eBay to sell 65 percent of Skype for $1.9 billion
[Update: the investor group has since announced it would buy 65 percent of Skype for $1.9 billion, valuing Skype at $2.75 billion]
eBay is expected to announce a deal on Tuesday to sell its Skype web-calling division to a group that includes Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, the New York Times reported.
The report cited two anonymous sources that said the investor buyout group includes Andreessen Horowitz, the new firm launched by Andreessen and Ben Horowitz … Continue Reading
Opera 10 is here, but do any of you care?
Opera Software just released the final version of Opera 10, the latest revamp of its pioneering-but-not-terribly-popular web browser.
Could this be the breakthrough Opera needs to reach a big audience in the United States? Opera is doing all right financially, but in the US, it accounts for only 1.18 percent of the browser market, according to the W3Counter. (Opera is used by a slightly higher percentage of VentureBeat visitors, but not much higher.) The company … Continue Reading
Silicon Mitus raises second round in rare chip funding
Silicon Mitus raised a second round of funding for its business of making power management chips. The funding stands out, since relatively few chip startups are getting funding these days. The amount wasn’t disclosed.
The Seoul-based firm is headed by Youm Huh, and it makes custom chips for flat panel displays, mobile applications and energy-related hardware.
The round was led by ePlanet Ventures and participants included Walden International. Lip-Bu Tan, chairman of Walden, said in … Continue Reading
Cleantech due for a comeback? Khosla Ventures raises $1.1B, hires former Facebook CFO
Update: Khosla Ventures just sent us a press release confirming the news.
Looks like not everyone’s afraid of the ongoing shakeup of the venture capital industry. Khosla Ventures, the firm headed by Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, has raised two funds totaling $1.1 billion to invest mostly into companies seeking to clean up the environment.
We already wrote that Khosla was raising the funds, but the New York Times has confirmed that he’s pulled together … Continue Reading
SealCOS filters search results using certified brand sites
SealCOS is announcing today that it is launching a certification process to ensure that consumers are visiting an authentic site belonging to a well-known brand. The Seal of a Certified Site is meant to sift officials sites from the pretenders.
New York-based SealCOS’s recognition is like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval and will be used to identify official web sites for all sorts of brands. That’s necessary because some of the imposters can often … Continue Reading
Prefinery helps companies build better beta tests
Beta testing can sometimes seem like a meaningless term, with Google in particular keeping applications in beta for ridiculous periods of time. But it’s still an important tool for web testing and development, and one that can get complicated, when you’re trying to keep things private. Now a startup called Prefinery says it wants to handle the hassle of beta test management for you.
Even though the main point of a beta is to gather … Continue Reading
Is it time for the venture capital "two-and-twenty" to end?
Private equity is starting to get the hint. Is it time for venture capital to do the same?
For more than a generation, “two-and-twenty” has been a rule of thumb for management fees in the venture capital industry. It means fund managers get twenty percent of any profits they generate and two percent of total assets under management in fees.
Chris Dixon, who co-founded Hunch with Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake and made early stage investments … Continue Reading
Medsphere raises $12 million for electronic health records
Turning the U.S.’s rickety paper-based system of health records into a state-of-the-art electronic one is no pretty task.
But someone’s got to do it.
Medsphere Systems Corporation, an open-source electronic health records provider, said it raised $12 million today to meet demand from hospitals racing to keep their eligibility for federal funds by revamping their records systems.
Carlsbad, Calif.-based Medsphere is one of several companies that are adapting VistA, or the Veteran Health Administration’s electronic … Continue Reading
Roundup: Android sales slump, Chinese piracy boom, book publishers still hate the Internet
Here’s the latest action:
Top Android app developer spills his sad, sad sales stats – Matt Hall has some of the top-selling apps on Google’s Android Market. For that, his company has earned a pathetic $62.39 average daily revenue. Matt’s list of Android Market failings that he thinks have washed away sales opportunities:
“No screenshots (Totally insane. No idea why.)
“325 character application description maximum (Why do I get 4.208 × 10-8 of my free
Analyst: iPhone secure against competitors, AT&T not so much
As Palm, Google, and others roll out their smartphone platforms, you might think Apple should be worried about keeping the momentum going on its iPhone. Not so, says Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster in a note sent out earlier today — the competition just drives more people to Apple.
Noting strong sales of the Apple’s latest model, the iPhone 3G S, Munster writes:
The smart phone industry has effectively crowned the iPhone and its App … Continue Reading
Facebook revamps sharing as users share 1 billion pieces of content a week
Facebook revamped its design for sharing content off other websites as the company pushes users to actively distribute links and videos through the social network. The update is a slight improvement over the older one: the design is cleaner and gives more space to the content you’re sharing.
Similar to composing a private Facebook message, the sharing window incorporates a thumbnail of the content and prompts you to add a comment. It’s still a tad … Continue Reading
Fox will air Tweet-peats of Fringe and Glee
Could Twitter save the stale summer rerun? Television network Fox is hoping that the popular social media will bring new life (and additional viewers) to repeats of the shows Fringe and Glee.
During this week’s repeat episodes, Fox will broadcast live tweets from producers and actors, both on the shows’ respective Twitter accounts, and scrolling on the screen throughout the episodes. Think Pop-Up Video for the techno-savvy masses. Those who want to become even more … Continue Reading
Negotiating with the mob: LivingSocial harnesses Facebook-organized buying
If the online masses can be harnessed to the millions for YouTube videos and protests, it’s only a mental hop, skip and jump to organizing the same for shopping deals.
That’s what LivingSocial is trying to tap into with its “Deals” service launching in New York City today.
The premise is simple: Get a local business to offer a deal only if a certain number of people sign up. Send it out on Facebook and … Continue Reading
DEMO speakers: Mike Olson, Shanna Tellerman, on raising VC in the downturn
The life blood of Silicon Valley is venture capital, but the industry is under huge strain. Some estimates suggest venture capital dollars could be cut in half.
On Monday, Sept. 21, to kick things off at the DEMO conference in San Diego, we’ve organized a dealmaker dinner, where we’ll discuss “The good, bad and ugly of raising venture capital in the downturn.”
One thing hasn’t changed: Entrepreneurs with a great idea usually need money in … Continue Reading
JiWire study dodges the big question: How many Wi-Fi hotspot users are there?
Wi-Fi ad network JiWire has published a study on roaming Wi-Fi users demographics and behavior.
The takeaway from the PDF-format report: Wi-Fi users are, as you might expect, wealthier and spendier than average. There’s a strong business traveler demographic. Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch make up nearly 100% of the non-laptop audience for Wi-Fi. 38 percent of hotspot users have made a purchase over a wireless network.
But contrary to the coffeshop stereotype, far more … Continue Reading
Twitter search gets threaded with Twitoaster
Twitter search engines have sprouted everywhere this year. But they often list results by time published, stripping them out of context.
French developer Arnaud Meunier wanted to get around that, so he built a conversational search engine through his client Twitoaster.
Twitoaster keeps track of Twitter conversations; it shows who has answered your tweets and extracts images and links out of replies. It has a few neat little features: It ranks the Twitter users who … Continue Reading
iWalk gains $21M, loses Negroponte
iWalk, a startup in Cambridge, Mass., that builds “wearable devices for human augmentation” has announced a $21 million Series B round led by Cambridge-based General Catalyst Partners. GCP partner John Simon has taken a seat on the board, while iWalk co-founder and MIT prof Nicholas Negroponte — most recently known for the XO computer project — has disappeared from the list.
The company’s sole product to date is the PowerFoot One, a computerized, robotic ankle … Continue Reading
Cisco video: Is cloud computing powered by angels?
I guess no one has a clue what the increasingly fashionable term “cloud computing” means. At least, that’s the message we’re meant to take away from a new video from Cisco (embedded below), where many people are asked what cloud computing is, and most of the on-camera responses are confused, way out there, or both.
Here’s my favorite description: “Cloud computing is where God allowed all the clouds to be connected together by the angels.” … Continue Reading
Asus rumored to sell cheaper ultra-thin laptop next week
Apple’s MacBook Air will soon be challenged on its super-slimness, by Windows-powered computers from Asus that may lack Apple’s aluminum-cased pizazz but will cost a lot less. Welcome to the world of co-opetition: Asus manufactures components for some of Apple’s MacBook and iPod products.
Digitimes reports that Taiwan-based Asus, maker of the low-cost Eee PC netbook, will begin selling two ultra-slim notebooks on September 7th in mainland China, Taiwan, and parts of Europe (no word … Continue Reading
Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars coming to iPhone
In another boost for games on the iPhone, console game king Rockstar Games is preparing to launch two major games on the iPhone and iPod Touch.
You could call this Take 57 of the “major game brands invade the iPhone” movie. We’ll see if Rockstar, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive, can crack the code and stand out among the iPhone’s apps, which currently number 83,653. (Of that number, 16,482 are games, according to Mobclix.) … Continue Reading
