Autodesk announces software giveaway for cleantech companies

Autodesk, maker of 3-D modeling software used to design buildings and other structures, announced today that it will be choosing 100 companies to receive $150,000-worth of software each under the banner of its Clean Tech Partner Program. The application process is open to any young company working on sustainable technologies, though there is a slight focus on renewable energy innovations.

Startups chosen for the program will receive five licenses for the following suite of Autodesk … Continue Reading

MobileBeat 2009: Feedback about content, news and dealmaking

Last week, about 500 people attended MobileBeat, our sold-out mobile conference in San Francisco.

Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Most people said they enjoyed the content debates and the jazz-filled reception afterward. In one case, a startup entrepreneur said he got three meetings with venture capitalists and four appointments with large companies interested in corporate development deals. In another case, two UK-based companies, Shozu and Touchnote told us they signed a deal on the spot … Continue Reading

Google adds layers to its mobile maps; multiple search capabilities

Google Maps’ mobile phone experience is becoming a richer experience with the addition of layers that you see public transit, Wikipedia entries or your friends’ location on Latitude. For example when coming to a new town, you can turn on a Wikipedia layer that lets you learn about notable sites nearby. Or you can turn on local search results to pull up restaurant or bar listings on your phone while you’re meandering around a neigborhood. … Continue Reading

Advanced Telemetry gets infusion for wireless energy-management dashboard

Advanced Telemetry has taken an undisclosed amount of second-round funding from existing investors Quercus Trust and 21Ventures to continue developing its energy consumption management platform for residential and commercial use.

The San Diego company’s lead product is a wireless panel called the EcoView that classifies energy consumption in a building as low, moderate or high. Some of the money raised in the recent round will be used to beef up its sales, with the rest … Continue Reading

Voice messaging startup Bubble Motion confirms $6M in funding

Bubble Motion, a company that allows users to send voicemails as if they were SMS text messages, announced today that it has raised $6 million in a third round of funding. Based on a regulatory filing, we first covered the Mountain View, Calif. company’s funding in June, but now Bubble Motion has confirmed the news and identified the new investor, Palomar Ventures, which led the round.

Here’s the company’s concept: If you want to send … Continue Reading

Turn Flickr, Facebook photos into postcards with ShoZu, Touchnote

ShoZu, a London-based company connecting phones to social networking sites, is partnering with Touchnote, to let you mail any photos you’ve uploaded through their service as postcards to friends and family.

British startup Touchnote, which won audience award for best mobile service last week at our MobileBeat 2009 conference, allows phone applications to print an image and mail it to anywhere in the world. After seeing the company demo on stage at MobileBeat, Shozu chief … Continue Reading

Yahoo confirms that it's buying Xoopit

Yahoo just published a blog post confirming yesterday’s reports that it plans to buy Xoopit, the startup that adds social and media-sharing tools to email .

What’s the reasoning? Well, if Yahoo’s post is to be believed, this deal is all about photos:

With the integration of Xoopit’s platform technology and capabilities, the task of sending photos via email will be as easy as it should be and sharing photo albums with friends and family … Continue Reading

Signostics channels $4M to launch ultrasound device

Signostics Medical, maker of a small, portable ultrasound device, has raised $4 million in capital from Playford Capital, Brandon Capital Partners and Terra Rossa Capital. The Palo Alto, Calif., company says the money will go toward marketing its product for assessment of bladder, abdominal and basic obstetric conditions following its recent approval by the Food and Drug Administration.

Signostics has raised $13 million to date and just launched a device for veterinary applications. Due to … Continue Reading

Pixetell brings web meetings to your inbox

Explaining complicated ideas, particularly complicated visual ideas, can be a real challenge. Email, and even images, are limited, and it can also be a pain to schedule meetings, whether they are in-person or over the web. Portland, Ore. company Ontier wants to solve that problem with a new product called Pixetell, which allows you to incorporate rich visual and audio information into your emails.

Basically, you build a Pixetell email by adding screen recordings, voice, … Continue Reading

eMeter takes $32M to help utilities switch to smart meters

eMeter, maker of software that helps utilities integrate data channeled from new smart meters in residential and commercial areas, has brought in $32 million in a third round of funding to meet rising demand.

While this financing, provided by Sequoia Capital and Foundation Capital, will help the San Mateo, Calif., company expand its marketing efforts and deliver more product, it says it’s still waiting for utilities to receive their chunks of the $4.5 billion in … Continue Reading

Roundup: CalPERS nosedives, eBay beats the street, Hollywood picks World of Warcraft director

Ebay whups analysts with $327M profit – Bloomberg reports that the most-visited U.S. e-commerce website has reported sales and profit that beat analysts’ estimates. The San Jose, Calif., company reported second-quarter net income of $327.3 million, or 25 cents a share, on $2.1 billion in revenue. PayPal and Skype grew impressively, but the company’s marketplace sites such as Shopping.com didn’t do so well.

CalPERS takes its worst plunge ever — The California Public Employees’ Retirement … Continue Reading

Huddle takes collaboration tools to the next level

Editor’s note: This is part of VentureBeat’s series “Startup Spotlight.” Every week, we’ll sift through the scores of companies applying to be promoted and profile the best one. Companies can sign up here at the Entrepreneur Corner, which is currently sponsored by Microsoft. (Of course, we’re still interested in covering startup news and innovation in our day-to-day coverage.) Today, we continue the series with Huddle, below.

Huddle, a site that ties together online collaboration, phone … Continue Reading

Do you have the right to socialize on multiplayer games?

[Editor's note: As virtual worlds and other online gaming communities become more mainstream in the United States, new legal issues are cropping up. Here's one analysis of a case involving a man who claims he should not have been cut off from a gaming site because he needed it to socialize.]

“Erik Estavillo is suing Sony over being banned from PlayStation Network, claiming that the company violated his right to free speech and has caused … Continue Reading

Foundation 9 Entertainment cuts costs and staff in game studios

Foundation 9 Entertainment is the latest game company to cut back on its development efforts as a result of a slowdown in the core video game business, VentureBeat has learned.

The Irvine, Calif.-based game development company is one of the biggest pure developers, with a collection of game studios making work-for-hire games for the Nintendo DS, consoles, and a variety of other platforms. Hence, its own rocky road is one more example of tough times … Continue Reading

Amazon acquires Zappos, the customer-friendly shoe company, for $807M

Amazon.com said it has agreed to acquire shoe retailer Zappos.com in a stock deal valued at $807 million.

Zappos, which was founded in San Francisco during the tail end of the last Internet boom, became famous for its radically friendly customer service. You could order shoes, have them sent to you by mail, try them on, and simply return them if you didn’t like them.

Founder Tony Hsieh (below) became known for transparency too. He’d … Continue Reading

Why corporations must return to investing in venture capital

America’s innovation engine is out of gas. Much has been written about the problem, but no one has addressed the major missing piece: the role of the corporation.

American corporations have been slashing internal long-term research and development spending for decades, and, more recently, investments in venture capital-backed startups. To turn this situation around, they must re-invest aggressively in venture capital and rely far more on leading-edge startups for outside R&D.

Consider, for example, the … Continue Reading

Business cards finally useful again with augmented reality?

Like the human appendix, business cards have outlasted their actual usefulness, but they’re somehow still around, piling up and killing trees. Perhaps they have a little more life in them with the help of augmented reality, a fast-growing area that superimposes animation or information on real-life objects in a camera’s viewfinder.

Jonas Jager tried to reinvigorate the business card by adding presentations that include video or 3-D animations. Those presentations are uploaded the web; then … Continue Reading

Adobe Wave launches — lets publishers update readers right on desktop

Adobe has launched a test version of Wave, the service that lets publishers push updates to readers directly on their desktops. It can be found at Adobe Labs.

We first wrote about the product two weeks ago when it was first announced. VentureBeat is one of the first partners to be featured on Wave. It lets you have VentureBeat article links appear on your desktop as soon as they’re published. Readers opt-in for any updates … Continue Reading

New Billboard site publishes charts, sells songs

Biggest news for non-geeks today: Billboard has made its famous charts available online without requiring a subscription. The 115-year-old publication has turned its website into a music portal where you can listen to full tracks without signing up. Every single act that’s ever made Billboard’s charts will soon have its own page on the site, the company told USA Today.

It’s as if Billboard’s management read Chris Anderson’s Free and decided to give it a … Continue Reading