Powerset, the startup founded in 2005 with the objective of challenging Google with the development of an improved search engine, made its official launch to the public today.

As we anticipated last February, Powerset’s search engine, which uses “natural language” to organize and search documents, will initially only index content from Wikipedia.

Powerset created an index of Wikipedia by studying the meaning of entire sentences rather than the relationship between words. Users will be able to type language queries in the form of a question instead of conventional keyword searches and quickly obtain information from many different sources.

A Silicon Valley startup called Tesla Motors designs and manufactures high-performance, highly efficient electric sports cars. Tesla Motors cars not only produce zero-emission, they combine style, acceleration and advanced technologies that make them among the fastest and most energy-efficient cars on the road.

Tesla Motors, which unveiled its electric sports car Roadster in 2006 and went into production last month, said it has already pre-sold all the 600 Roadsters the company planned to produce in 2008. The company is now taking orders of the 1,500 cars it plans to produce for 2009.

The Roadster car was developed with more than $40 million of venture capital from investors such as Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The 2-seat car goes from 0 to 60 mph in under 4 seconds and reaches a top speed of 125 mph. It ranges about 220 miles on one charge and can be fully recharged like a cell phone in about 3.5 hours. The 2009 Roadster base price is $109,000.

Tesla Motors recently opened its first store in Los Angeles and plans to open another one in Silicon Valley in the next 2 months. More stores will also be opened within the next year in Chicago and New York as well as Europe.

VirtualLogix, a real-time virtualization software startup, has received an equity investment from Motorola.

The amount was not disclosed but Motorola’s investment follows similar moves by companies such as Intel, Cisco Systems, and Texas Instruments, which previously invested in VirtualLogix.

VirtualLogix allows cell phone manufacturers to create mobile devices that run multiple operating systems, sharing the resources in an easier and more efficient way.

VirtualLogix VLX for Mobile Handsets is a high-performance, real-time virtualization solution that is targeted at wireless devices using ARM core-based system-on-a-chip (SoC). VLX for Mobile Handsets allows multiple execution environments to simultaneously run on a single ARM processor core. The secure, fault tolerant architecture enables the isolation of each execution environment, allowing phone services, trusted services or device management functions to run unaffected by potential corruptions in an open operating system (OS) such as Linux and its applications.

Virtualization software enables smart phone functionality to be quickly introduced using feature phone architecture by enabling existing modem software and real-time operating system (RTOS) to co-exist with the open OS and its applications on the same processor core.

VLX for Mobile Handsets maintains real-time operating system (RTOS) performance guarantees, allowing handset manufacturers and wireless operators to deliver more reliable, lower-cost mobile phones with advanced features to the mass market. [VirtualLogix]

As mobile devices proliferate with continued short life duration, “demand for simplified product designs that allow dynamic mobile experiences will intensify,” stated Reese Schroeder, managing director of Motorola Ventures, when announcing the investment.

So far, programmers had to code every application (social networking services, games, email or any other features) for each of the different operating systems, including Windows Mobile, Symbian, or Google’s Android. But with virtualization, Motorola could for instance have a Web-browsing application written for one system, an e-mail application for another, and calling features designed for a third OS, and gracefully integrate them onto one single phone.

Jaxtr, a social communications startup that let users link their phones to the web, is now providing a service that allows sending free SMS internationally, without restrictions, whether or not the recipient is a Jaxtr member.

Recipients can reply directly with their cell phones, or click on a link, sign up to Jaxtr and send a free reply through their cell phone’s Web browser.

The service allows text-messaging directly from the member’s home page to cell phones in 38 countries. Jaxtr’s basic membership is free and includes access to the new international SMS service.

Jaxtr’s new service is ad-supported although they plan to incorporate a premium service for a fee in the future.

PortoMedia, a startup based in Ireland, aspires to revolutionize the movie rental market. The company plans to set up kiosks that will allow consumers to download movies to a memory or portable hard drive.

PortoMedia has developed a high speed flash memory card (Movie Key) that enables a fully secure DVD quality movie to be downloaded from retail Movie Point in less than 15 seconds. Each Movie Point is loaded with between 500 and 5,000 titles and is refreshed regularly via satellite/DSL with the latest movie and TV content.

The consumer has the option to rent or purchase content. The content is protected by Windows DRM, guaranteeing both security and compatibility with a wide range of playback devices. We will offer a low cost reader/ set top box that attaches to a TV allowing the consumer to simply plug in the key and press play to view the movie on the big screen TV. [PortoMedia]

Users will plug in a USB memory device from PortoMedia, enter a PIN code, and download a movie. At home, customers simply slide the memory device into a dock connected to a PC or TV.

The key to the service is the proprietary USB interface that transfers data at a faster rate than standard USB devices. Movies can be loaded into a memory device in less than a minute, depending on the length, definition and chip speed.

The hardware will be sold in package with movies. The starting hardware set will be sold for around $60, and comes with a flash key, a dock, and six movies. A higher end pack will provide a handheld with a 1.8 inch hybrid hard drive with 240 GB of storage and 12 movies.

Powerset is building a consumer search engine based on natural language processing.

Unlike other conventional search engines that index keywords, Powerset claims to do a deep linguistic analysis on every sentence it reads.

Powerset extracts and indexes facts about every sentence in every page, making its index the first truly robust semantic index of the web. Powerset will offer a transformative search experience, with better, more relevant results. Powerlabs is an online community that will contribute to the development of Powerset and allow the company a direct line of communication with consumers to better understand the potential, possibilities, and challenges of building a large-scale search engine. [Powerset]

Using Powerset’s semantic search engine, a user could ask, “When did earthquakes hit San Francisco? ” and potentially get more on-point search results than from typing in mere keywords such as “San Francisco earthquakes.” Another advantage of the Powerset approach is that it gets to the meaning of words, so queries for one word will fetch results that contain words which are synonyms.

The project is backed by a team comprised by industry leaders from companies such as Altavista, Apple, Ask.com, BBN, Digital, IDEO, IBM, Microsoft, NASA, PARC, Promptu, SRI, Tellme, Whizbang! Labs, and Yahoo!.

For now, Powerset’s is currently under development. The search engine is testing the system based only on Wikipedia content before they go for the huge expense of indexing the entire Web.

ooVoo, a videoconferencing and Instant Messaging startup, has launched a new VoIP phone service that allows users to make free phone calls from a computer to any landline or mobile phone in the US and Canada.

ooVoo provides a high-quality video communication service that delivers a more meaningful way for people to call and connect over the Internet. ooVoo’s technology enables people to experience a face-to-face conversation and share a full range of emotions as if they are in the same room together, whether they are across the street or across the globe from each other. ooVoo’s superior quality video and audio is available to anyone with a computer, broadband connection and a web camera, for real-time video calls with up to six friends, relatives and colleagues simultaneously. ooVoo’s high quality video chat service includes video conversation recording, telephony, video messaging, instant message chat and file sharing amongst other capabilities. [ooVoo]

Unlike competitor Skype, ooVoo does not use a P2P network. The company offers a wide range of capabilities such as face-to-face conversation with up to six people, video stream recording, file transfer, in-call video effects and chat.

Virgin Galactic, a company owned and established by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group to undertake the challenge of making private space travel available to everyone and by creating the world’s first commercial spaceline, has recently unveiled the design of its new space shuttle model, the SpaceShipTwo.

The space launch system of the new SpaceShipTwo is based on the technology of preceding model SpaceShipOne, which successfully flew into space for the third time in October 2004. It is comprised of two vehicles: The White Knight Two (WK2) mothership, or carrier aircraft, which will be capable of lifting other payload (such as small satellites and scientific load) and launching it into space. And the 60-feet-long SpaceShipTwo shuttle, with room for six astronaut passengers and two pilots, which will be launched into orbit by the White Knight Two.

Whilst the two vehicles comprising the space launch system are still under construction, Virgin Galactic’s reported that it received over 85,000 registrations of interest to fly.

Virgin Galactic’s spaceport and operational headquarters, Spaceport America, will be built in New Mexico. However, initial flights will be launched from the Mojave Spaceport in the Mojave Desert, California.

Space tickets cost $200,000 and deposits start from $20,000.

Start-up Vlingo has developed a speech recognition technology for mobile phones that allows users to search for local business information, songs or web information using their voice.

The application, called Find, is in beta phase at AT&T and Sprint. Consumers who use certain types of mobile phones from these carriers can download the interface from vlingo.

Vlingo is a voice-powered user interface that unlocks access to mobile phone wireless data services. Vlingo allows users to speak or type into any vlingo-enabled text box and get accurate, easy and consistent access to all the information, entertainment and communication made possible through today’s mobile applications. By giving consumers control of the mobile Internet with the power of their voices, Vlingo provides a quantum leap in usability for mobile data services that are currently restricted by limited user interfaces. Vlingo secured its venture capital financing from Charles River Ventures and Sigma Partners. Founded in 2006, the company is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [Vlingo]

According to Opus Research, speech recognition was a $1.6 billion market in 2007. The firm predicts an annual growth rate of 14.5% over the next three years.

Vlingo will face competition for market share against companies such as Nuance (with its Voice Control system) and Yap, which is running a similar service.

Startup social networking site imeem, which lets users listen to and share their favorite music online, said that it signed a deal to access the catalog of Universal Music Group. This makes imeem the first company to offer free unlimited songs and music videos from all four major record labels.

imeem is the leading social media network where users create, recommend and discover music, film/video, art, and pop culture media and connect directly with people with similar tastes. By offering innovative media expression tools and social discovery features, including custom music playlists, video channels, photo slideshows and blogs, the imeem community can share their tastes with friends and fans on imeem and across the Web.

imeem is the first social network to partner with all four major labels as well as thousands of indie labels and video providers to offer free, on-demand streaming of all music and video content on an ad-supported basis. Since the launch of its Web-based service www.imeem.com in March 2006, the community has attracted over 19 million unique users each month. imeem was the fastest growing social site in the U.S. in September and October 2007. [imeem]

Imeem allows users to stream, but not download, an unlimited number of songs and videos and makes money by selling advertising. It shares ad revenues with its label partners. This represents a big challenge for imeem, since the music industry is very hesitant about ad-supported business models due to labels not making as much profit per song from advertising as they make through downloads. However, the site includes links to both iTunes and Amazon in case users want to purchase the tracks.

Imeem will face several ad-supported competitors such as SpiralFrog, which lets users download free tracks, and Rhapsody, which lets users stream only 25 songs per month.