How do you rid your iPhone of the malicious "Duh" worm?

[updated]

A new, malicious worm, dubbed the “Duh” worm, has hit jailbroken phones, grabbing personal information, including banking codes. But there are apparently a couple of ways to protect yourself.

U.K.–based security firm Sophos, which confirmed Duh’s existence says you’re likely to know when you’ve been hacked. Chester Wisniewski, a senior security advisory with Sophos, notes that “Duh’s” accessing information rapidly drains the iPhone’s battery. “And anyone playing by Apple’s rules is, of course, safe.” … Continue Reading

ReaMetrix raises $2.1M to develop cell lines

ReaMetrix, a company that prepares cell lines that express certain proteins over others, has brought in $2.1 million in venture capital, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in San Carlos, Calif., it is backed by Baring Private Equity Asia, Sequoia Capital India and Mobius Venture Capital.… Continue Reading

HootSuite lets you schedule status updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter

HootSuite, which started as a way to navigate your Twitter stream, is broadening its grasp on the social web — it’s adding LinkedIn updates and letting you schedule status updates on the social networks it tracks.

The idea is to become a social media dashboard, so you can update your Facebook, LinkedIn, Ping.fm and Twitter status and track what friends are doing on each network directly from HootSuite instead of visiting each web destination. After … Continue Reading

Headmix raises $540K for workflow, hiring, training services

Headmix, provider of the WorkSimple software system that helps companies onboard employees and give them tools to collaborate once they’re there, has raised $540,000 of an anticipated $660,000 round of equity, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in San Francisco, Headmix is backed by Baseline Ventures and Camp Ventures.… Continue Reading

Calibra takes $1.4M to for insulin delivery devices

Calibra Medical, a biotech company with an insulin delivery device used to ease diabetes management, has brought in $1.4 million in convertible promissory notes and warrants, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Redwood City, Calif., the company is backed by Canaan Partners, Intersouth Partners, Skyline Ventures, Frazier Healthcare Ventures, and Three Arch Partners. It last raised funds in August 2008 amounting to $35 million.… Continue Reading

Adconion Media Group buys Joost assets, ending a long saga

Content network firm Adconion Media Group said today that it has acquired the assets of Joost, the online video service founded by Skype founders and the subject of a lawsuit drama this fall.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The company was founded by Skype and Kazaa founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. Adconion, which has 300 million monthly unique users, said it will pursue Joost’s new strategy, announced in June, of focusing … Continue Reading

Roboni-I: The wandering robot that lets you play video games

South African firm Robonica hopes to conquer the hearts of gift givers this holiday season with hybrid entertainment that combines the interactivity of video games and the physical fun of toy robots.

The company’s first product, Roboni-I, is a robot with two wheels that wanders around on its own. Since you can play games with it and engage in robot activities on the web, Tom Dusenberry, head of North America for Robonica, refers to the … Continue Reading

Pixable lets you print out customized calendars from Facebook content

Online photo service Pixable, which lets you print albums from your Facebook content, is launching its Calendar Creator feature today. The new feature will let you print out calendars to remember important dates from your information stored on Facebook, which is where many of us now have all of our photos (Facebook claims more than 2 billion photos are uploaded to the site each month).

Facebook’s birthday reminders have turned all of us into those … Continue Reading

Gravity Sling shows how virtual goods sales work on the iPhone

Riptide Games has revealed how well virtual goods sales work on the iPhone with its new game Gravity Sling. It’s yet another case study in how to get ahead in the iPhone economy.

There’s a lot of hope that virtual goods sales — known as in-app purchases on the iPhone — will help make Apple’s AppStore much more profitable for app developers. Virtual goods have generated huge revenue growth for Facebook apps this year, but … Continue Reading

Milo.com gets big-name investors to help you find local deals

A company called Milo.com wants to stand out from the hordes of e-commerce sites  by providing users with information about what’s on the shelves of local stores. Investors just backed this mission with a $4 million first round.

That’s a respectable amount, but more impressive than the sum is who’s providing it. True Ventures led the round, while a number of high-profile angel investors also participated, including Jeff Clavier of SoftTechVC, Ron Conway of SV … Continue Reading

Plato's Forms raises $545K to correct bad journalism

Plato’s Forms, a San Francisco startup that describes itself as “a professional messaging platform focused on the problem of the rapid proliferation of misinformation in media,” just announced raising a $545,000 seed round. The company was founded by Darryl Siry, senior vice president of marketing and sales at Tesla Motors, and Ben Metcalfe. The investment comes from Siry, Zelkova Ventures, and individual angel investors.

Plato’s Forms plans to launch its first product in Spring 2010.… Continue Reading

BookRenter raises $6M to challenge Chegg in textbook rentals

Textbook rental site Chegg.com may be raising tremendous amounts of funding, but competitor BookRenter isn’t sitting still — it just announced a $6 million first round.

That number is dwarfed by the $84.2 million Chegg has raised (not counting debt), but BookRenter chief executive Mehdi Maghsoodnia says his Campbell, Calif., company is building a much more capital efficient business. Both services allow students to check out books at the beginning of the semester, then return … Continue Reading

Vidly adds video comments to your blog … and Chamillionaire's

Video startup Vidly is holding true to its promise to expand beyond Twitter with a new tool called Vidly Express, an easy way to add video comments to any blog.

The San Francisco company says publishers just add some code to their site, and the code creates a button for video replies next to every post. Vidly Express also integrates with commenting system Disqus (used by VentureBeat, among many others).

You can see the feature … Continue Reading

PlayMesh brings farming to the iPhone with iFarm

PlayMesh became famous on the iPhone when it launched its iMafia game in January. Now it has scored big again with iFarm, currently the No. 1 free app on the iPhone.

In less than 24 hours, iFarm has jumped into the top 25 ranks on the iPhone AppStore, claiming the position as the No. 1 farm game. This game is probably worth watching closely, since farming has become such a huge money maker on Facebook.… Continue Reading

Gridwise, IEC make pact to make utilities smarter

The Gridwise Alliance, a nonprofit coalition of stakeholders developing the Smart Grid, signed a memorandum of understanding today with the International Engineering Consortium to team up and make utilities more intelligent.

Presumably, the Alliance will help to integrate intelligent utilities curriculum into the IEC’s programs. The IEC is an educational NPO that connects the private sector with the university system to ensure up to date curricula and provides continuing education courses for professionals. The IEC … Continue Reading

Roundup: Microsoft and News Corp. plot Google's demise, Taptu and Google Maps Navigation hop on Android, and more

Here’s the latest action:

Amazon Web Services now calculates your app costs — To give users a better idea of how their applications will work and how much they will cost to run on Amazon Web Services, the company has just released a redesign of its AWS Simple Monthly Calculator. This tool allows users to select their regions and services in order to generate a customized quote.

Google Maps Navigation comes to Android — Owners … Continue Reading

Google-backed Pixazza opens up photo tagging service to help blogs earn revenue

Pixazza, a Google Ventures-backed startup, is opening up its crowdsourced photo-tagging service, which can turn any Web site into an online store.

The Mountain View-based startup uses an army of taggers to identify products and link them to shopping sites like Amazon or Zappos. For example, you might see a photo of actress Penelope Cruz wearing a new outfit on a fashion blog. If you roll over the image, you’ll see links to similar products … Continue Reading

Google prepares to launch Chrome extensions

Google says it’s getting close to adding extensions (which users install to add features to their web browsers) to its Chrome browser.

Specifically, Google announced today that developers can not only build extensions, but also upload them into Google’s gallery showcasing Chrome extensions. That way, “developers have time to publish their extensions ahead of [Google's] full launch.” The post doesn’t include any specifics on when that full launch will come, but it sounds pretty close.… Continue Reading