AlertMe teams with Google, British Gas to give consumers more control over energy use

AlertMe teams with Google, British Gas to give consumers more control over energy use

AlertMe is the newest energy monitoring device maker to partner with Google PowerMeter, giving homeowners more information and control over how much electricity they are using, and how much they pay for it. By providing hardware that plugs into your home’s traditional electric meter and… Continue Reading

Skype founders sue eBay for copyright violations

Skype founders sue eBay for copyright violations

Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis filed suit today against eBay, the owner of their the intenet telephone technology since 2005, alleging that the auction site violated a copyright agreement that it wouldn’t share the proprietary code powering the service.

The suit is officially being… Continue Reading

Joost removes Volpi as chairman, complicating eBay’s Skype sale

Joost removes Volpi as chairman, complicating eBay’s Skype sale

Mike Volpi, the former chief executive officer of online video site Joost who stepped down in July, has now been removed as chairman by the company’s shareholders, and is under investigation for his activities during his leadership.

Many are questioning Volpi’s dual roles at Joost and Index… Continue Reading

RPX raises funds to aggregate defensive patents

RPX Corporation, provider of a service that aggregates patents to prevent violations and subsequent litigation costs, has brought in an undisclosed amount of second-round funding from Index Ventures, Charles River Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Based in San Francisco, the company charges companies fees… Continue Reading

Recently replaced Joost CEO Mike Volpi joins Index Ventures

Recently replaced Joost CEO Mike Volpi joins Index Ventures

Mike Volpi, who just announced that he’s stepping down after a two-year run as chief executive of online video startup Joost, is joining Joost investor Index Ventures as a partner.

Volpi has spent two decades in the tech industry, starting with HP in 1989, and including… Continue Reading

Mobile payment startup Boku rolls up social rivals, raises funding

Mobile payment startup Boku rolls up social rivals, raises funding

Mobillcash, Paymo and Zong have spent the last year or so competing to offer mobile payment services, most prominently for social gaming applications and casual gaming sites. Now, as social gaming continues to grow in users and revenue, the competition is getting fiercer — and that… Continue Reading

AlertMe takes in $13M for online energy management

AlertMe, maker of a system that allows homeowners to measure and control the energy used by their appliances, has raised $13 million in a second round of funding. By hooking into a household’s broadband connection, the Alertme.com Energy Kit transmits power consumption data recorded from… Continue Reading

Index Ventures launches pharma co. as acquisition bait

Index Ventures is partnering with Mountain View, Calif.-based biotech firm Amunix to launch Versartis, a pharmaceutical company that will market diabetes and metabolic disease treatments, reports VentureWire. Each partner owns half of the new company, which also just received $11 million from Index in first-round… Continue Reading

Ticket marketplace Viagogo announces tennis deal, strong Q1 results

Ticket marketplace Viagogo announces tennis deal, strong Q1 results

Viagogo, the online marketplace where anyone can buy or sell tickets for live events, announced today that it is partnering with the French Tennis Federation to create a special ticket exchange channel for tennis, making it the first secondary ticketing platform to land a deal… Continue Reading

Imbera gets $15 million to help pack more functions onto small devices

Imbera gets $15 million to help pack more functions onto small devices

Chip-packaging company Imbera Electronics is announcing today that it’s raised $15 million in a second round of funding for its 3-D packaging solutions for semiconductor chips.

The company hopes to make 3-D chip packaging more economical, which, in turn, will allow electronics makers to pack more… Continue Reading

Index Ventures infuses biotech and cleantech with $438.8M

Index Ventures infuses biotech and cleantech with $438.8M

Index Ventures just announced the closure of a $438.8 million fund intended to finance young biotechnology and cleantech portfolio companies. This is the sixth seed and early-stage fund the London-based firm has raised. Perhaps best know for its prescient investments in technologies like Skype, MySQL… Continue Reading

Betfair pays $50M for TV Games Network

Electronic gambling company Betfair Group announced its purchase of TV Games Network — the official channel of the Thoroughbred Racing Association — for $50 million from Macrovision Solutions. The acquisition should give the U.K. company, which takes bets on the web and by phone, a… Continue Reading

Concert recommender Songkick takes $4.6M

Concert recommender Songkick takes $4.6M

Songkick, a site that recommends concerts in your local area based on your preferred artists, has snagged $4.65 million of an anticipated $7.17 million first round of funding, reports VentureWire. The company also aggregates ticket information from 16 sites like StubHub, Ticketweb and Ticketmaster, allowing… Continue Reading

Cloud management startup RightScale raises another $13M

Cloud management startup RightScale raises another $13M

It looks like the economic downturn hasn’t eliminated investment for cloud computing. RightScale, a Santa Barbara, Calif. company that manages applications in the Internet cloud, has raised $13 million in a second round of funding.

There are other app management companies out there, such as WeoCeo… Continue Reading

Set-top box co. Sezmi cuts staff despite new $33M

Set-top box co. Sezmi cuts staff despite new $33M

Personalized television service Sezmi announced that it has laid off about 20 of its employees even though it just brought in a $33 million tranche of an anticipated $51.5 million third round of funding. The Belmont, Calif. company cited the poor economy as its rationale…. Continue Reading

Adconion acquires KTV Digital to form video syndication branch

Adconion acquires KTV Digital to form video syndication branch

Ad network Adconion Media Group has bought production studio and video syndicator KTV Digital Media for an undisclosed amount to form its own video distribution branch, RedLever. The new entity will create branded videos for advertisers and agencies that will run across Adconion’s constellation of… Continue Reading

Playfish raises $17 million for Facebook games

Playfish raises $17 million for Facebook games

Playfish, a social gaming company that has four of the top ten games on Facebook, has raised $17 million in funding.

The deal shows that the intersection of games and social networking remains a hot sector in spite of the weakening economy.

Playfish came out of nowhere… Continue Reading

Roundup: MyHeritage raises funding, news feed psychology, Bell drops “basic research,” and more

Roundup: MyHeritage raises funding, news feed psychology, Bell drops “basic research,” and more

Here’s the latest action:

Genealogy site MyHeritage raises $15 million — The Israel-based company has grown from 17 million to 25 million registered users over the past year. Investors include Index Ventures and Accel.

High-imaging satellite GeoEye-1 launches — It claims to take the highest-resolution images of any commercially-available… Continue Reading

Joost’s desktop client is toast

Joost’s desktop client is toast

Since early on in its testing phase, I found Joost to be a compelling take on Internet Protocol Television (IPTV). Let me rephrase: I found the idea of Joost to be compelling. It offered free video content on the web in a way that was somewhat… Continue Reading

Dimdim raises $6M for free web meetings

Dimdim raises $6M for free web meetings

Updated

Dimdim, the free, open-source web meeting company, has raised $6 million in a second round of funding.

The concept is pretty simple — like WebEx, but free. Dimdim offers all the basic tools that you’d expect from a web meeting service, including a collaborative whiteboard, desktop… Continue Reading