Aragon buys software code analysis co. Krugle
Aragon Consulting Group announced its acquisition of San Mateo, Calif.-based Krugle, a provider of code analysis and maintenance technology. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Krugle had been shopping for a buyer for a while, needing funds to continue marketing its first product — Krugle Enterprise, a searchable source code library — released 10 months ago. Aragon, which specializes in outsourcing software development for companies, says it will continue to offer Krugle … Continue Reading
Is Facebook really using its new terms of service to own your data?
Facebook introduced a new terms of service agreement earlier this month for its 175 million users. But the changes went mostly unnoticed until the Consumerist blog published an article on Sunday saying the new terms allow the social network to “do anything we want with your content, forever.”
As is usually the case with such sensational headlines, the reality of the situation is far more complex. So here’s a quick look at what the issues … Continue Reading
Jasper Design connects $7M for circuit verification software
Jasper Design Automation just raised $7 million in fourth round funding from ZenShin Capital, Cambrian Ventures, Foundation Capital and Accel Partners, reports VentureWire. The Mountain View, Calif. company makes software that allows chip designers to check that new features or changes they introduce don’t interfere with the functionality of the original products they are working on. It currently counts Qualcomm, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Nvidia and Sony among its clients.
The recent investment round will … Continue Reading
Get Satisfaction gets new CEO and funding amid growth
[Disclosure: Get Satisfaction was founded by Thor Muller, who is an advisor to VentureBeat.]
Get Satisfaction, a company that aims to improve online customer service by letting customers take over much of the process, has raised an additional $1.25 million in funding.
The company has also appointed a new chief executive, Wendy Lea, who previously was a senior vice president for Siebel, to help the company market its products to bigger companies.
The … Continue Reading
Exalt musters $15M for wireless backhauling
Exalt Communications, a company that transmits wireless data through microwave radio systems to relieve congestion on regular networks, announced today that it brought in $15 million in third-round funding to expand its “backhauling” systems globally. The Campbell, Calif. company claims that demand for its products is on the rise as mobile users increasingly swap high-bandwidth data, including text messages, photos and video.
Its licensed and license-exempt microwave radios cover from 2 to 40 GHz, allowing … Continue Reading
Sega's 2009 survival strategy: Publish mature-rated Wii titles and exploit Sonic brand
Sega hasn’t had the easiest time lately. Its parent company, Sega Sammy Holdings, is laying off 560 people — 18 percent of its work force — and is closing 110 arcades in Japan. But the company says it has a strategy to distinguish itself as a smaller publisher among the industry’s giants.
One of the main pillars of this plan is Mad World, a comic-style black-and-white game with lots of red blood. Rated M for … Continue Reading
Offerpal Media raises $15 million for social monetization platform
Offerpal Media has raised $15 million in a second round of funding to continue developing its platform for generating money from social applications via advertising offers.
D.E. Shaw led the round and existing investors Interwest Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners participated. Anu Shukla, chief executive of the Fremont, Calif.-based company, said that the company will use it for expanding its sales and marketing, international business, and otherwise improve its core technology. Shukla said the … Continue Reading
Multi-core smartphones! (Not the iPhone, yet)
At the Mobile World Congress in Spain this week, ARM is teaming up with ST-Ericsson to show off its new Cortex-A9 multi-core processor. At a private event, the companies will be demonstrating what it says is the first Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP) model running on the Symbian mobile operating system. Symbian, while still the world’s largest smartphone operating system (with nearly 50 percent of the market in Q3 2008), fails to elicit the excitement of … Continue Reading
Business intelligence company PivotLink raises $10M
PivotLink, which delivers business intelligence via online subscription, has raised $10 million in a third round of financing. The San Francisco company says its sales bookings increased 100 percent in 2008 and that it has more than 6,000 business users. It has raised a total of $25 million.
The new round was led by StarVest Partners, with participation from existing backers Trident Capital and Emergence Capital Partners.… Continue Reading
Windows Mobile for Windows Phones rolls out touchscreen, marketplace and syncing
With a whole raft of competitors hogging the mobile spotlight recently, Microsoft tried to stage a comeback at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress with today’s announcement of new Windows Phones from HTC, LG, and Orange. Chief executive Steve Ballmer also confirmed a touchscreen user interface, an application marketplace, and a MobileMe-style synchronizing service — that yes, rhymes will a certain device by Apple, though Microsoft apparently didn’t realize it.
In her rundown of the news, All … Continue Reading
HTC takes a European vacation with the G2. Will we see it stateside?
The Mobile World Congress is officially underway in Spain, and one of the biggest stories of the show so far seems to be the complete and utter lack of new phones running Google’s Android mobile platform. While many companies are promising to have their own Android phones at some point this year, HTC’s G1 remains the only one actually out there. But that may change shortly — at least for Europeans. The G1′s successor, the … Continue Reading
Qualcomm cuts deals for its Mirasol displays
Qualcomm made about eight different announcements at the Mobile World Congress today, but most interesting was news of the company’s progress Mirasol displays, which are based on a new way of capturing light with micro-electro-mechanical semiconductor (MEMS) technology.
Qualcomm said it’s working with LG Electronics to develop Mirasol-enabled cell phones that use much less power than today’s liquid crystal display-based cell phones. Qualcomm also has separate deals with Inventec and Cal-Comp, a subsidiary of Taiwanese … Continue Reading
Dutch virtual world start-up raises $4 million
Dutch virtual world startup Virtual Fairground has raised $4 million and signed a license to publish a game based on the hit animated soccer TV show Galactik Football.
Amsterdam-based Virtual Fairground raised the money from an undisclosed angel investor. It will create a Flash-based virtual world and massively multiplayer online game based on Alphanim’s Galactik Football animated TV series. Virtual Fairground will develop and publish the game and virtual world.
The first phase of the … Continue Reading
AlertEnterprise bags $8M for security software
AlertEnterprise, provider of software that coordinates physical and IT security to prevent overlaps, just brought in $8 million in first-round funding, all from Opus Capital. The startup, founded by the same team that started compliance software maker Virsa Systems, will use the money to market its first products — AlertAccess and Alert Action, which monitor access privileges and geospatial activities.
Just 18 months old, AlertEnterprise is the team’s latest project, spearheaded after SAP AG bought … Continue Reading
Zoom takes in $20M for high-end vending machines
Zoom Systems, the San Francisco-based provider of luxury-good vending machines, just brought in $20 million in fifth-round funding to increase its market presence in the U.S. and Japan. You may have already spotted its machines (termed “automated retail stores”) in airports and shopping malls. By and large, they sell major electronics from companies like Apple and Sony, and other swanky tech goods like Rosetta Stone language-learning software.
The concept started as a vehicle for marketing … Continue Reading
GMG Entertainment cleans up with game currency cards in stores
Online games and brick-and-mortar stores that carry games have been fighting a tough war. But digital currency cards are making peace between them.
Online game publishers have turned to retailers to sell currency cards that let players buy subscriptions or virtual goods in online-only games. They’re ideal for kids who want to play online games but are too young to have their own credit cards or paypal accounts for online payments.
Los Angeles-based GMG Entertainment … Continue Reading
Mobile Peer Award winners
Updated.
The judges have just finished awarding the Mobile Peer Awards here at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
I wrote earlier about the competition. As mentioned, I was on the jury of the early stage startups (with a second set of jurors looking at so-called “emerging” companies).
I should note that the juries felt the standards were very high for the early-stage companies in this competition, but merely okay for the so-called emerging … Continue Reading
Samsung to use Sandbridge Technologies wireless chips
Moving ahead on its next-generation wireless chips, Sandbridge Technologies said today that it has cut a deal with Samsung Electronics, which plans to use Sandbridge’s chips in next-generation cell phones featuring high-speed data connectivity.
Tarrytown, N.Y.-based Sandbridge has pioneered a series of SB3500 baseband processors that do software defined radio. That is, the chips can adapt on the fly to handling a variety of different radio signals. Hence, a single chip is all you need … Continue Reading
Modu gets $38.5 million order from Southeast Asian phone company, signs up Telefonica
Modular electronics, where you put a couple of things together to make a combo product, have always been a bit like Frankenstein monsters. But Israeli phone designer Modu has managed to convince a big customer that its snap-together phone design is pretty cool.
Today, Lynk Communications is announcing it will spend $38.5 million to buy Modu phones that it will use in the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries. The announcement at the Mobile World … Continue Reading
Nvidia enables $99 Android/Windows CE mobile internet devices
Nvidia is announcing today that it wants to enable $99 mobile internet devices that can play high-definition graphics.
The so-called MIDs are smaller than laptop computers but less functional. Their primary purpose is to display web pages on a screen that ranges from four to 12 inches. The way Nvidia envisions them, they’ll run either Google’s Android or Microsoft’s Windows CE operating systems. They’ll also use Nvidia’s Tegra chips, which combine mobile phone and computing … Continue Reading
