VentureBeat

1) We’re hearing rumors that AOL and News Corp. were looking to acquire ValueClick
2) TubeMogul to sell online video analytics
3) German Facebook-clone investors back again
4) Facebook settles New York child-safety probe
5) Mochi Media launches MochiAds for casual games
6) Google, Microsoft and Yahoo all reportedly courting Facebook
7) AdMob poaches Google engineer
8) California adds a further $125M to clean transport
9) San Francisco’s New Resource Bank receives $10M kick-start

We’re hearing rumors that AOL and News Corp. were looking to acquire ValueClick – We checked with the companies last week, and they declined to comment. ValueClick’s value, and thus attractiveness, has just tumbled now that the online-ad company has said it will bring in less revenue than expected.

TubeMogul to sell online video analytics – The Berkeley, Calif. start-up supplies video-viewing data to Web publishers, so that they can track what videos are being watched. It a sort of Google Analytics, only for video. It has raised a seed round from NetService Ventures.

German Facebook-clone investors back again — The Samwer Brothers, famed for their propensity to back German companies that copy American models, have invested in Jimdo, the website creation tool. Not surprisingly, Jimdo’s tool (coverage here) looks quite similar to Weebly. This comes shortly after their investment in a Scibd copycat, Dotkus.de.

Facebook settles New York child-safety probe – Facebook, like MySpace, has been in the spotlight because pedophiles have used these social networks to contact children and expose them to porn. While a working group of attorney generals from all 50 states is still looking into the issue, New York state attorney general Andrew Cuomo announced today that his office had reached a settlement with Facebook. Cuomo had announced his own probe of Facebook’s privacy measures last month (previous coverage here). Under the agreement, Facebook will begin addressing complaints within 24 hours of being notified, responding to the the aggrieved party within 72 hours; it has also agreed to let an independent examiner oversee how it handles complaints.

Mochi Media launches MochiAds for casual games – The San Francisco company lets casual video game developers embed ads within their video-game creations, and includes analytics for measuring how much money the ads are bringing in (see screenshot, below). The company is just now launching to the public but it has already accumulated some impressive numbers. While in private beta, says it has already been working with 1000 game developers, serving over 100 million ads per month that have reached over 50 million gamers in total, worldwide. The company announced an undisclosed amount of funding from Accel Partners in August.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo all reportedly courting Facebook – All are reportedly offering to invest in Facebook at a valuation of $15 billion. Details here.

AdMob poaches Google engineer — The stream of employees leaving Google has turned into a river. Google’s stock price has broken $600, we’re at the top of an advertising market cycle, and smart employees have to wonder how much short-term upside there’s left in that stock. Kevin Scott, a former engineering manager in search and advertising at Google, is now managing both the software and hardware infrastructure at the San Mateo, Calif., mobile ad company, Admob. The steal comes just as Google is starting to offer mobile Adsense.

California adds a further $125M to clean transport — California’s Governor Schwarzenegger signed a bill that will provide a further $125 million each year to clean vehicle and fuel technologies. The money could go towards new startups or existing companies like Tesla, which is based in the state. The bill, AB 118, follows a package Schwarzenegger signed into law last Friday which, among other initiatives, encourages the use of solar water heaters and attempts to cut energy usage.

San Francisco’s New Resource Bank receives $10M kick-start — The New Resource Bank, a so-called “green bank” that will provide loans for new cleantech projects to either consumers or businesses, has also benefitted from California’s embrace of all things cleantech. Treasurer Bill Lockyer approved an initial state investment of $10 million in the bank. Earlier this year, the new business passed $100 million in assets.

 Updated

Germany’s Jimdo is one of a growing number of do-it-yourself website creation tools, but its combination of simplicity and flexibility separate it from the pack. As of today, people versed in basic HTML and CSS can use Jimdo to “borrow” the design of any site that suits their fancies.

This is a competitive space, and Jimdo competitors Weebly, SiteKreator and Synthasite all have their strengths. Weebly is dead simple, and anyone can use it to get a quick and dirty site up in a matter of minutes. SiteKreator’s interface is relatively slow and clunky, but ultimately gives you more control (see our coverage here). Synthasite, which is still in alpha, shows promise on both of these fronts, but we’ll have to wait for its beta to know if it can pull it off. None of these services, however, offer the ability to quickly import a template from another site and then add your own touches (or just rip the whole thing off).

For the record, we don’t endorse rip-offs of other peoples’ works; it’s lazy and an insult to the original designers who put in real effort to produce something that looks good. Our stomach churned a bit when we saw this Jimdo-clone of VentureBeat but here goes:

Creating a clone site takes a few steps. First, you copy the HTML from the site that inspires you, paste it into Jimdo, and press a button. This clears out everything besides the structure of the layout and replaces it with the code for Jimdo’s site-creation tools. You then copy and paste the source site’s CSS. Of course, all of this assumes you know have a rudimentary understanding of HTLM and CSS, and you’ll probably have to make some minor adjustments to the code to adjust the positioning of various elements. (see video below)

Once that is done, you’re free to use Jimdo’s AJAX interface to customize the rest of the site. You can easily add widgets of all types, text, and photographs. The free version gives you 500MB of storage and a hosted website; it’ll cost you $6 per month to get 5GB and use your own domain.

The company, based in Hamburg, has versions in English, German, and Chinese. Some might want to throw Jimdo into the “German clone” bucket with Verwandt, Frazr, and the like, but its look and feel are differentiated enough to avoid that label. It has raised only a small angel round of an undisclosed amount.

We’re interested in your thoughts on this, folks. Is this thing legit?

[Update: Jimdo's founders wrote to say that they do not support design theft, and created this import function to let designers use their own templates with Jimdo's service.]