Roundup: Invidi funded by WPP, Amazon, Google and more
1. Invidi gets $25 million from WPP, the world’s second largest ad conglomerate
2. Amazon building out its webs services
3. Atheros Communications buys micro GPS company
4. Google may be looking at wireless spectrum in the UK
5. Tiny Pictures, a mobile photo-sharing company, adds international language support
Invidi gets $25 million from WPP, the world’s second largest ad conglomerate — Most people think of Google and Yahoo as the new online advertising giants. But WPP is moving aggressively to upgrade its ad technology. It’s most recent move is to invest in Invidi, a company that targets ads to TV set-top boxes of individuals depending on their age, gender, location, income and ethnicity. It gathers the data by analyzing remote control, ratings, and program guide information along with census data. The Princeton, NJ startup earlier got capital from EnerTech Capital, InterWest Partners and Menlo Ventures, all of which returned to invest in this latest round. More details here.
Amazon building out its webs services — It has released SimpleDB, which provides database functions for young companies, without the need for a database administrator.
Atheros Communications buys micro GPS company — Atheros, the Santa Clara, Calif., maker of wireless chips, said it will buy u-Nav Microelectronics, a company that boasts the smallest and lowest power Global Positioning System (GPS) chip, including the one used in the Casio wristwatch for runners. The price is $54 million. More details here.
Google may be looking at wireless spectrum in the UK — That’s the gist of this CNET article, at least. The British telecommunications regulator OfCom will auction off a wide range of wireless radio spectrum within the next couple years, including the 700MHz band. However, A federal law prohibits Google from commenting on its plans outside of the US, as the company has committed to bid on spectrum in the US. The US Federal Communications Commission will auction off the 700MHz spectrum in January, which Google could use to offer its own mobile phone and mobile internet services. The company says it may reveal more of its international plans after the US auction is complete.
Tiny Pictures, a mobile photo-sharing company adds international language support — The San Francisco company’s service, known as Radar, lets you share and comment on photos from a mobile device and from the web. It already has 70 percent of its 630,000 total users outside of the US (previous coverage). Now, it is adding French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese WAP versions of its site, hoping to encourage existing users in many countries to add their friends. Chinese and Japanese versions are soon to follow, the company says.
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About the Author, Eric Eldon
Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.