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A couple of years ago, Cisco started forming its own startups inside the company aimed at moving the big networking giant into adjacent markets. Now it’s launching a couple of new emerging technology products that were born from that effort.

Today, Cisco is announcing Enterprise TV, a YouTube-like video posting and viewing service aimed at enterprises. It is also announcing a security camera that extends an existing line of “physical security” and video surveillance products.

Marthin De Beer, senior vice president for emerging technologies, said in an interview that the video product in a recognition of how web video is making the transition from the consumer market to the enterprise. In January, consumers watched 250 billion minutes of video.

The Enterprise TV platform will make it easier for companies to do everything related to video: creating it, capturing it, and playing it. Employees can capture video of meetings or training programs and upload it immediately to their enterprise networks, where employees can watch it on demand.

“Think of it as YouTube for business,” De Beer said.

But the video can be high quality, up to 1080p resolution, and Cisco’s platform can automatically transcode the video to the right format so it can be played back without any hassles. Cisco’s video cameras will actually come with wearable encoders. You plug the cameras into the encoders and they can reformat the video as needed and stream it nearly live to a corporate intranet. Cisco has created its own software to capture, post, host and stream. Cisco is also announcing today a new version of its digital media player, dubbed the Cisco Digital Media Player 4400G. Both Enterprise TV and the player are part of Cisco’s Digital Media System product line, which has more than 600 customers around the world today.

Enterprises have been slower than consumers to pick up on video technologies such as YouTube, partly out of concern for bandwidth costs, a lack of compelling applications, and because the picture quality is often poor. For enterprises, the purchasing process is slower and so Cisco believes that integrating Enterprise TV with a host of enterprise applications will help its acceptance.

Cisco has also created a new generation of security cameras that are integrated with its ISR routers for banks and other highly secure places. With the integration, the cameras can stream video through the routers so that the video can be stored and watched anywhere.

Typically, video cameras store data to tapes or hard disks near the actual location where the camera is. But thieves have learned to steal tapes or disks when they break into locations. If the video is streamed to another location and copies on multiple storage devices, the thieves can’t intercept the video. In addition, the video can now be embedded with alerts and have a Tivo-like capability so that it’s easier to scroll through hours to find the right moment needed. The cameras are relatively cheap, ranging from $150 to $800.

De Beer said that the emerging technology businesses cover four areas including telepresence (high-end video conferencing), digital media, and physical security/video surveillance. The fourth area will be unveiled soon but is still secret. All of those have the potential of being billion-dollar businesses some day, he said. Cisco has a ton of competitors, such as Sony and Panasonic, in new markets such as video surveillance. More focused competitors include Axis and Pelco. But De Beer said that the company’s broad solutions should help it be more competitive.

“We’ve built the technology to create the world’s largest networks,” De Beer said. “Now we’re building systems on top of the platforms.”

Even more than other industries, the tech world is unforgiving to large companies that can’t respond to external change. To keep up to date, Cisco last year revamped the Cisco Development Organization, a group tasked with innovation, making a number of key hires and and giving it greater leeway to act within Cisco.

One of the hires was Paul Marcoux, a former American Power Conversion exec and founding member of The Green Grid, a non-profit group advancing efficiency issues in data centers and enterprise computing. Marcoux was tapped to be vice president of green engineering, getting Cisco up to speed with both environmental issues and efficiency.

I spoke with Marcoux a few weeks ago, both to get an idea of how Cisco will update its routers, switches, servers and other equipment, and to hear his take on the problems that data centers face, as well as the opportunities startups have to make a difference (not to mention a profit).

VB: How competitive are Cisco’s products right now, when it comes to efficiency and the broader issue of climate change?
Quite frankly, I would say Cisco is even with the curve. We’re not ahead or behind. The development of green processes within companies is really something that a lot of the major corporations in our industry embraced no more than 18-24 months ago. You can jump across the pond and look at European companies, some of whom embraced climate change as long as 15 years ago and baked it into the culture. It will become part of our DNA also.

VB: What will Cisco do to make itself a leader?
As it stands, our high-end products are actually robust and efficient. But the real impact, on a global level, will come from our ability to effect meaningful change on our lower-end products, and that’s where you’ll see very rapid changes.

The goal is to develop intelligence into our power supplies. If you have a virtualized process in the data center, and you need to access more capacity, today you go to a rack and grab another server. In the very near future, it’ll be entire racks. It won’t be 3,000 watts, it’ll be 30,000 watts. The management for that power is what we’re looking to develop, and for other people to develop.

VB: You spend a lot of time talking to data center managers and technical executives. What are you hearing?
They’re overwhelmed and frightened. A lot of their solutions, they feel, are only based around technology, around boxes. But some of the more advanced chief technology and chief information officers understand that it’s more than just boxes. They get that, but they need to acquire a solid understanding of hardware and software and a good understanding of power, cooling and networking.

Sadly, a lot of these elements don’t exist in their bag of tricks. One of the important things we need to understand going into the 21st century is that most data centers are operating on a design that was started in the 60s and 70s. And organizationally, they’re not set up for meaningful change.

VB: What are they looking for?
They’re looking for methodologies to reduce expense, reduce risk, and also do it with a smaller footprint on the environment. The real issue is that within the last five years, the cost of electricity grew by 30 percent. Within the next 2-3 years, it will grow another 30 percent, and by 2020 it will be around 2.5-5 times what it is today. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the latest action:

Sprint and Clearwire to join forces for WiMax venture – The telecom companies, along with Comcast, Time Warner, Google and Intel, are about to announce a $3.2 billion investment in a new wireless Internet company using WiMax technology, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Journal reports that the new company, which will also be called Clearwire, is valued at more than $12 billion. It will launch two years ahead of competing offerings from AT&T and Verizon. The combination of that head start and the formidable lineup of backers should make this quite a coup for Sprint, which is the driving force behind the partnership.

The result: Everyone wins. The Wimax camp needed some help to counter a competing technology LTE, Clearwire needed some money and the carriers get to split up the financing burden among themselves. Google’s role, though, is new. It’s just the latest move by the Internet search giant to push into the wireless communications arena, and comes as it is pushing it new mobile platform, Android.

USA Today reports that Trilogy Equity Partners also put $10 million towards the venture. Trilogy is a VC firm started by John Stanton, who helped found McCaw’s first wireless venture.

Sun previews app platform JavaFX – Sun’s software chief Rich Green gave a demonstration of JavaFX, which should compete with platforms like Adobe AIR for developers of hybrid web-desktop applications, at the JavaOne conference today. Green showed off a JavaFX application that runs Flickr and Twitter feeds in Facebook, then dragged the app onto the desktop. The same application ran on a Java-enabled phone. Rather inauspiciously, CNET reports that the application kept breaking, although the problems were blamed on the venue. The platform is set to launch this fall; I’m hoping more details will emerge about how it’s going to stand out against AIR.

Rocker Neil Young makes collected works available for download — Speaking of Sun, famed musician Neil Young is partnering with the company in an ambitious project to make all of his work available for purchase. Apparently, the content will be delivered on Blu-ray discs that check for and download new content as it becomes available. Young says the Playstation 3 is the best device for downloading all that music. This sounds very cool, although I’m not sure that it’ll lead to quite as many PS3 sales as the new Grand Theft Auto game.

Microsoft’s media player Zune gets TV shows – For all you Zune owners who have been jealously eyeing those with iPods and wondering, “When will I be able to watch Battlestar Galactica on a tiny, portable screen?” the long nightmare is over.

Cisco revenue up 10 percent in Q3 – That’s an increase from $8.9 billion to $9.8 billion. Since the company, which is the largest maker of networking equipment, is seen as a bellwether for the larger tech industry, that’s a bit of a relief, and particularly impressive after Sun recently reported a loss during the same period and blamed the weakening economy. Cisco’s profit, on the other hand, fell due to acquisition-related charges, and sales are expected to grow more slowly than previously anticipated.

Stephen Colbert is the Person of the Year (on the Internet) — The political comedian will be recognized as part of the 12th Annual Webby Awards next month. Colbert’s mockery of Internet trends has led to everything from Wikipedia vandalism to possibly the largest Facebook group in history. Which is enough to make him an online pioneer, at least in the eyes of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.

Electronics counterfeiting has hit an epidemic level. At the IP Symposium in San Jose this week, the scope of the problem was laid bare. Surely, there have to be opportunities for start-ups in fighting this problem.

Here are some factoids from the panel which included Tom Valliere, a consultant at Design Chain Associates, Daryl Hatano, vice president of public policy of the Semiconductor Industry Association, and Debra Eggeman, general manager of the Independent Distributors of Electronics Association.

One of every 10 tech products sold is counterfeit, leading to an estimate of a direct loss over $100 billion a year. Direct losses include recalls, increased warranties, rework.

High-tech products account for four of the top ten border seizures, according to U.S. Customs.

Last year, the U.S. and European customs officers seized more than 360,000 fake computer chips in a joint operation. Under “Operation Infrastructure,” the fake goods seized carried more than 40 different trademarks.

A $2 fake part leads to losses of $20 if detected at the manufacturing board level. It costs $200 if detected in the market.

Among the recent warnings for fakes: counterfeit electric drills, circuit breakers, batteries.

China is a big problem because its intellectual property enforcement has historically been weak, but it’s not the only country where fake parts are discovered or made.

Big companies that have been hit: Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Sony. Industries affected: computers, avionics, automotive, telecommunications.

The types of counterfeiting include reverse-engineered copies, reclaimed scrap, remarked or re-branded working parts, and “bonus lots,” which slip out the back door of a factory. It’s only getting worse with the rise of eBay and Internet trading.

Daryl Hatano, vice president of the Semiconductor Industry Association, said that 15 billion chips were imported into the U.S. in 2006. With such numbers, it isn’t easy to catch the fakes.

One chip company reported that 100 of its parts with distinct serial numbers were counterfeited in the last three years. Another reported that it had made only 200 chips with a particular date code; it found a broker selling more than 40,000 of those chips.

The U.S. and Canada have conducted 400 seizures of fake Cisco network hardware with an estimated value of $76 million at retail.

None of these factoids are new, but they should make the case that somebody ought to do something about it. Technology can supply some answers. Using radio-frequency identification chips (RFID) could introduce supply-chain tracking. Manufacturers can embed nanoparticles and micro-tags in their products as anti-theft and secret identication devices. But such tracing can lead to spooky privacy invasions. Call it security, anti-counterfeiting, or supply-chain management. It’s got to be fertile ground for start-ups.

Unisfair is trying to get businesses to take virtual trade shows as more than a curiosity. On Monday, the company will announce version 2.0 of its Virtual Events for Business tool, VentureBeat has learned.

The Menlo Park, Calif., company helps businesses stage trade shows online so they can cut the costs of phsyical trade shows, yet reap the same benefits of gathering for talks and exhibitions. The new version delivers capabilities such as e-commerce, multiple-language support, and professional networking.

“The improvements are aimed at improving the stickiness of the virtual events,” said Guy Piekarz, CEO of Unisfair, in an interview.

A survey from the Factpoint Group says that virtual events attract an average of 1,587 attendees (42% of which are international). Thanks to increased attendance and the availability of detailed marketing data, such events deliver 348 qualified leads per each event sponsor.

Unisfair’s environment lets attendees create avatars, or 3-D characters, that they can use to browse through the virtual trade show. They can interact with text or voice chat. And the environment integrates with online business tools such as Salesforce.com or the Webex online meeting tool.

Clients such as Cisco and Forbes have used Unisfair to hold 415 events since the company debuted the virtual events . More than 500,000 people from 2,000 companies have attended the events. Over time, Piekarz said the virtual events will move to more of a self-serve model where companies can stage their own events without too much hand-holding.

The company closed its second round in December with $10 million (our coverage) from Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners. Sequoia invested $15 million in the first round. Unisfair has 65 employees. The company will compete against the larger all-purpose world, Linden Lab’s Second Life, as well as Forterra Systems‘ custom corporate virtual worlds. IBM has also given its own endorsement to virtual worlds as useful beyond entertainment.

Here’s the latest action:

File-sharing company Pando Networks raising $20.9M — Pando Networks, a New York file-sharing company that uses P2P software to allow users to download, stream and share large media files quickly, has raised $8.1 million of a targeted $20.9 million round of capital, VentureBeat has learned. The company has gotten positive press coverage for its ability to send very large files, such as high-def video. The round is includes backers Wheatley Partners and BRM Capital Fund. (Our early coverage of Pando.)

Federal Communications Commission weighs action against Comcast — The FCC said Comcast may have violated Net Neutrality principles, after it acknowledged t was slowing down traffic for peer-to-peer file-sharing sites. It is unclear what, if any, penalty the FCC can impose.

Cisco backs hi-definition streaming video company GridNetworks –Cisco participated in the Seattle company’s $9.5 million first round, part of the giant San Jose company’s effort to move into digital media to grow traffic on its infrastructure. GridNetworks competes against other content delivery networks, such as Akamai or Limelight, using a peer-to-peer client. We covered the company here.

Online advertising company Adjug gets backing from Tomorrow Focus — Adjug, the London based ad marketplace, lets advertisers determine where on a Web page they can place an ad, and decide what price they will pay to the publishers (announcement of the strategic investment is here ).

Softcoin, Web-based promotions company, raises $200,000 more — The Silicon Valley company offers promotion and loyalty programs online in the form of coupons. Customers get to redeem them in a store. The Brisbane, Calif. company has now raised $2.2 million in a third round of funding, which came from RRE Ventures, Greylock Partners and others, according to VentureWire.

Wireless car technology gets adopted by Ford – Airbiquity lets a driver’s cellphone deliver location and diagnostic data about their vehicle. The Seattle company has just landed a customer in Ford. See our recent coverage of Airbiquity and its financing here.

Walt Disney Co. expects $1 billion in revenue from online content this fiscal year — That’s a major increase from last year, according to CEO Robert Iger.

Cisco, the giant networking company, has expanded its venture capital investments to central and eastern Europe, taking a majority stake in a 30 million Euro ($40 million) fund there.

It comes at a time of a flurry of investment activity in the eastern European and Russia region, an area that has so far been starved of venture capital. The region has a plentiful supply of well educated engineers, and so could be promising. Cisco started a venture investing in Russia earlier this year. The Russian government has just doubled its own commitment to support venture activities there, to $1.25 billion.

Cisco has been more fleet-footed in the region than some of the nimbler venture capital firms, such as Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which only recently announced it had started investing in Russia and Israel.
There are few, if any, other U.S. venture firms are active in the eastern Europe or Russia region.

DFJ celebrated the raising of its Russia fund last week (see a write up here by Alex Haislip). DFJ’s is one of three funds that is beginning to invest in Russia, part of an government-sponsored initiative written about here in detail by Yuri Ammosov, the Russian official who helped organize it.
In fact, Ammosov (left) invited me to moderate a panel last week at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., here in Silicon Valley, to discuss the Russian VC scene. It’s striking just how little venture capital has been deployed in Russia. Mangrove Capital Partners has made an investment or two, but otherwise its about zilch. (See this Powerpoint by the Russian government about the VC activity there, and the opportunity for growth).

Government official Ammosov is trying to change that, and if his forceful personality is any measure, he’s likely to pull it off. He dominated the panel discussion, which also included Don Wood, of DFJ; Pitch Johnson, one of Silicon Valley’s first VCs, and one of the first U.S. VCs to invest in Russia; and Israeli Eldad Tamir, founder of venture firm Tamir Fishman. At one point Ammosov took issue with Pitch Johnson’s contention that the biggest Russia opportunity is in early-stage investing. Ammosov suggested that Johnson might be trying to divert attention to early stage investing, so that he could horde late-stage investing in life-sciences for his own firm (Johnson is affiliated with one of the new funds that is investing in Russia, though is not directly a partner).

At one point, I asked DFJ’s Wood about what he thought of Russia’s political climate, where freedom of the press is under challenge and where the nation’s secret service has infiltrated some of private industry. Interestingly, the Russian officials seemed to encourage the questioning.

Meanwhile, I’m hearing Ammosov is about to enter private industry himself.

The general view is that there are lots of promising Russian developers but very few promising young technology companies. A representative of Sun told me recently that Sun had sought to expand its marketing efforts abroad, but had downplayed its efforts in Russia recently, after noting there were few early-stage fast growing companies to market to.

Which is what makes Cisco’s initiative so interesting. Its VC efforts abroad are encouraging: Most recently, its $17.5 million into the IPO of Alibaba.com turned out to be quite lucrative, after the company’s stock almost tripled on the first day of trading.

Cisco has invested $2 billion in venture capital investments in China, India, Israel, and Europe and the United States.

The eastern European Cisco fund will be managed by a regional venture capital firm, called 3TS Capital Partners, which has already successfully invested two prior funds, making it one of the more respected investors there, said Hilton Romanski, senior director of Global Corporate Business Development for Cisco. Cisco is the sole investor in the fund.

This latest is 3TS’s third fund in eastern Europe. The Cisco effort will invests in fast growing companies in technology, media and telecommunications sectors. One sign that the firm is competent is that it performed well on investments made from its first fund, raised in 1999. That was a tough year for most venture capital firms; it was when the global Internet and telecom bubble burst, and many investments went south. Included in 3TS’s investments (see full list) from that prior fund are STK Cable, a Polish TV cable provider; Systinet, a web services company in the Czech Republic, and Orange Slovensko, a GSM mobile telephony in Slovenia, and Mobiltel EAD, the largest GSM mobile telephony operator in Bulgaria.

Cisco’s move to back a local venture firm follows a similar strategy it has undertaken in other regions, including in Israel, India and China. In each case, Cisco follows a three-step process: First, it feels out a region by taking a dominant stake in a venture capital firm, leaving it to that firm’s partners to manage the investments. Then, as it gains its footing, Cisco starts investing alongside the fund. Finally, it makes its own investments independently. Cisco backed Sequoia and Benchmark in the early funds launched by those firms in Israel, for example, but is now making its own investments there, and making a steady string of acquisitions.

The eastern Europe move follows a similar announcement made in March this year by Cisco to invest in Russia. In fact, Cisco is relying on the same point person, Yoav Samet, to manage investments in the entire region (Israel, Russia and central and eastern Europe). He’ll be hiring someone to manage central and eastern Europe separately.

Cisco has not previously made any investments in the region.

It has, however, made a bet in Russia, namely on the Russian equivalent of Amazon.com, a company called Ozon.ru, which is expected to go public at some point.

Here’s the latest action:
1. Medio’s roar turning to a squeal?
2. Sprint changing WiMax plans?
3. AOL rumored to be considering buying ad targeting network Quigo for $300 million
4. Bug Labs, for open-sourced electronic devices
5. Semantic search engine Hakia releases social networking tool
6. The amazing $200 Ubuntu Linux “green” PC at Wal-Mart
7. Cisco does its 125th buyout
8. Facebook’s stock has appreciated 33-fold, and then some
9. Internet Brands going public with growing losses, declining sales?
10. Shopstyle signs deal with In Style Magazine

Medio’s roar turning to a squeal? — We’re wondering what will happen to Seattle’s Medio, the company that provides mobile search technology to telecom giant Verizon, now that Google is reportedly close to signing a deal with the giant carrier to offer customers a GPhone. This which would carry a Google operating system, based on Linux and offering a host of Google applications including search. The Mercury News carried a profile story on Medio Tuesday, in which chief executive Brian Lent (pictured top left) boasts Medio has a broader reach than Google, citing its partnership with Verizon. The article appeared the day before the deal negotiations between Google and Verizon leaked. Obviously, Medio won’t get kicked off of Verizon’s phones overnight. The GPhone hasn’t even arrived yet. Still, the Merc piece is a notable read, explaining how Lent knew the Google co-founders at Stanford, but initially shrugged of the promise of search; he even turned down the No. 1 employee position at Yahoo. Verizon, in turn, may be flirting with Google for the following obvious: Apple iPhone has become a raging success, after Verizon turned down the chance to be the iPhone carrier partner. As Techdirt points out, Verizon and Google have a tough history, including the standoff over the 700 MHz spectrum debate and network neutrality. But the GPhone, that might paper over the differences.

Sprint Nextel changing WiMax plans? — Sprint may be rethinking its plans to offer high-speed wireless Internet service using WiMax technology, possibly merging its wireless broadband unit with start-up Clearwire, according to the WSJ.

AOL rumored to be considering buying ad targeting network Quigo for $300 million – But its just a rumor. Details from Kara Swisher.

Bug Labs, for open-sourced electronic devices — You’ve heard about all the open-source software. Well, New York’s Bug Labs is offering open source for hardware, drawing on outside developers to help fashion the building blocks of these personalized devices that will be easy enough for non-techies to assemble. It is backed by Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures and Robert Young, founder of open source company Red Hat. More about BugLabs here. It has similarities with Ponoko.

Semantic search engine Hakia releases social networking tool — Called Meet Others, it lets you meet people who typed in the same search query. Now that is geeky.

The amazing $200 Ubuntu Linux “green” PC at Wal-Mart — The price of this computer is truly in the basement. It runs OpenOffice software and comes pre-configured with links to all of Google’s online applications. See Wired story for more details. It stands in stark contrast to Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 laptop for the poor, began at a price of $100, but which now has crept upward to….$200. So apparently, there’s no need for the poor laptop any more. The developing world may as well order a Linux version straight from Wal-Mart.

Cisco does its 125th buyout –Cisco, the giant networking company, proves you can grow and prosper through non-stop acquisitions. It has paid $100M for Securent, a company that monitors access to a company’s data and communications regardless of vendor, platform, or operating system. Securent was founded in 2004 by Rajiv Gupta after raising capital from Greylock and Onset (via Alarmclock ).

Facebook’s stock has appreciated 33-fold, and then some – Many of us reported how the Microsoft deal to invest in Facebook at such a high value ($15 billion) makes Facebook’s private shares expensive. This, in turn, makes it tough to recruit motivated employees, because it means there’s little room for the stock to appreciate — at least for several years until Facebook starts making some money. NYT’s Miguel Helft has done a good job at exploring just how far the stock has risen.

Internet Brands going public with growing losses, declining sales? — We don’t get this one. The El Segundo, Calif., company has filed to raise $45 million in an IPO. But the company, whose sites include CarsDirect, WikiTravel, FlyerTalk.com among others, swung to a loss of $2.4 million in the first nine months of the year, and saw is revenues decline too. This, after buying 35 start-ups last year, enough to jolt any company. Buyer beware. It is backed by IdeaLab.

Shopstyle signs deal with In Style Magazine — ShopStyle, the fashion-focused shopping search engine that Sugar recently acquired, has announced a partnership with the popular In Style Magazine. Sugar has said its efforts to create a woman-centric network, a la Glam, was not working out, and has been looking into other means to generate revenue. Combining ShopStyle’s search with the editorial sensibilities of In Style’s fashionistas could prove lucrative for both companies. Under the terms of the deal, Sugar will receive a cut of revenues, as well as its CPCs.

ConSentry, a Silicon Valley startup that says its Internet network switches are more efficient than those of giant incumbent Cisco, has raised a $21 million round of funding.

Switches are components that route traffic from through the wider Internet network.

However, large corporations that buy switches to route their traffic often demand security feature to control access (sometimes called Network Access Control). As networks have become faster, security has become more of a challenge, Consentry said.

ConSentry’s switches are designed from the ground up to include NAC that can continuously control the access levels of users on a network, even at hard-wired LAN speeds. Contractors using a company’s network, for example, would have their privileges set when first logging on, but the network would continously monitor their behavior — not allowing suspicious behavior during the session.

NAC is a growing market, with more customers demanding high-level security for their networks. ConSentry made news earlier this year, when two schools each replaced several dozen Cisco switches with ConSentry products.

Smaller competitors also focusing on NAC include Rainier.

The $21 million funding is Consentry’s fourth round. It was led by new investor Teachers’ Private Capital. Other funds participated, including previous backers Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, INVESCO Private Capital and DAG Ventures, and new investors Translink Capital and NCD Investors.

Consentry, based in Milpitas, Calif., has almost 100 employees, and has taken about $72 million in funding to date.

Here’s the latest action:

Lawyers finally sue Avvo – Earlier we reported the angry response of lawyers to the new site, Avvo, which lets users rate lawyers. Well, now lawyer John Browne has followed through on earlier threats to sue, after he decided he didn’t like the profile rating he was given. The rating noted he’d been disciplined by state authorities. The Seattle PI’s John Cook has the story. His suit is even going after Avvo backer, Benchmark Capital. Meanwhile, Avvo’s chief executive responds.

Google beats Cisco in acquisitions of start-ups — So far this year, Google has acquired five venture-backed companies, compared to Cisco’s four, according to VentureOne. (MarketWatch) Until now, Cisco has consistently been the most acquisitive company in Silicon Valley. The emergence of the Google glutton makes sense. With a high market value, Google has the currency to spend.

The bizarre story of Lifelock’s founder — Robert Maynard, founder of Lifelock, an Arizona company designed to help customers avoid identity fraud, has resigned. Turns out, a previous credit-repair company of his had been accused of false advertising and deceptive practices and shut down, that he’d been arrested because of an unpaid $16,000 debt in Vegas, and there’s talk he may have been performed ID theft on his own father — at least according to the reports. This comes shortly after a reported $6 million investment from Silicon Valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins into the company at a rumored valuation of $40 million (scroll down). Kleiner did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Frontline Wireless may or may not be making progress — Depending on what you read, start-up Frontline Wireless may have gotten a vote of support, or suffered setback in its efforts to open a portion of wireless spectrum to build out a broadband network. Some said Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, endorsed it, but his words appear relative weak, when contrasted to the rather negative remarks by Alaska’s Ted Stevens and others.

Why few blacks, Hispanics and minority women are in venture capital — The NYT’s Matt Richtel takes a look.

Apple to sell music through Bebo’s social network — Details here on Apple’s first deal with a social network.

Benchmark backs three of the top-ten massively multiplayer online worlds (MMOs) — Details here. It has invested in Gaia, Habbo Hotel and Second Life, which are only three of the top ten that are venture backed.

Mahalo now paying users to write search engine results — Jason Calacanis is offering to pay $10 to $15 per search result written at his new Web site Mahalo. This follows his efforts at his former employer, AOL’s Netscape, to pay users in an effort to compete against Digg, and which didn’t seem to go very far.

Sony talks to acquire Club Penguin are off — So says Paid Content

AT&T works with Hollywood studios and labels to keep pirated films, music and other content off its network — the first major Internet provider to do so.

Microsoft announces deal with Linspire — Microsoft continues to strike deals with companies that offer services with the competing Linux operating system. The latest deal with Lindows offers interoperability, collaboration and intellectual property assurances (that Microsoft will not sue), and comes after Microsoft feuded with the company over its previous name, Lindows. The accord follows similar Microsoft deals with Novell and Xandros.

Jingle Networks wins patent – The Menlo Park, Calif. start-up, which operates the free directory assistance service 1-800-Free-411, has won a patent for answering such 411 calls while also offering recorded advertisements based on the information requested. The company’s statement is here. It could come in useful as much bigger players start to offer similar players. We’ve used the service, and find it helpful. However, we’ve found the ads more monotonous (they are often the same ones, over and over) than we expected.

Google, the fast growing search engine, has eclipsed Cisco Systems, the router maker for the Internet, to become Silicon Valley’s most valuable company.

We’d been waiting for this to happen.

We first noticed Google achieve its new status yesterday, when it hit a stock market value of $160 billion, slightly higher than Cisco’s $159 billion, however the eclipse may have happened earlier, say on Wednesday.

Right now, though, Cisco is still hanging on. It has traded upward today. In fact, the values of both Google ad Cisco have been seesawing, switching back and forth all morning. It should be a matter of time before Google stretches its lead, being the new company with more momentum. However, if the economy falters, and advertising dips (and recent Wall Street jitters may be reflecting fears about a downturn in consumer spending), Cisco may surge back. That’s one reason why Google’s stock has dropped over the last day, and why Cisco may yet end up at top at the day’s closing.

Google still has a long way to go before catching Microsoft, the nation’s most valuable technology company, which is valued at $285 billion. Or, if you look outside the tech world, oil company Exxon Mobil is valued at $459 billion.

The above screenshot of values was taken at about 10:20am Friday.

Updated

Cisco Systems, the giant networking company best known for building Internet routers, has agreed to buy WebEx, the video conference company, for a net $2.9 billion in cash.

This is significant because it brings Cisco into yet another Internet application market, this time serving small and medium sized businesses. It continues a relentless string of acquisitions by the San Jose, Calif. company, which first became known in the 1990s for its acquisitive nature. The pace slowed down a few years ago, but it has resumed, focusing more than ever on the consumer market and other Internet properties that are driving Web traffic. Most notably, it has acquired Five Across, Reactivity and the assets of Tribe all in the last few weeks.

You’ll see headlines elsewhere of a $3.2 billion purchase price, which includes WebEx’s $300 million in existing cash balance.

WebEx has more than two million subscribers. Cisco said that WebEx will give customers of Cisco’s existing products a better tool for interactivity and collaboration. Cisco’s officials said social networking is a trend that is pervading all markets, not just consumer related Internet applications, but also in business software applications. We’re on the conference call. Will update as necessary.

Beside WebEx, which leads the Web conference market, there’s also Microsoft’s Live Meeting, and Citrix’s GoToMeeting, and a host of scrappy small fry, such as DimDim.

The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

Here is the company’s statement.

MovieBeam, the service that tried to deliver movies over a set-top box, has been sold for less than $10 million, a major loss for investors and sign of how quickly the movie industry is changing — and consolidating.

Movie Gallery, a major video rental company, is the buyer.

MovieBeam had tried to deliver its movies over a box costing between $100 and $200. People then had to download the movies. But few people want pay for such a box when there are so many cheaper alternatives, especially lately.

After losing $56 million in 2005 on the nascent video service, original owner Disney spun out the service last year, and MovieBeam got $48.5 million more in funding at that time from a group of Silicon Valley venture firms, including Mayfield, Norwest and VantagePoint, as well as Intel and Cisco. Disney retained a stake too.

But in less than a year, that effort apparently had failed. Movie Gallery said in its statement that it “expects that the total incremental expense related to MovieBeam, including the initial acquisition cost and any ongoing development expenses will be less than $10 million in 2007.”

(Updated with comment from Cisco)

Cisco Systems, the giant supplier of Internet equipment which is falling hard consumer Internet, has bought the assets of Tribe.net, an early social networking player.

The New York Times reported the story first here.

Cisco’s acquisition of the small San Francisco-based Tribe’s technology is the third purchase within a month — and is significant because it reveals a great ambition by the giant router company to move into new areas of the Internet economy. The latest acquired properties — including Five Across and Reactivity — allow consumers to interact in new ways. They facilitate sharing and communication of video and other content — and drive more traffic over the Web. This benefits Cisco because it means growth for its existing business of supplying Internet equipment, such as routers.

Tribe is relatively small, had struggled of late, and was popular primarily among 20-somethings in urban areas like San Francisco and visitors to the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. Tribe.net will live on as an independent site, under the direction of founder Mark Pincus. However, Cisco will acquire the company’s technology and most of its eight employees — and will use it to help Cisco’s corporate clients build their own versions MySpace and YouTube.

One clarification of the NYT story. We’ve been following the Tribe story, and know that Pincus had sought to do things like build networks for third-parties, and in fact had talked with Bono’s antipoverty campaign, One.org about building a network for it. However, after Pincus departed as CEO, the new CEO rejected the deal, in an effort to push Tribe as a destination site. Bono’s network now has 2.5 million members, and as the NYT notes, it was won by Yahoo.

Pincus returned last year in an effort to save Tribe. Rumors are the Cisco purchase was in single-digit millions, which makes it likely less than the amount invested in Tribe (at least $9.5 million across two rounds from Mayfield Fund and others).

Notably, Marc Andreessen, Netscape co-founder and now co-foudner of Ning, a site that lets people build social networking sites (and thus a competitor to Cisco) takes a swipe at the router giant: “The idea that Cisco is going to be a force in social networking is about as plausible as Ning being a force in optical switches,” he tells the Times.

Update: Eric Chan, head of strategy and marketing for the Cisco “Media Solutions Group,” the unit leading Cisco’s Web 2.0 offensive, said the Tribe technology complements Five Across’. While Five Across builds white-label social networks for corporate clients, Tribe’s technology is stronger in helping users discover new relationships. Chan said there will likely be more announcements in the near future. The goal, he said, is to “provide somewhat of a MySpace in a box” for customers. Chan said he took note of Andreessen’s comment about Cisco, but declined to respond.