Eye-Fi adds new Apple Store memory card and thousands of Wi-Fi hotspots

Eye-Fi had the smart idea of putting Wi-Fi wireless networking into photo memory cards, and it continues to run with it. Today, the company is announcing a new version of its image-uploading memory card.

The Eye-Fi Geo X2 will be sold exclusively at Apple Stores starting in May. It offers photo and video uploads that can transfer data at 802.11n speeds. You can upload photos and videos to 25 sites, including MobileMe, Picasa, Facebook and … Continue Reading

Recognize-that-song app SoundHound goes freemium

SoundHound, a startup that builds sound recognition technologies, is moving its name-that-song app to a freemium model. The company says its technology beats competitor Shazam’s because it can recognize tunes in as little as four seconds and also has voice search.

The new free app offers five music searches a month, while the current SoundHound app will be rechristened SoundHound Infinity. Chief executive Keyvan Mohajer said the company earns revenue from a number of sources, … Continue Reading

Ground Truth grabs $7M for mobile internet measurement

Ground Truth, a provider of mobile measurement data, today announced a second round of funding for $7 million.

Ground Truth leverages millions of mobile internet subscribers from sources like telecommunication companies to provide insights into mobile internet usage. Ground Truth calls its methodology True View and focuses on providing marketer, publisher and mobile operators with data to better their business, including traffic and performance metrics.

Since the data is compiled from an assortment of sources, … Continue Reading

Hootsuite simplifies Ow.ly URL shortener, plans vanity shorteners

Social media startup HootSuite is introducing changes to its popular URL shortener Ow.ly — commonly used on Twitter, Facebook and other sharing sites — to make its brand less invasive. On top of that, it says it will soon sell custom URL shorteners to businesses (think Amazon’s amzn.com).

Before now, when you clicked on an Ow.ly link, the service would put an opt-out “social bar” at the top of whatever page you were viewing, containing … Continue Reading

AdMob report: Nexus One is barely there

Here in downtown San Francisco, you’d think Google’s Nexus One was duking it out with the iPhone for top slot in the mobile world. It’s a really great gadget.

But worldwide, mobile ad network AdMob — soon to be owned by Google unless the acquisition is blocked by regulators — has issued a report today that says only one in 50 mobile ad requests to AdMob in March came from an HTC-built, Google-branded Nexus One … Continue Reading

Kim Kardashian's ShoeDazzle raises $13M as shoes sales sprint

Watch out, Zappos. ShoeDazzle has a deal for the shoe lovers of the world. Today, the profitable online shoe sales company is announcing that it has raised $13 million in funding as it expands into new categories.

With celebrity Kim Kardashian as co-founder and spokesmodel, the company has seen its sales rocket in the past year. Every month it recommends pairs of shoes for its (mostly) female customers to buy.

The shopper buys one pair … Continue Reading

Mobile payments service Zong raises $15 million from Matrix Partners

Zong, a mobile payments startup that helps social gamers buy virtual goods, raised $15 million from Matrix Partners. The company, which started off as a division of Echovox and rode the wave of the booming virtual-goods industry, has now spun-off as an independent enterprise. It’s also cemented a long-in-the-works deal to be the mobile payments provider for Facebook’s new virtual currency Credits.

“We are really experts are the impulse buy and in giving that frictionless … Continue Reading

353,812,819 = total number of personal records hacked since 2005

More than 353.8 million records containing sensitive personal information have been leaked in security breaches since the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse began tracking them in January, 2005.

The nonprofit privacy advocate has compiled an extensive list of every known breach, along with the number of records exposed with each security breach. The list ends with an unknown number of leaks as a result of the latest Blippy breach.

The list includes data breaches where data exposed … Continue Reading

To expand its boundaries, Zynga allies with Japan's Softbank

Zynga, the maker of FarmVille and other popular social games, is preparing for an alliance with Japan’s Softbank investment firm as a way to break into the fast -growing Japanese market, VentureBeat has learned.

Japan is seeing significant growth in social gaming, even the U.S. shows signs of a slowdown.

Mark Pincus, the CEO of Zynga, had backing from a Softbank affiliate for one of his previous companies, SupportSoft.

The biggest maker of social games … Continue Reading

Health search engine Healthline raises $14M

Healthline Networks, a company that offers health search technology on its own website and on partner sites like Yahoo Health, has raised $14 million in a third round of funding.

The San Francisco company brings a semantic approach to health search, meaning that it has a deeper understanding of a user’s search than a normal engine. It says it has created a “taxonomy” of different medical terms, so it can deliver uniquely useful search results … Continue Reading

AMD launches its fastest six-core microprocessors

Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices is launching its fastest low-cost consumer PC microprocessor today, the six-core AMD Phenom II X6.

The company is coupling the new processor with its AMD 890FX chip set and ATI Radeon HD 5000 series graphics to create a complete consumer PC package, which AMD calls its “most powerful desktop platform ever.” Well, at least until the next fast chip comes along in a few months.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD said the … Continue Reading

Roundup: WSJ teams with Foursquare, Google adds local biz listings to Street View

Here’s the latest action:

Samsung book rattles South Korea — Kim Yong-chul’s new book “Think Samsung” has polarized the country, with some championing him as a corporate whistle-blower as others calling him disloyal for exposing the corruption perpetrated by Chairman Lee Kun-hee.

Wall Street Journal launches news service via FourSquare — The newspaper says it will now be offering news and reviews related to locations through the application, complete with custom badges that can be … Continue Reading

Entertainment journalist Sharon Waxman's site TheWrap raises $2M

TheWrap, the entertainment news site founded by journalist Sharon Waxman, announced today that it has raised $2 million in a second round of funding.

Waxman, who is based in Los Angeles and previously covered Hollywood business for The New York Times, launched the site in January 2009 to “cover Hollywood in the digital age.” That’s also when she announced raising a $1.5 million first round led by Maveron, which also led the new funding.

TheWrap … Continue Reading

Energy Dept. teams with Masdar Initiative to advance cleantech breakthroughs

The U.S. Department of Energy announced today that it has signed an agreement with Masdar, the Abu Dhabi organization overseeing a far-reaching strategy for developing and deploying renewable energy and other sustainable technologies. The two organizations say they will work together to make these advancements more affordable and accessible for the world community.

The memorandum of understanding will open lines of communication between the U.S. government and the companies governing and working on Masdar’s various … Continue Reading

Samsung exec: We might build a Google TV

The Korea Herald, an English-language newspaper based in South Korea, quotes an unnamed Samsung executive: “We are considering Google TVs. We are examining the business feasibility.”

The television sets would run on Google’s Android operating system, already used on the company’s Nexus One and Motorola Droid phones, among other devices.

Rumors surfaced last month that it is working with Intel and Sony to develop its Google TV platform, allowing users to surf the web on … Continue Reading

Lost iPhone case enters Dilbert territory

The case of the missing iPhone is a story that can’t decide whether it wants to be serious or ridiculous.

In the circle of Apple bloggers, the story about how an Apple engineer lost a valuable prototype of an iPhone that may reveal secrets about the company’s future models is serious business. And a police search of a Gizmodo editor’s home shows that local authorities in Silicon Valley are not treating it as a laughing … Continue Reading

SolarBridge spans gaps in solar with new $15M

Fitting with the trend toward more capital-efficient investments in cleantech, microinverter maker SolarBridge Technologies raised $15 million in a second round of venture funding today. The company produces a small component of photovoltaic systems, but could make a big difference in how solar is used.

Microinverters convert the direct-current (DC) electricity produced by individual solar modules into alternating-current (AC) electricity, making it compatible with electrical grids. Traditional, centralized inverters pose several problems. Because they aggregate … Continue Reading

Spark Capital's Rob Go is gone to new stealth project

Rob Go, the associate who created Spark Capital‘s seed funding vehicle Start@Spark, has moved on from the Boston-based venture-capital firm to start an unnamed new venture.

Spark is best known for its 2008 investment in Twitter. Start@Spark focused on Boston- and New York-based companies. Spark invested in Boxee, Tumblr, Veoh and KickApps, but these deals were done before the launch of Start@Spark.

Details have been hard to come by. Spark hasn’t responded to my questions … Continue Reading