VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

More earnings info — While we wrote earlier about Microsoft’s earnings, plenty of other companies are posting theirs, too. Motorola disclosed that its market share is down to 9.5 percent, while Qualcomm’s profit is up. Amazon’s Q1 profits rose 30 percent, Nintendo profits hit a record high on strong Wii and DS sales, and Juniper Network’s profits leaped 66 percent over last year’s.

Greenhouse gas emissions are accelerating — The rise in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide has gone from one part per million each year in the 1960s, to 1.5ppm in the 1980s, to 2ppm in 2000. Now emissions appear to have picked up even more sharply, with the latest numbers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showing an increase of 2.4ppm last year. Overall levels are rapidly approaching 400ppm; an atmospheric concentration of 450ppm is widely held as a point of serious danger.

Russia looking into Internet censorship — While the Russian media is kept under tight control, Internet access in the country has so far remained unfettered. That may be set to change, as Ars Technica reports.

CNET and Yahoo to ink editorial / ad deal – Yahoo has agreed to run much of CNET’s content on its site, as well as selling remnant advertising from the company, according to Kara Swisher.

Another Twitter engineer flitters away — Lee Mighdoll, a VP of engineering and operations added to the Twitter team back in January, has left the company. That follows the departure of chief architect Blaine Cook, for reasons still not entirely clear. Twitter has come under a lot of criticism this past year for its downtime issues, perhaps having some heads roll will help shore things up. The company also may also be preparing to raise a new Series C round, according to Silicon Alley Insider.

Ooma lowers prices in bid to compete — Ooma, as you’ll recall, is a startup selling $400 units that allow people to make free calls, for life, over a broadband internet connection. Following a rumor from Valleywag that the company is struggling, it has rolled out a new scheme to sell units for $249, with an optional monthly service plan for “enhanced telephony services”.

Google’s $70M restaurant bill — Even for Google’s famous free lunch, somebody pays: The company itself. The bill comes to $70 million, according to the Silicon Alley Insider. My question: Who gets the tip?

FCC chair rejects opening existing wireless networks — A petition from Skype failed to convince FCC chairman Kevin Martin to force wireless carriers to open up their existing networks to outside devices and software, leaving the newly-auctioned 700Mhz airwaves as the only network opened by regulation. More at the WSJ.

PG&E wants 800 - 1,200MW more renewable energy by 2015 — Energy utility PG&E, which supplies the Bay Area, just struck a deal for 900 megawatts of energy from solar thermal company BrightSource. Instead of taking a day of rest, though, the company has gone on to ask for up to 1,200MW more in a public “Request for Offers”, or RFO. It will announce bid winners in July. Via the East Bay Business Times.

Jana refuses board seat, continues attack on CNET — Jana Partners, the fund that is using its 10 percent share in CNET in an attempt to force the company to oust its top executives, has turned down another offer of a board seat. According to a new statement from Jana, CNET’s execs “lack the industry-specific experience and expertise to stop this shareholder value destruction.” It’s sticking to its demands for seven board seats, and has sent a proposal to CNET for an some changes it wants made, including more extensive social networking on the news site. More at Reuters.

Algae could become major source of hydrogen — Auto companies and government are both calling for a hydrogen-fueled transportation infrastructure, but nobody’s quite sure yet where all the cheap hydrogen will come from. The latest possibility is algae, which could be tweaked to release hydrogen, according to researchers at Argonne National Laboratory.

Microsoft’s open-source OOXML standard gets approval — Despite stiff opposition from open source devotees and some advocacy groups, Microsoft’s open document standard, called OOXML, passed an ISO vote to become a recognized standard. As a result, Microsoft will have an easier time keeping governments and some large businesses using its document software. More at Ars Technica.

Cleantech investing doesn’t mean being a nice guy — People, planet and profit: Bill Green, managing director of VantagePoint Venture Capital’s cleantech investments, only cares about one of those factors, and you can probably guess which. “You really don’t want the chief sustainability officer, you want the chief financial officer,” he says. “We need to change this conversation around. The chief sustainability officer, man he’s your friend. He drinks the cool-aid, he wakes up in the morning, he reads your blog, he so gets this, he hates George Bush, it’s all good. That’s not going to get us to done.” More Green tips for green investing over at Greenbang (no relation).

Mashery launches WhitePages API — A new API from Mashery will allow developers to easily add people search to their applications. The company is growing quickly, according to a post on ReadWriteWeb.

Samsung’s iPhone killer and Microsoft smartphones — Samsung has released its ‘Instinct’ phone, an iPhone competitor that “does a decent job aping Apple’s phone”, according to the Silicon Alley Insider. The phone got better reviews from other sources, but as SAI points out, a new, even better iPhone is due out next quarter. Meanwhile, Microsoft announced that it is releasing Windows Mobile 6.1 and an upgrade to Internet Explorer Mobile, which the company says will have more security and easier navigation.

CNET, one of the largest and oldest publishers of online technology news, is laying off ten percent of its workforce, or 120 employees.

The move, announced this afternoon in an internal memo obtained by PaidContent, is most likely intended to show that the company is serious about operating more efficiently. It is facing an increasingly threatening hostile board takeover effort led by hedge fund firm Jana Partners.

San Francisco-based CNET, a public company, has been fighting back against exploding competition from independent blogs. Most recently, it has re-arranged its editorial structure to put veteran reporter Dan Farber in charge, and it has given its rank-and-file editorial staff more freedom to blog.

Here’s the latest action:

Google moves ‘Sky’ into the browser — Google has a layer for Google Earth that is known as ‘Sky.’ Now the company has created a version for web browsers as well according to the Google Lat Long Blog. This browser-based ‘Sky’ features three separate optical sky surveys (microwave, ultraviolet and x-ray), has galleries of images from things such as the Hubble Space Telescope, and offers a search engine that lets you find thousands of named stellar items in the sky. It has the same look and feel as well as controls of Google Maps. This launch is notably close to Microsoft’s announcement of the WorldWide Telescope project.

Harvard grad server gets hacked — A Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences web server that contained applicant data for the Fall 2007 academic year as well as some housing data for this year and last was compromised by an outsider according to the Harvard University Gazette. The University took the site down for four days to investigate, and was forced to notify everyone whose data could have been comprised, as well as issue an apology. The hacker has not yet been caught.

MSN executive leaving for ad company — Microsoft chief media officer Joanne Bradford is leaving to join Spot Runner, an Internet-based ad agency in Los Angeles according to the Seattle Post Intelligencer. Bradford oversaw the MSN Media Network and in the past ran Microsoft online advertising initiatives. Greg Nelson has been named to take her place on an interim basis.

Nerve-tapping neckband enables telepathic chat — Way out of left field is a new device that translates thoughts into speech by picking up nerve signals according to New Scientist Tech. This technology, which requires training to operate, was used to place the first public voiceless phone call at a conference put on by Texas Instruments. Eventually this technology will be used for those who have lost the ability to speak.

Viruses are showing up pre-installed in some devices — Everything from iPods to navigation systems are showing up on store shelves with pre-installed viruses on them according to the Associated Press. These viruses can be used to steal password and open backdoors for hackers to get into. In most of the cases looked into, Chinese factories have been the source.

Specific Media acquires the ad network Adviva – The online ad network Specific Media has bought Adviva, a display ad network based in the U.K according to CNET. Specific Media made the deal to move into the European market. This deal follows Google just-cleared $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick and Microsoft’s $6 billion purchase of aQuantive last year. Terms of this deal were not disclosed.

A Delaware court today ruled in favor of allowing Jana Partners, a hedge fund, to nominate candidates to replace current CNET board members. With this power, Jana can take the next steps to stage a takeover of the online media company.

Back in January, Jana led a group of investors including Spark Capital and Velocity Interactive Group in acquiring a large share of CNET (our coverage). Knowing their intention was to stage a hostile takeover, CNET adopted a so-called “poison-pill” strategy in which any hostile bid would be a less attractive road to pursue as it would hurt all parties involved financially.

CNET went on to claim that Jana and the others could not legally nominate their own board members since they did not have sufficient time owning their shares. That specific argument is what the judge threw out today.

Jana now hopes to move ahead with plans to place two of their nominees on the CNET board, as well as expand the board from eight to thirteen members so that they can nominate more and effectively take control of the company.

On the front of another deal, Yahoo will likely not be happy with this ruling today as Microsoft is finalizing plans for a hostile takeover of the company (our coverage). Microsoft is also planning to seat its own nominees on Yahoo’s board.

Here’s the latest action:
1) Dan Farber takes the helm at CNET
2) Mozilla launches email-focused subsidiary
3) Scribd creates iPaper, an Acrobat competitor
4) Hewlett-Packard has great first quarter
5) Tesla Motors pulls in another $40M
6) Verizon, AT&T unveil new unlimited wireless plans
7) Oligarchs, proletariat run amok in Silicon Valley
8) Scientists suck up CO2 to make alternative fuel

Dan Farber takes the helm at CNET — One familiar figure is stepping aside for another at CNET, where long-time editor-in-chief Jai Singh is ending his long rule over the editorial arm of the media company. Farber, a veteran journalist and former EIC at some of the tech world’s most recognized publications, takes on the role at a time that CNET is struggling with activist investors including Spark Capital and Jana Partners. His own thoughts on the transition are here. (Image by Scott Beale of Laughing Squid.)

Mozilla launches new subsidiary to improve email — The Mozilla Foundation, which makes the Firefox browser, has launched a subsidiary called Mozilla Messaging that will work on improving the Thunderbird email client, another of the company’s products. In a painfully vague blog post, David Ascher, the CEO-to-be of Messaging, says that the new division will give Thunderbird the kind of attention Firefox has always gotten, adding new features and opening it to more contributions from outside developers. Despite the vagueness, as a major competitor to Microsoft Outlook, a next-generation version of Thunderbird may (eventually) be big news.

Scribd creates iPaper, an Acrobat competitor — Does clicking a link only to find it opening up a PDF file in a separate window bug the hell out of you? Scribd is hoping it can tap into that pain point to get a foothold over Adobe’s Acrobat, with a new document viewer called iPaper that will be embedded directly in web pages. The viewer will be able to display a variety of formats including normal text and Powerpoint presentations and, get this, advertisements powered by Google Adsense, without requiring a download. The app is quite similar to Macromedia’s FlashPaper, which Adobe effectively abandoned when it acquired that company. Ironically, iPaper is also made with Adobe Flash.

Hewlett-Packard has an excellent first quarter — Giant computer maker HP had an excellent first quarter, especially as compared to the recent earnings and stock performance of most of its compatriots on the NASDAQ. The company saw a small bump in North American revenue, accompanied by a jump in Asia and Europe. It’s often considered an indicator for the enterprise sector, so strong results coming now from HP suggest that the recession might not be so bad after all, at least for tech.

Tesla Motors pulls in another $40 million — Electric car maker Tesla has taken another $40 million, raising total investment in the company to date to $140 million, as we briefly mentioned yesterday. The lead investors were Valor Equity Partners and Elon Musk, the company’s chairman. Tesla is shooting for $250 million more over the next two years, and the launch of a new model; for more details, see yesterday’s article.

Two major carriers unveil new unlimited wireless plans — Verizon and AT&T now both offer unlimited-use wireless plans, starting at $99. Directed at the high-end market, the new packages are a significant step away from the set-minute “buckets” that the largest carriers have favored to date. They mark a further move toward using value-added services like applications and data as the major differentiator between wireless plans.

Oligarchs, proletariat run amok in Silicon Valley; middle class vanishing — Petit bourgeousie, where art thee? Recent employment figures for Silicon Valley show that overall employment levels are rising, but jobs in the $30,000 - $80,000 earning range are on the decline. Worse, the job growth for low-end earners  making less than $30,000 was at five percent, while growth for the $80,000-plus group was at only one percent. This might have something to do with an increasingly common business model: One well-paid CEO, one small army of interns.

Suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to make fuel — A couple of new schemes hope to pull carbon dioxide from the air to create an alternative fuel. The idea reported here by the New York Times involves using a nuclear plant as the power source for the electrochemical reaction that would produce the fuel, though, so don’t plan on seeing it any time soon.

Here’s the latest action:

1) Apple releases the Air, Twitter left gasping
2) Facebook-based gaming site Zynga launches
3) CNET defies Spark / Jana alliance with poison pill
4) Grayboxx rolls out local search nationally
5) Overlay.tv gets $4.5M for in-video ad links
6) Portfolio magazine cozies up to Open Social
7) Oversee draws $150M for domain auctions
8) A video primer on data portability
9) Notes on the upcoming 700mhz auctions

Apple releases the Air, Twitter left gasping — As usual, Steve Jobs used his keynote speech at the Macworld conference to introduce a new Apple product. This time it was the ultra-thin Air laptop, which will probably help continue the Mac’s trend of stealing market share away from Microsoft. Coming in at just three pounds and three quarters of an inch thick, it will also be the thinnest laptop on the market, at least according to Jobs. More tech specs here. The keynote also helped point out the limits of Twitter. The messaging service was on fire, with Mac fans firing off one-liners about developments — too many, apparently, because the service went down because of the load, confounding several live-bloggers, including Valleywag.

Facebook-based gaming site Zynga launches — Casual gaming startups like Kongregate and King.com are amassing large userbases, but can a gaming startup survive on Facebook and other social networks alone? Investors including Peter Thiel and Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures think so, having just sunk $10 million into a company called Zynga that offers versions of popular games like Texas Hold’em and Battleship on Facebook. The company’s founder, Mark Zingus, told the New York Times that Zynga is already doing well enough to support its staff of 27 people with revenue from its games — despite the fact that the their sole source of revenue is other developers who run ads for their applications on Zynga’s games.

CNET pops the poison pill — CNET showed its willingness to fight Spark Capital and Jana Partners, the leaders of a group of investors trying to take it over. CNET has adopted a “poison pill” plan, in this case a shareholder’s rights plan that attempts to discourage the two from buying more than 15 percent of the company (they currently hold just over 10 percent). The company also instituted new severance packages for its (allegedly underperforming) senior execs, just in case. Expect lengthy negotiations between the independent board that instituted the new rules and Spark/Jana, which want to fire the aforementioned execs and run the company according to its own ideas.

Grayboxx rolls out local search engine nationally — Grayboxx, a local search engine and reviews site that launched last October for 100 towns and cities, has expanded its service to cover the entire United States. The company is almost entirely automated, although it just added a feature to allow user reviews. We also covered it before its launch.

Overlay.tv raises $4.5M, readies release of video advertising service — A first round of $4.53 million has gone to Overlay.tv, which will launch its service on Valentine’s Day. In a nutshell, Overlay can add hyperlinks or images into videos leading back to other websites. For example, a video of M.C. Hammer dancing might include a video link on top of his legs, leading to a site where you could buy balloon pants. Regular users will also be able to put overlays on videos leading back to links of their own choosing. Overlay is based in Ottawa, Canada. Update: Backers are Celtic House Venture Partners, EdgeStone Capital Partners and Tech Capital Partners.

Portfolio cozying up to Open Social — A day or so ago we reported that famously stodgy media giant Conde Nast is moving its teen destination, Flip.com, to live entirely on Facebook and other social networks. Now Portfolio magazine, another Conde property, is planning on joining up with Google’s Open Social (coverage of OpenSocial here), as well as spreading its content to sites like LinkedIn. Although left behind for several years, “old media” is slowly learning to play the internet game (witness as well the growing online success of standbys like Time Magazine and the New York Times).

Domain name company Oversee draws $150M — Private equity firms have continued to take an interest in the domain name business, most recently with Oak Hill Capital pouring $150 million into Oversee.net, a monetization platform for domain owners and the new owner of domain auctioneers Moniker and SnapNames. Oversee will likely use the money to consolidate its growing hold on the domain name auction business.

Data portability 101: The video tutorial — A picture is a thousand words, but a video might help you keep from falling asleep, when learning about topics like data portability. Helpfully, ReadWriteWeb has a brief update post containing a video explaining the basics. We’ve also written on the portability group Facebook and Google recently joined, here.

FCC’s 700mhz auctions approaching fast — January 24th marks the date of the 700mhz spectrum auction, and AT&T, Verizon and Google are getting ready to square off in the competition for the most desirable blocks. Unfortunately for the FCC, the main bidder for one of the other blocks, Frontline Wireless, recently shut down, and it’s possible that nobody else is interested. For more info on the spectrum and auction rules, check out Ars Technica, while GigaOm has a helpful table of the different spectrum blocks.

Here’s the day’s action:
1) CNET sells its photo-sharing site Webshots at loss, may be ready to try again
2) Comcast isn’t the only ISP manipulating traffic
3) Apple may lose Warner Music, too
4) Yahoo’s Cammie Dunaway goes to Nintendo
5) Trusted Opinion, social recommendations, raises $1.3 million
6) JackBe, enterprise mashup software, raises $9.5 million
7) EchoSign, electronic signatures, takes $6 million

CNET sells Webshots to American Greeting for $45M – CNET bought Webshots, a photo-sharing site, for $70M in 2004, so the purchase apparently didn’t do much for the company. CNET itself is losing money, and also recently took on a $250 million loan, which may signal a desire for more (but hopefully better advised) acquisitions of internet properties.

Comcast isn’t the only ISP interfering with P2P — This post by Om Malik points out that other ISPs are probably also interfering with Net traffic. So much for Net Neutrality. Companies that rely on P2P traffic may have to count on lawmakers for relief if ISPs become bolder in their efforts to minimize certain traffic. Luckily, they’ve got congressmen like Rick Boucher, who has put the issue at the top of the House tech agenda.

Apple’s iPod aura wearing off with music labels — Last month it was Universal Music Group, this month it’s Warner Music. As record label’s contracts with Apple run out, the companies are deciding they don’t really want to be in a controlling relationship, and would prefer to see other distributors. Both Universal and Warner are shifting to a month-to-month contract with Apple that will allow them to strike deals elsewhere. If the companies have figured out yet that they don’t have to be in constant control of their own content, that might even mean a few crumbs for startups.

Yahoo-er Cammie Dunaway has indeed left for Nintendo – The New York Times confirms the rumor that Valleywag had the other week.

Recommendation-focused social network Trusted Opinion raises $1.3 million – More here.

JackBe, enterprise mashup software company, raises $9.5M more – The company, based in Fremont, Calif., raised the third round of financing from Harbert Venture Partners, Core Capital Partners, and existing investors Intel Capital, Darby Technology Ventures and Blue Chip Venture Company. The company’s Presto platform allows users to create applications by pulling in data from various sources, and faces numerous competitors, including Nexaweb and Xignite. It had previously raised $9.5 million.

EchoSign takes $6 million for signature automation — A month ago today, we reported that competitor DocuSign had taken $12.4 million to continue developing its electronic signature technology. We wouldn’t say they’re copying, but does anyone else hear an echo? (OK, sorry for that one.) This is EchoSign’s second funding, led by Emergence Capital and also participated in by previous investor Storm Capital.

Here’s the latest action:

Sprint doubles bet on WiMAX –- Sprint doubles its investment pledge on the untested WiMAX technology (WSJ, subscription required), which Sprint will use to provide widespread broadband over its network. It now plans to spend $5 billion by 2010.

Twitku, the Meebo for twittering — Twitku is a new service that lets you post a single message about what you’re doing simultaneously to Twitter and Jaiku. Those two services are rivals in letting people send one-line messages to their friends, and some people have become torn about which one to use. So Twitku lets them avoid the problem. Like Meebo does for instant messaging, Twitku brings your accounts into a single screen.

Meebo now tailored for the iPhone — The popular online instant messaging company has finally unveiling a version designed for the iPhone. Other IM startups, such as Heysan!, were iPhone-compatible when the iPhone launched and saw traffic surge. Since launch, IM companies of all shapes have introduced their own iPhone-compatible versions. One that we’ve covered is FlickIM, which boasted at the time it was better than the then-existing Meebo on the iPhone. Meebo is one of the most used instant messaging services in the world. Like the Facebook app for the iPhone, this move was predictable.

VMware’s $750 million mistake — While everyone was getting suckered into raving about VMware’s whopping IPO Tuesday, few people stood back and realized what the company’s robust stock rise (from $22 to $51 in the first day) really meant. Essentially, the company flittered away about $750 million to investors who had nothing to do with the company’s success. Had it sold its stock at a higher price, say $45, it would have doubled its proceeds, and still given initial investors a decent incentive to buy the stock. Press accounts marveled at the stock’s rise, but hey, had the company priced its stock at $10, it could have seen a five-fold increase, and gotten even better press coverage! Great press, but completely destitute. What it should have done was use the open-IPO process that prices stock at market rates to begin with, which is what Google did. Investment bankers hate it. But its better for the companies. (Thanks to Techdirt, for the reminder).

Final nail in Bolt Media coffin — Bolt Media, the video site that launched in 1999, absorbed more than $60 million in venture backing, precariously survived the burst of the Internet bubble in 2000, slaved through the dark years of 2001-2003, travailed through a management buyout in 2004, and then almost got sold in February to GoFish, has finally met its end. The acquisition didn’t go through, because of Bolt’s myriad of lawsuits, giving it no other option than to fold.

Reporters sue HP — Three reporters for CNET Networks sue Hewlett-Packard, accusing the company of violating their privacy in its hunt for the source of boardroom leaks.