VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

Mobile enthusiast gives up on “mobile web” – Russell Beattie, a Silicon Valley developer and mobile enthusiast who spent two years working at Yahoo Mobile before launching a start-up called Mowser, has given up on the mobile sector. He writes: “The general answer is that I don’t actually believe in the ‘Mobile Web’ anymore, and therefore am less inclined to spend time and effort in a market I think is limited at best, and dying at worst. I’m talking specifically about sites that are geared 100% towards mobile phones and have little to no PC web presence. Two years ago I was convinced that the mobile web would continue to evolve in the West to mimic what was happening in countries like Japan and Korea, but it hasn’t happened, and now I’m sure it isn’t going to.” Mowser focused on adapting content for mobile phones. Beattie said the expected traffic never came. His story is a cold shower for industry players hoping advances by the iPhone and the Android will inject life into the sector.

Credit crunch hits cleantech after all — Despite some crowing from the clean-technology crowd that the credit crunch hadn’t hit it, it did eat into one a that sector clean-technology companies: private equity investment. Earth2Tech has a good wrapup of the numbers and commentary.

Silicon Valley’s giants are fine, but maybe not for long — The big tech companies of Silicon Valley, on the other hand, are humming along as if the current (probable) recession weren’t even taking place, says the San Jose Mercury News in its annual SV150 issue. The reason: Their international business divisions are going strong. However, the New York Times reports that housing markets worldwide are following the US market’s tailspin, so credit and spending abroad could suffer as well, challenging even multinational companies.

Feed your tank, starve a poor person — Biofuels have pushed back the fight against poverty by seven years and may continue to hurt poor people, according to a quote from World Bank president Robert Zoellick in the Guardian. The tapping of biofuels for alternative energy has faced a growing negative reaction, because it is sending food prices soaring around the world. Biofuels are made from food crops like corn and sugar, and so are taking away from the food stock. The effect, at least for the moment, will probably be limited to more cautious government subsidization policies.

Farecast rumored sold for over $75M — Online travel search site Farecast may have been sold for over $75 million, according to John Cook of the Seattle PI. He’s not sure who the buyer is, but speculates that Expedia would be a likely match since two major competitors, SideStep and Kayak, merged last year. Farecast has done well with its feature that lets you predict whether fares are going up or down in the near future, helping you decide when to buy.

Radio One buys Community Connect for $38M — Media giant Radio One has laid down $38 million for Community Connect, which operates niche sites based on ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. The company had taken funding from Dominion Ventures, ConnectCapital, Comcast Interactive Capital and Jump Ventures, according to peHUB.

YouTube dominates video, while Google roars in search — YouTube boasted 73.18 percent of all U.S. visits among a group of 68 online video websites in March, according to Hitwise. MySpaceTV received the second highest percentage of visits, with 9.21 percent followed by Google Video with 4.06 percent. YouTube dominates video more than Google dominates search. But then search makes much more money. Google got 67.3 percent market share for search, and that’s a high, while Yahoo and Microsoft hit new lows.

Gawker media cuts Wonkette and others loose — Gawker owner Nick Denton tells Silicon Alley Insider that as the economy stumbles, he’s ditching three “underperforming” Gawker sites: Wonkette, Gridskipper and Idolator, which will all continue under new ownership. That leaves the company to focus on its 12 “core titles,” like Silicon Valley’s beloved gossip blog Valleywag.

Google App Engine and Amazon web services, together at last — When Google launched its Engine App a week ago, allowing developers to build and deploy web applications on Google infrastructure, the move was widely seen as a move against Amazon’s web services. But just because they’re competing products doesn’t mean they can’t work together, as Portland entrepreneur Chris Anderson has shown by creating AppDrop, which allows you to build apps with Google’s software development kit and deploy in Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud. There have been complaints that Google Engine App locks in your applications, but AppDrop shows that isn’t quite true.

LiveUniverse reportedly acquires home page service Pageflakes — LiveUniverse, the online entertainment network run by former MySpace executive Brad Greenspan, has acquired the Ajax home page service Pageflakes, according to TechCrunch’s unidentified sources. Just a few hours earlier, GigaOM reported that Pageflakes was “desperately” seeking a buyer. Last February, a number of sites said that LiveUniverse purchased video site Revver, so the network appears to be in an acquisitive mood.

Jingle Networks, a provider of free telephone directory services, has raised $13 million in a third round of funding, according to VentureWire.

The service, called “1-800-FREE-411″, is pretty simple, and it’s completely automated: You dial a number, listen to an ad and then get the information you need. The Boston-based company has signed up around 150,000 advertisers.

When we covered Jingle back in 2006, the startup had just raised $30 million to build out its network — reaching a “critical mass” of between 10 million and 20 million monthly callers was key to attracting advertisers, chief executive George Garrick said. It looks like Jingle’s efforts were successful; it’s gone from around 13.5 million monthly calls (450,000 daily) to 20 million.

Investors include Goldman Sachs & Co., Hearst Corp., IDG Ventures, Liberty Associated Partners and Comcast Interactive Capital, and Jingle’s total funding to date is $70 million.

This is a crowded market, with lots of competitors offering similar free services, and Jingle competing against big players like Google, Microsoft and At&T. (We also hear that V-Enable has a big announcement coming tomorrow.) Google, for example, is better placed to deliver targeted ads, which is key to making ad-supported services pay off. If Jingle wants to take on companies of that scale, it will have to be innovative.

On the other hand, the startup must be doing something right already, because it reached profitability last month. I’m trying to reach Jingle’s investors to find out more about why the company has done so well, and how it will stay competitive in the future.

updated

Bubble Motion, a Silicon Valley company that gives you a way to send text messages (SMS) with your voice instead of text, has raised $14 million in additional funding.

It came from existing investor Sequoia Capital, and new investors Comcast Interactive Capital and NCD Investors.

The company says in a statement that it has more than 135 million users worldwide, which we haven’t confirmed, but it sounds inflated. (Could the company really mean the technology is enabled by carriers that have that many users? We’re asking for more info. Update: Our suspicion was founded; see below)

The lets you click on a key, talk, and send a short message — which Bubble Motion argues is effective because it lets you show emotion in ways that a regular text, IM or email don’t.

We first wrote in detail about the company nine months ago, when it first raised $10 million, and when it said 15 percent of subscribers to Vodafone Egypt were using the service.

Update: Turns out, the company’s 135 million number represents the number of users served by carriers Bubble Motion has partnered with. The actual number of people using the voice text is only a percentage of that. David Still, product manager, wouldn’t divulge the number, but said India is the largest market for its actual users and fastest growing. Its carrier partner there has 57 million subscribers, only a percentage of has used Bubble Motion. Bubble Motion is still not accessible within the U.S. With Comcast as an investor, Bubble Motion is hoping to turn up the discussions it is having with U.S. carriers, Still said. A company called Kirusa is Bubble Motion’s closest competitor.

BlackArrow, a San Mateo, Calif., startup, is offering a new technology to help keep TV advertisers happy.

The company, in secrecy until now, will announce tomorrow (Monday) that it wants to insert targeted ads into on-demand viewing by placing a piece of hardware between cable operators and consumers. Prior to the user watching an on-demand show, BlackArrow helps deliver a brief ad, tailored to the theme of the show and the user’s apparent preferences. For example, a teenage boy might be delivered an ad for an upcoming game like Halo 3.

The company isn’t just another video ad company. It is backed with a $12 million funding round, led by Comcast Interactive Capital, the investment arm of the cable giant.

While DVRs like the TiVo will still allow users to fast forward past advertising, BlackArrow will open up the field for cable companies to profit from acting as remote ad servers. BlackArrow will count on the cable companies to offer their own DVR technology. The advantage for the consumer is not having to worry about buying or installing a hardware DVR. A majority of viewers still haven’t.

BlackArrow is less revolutionary than we’d thought. The company spent more than a year in stealth mode developing its product, and good sources of ours originally suggested that the original aim of the company was to destroy the ad-skipping capabilities of the TiVo. That apparently is no longer the case, if it ever was.

Indeed, the amount of advertising you’ll have to put up with should decrease dramatically, sad CEO Dean Denhart. Advancing standards allow for targeting that is much more valuable to advertisers. Consumers who are dead-set against seeing ads will still be able to rely on their old workarounds.

Like some other advertising startups, BlackArrow can also work with broadband video delivered over the internet. Its best advantage is in its proprietary hardware. The company doesn’t yet have any notable competitors, Denhart claimeed. Large companies like Microsoft, hungry for advertising dollars, are likely to pile in.

Cisco, another investor, has also been testing the company’s equipment. Other investors in the round include Intel, the Mayfield Fund and Polaris Venture Partners. The previous round of $5 million, taken in 2006, was led by Mayfield. The company has raised a total of $17 million. (We’re still trying to reconcile this with our original report that it had raised $14.75 million).