VentureBeat

Beceem is a Santa Clara start-up that provides chips for mobile WiMax technology. WiMax has become all the rage because it allows broadband access for miles of territory.

WiMax ranges much as 10 miles, while the WiFi we know today reaches only a few hundred feet. Intel wants to use WiMax to allow someone to get wireless access on a laptop anywhere.

The WiMax technology is only now being deployed, so there is still a lot of risk still. But Beceem is the first to have demonstrated a suitable full-fleded “IEEE 802.16e” mobile WiMax chipset. Motorola is using it in Europe, for example.

It appears to be running away with a clear tech lead. Last week, we visited with Vinod Khosla, a well-known Silicon Valley venture capitalist who is backing Beceem. And he was beaming. Beside him, was Beceem’s chief executive, Shahin Hedayat, who had just finished a meeting with Khosla. Later we found out why they were happy. Things are going so well for Beceem, its backers wanted to cough up more money to allow it to expand. Beceem has raised $27.1 million and may raise more. Its backers include Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Walden International and Global Catalyst Partners.

Turns out, Intel is having to resell Beceem’s chip for Intel’s WiMax efforts — even though Intel is spending $1 billion on distributing WiMax. You’d think Intel, the chip giant, would want to sell its own chips. You look behind the curtains, and there’s only this tiny start-up Beceem doing it all. Intel recently sold off a mobile handset chip unit too, so it doesn’t have too much momentum in the mobile space.

Beceem may be well-placed because it bypassed fixed WiMax and went straight to the mobile platform, which you’d think is more compelling since the trend is toward cell usage. A host of companies like Redpine Signals, RF Magic, Sequans, Sierra Monolithics, Telecis, and Wavesat have all been focused on fixed WiMax.

Earlier this year, Beceem raised $40 million, from Intel and Samsung, which is dominant in Korea, where WiMax is also being adopted.

There is another competitor, TeleCIS, but it doesn’t have near the funding.

Demand Media, the company pursuing the audacious strategy of buying up a bunch of generic Web sites that have no staff generating real content of their own — to throw advertising on them — has raised another $100 million.

In May, we reported it raised its first $120 million. Lately, though, the company appears to be buying content as well, including acquring Hillclimb Media, a producer of niche web sites.

The chief executive is Richard Rosenblatt, the former chairman of the company that ran MySpace. No doubt he has grand expectations; nothing to lose from swinging for the fences. Among the half-dozen acquisitions in recent months, Demand Media also acquired eNom, which claims to be the second largest domain name registrar.

The financing was co-led by 3i, a London based public venture capital firm with offices in Silicon Valley, and Oak Investment Partners. Spectrum Equity Investors also participated in this round.

Rosenblatt is also chair of an Arizona search engine marketing company, called iCrossing. There too, he has received lots of cash ($15M) from Oak.

Brad Greenspan, a former chief executive of the company that ran MySpace, has been just as active, if not more so.

The latest tech news in Silicon Valley:

The mobile TV revolution continues, and MobiTV is hot — MobiTV, of Emeryville is one of the start-ups on the forefront. It offers TV programming from networks and cable providers. It started out serving mobile phones. Now it has expanded, first to WiFi, and now with AT&T to anyplace with broadband.

Venture investors like Oak are paying a good price to play. MobiTV raised $70 million in a July third round, at a valuation in excess of a pretty $400 million, according to PE Week Wire. That’s compared to a value of just $50 million following a $15 million round in 2004. Oak invested $65 million of the total new investment.

Loopt, the mobile presence company, is finally launching — Loopt uses GPS and other data to give you the location of your friends, along with their presence status, such as available or away. Techcrunch has a review. The company has changed its name several times.

You’ll be able to get alerts when your friends are within a certain distance, and send messages to them (see image below). The service is initially available only to customers of pay-as-you-go service, Boost Mobile.

The Costco of travel sites — cFares, a travel start-up based in Redwood Shores, is charging you $50 to get access to wholesaler discounts, and the resulting prices are about $30 to $50 below those of other major sites, finds GigaOm. The company has raised $1.5 million from Garage Technology Ventures and is working on a second round. Also interesting: cFares.com has built a way for an airline to under-bid another airline at the point of sale, thereby providing a below-market price to the consumer. Finally, it has a “Name-Your-Price” feature, where it does an ongoing search online for fares priced at your wish, or lower.

Social networking siteXuQa raises more than previously thought — The youth oriented site, previously slammed by critics, has relaunched; it is focused on model contests, and revolves around a system of “gathering peanuts.” Goal is to become the most popular, and you get up to $1,000 in cash for rewards. We’ve mentioned the company before here. Some doubted it would raise VC money. But who isn’t able to raise money these days? Turns out, it has gotten $1.3 million from BV Capital and Morten Lund, an early Skype investor. It is based in San Francisco, with most of its developers in Karachi, Pakistan.

Yahoo Local revamps — It now lets you write reviews and submit ratings for local businesses, save your favorite locations, view local businesses on one map to see what’s around you and so on. (See more here, which includes a look at Microsoft Live Local Search’s improvements too.)

Yahoo seeks to retain talent — It is setting up an in-house incubator, called Brickhouse, and will be led by Flickr founder Caterina Fake.

Networking company Netgear ships a Skype phone that works with WiFi — The phone started shipping this week for $249.99.

Google’s market share in China is plummeting (see Red Herring article) — We got in touch with Kaiser Kuo, who wrote the piece, and he says the guy who led the study, Mr. Lu, is credible. As a start-up, Google neglected China. Chief executive Eric Schmidt first traveled there last year. More recenlty, Google was criticized for allowing censorship there, but China’s government has played hardball anyway, and now Baidu is eating Google’s lunch.

Google Earth shows you around the Bay Area with TurnHere videos — Google has released a host of new ways to find information while you’re zooming around its virtual globe. You click on the checkbox for “Featured Content” in the Google Earth sidebar, and a whole bunch of multimedia overlays pop up. In the Bay Area, we see the usual National Geographic feature boxes already announced. But now you see a whole bunch of new videos from start-up TurnHere; it’s a good way to check out restaurants or other places before you visit. In fact, TurnHere plans to shoot 25,000 short videos this year, most of them neighborhoods and local attractions. This could get interesting. Here’s a good Merc story on TurnHere. Here’s a story about Google’s Featured Content.