Cloudera raises $25M to help deal with the enterprise data deluge

Cloudera, a maker of data-management software for large companies, announced today that it has raised $25 million in its third round of funding to help build its Hadoop-based software architecture.

Hadoop is an open-source data-management software framework. But Cloudera provides a version that is specifically for enterprise users, coupled with IT support and management. The software provides analytics and storage options for large-scale networks that have thousands of nodes and process petabytes (that’s 1,000 terabytes) … Continue Reading

On the GreenBeat: $100 billion invested in solar by 2010, $6 billion Blythe solar project wins approval

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

Cleantech investment firm Good Energies and NIBC European Infrastructure Fund announced they will team with German solar company Q-Cells to form the largest operational solar photovoltaic plant in the world.  The two funds will acquire two solar plants in Germany, which will operate alongside a Q-Cells plant.

The world’s biggest solar thermal plant, the $6 billion Blythe project, has won approval from … Continue Reading

Vimeo gets optimized for Google TV with Couch Mode

Streaming video site Vimeo has jumped on the Google TV bandwagon with its new Couch Mode — a way to easily view the site’s videos uninterrupted like a TV channel.

Much like Google’s own YouTube LeanBack, a couch-friendly way to view YouTube videos, Couch Mode is all about throwing you directly into a stream of high-quality content. A video starts playing as soon as you visit the site, and you can bring up a menu … Continue Reading

iPhone glitch lets anyone make calls from your password lock screen

A glitch in the iPhone software’s (iOS) password lock screen could give anyone access to your phone application or photo album.

First discovered by a poster on the MacRumors forums, the glitch is surprisingly easy to replicate: When your phone is locked with a numeric passcode, simple tap the Emergency Call button, enter any random number, then tap the call button and quickly hit the lock button. The Phone app then pops up, which can … Continue Reading

Zuberance turns word-of-mouth into $8M of new funding

Zuberance, a company that helps businesses energize their fans and turn them into a volunteer salesforce, has raised $8 million in a second round of funding.

Founder and chief executive Rob Fuggetta said the company’s goal is to become the tool every marketer uses to manage word-of-mouth campaigns. With Zuberance, a business can reach out to existing fans (who can be identified in a number of ways, such as an existing email list) and encourage … Continue Reading

McAfee reveals the riskiest domains on the web

Antivirus firm McAfee says sites using the world’s most heavily trafficked web domain — sites that end in “.com” — are also the riskiest.

Of the 27 million web sites McAfee scanned, more than 6.2 percent — or 1.67 million web sites — pose security threats for users (compare that to only 4.1 percent deemed risky back in 2007 and 2008). And 56 percent of those dangerous sites are on the .com domain. This means … Continue Reading

Gowalla thinks money with launch of new check-in features

Popular mobile check-in application Gowalla today announced it has launched several new features — all helping the company to make money from the service. The company’s new features include City Pages, Verified Businesses and a Stamp Calendar.

Gowalla is now joining the competition, like Foursquare, by allowing businesses to claim and verify their locations. Once complete, businesses can create a custom welcome message to be delivered upon check in and those individuals can then receive … Continue Reading

DaCast launches self-serve live video streaming

DaCast is announcing today its self-serve live video streaming service after about three years of development.

The San Francisco-based company originally set out to create a peer-to-peer for live video streaming technology, as we wrote in mid-2008. But the company pivoted to make its online broadcasting platform into a self-service business, allowing video creators to live stream anything they want.

Stephane Roulland, chief executive of DaCast, says it takes as little as 20 minutes to … Continue Reading

RIM demonstrates its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet with Adobe (videos)

BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion briefly demonstrated its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet today on stage at Adobe’s MAX conference.

We heard from Adobe earlier today that it had teamed up with RIM to bring its new AIR application platform to the PlayBook, and the company also revealed that parts of the PlayBook’s user interface were built with AIR.

Given that RIM couldn’t muster a live demonstration of the PlayBook at its own event in September, it’s surprising … Continue Reading

Is BudURL the link shortener that businesses have been looking for?

Link shortener BudURL is not really for you random Twitter user, or a media organization that’s trying to maximize traffic. Instead, it’s aimed businesses that want to control and analyze their social media promotions.

Until today, BudURL offered two services — an $8-per-month product with basic functionality, and an enterprise version that’s used by big brands like AMD, AT&T, and Coca-Cola. Now it’s adding a third service, BudURL Pro, that fits in between the two … Continue Reading

Adap.tv snags $4.5M to deliver video ads online

Adap.tv, a provider of online video advertising, has raised $4.5 million in a third round of funding. Existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Gemini Israel Funds and Spark Capital participated in the round, according to a filing with the SEC.

Based in San Mateo, Calif., Adap.tv provides publishers with an ad serving platform for monetizing videos. Last week, the company announced that comScore ranked it the third largest online video property based on video advertisements. Adap.tv reached … Continue Reading

Jay Adelson's fireside chat on lessons of failure (video)

Jay Adelson, the former chief executive of Digg, gave a post-mortem on his time at the pioneering social news network today at the FailCon conference in San Francisco.

He had plenty of lessons to offer about failure, but he said he had no regrets on his five-year tenure at Digg, as we wrote in our earlier story. He had no second thoughts about not selling the company when everyone else was urging him and founder … Continue Reading

Google traffic now accounts for record 6.4% of all Internet

Traffic across Google sites broke a new record this month and now accounts for an impressive 6.4% of all Internet traffic around the world, according to a tally by network security firm Arbor Networks.

The tally included all Internet sites owned by Google, namely its main Google.com search engine, YouTube, GMail, Google Maps, Google’s office suite of products like Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and others. One expects a major contributor to the statistic to be … Continue Reading

Premium streaming video 3, YouTube 0: China's Tudou preps for IPO

Tudou, the number two streaming video site in China, is planning to file an initial public offering to raise up to $150 million on the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite stock market.

The Chinese streaming site is the latest in a slew of sites that stream premium content — though it also has user-contributed video like YouTube as well — to either go public or be the subject of rumors of going public. Hulu, another premium content … Continue Reading

With layoffs and top execs gone, Digg needs to redesign its business, too

Social news aggregator Digg laid off more than a third of its staff Monday in the wake of a failed redesign, and its top sales and finance executives left — suggesting that more than just the website’s look and feel need fixing. In a post on the company blog, new CEO Matt Williams claimed the cuts, affecting 25 out of 67 employees, were needed in order to achieve profitability by mid-2011.

Digg’s chief revenue officer, … Continue Reading

Apple looks to Unisys for help with enterprise, government sales

Apple is seeking to further increase its reach to businesses and U.S. government agencies with the help of enterprise technology and service company Unisys, Bloomberg reports.

Apple has signed a deal to have Unisys provide maintenance and other services for its products to businesses and government agencies — a bold new move for a company unused to relying on others for support.

Apple has traditionally focused on consumer sales. It makes sense for the company … Continue Reading

How Hunch's CEO just slapped a "For Sale" sign on his company

We haven’t heard much about Hunch, the once-buzzy recommendations site based in New York — and what we’ve heard hasn’t been good. So it was interesting to read CEO Chris Dixon’s response to an anonymous questioner who asked why Hunch was building a general recommendations platform instead of focusing on solving one specific problem.

Dixon (pictured here, left) wrote an answer that is instructive when read closely:

We’ve talked to probably a hundred large websites … Continue Reading