LITTLE ROCK — UA team wins $20,000 tech prize
A team from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville took home a $20,000 grand prize for a process that improves the efficiency of solar cells by as much as 15 percent during a student business plan competition in Canada.
The patent-pending process by student-run company Picasolar took the grand prize at the 2013 IBK Capital-Ivey Business Plan Competition, held at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in late January.
Along with the cash, the team earned an invitation to the Venture Labs Investment Competition at the University of Texas at Austin in May.
The process, invented by Picasolar team member Seth Shumate, a doctoral student at the College of Engineering and J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, could improve the efficiency of solar cells by 15 percent.
Two other UA teams competed in Canada.
ParadigMed, which manufactures a device for male circumcision in an outpatient setting, made it to the final round of the competition. HomeDx, which is working to develop the first over-the counter influenza test, fell just short of the final round.
Company fined for privacy violation
The company behind the popular Path social networking service agreed to pay $800,000 to settle federal charges that it illegally collected personal information from cell phones without the knowledge or consent of its customers, the government said Friday.
Path Inc. of San Francisco collected names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and usernames from Facebook and Twitter accounts from the cell phones of its customers without permission, the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission said.
These customers included roughly 3,000 children under 13 and occurred even in cases when a Path customer sought to block the service from collecting the information. The government said Path collected the information the first time a customer signed into the service and upon every subsequent sign-in.
“The user had no meaningful choice as to the collection and storage of personal information from the user’s mobile device contacts, and the user interface options were illusory,” according to the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Path. The Justice Department filed the case against Path on Thursday in federal court in San Francisco at the FTC’s request. Path acknowledged the legal settlement on Friday.
Path said in a statement that even before the FTC had contacted the company, it was made aware that its service was allowing children under 13 to register as customers. It said it has suspended all accounts for users under 13. Path’s statement did not respond to the government’s charge that the company had violated privacy assurances that it made to adult customers whose personal information it collected without permission.
“There was a period of time where our system was not automatically rejecting people who indicated that they were under 13,” the company said. “Before the FTC reached out to us, we discovered and fixed this sign-up process qualification, and took further action by suspending any underage accounts that had mistakenly been allowed to be created.”
Facebook launches gift-card service
Facebook Inc., operator of the most popular social-networking website, unveiled a service that lets users give gift cards to other members for purchases at retailers and restaurants.
The card can be used at four businesses, including Target Corp. and Jamba Juice Co., Facebook said on its website. With the new service, users select gift amounts to be put on the card and sent to their friends. The recipient is notified of the present and receives the card in the mail a few days later.
Facebook is investing in new products to attract users and keep them on the site longer. Last month, the company announced a revamp of its search service that lets members find information on people, places, photos and interests. Last year, Facebook debuted tools that let members purchase physical gifts for friends on the site.
The latest gift feature works for members in the U.S., and the refillable cards can carry balances from multiple businesses in varying amounts. The cards can also be used for LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA’s Sephora cosmetics chain and for Darden Restaurants Inc.’s Olive Garden eateries.
Menlo Park, Calif.-based Facebook fell less than 1 percent to $30.98 at the close in New York. The shares have declined 18 percent since the company’s initial public offering in May.
Business, Pages 22 on 02/04/2013