Mimosa takes $4M for archiving email, files

Mimosa Systems, maker of software that archives email and other data, has raised $4 million of a $5.5 million round of debt, rights and securities, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Santa Clara, Calif., the company is backed by August Capital, Clearstone Venture Partners, Dot Edu Ventures, Focus Ventures, Jafco Ventures and Mayfield Fund. The company last raised money in June, bringing in $3 million in debt financing.… Continue Reading

5 O'Clock Roundup: Microsoft CFO out, new Google ads, an $85 million fraud?

Here’s the latest action:

Canopy Financial is accused of fraud — The health IT company, which raised $85 million in venture capital, allegedly made fraudulent financial statements, even forging some with fake KPMG letterhead. Spectrum Equity Investors may have taken the biggest loss on their recent $62.5 million investment in the company, TechCrunch reports.

Microsoft chief financial officer Chris Liddell to step down – It’s not clear why he is leaving, but he will be … Continue Reading

Aravo raises $19M for supplier info tracking

Aravo Solutions, provider of software that helps companies manage their supply chains and corporate risk and responsibility, has raised $19 million of a targeted $22.1 million fourth round of preferred stock, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in San Francisco, the company is backed by Big Sky Partners and individual investors Tony Mayer and Stephen Friedman. It raised $7 million last December.… Continue Reading

Clean energy initiatives get $63M from DOE with wind in the lead

Before the U.S. Department of Energy announced its $620 million in grants for Smart Grid demonstration projects today, it rolled out $63 million for clean energy innovations, with $45 million in stimulus money going exclusively toward the development of new wind turbine designs.

The government has unofficially anointed wind as the most promising of the renewable energy sources — over solar, geothermal, even biomass. Earlier this year, it doled out more than $1 billion in … Continue Reading

Clearwire takes on $920M more to build out wireless networks

Clearwire is raising a lot more cash as it attempts to build a national high-speed, 4G wireless network using WiMax technology. Today, it announced $920 million in debt financing.

The company already raised a little less than $2 billion from strategic investors and the sale of bonds, so its funding now totals $2.8 billion. Clearwire says it has the option to raise another $295 million from public shareholders.

The company was born last year from … Continue Reading

Driving app Waze turns the highway into a Pac-Man game with 'Road Goodies'

Mobile driving application Waze is adding a little extra incentive for users to help build out its crowdsourced maps. It already offers users points for “munching” up the road — i.e., driving around with Waze and validating the app’s directions. The latest version adds “road goodies,” special spots on the map that you get extra points for driving over.

Those goodies (hammers, cherries, and presents) are placed on Waze maps wherever the company has identified … Continue Reading

Announcing the DiscoveryBeat Apps Contest, sponsored by Flurry

We’re holding a contest in conjunction with our DiscoveryBeat event to be held on Dec. 8 at the Automattic Lounge on Pier 38 in San Francisco. The DiscoveryBeat Apps Contest is being sponsored by Flurry, which recently launched its AppCircle app recommendation engine for the iPhone.

Getting apps discovered is no easy task when there are tens or even hundreds of thousands of competing apps on a social or mobile platform. So the event is … Continue Reading

Amidio launches Touch DJ with 'visual mixing'

Mobile music app maker Amidio launched its Touch DJ application for the iPhone today, allowing users to spin and mix music right on their handsets. Since a demo of the app appeared on YouTube on Nov. 17, it has received 35,000 hits. People are excited worldwide.

One of the major hurdles standing in the way of a mobile DJ in the past was that the iPhone and iPod Touch only have one stereo output — … Continue Reading

Youtego launches more personal approach to social networking

Startup Youtego is bringing a new experience to social networking. It’s all about using images to define yourself, your life, and your interests, and in the little while that I’ve been playing with my account, I’m already having more fun than Facebook ever provided.

Youtego’s main screen is a layout of tiled categories. It starts you off with six: “I love”, “I know”, “I can”, “My work”, “My education” and finally “I”. In each category … Continue Reading

EVO Media Group raises $1.5M to help you build a moneymaking website

EVO Media Group, which runs the DevHub.com service, says it’s making headway in the website-building market by adding a crucial ingredient — money. And the Seattle startup just raised $1.5 million in new funding itself.

Like Weebly, Yola, and others, DevHub makes it easy to build a web site by just dragging and dropping the elements into place. But the people who use those services tend to be individuals who want personal web sites, or … Continue Reading

Smart Grid handouts keep rolling: DOE earmarks $620M for demo projects

Less than a month after it handed out $3.4 billion in stimulus grants to utilities working toward a cleaner, more efficient electrical grid, the U.S. Department of Energy says it is doling out another $620 million to projects working on demonstration-scale Smart Grid technologies. Today, it named 32 recipients working on every aspect of the grid, including smart meters, transmission equipment, storage devices and energy monitoring systems.

The idea is to support demonstration projects that … Continue Reading

Sony's MAG can stage massive online combat (with video and beta codes)

Sony’s MAG is an experiment in group psychology. In this online game, 256 players can engage in first-person combat in the same online session. The question is whether the games will be organized duels between armies, or a crazy free-for-all where it’s every soldier for him- or herself.

I played the beta of MAG (which originally meant Massive Action Game), a multiplayer-only online game debuting on the PlayStation 3 early next year. If the game … Continue Reading

Telegent files for IPO as public market thaws even more

Chip design firm Telegent has filed for a $250 million public offering, capping off an exciting few days of IPO action. Last week, network security provider Fortinet sold 12.5 million shares of common stock for $12.50, raising just over $156.2 million. And web marketer QuinStreet filed for its own $250 million IPO.

Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., Telegent provides designs for semiconductors that allow people to watch live television broadcasts on their computers and phones. It … Continue Reading

Toys R Us finds hordes of fans on Facebook

Facebook announced today that Toys R Us has become the fastest growing brand on Facebook, growing between 40,000 to 95,000 fans per day over the past week. Toys R Us recently released a new catalog on their Facebook Fan Page, called the “Big Book” and currently has 396,301 fans.

Unsure of the exact reason for the tremendous growth, Facebook “assumes it’s the result of an ad campaign,” juxtaposed with a number of features on the … Continue Reading

Google Calendar testing an easy event scheduler

Updated

A number of companies offer better ways to schedule meetings than the standard back-and-forth over email — Huddle, TimeBridge, and Presdo are a few that come to mind. Now Google is experimenting with a feature that tackles the same problem, though a bit less ambitiously.

Here’s how it works: When you create an event in Google Calendar, you can add a list of the guests that you’d like to invite. Then, if you have … Continue Reading

Facebook establishes dual-class stock structure

Facebook is establishing a dual-class stock structure, a move that could help pave the way to an initial public offering in the future. The company gave no time-line for such an offering and instead said it will help give current shareholders more power to guide the long-term vision of the company.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook is converting all current shareholders to Class B stock, which carries ten times the voting power of … Continue Reading

Facebook co-founder's Asana raises $9M from Benchmark, Andreessen-Horowitz

Asana, the productivity management startup from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and lead engineer Justin Rosenstein, has raked in $9 million from Benchmark Capital and Andreessen-Horowitz.

Asana is probably one of the more anticipated startups in Silicon Valley right now. Moskovitz, Mark Zuckerberg and Chris Hughes founded Facebook together during college at Harvard University. Rosenstein was another early Facebook employee. The pair are trying to re-imagine productivity management in a way that’s completely native to the … Continue Reading

Siri raises $15.5M more for virtual personal assistant

For those of you awaiting the next generation of personal assistants, San Jose startup Siri, who’s product aims to be a virtual personal assistant (VPA), has just raised $15.5 million in round two funding from Menlo Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures says VentureWire.

Siri leverages speech-to-text technology and artificial intelligence to allow users to “just say what they want to do.” The VPA then takes over and does the rest. Siri explains: “You can discover things … Continue Reading