VentureBeat

Send Word Now, a New York startup that allows organizations to send out mass alerts, has raised $14 million in a fourth round of funding.

The company’s goal is to provide government agencies, universities, nonprofit groups and others with a way to disseminate information, particularly in emergency situations where getting the news out quickly can save lives. For example, Tufts University hired Send Word Now to implement an alert system last year in the wake of Virginia Tech shooting. In a test earlier this month, Tufts was able to send out more than 46,000 alerts — SMS text messages, emails and phone calls, usually reaching each person through multiple avenues — in less than 10 minutes. Other customers include Wal-Mart, Boston University and the U.S. Postal Services, according to Forbes.

The system can be automated, which could lead to faster, almost-immediate alerts when disasters hit. It’s not a one-way communication system, either, because Send Word Now can also ask alert recipients to respond, for example to confirm that they’re all right, and then alert authorities about who hasn’t responded yet.

There are other companies trying to meet similar needs. Many, however, are more focused on alerting friends and family when you’re in trouble (rather than notifying a huge group of people about an emergency that could affect all of them) such as Life360, which is one of 10 companies that won Google’s Android Developer Challenge in August.

Others have used the micro-messaging service Twitter to spread information in times of crisis. For example, Twitter has been used during numerous earthquakes in California and also during the fires that threatened Southern California last year.

Send Word Now’s new round was led by Palisade Concentrated Equity Partnership, with participation from existing investors Southpaw Asset Management and Ascend Venture Group.

If you want to take an off-beat vacation and have no idea where to turn, consider Tripology. The company, which connects you to travel agents who know the less traveled roads throughout the world, has just raised $1.25 million in its first round of financing.

Travel is one of the more crowded areas of the Internet, filled with upstarts like Sidestep to Kayak, RealTravel, TripIt (to launch this summer) and OpTrip, a new Mountain View, Calif. start-up founded by Stanford computer science PhD Calvin Yang, which has just received an undisclosed amount of funding.

And, of course, Travelocity, Expedia, and Orbitz all work perfectly well when you want to set up a simple flight, hotel, rent-a-car trip.

But what if you need a little more human help to do the far-out stuff?

What if you want to backpack to Tanzania, hike Kilimanjaro, hit Kenya for a safari, then hop a plane to Micronesia to SCUBA dive some World War II shipwrecks? You could buy Lonely Planet guides for all of these places, filter through them and make the arrangements yourself, or you can find a travel agent who has set up these things before.

The problem for adventuresome consumers is that the best specialty travel agents are not always easy to find. The problem for specialty travel agents is that finding the adventuresome consumers is even harder. Sites like Specialty Travel and Travel Hub list specialty travel agencies, but the listings on those sites requires digging and guesswork, and is somewhat cumbersome.
Tripology addresses this: It asks intrepid travelers what they want to do on their trip and automatically finds three to four travel agents who know how to make that happen. For the consumer, finding the agents is free. For the travel agents, the qualified leads come for $5 dollars a pop.

The site gives you the standard options you’d expect from a travel site. You can input the dates of your trip, what kind of hotel or cruise you’d like, whether or not you’d like to rent a car, etc. What sets this site apart is its “Activity and Tours” section, which lets you specify the regions you’d like to visit, which countries you hope to explore, and up to 10 activities you’d like to engage in while you’re there. The activities range from backpacking, fishing, and rafting to arts and crafts, visiting spas, and drinking local wines. You then set the type of trip — honeymoon, destination wedding, family vacation, bachelor party and more — and your lifestyle — disabled, risque, gay & lesbian, single, or religious –and submit it.

This information is all used to match you with ideal travel agents, and Tripology does not get involved in any transactions after that — though, users can rate and comment on the agents after their experiences with them. The company has global ambitions: A fifth of its 4500 registered travel agents are outside the U.S. It will use the $1.25 million to expand its reach.

The funding round was led by Ascend Venture Group.

Boxxet is a Burlingame, Calif. company that creates information sites for popular topics, such as the SF Giants — carrying relevant news, blogs and photos.

It has just opened the site to the public, having raised a seed round of $900,000 from New York’s Ascend Venture Group.

It is breaking the rules of Web 2.0, moving away from the trend of relying on user input. The company emerged last year, in testing mode, and we described its mission as wanting to be the About.com of Web 2.0. At the time, it hoped to rely on users to create these sites. However, the rise of other sites, such as Wikipedia, Wikia and Digg, all reliant on user participation, forced Boxxet’s founder You Mon Tsang to change his strategy. Users lack time to participate on many sites, he says, so he automated the generation of content at Boxxet’s pages. Boxxet does let users rate an article, say about the giants — a positive rating pushes that article up on its SF Giants site (see screenshot of SF giants site below). However, it isn’t relying on users to create and manage sites.

Boxxet’s chief competitors, he says, are the search engines, which are beginning to display summarized content for popular searches. Search Ask.com for “SF Giants,” for example, and you’ll find news, scores, and other things on top and to the right of search results.

Still, if you want the latest scoop or other info on the Giants, or on the Sharks, or on one of 450 other topics, this is a place worth trying.

San Jose’s Cisco has invested $50 million in China Communications Services (CCS), a new spin-off from China’s state-run telecom company.

CCS offers all kinds of telecom services to Chinese companies and service providers, including — surprise — digital video.

Cisco, the giant networking company, has been aggressively entering new markets, and video is one part of its strategies. Cisco is not content to settle for taking over the U.S. living-room. It sees many more living-rooms in China.

The investment in the China Telecom spin-off is Cisco’s largest investment in China to date. The move is also significant because spin-offs from Chinese government-run companies are happening at a rapid rate, and they need help getting cutting edge technology. Cisco, which is partnering with CCS, can stand to see strong growth as CCS becomes more efficient.

CCS had its IPO on Friday on the Hong Kong exchange, and the Cisco investment was part of the IPO. Other CSS shareholders include China Telecom Group, China Mobile and China Unicom.

Cisco has already returned a profit on its first $400M batch of venture investments in China beginning in 2001, Ned Hooper, Cisco VP of Corporate Business Development, told VentureBeat earlier this week. Cisco has since started investing from a second batch of funds, and its too early too tell how these investments are doing. All told, Cisco has invested more than $700 million into nearly 30 Chinese start-ups, including online learning company Ambow and gaming company Shanda.

Hooper said the CCS investment is to help spark the next wave of service provider infrastructure investment in China, which is being led by 3G (third generation telephone networks) and broadband services, including Internet TV.