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SightSpeed, a desktop-based video conferencing application, tomorrow launches SightSpeed Light (see screenshot below), a widget video conferencing app, on the Myspace application platform.

SightSpeed Light provides a Flash-based free video chat and video mail between MySpace users, but it is also integrated with SightSpeed on the desktop. The company has plans to relase the widget on social networks LinkedIn, Salesforce, Plaxo, Orkut, Hi5 and others, but so far it doesn’t have a date for these releases.

Last year, SightSpeed released Vlip, a video logging and video chat website aimed at the casual user, but it seems to have fallen off the map.

This seems to be SightSpeed’s first foray into directly attracting the casual user, whereas for years it has attracted businesses. In 2007, some 1.5 billion minutes were used on SightSpeed, the company boasts, but it won’t release metrics on the size of its user base, traction and growth, or profitability.

The original SightSpeed product, mostly used by businesses, is a Windows/Mac desktop video conferencing application that comes in three packages: free and ad supported, a premium $9.95/mo subscription model that includes multi-party chatting, extended video mail, and video mail tracking, as well as SightSpeed business with an admin console and report-building for $19.95/mo.

Chief Technology Officer Aron Rosenberg says he considers the widget as just one way video conferencing will reach a mass audience — and he wants to stay ahead of free competitors Oovoo, Tokbox, and Skype Video.

“For all the people who have heard of Skype, there are billions of people who have not, and millions who associate [Skype] with just phone conferencing. Skype may have 200 million users, but so did Yahoo,” he says in a thinly veiled comparison to Google’s eclipse of Yahoo even though Yahoo was once much bigger.

SightSpeed’s advantage over Skype and other competitors is quality, Rosenberg said. However, Oovoo and Tokbox offer multi-party video chat for free, which SightSpeed charges for.

VoIP phones from Vonage can be integrated with Sightspeed. Sighspeed can be co-branded and white labeled, has an open API, and it also works well with PC manufacturers says Rosenberg, taking another swipe at Skype by remarking how closed and un-interoperable Ebay’s stepchild is.

Sightspeed is included in every Creative Labs webcam installed, which Rosenberg credits for a significant chunk of the company’s distribution, as well as a partnership with Logitech, and has received rave reviews from PC Mag.

The future for SightSpeed is on the mobile device, says Rosenberg, who looks to the US to advance its phones in the upcoming years — Taiwan already has $100-$200 video phones he says.

So far, SightSpeed works with an Nokia N95 mobile phone, with plans to be accessible on the next-generation iPhone.

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(UPDATED at 5:05 p.m. PDT; see below.)
(As part of my ongoing effort to strike the right balance between keeping up with venture-business news and writing more analysis, I’m inaugurating a daily briefing that will collect deal-related news items from the life sciences in one place. I’ll continue updating this post throughout the day as the news dictates. Comments on this or any other feature of this blog are always welcome; sound off below. For more on recent and possible future changes to the Life Sciences site, see earlier posts here and here.)

Featured companies: CoolSystems, BioProcessors, ConforMIS, Semafore Pharmaceuticals, Vatera Capital, Danish Diagnostic Development, BG Medicine

CoolSystems raises $3M for sports medicine — CoolSystems, a Berkeley, Calif., medical-device maker focused on sports medicine and post-surgical treatments for orthopedic injuries, raised $3 million in an expected $6 million seventh funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). The inside round includes MedVenture Associates, Maxwell Trust, Roda Group and angel and individual investors. Completing the $6 million round will bring the company’s total fundraising to $28.9 million.

Founded in 1998, CoolSystems makes and sells compression and cooling wraps under the GameReady brand. From the VentureWire story:

The company’s device treatments include a technology that provides a simultaneous compression and cold therapy, as well as wraps, for the treatment of post-orthopedic surgery and sports medicine. The technology works when a cloth is wrapped around the treatment area and is squeezed on the outside like a blood pressure cuff with a cyclical compression to reduce swelling, while high speed cooling is applied on the inside. The company also worked on the wraps with doctors and dress designers to get the best fit. CoolSystem’s equine division sells products for competitive and post-operative horses.

Implant maker ConforMIS secures $10M debt facility – Lexington, Mass.-based ConforMIS, a maker of knee implants for arthritis patients, secured a $10 million “debt facility” with Merrill Lynch Capital. The funding will help accelerate commercialization of the company’s patient-specific knee implants while serving as a bridge to a mezzanine round.

Microbioreactor maker BioProcessors raises $10M — BioProcessors, a Woburn, Mass., developer of drug-development laboratory equipment, raised an additional $10 million in a third funding round, bringing its total for the round to $28 million, VentureWire reports.

Investors included LSP Ventures, HLM Venture Partners, New Science Ventures, Oxford Bioscience Partners and Healthcare Ventures. According to PE Hub, the company has a post-money valuation of approximately $68 million. BioProcessors, founded in 2000, makes miniature “bioreactors” for culturing cells or conducting automated cell-based experiments.

Semafore Pharma names new CEO – Semafore Pharmaceuticals, an Indianapolis biotech focused on cancer drugs, named Edward Jacobs as its new CEO. Jacobs was previously the chief operating officer at SuperGen.

Kos Pharma founder starts new VC fund — Michael Jaharis, a co-founder of Kos Pharmaceuticals, which Abbott Labs snapped up for $4.2 billion last December, has launched his own VC fund, Vatera Capital, VentureWire reports. The fund has already participated in one funding, a $53 million round for Aveo Pharmaceuticals (see our coverage here). Given Jaharis’ background running drug-reformulation companies — that is, ones focused on figuring out how to package old drugs in new ways — it seems likely that his investments will follow suit. (Aveo, which licensed its cancer drugs from Mitsubishi Pharma, is a pretty good example, in fact.) This strategy can certainly make money — Kos itself is a prime example of that — but it probably isn’t going to knock anyone’s socks off.

Israel’s manufacturing-quality inspector Orbotech pays $39M to acquire Danish Diagnostic Development — Orbotech, an Israel-based maker of electronic-component inspection systems, agreed to buy Danish Diagnostic Development for $39 million in cash, plus up to another $6.5 million in milestone payments. (See the release here.)

DDD is a leading maker of “gamma cameras” used in CT and MRI scans as well as in “nuclear medicine,” which involves injecting a radioactive solution into a patient, then observing their movements with the gamma camera. Orbotech said the acquisition heralds its diversification into medical imaging.

BG Medicine files for European IPO — Waltham, Mass.-based BG Medicine notified the SEC that it intends to go public on the Euronext Amsterdam market. BG Medicine is focused on developing new “molecular diagnostics” that aimed at detecting disease or other bodily harm at the earliest possible moment. The company’s lead candidates include tests for early signs of heart failure or clogged arteries and another test to determine if patients are likely to respond to new cancer drugs such as Herceptin and Avastin.

UPDATE (5:05pm PT): Added items on Semafore Pharmaceuticals, Vatera Capital, Danish Diagnostic Development and BG Medicine.

Vlip is a new site takes video sharing conversations a step further.

It lets you record a video online with a webcam on your PC, and lets your friends and others respond with their own webcam clips. This is open-ended, so people can keep responding. The responses are threaded together. Moreover, if a registered member sees your video, they can click on the video to talk with you live, over a video call. Vlip’s strength is its simplicity.

No other site offers this. YouTube offers a way to reply to videos, but not a button to have an immediate live video chat with someone.

The video call is good quality, because it is the bread and butter of Vlip’s parent company, Sightspeed. The company, founded in 2001, has offered a free video-chat feature for some time. The Berkeley, Calif. company received $1 million in backing in 2003, and is now trying to ride the video wave by releasing Vlip as a separate product. Vlip launched late last week, but we waited to publish until we’d talked with Chief executive Peter D. Csathy. He wouldn’t say whether the company is profitable, but said traffic growth has been strong.

There are some drawbacks to Vlip. Once someone has posted a vlip, they can leave and go do their own thing. You can respond to them with your own clip, but this makes it hard for you to talk with them live — which dampens the appeal of this distinguishing feature of Vlip’s. You also need a webcam to record your clip. If you like replying to videos, many other sites offer that. Flikzor offers something very similar. Grouper, meanwhile, was early to introduce video comments — which gives you more visibility into exactly who has replied to a given video.

Vlip lets users post their vlip recording to any other Web site or blog, and the replies are kept together with the clip — even as it is watched across multiple Web sites. You can email vlips too too. You don’t need a Webcam to watch the vlips.

The company’s backing is from Roda Group, which led the finance round, with participation from BR Ventures, Cornell University’s venture capital fund.

The company hopes to make money from advertising, but also from driving traffic to Sightspeed’s video chat features. Members can pay for premium features, such as multi-party video conferencing, and unlimited storage of video mail. The company is particularly well placed, now that many PCs and other devices are being released with webcams built in. Csathy says he’s striking deals with multiple players, from chip-maker AMD to Creative Labs.