Category: Internet

  • Chatious – Converse com pessoas de todo o mundo usando a sua webcam

    Chatious

    Provavelmente já ouviu falar do Chatroulette, um site que lhe permite falar com pessoas aleatórias utilizando a sua webcam instantaneamente.

    Pois bem, o Chatious é um projecto que lhe irá permitir falar e partilhar ideias e conhecimento com pessoas de todo o mundo com a possibilidade de seleccionar o género de pessoa com quem deseja falar.

    O objectivo do Chatious será a longo prazo colocar pessoas de localizações próximas (geochat) a conversar e evitar que o serviço seja utilizado por depravados como acontece muito no Chatroulette.

    Para já o projecto ainda está em desenvolvimento, no entanto poderá seguir o Chatious no Facebook e no Twitter.

    WebTugaChatious – Converse com pessoas de todo o mundo usando a sua webcam

  • Verizon’s FiOS Rollout Drawing To a Close [FiOS]

    Fiber optics. It sounds fast (it is). But it also sounds expensive (it is). So expensive, it turns out, that Verizon has announced that it’s winding down expansion of its FiOS network. It will keep plugging away in markets that it has already announced—Philly, New York City, and D.C., chiefly—but it won’t be looking at expanding FiOS to any more major cities. The AP report gives a sense of how expensive the endeavor was for Verizon: More »







  • The Active Network Stops for Overhaul Following a Decade of Acquisitions

    activenetwork_logo
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    About as far back as I can remember, The Active Network usually has made at least one acquisition by this time of year.

    But it’s been a silent spring over at Active HQ in San Diego’s Sorrento Valley, where the venture-backed company develops software that customers use to manage recreational sports events, including online registration, payments, and marketing. Combining a business that’s focused on helping people to get out and about (triathalons, campground reservations, tennis tournaments) with strong capabilities in software development (I’m imagining code written by pudgy and translucent-skinned programmers who feed at night on bear claws from the snack machine) makes me wonder sometimes how active The Active Network’s 2,200 employees really are.

    But I digress.

    Until recently, The Active Network has been pursuing an aggressive growth-through-acquisition strategy that I once compared to kudzu, “the vine that ate the South.” To fund its growth, the company has raised more than $200 million from VC firms and other investors, including ESPN, Canaan Partners, Tao Venture Partners, Charles River Ventures, North Bridge Venture Partners, Comdisco Ventures, and Performance Equity Partners. But The Active Network made its last noteworthy acquisition more than a year ago, when it bought the online campground reservation provider Reserve America from IAC, (NASDAQ: IACI).

    So what happened? Is there a reason for The Active Network’s inactivity on the M&A front?

    As it turns out, there is.

    CEO Dave Alberga tells me that while the company has made some very small, undisclosed acquisitions, it began an ambitious program in late 2008 to overhaul and replace …Next Page »







  • Azigo Gets $1.8M

    Erin Kutz wrote:

    Azigo, a Wellesley, MA-based maker of software that seeks to securely consolidate users’ various online account information, has pulled in a $1.8 million equity offering, an SEC filing reveals. Ten investors participated in the round for Azigo, which was originally named Parity Communications.







  • Under the Radar in February: Five Northwest Startup Financings You Haven’t Heard About

    Under the radar deals
    Erin Kutz wrote:

    For startups, it seems no amount of funding is too small. At least that’s what we like to keep in mind when analyzing monthly financings for area companies.

    February’s list of under-the-radar deals for Northwest startups was half as long as January’s, at just five deals. On the bright side, all five of the February under-the-radar transactions were equity offerings, while the 10 deals in January involved two debt-based financings. We define “under-the-radar deals” as startup transactions under $1 million (even if only by a few dollars), a distinction that separates them from the list of bigger venture deals sent to us earlier in the month by our partner CB Insights, a New York-based private company intelligence platform.

    To be fair, though, we left a few deals off the list originally provided to us by CB Insights, as the companies came from industries that didn’t quite fall into our coverage area. To make the cut, we look for companies that are doing something new and innovative in the industries we report on, such as technology, life sciences, Internet, and energy. (Of course, this can be somewhat subjective.) New businesses in more traditional spaces such as oil and gas or straightforward consumer goods typically get left off the list.

    Last month’s under-the-radar-deals ranged in value from $165,000 to $500,000. Three of the financings went to Washington-based companies, and two to startups working out of Oregon. None of these transactions were big enough that we reported on the deals when they first broke, but we still look to the list as an indication of trends in early-stage investing, or as bellwethers of which stealthy companies might be on the rise. February’s list included companies in software, energy, and biotech.

    The biggest deal was the $500,000 in equity-based funding that went to Eden Rock Communications, a Bothell, WA-based developer of 4G wireless self-organizing networks; this company seeks to more successfully automate the deployment of wireless data services. Iverson Genetic Diagnostics, also of Bothell, WA, came in second with a $341,000 equity offering. We touched on this startup briefly before when it presented at the Angel Capital Expo put on by the Keiretsu Forum Northwest in October. This was the only company on our list that we had heard of before.

    The third-biggest deal went to Home Comfort Zones, a Beaverton, OR-based maker of room-by-room home temperature control systems. It pulled in $300,000 in an equity and preferred stock offering, according to a regulatory filing. We might not typically report on a traditional thermostat maker, but it looks like Home Comfort is innovating in the area by crafting a device that varies heating and cooling by room, and tells consumers how much energy they are using for the task, as a way to help them change their habits.

    At this point, it’s hard to tell what the shorter list means. It could indicate that investors are less inclined to put cash into smaller startups, or it could be a positive sign that startups would rather pursue larger venture rounds. Startup funding in February remained steady, as far as the bigger venture deals go. Earlier this month, Greg wrote about how in February, Washington startups pulled in $53.5 million across 10 deals, keeping that month’s venture funding stats relatively in line with the $57 million that went to eight companies in January.

    We’ll have to wait and see how the startup investing landscape for March turns out. Meanwhile, check out our list of February under-the-radar deals in the Northwest:

    Eden Rock Communications Bothell,          WA A developer of 4G wireless self organizing networks Equity $500,000
    Iverson Genetic Diagnostics Bothell,          WA A developer of advanced genetic testing Equity $341,000
    Home Comfort Zones Beaverton,     OR A maker of room-by-room home temperature control systems Equity $300,000
    Etelos Maple Valley, WA A software platform for delivering Web-based applications Equity* $250,000
    HM3 Energy Gresham,        OR A developer of clean fuel produced from biomass waste Equity $165,000

    *includes some debt, options, and warrants







  • Hacker do Twitter de Obama foi detido

    O hacker francês de 25 anos que actuava sob o nickname (um pouco óbvio) de “Hacker Croll” foi detido pelas autoridades francesas. O hacker foi detido, numa operação levada a cabo pela polícia francesa sob a alçada de agentes do FBI, sob suspeita de ter acedido à conta Twitter de Barack Obama (entre outras) e de ter partilhado screenshots e ficheiros com diversas informações confidenciais, tais como apontamentos de reuniões, projecções financeiras, calendários, entre outros.

    Segundo, o procurador Jean-Yves Coquillat, “Hacker Croll” não é nenhum génio da informática, nem usou nenhuma técnica sofisticada para conseguir os acessos.

    A técnica do hacker francês para conseguir os dados de acesso consistia em navegar pelos sites, blogues e perfis das redes sociais das pessoas em questão, e a partir daí raciocinar uma possível password. Um autêntico jogo de paciência e de tentativas-erro.

    Outra das técnicas usadas era o método da “pergunta secreta”, em que, após várias tentativas, conseguia responder com sucesso à questão e muitas das vezes a própria resposta já era a password em si.

    A polícia avança que a principal causa destas transgressões é o actual estado do jovem de 25 anos, que vive em casa dos pais, está desempregado e, segundo declarações da própria polícia, “com tempo livre a mais entre mãos”.

    É de relembrar que em França, aceder ilicitamente a uma base de dados é considerado crime e é punível até 2 anos de prisão.

    No entanto, após ter sido detido e interrogado pelas autoridades, “Hacker Croll” foi libertado e agora aguarda o seu julgamento que ocorrerá dia 24 de Junho.

    WebTugaHacker do Twitter de Obama foi detido

  • KidZui Caps Significant Progress in Difficult Year with $4M in Fresh Funding

    kidzui-logo
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    KidZui’s founding chairman and CEO Cliff Boro called me from the airport last night to confirm recent reports saying that the San Diego startup, which has been developing a kid-friendly Internet browser, has raised $4 million in additional venture funding.

    The four-year-old startup launched its KidZui browser (which is a Firefox add-on) in 2008, and Boro says KidZui now has more than 1 million registered users. The browser gives kids an authentic Internet experience by allowing them to surf hundreds of thousands of websites, watch online videos, and play games. It’s just that all of the content has been screened and approved by KidZui’s editorial team. But as the CEO explained to me last summer, it’s a tough market with already-established and well-funded rivals like PBSkids, Webkinz, Nickelodeon, and Club Penguin.

    San Diego’s Mission Ventures led the $4 million round, and Boro tells me that Mission’s managing partner, Leo Spiegel, has joined KidZui’s board. KidZui previously raised almost $12 from Emergence Capital Partners, First Round Capital, Maveron, and other investors—and Boro says the VCs also joined in the latest round.

    “We plan to use the funding for general working capital, and continue to work on making our product better and on expanding our partnerships,” Boro says.

    The company recently arranged some high-profile partnerships. Under a deal with Best Buy, for example, the consumer electronics retailer now offers to load the KidZui browser as part of its software installation service. Through a new partnership with DreamWorks, KidZui is integrating the lead character from the animated movie “How to Train Your Dragon” in its social networking experience as part of an integrated sponsorship.

    Boro says KidZui has increased its audience by 300 percent over the past year, “and spent less than $10,000 on marketing.”

    Still, it hasn’t been an entirely smooth ride since last August. At that time, Boro told me he had reduced KidZui’s headcount to 25 staffers from 30. He’s laid off more workers since then, and KidZui now has 15 employees. “We definitely cut expenses last year and are running pretty lean,” Boro says. “We’ve made significant progress in a difficult year.”







  • ApostaGanha.pt – Site de Apostas de Desporto

    ApostaGanha

    Em que consiste o Aposta Ganha?

    Apostaganha.pt é o ponto de referência, em Português, para mais de 8 mil aficionados das apostas online. Caracterizado por um conjunto  vasto de meios informativos colocados ao dispor dos apostadores, o apostaganha.pt assume um papel de liderança na área de disponibilização de material auxiliar para os apostadores experientes, e de guias de aprendizagem para aqueles que se pretendem iniciar nesta actividade.

    Recursos do ApostaGanha.pt

    Quem acede pela primeira vez ao apostaganha.pt, corre o risco de se perder no vasto mar de informação que lhe é disponibilizada. Desde artigos relacionados com os mais diversos subtemas do mundo das apostas, passando por tutoriais de aprendizagem vocacionados para iniciantes, até prognósticos referentes às mais diversas apostas desportivas, o apostaganha.pt assemelha-se a uma verdadeira enciclopédia prática e completa sobre o tema.

    O Portal conta  com dados informativos sempre actualizados, referentes a ODDS, classificações e resultados desportivos, bem como artigos extremamente completos e pertinentes, dando ao seu usuário uma resposta rápida e intuitiva às suas necessidades como apostador.

    Comunidade de Apostas Desportivas

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    As comunidades são excelentes formas de se obter conhecimento, proveniente de inúmeros indivíduos experientes na área, que se encontram dispostos a fomentar o espírito de entreajuda, levando ao aumento do nível de informação disponível. Neste aspecto, o apostaganha.pt não encontra rival, pois coloca ao dispor dos seus visitantes um fórum de informação vasta e diversificada, onde mais de 8 mil membros se auxiliam na prestação de ajuda referente aos mais diversos temas, conseguindo agregar, neste pequeno espaço, dezenas de recursos relevantes para quem se dedica a esta actividade.

    Prémios Aposta Ganha

    O apostaganha.pt oferece aos seus usuários a possibilidade de usufruir de diversas premiações monetárias, sem qualquer necessidade de investimento, através da simples participação nos mais diversos torneios patrocinados por várias das casas de apostas, como é o caso da betclic e da sportingbet, que são vistas como casas de autoridade no universo das apostas online.

    Estes torneios oferecem uma possibilidade única de arrecadação de prémios que, mensalmente, poderão andar na casa das centenas de euros. Para tal, a única coisa necessária é participar, e esperar que os poucos minutos de dedicação necessária se convertam numa agradável surpresa monetária.

    Quem são os utilizadores do apostaganha.pt?

    A comunidade de utilizadores é composta por muitos daqueles que vêem nas apostas online um meio eficaz de aquisição de rendimentos extra. O apostaganha orgulha-se de ser o ponto de encontro de pessoas das mais diversas idades e classes sociais, desde estudantes universitários que procuram conjugar a diversão da actividade com a possibilidade de lucro, até Pais de família que beneficiam das apostas como uma importante forma de rendimento extra,

    Em que desportos se pode apostar?

    As possibilidades de aposta são quase tão vastas quanto os gostos de cada um, englobando uma enorme variedade de desportos, tais como: Futebol, Basketball, ténis, Hóquei, Corridas de Cavalos, Futebol Americano, entre muitos outros.

    Porquê o apostaganha.pt?

    Se és novo nestas andanças, mas procuras  um meio de aumentar os teus rendimentos mensais, o aposta ganha oferece-te a prestação de auxílio ideal na jornada de aprendizagem a que te deverás submeter antes de te iniciares seriamente nas apostas. Sendo um Portal de confiança e renome, encontrarás no apostaganha.pt a informação confiável que te será imprescindível  para uma correcta aprendizagem.

    Se já tens experiência nesta actividade, já deves conhecer o Portal em questão. Se não conheces, só terás a ganhar em conhecer, a partir do momento em que começares a usufruir da informação disponibilizada para maximizares as tuas possibilidades de lucro.

    WebTugaApostaGanha.pt – Site de Apostas de Desporto

  • First-Day Trading Lifts MaxLinear Shares 33 Percent Above IPO Price

    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    Eager investors boosted the stock of Carlsbad, CA-based MaxLinear (NYSE: MXL) by more than 33 percent today in the company’s debut, with shares closing at $18.70 in first day of trading of nearly 6.9 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange. Last night, MaxLinear’s IPO underwriters increased the offering to 6.4 million shares (from 5.4 million), and priced the stock at $14 a share, raising a total of nearly $90 million for MaxLinear and its venture investors. As we previewed, MaxLinear is a semiconductor company that specializes in designing radio frequency chips that receive and process broadband TV and video signals.







  • Optify, Emerging from Stealth, Shows Off Software to Measure Sales and Marketing on the Web

    Optify
    Gregory T. Huang wrote:

    Lead generation. B2B marketing. SEO. Fuh fuh fuh.

    Forget all these buzzwords. You want more customers? Talk to Optify. This Seattle startup, which came out of stealth mode yesterday, doesn’t have all the answers, but it does have what looks to be a pretty useful software product for marketers who want to track, organize, and improve their sales leads and results in a new way. Especially their results.

    Optify is the brainchild of Brian Goffman, a former venture partner at Madrona Venture Group in Seattle, and Erez Barak, a veteran of Hewlett-Packard and Mercury Interactive. Optify’s customers so far include the Wall Street Journal, LexisNexis, Microsoft, and a slew of other companies, including Seattle-area stalwarts Bocada, Concur, Marchex, and SonoSite, and up-and-comers like AdReady, Smartsheet, and Skytap. Optify began in 2008 and was funded by Madrona and angel investors to the tune of $2.75 million last July. The company has 20 employees—and a few open positions in its own sales and marketing department.

    Goffman and Barak have built a sophisticated software engine that helps corporate marketers tell, for example, which visitors to their website are most likely to buy their products—so their marketing team can focus on those potential customers, and better align themselves with the sales team. Optify’s software and dashboard interface weaves in technologies like search engine optimization, social media and e-mail features, and precise, real-time Web analytics.

    Optify is seizing on the Web-based trend to gather data and measure everything that wasn’t possible in the old days when print publications and broadcast television ruled the media landscape. Those operations are struggling to show exactly how many people are getting exposed to advertising content, and how many are acting on it. Not so on the Web—and across many industries. “Marketers need to be able to show results,” Goffman says.

    That means if they’re running promotions on Twitter, or blogging, or pursuing various customer leads, they want to be able to report exactly how that is translating into new sales. Barak echoes the sentiment, which makes a lot of sense. He says customers are telling him that things like search engine optimization are important, but “make sure you’re connecting it to the business impact. Get me more high-quality leads, and connect it to [sales] performance.”

    It’s certainly a crowded field, but Goffman says Optify’s main competition to this point has been manual work, marketing consultants, and companies that focus on smaller pieces of the puzzle, like e-mail campaigns or small businesses. A unified marketing platform has “not been done with the simplicity we’ve done it, and with our out-of-the-box capability,” he says.

    Which is not to say all the marketing problems have been solved. “There are things marketers do that we don’t manage. But we can track all their traffic sources. Long term, marketers want one application to do everything,” Goffman says. “That’s where we’re heading.”

    One surprise is that Optify is selling to bigger companies than it originally expected to this early. Goffman says he thought they would sell to a larger number of small companies. But Optify has adjusted to building its software for big websites that get lots of traffic. He says the key challenges are to keep getting great people to work for the company, and to stay focused—pretty standard stuff for a young startup.

    “In a fast moving market, you have to really pick your spots,” Goffman says. “And the fundraising environment is still tough. It’s a haves and have-nots world.”







  • San Diego’s Xpenser Touts Free Web and Mobile-Based Expense Tracking

    Xpenser-logo
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    At the end of his presentation late yesterday at the DEMO Spring 2010 conference in Palm Desert, CA, Parand Tony Darugar said that when he returns to San Diego following the three-day event, “I will have no receipts in my wallet, and I won’t have to do an expense report.”

    That’s because he uses Xpenser, a Web-based expense-tracking service that Darugar created with procrastinating, on-the-go executives like himself in mind. Before founding Xpenser, Darugar says he let his monthly business expenses pile up—until his wife, who is a financial planner, pulled him aside and told him he was six months and $20,000 behind in filing his monthly expense reports.

    Darugar says filling out corporate expense forms is a tedious chore that many folks describe as “a pain in the neck” and a “waste of my time.” Xpenser is a free service operated by Tastr, a San Diego startup that Darugar founded, and which was among 65 companies to launch new products at the three-day DEMO conference. In fact, Tastr was the only San Diego company to attend the event.

    While Darugar also demonstrated Xpenser’s capabilities at a TechCrunch event in September, he announced at the DEMO event that Xpenser is introducing premium accounts that have expanded features, and that charge a fee for business customers and their corporate clients. He also emphasized that Xpenser is a platform that can be used on the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry smartphones. Corporate expense tracking is an increasingly crowded field, but Xpenser seems to have some unique features.

    As a free service, Xpenser’s strength is in its versatility. Users create their own account through the website, which automates the process of filling out expense forms by allowing users to use a cell phone or any other device to report each expense as it is incurred. The user can phone it in and leave a voice message, or use text messaging, e-mail, Twitter, instant messaging, and other online services. He even showed how to use an iPhone to take a photo of a receipt and send it to the Xpenser website, where it is converted into a Web-based format that can be exported to an Excel spreadsheet, Quicken QIF format, and other programs.

    Darugar gave several examples during his six minutes in the spotlight at DEMO. To record an $18 taxi ride from the airport, he used his cell phone to call an Xpenser phone number and described the trip for a voice recognition program that transcribed and stored the information. He also showed how to use an iPhone camera to simply take a photo of a receipt and transmit it to his Xpenser account.

    I watched Darugar make his presentation in a live Web broadcast that DEMO arranged with BitGravity, a DEMO demonstrator and DEMOgod award winner in 2008.







  • Voyager Adds Funding for Placecast

    Gregory T. Huang wrote:

    Seattle-based venture firm Voyager Capital has participated in a $3 million follow-on financing for Placecast, a San Francisco-based mobile marketing startup. Existing investors Quatrex Capital and Onset Ventures also participated in the funding, which is an add-on to the $5 million Series B round the company announced last November. Placecast, also known as 1020, is a location-based advertising platform that combines data across Web, mobile, e-mail, and Wi-Fi to increase the relevance of ads for publishers and advertisers. Voyager’s Enrique Godreau talked about 1020’s mobile ad platform in an interview with Xconomy in 2008.







  • Facing Job Exodus, San Diego IT Execs Launch Council on Globalization and Competitiveness

    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    IT executives from some of San Diego’s better-known employers, including Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Sony Electronics, and Broadcom are banding together to find new ways to retain local IT jobs and to counter the effects of foreign outsourcing.

    The formation of a new regional business group, the San Diego-based Industry Council for Competitiveness and Globalization (ICCG), comes as the Washington D.C.-based Alliance for American Manufacturing released a study that claims the U.S. lost 2.4 million jobs to China from 2001 to 2008.

    The Alliance, an advocacy and lobbying organization formed in 2007 by the U.S. steel industry and its labor union, says California accounts for almost 370,000 of the job losses—including high-tech and IT jobs in data processing, computer programming, and technical support. The alliance contends that the 370,000 lost jobs represents about 2.2 percent of California’s workforce. On its website, the alliance says Massachusetts lost 72,800 jobs (or 2.2 percent of its statewide workforce) and the state of Washington lost 44,000 jobs (or 1.4 percent of its workforce) over the same period.

    Alliance spokesman David Roscow tells me the group issued the report as part of its continuing effort to focus the attention of U.S. policymakers on China’s trade subsidies, currency policies, and other practices that have adverse effects on the U.S. economy, and amount to “cheating,” according to the Alliance.

    The formation of the new business group in San Diego also comes as many local technology and life sciences companies—especially the biotech startups—are turning to …Next Page »







  • Future of Online Advertising Looks Like Video, Mobile…and Microsoft

    Microsoft
    Gregory T. Huang wrote:

    Last night, we heard from a distinguished panel of executives on the opportunities in online advertising, at a TechFlash event in Seattle. The panel comprised some of the top names in the online ad world:

    —Aaron Finn, founder and chairman of AdReady

    —Brian McAndrews, former CEO of aQuantive, managing director at Madrona Venture Group

    —Jeff Lanctot, managing director of advertiser and publisher solutions at Microsoft

    —Charlie Tillinghast, president of MSNBC.com

    Just a quick recap here. So what does the future hold? Where are the opportunities for startups, investors, advertisers, and publishers?

    It’s clear things have changed a lot in the online-ad world since the heyday of three or four years ago. “It’s very challenging to have a business that’s based just on advertising,” McAndrews said. “For pure consumer Internet businesses, most ought to be thinking about multiple revenue streams.” To this end, he mentioned virtual goods—which I took to mean things like online currencies, electronic cards, and gifts (which are some options that Seattle-based BuddyTV has said it is looking at, for instance).

    Finn pointed out that the term “ad-supported” means a lot of different things now. He cited Bellevue, WA-based BlueKai as a startup taking an interesting approach in the exchange of data between advertisers and publishers; it helps websites sell data on their consumers’ demographics or buying behavior to companies that wish to use the information to target their advertising more efficiently.

    McAndrews said there are still opportunities in ad infrastructure as well—the technology of ad serving, “demand-side” platforms to help advertisers find places to pitch their wares, and “sell-side” platforms that might help media companies show off what they have to offer. Startups should think about products that are “bolt-ons to the bigger players, like DoubleClick [Google] or Atlas [Microsoft]. But to go head to head with them isn’t smart.” He also said there must be opportunities in working with consumers who are willing to pay hundreds of dollars a month in cable, Internet, and phone bills.

    As for the rest of the panel discussion, I can’t be comprehensive. There was a lot of good information for people entrenched in the online advertising and publishing worlds. But here are my high-level takeaways on what the opportunities are out there:

    1. Video

    In the news world, Tillinghast said 20 percent of MSNBC’s ad revenue comes from video content, and it sounds like it’s growing fast. “Professional video seems to be a real strong point, and a defensible one,” he said.

    “In video, content still is king,” McAndrews said. That’s opposed to online text articles, where it’s difficult to get even loyal readers to pay a cent. In entertainment, Hulu has done pretty well with …Next Page »







  • Novell Turns Down Buyout Offer, Alnylam Pulls In $20M from Takeda, $16M Stock Deal Goes to RXi, & More Boston-Area Deals News

    Erin Kutz wrote:

    It was a lighter deals week for us, but we still saw headlines of funding rounds, partnerships, and stock offerings for companies in Internet, software, and life sciences.

    —Boston-based Swaptree, an online marketplace for trading books, CDs, DVDs, and video games, grabbed $4.8 million of a planned $6 million offering based in equity, options, and warrants. The company didn’t reveal the investors in the financing.

    —Novell (NASDAQ:NOVL), a network software maker, rejected a $2 billion buyout offer from private equity firm Elliott Associates. The Waltham, MA-based company’s board said the $5.75-per-share bid undervalued Novell’s growth prospects, and said that it would pursue other possible strategies for enhancing shareholder value, such as cash dividends or stock repurchases.

    —Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ALNY), the Cambridge, MA-based drugmaker, received a $20 million payment from Takeda Pharmaceuticals, as part of a partnership deal established between the two companies in 2008 that could ultimately be worth more than $1 billion. This week’s payment was related to Alnylam sharing its RNA interference material and information, but the company stands to pull in more milestone payments and royalties if Japan-based Takeda uses the technology to create RNAi products.

    —Another developer of RNA interference-based treatments, RXi Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: RXII) of Worcester, MA, announced it had raised $16.2 million through a stock offering. Investors agreed to pay $6 per share for 2.7 million shares, a 26 percent discount over the stock’s $8.11 closing share price on Monday. They’ll also purchase warrants for another 540,000 shares.

    SmartCells, a developer of a once-a-day, self-regulating, injectable treatment for diabetes, has pulled in $1.75 million in an equity-based offering, a regulatory filing revealed. The Beverly, MA-based company did not indicate what round of financing the planned $4 million round represents.







  • MaxLinear IPO Prices Stock Above Range at $14 a Share

    MaxLinear logo
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    What began as a modest IPO for Carlsbad, CA-based chipmaker MaxLinear appears to be heating up. In a statement released tonight that MaxLinear increased its initial offering to 6.4 million shares at $14 a share—from 5.4 million shares at a range of $11 to $13 a share. The new stock offering is one of six IPOs expected this week, which has market watchers buzzing about the busiest week for IPOs in a couple of years. The company’s shares will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol MXL (NYSE: MXL).

    A number of forces have converged to make the MaxLinear IPO hotter than most. MaxLinear focuses on designing semiconductor chips that enable people to watch TV on devices with a wireless broadband connection. The company’s offering also comes during an auspicious week in the markets. Financial Engines, an investment adviser based in Palo Alto, CA pulled off the biggest IPO since the fall of 2009 when it went public last week.The S&P 500 Index has also reached its highest trading level since September. Market analysts have been saying that MaxLinear’s IPO, like the Financial Engines IPO last week, is over-subscribed.

    As I mentioned in a preview of MaxLinear’s IPO, the company initially expected to raise $42.7 million, or nearly $50 million, if the underwriters exercise over-allotments that could bring the total offering to 6.25 million shares. With the last-minute increase to 6.4 million shares, MaxLinear’s offering is expected to raise close to $90 million.

    The company’s filing showed that about 1.27 million shares, or 27 percent of the initial offering, are being sold by MaxLinear’s venture investors, which include San Diego’s Mission Ventures, (which owns a 13 percent pre-IPO stake); U.S. Venture Partners, (21.6 percent); Battery Ventures, (13.8 percent); and UMC Capital, (7.1 percent). The company plans to use the capital for general corporate purposes and acquisitions.

    The Carlsbad chipmaker’s IPO also was stoked Monday evening by “Mad Money” pitchman Jim Cramer on CNBC. In his inimitable way, Cramer said, “MaxLinear is a play on many of the big themes that we’ve been hitting on all the time. The company designs high-performance, low-cost radio frequency receiver chips that capture and process broadband signals—which allows us to watch broadband video on cable boxes, digital TVs, mobile phones, computers, vehicle displays, and other networks. This is at the heart of the tsunami. Broadband video on your phone?! Oh man! That defines the tsunami!”







  • MyFax – Enviar Fax grátis pela Internet

    MyFax

    Foi através do blog do Almeno Rocha que fiquei a saber acerca do serviço gratuito MyFax que permite a qualquer pessoa que tenha uma ligação à Internet e um Browser, enviar um Fax para qualquer local do mundo.

    Se hoje em dia o e-mail é já um substituto do Fax, existem ainda muitas pessoas/empresas que não dispõem de endereço electrónico e utilizam o e-mail para troca de informação/documentação.

    Através do serviço MyFax poderá enviar fax através de um ficheiro Word (.doc), Powerpoint, PDF, TIF, GIF ou JPEG que não exceda as 10 páginas ou o máximo de 10MB. É ainda possível escrever uma mensagem em vez de anexar um ficheiro.

    Um serviço que certamente irá dar jeito a alguns de vocês. A empresa do MyFax tem também soluções para empresas, tanto a nível de Fax pela Internet como campanhas de e-mail e serviços de atendimento telefónico virtual.

    Poderá desde já começar a enviar Faxes gratuitamente, bastando que para tal aceda aqui e preencha os dados necessários para o envio do Fax.

    WebTugaMyFax – Enviar Fax grátis pela Internet

  • Avvo Follows Amazon and Expedia, Ignition and General Catalyst Back Travel Startup, Gist Goes Networking, & More Seattle-Area Deals News

    Gregory T. Huang wrote:

    This was a busy week in the Northwest, with lots of action in consumer software, Internet, mobile, and biotech. The biggest startup deals involved former Expedia executives (see below).

    —A stealthy Seattle online-travel startup, co-founded by former Expedia execs Rich Barton, Greg Slyngstad, Sunil Shah, and Simon Breakwell, has raised $9.8 million in equity financing. Ignition Partners is an investor, along with General Catalyst Partners, Benchmark Capital, and the founders. The startup’s placeholder name is NewTravelco.

    —Seattle-based Avvo, the online lawyer directory and Q&A forum, raised $10 million led by new investor DAG Ventures, with existing investors Benchmark Capital and Ignition Partners also participating. Founder and CEO Mark Britton, a former Expedia exec and top lawyer, told me about how Avvo’s strategy and user interface takes a page from Expedia and Amazon’s playbooks.

    —Bellevue, WA-based Limeade confirmed it has raised a $3 million funding round this quarter from undisclosed investors. The company also announced new customers and the addition of Marchex president John Keister to its board. Limeade is an online startup focused on employee health and productivity.

    —Seattle-based Theraclone Sciences raised $1.5 million in equity financing from undisclosed investors, as Luke reported. The new equity follows its $29 million venture capital round in March 2007 from Arch Venture Partners, Canaan Partners, Healthcare Ventures, Amgen Ventures, MPM Capital, and Alexandria Real Estate Equities. Theraclone is a developer of antibody drugs.

    —An interesting local deal came about when Seattle-based Gist acquired Learn That Name, an iPhone app created in a Startup Weekend event last summer. Terms weren’t disclosed, but Gist will incorporate Learn That Name into its own iPhone app, which helps business people keep up with news and information about their contacts. How did the deal come about? Good old-fashioned networking.

    —Portland, OR-based Second Porch raised $1 million led by the Oregon Angel Fund. Second Porch, led by CEO Brent Hieggelke, is an Internet startup that lets consumers rent and trade vacation homes with people they trust, through Facebook.

    —This isn’t a new deal, but a profile of a consumer software startup in the process of making some very interesting deals: Seattle-based Cozi is looking to deliver on its vision of helping families communicate better in and out of their homes, using software on mobile phones, netbooks, and other devices.

    —Twitter, the San Francisco-based messaging company, has formed partnerships with a number of large websites, including Amazon.com, Microsoft’s Bing, and MSNBC, to allow consumers to tweet and follow others’ tweets from within these sites. Financial details of the partnerships weren’t given.







  • Limeade Gains Customers, Cash

    Gregory T. Huang wrote:

    Bellevue, WA-based Limeade, a Web startup focused on improving corporate health and productivity, announced it had closed a $3 million funding round at the end of January. The investors were not disclosed. Limeade also said its employee subscriber base has grown by a factor of 30 compared to the previous year, and that it has won contracts from the State of Washington, Jamba Juice, and other organizations. John Keister, the president of Seattle-based Marchex, has joined the company’s board of directors. Limeade is led by CEO Henry Albrecht.







  • 13 Teams, 100 People, 54 Hours: Lessons from Startup Weekend in Seattle

    Eric Koester wrote:

    “Exhaustingly awesome.”

    “The talent in that room is pretty inspiring.”

    “54 hours…from idea to products I’d pay money for in just 54 hours. Wow.”

    Those are just a couple comments I gleaned from some of the attendees and guests at the demos held at the Startup Weekend demo finale. I’d second each of these thoughts—you are crazy if you didn’t walk out of that room with a clear sense of potential and possibilities.

    I had the privilege to attend Startup Weekend held in Seattle from March 19-21 at Adobe’s Fremont campus—my third time participating in a Weekend. If you haven’t heard about Startup Weekend, it is a 54-hour intensive event that throws a group of entrepreneurs, developers, business people, coders, and startup junkies into a room, lets those individuals form teams around crowdsourced ideas, plies them with caffeine, beer, and junk food, and lets the magic happen.

    And what results from that combination is downright stunning. Sitting in the audience on Sunday, the crowd was treated to demos of an amazingly rich Facebook application, a powerful application leveraging open-source mobile phone camera software, a ready-made online portal for “green” consumers, an iPad game for kids, iPhone applications for video game swapping and mobile app discovery, and location-based tools to better connect users, just to name a few of the demos. I go to meet the people and get a chance to see what smart people think are the next big ideas for innovation. And this weekend we saw some interesting trends.

    What did I take away from this Startup Weekend?

    Now first let me say that it’s easy to get caught up in the exciting demos and the “tech-focused” product ideas being offered up at an event like this. But the reality is we might only see a couple of these technologies make it past the weekend and be heard from again. Even still, I think there are some real insights that I drew from the projects about what is on the horizon for startups in the technology space, mass-adoption of technologies, and more generally about the Seattle tech scene. Here are my thoughts:

    * Everything is getting more social. Facebook and Twitter alone have created huge opportunities for new companies. Raising Uncle Jesse (a “hopefully” viral Facebook app), Digri (discussed below), MobVoice (a real-time crowd-source rating service), Locql (a tool to get local information from local individuals in your social networks), and EveryDayOneThing (a “green” consumer portal) were technologies that all tied into Facebook, the largest social network in the world, and/or Twitter. As our personal online networks grow, technologies will be needed to help us better manage, mine, and understand our networks.

    * Location, location, location. Lots of folks outside the tech world have never heard of tools like Foursquare or Gowalla which provide location-based mobile service (the most common current application is some variation of “checking into” bars, coffee shops, etc. to let your social community know where you are at). While these location-based platforms may not be completely mainstream yet, a couple “little” companies (such as Google and Facebook) have their eyes on this space …Next Page »