VentureBeat

Here’s the latest (updated) action:
1) Kyte.tv raises $15 million
2) Electric Sheep Company lays off 22
3) FCC receives 700MHz auction applications
4) Microsoft signs $500M ad deal
5) GPS devices fly off the shelves
6) Netsuite sets high price for planned IPO
7) Eric Eldon, celebrity at large?

Kyte.tv raises $15M second round — An online startup that offers a video player allowing near-live communications by video, photo and chat, Kyte has picked up some steam online, attracting a decent-sized audience and celebrities like 50 Cent to its service. The $15 million second round was provided by Telefonica, Nokia, DoCoMo, Swisscom, Holtzbrinck and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, according to Robert Scoble. Quite a hefty amount, in comparison to the $2 million investment into live streaming video company, Ustream that we reported in yesterday’s roundup. However, Kyte still has some work to do in competing against newer, sharper-looking rivals like Qik, which says it can stream live video straight from your phone, something Kyte doesn’t quite do (though is working on).

Electric Sheep Company lays off 22 employees — It’s time to cull some lambs from the fold for the Electric Sheep Company, which builds software that third-party companies can add to virtual worlds Second Life. It had planned to build an ad network within these worlds. Instead, it has cut almost a third of its workforce, and is giving up on the ad plans for now. It plans to branch out beyond Second Life to worlds like Metaplace (our coverage). More details are at ClickZ News.

FCC receives applications for 700MHz auctions — More than two hundred applications were filed to bid on the upcoming Federal Communications Commission auction for the 700 Megahertz wireless spectrum, planned to begin January 24th. Although some applicants must correct and finalize their applications, the list contains some notable names — Google, of course, but also Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s venture firm Vulcan Capital, and startups like Frontline Wireless (expected). Check out the lists of finished and unfinished applicants yourself for more.

Microsoft signs $500M ad deal with Viacom – Taking a first step toward becoming a viable competitor to Google in the online ad market, Microsoft signed a deal with Viacom that it says is worth about $500 million, over a contract period of five years. Google, in turn, immediately claimed that the deal is proof that Federal anti-trust watchdogs should allow its merger with DoubleClick to go through. Microsoft may well be kicking itself, because as Bloomberg reports, the Federal Trade Commission will likely approve the Google-DoubleClick merger this month (although it must also find approval with European regulators).

NetSuite sets high price for planned IPO — First the expected range for NetSuite’s initial public offering was $13 to $16, then underwriters boosted it to $19 to $22. Now the final price has been set at $26, almost double the original range. That means that Larry Ellison, the billionaire CEO of Oracle whose family owns over 70 percent of the company, will make out like a bandit. NetSuite, of course, is a competitor to Salesforce, whose own stellar performance on the markets likely helped improve NetSuite’s outlook. Ellison was also at one time an early investor in Salesforce, which is now run by a former employee of his, Marc Benioff.

GPS devices becoming cheaper, more ubiquitous — Many GPS devices have dropped below $100, and even the better units often retail for little more than $200. Sales of the devices at local malls are through the roof, according to Dean Takahashi. Cell phones, likewise, are providing an ever-cheaper way to find your way around. Excellent news for the dozens of startups that have sprung up offering to show you the way to the nearest store, friend or event — now the question is, which will come out on top?

VentureBeat’s own Eric Eldon becomes a celebrity — Admittedly, those are the words of Speedddate.com, a dating startup that ran a session with eight “celebrity bloggers.” We (or he) will take the compliment. Way to end those lonely nights of blogging, Eric.

Here’s the latest action:

Google phone details — Google’s Eric Schmidt had said Google wasn’t releasing a Google Phone, but the WSJ has the latest details about its significant action in the phone area nonetheless. Namely, it is working with other manufacturers.

Yahoo executive Daniel Rosensweig joins Quadrangle Group, a private equity firm — The former Yahoo operating chief will join the New York firm and help it on media, tech and communications investments. More here. Quadrangle’s investments include Cablevision Systems and movie-theater operator Cinemark.

Amazon is launching its own competitor to PayPal and Google Checkout — Techcrunch has details.

Discovery Communications buys green blog TreeHugger.com for a reported $10 million — TreeHugger makes announcement here. TreeHugger says it attracts 1.4 million unique users monthly. More at New York Post.

CBS Mobile is promiscuous with mobile ad companies — It has partnered with not one, but four mobile advertising companies: AdMob, Millennial Media, Rhythm NewMedia and Third Screen Media.

Google experiments with new behavioral targeted ads — If you perform a search for “Italian Hotels,” and then another search for “weather,” Google will show you ads next to your results related to the weather in Italy. Details at NewTeeVee.

Homepage company Netvibes criticizes Facebook for being closed — You can’t pull in the news feeds from your Facebook friends on to your homepage at Netvibes. Netvibes has introduced a widget to provide you information about your friends, but it is protesting the lack of the news feed.

New York Times suggests the Bancroft family was essentially bought off, when it agreed to sell Dow Jones/WSJ to Rupert Murdoch — Of course, it’s in the Times’ interest to make the parent of its competitor, WSJ, look dysfunctional, even if the structure will change under Murdoch. Reading a story like this, you begin to see why Dow Jones wasn’t performing very well.

Docstoc, a site where people can post any sort of document, reportedly about to raise cash — Docstoc is a competitor to Scribd, and is clearly trying to keep up. Scribd dubbed itself the “YouTube for documents” and raised $4 million in venture capital. Docstoc is rumored by Techcrunch to be about to raise money from co-founders of MySpace and angel investors in Baidu. We’ve asked the company for comment, but it hasn’t responded.

Yelp releases opens its platform to third-party developers — Yelp, the review site, has released an API that lets other sites or companies with mobile applications retrieve Yelp business and review data for integration into their own offerings.

The FCC set the wireless auction rules — The Mercury News has a good summary. Notably, Reed Hundt, a former FCC Chairman and executive with potential auction bidder Frontline Wireless, was originally a critic of the proposed rules. Now, he has responded by saying he supports the rules. We asked his representative why he has changed his tune. She said Hundt is now stressing the “glass half full” instead of “half empty.”

BitTorrent is rolling out free video service — Beginning next month, the San Francisco video and media distribution company will offer some of its library of television and feature films - which include titles such as “Letters from Iwo Jima” and “24″ — for free, supported by advertising. See Mercury News story here.

updated

There’s a lot of excitement coming from a decision by the Federal Communications Commission chairman to propose rules that will set aside wireless spectrum for creation of an “open network” free from the chokehold of large telecom carriers.

The spectrum would be auctioned off early next year. Chairman Kevin Martin’s proposal will circulated as early as Tuesday.

This could provide an opening for other technology companies, notably Google, to make a major strike at the monopoly currently held by the carriers. See this story for the number of steps Google has already made to roll out its own network. Outwardly, Google has said it doesn’t want to become a full-fledged network, saying it isn’t part of its core activities. More on Google, and the challenges that remain to its bid, in a sec.

In covering the start-up world over the past several years, we’ve noted that one of the biggest bottlenecks to innovation has been the carriers’ control over the wireless industry. Start-up after start-up has complained about the large fees carriers charge any company hoping to offer services on their networks. The latest visible manifestation of the carriers’ power has been AT&T’s control of the iPhone.

The FCC move was anticipated, and we’ve been reporting the efforts of companies like Frontline Wireless to push it along. Technology entrepreneurs and investors have also written columns for VentureBeat in support of the opening. We also ran a column by investor Paul Grim today calling for T-Mobile, a network to boldly take action to open up its network as a way of challenging the bigger networks.

Google’s blog on the matter is here. Notably, Google has concluded that the carriers and cable companies will win the auction, because they will have so much to lose from it that they’ll pour huge resources to make sure others can’t compete. Here’s a Google lobby letter. And Reed Hundt, head of Frontline Wireless, has reportedly even called Martin’s proposal a “dreadful plan,” before it is even released, apparently believing there will be so many loopholes that carriers will dominate despite the “open” ruling (details at GigaOm).

The WSJ has more here.

Frontline Wireless is a new start-up aiming to bid on wireless spectrum that it will let police and other emergency response agencies use, in the hopes of making a profit at the same time.

The strategy, led by an interesting mix of interests, potentially including Google, is to get a corner on a 12MHz section of spectrum of long-wave radio, which is designed for big open spaces. Wifi is for offices and metro areas. This long-wave radio spectrum is great for places like the hills beyond Berkeley, Calif, where it could reach your car’s GPS device, your RIM or iPhone, and provide it with wireless broadband.

Frontline’s network, importantly, would be an open network, having plenty of room for anyone who wants to lease part of it (from the eventual owner). This stands in contrast to the closed networks owned by the carrier networks. The key condition of Frontline’s proposal: That whoever successfully bids on the 12MHz will also open it up for use to emergency response services (first responders) for their free use.

Frontline Wireless plans to make a bid on the spectrum this year, co-founder and former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt told VentureBeat during an interview earlier this morning. He knows of few other companies interested in making a similar bid. The 12MHz he wants is part of the 60MHz to be auctioned by the federal government in early 2009. Hundt’s proposal is an answer to a request by the FCC commissioner for good ideas about how to use the auction for public safety. The lack of a common national network for police and fire departments was made tragically clear during 9/11 • so there really is a good reason for this. The 60MHz of spectrum to be auctioned lies in the 700MHz to 800MHz band, part of a spectrum close enough to existing first responder frequencies that it makes sense, Hundt said.

Meanwhile, the company has won an undisclosed amount of investment from high-profile angel investor Ram Shriram. Hundt said he met with Shriram last year at Evvia restaurant in Palo Alto, and sought his support because Shriram can open doors in the tech world. Namely, Google.

That company has been an early supporter of “network neutrality” for fixed broadband. It will likely be a backer of wireless broadband, too, Hundt reasons. Moreover, RIM and Palm and Apple may also be interested.

Frontline has a credible management team: Besides Hundt (a Democrat), there’s Janice Obuchowski, a former head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (and Republican), and Hayes Griffen, chief executive of Vanguard Cellular (later acquired by AT&T Wireless for $1.7 billion).

The company’s open-access pitch may help it avoid the problems that Cyren Call, another venture-backed company has run into. That company’s bid for a lower piece of the spectrum was recently rejected by the FCC. Bids for the upcoming auction will take place later this year.