VentureBeat

Here’s the latest [updated] action:

1) NVCA thanks the Senate for blocking VC tax
2) Feedster goes belly-up
3) David Chao is new head of Doll Capital
4) Asian telcos may finally find a US toehold
5) Biofuels could be worse than gasoline
6) TechForward raises financing
7) Facebook blocked in Syria

Senate blocks carried interest tax — The National Venture Capital Asoociation expressed its gratitude to the US Senate for dropping a provision to change carried interest tax rates, again. This isn’t any real surprise — we reported in October that the bill would likely fail in Senate, as it has before. Senator Charles Rangel, the Democratic chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, promised to “continue to pursue this issue.” For more on why it’s an issue in the first place, check out our past post arguing in favor of the tax.

Feedster drops off the radar — The blog search site may or may not be dead, but its servers are no longer responsive and the company isn’t responding to our inquiries, either. The company first got funding back in 2004, but we hadn’t heard much from it since last year. Considering the trouble other, similar companies have had, including competitor Technorati, chances seem good that Feedster is done for.

David Chao taking helm retains leadership role within Doll Capital Management — You could see it coming, but it’s now official. David Chao is becoming the head [update: I’m told by Chao that he is not the sole leader of the firm, as a source close to the firm had originally told me. Chao tells me the firm has a management committee comprised of four partners that makes recommendations to the general partners, and he is on the management committee.] Chao is characterized by his hard-charging, workaholic attitude — which we’ve been following for years (see here and here). The Wall Street Journal was inspired enough to paint an admiring portrait of him in an article last year. Under Chao, DCM may tend to cut its losses more quickly and play a faster hand with its investments. He helped found the firm over a decade ago.

Asian telcos are eyeing the US market — NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and other large Asian cellular operators have always been interested in the United States market, but past investments haven’t worked out well for them. The upcoming 700MHz auction, however, may provide them with a useful overseas toehold, especially if Google places a winning bid. More from BusinessWeek.

Biofuels could actually produce more carbon — We all know that corn-based ethanol is inefficient and wasteful (unless you’re a corn farmer). Going a step further, this Environmental Science & Technology article suggests that ethanol’s production might actually release more carbon into the atmosphere than just using gasoline. And another article from the same publication points out the polluting side of harvesting sugarcane in Brazil, a more effective source of ethanol. (For those of you about to point out cellulosic ethanol as an answer, check out this piece from our own Contributor series, written by UC Berkeley professor Ted Patzek.

TechForward, a company that lets consumers upgrade their consumer electronics after purchasing, raises financing — The Los Angeles, Calif., company raised an undisclosed second round of funding from Silicon Valley venture firm New Enterprise Associates, as well as First Round Capital.

Syrian authorities block Facebook –Apparently, the country took the action out of fears of Israeli “infiltration” of Syrian social networks, according to residents and media reports.

Here’s the latest (updated) action:

The solar-powered motorbike from SunRed in Spain — Read the little story about how the company hopes to make a prototype soon, and needs venture capital to do so.

Marchex launches huge Web site — The public company said it has launched more than 100,000 local and vertical Web sites, publishing more than one billion pages of content for hoping to bait people surfing online. These are third-rate sites, originally filled with advertising, but now hosting more than 15 million business listings in sundry categories. Marchex also scrapes the Web for reviews and other content to place in these sites. The sites include www.cuisine.com, www.locksmiths.com, www.remodeling.com, and www.bayareahotels.com. Marchex paid Yun Ye of Name Development $164 million for 100,000 sites. Marchex says 30 million unique visitors monthly land on its sites by typing in domain names, willingly or unwittingly. This is very similar to the strategy of Demand Media, another opportunist land-grab company we’ve covered. (More at the NYT).

Venture Capitalist blasts buyout industry — Dixon Doll (left), the co-founder of venture capital firm DCM, next chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, said his group is working hard to fend of a new tax that could affect the VC industry. He blamed the buyout industry for the recent proposal in Congress for such a tax, saying it is “plain and simply because of the unbelievable egos of the guys running the PE firms like Blackstone and KKR,” he said. “They put big targets on their back … calling attention to themselves in a nonflattering way.” (We’ve reported on the lavish parties and $300 stone crab eaten by the Blackstone crowd.) They also don’t create jobs, he said: “It’s ‘Barbarians at the Gate’ all over again,” he said. (Via VentureWire.)

The slow video joint venture between News Corp. and NBC Universal — We’ve reported on this joint effort to answer YouTube. Today (Thursday), they appointed a high-level Amazon.com executive, Jason Kilar, to be chief executive of the venture. He led Amazon’s efforts in video and DVD. It is supposed to launch later this year. However, we were on the conference call today, and the date of launch seems uncertain. This is a very slow project. And each week that goes by, YouTube gets bigger. And strangely, News Corp.’s own MySpace launched MySpace TV today, which will serve to confuse. The venture has 30 employees, Kilar said. The venture — which still has no name — is reportedly trying to raise $100 million on a valuation of $1 billion (Paid Content).

Hollywood veterans launch Film Department — Mark Gill, formerly president of Warner Independent Pictures, and Neil Sacker, a former executive vice president at Miramax, said they’ve formed an independent film company with $200 million in financing from a group of unnamed private investors. (Update: We’ve been told Gill got money from Deutsche Bank). It will be called Film Department (no site yet). It will produce six films a year with budgets between $10 million and $35 million. Sounds almost retro, at a time when there’s so much Web novelty. (Details here.)

Google Gadget Ventures — Google announced a pilot project to support third-party developers of gadgets, the cornucopia of items you can choose for your Google home page. It is offering (1) grants of $5,000 to developers who’ve built gadgets in for Google’s directory that already receive at least 250,000 weekly page views, and (2) seed investments of $100,000 to previous Google Gadget Ventures grant recipients who’d like to build a business around the Google Gadgets platform. More details here. This is a smart way for Google to build an active community around its platform

The exodus continues from Google — Indeed, Google may need to nurture those smart developers sooner than they think. Here’s a good summary in the WSJ about the growing stream of people leaving Google. The Silicon Valley mentality: There’s no point working for a public company, especially if it looks like the stock has hit highs for a while, and when you can go roll the dice at another start-up. By being up in Redmond, Microsoft doesn’t suffer the same walk-across-the-street problem. This will be interesting to watch.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets supports folders — Folders, that’s right. Gmail doesn’t give you folders, but Google Docs does. This, and other updates (details here).

Feedster launches disorienting “Version 2.0″ — We’re having difficulty understanding what this well-funded company does that is different. Odd. We’ll look into it.

Pageflakes turns your home page into a social network — Pageflakes is one of dozens of companies offering you a home page where you can put widgets of information such as email, news, weather and sports. Next month, it launches Blizzard, which lets people subscribe to their friends’ widgets of information, or “pagecasts” as Pageflakes calls them. (Erick Schonfeld has the details).

Webwag, which is similar to Pageflakes, lets you synchronize your widgets with your phone — Details here. We first wrote about this company here.