Kleiner Perkins announces $250M sFund for social startups

John Doerr, one of the best-known venture capitalists around and a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, announced the sFund today at a special event at Facebook headquarters. It’s a new fund that I speculated about last night. It will be a fund for startups involved in “the social Web”, and it will total $250 million.

Doerr has assembled a killer group of speakers on-stage with him: Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, Facebook chief … Continue Reading

Mac FaceTime security hole could compromise your Apple ID

Apple’s new FaceTime software for Macs, which lets Mac users video chat with iPhone 4 and iPod Touch FaceTime users, apparently has a gaping security hole which could compromise your Apple ID password, the site MacNotes reports.

Once you’ve logged into the FaceTime software, you can easily see all of the account settings for the Apple ID used to connect — including the username, ID, place and birth date, as well as the security question … Continue Reading

New Nokia CEO drops a bomb: 1,800 workers are out of here

Just five weeks after taking over phone manufacturer Nokia, CEO Stephen Elop is planning to slash 1,800 jobs since initiating plans to refocus the company on smartphones, according to Nokia’s quarterly earnings report released today.

Nokia turned around its performance from last year, jumping to a quarterly profit of about $739 million compared to losing $781 million in the same quarter in 2009. Its sales were up 4.7 percent to $14.4 billion compared to $13.7 … Continue Reading

On the GreenBeat: Tesla opens Fremont factory, SiOnyx raises $12.5 million

Here are the stories we’re following today on the GreenBeat:

Tesla has completed the $42 million purchase of a factory in Fremont previously owned by a Toyota and GM joint venture, the Wall Street Journal reports. CEO Elon Musk says the factory is key to Tesla’s future, but revamping the factory will be a big task — the company still needs to recruit and train 500 people, sign up suppliers and refit the facility … Continue Reading

"Zappos of China" OkBuy.com grabs $17M to go shoe shopping

Chinese online shoe retailer OkBuy.com announced yesterday that it has raised $17 million in a second round of funding from Sequoia Capital, Intel Capital, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

The company, which can be best described as China’s equivalent of the online retailer Zappos, says it will use the funding to increase its stockpile portfolio and product range. An increased range of products is necessary since variety directly affects the profitability of e-commerce companies, according to … Continue Reading

Fandor prepares to launch Netflix for the indie crowd

The Internet doesn’t lack for streaming movie services, but Dan Aronson, chief executive of San Francisco startup Fandor, said there’s room for at least one more. His company’s indie movie site is opening to the public in beta test mode today, and he described it as what would happen “if Sundance ran Netflix.”

In other words, Fandor is a site where subscribers can watch independent and international movies. We’re not just talking about movies that … Continue Reading

AT&T reports record sales with 2.6M new subscribers in Q3

The past few months have been good to AT&T — the company reports that it landed 2.6 million new subscribers and saw a total net profit of $12.3 billion in its third quarter this year.

AT&T saw a record amount of new subscribers for any third quarter in its history, which brought its total subscribers to 92.8 million. Wireless churn, or the rate of users leaving the service, was also the lowest ever for a … Continue Reading

Intel and The9 invest $8M in social game platform Aurora Feint

Social game platforms are hot, and here’s more proof: Intel Capital and Chinese online game publisher The9 have invested $8 million in social game platform company Aurora Feint, which runs the equivalent of the Xbox Live gaming service for Apple and Android mobile phones.

The9′s investment had previously been revealed. But Intel Capital is the newest participant in the second round of funding for Burlingame, Calif.-based Aurora Feint. Aurora Feint runs the Open Feint social … Continue Reading

Poptent raises $3M for new social network for crowdsourced video

Poptent has raised $3 million to keep building its social network around crowdsourced video. It also hired Andy Jedynak as its new chief executive.

The company runs a website hat lets users create their own videos based on major brands. It’s a much cheaper way of making commercials and it taps the zany talents of passionate fans. Users can create their own commercials around known brands for a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising … Continue Reading

Online training site Grovo launches to help you demystify the Web

Learning to use a new website or online service can be a daunting task to some users, and that problem is amplified as sites and services grow more advanced. The online training site Grovo, which is launching today, aims to bridge that gap with video lessons on a variety of topics like the money management site Mint, Google Docs, and the basics of Twitter.

Grovo’s 15 to 20 minute courses are broken down into short … Continue Reading

Leaked MySpace photos reveal underwhelming redesign

We’ve just received photos that supposedly show MySpace’s upcoming redesign. They look legitimate, and they include the new logo that MySpace has already unveiled, but it’s not clear whether these are the final designs.

The redesign, which was reportedly scheduled for mid-October (I assume it has hit some delays), has been described as the News Corp-owned social networking site’s last stand to stop the loss of users and ad revenue. (comScore reports that Twitter recently … Continue Reading

Is Kleiner Perkins about to announce a Facebook fund?

Famous venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers will be holding a press conference tomorrow morning at Facebook headquarters, where partner John Doerr will supposedly discuss “social web developments.”

There’s no official word on what Kleiner will reveal, but a fund for startups building Facebook applications, integrating with Facebook in other ways, or maybe just for social startups in general seems like the most likely news. Besides Doerr (pictured left), Kleiner says executives from Amazon, … Continue Reading

Sales leads in social media? Real-time marketer Optify snags $6.1M to prove it works

Many businesses view social media tools like Twitter as time-wasting distractions for employees. But social-media software startup Optify has secured $6.1 million in financing as the group seeks to gain a lead in the already-crowded field of companies offering social marketing tools to blue-chip customers.

Seattle-based Optify offers a toolbox of metrics that let sales teams automatically qualify and score online leads in real time. This, in turn, allows marketers to close more deals by … Continue Reading

Amid Microsoft buyout rumors, Linden Lab founder leaves CEO post

The game of musical chairs in the executive suite at Second Life parent company Linden Lab continued today, as founder Philip Rosedale, who had been serving as interim CEO since June, announced he was stepping down from the job immediately.

The change-up happens amidst nearly a month of rumors that Microsoft has already made a bid for the company and may soon acquire the virtual reality shop, according to TechEye, which sourced it to a … Continue Reading

Steve Jobs demonstrates FaceTime video conferencing on the Mac (video)

Steve Jobs showed off video conferencing between a Mac and an iPhone 4 on stage today at Apple’s “Back to the Mac” event in Cupertino, Calif. He showed FaceTime video conferencing in a demo with Apple marketing executive Phil Schiller. Now you can talk with someone on an iPhone and they can change the aspect of the video from vertical to horizontal. They can also press a button to activate a video view of what … Continue Reading

Steve Jobs describes the new MacBook Air (video)

Apple CEO Steve Jobs still has that magic touch when he describes his “one more thing.” Here’s the video of the master spokesman talking about two new laptops. But Jobs makes them sound like they’re the greatest thing on earth. They just went on sale today. I took this video during Jobs’ press conference dubbed the “Back to the Mac” event at Apple’s headquarters today in Cupertino, Calif.… Continue Reading

Netflix bets on online streaming, shells out $115M for content

Video rental and streaming service Netflix paid about $115 million in its most recent quarter to acquire new content for its online streaming video library, according to its earnings reports released today. The company’s quarterly profit jumped by about 27 percent year-over-year last quarter.

Netflix has all but won the video rental wars now that Blockbuster has filed for bankruptcy, but it’s stepping up its game in the video streaming sector. Newcomers like video streaming … Continue Reading

Windows Phone 7 review: Microsoft arrives at the smartphone party in the right costume

Microsoft‘s journey into phones has been a long struggle in the dark. But Windows Phone 7, which launches on Nov. 8 , may be the light at the end of the tunnel.

With this new operating system, Microsoft’s partners can field $199 phones that mount a credible challenge to the iPhone. I’ve checked out the new Windows Phone 7 models from Samsung (the Samsung Focus) and HTC (the HTC Surround). They have 4-inch touchscreens that … Continue Reading

MBA Polymers raises $25 million for recycling plastics

Recycling engineering plastics company MBA Polymers announced today it has raised $25 million in equity funding, which includes the $6.6 million it had raised as of September.

The money will go towards funding the company’s existing operations and supporting its new factories in Europe and Asia. The company recovers plastics from recycled materials. It squeezes recyclable plastic out of just about every imaginable thing — cars, cell phones, computers, household appliances and plastic-rich shredded materials … Continue Reading