VentureBeat

ShotSpotter, a Santa Clara, CA, company that enables police departments and the military to locate the precise source of gunfire, has raised $12 million in its third round of financing.

The technology, which is deployed in neighborhoods throughout 15 American cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland, and DC, enabled the capture of a top-10 most wanted fugitive, provided the first physical evidence in the Ohio sniper case, and caused a decrease in gunfire by some 60 to 80 percent in the areas in which it has been used, according to the company.

When a gun goes off, wireless sensors spread throughout a neighborhood register the instant the sound wave reaches them, using GPS to pinpoint the moment to within 20 nanoseconds. The sensors then transmit the timing data to a server within the police department’s control. This server makes the calculations necessary to triangulate the source of the sound and, within 5-10 seconds of the shot being fired, specially-equipped police cars on patrol get both the precise origin of the shot and a playback of its audio signature, allowing the officers to determine how many shots were fired and make a tactical decision from there.

Considering that only approximately one in five instances of gunfire go reported, and that these reports usually come only 3-5 minutes after the fact, the usefulness of ShotSpotter’s technology, which registers every instance of gun fire and reports it in nearly real-time, is obvious.

This is also clear in military applications, where even five seconds is a long time. ShotSpotter’s Chief Executive Officer, James Beldock, said he can’t discuss much about its relationship with the Department of Defense, but did say that the marines are using the technology in Iraq, and that it works with unmanned aerial vehicles that can point a camera directly at the source of the gunfire almost the instant shots go off.

This gets us to thinking: Had ShotSpotter’s technology been deployed in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963, maybe we’d know for sure if there had been a second gunner on the grassy knoll..

Levensohn Venture Partners led the round, and was joined by Labrador Ventures, Claremont Creek Ventures, City Light Capital and first-round leader Lauder Partners. We covered an earlier round of funding here.

Here’s a round-up of the latest tech stuff:

Jobster may cut a significant portion of its 145-person workforce? — Reports of major pending layoffs at Jobster are ironic, not merely because the company helps employers find employees. But because the company appears to doing the cutting to attain profitability, five months after boasting to VentureBeat that it would be profitable were it not hiring so many people so quickly all over the place. This company got very big very fast. Could this be another example of how massive amounts of venture capital do strange things to companies? We caution that we haven’t confirmed the layoff reports, and that note the CEO says “a lot of falsehoods are being bandied about.” But John Cook of the Seattle PI, has talked with the company, and confirms a review is underway, and job cuts could be part of the announcement in early Jan.

IBM cooling on Second Life hype — Shortly after IBM launches 12 islands on virtual world Second Life, complete with press conferences from its chief executive, tour guides and trains to show visitors around its virtual complex and auditorium, David Berger, manager of strategic communications for Big Blue concedes it’s time to ask questions about Second Life claim it has two million residents. Why wasn’t he more skeptical in the first place? (Update: Forgot to add, and why does it take gossip site Valleywag’s debunking of a good part of mainstream media’s coverage of Second Life to push him there?)

Shotspotter actually works — Earlier this year, VentureBeat wrote about Santa Clara start-up Shotspotter, which said it could help police locate the origin of gun shots, to help them combat crime. It is working. It helped Minneapolis police nab their first suspect, a mere seven hours after implementing it. This is the company backed by Gary Lauder, scion to the Estee Lauder fortune. It has since raised more than $10 million.

News ranking sites Megite and Tailrank launch video — With news-ranking site Digg bolstering its photo and video offerings recently, you’d expect competitors Megite and Tailrank to follow. The difference is, Digg method relies on voting by users, whereas Megite and Tailrank measure popularity by the number of links a video gets. All this is leaving another player, Techmeme, looking rather bare. (See the new video offerings at Megite Video and Tailrank Video.)

Speaking of Digg, spammers continue to target it — CNet reports that Karim Yergaliyev, 19, one of the top 30 “diggers,” agreed to digg a story for JetNumbers in return for a favor.