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.

Here’s a summary of the latest action:

1) Google integrates Postini
2) Record M&A in media industry
3) Japanese virtual world Meet-Me
4) Ballmer says Facebook a fad
5) Boing Boing TV
6) Utility computing and video delivery start-ups continue to get funding

Google integrates Postini – Nearly three months after buying Postini for $625 million, Google has integrated the company’s security features into Gmail and is offering them to businesses. Its intention is to challenge Microsoft and other software companies that sell primarily desktop-based software to businesses, that include similar security features.

Postini features include a way where administrators can manage who gets what emails based the content of the message, whether it has attachments or not, and the identity of the sender or receiver. These rules can be used to do things like prevent people from sending messages with certain keywords to outside parties. Administrators can also search emails across a domain and recover deleted emails.

Google has also increased storage for individual mailbox’s using the service to 25 gigabytes, up from 10 gigabytes.

Media industry sees record M&A activity – The media and information industries saw record levels of M&A activity during the first three quarters of the year, with 637 deals worth $95 billion, according to The Jordan, Edmiston Group, an media-focused investment bank. The level was 64 percent more than last year’s $60.6 billion. Now you know why VentureBeat has been so focused on advertising and media companies lately. An explosion in online advertising budgets has made online ad networks and technology providers attractive and has led to deals like the $5.7 billion purchase of aQuantive by Microsoft.

Japanese virtual world “Meet-Me,” a safer alternative to Second Life — Here’s the story by Associated Press. In Japanese version, you can’t fly. Here’s the question. Do we want our virtual worlds to be exact replicas of our offline worlds? Sometimes it seems we’re headed in that direction. Each virtual world we see appears to be heading more toward reflecting the cultures that use them, so that we’re really no longer exploring taboos but simply extending our life virtually, nothing more.

Ballmer says Facebook may be a fad — In London, the Microsoft chief executive says: “I think these things [social networks] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.” This comes amid reports that Microsoft is negotiating to acquire a stake in Facebook.

Top Up TV, a London provider of pay TV service, raised a significant round of funding — It comes from Balderton Capital. Dow Jones (subscription required) quotes Balterton partner Tim Bunting saying it is in the double digit millions.

The firehose of VC funding to video delivery technology continues – There are way too many of these video delivery companies already, but when Silicon Valley investors like Ron Conway (early investor in Google) go around touting that they continue to want to invest in video, everybody else thinks its a great opportunity too. Here’s the latest: Move Networks and Acinion, according to PE Hub. Move, of American Fork, Utah, got $34 million, while Acinion, of Acton, Mass., raised $16 million. This brings Move’s total venture financing to more than $45 million from firms like Steamboat Ventures and Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Acinion has now has raised around $21 million from firms like Globespan Capital Partners, IDG Ventures Boston and Sigma Partners.

DECA announces first show, Boing Boing TV – The next blog to receive its own professionally produced show will be Boing Boing, the “directory of wonderful things.” Despite the length of about three minutes, the move is revealing of how internet media is moving ever closer to mainstream realm. In celebrity news, where there’s more money to go around, blogger Perez Hilton recently scored an hour-long show on VH1. DECA, the Web 2.0 production company behind Boing Boing TV (we reported on it last week here), has hinted that there’s more to come.

European startup to compete with Amazon utility computing – Amazon’s EC2 and S3 services, which offer scalable processing power and storage respectively, recently came up against competition in the United States from new startup Nirvanix. Now a new venture in the United Kingdom has joined the fray: Flexiscale made by XCalibre. Demand for elastic computing capabilities has been increasing as other companies find new uses for it, so there’s no telling yet how deeply the new company will cut into Amazon’s profits, if at all.

TVtrip.com, a website providing detailed information about hotels, has raised €3.5 million ($4.8 million) in a first round of financing.

The site caters only to European hotels for now. It offers a search engine for hotels; then, for each listing, if offers videos of rooms, ratings, a summary of amenities and maps of surrounding areas.

This service is so obviously useful, as we noted when it launched last month. Finding decent hotel rooms can be a painful experience — at least if you’re booking a vacation on a budget. Competitor Trivop, meanwhile, has raised €600,000 from European angels, and is also focused on Europe.

The TVTrip funding comes from Balderton Capital and Partech International.

The company covers 10 major European cities including London, Paris, Madrid, Rome and Berlin. It will soon add Lisbon, Prague and Venice. By the end of 2007, TVtrip.com said, it will cover more than 1,500 hotels in 50 cities.

The site is available in five languages: English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

To become truly useful, the site does have more room to go. The site does give you a price selector tool, in the form of a slider that lets you filter for hotels listed below a certain price. But its not clear where the prices are coming from. Right now, if you want to check rates and book rooms, it ushers you off to partners such as Booking.com, Expedia and Venere — and it provides no clear explanation for why it sends you to one or the other service. You’re left wondering if you really have the best price for that hotel available on the Web. For now, its best left as a useful research tool when you’ve already got a short list.

It’s a week until payday at your job, the rent and bills are due, and you don’t have the cash. What do you do? Wonga, which has just raised $6 million from Balderton Capital, wants you to come to them .

Based in the UK, Wonga has yet to launch. But when it does, it will offer nearly instantaneous loans ranging from £200-1000 (about $400-2000). The time between application and deposit is around 20 minutes, which is remarkable.

This is just the latest in a string of investments in companies seeking to cut banks out of the small personal loans business. U.S.-based person-to-person lending companies Prosper and LendingClub have similar goals. (See our recent coverage here )

Wonga requires you have to have a decent credit record and not be in debt. For a flat fee of £25 plus one percent interest a month (a 13.8% APR), you can get a first loan up of to £200. Wonga has a “trust rating” system that allows responsible borrowers to take increasingly bigger loans, so when you pay back your first £200, you can take 400 in the future, and if you pay that £400 on time, you can borrow £600, and so on up to £1000.

Balderton Capital, which used to be the European wing of Benchmark Capital before recently splitting off, has also invested in the UK’s person-to-person lending company Zopa (see coverage here ). The potential conflicts continue: Benchmark U.S. has also just poured $20 million more into Prosper, even though it has a stake in Zopa, as well. The casual observer begins to wonder whether these two firms have become competitors in this area since splitting. CircleLending is yet another player which, like Wonga, is not a social network.

Wonga only operates in the UK, where companies like EZCashLoan, PayDayLoansUK, and a whole list of others offer same-day loans.. Some of these companies don’t check credit and most will give you a loan even if you are already in debt. None can get you your money in less than half an hour.

To offer its loans, Wonga does not draw on money from a bank; its risk is underwritten by an undisclosed partner. The $6 million will go towards expanding its operations and building out its infrastructure.

updated

Benchmark Europe, one of Europe’s largest venture capital firms, has split from its U.S. counterpart, and changed its name to Balderton Capital.

The move is significant because it shows the European outpost of the U.S. firm has become successful enough to do business under its own name. Benchmark Europe raised a $500 million fund in December, is one of the largest VC firms on the continent and is starting to see its first returns: One of its investments, Yingli Solar, filed to go public yesterday on the NYSE. MySQL, another investment, plans also to go public soon.

The move is also notable because it shows how the venture model continues to tend toward local manager control. DFJ, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital and others have all expanded internationally — and will have to deal with the same challenge of managing relationships with their foreign counterparts. Indeed, DFJ saw serious defections in China two years ago.

Benchmark U.S., which has always had an equal partner structure internally, compared to most firms where there is significant hierarchy. Kevin Harvey, of Benchmark here in Menlo Park, Calif., said the intent from the beginning was that Benchmark Europe would have local autonomy, and it has been run that way. Local managers with autonomy are more efficient and make better decisions, Harvey said.

In 2000, to get Benchmark Europe started, the U.S. team had helped the European team firm with brand affiliation. With hits like eBay, Benchmark U.S. had the reputation that could help Benchmark Europe access deals. In return, Benchmark’s U.S. partners enjoyed significant ownership of “carry,” or profits, in Benchmark Europe’s funds. That carry diminished with Benchmark Europe’s second fund, and has been eradicated entirely for Benchmark Europe’s $500 million third fund raised in Dec. That fund will be called Balderton I, as of today.

The change has happened quickly. Balderton doesn’t even have a Web site yet.

Balterton has about $1.5 billion under management, and has invested in more than 70 companies, which also include Bebo, Betfair, Alphyra and Setanta. Barry Maloney, general partner of Balderton, tells VentureBeat that the partners on both sides have invested in each other’s funds. The only difference is the change in carry.

Another benefit is that Balderton can now encourage the entrepreneurs it backs to seek capital from Benchmark in the U.S., without those entrepreneurs getting concerned about giving too much of a stake to a single fund. Maloney said Balderton will treat Benchmark U.S. as a “most favored nation” when its companies seek to raise money in the U.S. MySQL is an example of a company where both sides invested in the same company.

There will be no change in the Israeli team’s name or organization, though Benchmark’s Harvey said the long-term goal is for that team to become an independent brand too.