Roundup: Rumor mill churns on Plaxo, Bebo, Google Phone, and more
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… Continue Reading
Kyte.tv raises single-digit millions for online TV channel service
Kyte.tv, the San Francisco company that lets users manage their own TV channels online or on a cell-phone, has raised a second round of financing in the “single-digit” millions of dollars.
Swiss carrier Swisscom and German media group Holtzbrinck Ventures has invested in the round, Chief executive Daniel Graf told VentureBeat. He would not disclose the exact amount. The investment follows the launch of Kyte last month. Some 3,000 users have since downloaded the player, Graf… Continue Reading
The new behavior advertising upstarts: Aggregate Knowledge and Wunderloop
The eye-opening performances claimed by new behavioral advertising start-ups Aggregate Knowledge and Wunderloop are sure to grab the attention from online retailers and publishers.
Take the little announcement by the nine-month-old Menlo Park company Aggregate Knowledge yesterday at DEMO: It drove more than 20 percent of all of the holiday purchases at major discount retail site Overstock.com. Considering that the annual revenue of Overstock is in the range of $700-800 million, our rough estimate is that Aggregate… Continue Reading
Whisher tackles FON — launches its own WiFi nation
Honestly, we never got FON, the company that sells a WiFi router so that you can share your WiFi with others.
FON claims 50,000 nodes, and that it is the “largest WiFi network in the world,” so it appears to be having some traction.
Whisher is a new Spanish start-up flogging a similar model — but its offering may be more palatable than FON’s. Whisher has just raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Benchmark Europe… Continue Reading