VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

Obama Bay Area event sets fund-raising record — Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama visited the Bay Area and racked up $7.8 million in fund-raising, a record for a single event, according to Draper Fisher Jurvestson’s Steve Jurvetson, who, with his wife Karla Jurvetson, donated in $9,200.

Xbox 360 sells out in Japan — The Microsoft gaming console has never been able to gain a strong foothold in the country which prefers its own Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation 3. Perhaps the tides are turning — or perhaps this shortage was staged, as many commenters are speculating in the comments on Kotaku. Either way, there will be more in the country next month.

Hulu closer to going international? — The popular NBC and Fox-based video streaming site is apparently trying to hire people to expand to other countries, according to GigaOm. That will remove perhaps the biggest knock people have against it — if you’re outside the U.S., you can’t watch it!

Tsavo gets funding — The new southern California start-up that is buying up content and advertising start-ups, akin to Demand Media, raised $20 million from American Capital. The start-up is the latest project of Michael Jones, who has just left AOL, where he worked for two years after AOL bought his previous text-voice-video chat software company, Userplane, for about $40M. TechCrunch has more.

American Airlines takes Wi-Fi to the skies — The airline has started rolling out its in-flight Internet service powered by Gogo, according to CNET. For now it’s only on non-stop flights between New York and San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles and New York and Miami.

iPhone update 2.0.2 is meant to address 3G issues — Suspicions that the new software update was meant to address iPhone 3G connection issues have been confirmed by an Apple representative talking to USA Today’s Ed Baig.

Salesforce.com posts solid numbers — It’s the first software as a service company to exceed a $1 billion annual revenue run rate, according to the release. It saw record revenue of $263 million, up 49% year-over-year.

VC in the middle of online escort scandal — William Ferretti, the co-founder of Medstar Television and a self-described venture capitalist, faces felony charges. Vallywag has more.

Don’t tweet for money when raising funding — Jason Goldberg, the founder of SocialMedian, sent a tweet (Twitter message) out this morning letting people know he was raising more funding and to contact him if you were interested in participating. One problem, Mike Arrington of TechCrunch, who is also a lawyer called him out on that being illegal because it was technically an unregistered public offering. The tweet was deleted.

BioImagene gets a new round — The digital pathology company has landed a $26 million fourth round. Burrill & Co. led the round with Ascension Health Ventures, National Healthcare Services, Artiman Ventures and ICCP Ventures also participating.

Personalized talk radio company Stitcher launches an iPhone app — Watch the video below for more.

Here’s the latest action:

Google’s search-within-search bugs some publishers — Apparently some folks such as the Washington Post aren’t looking too kindly on a feature Google added earlier this month, which lets people search within publications like the Post directly from Google. The feature lets you search for a publication on Google, for instance the Post or other sites like Wikipedia, The New York Times, and Wal-Mart, and then gives you a secondary search bar to search within those sites. Here’s the rub: If you search the Washington Post from that bar for say, “jobs,” you’ll see results for the Post’s employment pages, but also ads nearby for competing job sites like CareerBuilder and Monster.com. The NYT has the story.

Modu, a company with a module that can be inserted into various wireless devices, raises $100 million — The Israeli company is expected to close the round within the “next few weeks,” according to the Globes, which also says the company is valued at a significant $150 million before the investment. The company has raised $20 million to date from Genesis Partners, Gemini Israel Funds, SanDisk and founder Dov Moran. The company is making modular hardware products built around its tiny module, a phone-MP3 device that can morph into different functions depending on the cellular device it is snapped into; there’s a video here (or just see below).

Sun gets $44M contract from Pentagon’s DARPA to replace chip wires with laser beams –The wiring between processors on a chip is one of the biggest bottlenecks to increased efficiency in semiconductors. Sun has beat out Intel, IBM, MIT and HP on a government contract to figure out how to use silicon photonics, or light beams, to make chips faster and more efficient.

Will Fed make taxpayers pay more for Bear Stearns? — Shareholders of Bear Stearns, a third of which are Bear Stearns’ own employees, were so upset by the deal to bail out Bear Stearns at the low price of $2 per share that they’ve revolted and are pushing for a higher price of $10 per share. This is the bank that got caught up in the worst excesses of the subprime bubble, was apparently literally gambling while the ship sank and refused to participate in bailing out other companies (Long-Term Capital Management) in the past. So why would the Fed and JPMorgan want to make taxpayers pay the higher price to bail these guys out?

Search arbitrage company Geosign disintegrates after receiving record $160M investment last year – The Canadian company’s saga shows the danger of trying to use an arbitrage strategy with Google’s ads. It was buying Google keywords and sending people to landing pages with Yahoo ads on them. When Google found out about the trick, it changed its terms and shut off Geosign’s ability to conduct its arbitrage. The company’s business model disintegrated. American Capital, the lead investor in the company last year, is looking pretty foolish. Why make an investment in a company that isn’t producing anything of sustainable value? We reported on the company here last year when it raised the money.

The X Prize Foundation offers $10 million to team that produces vehicles that can get 100 miles per gallon or more — Details here. The winning cars must carry four or more passengers and have climate control, an audio system and 10 cubic feet of cargo space. Qualifiers also must have four or more wheels, reach 100 mph, and reach 60 mph in 12 seconds and have a range of 200 miles.

Battery companies LionCells and Seeo raise cash — Seeo, of Berkeley, Calif., has raised nearly $1 million in capital from Khosla Ventures, to make safe, high-density batteries. This comes after the company (which doesn’t have a web site) took in $1 million last year, according to a California regulatory document cited by VentureWire. Last month, another company, Menlo Park’s Lion Cells, which makes high-power lithium ion batteries, raised approximately $12 million, according to the SEC. Battery Ventures and Nth Power participated in the second round, according to the filing.

GotVoice, the speech-to-text company, now wants to raise money too — Perhaps jolted by the announcement last week that competitor SpinVox raised $100 million in a carrier land-grab for its own speech-to-text technology, GotVoice is now saying it too wants to raise financing. To give it more time, the Kirkland, Wash. company has raised a $1.78 million “bridge round” of funding to supplement the $3 million in raised in 2006 from Ignition and other individual investors, according to VentureWire.

Silicon Valley venture firm Morgenthaler Ventures raising funds — The venture capital firm is trying to raise another fund, totaling about $400 million, but VentureWire reports that the firm’s 2001 fund is below median in its performance and suggests investors are on the fence on the firm, founded in the 1960s.