VentureBeat

How will the current crisis on Wall Street affect Silicon Valley? – “I don’t think it will have much of an impact on Silicon Valley as an operating entity,” banker Bill Hambrecht tells Om Malik. Watch the video for more.

Meanwhile, how will online advertising be affected by Wall Street turmoil? — Maybe not so bad, some hopefuls in the industry tell PaidContent.

Global Agency Interpublic Group creates new venture arm — It will be called Mediabrands Venture Fund, and follows similar moves by marketing conglomerate rivals WPP and Publicis. IPG has already invested in social network Facebook, TV ad creation company Spot Runner, and marketing firm Huge.

Grand Theft Auto maker Take-Two Interactive sees shares plummet — After a nine-month-long acquisition bid by EA ended in failure.

The Wall Street Journal gets a redesign — See screenshot or click here.

The Wrath of The Lich King is coming — The massive multiplayer online game’s creator, Blizzard, expects to release it around the world on November 13. Meanwhile, EA prepares Warhammer Online for September 14th.

Data-focused gadget company Ambient Devices gets venture backing — An undisclosed amount from .406 Ventures.

Nanosolar to build ten-megawatt farm — This will be the first really good-sized deployment of the company’s technology.

Mashery, to put it simply, helps companies to more easily share their data with outside developers. By making this data more accessible, a company can let other developers use their own creativity to put the information to work.

This technology, called application programming interfaces (or APIs), has been around for years, and has assumed new relevance as more web-connected services look to grow. Auction site eBay has let developers build auction services using its auction data for many years, for example. But APIs are buzzwords these days, and exemplified to consumers by social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and rivals, that let third party developers build applications that access their user information and build applications that integrate into their sites.

You’ll find many web start-ups touting the fact that they have an API. But the real value for an outside developer is using others’ data for their own ends, the promise of more established companies with more established data means more opportunity. That’s where Mashery comes in. It provides support, helping software developers at a company to create APIs for accessing company data in easy ways. It helps a company figure out technical specifications for its APIs, based on the company’s business decisions about what data it does or doesn’t want to share.

San Francisco-based Mashery already has some interesting clients, including international news service Reuters, online real estate site Trulia, online directory Whitepages.com and other corporate clients.

We’ve recently learned that Mashery raised a $2 million round from .406 Ventures, First Round Capital, Formative Ventures Emerging Technologies Fund and angel investor Mark Benioff, who is also the chief executive of online business software company Salesforce.com.

The Benioff investment is particularly interesting, because Salesforce has been busy working with Google and many other companies to let its client companies share their data through its software to others. In other words, Benioff must know that many of Salesforce’s clients have valuable data to share and also want to share it. Mashery is in a niche that serves that need.

Of course, eBay, Google, Facebook and many other tech companies build their own APIs. But as more traditional companies with lots of data develop web properties, look for Mashery’s market opportunities to keep on expanding.

Skyrocketing prices for crude oil, natural gas and their associated products are having interesting side-affects on cleantech. Alongside a high level of excitement for investments like algal biofuel, some non-standard deals are appearing, including one for a company called American Biomass.

Based in the chilly state of New Hampshire, American Biomass is betting that high fuel prices for traditional heating fuels will inspire consumers to look elsewhere for warmth — in this case, back to the same trees their forefathers used.

The heating method in question uses wood pellets that vaguely resemble high-fiber breakfast cereal. The pellets, essentially refined wood that contains very little moisture, sap, bark and other messy bits associated with fresh-cut logs. are fed into special stoves, a more efficient and cleaner twist on the wood-burning fireplace.

There are multiple advantages to the scheme. Aside from being a better way to burn wood, pellet stoves don’t require a chimney, and include feeders and temperature controls for automatic operation.

Compared to a forced-air heater burning cheap methane or propane, wood pellets can’t compete. But that’s exactly the point — the heating fuels that have been used for the past few decades aren’t so cheap anymore. In response to that trend, wood pellet stoves were already starting to pick up in popularity a few years ago.

If anything the trend of switching to pellet stoves for price-conscious consumers is likely to pick up. That’s good for the environment, in the long run — at the very least, pellets are probably a better renewable fuel to make from wood than cellulosic ethanol, in terms of both price and efficiency.

But the design of the modern pellet stove is over 20 years old, so it might seem like a bad area for venture investment. The niche American Biomass is carving out for itself deals with another area: The logistics of moving all that wood around.

Wood pellets are already fairly cheap but aren’t always widely or easily available. There’s decades of built-up infrastructure behind the use of liquid and gaseous fossil fuels, but if growth in pellet use continues, a parallel distribution structure will be needed.

The $4 million funding, provided by .406 Ventures, is the first for American Biomass.