Fantasy sports developer RotoHog bags $2M
Online fantasy sports game developer RotoHog announced that it’s brought in $2 million in a second round of capital. It plans to use the funds to expand its partnerships with brand sponsors and look at opportunities overseas.
Instead of offering basic fantasy sports competition, RotoHog builds custom sports games — including many for particular brands. In the past, it has developed branded products for NBA.com, Turner, LG Electronics, the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour and GoDaddy.com,… Continue Reading
Networks in Motion acquires TrafficGauge for location-based traffic software
Networks in Motion, creator of location-based applications for mobile phones, announced that it’s purchased real-time traffic map provider TrafficGauge for an undisclosed sum. The Irvine, Calif. company plans to use TrafficGauge’s technology to develop better navigation tools for cell phones, including software that could make route recommendations based on current traffic conditions.
Network in Motion sells its services to carriers like Verizon Wireless. It has raised $15 million in capital to date from Redpoint Ventures, Mission… Continue Reading
Netseer nabs $8.1M for ad targeting beyond keywords
Netseer, a company that targets ads based on intuitive relationships between keywords, has brought in an $8.1 million tranche of an expected $14.1 million round of funding from Mission Ventures and ONSET Ventures, according to VentureWire. The Los Angeles company hasn’t disclosed its plans for the new money.
As an example of what Netseer does, VentureWire says its algorithms would be capable of targeting ads for sites mentioning both Cuban cigars and cognac — two things… Continue Reading
Big Stage Entertainment wants you to take your 3-D avatars from game to game
If you’re going to go to a lot of trouble to create a 3-D avatar, or virtual character, you might as well spread it around. That’s the point of Big Stage Entertainment’s PortableYou program.
The company uses a facial modeling system to render a faithful version of someone’s face by building a 3-D replica from three photos taken from slightly different angles. The photorealistic product can then be imported into video games, virtual worlds, mobile applications… Continue Reading
Roundup: Uber closes down, Yahoo speaks on Yahoogle and more
Uber, an also-ran social network turned microblog platform, closes down — Investors included Universal Music Group and Sterling Stamos Co-Investors fund. The company claimed that it closed down due to economic issues, as you can read on its site. More on PaidContent.
Mobile payment company Transaction Wireless raises $2.25 million — Funding comes from Mission Ventures and Okapi Ventures.
House debates about how its members can use web video, devolves into childish squabbling — The Senate has already avoided such… Continue Reading
Polling widget company SodaHead raises $8.4 million
SodaHead, a company that provides a polling widget for web publishers that it also uses to prompt discussions on its own site, is seeing some decent traction. It has gained more than 600,000 members total since launching last September, and has logged a total of more than four million comments on its site.
To use SodaHead, you create a poll widget on its site, then embed the widget code into your site, similar to competitors like… Continue Reading
Big Stage closing a new round of venture money
Next month, personalized video-mashup site Big Stage will launch its public beta. The site lets you upload three high-resolution photos of yourself. It then stitches those photos into a 3-D avatar. You can accessorize your avatar and put your avatar into videos and amusing scenery. You can then share it with your friends.
The company got to show off its 3-D avatar technology to the world during Intel CEO Paul Otellini’s keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show… Continue Reading
Big Stage’s 3D avatars may blow the competition out of the water
Big Stage wants to popularize 3D avatars based on pictures of your own face, and it looks more likely to do a good job of it than any other startup we’ve seen so far, comparing favorably to JibJab, the most popular site yet to feature animated avatars.
On JibJab, you can paste a picture of your face into a video of, for example, a man who’s disco dancing. It’s silly and fun but has all the… Continue Reading
Nirvanix, competitor to Amazon’s storage delivery service, raises $12M, as expected
Nirvanix, a San Diego, Calif. company that is competing wth Amazon’s’s S3 by offering a storage delivery service for media applications, has raised $12 million in a funding round, as expected (see earlier coverage; scroll down).
It was led by Mission Ventures and Valhalla Partners with participation from Windward Ventures. Nirvanix will use the funds to expand its so-called Storage Delivery Service (SDS). The company said it has 40 customers. The company raised $2.5 million earlier… Continue Reading
RotoHog, a new twist on fantasy sports
RotoHog, a site with an original approach to online fantasy sports, has raised $6 million in its first venture round.
There’s no revolutionary technology here; it’s just an effort to enhance an existing concept, and reflects the significant push to make money entertaining the masses who are spending ever more time online. For those who aren’t familiar, fantasy sports are like massively-multiplayer online role games, except for sports nuts instead of geeks. Fans spend multiple hours… Continue Reading
RockeTalk raises $7.1M for mobile phone messaging tools
RockeTalk, a San Diego-based developer of software that combines all mobile phone messaging tools into a single application, has raised around $7.1 million in a first round of funding, according to a regulatory filing cited by PE Wire.
Backers include iSherpa Ventures, EDF Ventures and Mission Ventures. RockeTalk CEO Rajiv Kumar previously was co-founder of bluetooth software company Widcomm.
Slacker raises $40M more to take on iPod, Last.fm
San Diego-based Slacker, the company that wants to take on the iPod with a new type of music recommendation service, has raised $40 million in a second round of funding.
The company, which we first covered in March, is launching in two stages. First, it launched its online player, which we’ve been listening to for several days now (image below), and have enjoyed. This part is similar to Last.fm, in that you can vote what music… Continue Reading
ID Analytics raises $20M for identity fraud prevention
Updated
ID Analytics, a San Diego, Calif. company that seeks to detect and prevent identity fraud before it happens, said it has has closed $20 million in a third round of financing.
The round was led by Investor Growth Capital, and included existing investors Canaan Partners, Trinity Ventures and Mission Ventures. The company has now raised more than $45 million in funding.
The five year old company says its clients — companies in the financial services, retail,… Continue Reading
Greenplum, and the Web 2.0 server
Greenplum, a San Mateo company offering businesses an affordable way to sort though hundreds of terabytes of data to become more intelligent about their customers’ habits, has raised $19 million in financing.
Greenplum is significant because it says it provides a database for speedy data warehousing at a tenth of the cost of leading incumbent, Teradata. It does so by working with the new server built by Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, billed internally as the “Web… Continue Reading
Mochila, the market place for individual articles
Start-up Mochila has emerged with an intriguing idea: a marketplace for individual newspaper, magazine and other articles.
If VentureBeat wants to run AP stories, for example, we can go to Mochila and pick out individual Associated Press stories, run them on VentureBeat for free — and share any resulting revenue with Mochila and AP. It is a 40-30-30 percent revenue split, with AP getting the 40 percent. AP is a customer of Mochila’s, as are a… Continue Reading