VentureBeat

1. Google buying contact organizer Plaxo?
2. Bebo raising new round of capital at $1B+ value?
3. Facebook en espanol
4. Chip maker to show off Google phone Monday
5. Surprise! Record industry wants filtering on your PC
6. Apple splashing production orders due to low demand
7. U. of Wisconsin sues Intel for Core 2 Duo infringement
8. BBC to launch download of iPlayer sometime this year
9. OpenID interesting concept, but will anyone use it?
10. Real Goods Solar files for $57M IPO
11. WooMe raises $3M round for video speed-dating

Google buying contact organizer Plaxo? — That’s the latest rumor (courtesy of Wired), but there’s been plenty of rumors about Plaxo lately, that suggests its investors are looking for a way to sell. We reported earlier a rumor that Facebook was in talks to buy Plaxo. Dan Primack says Google may be interested, but that there are other suitors involved too.

Speaking of rumors, Bebo may be raising a new round of capital — Kara Swisher, of AllThingsD, blasts Techcrunch for running a rumor that Google or News Corp.’s MySpace may be interested in buying social networking company Bebo for $1 billion or more, blaming the site for not doing its reporting. Instead, she claims, Bebo may get an investment from those two sources, or from any on a long list of other strategic or institutional investors. Yahoo and Microsoft, she adds, had also floated possibly buying the whole company. The $1 billion-plus number comes from the valuation the company would get for the investment round. Bebo has about 21 million unique visitors a month.

Facebook en espanol — Facebook has been translated into Spanish for its 2.8 million active users in Latin America and Spain. French and German translations are expected in the coming weeks.

British chip maker ARM to show off version of the Google phone on Monday — Details here.

Surprise! Record industry chief wants users to install copyright filtering software on their PCs — Details.

Apple splashing production orders due to low demand — First it was iPods and iPhones, and now notebooks too.

University of Wisconsin sues Intel for patent infringement for its Core 2 duo — Details here.

BBC will launch download version of its iPlayer sometime this year — The iPlayer is a “catch-up” online TV service.

OpenID is interesting in concept, but will anyone really use it? — Microsoft, Google, Verisign, IBM have decided to support something called OpenID, which is a service that lets people use same login information for multiple sites. But as Techcrunch notes, it’s not clear whether any of the latest adherents have agreed to be a “relying party” (allowing users with third party OpenIDs to log in to their sites). So far, they’ve merely pledged to be OpenID “compatible,” which means they really want to be an ID “issuer” so that they “own” the user.

Real Goods Solar files for $57M IPO — The company said it is the largest installer of grid-connected solar panels in California. The Broomfield, Colorado company is a subsidiary of environmental lifestyle company Gaiam.

WooMe raises $3M round for video speed-dating — WooMe, an online video platform for meeting potential dates (or finding roommates, travel companions, and so forth) has raised an additional $3 million extension to its first round of $1.9 million. We’ve covered the company pretty extensively, here and here. Mangrove Capital led, Atomico Investments participated, and individual investors Oliver Jung and Klaus Hommels (of Balderton Capital) also jumped in.

 Updated

WeatherBill, a company that lets you make money by betting on the weather, has raised $12.5 million.

The San Francisco-based company sells contracts that essentially let you put money down against bad weather hurting your business, so you can still get paid even if your business itself suffers.

You can choose your contract to be for hot, cold, rainy, snowy or dry days or seasons, and customize every specific aspect of your scenario, such as the temperature, precipitation or snow level. Choose a location with all of your weather specifications and how much you hope to earn from the contract, and the site will calculate its cost.

For example, VentureBeat could purchase a contract to bet that cold winter weather will hit the Bay Area all of next week — a way to make ourselves feel a bit warmer if this turns out to be the case (screenshot below). We’d get paid $100 from WeatherBill for every day that the minimum temperature dips below 65 F. The example below shows the contract would cost us $660. Question is: How likely is it that every day next week will be that cold? There’s a chance we won’t make our money back — and we’re not experts enough at predicting the weather to know.

But let’s say you’re a travel agency and you want to guarantee your customers that they will receive a full refund if their flights get cancelled due to heavy snows on New Year’s Day, 2008. Simply take out a contract with WeatherBill and it will pay you if there’s enough inches of snow on the ground to cancel flights — that’s what a Canadian travel agency called itravel2000.com has done, a contract that company chose to be worth up to $100 million.

WeatherBill bases its prices on accumulated weather statistics as well as computer-generated models of weather forecasts and longer-term trends.

Hundreds of businesses have bought contracts, typically worth less than a couple million dollars; the company earns between one and 20 percent revenue from its contracts, chief executive David Friedberg tells us.

Weatherbill is growing quickly he says, and is cash-flow positive — most likely because it makes money no matter what. Nephila Capital, a re-insurance fund that normally sells capital bonds, weather derivatives and financial instruments to large clients such as insurance companies, backs 100 percent of WeatherBill’s risk, paying the company in the event customers cash out on large contracts.

Because WeatherBill’s contracts are considered “over the counter financial instruments,” Friedberg says, they are regulated by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission — meaning that businesses and individuals must have a net worth of over one million in order to purchase them.

Current clients include ski resorts, farms, restaurants, outdoor sports companies, and others.

New Enterprise Associates and Index Ventures led the round, with Allen & Company, Atomico Investments and angel investors participating. Current investors include First Round Capital and angel investors.

Jott rocks.

Jott, a company based in Seattle, offers a convenient new service that lets you speak messages and send them to yourself or others — as a transcribed text message.

Or as a voice message, if you prefer.

Sign up at Jott.com takes a minute, with no hassle. Then all you do is call Jott’s number, 1-877-568-8486. Jott asks who you are sending the message to. You tell Jott (the name of your friend will be contained in the contacts you’ve imported), and then record a message, and hang up. It ends up in their inbox, translated into text. Or you can choose to send voice message instead, by immediately pressing a “1″. The message then shows up as an audio file in their email.

This is a really easy and useful service, and we may be hooked. Here’s the intriguing part: Jott sends your messages to India for transcription. There, cheaply paid workers are listening to your voice message, and typing down the text in an email, which they then shoot off to the recipient. It took us about five minutes to receive our transcribed message tests — and they were perfectly done. A new meaning of the phrase “Passage to India.”

This is perfect for those professional messages you want to send to people, say while driving in your car. You don’t want to bug someone with a phone call, but texting or emailing someone is hard to do • steering with your knees isn’t very safe.

Jott more convenient than Spinvox and Simulscribe. Spinvox is great for people who get power voicemail. It transcribes incoming voicemail, and sends them to your inbox in written form. But we couldn’t get Spinvox to recognize our phone number during the registration process, and besides, it isn’t free. Simulscribe also isn’t free. It asks for more info than Jott during the sign up, and gives you a week’s free trial, but then forces you to cancel if you don’t want to get billed.

Pinger, another service that lets you leave voice messages for people, doesn’t do voice-to-text.

There was a bug in Jott. The contact import process didn’t work for us. Presumably, they’ll fix this soon. It worked when we manually entered our addresses.

So how does the business model work, if Jott pays Indians to subscribe, but offering the service for free? Jott founder and chief executive John Pollard tells VentureBeat he wanted to see how people reacted to the product before charging. Jott plans to support a free version with advertising. They’ll charge for a premium version, for those want to avoid ads.

Our hope is, this isn’t too good to be true. If it stays free, we’ll keep using it, and it may become part of our daily workflow.

The company raised less than $1 million from Draper Richards, Seattle firm Ackerley Partners in Seattle and Skype founder Ziklas Zennstrom’s investment group, Atomico in London.