Unquestionably, the major obstacle for indoor, or household-friendly light-emitting diodes is price. No matter how long a bulb lasts, nobody wants to spend $30 on one light. Exacerbating the situation, there are too many competing uses for LEDs, according to electronics market research firm iSuppli, slowing their development for home use.

Back-lighting for televisions is a huge growth market for LEDs, with 2.5 million LED-lit sets manufactured in 2009, and an estimated 25 million to be built this year. Estimates range up to 100 million LED-lit TVs to be made in 2014. All this demand has created a shortage of LEDs for other uses.

In response, LED makers are buying up the MOCVD (metal organic chemical vapor deposition) systems that manufacture LED materials. Aixtron and Veeco are two prominent MOCVD makers. Between them, an estimated 120 MOCVD systems will be shipped this quarter. With so much new production capacity being scaled up, one might expect the shortage to end quickly.

But this isn’t the case. Once Veeco or Aixtron ship a MOCVD system — already about five months after it is ordered — the purchaser must customize it for its own LED chip design. This takes an additional three to four months, as Jerald Kolansky writes. There is typically a ten-month gap between new production equipment being ordered and the actual start of production.

Since LEDs are growing so explosively (the prediction is double-digit percentage increases over the next three years), most LED companies are looking to boost production capacity. In two years or less, the LED shortage will be over, and the LED glut will likely begin, analysts say.

Kolansky writes that an over-supply situation “is likely in 2011″ — unless lighting moves into mass production. In order to do so, LED makers will want to satisfy their immediate customers first, which brings us back to LED-backlit televisions. TVs use up to 500 lights per panel, whereas a notebook computer uses 50. With demand so high in these areas, it may be difficult for lighting companies to drive prices lower.

This is especially true when one considers the bulk purchasing power that TV makers have. It would take an awful lot of light bulbs to equal the purchase of just one TV. If manufacturers have to devote resources to one of the two markets, one proven and one emerging, the new guy is likely to be left out. In other words, LED lighting is unlikely to take off until after the display market is stable. This could lead to a period of market saturation, with LEDs being overproduced for display applications and under-utilized for lighting.

Aixtron and Veeco are both planning to double production capacity by the end of 2010. The LED market itself is expected to more than double by 2014.

Companies: Aixtron, Veeco

Ray Muzyka, chief executive of popular video game-maker BioWare, spoke at our GamesBeat@GDC conference in San Francisco about building game franchises. While onstage, Muzyka talked about his Electronic Arts-owned company’s upcoming games in the Star Wars, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age franchises — all across BioWare’s “future portfolio,” he said it’s shifting toward selling games as an ongoing service rather than a standalone product.

Afterwards, I did a brief video interview with Muzyka, during which he elaborated on how his BioWare’s business model is changing, described the company’s new games and downloadable content (DLC), and offered his advice for up-and-coming game entrepreneurs.

See all our coverage from GamesBeat@GDC.

Tags: GamesBeat@GDC

Companies: Bioware

People: Ray Muzyka

A new Google Labs project merges two breakthroughs into one. Public Data Explorer brings together a set of databases — health statistics, crime stats, oil prices, economic metrics — with a browser-based technology that lets researchers and presenters create charts that move. The motion  show trends in a way not possible with motionless plots.

Google’s motion charts are familiar to a small set of people, many of whom first saw them in a video of a presentation at the 2006 TED conference by researcher Hans Rosling, who dazzled jaded TED attendees with an 18-minute presentation of animated charts on global life expectancies and their correlations with global wealth. Roslings moving graphs debunked, he said, the presumption that there is a gap between rich and poor nations today. Instead, Rosling showed how most of the world’s population has gravitated into a middle ground over the past 40 years.

Google Public Data Explorer now makes it possible for anyone to chart public data from TK HOW MANY databases, correlate information from multiple databases, and create moving charts that can be embedded in a Web page just like a YouTube video.

EMBEDDED EXAMPLES GO HERE

The chart technology was conceived by Rosling’s son, Ola, and his wife Anna Ronnlund. The two had studied the arts rather than science in college. After Ola’s father complained over dinner in 1998 that his students at Sweden’s Sweden’s Karolinska Institute didn’t have a fact-based worldview, Ola and Anna eventually brainstormed the idea of making the elder Rosling’s bubble charts of global wealth versus child mortality into a single animation — a chart that would play over time to show emerging and evolving trends.

Eventually, Ola and Anna dubbed their tech and formed a company to develop their motion-chart idea with funding from the Swedish international aid agency Sida. Over the next couple of years they learned of the heavy demand for this kind of visual exploration tool among public agencies around the world.

At the same time they began to ve invited to tech conferences in American, where they met early personal computer visionary Alan Kay. They asked if he could help find someone who could take over this idea and develop it further. Kay gave them the ugly truth: It very unlikely, he said. They would probably have to develop it themselves. That’s how it works with most innovations.

In 2005, Anna and Ola founded the Gapminder foundation together with Hans. With his ever-more-powerful visualizations, using the technology now named Trendalyzer, Dr. Rosling was invited to more and more prestigious conferences. Eventually, he met the Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Hans was also invited to TED in 2006. His presentation, widely viewed online, got him invited to give an internal presentation at Google’s Tech Talk series. He insisted that the inventors, Anna and Ola and software engineer Johan Nystrand, give the preso instead.

You can guess how the story ends: Google acquired the Trendalyzer software from the Gapminder foundation, which still operates in parallel. Anna, Ola and three others from Gapminder were hired by Google in early 2007.  Google’s motion charts have been available in Google Docs since TK WHEN. But now, by pairing the Trendalyzer software with public databases, and letting Google’s super-scalable servers handle the work, Google hopes to empower researchers and just-plain-nosy people worldwide to make new discoveries akin to Rosling’s wealth-and-health correlations.

Here’s our rundown of the week’s business and tech news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

">In favor of software patents — Patents are getting a lot of criticism these days, but Fair Software’s Alain Reynaud argues that they are worth preserving, just a little flawed.

Wind is generally considered the front-runner when it comes to renewable sources of energy — both cheaper and more reliable than solar. The government certainly prioritized it last year when it doled out millions in grants, mostly to wind firms. Now news of record-setting wind generation out of Texas confirms that turbines are probably the best bet.

Apparently, early this morning, about 19 percent of the power on the major Texan grid came from wind installations (about 6,272 megawatts) — that’s an incredible amount considering that green-minded states like California are hoping to hit 33 percent from renewable power in general ten years from now. This is also significant given that not all of Texas’ turbines participated — the state’s Panhandle is actually on a different grid.

On a regular basis, Texas derives about 6 percent of its electricity on the grid from wind, reports the New York Times. That’s not very much for a state that is far and away the leader in wind development. Interestingly, however, not all of the wind power generated in Texas is actually transmitted. The necessary infrastructure doesn’t yet exist to deliver it all to consumers. So who knows what could be achieved if this missing link were fixed?

Not that the problem has been neglected. The state is already investing $5 billion in transmission repairs and expansions. The goal is to string many more cables between the wind-heavy western region of Texas and the biggest cities, Houston, Austin and Dallas.

If Texas can successfully (and affordably) build the necessary infrastructure to up the amount of wind-generated power on the grid, it could provide a great best-practice case for states looking to boost their own wind power, like California, Michigan, and other states in the Midwest.

A 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Taiwan on Thursday morning. Electronics market research firm iSuppli reports that Taiwanese firms Chi Mei Optoelectronics and HannStar Display Corporation to temporarily stop making large LCD panels in the Tainan Science Park area, for safety reasons.

According to iSuppli, CMO and HannStar produce a total of 16.3 percent large-size LCD panels.

“After a shutdown, it typically takes 12 to 24 hours before production can be restarted at an LCD manufacturing fab.” said iSuppli researcher Sweta Dash in a press release. “However, if there is damage to the equipment, the shutdown will last for a longer period of time.”

There have been no reports yet of deaths due the quake, but thousands of people are reportedly without electrical power.

[Photo: Tsao/Getty]

Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano said today that the federal government is stepping up its efforts to protect Americans from increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks. It will do so by preparing to prevent and preempt attacks, without compromising privacy, she said.

She said she met hockey star Wayne Gretzky during the recent final game for the Gold Medal in hockey at the Olympics, and she recalled how he said that he doesn’t skate to where the puck is, but where it will be. The same applies for anticipating cyber attacks.

Under President Obama, protection of the nation’s cyber infrastructure is viewed as both an issue of national and economic security, Napolitano said in a speech at the RSA security conference in San Francisco today. Her speech follows one yesterday by Howard Schmidt, the new White House national cybersecurity coordinator.

“We don’t live in a static world,” she said. “We have to evolve to deal with the threats.”

The federal government’s goal is to protect cyberspace, making it safe and secure and encouraging cyber security knowledge and innovation. It is working with private industries to protect infrastructure of the Internet that is owned by both federal and private parties.

One project is Einstein, an effort to protect federal agencies. Basic protection has been added under Einstein, but now the government is moving on to the idea of preventing attacks before they can happen. The effort mirrors attempts to anticipate terrorist attacks to head off the cyber equivalent of 9/11.

Napolitano said that the government is also reviewing the resiliency of networks to make sure that, if there are attacks, they can’t take down all of the network and that recovery can be quick. She said the collaborative work is happening, but was short on the details.

“We want to ensure that the Department of Homeland Security has the legal authority and financial resources to act and retain the top talent that it needs,” she said. “We have to make the system writ large, safe and secure.”

She asked the conference attendees to redouble efforts to increase security and improve their products so that the security is automatic and the reaction to attacks can happen at Internet speed. She wants the industry to make interoperable products and privacy-enhancing authentication. And she called for the industry to increase public awareness and set up a competition to do so. The DHS National Cyber Challenge contest closes on April 30 and details are on the DHS web site. The investment in this educational campaign will be big; Napolitano compared it to the scale of campaigns to stop smoking and prevent forest fires via Smoky the Bear.

People: Janet Napolitano

Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano said today that the federal government is stepping up its efforts to protect Americans from increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks. It will do so by preparing to prevent and preempt attacks, without compromising privacy, she said.

She said she met hockey star Wayne Gretzky during the recent final game for the Gold Medal in hockey at the Olympics, and she recalled how he said that he doesn’t skate to where the puck is, but where it will be. The same applies for anticipating cyber attacks.

Under President Obama, protection of the nation’s cyber infrastructure is viewed as both an issue of national and economic security, Napolitano said in a speech at the RSA security conference in San Francisco today. Her speech follows one yesterday by Howard Schmidt, the new White House national cybersecurity coordinator.

“We don’t live in a static world,” she said. “We have to evolve to deal with the threats.”

The federal government’s goal is to protect cyberspace, making it safe and secure and encouraging cyber security knowledge and innovation. It is working with private industries to protect infrastructure of the Internet that is owned by both federal and private parties.

One project is Einstein, an effort to protect federal agencies. Basic protection has been added under Einstein, but now the government is moving on to the idea of preventing attacks before they can happen. The effort mirrors attempts to anticipate terrorist attacks to head off the cyber equivalent of 9/11.

Napolitano said that the government is also reviewing the resiliency of networks to make sure that, if there are attacks, they can’t take down all of the network and that recovery can be quick. She said the collaborative work is happening, but was short on the details.

“We want to ensure that the Department of Homeland Security has the legal authority and financial resources to act and retain the top talent that it needs,” she said. “We have to make the system writ large, safe and secure.”

She asked the conference attendees to redouble efforts to increase security and improve their products so that the security is automatic and the reaction to attacks can happen at Internet speed. She wants the industry to make interoperable products and privacy-enhancing authentication. And she called for the industry to increase public awareness and set up a competition to do so. The DHS National Cyber Challenge contest closes on April 30 and details are on the DHS web site. The investment in this educational campaign will be big; Napolitano compared it to the scale of campaigns to stop smoking and prevent forest fires via Smoky the Bear.

People: Janet Napolitano

In the wake of the Greener Gadgets conference held last week in New York City, review site Retrevo released results from a survey looking at how much green factors into people’s gadget buys. Unsurprisingly, the answer was not much. But there might be a silver lining.

A gadget can be considered “green” if an effort has been made to keep its negative environmental footprint to a minimum along its supply chain. Major factors include energy consumption, waste production, the ability for its components to be recycled, and the toxicity of the materials used to make it. Considering that most gadgets are assembled from parts made by many different companies around the world, and travel extensive distances, it takes a lot of time and attention to make a green phone, music player, appliance, etc. And of course there are shades of green.

Here are some of the key results from the Retrevo survey:

When asked whether they feel guilty not buying a green gadget –

• 42 percent said no, because they don’t care whether a gadget is green or not
• 16 percent said no, because they care more about price

When asked whether they pay attention to green product certifications like EnergyStar:

• 36 percent of respondents under 25 said yes (keep in mind, very few people under 25 are buying their own major appliances)
• 55 percent of respondents over 25 said yes

When asked whether they would even know how to buy green if they wanted to:

• 40 percent said yes but that they don’t always do it
• 21 percent said no but they’d like to learn
• 18 percent said no and that they don’t care

Even though it indicated a general lack of green gadget knowledge among the population, the survey did serve up some very promising data as well. For example, 16 percent of people say they always make a conscious effort to buy eco-conscious electronics, and another 10 percent on top of that say they know they always buy the greenest offering available.

When asked about what would convince more people to buy greener gadgets, more than half of respondents said tax rebates, subsidies and cash incentives from the government or vendors. While this is becoming an increasingly popular motivator, it’s not always going to be possible. On the hopeful side, upwards of 75 percent said that learning easier ways to recycle or becoming more educated about what to buy would make them more inclined to buy green gadgets.

Clearly, the mass market is gradually caring more about devices’ environmental footprints. And surveys like this one aren’t the only indication. Major retailers like Wal-Mart, Amazon and Apple have all launched dedicated green initiatives to call consumers’ attention to how they are doing their part combat climate change and pollution.

Wal-Mart has big plans to label many of its products with their carbon footprints and a rating of how green they are are based on their manufacturing processes and transit — and it just announced its goal to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20 million metric tons. Apple has eliminated certain toxic materials from its products, publishes regular reports on energy use, and provides specific instructions for how to recycle its devices. Amazon now has a special catalog of all green products, and assigns them ratings based on certain criteria. These companies seem to get it that their future customers will be more and more concerned with what their purchases are doing to the planet.

Companies: amazon, Apple, Retrevo, Wal Mart

Don’t have $111,000 for Silicon Valley’s most prestigious auto brand? Tesla Motors, the oft-troubled but popular maker of plug-in hot rods, emailed with news of a new lease program.

“You could take immediate delivery of a new 2010 Tesla Roadster or Roadster Sport,” it says in my inbox, “with a three year, 30,000 mile contract and with monthly payments as low as $1,658. At the end of the term, you’ll be able to purchase the groundbreaking Roadster or pay a fee and walk away.”

Don’t forget to budget for insurance, sure to be high on a two-seater with 248 horsepower behind the driver’s head. The Tesla Roadster rockets from zero to 60 miles per hour in less than four seconds. Insurance actuaries hate that.

Not to brag, but I took a test ride in a prototype in 2006. The car feels safe despite its speed, thanks to a linear torque curve and a high PRM limit that prevents the usual gear-shifting jerkiness of gasoline-powered high-performance cars. The Tesla accelerates smoothly all the way from standstill to well beyond legal speed limits. In first gear.

If the price is still to high for you, hang on. The company plans to sell a $50,000 BMW-esque sedan next year.

Companies: Tesla Motors