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.

Jaxtr, a service for dodging international calling fees using your phone, has raised $10 million in series A round led by August Capital.

It says it has doubled in size in the last month to a million users.

The Menlo Park, Calif. company (more detail from our past coverage here and here [update: first comment below]) allows you to make free phone calls over the web or your mobile and landline phones, including low local rates for international calls.

When you sign up and make your first call on the web, you get a unique Jaxtr phone number and web address, such as www.jaxtr.com/mattmarshall.

People who want to call you can simply click on the web address link and get directed to your current phone number, as you have it pre-selected on Jaxtr — without you having to reveal your real number.

The company also lets you embed its widget on web pages so you can make or receive calls, say, on your Myspace account; it also launched a Facebook app in late May, but it only has a little over 12,000 users three months later.

Jaxtr has between 70 and 80 percent of its total users making and receiving calls from mobile phones simply because a Jaxtr number can be entered into a mobile address book like any other number, chief executive Konstantin Guericke tells us.

While Skype, Jajah and other internet-based phone services also provide ways to make free international calls, Guericke says this alternative phone number is more convenient for mobile users because they don’t need to download a mobile application, like Skype, or access a web browser, like Jajah. It’s similar to GrandCentral, the company bought by Google, which provides a single number you can use anywhere — although it gives you a single URL instead.

Eighty percent of total Jaxtr users live in 220 countries outside of the US, although Guericke says US users are three times as active, overall.

More than 16,000 users are now registering per day, the company says, with nearly three quarters of users in their 20’s.

Jaxtr was almost acquired recently, Dave Hornik of August Capital tells us — from another private company headed to an IPO (but not Facebook), he says.

While the offer would have been a good return for Jaxtr and its investors, Guericke says Jaxtr took the funding to try to replace the multi-billion dollar industry of selling calling cards with minutes for making international calls.

Jaxtr plans to make money by charging people who use more than their allotted 100 minutes per month; he hopes to get 20 million users in the next twelve months and is planning for only around one percent of these users to pay for additional minutes.

Other returning investors include the Mayfield Fund, The Founder’s Fund and three early Skype backers: Draper Richards, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Mangrove Capital.