VentureBeat

1. Invidi gets $25 million from WPP, the world’s second largest ad conglomerate
2. Amazon building out its webs services
3. Atheros Communications buys micro GPS company
4. Google may be looking at wireless spectrum in the UK
5. Tiny Pictures, a mobile photo-sharing company, adds international language support

Invidi gets $25 million from WPP, the world’s second largest ad conglomerate — Most people think of Google and Yahoo as the new online advertising giants. But WPP is moving aggressively to upgrade its ad technology. It’s most recent move is to invest in Invidi, a company that targets ads to TV set-top boxes of individuals depending on their age, gender, location, income and ethnicity. It gathers the data by analyzing remote control, ratings, and program guide information along with census data. The Princeton, NJ startup earlier got capital from EnerTech Capital, InterWest Partners and Menlo Ventures, all of which returned to invest in this latest round. More details here.

Amazon building out its webs services — It has released SimpleDB, which provides database functions for young companies, without the need for a database administrator.

Atheros Communications buys micro GPS company — Atheros, the Santa Clara, Calif., maker of wireless chips, said it will buy u-Nav Microelectronics, a company that boasts the smallest and lowest power Global Positioning System (GPS) chip, including the one used in the Casio wristwatch for runners. The price is $54 million. More details here.

Google may be looking at wireless spectrum in the UK — That’s the gist of this CNET article, at least. The British telecommunications regulator OfCom will auction off a wide range of wireless radio spectrum within the next couple years, including the 700MHz band. However, A federal law prohibits Google from commenting on its plans outside of the US, as the company has committed to bid on spectrum in the US. The US Federal Communications Commission will auction off the 700MHz spectrum in January, which Google could use to offer its own mobile phone and mobile internet services. The company says it may reveal more of its international plans after the US auction is complete.

Tiny Pictures, a mobile photo-sharing company adds international language support — The San Francisco company’s service, known as Radar, lets you share and comment on photos from a mobile device and from the web. It already has 70 percent of its 630,000 total users outside of the US (previous coverage). Now, it is adding French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese WAP versions of its site, hoping to encourage existing users in many countries to add their friends. Chinese and Japanese versions are soon to follow, the company says.

If you’re in the mobile industry, and you’re not growing, you have a problem.

We’re in the midst of a mobile revolution (all arrows pointing up), and numerous start-ups are riding the tide as it rises

This week, those reporting success include mobile photo-focused social network Radar, a mobile video-sharing site Avot Media, a mobile social presence detector Aka Aki and a mobile data storage company Zyb.

Sure, Google, Yahoo, Apple, Facebook and other large companies are providing better mobile services. These startups, though, show there’s still plenty of room for the small guys.

Radar, for sharing photos — Radar is a mobile web service for sharing and commenting on cameraphone pictures and videos with your friends, and has numerous competitors. Radar’s most recent report: It’s seeing 40-50 percent monthly growth in number of users, now in the “hundreds of thousands” (though it’s not clear how many stay active), according to chief executive John Poisson.

The service, part of a San Francisco company called Tiny Pictures (previous coverage), offers both a web site and a downloadable application designed for easy uploading once you’ve taken taken photos or video with your phone’s built-in camera. Radar’s downloadable application keeps you notified in real-time when new photos, videos or comments have arrived.

Notable success comes from customized version for the popular Sidekick phone, built on a mobile platform offered by Danger, that’s popular with teenagers. Danger’s platform is also used by many T-Mobile devices. Tiny Pictures has just announced a deal with T-Mobile in Germany, whereby users can purchase a customized German version of Radar that uses the Danger platform for €2.99 (around four US dollars).

Avot Media, for better mobile video watching — Avot Media, a company trying to be YouTube for mobile devices, launched its flagship product, Avot mV, a week ago.

The Sunnyvale company is notable for developing an easier way to watch high-quality videos on your phone. Avot mV is averaging around 150,000 pageviews each day, and climbing, with more than 1000 downloads of its mobile application daily.

Other mobile video sites — like YouTube — need to transcode video files from other formats into a mobile format, a process that results in lower-quality audio and video. Avot’s application streams video straight from YouTube, Daily Motion, Metacafe and other online video sites, without transcoding, resulting in a clearer image and better sound.

Competitors include Mywaves and Veveo, which is scheduled to launch its own form of mobile search for videos and other web content next week. Avot says it has taken money from angel investors so far, but is not disclosing how much.

Avot works with Window Mobile phones now (you can try it here), but plans to support most mobile devices in the coming months.

Like other video sites, it includes search for videos from across the web, playlists for users to organize and watch their favorite collections of videos, and ways to share favorite videos with friends.

Aka Aki, letting strangers meet over mobile phone — Aka Aki is a German company trying to help you meet strangers through mutual presence detection — if your phone has Bluetooth. You set up an Aka Aki account with your personal info, then you get notified if someone else with Aka Aki on Bluetooth phone wanders within around 60 feet of you. You and the other person can then check out each other’s profiles. This sounds no less awkward than approaching a stranger without presence detection. It is testing in Berlin.

The site also has a web component similar to other social networks, where you can become friends with people, and message them. No word on whether this company has funding.

We’ve mentioned a research group in England working on a similar idea, pairing Facebook and Bluetooth to help Facebook users find each other.

Zyb, to back up your mobile data — The free mobile phone backup service, Zyb, supports more than 400 phone models. The company, backed with €3 million (four million US dollars) from Nordic Venture Partners (www.nordic.com), works easily, and also has a networking feature to it. Users can connect to others in their address book, and share content and keep their contacts updated.

Zyb is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, and has a development office in Cambridge, UK.

It has almost 200,000 users globally. Competitors include carriers, all of which charge for backup, as well as contact management company Plaxo, which offers Plaxo Mobile Plus, costing a monthly $4.49, and Yahoo, which also offers a paid online backup service.

One drawback: It doesn’t work well with U.S. phones because carriers here block so-called OTA settings, which disables the “live” features that make the service powerful. They can manually set up and sync their phones.

The company says revenue will come from three main sources: 50% from contextual advertising, 20% from partner implementation fees and 30% from premium services, including, for example, Outlook integration and other business oriented usage.

updated

San Francisco start-up Tiny Pictures allows you to take and send photos to your friends’ phones. The photos can be shared almost instantly and with groups of friends, who can then comment.

The company’s product, named Radar, will get a boost tomorrow, when Danger, which powers the Sidekick mobile device, will announce Radar’s software is available to be downloaded via a user’s carrier. The first carrier, Suncom Wireless, will likely be announced tomorrow. The two companies plan to announce others.

We haven’t written much about Tiny. It received $2.7 million from Silicon Valley venture firm Mohr Davidow Ventures in March 2006. It is one of a handful of companies that automate the photo-sharing process. All you do is take the photo, hit another button to create a message (where you can write in a subject line if you want), and then hit send. It then goes to your chosen group of friends, where they can comment. It also now does videos.

An advantage of being installed on the Danger device is that the user can remain notified in real-time when new photos or videos have arrived or been commented on. Previously, when used on a regular phone, a user would have to switch over to the Radar application.

KyteTV, which is offering real-time transmission of photos over Java-enabled phones, can be considered a competitor — when it launches.