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 your broadband connection, British-based AlertMe now makes power consumption data available on your internet browser via the Google PowerMeter interface — if you happen to live in the United Kingdom.
The… Continue Reading
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 brought by Joltid, another company owned by the duo — which, incidentally, also founded video-sharing site Joost. The trouble started when eBay moved on plans to sell off most of… Continue Reading
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 Ventures — a thorny subject involving eBay’s sale of Skype. He joined the private equity firm in June when Joost officially threw in the towel on becoming a web television… 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 between $35,000 and $4.9 million a year — a decent exchange for some companies that pay out millions of dollars annually due to patent infringement. RPX actually buys the rights… Continue Reading
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 13 years at Cisco, where his roles included chief strategy officer. However, his most recent job, at Joost, hasn’t exactly been a huge success. The web video service has struggled… Continue Reading
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 means consolidation. Mobillcash and Paymo have been rolled up into a new, fourth company: Boku.
Founded at the beginning of this year by serial entrepreneur Mark Britto, Boku is trying to combine… 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 individual appliances to a centralized web interface where customers can view the information and actually control use. For example, they can flip switches, alter settings during peak energy periods, and… 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 funding.
The team says it only needs to push one of the drugs through phase one clinical trials to be well-positioned for a lucrative acquisition. While they predict this will take… Continue Reading
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 in France. Reinforcing the good news, the London-based company also reported strong first-quarter earnings and rapid growth.
Viagogo recently hit more than one million ticket listings on its site, with sales… Continue Reading
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 functions into smaller gadgets such as cell phones. It’s an important area of innovation in a time when smartphones are taking over people’s lives.
Chip packaging is becoming a tougher technical… Continue Reading
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 (sold to Sun Microsystems for $1 billion) and Betfair, Index has been relatively insulated from the economic downturn and is looking to expand its reach in the health care and… 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 solid presence in the racing business and the U.S. online gambling market.
Macrovision bought Santa Clara, Calif.-based TV Games Network from Gemstar-TV Guide last year and looked like it was going… Continue Reading
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 for one-click purchase.
When VentureBeat last covered the London company in March, we detailed some of its other cool features, including the ability to generate a concert schedule from your personal… Continue Reading
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 and Intridea, but chief executive Michael Crandell has said RightScale stands out with its visual interface and the monitoring it provides with its own servers. Initially, RightScale (like most of… Continue Reading
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. It is just one of many tech companies cutting staff to conserve cash in preparation for tighter times ahead.
Sezmi’s service comes with a set-top box that brings both high-definition broadcast… Continue Reading
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 web sites.
RedLever, based in Santa Monica, Calif., is a rebranding of KTV’s operation, and will be used to generate content for 75 of the most popular 100 entertainment and media… Continue Reading
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 to become a leader in one of the hottest categories of the video game industry. It was founded in October, 2007, and launched its first game in December, 2007.
To date,… Continue Reading
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 satellite — enough to “show home plate on a baseball diamond.” Google has an exclusive contract to this satellite’s images. [Image of GeoEye launch site, using GeoEye.]
The psychology of news… Continue Reading
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 similar to a television experience but added the interactivity that the web offers. The service’s problem was in its execution — namely that it required a seperate desktop client to… Continue Reading
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 sharing, audio and video. It doesn’t have too many bells and whistles, and some of the technical kinks still need to be worked out; I’ve run into a few display… Continue Reading