Funding Daily: Personalized web, ‘big data,’ Yahoo Japan, and marketing automation

Wednesday was a fairly busy day for deals, with old-industry blue chipper GE investing big into a new platform as a service company, Yahoo Japan investing in U.S. startups, and API management company 3scale announcing new funding to grow faster.

GE invests $105M in Pivotal to build the Industrial Internet

Today, General Electric announced that it is investing $105 million in Pivotal, a hotly anticipated spin-off from VMware that is building "next generation Enterprise Platform-as-a-service."

Hospitals can now track which workers have washed their hands

The AgilTrac Real-Time Location System will allow hospitals to make sure doctors, nurses, and other workers are washing their hands enough.

What companies must do to survive the decade

Companies all over the world are becoming increasingly worried about their ability to innovate and compete in the fast-changing technology world. That’s according to GE’s third annual “Global Innovation Barometer” released Jan 17.

Undisputed patent king IBM sets its scientists to work on ‘big data’

For the 20th consecutive year, IBM has held its ground as the king of patents. And it will now devote considerable resources to big data and analytics technologies.

Top 100 viral video brands led by Red Bull, Google, Samsung

Apparently Red Bull employees don't just sell energy drinks. They're also customers.

GE taps maker movement, brings hardware hacking to SXSW [video]

General Electric set up a hands-on “garage” area at SXSW Interactive this year to get technophiles up to their elbows in hardware, including laser cutters, 3D printers, injection molders, and more.

Linda Boff, the company’s executive director of global digital …

Jive still makes enterprise tech cool, reports Q4 earnings

Jive Software reported its first earnings as a public company today, and introduced a secret new product called “Project Thunder.”

In the fourth quarter of 2011, Jive increased its revenue by 53 percent over the same period last year, earning …

U.S. DOE: Wind power production fell in 2010

Only around a quarter of the new electricity capacity introduced in 2010 came from wind power, down from 42 percent in 2009, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The average cost of installing new wind power …