Smartsheet launches a spreadsheet-like way to manage sales

Smartsheet has already expanded its work management application with cool features like a way to crowdsource tasks. Now it’s adding a customer relationship management (CRM) service on top of that.

The goal of the Smartsheet Sales Pipeline Management app is to give small companies an easier transition from the tool many of them are using to track their sales leads — a spreadsheet. At some point, you’ll want something more sophisticated, but if you switch … Continue Reading

5 O'Clock Roundup: Amazon's all-time high, Microsoft's ignorable low, the Windows 7 questions no one but David Pogue wants to be seen answering

Amazon shares hit an all-time record -- Today’s $118.49 price is higher than the $400-plus days of 1999, because of splits in the years since. Today’s share price would be about $700 without the splits, says the Wall Street Journal. The Journal hauled out Mary Meeker, a big booster of Amazon and other dot-com stocks in the late 1990s who still follows the sector:

Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker attributed Amazon’s recent surge to … Continue Reading

Icahn haz Yahoo board resignation

Carl Icahn, the Yahoo investor who attempted a hostile takeover of the company last year, has resigned from the board of directors.

Icahn’s move against Yahoo’s board, especially then-chief executive Jerry Yang, was prompted by the failure of the struggling company to reach an acquisition deal with Microsoft. Last July, Icahn threatened to try to get Yahoo’s entire board replaced with members more open to a Microsoft deal, but instead negotiated to get a seat … Continue Reading

The Tennessee Valley Authority goes green

After decades spent working with the Army Corps of Engineers to dam every wild river in the region — most them more than once — the Tennessee Valley Authority is taking steps to go green.

As the largest public utility in the country, the TVA owns more than 32,000 megawatts of production capacity. Now, it has announced that it will buy 200 megawatts more from other projects in the Dakotas. These other projects, owned and … Continue Reading

Will Shanghai become the Silicon Valley of "green revolution?"

First Silicon Valley venture capitalists, and now the Obama administration, are fretting that China might overtake the U.S. as the leader in green innovation.

And their fears are well-placed. A survey of Americans about their views on greenhouse gases, released yesterday, shows fewer Americans see evidence that global temperatures are rising. Only 35 percent of people polled by the Pew Research Center earlier this month said they see global warming as a very serious problem, … Continue Reading

Massive funding to lift Smart Grid companies. Look for it next month

The federal government has earmarked $4 billion dollars for companies promising to build out a Smart Grid and improve power efficiency, but Silicon Valley’s startup community hasn’t seen much of that money yet.

That may change later this month and in November, when the Department of Energy will begin dishing out as much as billions of dollars to the nation’s utilities to support investments in smarter, more efficient technology. Those utilities will then finally have … Continue Reading

MLB.com vets get funding for social media startup Hot Potato

Hot Potato is, to quote Media Memo, “a buzzy startup that’s supposed to let users converse about a particular event, whether they’re attending it in person or watching from afar.” The company, led by eight-year MLB.com veteran Justin Shaffe, is still under wraps, but Media Memo writer Peter Kafka has outed a $1 million funding round led by First Round Capital and RRE Ventures. Valley A-lister Ron Conway and real-time investment firm Betaworks have also … Continue Reading

VentureBeat-DEMO meetup in London — see you at the Sanderson Hotel

VentureBeat is coming to London!

We’re hosting cocktails on Wednesday, Oct 28., at the groovy Sanderson Hotel in London’s Soho from 6 to 8pm. I’ll be in London to moderate at the Symbian mobile conference SEE next week, but wanted to take the opportunity to meet up with local technology entrepreneurs, too. We’re meeting for casual conversation at the Hotel’s Long Bar Courtyard, where we have a private table area reserved with a hostess. Register … Continue Reading

Twilight of the venture gods: Is Sequoia spreading itself thin?

Along with Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Sequoia Capital is probably the most famous venture capital firm around, but it may have overreached in the last couple years, writes Adam Lashinsky in Fortune.

Lashinsky writes that Sequoia attempted to branch out from venture capital into a broader range of investments, with a project modeled on college endowments and dubbed the Heritage Fund. However, Sequoia’s plans collided with last year’s financial crash. The firm has yet … Continue Reading

WhitePages: Android users more likely to buy apps than iPhone users

iPhone app shoppers outnumber Android consumers several times over. But WhitePages, which makes popular phone directory and caller-ID applications for both platforms, reports a surprisingly high conversion rate among Android users compared to their iPhone counterparts.

WhitePages VP of Mobile, Kevin Nakao, told me in a phone call, “Conversion rates and premium penetration rates are better than we expected. We had projected five to six percent of people would buy the app. Instead we’re seeing … Continue Reading

Autodesk's Sketchbook Mobile redefines fingerpainting

Sketchbook Mobile is the iPhone version of Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro digital painting application. The original release hit #1 on Apple’s entertainment app download list.

The video below shows off the new 1.1 version of Sketchbook Mobile. The app’s gesture-controlled brushes have been significantly advanced, pushing the edge of what you can do with your fingers on an iPhone. Why the video producer parked this feature 1:43 into the clip instead of opening with it, I … Continue Reading

Facebook pulls highlights back into the main news feed

Taking aim at information overload, Facebook is now allowing users to see its news feed in two ways. They can either see a live stream with updates ordered by time, or the most interesting content as judged by comments and likes.

“While seeing real-time activities is extremely valuable, we also want to be sure you don’t miss other interesting content,” wrote Raylene Yung, a Facebook engineer, in a company blog post today.

Stories in the … Continue Reading

Pooch sniffs out funds for canine fashion site

PoochOnline.com, an e-commerce site hawking doggy couture, has taken a seed-stage investment from San Francisco firm Ecosystem Ventures to expand its selection of pet apparel, including snakeskin collars and miniature leather biker coats, reports the Wall Street Journal. Based in Saratoga, Calif., the site clearly targets affluent pet owners, also selling furniture and high-design beds and dog houses branded as “petchitecture.”

Operating in Silicon Valley, Europe and India, Ecosystem Ventures is also an investor in … Continue Reading

Mimosa gulps $1.6M to archive data

Mimosa Systems, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based company that provides software for data archiving, has brought in $1.6 million in debt, rights and securities, according to a filing with the SEC. It is backed by August Capital, Clearstone Venture Partners, Dot Edu Ventures, Focus Ventures, Jafco Ventures and Mayfield Fund. It has now raised $21.6 million to date, including $3 million secured in June.… Continue Reading

G2 Microsystems closes in on $1.25M for integrated circuits

G2 Microsystems, maker of integrated circuits for mobile resource management, is only $74,000 short of its targeted $1.25 million round of debt, according to a filing with the SEC. The Campbell, Calif. company’s backers include Deutsche Bank Capital Partners, Siemens Venture Capital, Starfish Ventures and UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund.… Continue Reading

Ensphere takes $4M for optical semiconductor equipment

Ensphere Solutions, maker of fabless semiconductor equipment for optical interfaces, has raised $4 million from Egyptian venture capital fund Ideavelopers. Based in Santa Clara, Calif., the company is supplying tranceivers for Intel’s Light Peak technology — a new interconnect technology designed to transmit data at a lightning rate of 10 gigabytes per second. Intel says it could reach up to 100 gigabytes per second in the next ten years.… Continue Reading

Microsoft reports revenue declines but beats Wall Street estimates

Microsoft reported revenues for its first fiscal quarter today were down 14 percent at $12.92 billion, but the company still beat Wall Street estimates.

Net income was $3.57 billion, or 40 cents a share. Analysts had expected 32 cents a share, and the stock is up today. Revenues from yesterday’s launch of the Windows 7 operating system will be recorded in the second fiscal quarter, which closes on Dec.31. While business demand was weak in … Continue Reading

Technorati: If you blog, you have to tweet

The microblogging service Twitter made a huge impact on bloggers in 2009, according to blog search engine Technorati‘s final installment of the State of the Blogosphere 2009 report.

About 73 percent of bloggers use Twitter, compared to about 14 percent of the general population. Bloggers say they use Twitter to promote their blogs, bring interesting links to light, and to get a feel for what people are talking about. About 52 percent of Twittering bloggers … Continue Reading

Aviir pumps up with $1M for heart diagnostics

Aviir, the Palo Alto, Calif. company that turned Stanford research into technology used to diagnose heart conditions, has brought in $1 million in equity, debt, rights and securities, according to a filing with the SEC. It adds this amount to $1 million raised in August and $7.8 million in bridge financing secured in January from Aberdare Ventures, Bay City Capital and New Leaf Venture Partners. Before that it raised funds in March 2008 amounting to … Continue Reading