The new behavior advertising upstarts: Aggregate Knowledge and Wunderloop

The new behavior advertising upstarts: Aggregate Knowledge and Wunderloop

The eye-opening performances claimed by new behavioral advertising start-ups Aggregate Knowledge and Wunderloop are sure to grab the attention from online retailers and publishers.

Take the little announcement by the nine-month-old Menlo Park company Aggregate Knowledge yesterday at DEMO: It drove more than 20 percent of all… Continue Reading

TextDigger, Hakia say they can improve search

TextDigger, Hakia say they can improve search

TextDigger is the latest company seeking that Holy Grail: Improving on Google’s results by understanding the sense of the words you’re looking for.

TextDigger’s search engine is called Digger, and it just launched at the DEMO conference.

First, some context: Digger, of San Jose, joins Powerset, the… Continue Reading

DEMO mentions: GetaBuz, Pairup

DEMO mentions: GetaBuz, Pairup

Here are two new Silicon Valley companies that launched at DEMO. We’re not certain whether they are features or have potential for more, but they are aiming for more:

Buz Interative lets you create voicemail greetings with music — We got a preview of the Palo… Continue Reading

Report from the trenches

(Editor’s note: VentureBeat hadn’t heard from Silicon Valley start-up Bunchball in a while, so we asked CEO Rajat Paharia to tell us what it is like out there on the front lines. Here’s his report.)

In January 2005, I left my job with no idea… Continue Reading

Roundup: Bombs, don’t do Delaware, MySQL IPO & more

Roundup: Bombs, don’t do Delaware, MySQL IPO & more

The latest Silicon Valley round-up:

Correlation between bomb building and entrepreneurship? — Former PayPal chief executive Peter Thiel reportedly says four of six founders of the online payment service built bombs while in high school. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson designs rockets.

MyYearbook.com, a social networking… Continue Reading

Farecast, the airfare prediction site, raises $12.1M more

Farecast, the airfare prediction site, raises $12.1M more

Farecast.com, the young Seattle start-up that now owns the niche of predicting airfares, and which continues to roll out new features (like letting you guarantee low fares), has raised $12.1 million more.

The round was led by Sutter Hill Ventures, and includes PAR Capital Management, Pinnacle… Continue Reading

DartDEVICES, the DEMO conundrum company, has $2.8M from Motorola

DartDEVICES, the DEMO conundrum company, has $2.8M from Motorola

DARTdevices, of Mountain View, is a start-up that launched at DEMO today, that until this evening remained unintelligible to us.

It proclaims a technology that lets multiple devices interact with an application over a shared connection. Gigaom’s Katie Fehrenbacher sat down with the company, but… Continue Reading

Losing politician Steve Westly heads — where else — into venture capital

Losing politician Steve Westly heads — where else — into venture capital

Steve Westly, the former state controller and eBay executive who failed in a gambit to become state governor, is headed back to Menlo Park, the center of Silicon Valley’s venture capital industry.

He may have lost the California Democratic primary to Phil Angelides, but he’s joining… Continue Reading

Western VC group on corporate governance — Don’t play with your Blackberries, among other things

A major West Coast venture capital organization today endorsed corporate governance guidelines for board members of private companies.

It lists do’s and don’ts board members should follow, from the attitude they should exhibit toward entrepreneurs during board meetings, to refraining from fiddling with their Blackberry’s during… Continue Reading

Zing, developer of WiFi mobile devices, raises $13M

Zing Systems, a Mountain View company developing WiFi mobile audio and entertainment devices that are “always connected,” and which don’t require connection to a PC, has raised $13 million in a third round of funding, according to VentureWire.

The funding, which closed last month, was led… Continue Reading

My Currency, lets “wisdom of the crowds” estimate real estate prices

My Currency, lets “wisdom of the crowds” estimate real estate prices

My Currency is a new real estate company that tries to turn Zillow on its head.

Zillow, you’ll recall, is controversial, because it estimates values of homes. Some people love to gawk at the estimates for their neighbors’ homes, others are irked when they feel Zillow… Continue Reading

Nexo, the social network for families, launches with angel backing

See our story here.

Whisher tackles FON — launches its own WiFi nation, with Benchmark backing

See our story here.

Mobio — the useful mobile service

Mobio — the useful mobile service

Mobio, a Cupertino start-up, is distinguishing itself by creating simple, useful services for the mobile phone.

We wrote about the company when it released its movie service — which lists movie reviews, times and maps.

Today, Mobio kicks off a 100 more services, many of them handy… Continue Reading

With Bling, translate your Web site to mobile AJAX

With Bling, translate your Web site to mobile AJAX

Bling Software, a start-up that launches today at DEMO, helps translate your Web site into a visually rich mobile version.

Your regular site can not be duplicated on a cellphone’s tiny screen, so you have to customize it. This can cost serious bucks.

Now, Pleasanton’s Bling has… Continue Reading

Devicescape, which connects your device to WiFi hotspots, raises more “millions”

See our story here.

Devicescape connects your device to WiFi hotspots

Devicescape connects your device to WiFi hotspots

Devicescape releases a software today that connects any of your WiFi devices automatically to a WiFi hotspot or muni network.

This is significant, because more cellphones are being equipped with WiFi, as the cost of WiFI chips hit bottom rates of $2. And by accessing WiFi… Continue Reading

Nexo, the social network for families, or small groups

Nexo, the social network for families, or small groups

Nexo bills itself as the social network for families, or small groups.

What? Not another social network! Well, the thinking of co-founder Craig Jorasch is that there’s still need for one more. There’s no site on the Web, he argues, where you can slap together… Continue Reading

Zink: A printer that doesn’t use ink

Zink: A printer that doesn’t use ink

Zink, a company presenting at the DEMO conference today, announces a novel printing technology: A printer that needs no ink.

Zink printers heat up a printing element and roll plastic paper past the print head once, and presto, a 2-by-3-inch picture comes out dry in 30… Continue Reading

Whisher tackles FON — launches its own WiFi nation

Whisher tackles FON — launches its own WiFi nation

Honestly, we never got FON, the company that sells a WiFi router so that you can share your WiFi with others.

FON claims 50,000 nodes, and that it is the “largest WiFi network in the world,” so it appears to be having some traction.

Whisher is… Continue Reading