Kakai secures $7.5M for stealthy consumer electronics device

Kakai, a secretive startup said to be working on a new portable consumer electronics device, has brought in $7.5 million in equity, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Santa Clara, Calif., the company is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, the new firm founded by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. Kakai has no web site yet.… Continue Reading

Google's Nexus One may launch on Jan. 5

It looks like the Nexus One, a.k.a. the Google Phone, may go on sale in just a week.

Sources are telling TmoNews that you’ll be able to order the Nexus One directly from Google starting at 9am on Jan. 5. The site also has a screenshot from an internal T-Mobile site, which more-or-less confirms some previous reports: That Google is launching a new phone in early January based on its Android smartphone operating system, and … Continue Reading

Center'd lands $1.9M to help you find local events, activities

Center’d, creator of social networks revolving around local events and activities, has brought in $1.9 toward a targeted $4 million round of equity, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Menlo Park, Calif., the company is backed by KeyNote Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners and a handful of angel investors.… Continue Reading

Pacific Lake Partners raises $35M fund to back young entrepreneurs' buyouts

Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capital firm Pacific Lake Partners is still looking to raise $35 million for a rather interesting new fund. The fund will specifically target young entrepreneurs looking to buy and turn around other people’s startups — a fairly uncommon approach for investors.

The firm says it will give recipients between $300,000 and $500,000 to aid them in their search for the right opportunity, according to Dow Jones VentureWire. The term “search fund” … Continue Reading

Facebook was the most visited site in the country on Christmas

Facebook became the most visited site in the U.S. for the first time during Christmas, topping Google, according to research firm Hitwise. On Christmas Day, Facebook attracted 7.81 percent of U.S. web traffic, compared to 7.51 percent for Google. On Christmas Eve it was 7.56% for Facebook and 7.54% for Google. The social networking site has historically gotten a traffic spike during the holidays. (Hitwise reported that it reached an earlier all-time high on Christmas … Continue Reading

VentureBeat is hiring! We seek an ad ops manager and a director of advertising sales

VentureBeat is still hiring.

Consider working for one of the most influential business blogs — with syndication across outlets like the New York Times — that also hosts exciting events to debate the most disruptive technologies of the day, including DEMO (the leading launchpad event for emerging technology products), MobileBeat, GamesBeat and most recently GreenBeat.

In addition to hiring writers (contact me), we’re also looking to fill the following two positions (email us here):

Manager, … Continue Reading

Will good come from the huge piracy of Modern Warfare 2?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has broken records for game sales. So it’s only natural that it’s also the most-pirated game of 2009, according to downloads measured by TorrentFreak.

Activision’s Modern Warfare 2 was the most pirated game on the PC and the Xbox 360 this year. And Nintendo’s New Super Mario Bros. was the most pirated on the Wii. Modern Warfare 2 sold 4.7 million units in the U.S. and the United Kingdom … Continue Reading

5 o'clock roundup: AT&T restarts New York iPhone sales, Totlol alleges Google sabotage

Here’s the latest action:

AT&T stops, starts New York iPhone sales — The mobile carrier said it temporarily stopped selling iPhones on the web to buyers with a New York zip code due to “online fraudulent activity” or because it “periodically chooses to modify [its] promotions and distributions channels.” Or something. Especially at first, there was a lot of suspicion that AT&T was having difficulty dealing with the demand for data from Manhattan cell phone … Continue Reading

Young startup LetMeGo.com to take on big-time travel sites with extra-personal service

Most of us have special requests when we travel, but don’t really expect our lodging providers to be interested in these much less take them into account. Nevertheless, celebrities, heads of state and royalty can depend on their lodging providers to cater to their every whim. If Alexander Torrenegra, serial web entrepreneur and founder of new venture LetMeGo.com, has his way, you may soon get the same kind of service.

With LetMeGo.com, travelers upload their … Continue Reading

City data fuels cool apps: call out bad taxi drivers, find parking

“Government 2.0” has been a big buzzword of 2009, with thought-leaders like Tim O’Reilly and The Sunlight Foundation showing the way. It’s a movement that pushes public institutions to use technologies that have thrived in the last five years (like social networking and blogging) to foster closer relationships with citizens. This entails being more open with data and encouraging people to build apps around that data and transform it through mashups for use by others.… Continue Reading

Rally brings social geo-location to your real friends

All over the social Web these days, there’s a race to get as many friends, followers, readers, or subscribers as possible—most of them people you don’t know. As location-based social applications like Foursquare and Gowalla grow, they’re broadcasting your location to all those people, connecting you in one more way to a lot of people you’ve never heard of. As our “circle of friends” grows out of control, we wind up more public than we … Continue Reading

Dorthy.com wants to be your New Year's resolution tracker

Over the past couple of weeks, personal-goal startup Dorthy.com quietly rolled out a major upgrade, just in time to capture your New Year’s resolutions.

The company behind Dorthy wants you to use the site to make — and keep — your personal resolutions for 2010, and more generally all of your long-terms goals.

Dorthy hosts what it calls dreampages. Members set up a sharable dreampage with an avowed personal goal, whether it’s “build wells in … Continue Reading

Jingle Networks takes in $6.8 for free directory assistance

Jingle Networks, the startup that operates 1-800-FREE-411, a national telephone directory service, has raised $6.75 million in new venture funding, according to an SEC filing. Based in Menlo park, Calif., the company received this recent round from undisclosed investors.

It has now raised an impressive $88.7 million to date from a group including First Round Capital, Lead Dog Ventures, Liberty Associated Partners, Rose Tech Ventures, Goldman Sachs, the Hearst Corporation, Flybridge Capital, IDG Ventures and … Continue Reading

Biofuel maker Codexis stuns cleantech market, files for $100M IPO

As blog after blog comes out with end-of-year green IPO predictions, the same three companies have consistently been tapped: Solyndra (which filed for its $300 million public sale two weeks ago), Silver Spring Networks (the anointed Smart Grid leader) and Tesla Motors (because it makes the prettiest electric car of the bunch). But today, Codexis, maker of engineered microbes and catalysts for green fuel, chemical and pharmaceutical production has surprised us all, filing for a … Continue Reading

IGN comes out on top among biggest game news sites

Video game sales are hurting because of the recession, but gamers are still consuming an awful lot of news about video games.

Traffic at the top 50 gaming sites grew to 20.2 million unique visitors, up 23 percent year over year in November, according to Kantar Media’s Compete.com traffic measurement subsidiary. By comparison, the category including games, music and movies grew 9 percent to 40.2 million unique visitors in November. Overall, game news sites have … Continue Reading

eBay: 1.5 million items purchased via mobile this holiday season

Shoppers are doing more holiday gift-buying from their mobile phones, according to new numbers from eBay. The e-commerce giant says users purchased 1.5 million eBay items from either the eBay mobile website or the company’s iPhone application over the recent holiday season. That’s three times the amount sold during the same period last year.

Just as eye-catching as the overall numbers are some of the individual purchases that eBay describes. I’m used to thinking of … Continue Reading

Climate bill chaos: Your guide to the two newest proposals

In the madness leading up to and following the U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen two weeks ago, many have lost track of the climate change legislation working its way through Congress in the U.S. The last many heard of it, the controversial Kerry-Boxer bill was bound up in committee, poised for almost certain doom. Since then, two shiny, new proposals have been put on the table. But do they really have a better shot?

Before … Continue Reading

iPhone photos become high art in gallery competition

When photography became commonplace in the late 19th century, it took several decades and pioneers like Alfred Stieglitz before it became accepted as fine art. Today, with ubiquitous cell phone cameras and now mobile live-video streaming, expect the divide between high and low art to become even narrower.

A San Francisco Bay Area gallery is testing that idea with a photo contest that asks people to submit their artiest iPhone-taken pictures. At between 2 and … Continue Reading