Heroku: PaaS is the future of development tools

The mantra that all companies need to become software companies is starting to sound familiar. PaaS clouds are the key to making this happen, by providing the means to get customer-facing applications up and running quickly, Heroku CEO Adam Gross argued this week at a developer’s conference. Gross said that even companies not known for…

Facebook throws an open source hackathon

Facebook’s Boston-area outpost is in Cambridge, close to MIT – they’ve just expanded from a smaller site and annexed a whole floor of a well-kept office building near Kendall Square Station. The first thing you see when you get off the elevator is a floor-to-ceiling pattern of blue lines that are meant to spell out…

U.S. solar growth blows away previous records

The U.S. solar market nearly doubled its electricity-generating capacity last year, as 14.6 megawatts (MW) of new photovoltaic panels were installed throughout the country. There was a 95% increase in new solar installations over the previous year, when 7.5MW were installed, according to a new report from GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association…