Calient raises $5M for fiber optic management

Calient Networks, which provides switching equipment to manage fiber optic networks, has raised $5 million in a third round of venture funding (pdf announcement here). TeleSoft Partners, which first invested in the San Jose, Calif. company back in 1999, led the round, according to VentureWire.

Calient makes switches that use small mirrors to redirect optical signals, which it says provide a reliable, automated, low-cost system for service providers, government agencies, and optical network equipment providers. … Continue Reading

iScience sees $20.5M for eye surgery instruments

iScience Interventional, maker of surgical tools for eye operations, has closed a prolonged sixth round of funding at $20.5 million after facing a bit more of a challenge due to the economic climate. The money will be used to commercialize its line of micro-catheters used to remove fluid from or deliver medication to the back region of people’s eyes. It hopes to have them on the market by the end of 2010 at the latest, … Continue Reading

Luxim brightens with $12M for efficient plasma lighting

Luxim, provider of high-efficiency solid-state plasma lighting systems, has nabbed $12 million in a third round of funding from Sequoia Capital and others. Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., the company plans to use the money to scale production of its existing products, which are largely used in stadium, city street, commercial and industrial lighting, as well as medical instrumentation. It has yet to roll out products suited to residential use.

The lights are unique not only … Continue Reading

Android growing, says Google — but not so fast, says Motorola

Okay, it’s not just tech blogs like VentureBeat that think the Google-forged Android operating system is going to have a big year. Even Google chief executive Eric Schmidt is getting bullish. In a conference call yesterday about his company’s first quarter earnings, Schmidt held forth with the following:

There are announcements happening between now and the end of the year that are quite significant from operators and new hardware partners in the Android space, which … Continue Reading

MixerCast nabs $4.1 million for widget ads

As the display advertising market tanks, widget-based ad networks like MixerCast still seem to be netting cash. After raising $6 million last year, the San Mateo, Calif. company has announced the close of another $4.1 million round led by Intel Capital.

MixerCast’s business is essentially dual pronged. For end users, it provides a drag-and-drop platform for creating and publishing widgets on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Dubbed MCast Suite, this platform essentially serves … Continue Reading

Thanks to Oprah, we can finally stop talking about Twitter

Today may very well be the end of an era. Actor Ashton Kutcher, the first man to reach 1 million Twitter followers, and Twitter co-founder Ev Williams are going on The Oprah Winfrey show today to talk about the microblogging service, and it looks like Winfrey has started tweeting (she’s already approaching 120,000 followers).

I’ve been keeping my head down during most of the furor around Kutcher’s successful attempt to beat CNN breaking news to … Continue Reading

How I became a virtual world believer

The media narrative about Second Life and virtual worlds is starting to get past the hype stage, past the bashing stage, and is beginning to resemble reality. VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi has covered this shift in a thorough Q&A with parent company Linden Lab’s CEO Mark Kingdon.

Public misperception of Second Life and the virtual world landscape is beginning to change as we see what it means for the evolution a new global culture and economy.… Continue Reading

Fotomoto lets photographers sell work direct on their sites

Fotomoto lets photographers sell their photos directly to customers through their own web sites. E-commerce capabilities can now be added to an artist’s photo gallery with only a few lines of JavaScript code, the company claims.

An offering like this could turn the industry on its head. Previously, most photographers had to go through a middleman like iStockPhoto to sell their work online. In turn, they had to sacrifice control over how their images were … Continue Reading

The bizarre case of Oak Investment Partners

The venture capital industry is in a lot of pain, saddled with so much money, it can’t invest it properly. With the Internet boom over, and investors pulling back from supporting venture capital firms, we’ll see a lot of the mediocre VC firms finally die (see our list of the walking dead).

Which brings me to Oak Investment Partners.

Almost three years ago, I wrote how Oak Investment Partners had become the largest venture capital … Continue Reading

John Madden retires, but EA Sports will keep him on signature football game

Longtime NFL broadcaster John Madden retired today, but Electronic Arts said it will keep him as the lead celebrity on its top-selling game, Madden NFL Football.

The 73-year-old Madden will step away from his announcer’s role immediately. The former coach of the Oakland Raiders became legendary for his instant analysis during games and his sense of humor.

EA founder Trip Hawkins signed up Madden in 1984 and the first game came out on the Apple … Continue Reading

iPhone app lets you get away with napping at work

A new iPhone app lets you nap at work in your cubicle without fear of being caught.

The iNap@Work app makes office-like “productivity noises” so that your co-workers will hear a constant din of activity coming from your space. Even though you may be snoring, your workers will hear sounds like typing, mouse clicks, flipping through papers, stapling, and human sounds such as clearing your throat.

All you do is adjust the settings on the … Continue Reading

SoundCloud raises $3.3 million for audiophile file-sharing

SoundCloud, an audio file sharing site for music professionals, has raised €2.5 million ($3.3 million) in its first round of funding. The Berlin-based startup entered the crowded file-sharing market last year with a private beta, but its executives say the service has since grown to 100,000 registered users.

The site works by providing a web-based platform for storing and sharing uncompressed audio files. But, rather than focusing on the average file sharer, SoundCloud targets its … Continue Reading

Google Friend Connect's event gadget: Useful, but not a Facebook killer

Google is announcing a new way to promote and get people to sign up for events online — a gadget powered by Google Friend Connect, the search giant’s service for letting developers add social features to web pages.

Setting up an event is pretty easy: Just enter the basic details like time, location, and relevant images, and Google will generate HTML code that you can add to your site. Then, when people visit your site, … Continue Reading

Five rules for getting your ideas off the ground

The 99% Conference — a two-day event about turning (hopefully good) ideas into reality — kicked off today in New York. It drew more than 300 creative thinkers and consists of a number of 20-minute presentations focused on issues of productivity and the process of executing ideas.

The event, put on by Behance, which runs an online network for creative professionals, and online design publication Cool Hunting, gets its name from inventor Thomas Edison’s insight … Continue Reading

AOL's new toolbar aims to unite its aging empire with the web

A few months ago I started hearing rumors about some sort of web-wide chat and social networking product that AOL was working on. It promised to tie together AOL’s popular instant messaging service AIM and Bebo, the social network that the conglomerate bought for $850 million a year ago — and restore AOL’s former reputation as an innovative web company. Today, the product has been partially revealed in live testing on AOL country music site … Continue Reading

As execs defect, is this the end of an era for Google?

During today’s earnings report, Google announced that its global head of sales, Omid Kordestani, perhaps better known as its business founder (or employee No. 12), will leave his post to become a senior adviser to the company’s founders and chief executive, Eric Schmidt. While he hasn’t exactly left for good, his decision to step down follows the departure of several other high-profile executives in Google’s sales organization — signaling even more strongly that the bloom … Continue Reading

Roundup: Apple patents surface, Second Life grows, Rosetta Stone IPO takes off

Here’s the latest action:

New Apple patent filings raise eyebrows — The next versions of the iPhone could make use of a motion-aware user interface, based on some recent patent filings. MacRumors has more.

Nokia’s net income takes a dive — Phone maker’s net income falls 90 percent in the first quarter. CNET has more.

Bartz unlikely to sell Yahoo? — A profile in Fortune of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz cites unnamed sources as saying … Continue Reading

Facebook's fbFund incubator program looks to cash in on the site's growth

This year, Facebook and two of its venture investors, Accel Partners and the Founders Fund, are changing up their fbFund incubator-style program from handing out grants to making equity investments. Venture capitalists aren’t generally known as purely altruistic, so the switch suggests these two firms see more money to be made on the platform this year than last. The program is also broadening in scope to include sites that use Facebook Connect for sharing user … Continue Reading

Sun Catalytix lands funds for "solar fuel"

Sun Catalytix, a stealthy operation formed last year to commercialize “solar fuel” research conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Polaris Venture Partners that VentureExpert pegs at $700,000. Xconomy reported the story first.

While little is known about Sun Catalytix’s forthcoming products, its founder, MIT chemistry professor Daniel Nocera, has long been involved in research on hydrogen gas made with only sunlight and water. Basically, the … Continue Reading

YouTube takes 'baby step' towards countering Hulu

Google-owned video site YouTube continues to expand beyond the amateur and pirated content that its known for, with an announcement today that it’s becoming more welcoming to licensed, professional content, with a new channel for watching TV shows, a revamped channel for movies, and an expansion of its program for ads that run during the videos.

Basically, it’s starting to sound a lot more like Hulu, the online video venture of NBC Universal and Fox, … Continue Reading