Martin LaMonica
Martin is a veteran journalist covering science, technology, and business from Cambridge, MA. He writes about energy and technology for Xconomy, MIT Technology Review, the Boston Globe, the Guardian, Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, and others. For ten years, he was senior editor at CNET where he covered clean tech, the Web, and tech companies. During the dotcom boom and bust, he was executive editor at enterprise IT publication InfoWorld and previously was the Paris correspondent for the IDG News Service. He graduated from Cornell University.
Recent posts
3D printers give hardware designers a way to convert their computer models into objects they can see and feel. A Boston-area startup has made a desktop printer that goes one step... Read more »
There’s a shortage of radioactive material that few people outside the medical community know about. And the best hope for solving the problem—and reduce nuclear proliferation risks linked to it—rests in... Read more »
Claims of a breakthrough in battery performance are fairly commonplace—and often disappointing. A little-known startup has been toiling on a material that isn’t a radical break with today’s batteries. But by... Read more »
Showing snapshots from vacations is nice, but what if you could use a phone or tablet to walk your friends through a three-dimensional reconstruction of Notre Dame or Angkor Wat, based... Read more »
If you live in an apartment and don’t have roof space, you can still buy into solar power through shared ownership programs—a niche market that a number of solar startups are... Read more »
Material science typically moves slowly, so companies developing better batteries need investors able to stick around for more than just a few years. Seeo has found that some corporate investors are... Read more »
It’s not every day that a wind energy startup attracts investment from a telecom company, but that’s exactly how Altaeros Energies financed its Series A round.
Altaeros said today that Japan-based... Read more »
Having a drone deliver a package to your doorstep minutes after ordering it online would bring instant gratification to a new level. But there’s a problem: that and many other commercial... Read more »
When Governor Deval Patrick leaves office at the end of the year, he will be remembered for fostering the growth of Massachusetts’ life sciences and energy technology industries. Less known is... Read more »
What if municipal WiFi wasn’t provided by the Googles of the world, but by the city transit authority? Using technology from startup Veniam, city-wide WiFi could come from a fleet of... Read more »
In a not-so-quiet way, the tech industry is placing new bets on artificial intelligence, reviving a long-sought technology by using massive data sets and powerful computers.
San Francisco-based Sentient Technologies on... Read more »
The role of the trillions of microbes in the human body is poorly understood—and that’s even more so in plants. A growing number of companies are trying to harness the power... Read more »
Trying to run an electric car from solar cells on the car’s roof makes no sense—or so I thought. Earlier this week, I met with Daniel Theobald, the CTO of healthcare... Read more »
The list of advanced biofuel companies that failed to live up to their ambitions is long and discouraging. Joule Unlimited, though, appears to be making progress despite the headwinds of skeptical... Read more »
Many smart-grid entrepreneurs have recognized that utilities could make better use of the reams of smart-meter data they produce every day. At the same time, entrepreneurs have learned that selling to... Read more »
In an unassuming two-story building in a bland office park in suburban Boston, an MIT spinout is producing material to make beautiful TV images.
On Tuesday, QD Vision received the Presidential... Read more »
Robots have long been cast as human helpers in movies and the public imagination. Now delivery robots are becoming a reality—so long as the robots stay indoors.
The Aloft Hotel in... Read more »
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, only months after becoming an NBA owner, is further flexing his philanthropic muscles. On Thursday, he said he will bankroll a 50 percent increase in computer... Read more »
If you took apart a smartphone, you’d have many of the components needed to build a consumer robot: a low-power processor, software to run it, and an array of sensors. Qualcomm-backed... Read more »
AJ Perez is a young startup executive who thinks about the long term.
As the CEO of New Valence Robotics (NVBots), he’s targeting the company’s 3D printers at schools—not known as... Read more »