VentureBeat

SkyGrid, a news aggregator for investors, has raised $11 million in a second round of funding.

On its surface, the concept sounds a bit silly — can’t investors do Google News searches on their own? Or use a free news index like Bloomberg’s? Do they really need to pay another company to do it? In fact, a startup with a similar idea called Monitor 110 closed its doors recently — and, like SkyGrid, it was backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

But New York-based Skygrid has a slightly different take on the problem. Yes, it’s a good place to find news articles, but more importantly it helps you see the overall tenor of the news coverage. Each story is color-coded red, green or blue to indicate whether it’s negative, positive or neutral, respectively, and SkyGrid packs a lot of articles onto the page. Thus, an investor can tell at a glance what the news is and how news sources, in general, are reacting.

For folks (like me) who aren’t serious investors, a good comparison might be movie review aggregation sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, which I visit to find individual reviews, but also to get a flavor of the general response among reviewers. GigaOM’s Carleen Hawn took a close look when SkyGrid launched in February and came away impressed.

I still can’t imagine paying for this kind of service myself, but hey, I’m not the target audience. And in the few months since its launch, SkyGrid says it has signed up more than 100 paying customers, including traders, hedge fund managers, portfolio managers and research analysts.

RRE Ventures led the round, with participation from BlackRock. SkyGrid previously raised $550,000 from DFJ, Tim Draper and Esther Dyson.

Here’s the latest action:

File-sharing company Pando Networks raising $20.9M — Pando Networks, a New York file-sharing company that uses P2P software to allow users to download, stream and share large media files quickly, has raised $8.1 million of a targeted $20.9 million round of capital, VentureBeat has learned. The company has gotten positive press coverage for its ability to send very large files, such as high-def video. The round is includes backers Wheatley Partners and BRM Capital Fund. (Our early coverage of Pando.)

Federal Communications Commission weighs action against Comcast — The FCC said Comcast may have violated Net Neutrality principles, after it acknowledged t was slowing down traffic for peer-to-peer file-sharing sites. It is unclear what, if any, penalty the FCC can impose.

Cisco backs hi-definition streaming video company GridNetworks –Cisco participated in the Seattle company’s $9.5 million first round, part of the giant San Jose company’s effort to move into digital media to grow traffic on its infrastructure. GridNetworks competes against other content delivery networks, such as Akamai or Limelight, using a peer-to-peer client. We covered the company here.

Online advertising company Adjug gets backing from Tomorrow Focus — Adjug, the London based ad marketplace, lets advertisers determine where on a Web page they can place an ad, and decide what price they will pay to the publishers (announcement of the strategic investment is here ).

Softcoin, Web-based promotions company, raises $200,000 more — The Silicon Valley company offers promotion and loyalty programs online in the form of coupons. Customers get to redeem them in a store. The Brisbane, Calif. company has now raised $2.2 million in a third round of funding, which came from RRE Ventures, Greylock Partners and others, according to VentureWire.

Wireless car technology gets adopted by Ford – Airbiquity lets a driver’s cellphone deliver location and diagnostic data about their vehicle. The Seattle company has just landed a customer in Ford. See our recent coverage of Airbiquity and its financing here.

Walt Disney Co. expects $1 billion in revenue from online content this fiscal year — That’s a major increase from last year, according to CEO Robert Iger.

Skyhook Wireless, a Boston company seeking to become the first company to link GPS locations to Wifi hotspots nationwide to make it easier for advertisers to target mobile users, has gotten another $8.5 million in capital.

The four-year-old company has now raised $16.8 million. The financing, first reported by VentureWire (sub required), was led by RRE Ventures and included existing investors Bain Capital, Intel Capital and CommonAngels.

According to VentureWire:

Skyhook is creating a map to link GPS locations to Wi-Fi hotspots to improve efficiency for some location-based applications which use GPS for tracking, a technology that does not work well in densely populated or indoor areas. Skyhook, which has been mapping Wi-Fi networks in all of America’s most densely populated areas, has created a reference point that can help location-based applications orient themselves when GPS won’t work.

This lets advertisers serve customers with more geographically relevant information.