve known that Google has been working on an integrated video chat feature for months now. But Google’s timing couldn’t be any better, as powerful dual-core Android phones are finally becoming available, many of which can also take advantage of 4G networks.

The updated Google Talk will let consumers voice and video chat with Google Talk users on Android tablets, as well as computers using Google Talk with Gmail, over 3G, 4G, and Wi-Fi connections. Apple’s FaceTime video chat, in comparison, only works over Wi-Fi connections.

In addition to being more flexible than Apple’s option, Google Talk will also overlay text sent via instant messaging on top of your video chat screen, so you can conceivably follow links sent during chats (as demonstrated in the video below).

I’m a big fan of the possibility of video chat on phones, although even Apple’s slick FaceTime hasn’t taken off (primarily because it’s chained to Wi-Fi). But there are indeed plenty of reasons why video chat could take off this year, in addition to the rise of 4G. Native video chat on Android should encourage more consumers to give it a shot, especially since it will be less trouble than signing up for another service like Qik. (At the moment, Skype only offers video chat on the HTC Thunderbolt, which runs on Verizon’s LTE 4G network.)

Google says that the new Google Talk will arrive on the Nexus S with the Android 2.3.4 update over the next few weeks. It will show up on other devices running Android 2.3 and above in the future.

Tags: Android, FaceTime, Google Talk, iPhone, smartphones, video chat

Companies: Apple, Google

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Total, a French oil company, announced today that it will purchase a majority stake in solar panel manufacturer SunPower for $23.25 per share — bringing Europe’s third-largest oil company into the growing and hyper-competitive solar panel business.

First Solar now stands alone as the last major independent manufacturer of solar panels in the United States. Solar panel manufacturers have faced stiff competition from Chinese companies that are able to compete with much lower costs, forcing U.S. companies to either seek large amounts of financing — typically in the form of huge guaranteed loans from the Department of Energy — or sell off to larger energy companies.

SunPower specialized in photovoltaic panels that were highly efficient, but a little more expensive than other solar panel manufacturers. Solar panels capture sunlight and convert it to electricity, but usually capture only small amounts of the sunlight that hits the panel. SunPower’s cells can capture around 24 percent of the light hitting the panel and convert it to electricity — compared to FirstSolar’s 11 percent efficiency ratings. SunPower specializes in wafer-style solar panels, while FirstSolar and other major competitors produce thin-film solar panels that can be placed on any surface and have lower manufacturing costs.

That’s because most new solar power projects carry tremendous capital costs and take some time before they recoup their costs. SunPower also played that game — the company purchased European photovoltaic plant company SunRay for $277 million in February last year. SunPower supplied 80,000 panels for SunRay installations in Europe and Israel covering 13,000 homes before it decided to purchase SunRay.

Total will buy 60 percent of SunPower for around $1.4 billion, valuing the company as being worth around $2.3 billion. SunPower currently has a market cap of around $1.45 billion — so the deal represents a 58 percent premium over its current market price. Shares of SunPower were up around 40 percent to $22.15 in extended trading after the deal was announced.

[Photo: pgegreenenergy]

Tags: efficiency, solar panel, solar power, thin-film solar panel, wafer

Companies: FirstSolar, SunPower, Total

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The history of the auto industry is littered with the carcasses of the cars and companies that didn’t make it. Modern hybrid-electric vehicles, for example, were first commercialized by Toyota, with its 1997 Prius (sold in the U.S. starting in 2000). But many concepts, development vehicles, one-offs, and other technology experiments preceded that first Prius.

Hybrid history on eBay

Now an arcane piece of hybrid history has turned up on eBay UK, representing major names in the waning British car industry that came together to create an experimental concept car that cost, according to the literature, 1 million pounds sterling.

(You can view the eBay listing here)

The car, a Lucas Hybrid-Electric Research Vehicle, was designed and built during the 1980s by the combination of Lucas, the electric parts maker; Ogle Design, the design house that also briefly produced cars under its own name; and Reliant, the longstanding maker of both plastic three-wheel cars and the sporty Scimitar hatchback coupe in the 1970s.

It debuted at London’s Olympia Motor Show in 1982, fitted with a plexiglass hood so the mechanical parts could be seen.

The five-door hatchback design was “highly aerodynamic”–at least by the standards of the day–for lowest energy consumption.

The seller says he acquired it from a museum, but has too many projects to be able to finish it. And it has, he says, just 380 road miles from new since its road tests were completed.

Complete but for batteries

The car has been under a dust cover for many years and will need new batteries, according to the description. The alternator also needs to be reconnected. The buyer must bring a trailer, as the car has not been put through Britain’s comprehensive Ministry of Transport (MoT) annual safety inspection.

The Lucas Hybrid can run either in pure electric mode, or with its tiny 0.85-liter 40-hp (30-kW) Reliant four-cylinder engine turned on to power a 25-kW generator that flows power to the 50-kilowatt (67-hp) electric drive motor. The Reliant engine is brand-new and runs beautifully, according to the seller.

Electric, series, parallel, gasoline ?!?!?

This latter mode is called “series hybrid,” and is the same way the 2011 Chevrolet Volt (also a five-door hatchback) propels itself: The wheels are turned by an electric motor that draws power from the onboard 21.6-kilowatt-hour battery pack (about one-third larger than the Volt’s).

In this case, it uses lead-acid batteries rather than modern lithium-ion cells, with an onboard charger allowing the pack to be charged by plugging it into the electricity grid. The electric range was given as 40 miles (also the Volt’s approximate range), with 0-to-50-mph (yes, 50, not 60) of, ummm, 23 seconds.

Unusually, the car can also operate solely on engine power, like a conventional car, as well as in parallel mode (like the Prius hybrid), with both the engine and the motor contributing torque to the wheels.

The car has a stated top speed of 85 mph, and accelerates up to 75 mph on battery power alone.

Many unknown experiments

Other firms experimented with series hybrids (like Daihatsu’s 1993 Dash concept) and electric cars (like Volkswagen’s CityStromer electric Golf conversions) during the 1980s and 1990s. But hybrid history stretches back to the earliest days of the automobile itself.

The world’s first hybrid, in fact, was created in 1900 by an Austrian engineer named Ferdinand Porsche, who later founded the sports car company that bears his name.

Porsche just spent millions of Euros to re-create that 1900 Semper Vivus,demonstrated in running order last week at a reception before the New York Auto Show where the 2012 Porsche Panamera S Hybrid was launched.

Meanwhile, you have roughly four days left to bid on this orphaned but fascinating British experiment. The opening bid is £3,900 (roughly $6,450), and as of now, there are no bids.

The Lucas brand is our cue to throw in one of the many, many Lucas jokes by long-suffering British-car owners: What are the three positions of the Lucas headlight switch?

Written by John Voelcker, this post originally appeared on GreenCarReports, one of VentureBeat’s editorial partners.

Tags: Electric car, electric vehicle, hybrid, hybrid-electric car, Lucas-Reliant

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As I explained in my last piece, skilled immigrants are leaving the U.S. in droves. This is because of economic opportunities in countries like India and China, a desire to be closer to family and friends, and a deeply flawed U.S immigration system. It doesn’t matter whether we call this “brain drain” or “brain circulation”– it is a loss for America. Innovation that would otherwise be happening here is going abroad.

With all the stories we read about weak infrastructure in India, authoritarianism in China, and corruption and red tape in both countries, the perception is that these entrepreneurs are facing major handicaps back home. They have no chance of competing with us, so we have nothing to worry about, right?

Wrong.

My team at Duke, UC-Berkeley, and Harvard just completed a research project for which we surveyed 153 skilled immigrants who had returned to India to start companies and 111 who went back to China. The title of the paper, which Kauffman Foundation released today, tells the story: The Grass is Indeed Greener in India and China for Returnee Entrepreneurs. Here is what we learned:

Why did they return?

The most significant factors drawing both Indians and Chinese entrepreneurs home were economic opportunities, access to local markets, and family ties. More than 60% of Indian and 90% of Chinese returnees said the availability of economic opportunities in their countries was a major factor in their return. Seventy-eight percent of Chinese entrepreneurs were lured by the attraction of local markets as were 53% of Indian entrepreneurs. And 76% of Indian entrepreneurs and 51% of Chinese entrepreneurs said it was family ties that brought them back home.

The returnees took pride in contributing to their home country’s economic development. More than
60% of Indian and 51% of Chinese entrepreneurs rated this as very important. Government incentives weren’t at all important for the Indians surveyed, but did lure back 23% of the Chinese. And Only 10% of Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs left the U.S. because they had to; others may have been frustrated with their visa situation, but had other, more important reasons for returning home.

How does their situation back home compare to the U.S.?

Surprisingly, 72% of Indian and 81% of Chinese returnees said that the opportunities to start their own businesses were better or much better in their home countries. Speed of professional growth was also better back home for the majority of Indian (54%) and Chinese (68 percent) entrepreneurs. And the quality of life was better or at least equal to what they’d enjoyed in the United States for 56% of Indian and 59% of Chinese returnees.

What are the advantages of doing business in India and China?

Among the Indian nationals surveyed, the strongest common advantage to entrepreneurs who had moved home was lower operating costs; among the Chinese nationals, it was access to local markets. In India, 77% ranked operating costs and 72% ranked employee wages as very important advantages; in China, 64% and 61% did. In China, 76% ranked access to local markets as very important. In India, 64% did. The availability of qualified workers was perceived as a more significant advantage in India than in China, with 60% in India and 43% in China saying this was very important.

Optimism about the country and economy also makes a big difference. Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs both (55% and 53%, respectively) saw the mood in their countries as a very important advantage. And as you would expect, given the support that the Chinese government provides businesses, far more Chinese entrepreneurs (31%) consider government support very important than their Indian (7%) counterparts.

What’s the American advantage?

The only advantage respondents typically indicated that the U.S. offered was in the salaries received— 64% of Indian and 43% of Chinese respondents said the salaries had been better in the United States than they were at home.

It’s not all bad news

There is a silver lining to this cloud. Yes, entrepreneurs are returning home and fertilizing the
entrepreneurial landscape back home. And yes, we would benefit if all this entrepreneurship was in the U.S. But there is also a two-way “brain circulation” happening—with potential benefit to both the U.S. and these emerging economies.

Returning entrepreneurs are maintaining close and continuing contact with friends and family,
colleagues, customers, partners, and sources of business information in the U.S. Indian returnees said they were visiting the U.S. between two and three times over the previous two years, and Chinese said they visited more than four times in that period. A majority said they had monthly or more frequent contact with former colleagues in the U.S.; more than a quarter have contact with U.S.-based colleagues at least weekly. A majority also exchange information about customers and collaborators, markets and technology, or organizations with people in the U.S. at least monthly; approximately one-third exchange information about customers and collaborators with colleagues in the U.S. weekly or more frequently.

Returnees are also exploiting their privileged position in the world economy: building businesses that take advantage of their access to the lower costs, growing markets, and business networks in their home countries but maintaining close ties also with customers, collaborators, and sources of information in the U.S. The accumulation of linkages between entrepreneurs in regions such as Bangalore and Beijing and entrepreneurs in the U.S. offers opportunities for mutually beneficial growth.

UC-Berkeley School of Information dean AnnaLee Saxenian documented this dynamic in her book, The New Argonauts. She noted the positive dynamic at work in the relationships between entrepreneurs and institutions in Taiwan and Israel and Silicon Valley: each benefit from participation in the decentralized, cross-regional collaborations that support innovation in today’s global economy.

In the new world order, we’re going to be competing and collaborating. The U.S. will not be the only land of opportunity and it will not be the only land of innovation. We can’t turn the clock back now and keep the entrepreneurs who have already left, but we can certainly try to increase our competitive odds by keeping those who are already here—and who want to be playing on our team, from leaving.

Vivek Wadhwa  is a visiting scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, director of research for the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University, and senior research associate for the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. To read his previous article in this series, click here.

[Image via masochismtango/Flickr]

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An Alabama-based nuclear power plant with similar specifications to the Fukushima Daiichi plant that was ravaged by an earthquake in Japan outlasted catastrophic weather in the southeast and has shut down without incident.

Diesel engines, the second line of defense in a long line of safety precautions at the Brown’s Ferry plant, were not disabled by the severe weather. The reactors kicked in and provided emergency power to the plant after its main power lines were cut.

Dozens of tornadoes ripped through the midwest and southeast yesterday, killing 248 people and dealing leveling entire neighborhoods. The storms spawned the deadliest outbreak of tornadoes in nearly 40 years, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The situation at the Browns Ferry plant illustrates the effectiveness of standard nuclear safety features in severe weather. Most nuclear reactors will never face the tragic combination of circumstances that struck Fukushima.

Despite the Fukushima situation, the US government plans to continue funding nuclear power projects as part of a push to promote energy that is cleaner than that produced by fossil-fuel-burning plants. President Barack Obama and U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu have also lobbied hard to bring nuclear power to the forefront as a potential alternative to fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.

[Photo: Argonne National Laboratory]

Tags: clean energy, clean technology, fossil fuels, nuclear power

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This post was brought to you by Social-Loco.

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Marissa Mayer, VP, Consumer Products, GoogleEmily White, Senior Director, Local, FacebookVictoria Ransom, CEO, Wildfire InteractiveJon Battelle, CEO, Federated MediaRobert Scoble, Managing Director, RackspaceAlexa Andrzejewski, CEO, FoodspottingDavid Staas, SVP, Marketing, JiWireSumir Meghani, Director of Biz Dev, GrouponClara Shih, CEO, Heasay (author, Facebook Era)Dennis Glavin, Head of Local Online and Mobile Advertising, MicrosoftJay Adelson , CEO of SimpleGeo

For more information on the conference please visit: www.socialloco.net

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It may not be as much as the colossal $300 million financing that Nanosolar finally disclosed yesterday — the biggest ever for a solar company — but another thin-film manufacturer, AVA Solar, has broken into the nine-figure funding range today, with a challenge to industry giant First Solar’s dominance. AVA stands out a bit […]

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Picateers has raised $6.6 million in a second round of funding to expand its effort to replace school portrait vendors with volunteer-based programs run by parents.The San Mateo, Calif., company is disrupting the school portrait business by using a web-based approach. It recruits parents to use their own digital cameras to shoot portraits of kids. […]

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You just knew it was too good to last. Starting on October 1 of this year, Internet service provider Comcast will begin placing a cap on the amount of data its customers can access a month, DSLreports has learned.The 250 gigabyte cap, now confirmed by Comcast, represents on 14,000 of the company’s 14.1 million users, […]

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Remember the awkward video from last December that featured various bloggers and video bloggers in video speed-dating situations? Well, the company that offered the dating service behind it, SpeedDate.com, claims to be on a bit of a tear. It’s growing 50 percent a month and now getting 100,000 online dates happening on its service per […]

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SugarSync, the service from startup Sharpcast that allows users to synchronize files across multiple computers and mobile devices, just became even more useful with the release of an iPhone application.There are a lot of other sync services out there, including Syncplicity and Dropbox, but I was really impressed by the demo I saw when SugarSync […]

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Mobile software operating system Android is coming soon, at least on one device — and that device will have a way for third-party applications to get access to users. The Google-led software initiative will offer a service called Android Market, a way to find, maybe purchase and download third-party applications (and maybe other content?). This […]

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BuzzCity, a Singapore-based mobile advertising company, has picked up an additional $10 million for its combination approach of an ad network and social site, myGgamma.com The company is aiming to expand in the United States, but chances are, you’re not in its target market. Its idea is to reach out to audiences everywhere […]

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Google-owned video site YouTube is experimenting with another way to make some extra cash — placing a giant banner ad on its homepage, according to Silicon Alley Insider.People love to speculate and complain about YouTube’s struggle to make money from its huge audience. Yesterday, Google revealed that when YouTube notifies content owners that their copyrighted […]

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