Schooner cruises to $20M for data center equipment
Schooner, maker of servers that incorporate both flash memory and multicore processors for high-speed performance, has brought in $20 million in a second round of financing from Menlo Ventures, CMEA Capital and Redpoint Ventures, reports VentureWire.
Based in Menlo Park, Calif., the company says its servers fit into the standard-style rack used by most data centers. It will use the new money to diversify its product portfolio to better target corporate data centers. Its two … Continue Reading
Free website builders Yola and Weebly hit 2M users
Yola, one of the better-known among a recent wave of easy-to-use website building tools, just announced that it has hit the 2 million user milestone. That means it doubled its user base in about six months, after taking more than a year to hit the 1 million user mark.
I was surprised to hear those numbers since I usually think of Yola as chasing competitor Weebly (at least in terms of users), yet I hadn’t … Continue Reading
Face the facts, Facebook: 3 out of 5 social networkers still use MySpace
Among social network users, 68 percent visit Facebook weekly, according to the latest annual survey of 40,000 American Net users by Forrester Research. But a nearly equal 59 percent visit MySpace — a healthy dose of traffic for a site that Internet hipsters like to claim “no one uses anymore.” MySpace’s member pages, such as the one shown here for entertainer Tila Tequila, are often hyperactively tacky and attract younger audiences.
One-third of online consumers … Continue Reading
TV time holds steady against the Internet
In the past five years, Americans have dropped their time spent with radio and newspapers by nearly one-fifth, according to Forrester Research’s latest Internet use survey. In return, they’ve more than doubled their Internet usage, jumping from six hours per week average to more than 12.
But the 40,000 American adults surveyed by Forrester haven’t changed the amount of time they spend watching TV. U.S. consumers average 13 hours of TV per week, a figure … Continue Reading
Sprint acquires Virgin Mobile, looking to grow in prepaid phones
Sprint announced today that it’s acquiring Virgin Mobile USA in an effort to bring on more customers for its prepaid mobile phones. The deal adds up to $483 million, including the 13.1 percent of Virgin that Sprint already owns.
Sprint says it will merge Virgin with its Boost Mobile prepaid phone division, and will put Virgin chief executive Dan Schulman in charge of its overall prepaid business. With the economy causing more people to be … Continue Reading
New Sirf GPS technology means better mobile navigation devices coming soon
With new technology being released today by Sirf Technology, you can expect navigation systems in all sorts of consumer electronics devices, including the smallest of cell phones.
The San Jose, Calif.-based maker of global positioning system (GPS) chips has unveiled SiRFstar IV, with a lot of new features that will upgrade the capabilities of GPS systems.
The new architecture will reduce battery usage dramatically. That has been the Achilles heel of the technology, since GPS … Continue Reading
Heads up, hipsters: Oldsters are catching up in online time
Another surprise stat in Forrester Research’s annual Internet use survey of 40,000 Americans, which came out today: Generation Y users, ages 18 to 29, lead in time spent online, logging just over 19 hours per week on average for work and non-work purposes. But the slightly older Generation Xers, now aged 30 to 43, are right behind them at 17 hours per week average.
Even more surprising, all age groups above Gen X, meaning all … Continue Reading
Astoria Software raises funds to produce technical and product documentation
Astoria Software, maker of applications used to produce technical and product documentation for the technology, lifescience and manufacturing sectors, announced that it raised an undisclosed amount of financing from Goldman Sachs, BluePrint Ventures, Prism VentureWorks and Ticonderoga Capital, according to VentureWire.
Based in San Francisco, Astoria says it has between 35 and 40 customers, each with contracts amounting to $500,000 and more. It says it will use its new money to beef up its sales … Continue Reading
Quantenna adds new funds for wireless video chips
Quantenna, maker of chipsets used to improve video functionality in televisions and laptop, has added an unspecified amount to its third round of funding, which previously amounted to $13.8 million.
Based in Fremont, Calif., the company has now raised $44 million to date ($2 million more than it reported having in April), according to VentureWire. Its backers include Grazia Equity, Sequoia Capital, Sigma Partners, Southern Cross Venture Partners and Venrock.… Continue Reading
Americans, stabilized at 12 hours per week online, are goofing off smarter not harder
Forrester Research’s annual survey of Internet users is a serious matter. The company collected responses from 40,000 Americans in January and February and has been crunching the data for months. This year, Forrester found that while more households have broadband than ever before, “most media behaviors remained relatively flat” rather than growing to eat more and more of Net users’ time. Average weekly Internet usage held at 12 hours total work and non-work use, same … Continue Reading
Mixamo takes $4M for animation creation software
Mixamo, maker of technology that allows users to quickly and efficiently create motion-capture animation, just launched with $4 million from Granite Ventures and Keynote Ventures. Based in San Francisco, the company says it provides software that speeds up the process necessary to convert live-action footage into animation. For this reason, its target market is game developers.
With Mixamo, users can upload their characters and the program automatically animates them, it told VentureWire. This drops the … Continue Reading
How to run a startup, Steve Newcomb-style: Naked Thursdays
San Francisco and Silicon Valley have their share of quirky corporate cultures. It’s part of the place’s DNA to constantly experiment with organizational structure in search of that perfect blend of directed action and creative flexibility. Perennial entrepreneur Steve Newcomb would know a thing or two about it after launching five companies, one of which was Powerset, which sold to Microsoft last year for $100 million.
His latest endeavor is Virgance, an idea factory for … Continue Reading
SunRun takes $18M, advice from Accel to make solar consumer-friendly
SunRun, a company that sells rooftop-generated solar power to residential consumers for flat monthly fees (and a one-time startup cost), announced today that it raised $18 million in a second round of funding to market its services even more broadly.
Backed primarily by Accel Partners, SunRun is also implementing an aggressive web-based strategy to boost its profile and attract interest. It says Accel gave it helpful tips to grow traffic on its web site, now … Continue Reading
Americans hitting second-tier job search sites a lot more
It’s not surprising that Americans are hitting the category that online ratings company comScore calls “career services & development” more than ever. Many mid-level job sites like SnagAJob have had 30 to 60 percent growth between June 2008 and 2009.
But a new report from comScore reveals a mixed bag of results that varies wildly from site to site. Top-ranked CareerBuilder, as well as the third-place Monster, both had no growth in the past year, … Continue Reading
Augmented reality transit app adds MUNI, bus stops for SF
British iPhone application developer Acrossair is launching an augmented reality transit-finding app for San Francisco as soon as Apple releases a newer version of its iPhone OS in early September. Augmented reality is a nascent field that lets you superimpose graphics or information over a live camera feed, letting you see geotagged Wikipedia entries or videos related to your surroundings, for example.
The app works by letting you pan around with your iPhone 3GS’ viewfinder … Continue Reading
BookFresh raises $500K more to help you schedule everything online
BookFresh, a startup that helps a wide range of service providers (everyone from doctors to handymen) with the tools to schedule their appointments online, has raised $500,000 in new funding from well-known angel investor Ron Conway and other individuals.
San Mateo, Calif.-based BookFresh says it can make traditional businesses more cost-effective and efficient by eliminating most of the time spent on the phone, setting up appointments. And it’s good for consumers like me, too, since … Continue Reading
IBM buys analytics software firm SPSS for $1.2 billion
IBM is buying analytics software firm SPSS for $1.2 billion in cash as the recession-inspired tech consolidation wave continues.
The companies said the deal would strengthen IBM’s focus on information analytics, where the firms say they have complementary technologies and market positions. SPSS focuses on a category dubbed predictive analytics as a tool for managing companies and making smarter decisions.
IBM will pay $50 a share, a 42 percent premium above Monday’s closing stock price … Continue Reading
Did Steve Jobs personally ban Google Voice apps from the iPhone?
After a period in which iPhone app developers were allowed to create apps that worked with Google Voice — an all-automated system that manages voicemail and call routing for multiple phones, as well as automated transcription from voicemail to text — Apple has abruptly removed Google Voice apps from its App Store. Beyond removing apps written by part-timers, Apple also rejected an official Google Voice app created at Google.
“Richard Chipman from Apple just called,” … Continue Reading
$1.5 B merger of two historic scientific instrument makers could spell consolidation wave
Agilent Technologies and Varian are merging in a $1.5 billion deal that could spell a wave of consolidation in the scientific instrument market.
The two companies are the seminal firms of Silicon Valley’s original instrument-focused technology business. Agilent was the chip equipment and instrument making division of Hewlett Packard, founded in 1939 as the first tech firm in Silicon Valley, while Varian was founded by brothers Russell and Sigurd Varian in 1948.
The deal is … Continue Reading
Verizon promises developers access to a "billion" customers
[Disclosure: This post is one of a series of articles sponsored by Verizon. The company has given us editorial freedom to write what we'd like. In return for us covering the company's developer conference, Verizon will be running ads on our site in ensuing weeks.]
Verizon Wireless, the nation’s largest wireless carrier, will today announce more details of its plan to woo application developers and challenge the dominance of Apple’s iPhone App store.… Continue Reading
