Erin Kutz wrote:
Desktone, a maker of virtual desktop software, has raised $5.4 million out of a nearly $12.2 million equity offering, an SEC filing revealed today. The Chelmsford, MA-based company didn’t immediately respond to a request for confirmation on what round the financing represents, but the filing notes that 15 investors have participated. In 2007, Desktone closed $17 million in Series A funding, co-led by Highland Capital Partners and SoftBank Capital.
Microsoft’s Bill Koefoed has told Pacific Crest analyst Brendan Barnacle that Microsoft is planning to invest $1 billion in research and development for Windows Mobile.
Bill also poopooed any suggestion that Microsoft was interested in an acquisition of Palm or RIM.
"Koefoed also noted that the operating system firm Palm and Research in Motion both have their own set of development challenges," Barnacle writes.
In Palm’s case the massive failure of WebOS is clear, and despite RIM’s huge success in the market, there is also very little doubt their OS is in need of a major revamp.
Hopefully much of that billion will be used for further intelligent integration of Microsoft’s various online and desktop services in their various mobile operating systems.
What new technology would you like Microsoft to develop into Windows Phone? Let us know below.
Read more at Forbes here.
Ryan McBride wrote:
Amicas has changed its tune about its competitor Merge Healthcare’s efforts to buy the Boston-based software firm. After criticizing those efforts last month, Amicas’s board says that Merge’s updated buyout offer is superior to the one it had agreed to accept from the private equity group Thoma Bravo in December.
Milwaukee-based Merge is offering to buy Amicas for $6.05 per share. Amicas, a medical imaging and radiology software outfit, now says that it thinks Merge’s offer is better than Thomas Bravo’s bid of $5.35 per share. Amicas said last month that Merge’s offer of $6.05 per share was “illusory and risky,” but Merge has since secured an agreement with Morgan Stanley to finance the bulk of its proposed acquisition. The board of Amicas decided yesterday that it would give Thoma Bravo a chance to top Merge’s new offer by March 8.
Talk about a last minute change. Amicas had been urging shareholders to approve the Thoma Bravo agreement during a meeting scheduled for Thursday. On February 22 Amicas called Merge’s buyout overtures that day “an eleventh-hour attempt by Merge to insert itself into a process that is well underway, and to disrupt Amicas’s definitive merger agreement with Thoma Bravo, damage Amicas’s operations, and mislead Amicas’s stockholders.” If that was an eleventh-hour move by Merge, then one might think Amicas is delivering their bidders at Thoma Bravo some bad news just several ticks from midnight.
Still, Amicas’s board says it isn’t yet advising shareholders to accept Merge’s proposal over the Thomas Bravo agreement. Effectively, the board is leaving the door open for Thoma Bravo to enrich its previous offer, and it has authorized the company to nix that agreement if the private equity group doesn’t best Merge’s proposal. Amicas has rescheduled the shareholder vote on the buyout proposals to a meeting on March 16.
Amicas’s stock traded up 2 cents at $6.01 per share for the day at 3:13 pm Eastern time.
The HTC HD Mini features a pretty nice lock screen, as can be seen from the video above.
Michyprima has now made the software available as a cab, which I have tested on the HTC HD2 and found to work pretty well.
Michyprima warns that the PIN lock screen however no longer works, so if you use this security on your phone this cab will not be suitable.
Download the cab here.
Thanks Fotone for the tip.
Gregory T. Huang wrote:
Portland, OR-based Platial, a social mapping startup, is shutting its doors, according to a blog post on the site. The news was reported yesterday by paidContent, TechCrunch, GigaOm, and others. Platial was backed by Kleiner Perkins, Keynote Ventures, Ron Conway, and other investors.
Mary Jo Foley from the ZDNet All about Microsoft blog has uncovered a Microsoft Research project aimed at providing faster searches on your smartphone while on the go.
Microsoft SONGO is “a mobile search and advertisement cache architecture for mobile devices,” according to the cached Bing site.
From a white paper synopsis about SONGO that’s on the MSR site:
“Initially, a community-based search cache is generated by mining the most popular queries and links from the mobile search logs. This cache is updated daily making sure that the latest popular information is always available locally on the mobile device. Over time, the community-based cache is incrementally updated with the queries and links that the individual user submits and visits respectively. An analysis of 200 million queries shows that, on average, 66% of the search queries submitted by an individual user can be locally served by caching 2,500 links at the expense of 1MB of flash and 200KB of RAM space. A prototype implementation of SONGO in Windows Mobile demonstrates that a cache hit results into 16x faster responses and 23x energy savings when compared to querying through the 3G link.”
In short, a relevant segment of the Bing database will be stored locally, providing super-fast searches in about 2/3 of cases.
Microsoft has so far developed two prototype apps include one providing FaceBook real-time-search, and another “Quick Ads” demo app which shows off real-time business look-ups.
Read more at ZDNet here.
While nosing around the web for some Android research, I came across a piece of software called Open Home. Mashable included it in a top Android application roundup this past weekend, but the software has existed for a while. The application takes the place of your default Android home screen, which is what you see when hitting the dedicated Home button. Technically, the button runs “Launcher” but for all intents and purposes, most people call it Home. The Open Home software adds a bunch of usability features, but I also noticed that it provides me with seven home screens on the Nexus One.
Although Open Home is an $3.99 app, I’d really call it a platform. With it, you can skin or customize your Android interface, add Live Folders, shortcuts and such. And there’s tons of custom skins, fonts, icon packs for sale in the Android Market to enhance it. There’s even an experimental 3D cube interface in the latest version — as you swipe to other home screens, the screen rotates like a cube. I haven’t dropped the $3.99 just yet, but I did install Open Home Lite, which is free. It wasn’t until after installation that I realized the software adds two extra home screens to the Nexus One. I don’t have enough apps and shortcuts to fill up seven screens just yet, but I’m heading in that direction, so the extra space will come in handy. Each of the screens can hold a custom descriptive title as well — check this old but relevant video to see how one user categorized the screens on his HTC Magic.
Aside from the extra home screens, Open Home adds dedicated search on the left and an interesting little slideout drawer on the right side of the screen. Simply tap and swipe the star to pull out the drawer. I’m thinking of placing the most used apps in the little drawer so that they’re available from any of the seven screens. And I don’t even have to give up my Live Wallpapers since Open Home supports them on my handset. Perhaps one of the best features of all — Open Home allows for home screen rotation to landscape mode, something I wish Android would support natively.
I’ll be playing some more with the free, lite version of Open Home, but I’m already inclined to drop the $3.99 — it’s a small price to pay for two extra home screens and customization features.
Images courtesy of Better Android Apps
Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
Google’s Mobile Strategy: Understanding the Nexus One
Chris Harrison at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, along with Dan Morris and Desney Tan at Microsoft’s research lab have created a system that allows users to use their own hands and arms as touch screens by detecting the various ultralow-frequency sounds produced when tapping different parts of the skin.
An armband houses an array of sensors that collect the signals generated by the skin taps and then calculates which part of the display you want to activate.
The system closes the loop using a pico-projector to show menus and other selectable media on your arm and the complete system has an accuracy of 95.5%.
More details can be found in this Microsoft Research paper.
It is unlikely the system will find implementation in our smartphones any time soon, but I do wonder if the accelerometer in our current devices are sensitive enough for a crude version that can do volume up, down, pause and start? Any developers interested in giving it a try?
Via ZDNet.com
Gregory T. Huang wrote:
The big news of the week (and year) is Picnik’s acquisition by Google. But read on for some other notable deals from the Northwest as well.
—Seattle-based Picnik, the popular photo-editing software startup, was bought by Google in a deal of undisclosed size. The folks at Picnik seem pretty happy, and it sounds like a good cultural fit, as well as a good sign for the local Web startup community and M&A market, according to Picnik CEO Jonathan Sposato.
—Erin reported on some under-the-radar financing deals from the Seattle area and beyond, from January. Some notable investments you might not have heard about: UW startup Impel NeuroPharma raising $300,000, Seattle-based ValueAppeal raising $400,000, and Portand, OR-based NVoicePay raising $90,000 for e-payment software.
—Seattle-based 3Tier raised $3 million in new equity financing, as Luke reported. The investors weren’t disclosed, but back in December 2008, the company raised $10 million in a deal led by Good Energies. 3Tier recently completed its global map of wind and solar energy hotspots, in an effort to use high-performance computers and satellite data to provide crucial information to energy companies looking for the best sites to build renewable power plants.
—Seattle-based PhotoRocket, the stealthy photo-sharing startup from founder Scott Lipsky, opened a new round of financing that it expects will close on March 31. Investors and a target amount were not disclosed. Lipsky, the co-founder of aQuantive and GalleryPlayer (and former Amazon.com exec), said he has hired Michael Cockrill, formerly of Atlas Accelerator, Mixxer, and Qpass, and Gary Roshak, formerly with Marchex and Yahoo, for senior roles in PhotoRocket.
—Seattle-based Alliance of Angels said it invested a record $9.1 million in 29 companies in 2009. The investments by the angel investor organization were made in software, cleantech, retail and consumer products, and other sectors including Internet, mobile, and medical devices. Alliance of Angels has been investing in tech and high-growth companies since 1997.
Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:
One of the most surprising personnel moves announced in San Diego so far this year came in early January, when former Qualcomm COO Len Lauer was named to head Memjet, a startup the Wall Street Journal described as “a closely held company most people have never heard of.”
Lauer’s move was puzzling. As a wireless industry veteran—and former Sprint Nextel COO—Lauer was rumored to be a possible successor to Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg. Memjet, on the other hand, has been working for at least a decade to develop a broad spectrum of new inkjet printing technologies that promise to revolutionize the printer market. With many inkjet printers selling for less than $100—or included for free when you buy a new PC—it doesn’t seem more like a commodity than an industry that’s ripe for an innovation revolution.
Memjet nevertheless has amassed substantial gravitas since it took the wraps off its technology in 2007. Memjet has four U.S. based operating companies (Memjet Home and Office, Memjet Labels, Memjet Photo Retail, and Memjet Wide Format) and says it holds more than 2,600 patents—with 2,000 more pending. Managing so many patents—and using such intellectual property to maximum advantage is one reason why Memjet looked to recruit a top executive from Qualcomm, which holds more than 9,400 patents and generated more than a third of its 2009 revenue from licensing its proprietary technologies.
Memjet’s core technology was invented by Australian Kia Silverbrook, a former chief technology officer for Japan’s Canon. He is renowned in the printing industry as both brilliant and eccentric.
Memjet CEO Len Lauer
Lauer’s experience in organizing and managing big technology companies also was “likely overdue,” according to the Hard Copy Observer, a trade journal published by Lyra Research, a printer market research firm based in Newton, MA. “As Memjet has expanded, the company’s ability to execute across the broad range of fronts in which it is engaged has likely suffered from the lack of a professional executive,” the Hard Copy Observer reported in January. So Lauer’s appointment also marks a restructuring of a company that reflects Silverbrook’s priorities. Of Memjet’s 600 employees, Lauer told the Wall Street Journal that 400 are employed in Sydney, Australia, as engineers. In the U.S., Memjet has operations in Boise, ID, and San Diego, but no chief financial officer.
As it turns out, Memjet and Silverbrook are well-known in certain …Next Page »
Microsoft has released the long awaited Facebook client for the ZuneHD.
Engadget, who gave it a try, notes the app has some issues. Most were related to some connectivity problems, but they note that the photo viewer allows one to leave comments, but lacked pinch-to-zoom, or any other form of zoom in fact. This issue is also present on the Windows Mobile version of the Facebook client, but rather disappointing for a newly released product running on the flag-ship version of their mobile OS.
See more pictures of the client after the break.
Click for larger versions.
Do you have branch offices in China? iSec has published a new report outlining the severity of the attacks on Google.cn, allegedly by the Chinese government, dubbed ‘Aurora’ attacks. Up to 100 companies were victims, and some are speculating that resistance to such attacks is futile. The report lays out the shape of the attacks — which were customized per-company based on installed vulnerable software and antivirus protection:
1. The attacker socially engineers a victim, often in an overseas office, to visit a malicious website.
2. This website uses a browser vulnerability to load custom malware on the initial victim’s machine.
3. The malware calls out to a control server, likely identified by a dynamic DNS address.
4. The attacker escalates his privilege on the corporate Windows network, using cached or local administrator credentials.
5. The attacker attempts to access an Active Directory server to obtain the password database, which can be cracked onsite or offsite.
6. The attacker uses cracked credentials to obtain VPN access, or creates a fake user in the VPN access server.
7. At this point, the attack varies based upon the victim. The attacker may steal administrator credentials to access production systems, obtain source code from a source repository, access data hosted at the victim, or explore Intranet sites for valuable intellectual property.’ The report also has pages of recommendations as well as lessons learned, which any systems administrator — even those inside the US — should read and take note of.
Courtesy of slashdot.com
Chainfire has recently published a GSensor emulator. This allows you to use much of the software developed for the HTC GSensor, but on your LG eXpo.
Due to excessive nagging primarily from jug6ernaut but also a few others, I’ve attempted to make a HTC GSensor Emulator for the LG Expo GSensor.
Only the basic GSensor calls are supported (polling), none of the advanced HTCSensorSDK stuff. This means that while some apps will work, some will not. Boing and Diamond Hologram do work, though!
Support Chainfire to keep things like this coming!
Download and more info.
This comic was so unabashedly nerdy that we were *forced* to post it. [College Humor and loldwell via theNextWeb]
Gregory T. Huang wrote:
Google’s acquisition of Seattle-based photo editing company Picnik is the deal of the year—and maybe more—for the local tech startup community. It just closed this morning, and terms aren’t being disclosed, but suffice to say Picnik’s leadership and team of 20-odd employees will make out pretty well. What’s more, the acquisition adds a bookend to the company’s storied history, from a bootstrapped startup that never needed outside venture capital to become a profitable Web traffic machine. (Eat your hearts out, VCs.)
Picnik was founded in late 2005, became profitable in late 2008, and formed key partnerships with sites like Flickr, Facebook, and MySpace, on its way to having millions of users and more than a billion photos uploaded. The startup’s revenue model is a paid subscription service that gives consumers access to premium photo-editing tools.
Jonathan Sposato, Picnik’s chief executive, spoke with me in-depth today about the deal and what it means for his company, the tech community, and the M&A market. His startup perspective on “how Google works” is particularly interesting, as is his take on the importance of the culture fit between Picnik and Mountain View, CA-based Google. (One of Sposato’s previous startups, Phatbits, was also acquired by Google in 2005, and he worked there for almost a year before joining Picnik in its early days.)
Here’s an edited transcript of our conversation:
Xconomy: So how did the Google deal come about?
Jonathan Sposato: We’ve always kept a dialogue going with various companies. We’re high-profile, and we get lots of traffic. So the big companies are always, always talking with us in some shape or form. With this particular round, there was a lot of buzz starting to build around Picnik around mid-year/summer of ‘09. As some of the conversations got more codified, it became clear that Google was going to be the most interesting and fun option for us down the road. Also, some amount of my own past at Google—that both Google and Jonathan were known quantities to each other—had a very positive impact.
X: Were there other serious suitors when it came down to crunch time?
JS: There were. [Even as of recently.]
X: And how well did you guys make out?
JS: I can’t talk about the deal considerations. This is really the best deal—the return on everyone’s time and energy and money in for the three of us (the principals) is fantastic. In terms of deal size, it’s made us all very happy. Everyone on the Picnik team, down to the line-level folks, are very, very happy. They see a very nice financial result hitting their pockets as well. That has been a very satisfying feeling.
X: How long are the golden handcuffs on you? (Sposato has told us before about his desire not to work for The Man.)
JS: I wouldn’t put it that way. I, and everyone on the team, are very interested in giving Google a really, really great deal. The kinds of exciting things that Picnik and Google both bring to the table are going to be pretty darn amazing. I can’t think of a better synergy here. I would also say I’ve been really touched by the support of folks at Google. This is a homecoming of sorts. It’s been very heartwarming to hear from folks at Google who’ve been highly supportive. We’re really pumped.
X: So this acquisition feels different from the Phatbits acquisition?
JS: Every deal is different. This is, in every way, very different from Phatbits. That was a smaller company, it didn’t have the scale and traffic that Picnik does. The one constancy, where I could benefit with my previous experience, was that I know how Google works. They are an …Next Page »
A disheartening chart from Ars Technica, if you’re a Firefox booster: That gentle downward slope indicates Firefox might never reach 25 percent marketshare. Why? Because companies with money care about browsers now. Or, in a word: Chrome.
Chrome is the only browser that gained marketshare from January to February, bouncing .41 percent to 5.61 percent. Even the release of Firefox 3.6 in the last two months didn’t help, with Firefox sliding .18 percent (second to IE’s .6 percentage point drop, which you’d assume would be sending users to alternative browsers, like Firefox).
Here’s one difference between Firefox and Chrome, in a nutshell: Banners on two of the biggest, most trusted websites on the internet. Chrome’s by Google. It’s fast! It’s nice! Switch to it!
But you know what? It is faster and nicer than Firefox. The heyday of Firefox, when it was hands down the best was when nobody with money cared about browsers that worked, that made the internet a better place. So guys on a shoestring could out-innovate and slaughter the incumbent tyrant. Now companies with resources—Google—can iterate new versions and features just plain faster. Not to mention, advertise the crap out of its browser.
Part of me really hopes that Firefox does hit 25 percent, just as a symbolic “fuck you” to the old browser regime. But the other part me thinks Chrome might do it first, even if that’s a ways away. [Ars]
Gregory T. Huang wrote:
Well, this is no big surprise. Seattle-based Picnik was on everybody’s list as a local tech company with great potential to be acquired. The photo-editing startup announced today it has been bought by Google. Terms of the deal weren’t given, but this is big news for a startup community that hasn’t seen a major tech exit in some time. One question is how many other suitors were trying to acquire Picnik.
A blog on the company’s site says, “What does this mean for Picnik? It means we can think BIG. Google processes petabytes of data every day, and with their worldwide infrastructure and world-class team, it is truly the best home we could have found. Under the Google roof we’ll reach more people than ever before, impacting more lives and making more photos more awesome.”
Last month, we reported that Picnik had surpassed the 1-billion-photos-edited mark and was ahead of Flickr’s growth curve before the latter merged with Yahoo Photos. It will be interesting to see how Picnik’s subsequent growth compares to Flickr now that it will be integrated with Google. An interesting point here is that the integration between Picnik and Flickr, which was crucial to Picnik’s growth, is certainly threatened by the Google acquisition—since Flickr is the archrival of Google’s Picasa photo service.
Picnik CEO Jonathan Sposato has previous connections to Google. The Mountain View, CA, search giant bought Sposato’s previous startup, Phatbits, in 2005 (the software became Google Gadgets). Sposato stayed on and worked from Google’s offices in Kirkland, WA, for just under a year before leaving to join Picnik, which had been started by Sposato’s friends Mike Harrington and Darrin Massena in late 2005. It’s clear that Google keeps a close eye on its alums’ companies.
One thing that makes Picnik stand out is that it was bootstrapped and never took outside funding—venture capital or otherwise. The company has been cash-flow positive since November 2008. Last spring, Sposato told me, “What is the point of having your own startup if you have to work for The Man again?” (It’ll be interesting to hear his thoughts on joining Google once again.)
And something else Sposato told me last year has added significance now. “Our mission statement is to make ‘Picnik’ an Internet verb,” Sposato said. “Think of it as the Google of photos.”
The company will be moving, but not very far from its Belltown office. Picnik says its team, which currently numbers 20 employees, will continue working on Picnik from Google’s Seattle offices (presumably in Fremont, just a few miles away), and that “nothing is changing right away.”
Here is another angle on the un-named mystery LG slider running Windows Phone 7 series at the Engadget show. Unlike the other video Engadget released in this instance we actually get to see the device in action, browsing the photo hub, which does give a better appreciation of the size of the smartphone and how it first in the hand.
Do our readers like the device any more than before? Let us know below.
Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:
School’s out for the Founder Institute’s inaugural class in San Diego, which started with 22 students in November and last week graduated 13 entrepreneurs who are moving forward to develop 12 startup companies, according to Jeanine Jacobson, a San Diego organizer.
After starting the four-month mentoring program for startup founders in San Francisco a year ago, founder Adeo Ressi (of TheFunded.com) expanded to San Diego-Orange County, Seattle, and other cities known as hotbeds of technology. The Founder Institute program is now in nine cities and has even acquired an international flavor; the deadline for spring applications ended yesterday for programs in Paris, Singapore, Denver, and Los Angeles.
The outcome in San Diego was sufficiently encouraging for the startup incubator and training program to announce it is now accepting applications for a second class, which is scheduled to begin April 6. The Institute has recruited 26 mentors who have started their own companies, with the San Diego curriculum focused generally on high tech, including Internet, IT, cleantech, and hardware. Jacobson tells me she even received an application Friday from a recent F/A-18 Hornet pilot, who is an entrepreneurial-minded graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.
The Institute will continue to holds its classes in the evening to make it easier for students to keep their day job. The cost of enrollment has been increased to $800 from $600, although students also must give up a small stake in any company they launch (see below). And they must pay a $4,500 course fee if they get external funding during the program.
Jacobson tells me the entrepreneurs who graduated last Tuesday “are now working on their business. Some are looking for empty office space, and some are still building products.” The San Diego graduates include:
—CloudCanvas, a Web-based image-editing program developed in HTML 5 that was previewed in the TechCrunch 50 Demo Pit.
—Live On Campus, a website that provides online news for …Next Page »
Gregory T. Huang wrote:
Startups almost never end up doing what they started out doing. The key is, can they adjust to the market and find enough paying customers before they run out of money? Here’s an interesting case study in the making: Napera Networks.
The computer-network security startup, based in Mercer Island, WA—are there any other startups there?—is announcing a new product direction and strategy today. Napera is rolling out network management software that is based entirely in the Internet “cloud,” and will be sold to small-to-medium-sized businesses through a software-as-a-service model. The software, called PC Security Informer, helps IT administrators efficiently manage the security of employees’ computers—dealing proactively with things like anti-virus updates, spyware removal, and firewall breaches.
It sounds pretty straightforward, but the key opportunity is that most smaller companies (with a couple hundred employees or fewer) don’t want to spend a lot of money on complex security systems from Microsoft, Cisco, or Computer Associates (CA), for example. Napera says it offers an easier and cheaper solution to the basic problem of businesses’ machines being insecure.
“We’ve wrapped it in a very Web 2.0-like wrapper,” says Todd Hooper, the CEO and co-founder of Napera. “If you can use Facebook, you can use our apps.”
Hooper, an expert in network security, co-founded Napera in late 2006. Before that, he had co-founded Momentum Pty, an Internet security consultancy in Australia, and audio software firm Trillium Lane Labs, and had been vice president of business development at Seattle-based WatchGuard Technologies.
What’s interesting is not necessarily whether Napera’s technology is really better than that of its competitors, but that the company has found a way to evolve from a …Next Page »
