VentureBeat

Fon, a Spanish startup hoping to build “the world’s largest wireless community”, has raised $9.5 million in a third round of funding, according to TechCrunch.

Coral Capital Management led the round, with participation from British Telecom, Google, Allen & Co., founder Martin Varsavsky’s Jazzya and Joi Ito’s Digital Garage. Varsavsky says he’ll use the new funding to launch Fon in Russia, and to release a new version of the company’s Fonera router.

We covered the company last October, when British Telecom joined Google as a Fon investor. It’s a cool idea: After installing a Fon wireless router, you can open up your network to other Fon users in exchange for free access to other routers when you’re traveling, or you can charge for access and receive 50 percent of the proceeds. But it’s still not clear whether the company is making much money, since it appears to be giving the routers away for free, and the most interesting part of Fon’s model also involves free wireless. (A startup called Meraki is also trying to create a free wireless network, in this case one that envelops San Francisco.)

It’s worth noting that British Telecom and Google may not see Fon as a moneymaker, but as a way to promote their own offerings. Sequoia Capital, a previous Fon investor that’s usually more interested in profit, didn’t participate in the current round.

Dopplr, a Helsinki, Finland company that lets frequent travelers share their trips with friends and so that they make notes on each other’s itineraries, has raised an undisclosed amount of financing from individual investors.

Sharing travel plans isn’t new.  A plethora of sites offers ways to consult with others on travel plans, from MyTripbook, to RealTravel to Tripwiser. The difference is, most other travel sites offer trip-sharing as part of a much larger palette of offerings.

Dopplr does it with laser focus. The company has not launched yet, but is inviting people to test it. It is straight-forward and very simple. You sign up, and then are taken to a profile page where you can add your trips — it prompts you for your destinations and dates. You can add notes for each trip, and then invite others to see and correspond. Dan Gillmor, a former Mercury News columnist who has dabbled in several investments recently, is a co-founder, and invited us to share his travels. See a screenshot below.

I like the service’s simplicity. On the other hand, it’s clearly a service designed only for frequent fliers (the rest of us won’t need to use it).
It works well on the mobile number. You register your phone, and then you can SMS someone’s email address to Doppler’s London number +44 7797 806 170 to invite them to see your schedule (there’s no U.S. number, so it won’t work locally yet, but that’s coming).

Investors include Martin Varsavsky, Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman and The Accelerator Group led by Saul Klein — all of whom use Dopplr, and are well-known for their investments in Internet companies (including Last.fm, Joost, Flickr, Stardoll, and Netvibes to name a few).

(UPDATED: see below.) 23andMe, a stealthy Mountain View, Calif., “personal genetics” startup, has raised a first round of funding from some heavy hitters — Google, Genentech and two blue-chip VC firms, Mohr Davidow Ventures and New Enterprise Associates.

That’s some significant megatonnage for a low-profile and potentially controversial startup, although it all starts to make sense once you realize that Google co-founder Sergey Brin is newly married to 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki. In addition, Genentech CEO Art Levinson sits on Google’s board. Those insider ties triggered disclosure requirements for Google, which revealed its new $3.9 million stake in 23andMe earlier this afternoon in an SEC filing. Among other things, the financing allowed 23andMe to pay back $2.6 million it had previously borrowed from Brin.

23andMe didn’t disclose the overall size of the round, although I’m told it’s in the vicinity of $10 million. None of the four named investors officially took a lead role in the financing, according to Michael Goldberg, a Mohr Davidow partner.

According to the company’s bare-bones release, 23andMe aims to help people “access, explore and better understand” their own genetic profiles via the latest DNA-analysis techniques and Web-based software tools. (The company’s name is a play on the 23 pairs of chromosomes that carry each individual’s DNA.) That service isn’t likely to launch until the end of this year, and in the meantime, 23andMe officials aren’t talking.

Which is not to say that 23andMe’s business is a total mystery. The company’s Web site suggests that it will allow people to analyze their own genomes and then share or compare that information via social networks of some sort (emphasis added):

Even though your body contains trillions of copies of your genome, you’ve likely never read any of it. Our goal is to connect you to the 23 paired volumes of your own genetic blueprint (plus your mitochondrial DNA), bringing you personal insight into ancestry, genealogy, and inherited traits. By connecting you to others, we can also help put your genome into the larger context of human commonality and diversity.

Toward this goal, we are building on recent advances in DNA analysis technologies to enable broad, secure, and private access to trustworthy and accurate individual genetic information. Combined with educational and scientific resources with which to interpret and understand it, your genome will soon become personal in a whole new way.

How this will work in practice isn’t entirely clear, although there are hints scattered here and there. Maverick tech entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky, for instance, wrote on his blog in January that 23andMe will take in saliva samples through the mail, then subject them to a fast and relatively inexpensive genetic analysis. That data, he suggested, would go into a database that people could search for both personal and scientific reasons — a vision that, if true, would also help explain Google’s involvement, given the company’s oft-stated desire to index all of human knowledge. (An individual familiar with 23andMe told me that Varsavsky’s description sounds “well informed.”)

Mohr Davidow’s Goldberg explains that 23andMe hopes to stand at the intersection of “personalized medicine” and consumer-driven healthcare by offering individuals the tools they need to make medical decisions based on their genetic makeup. “Consumers have to become educated,” he says. “They have to understand that genetics isn’t scary science, that it’s all about what makes me who I am.”

Of course, no one knows at this point how people might react to the notion of storing — much less sharing — their genetic information online. Goldberg emphasized that 23andMe is “extraordinarily committed” to maintaining user privacy. It also can’t hurt that Congress appears poised to ban genetic discrimination with respect to employment and health insurance, which could do a lot to alleviate peoples’ anxiety about hanging out their genetic laundry online.

UPDATE: Turns out Martin Varsavsky is also a 23andMe investor. At least, that’s what he says on his blog. No wonder he’s “well informed.”

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 and SwissCom. This news was supposed to be “embargoed” until Tuesday morning’s Demo conference opened, which is the rule for companies like Whisher presenting there. However, the news has already been broken by the habitual embargo-breaker, Erick Schonfeld (got to love his chutzpah) and elsewhere (a good summary of all the latest WiFi offerings, btw), so we’re weighing in too.

Stepping back, the FON idea is that you share your WiFi with others, and they’ll share with you • a great help when you’re on the road and need a connection for free.

But practically speaking, this is a tough sell. You’ve got to buy the router first, and in today’s rushed world, buying another router in hopes that you might find someone else to share with down the line — well, it doesn’t seem to be high on our priority list. Increasingly, there are muni WiFi sites, and if you’re desperate, there are free WiFi cafes; we know at least one in each major town we visit here in Silicon alley. And there are EVDO cards, too.

So along comes Whisher, which basically does the same thing as FON, but without requiring you to buy the $29.95 hardware box. There’s some emnity here, too, because Whisher is run by Ferran Moreno, who left FON, apparently over a split with FON CEO Martin Varsavsky. You do download a free software. This lets you tap into any free WiFi hotspot, or into the private WiFi network of participating members. Once there, Whisher provides other social networking features • for example IM, file-sharing and information about the locale you’re visiting and the users there.

So how does it plan to make money? Whisher, unlike Fon, wants to rely on advertising. By getting users to chat and interact at a local WiFi connection, Whisher hopes to let advertisers target the users. If you’re near a MacDonalds, for example, the fast-food chain can offer you a discount to lure you over.

The investment from Benchmark Capital is led by Klaus Hommels, who was an early investor in Skype, and who says he sees the same viral possibilities in Whisher.

(Competitor FON, notably, is funded by Skype, along with Google and Sequoia Capital)

Ferran Moreno, founder and CEO, tells VentureBeat he’s most proud of the company’s embedded browser • which lets Whisher control the experience, updating it as needed.

The IM service is integrated with Jabber, which allows you IM with anyone else on the network, regardless of their particular IM service.

The file-sharing is noteworthy too. You leave the files on the WiFi network, so that anyone passing by can have access to them.

Right now, the Whisher’s Windows version is working better than its Mac and Linux versions, Moreno said. VentureBeat was unable to login to test the product.