Roundup: Foursquare gets dinged on privacy, Cisco unveils tablet, and more
Here’s the latest action:
Consert nabs $17.7M — The startup, which provides wireless communication services between smart meters, utilities and home area networks, has brought in $17.7 million from GE Energy Financial Services, Verizon Ventures, Qualcomm and Constellation Energy.
Foursquare privacy leak discovered — The check-in service unintentionally leaks private data because it lists everyone who has recently checked in at locations without giving them the option to hide their histories. Developer Jesper Andersen found … Continue Reading
Mavenir raises $13.6M for mobile operator services
Mavenir Systems, a company that helps mobile operators roll out new voice and messaging services to their subscribers, has secured $13.6 million in a fourth round of funding.
The company enables service continuity across wired and wireless networks, allowing carrier customers to get consistent service on multiple personal devices. With Mavenir technologies, a customer can use a single phone number to receive calls on both his or her mobile and landline phones. The company can … Continue Reading
Adesto Technologies brings in $3.5M for memory products
Fabless semiconductor company Adesto Technologies has closed a $3.5 million round of equity, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., the company develops low power, low cost memory solutions. Investors in the company, which was founded in 2006 and last raised $14 million in 2009, include Arch Venture Partners, Harris & Harris, Adams Street Partners and Applied Ventures.… Continue Reading
Twitter curbs developer access to reduce downtime
In another move that threatens the health of its developer ecosystem, Twitter has nearly halved the number of times third-party applications can request data from the service.
The information network said it cut the default rate limit, or number of times an application can call the service on behalf of a user, to 175 from 350 per hour today after suffering outages and downtime through the World Cup tournament. All third-party apps, including ones that … Continue Reading
Tesla's IPO: After-hours trading, big winners, and what it means for green
Tesla Motors‘ IPO trumped even the most bullish of expectations today, selling 13.3 million shares for $226.1 million and earning a valuation above $2.2 billion.
Initially priced at $17 last night, the company’s shares started trading this morning at $19, and hit $23.89 by the time the market closed — an impressive 40.5 percent increase. It’s since increased to $24 during after-hours trading.
This is a huge victory for the company, its CEO Elon Musk … Continue Reading
Verizon will finally offer the iPhone in January (report)
In January, we may finally be able to stop speculating about when Apple will end its exclusive deal for AT&T to carry the iPhone in the United States. That’s when Verizon will start carrying the device too, according to “two people familiar with the plans,” who spoke to Bloomberg.
The end of AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity seems inevitable — the device launched with similar carrier exclusivity in countries around the world, and most of those deals … Continue Reading
No surprise: Andreessen Horowitz leads Foursquare's $20 million funding
After weeks of convoluted negotiations and much-reported brouhaha surrounding Foursquare’s second round of institutional funding, the location-based check-in service now says it has officially closed the round at $20 million dollars. The round was led by Silicon Valley VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, as expected, with previous investors Union Square Ventures and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures also taking part.
The hype around Foursquare picked up steam when the company said it was looking for another round of … Continue Reading
StuffBuff offers new twists on social auctions
There’s no shortage of ambition when you talk to Michael Langer, chief executive of startup StuffBuff. Langer said his big mission to replace existing e-commerce giants like eBay. To do that, the company is taking a more decentralized, social approach to commerce, as shown by two new features.
Both features offer variations on the New York City company’s initial widget, LiveHaggle, where sellers and buyers participate in a live chatroom as part of the auction. … Continue Reading
Google siphons some Buzz for social search
The personalized search wars are beginning in earnest.
Google started mixing in content shared on Buzz into social search today. For people with friends who are avid users of Buzz, the move should fill out their personalized search results, which have been pretty spartan for the last half-year. Social search has had little more than Google Blogger, Picasa and Reader to grab content from.
First unveiled last fall, social search augments Google results with links … Continue Reading
Virtual waterfight wins UK location competition
Location Wild, a week-long competition to create a location-based application from scratch has come to an end in London, England. The winner is a 19-year old Bath University student called Thomas Fletcher, who created a virtual waterfight game called City Warfare, which piggybacks on the hot “check-in service” Foursquare. Fletcher walked away with $2,500 and an iPad.
City Warfare is a text-based game played in real-world locations. The idea is to use waterbombs and waterpistols … Continue Reading
MapQuest plays catch-up with redesign
MapQuest fell from it’s position as the number one mapping site early last year, pushed from its perch by Google’s Google Maps. And Google and Microsoft have been beating AOL-owned MapQuest to the punch in adding features to their services, like the ability to add photos to maps, which Google introduced a full two years before MapQuest did. Now, MapQuest is making a come-back play. It is launching a beta version of a major redesign, … Continue Reading
Last minute sprint boosts Tesla shares to $23.89, valuation to $2.2B
The Nasdaq is closed, and Tesla Motors (TSLA) is ending its first day on the market at $23.89 a share, a 40.5 percent increase over the $17 pricing it announced last night. This is a rock star showing for the electric car company, which has exceeded expectations that were already sky high.
As of 20 minutes before 4 p.m. EST, the stock price was hovering between $21 and $22. It shot up above $23 in … Continue Reading
Why are more web companies placing bets on Latin America?
With the recent news that Groupon, the well-funded group buying site, just acquired two start-ups in Latin America, many in the region view it as a sign of things to come. Whereas, previously, only well-financed startups with strong revenues made it onto the radar of potential strategic acquirers; today, smaller startups in the region, such as Argentinean start-up, Three Melons, which was recently acquired by Playdom, are fair game. So, what has changed?
For one … Continue Reading
Facebook analytics company Kontagent grabs $5.9M
Update
Kontagent, a company that provides Facebook application analytics, is raising a $5.9 million first round of funding according to a recently filed SEC form. Co-founder Albert Lai confirmed the funding.
Kontagent has developed an analytics tools for Facebook application developers looking to gain helpful insight into how their apps are doing. With close to 500 million Facebook users, there is a great opportunity to generate large amounts of revenue from an application. Information … Continue Reading
Tesla stock breaks the $21 mark before market closes
Tesla Motors is having a great debut despite a gloomy market today, with share prices surging from the starting point of $19 to $21.89 a half hour before the Nasdaq’s close at 4 p.m. EST. The stock is now trading 30 percent above where it was priced last night at $17, boosting its valuation above $2 billion.
The electric car company seems to be defying gravity on several levels. The market is miserable today, with … Continue Reading
Sequoia leads $55M for SunRun, bringing solar to a roof near you
SunRun, the San Francisco company that makes installing rooftop solar practical for average homeowners, announced its second win in as many weeks today. Last week it scored a $100 million deal with the Pacific Gas & Electric Company, now it’s announcing $55 million in fresh capital led by venture heavyweight Sequoia Capital.
The startup offers programs so that homeowners can choose whether to pay for pricey rooftop solar systems upfront (a steep price tag exceeding … Continue Reading
Talend makes it easy to do big data crunching with Hadoop
Yahoo is marking the fifth birthday, more or less, of its Hadoop technology. The open-source software allows Java programmers to process large amounts of data using distributed computing techniques. Inspired by Google’s MapReduce and Google File System, which make it possible to search the Internet in a fraction of a second, Hadoop is available free for anyone to use.
Of course, you get what you pay for. That’s why enterprise data integration software maker Talend … Continue Reading
Hulu Plus comes to the Xbox Live online game service
It took a while, but Microsoft and Hulu have confirmed rumors that Hulu Plus will be available as a subscription service on the Xbox Live online game service on the Xbox 360 game console.
Hulu Plus will let users watch movies, TV shows and other videos for a subscription fee of $9.99 a month.
Hulu Plus joins other non-game entertainment offerings on Xbox Live, including Netflix, Last.fm, and Zune video. Come November, the Xbox 360 … Continue Reading
Hulu announces premium service, iPad app
TV-viewing site Hulu finally announced its long-rumored premium service today, rather predictably named Hulu Plus. Subscribers will pay $9.99 per month to access more content on more devices, according to a blog post from chief executive Jason Kilar.
Kilar emphasized that Hulu Plus won’t replace the free version of Hulu but is instead an “incremental and complementary” extension. Basically, it fills in some of the service’s gaps. Until now, Hulu viewers could only watch the … Continue Reading
Nexus One update runs faster, serves Wi-Fi
Owners of Google Nexus One phones have begun receiving updates to version 2.2 of the Android operating system, Google’s open source platform that is also used by Motorola and HTC. As shown in a Google marketing video meant for Android app developers, Android 2.2. has a faster browser and faster game play speeds.
Android 2.2 also enables Nexus One owners to use the Nexus One as a Wi-Fi base station, allowing up to eight other … Continue Reading
