Sol Voltaics uses nanotechnology to make solar energy 25 percent more efficient

Swedish company with Silicon Valley talent has raised $11 million to make solar power more efficient.

Livescribe launches Sky wireless smartpen that syncs with Evernote

Livescribe has created a pen that can capture writing, record audio, and then wirelessly transfer the captured data to a smartphone, tablet, or Evernote note-taking software on a PC.

Zebit closes $25M in venture funding for microlending website

If you’re looking to expand your business and/or purchase something you desperately need, but your credit is low, take a look at Zebit. The San Diego-based data platform that supports micro-lending businesses from start to finish, raised $25 million in …

Lance Tokuda’s SchoolFeed rounds up $1.75M for fast-growing classmates network

Lance Tokuda was looking for an old high school friend, but instead he found his second big social networking startup. The co-founder of game publisher RockYou happened to find an old acquaintance from high school on Classmates.com, which has more …

Scripted is a writer smorgasbord for those in need of community outreach, gets $700K

As a small business, it’s hard to keep up excited web content due to time costs, commitment to a full time community manager, and more. Writer marketplace Scripted, however, has a cheaper option and a seed round of $700,000 to …

DataStax lands $11 million to further the “NoSQL” data store revolution

DataStax, which sells products built on top of the open source “NoSQL” data store Apache Cassandra, just announced a $11 million investment from Crosslink Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners.The company also announced a new enterprise product which will be available …

Empire Avenue raises $1M for social stock market

Empire Avenue has established itself as a stock market that measures the social influence of its members. The company’s social standing in the world moved up a notch today when it raised $1 million.

The Edmonton, Canada-based company has created …

A pretty tune for local music site TakeLessons: $6M from Crosslink Capital

Today TakeLessons, a site that helps music students find local teachers and allows teachers to manage their business, is whistling a happy tune all the way to the bank.

The San Diego-based company just announced Crosslink Capital (the largest investor …

SeaMicro drops its third low-power ‘atom bomb’ on server makers

For the third time in nine months, SeaMicro is announcing a new line of servers that can pack an awful lot of computing power in a sixth of the usual space and a quarter of the electricity.

SeaMicro shook up …