Here's the latest action:
Google adds search to Reader -- In an obvious but very useful move, Google Reader, the company's web-based RSS feed reader, has added the ability to search through your RSS subscriptions, or the categories and tags you use to organize them. So you can search for words in articles in RSS feeds you've subscribed to, without actually having the articles on your screen. Cool!
First venture capitalist to sell his blog: Rob Day -- We've been a fan of venture capitalist Rob Day's blog Cleantech Investing from the day it started. It's about clean technology. Greentech Media Inc, a company that has just launched to focus on the clean-technology sector, has acquired the blog for an undisclosed amount, and now runs it on its site. By the way, Greentech Media is also pulling feeds from VentureBeat's articles about clean-technology. It provides links to our full stories. Day told us about the purchase last week, but we were waiting for Greentech to launch and get its feeds squared away, which it did yesterday. Day now works for @Ventures.
Quattro Wieless raises cash to help companies adapt their Web sites to mobile versions -- The Waltham, Mass. company serves businesses by providing them with mobile versions of their sites. This field has many competitors now. The year-old Quattro has raised $12.3 million in a second round of funding from Globespan Capital Partners and Highland Capital Partners, bringing its total funding to $18 million. It provides online software to let companies see what their mobile site would look like. If the publisher likes it, they can join Quattro's network, which customizes it for most mobile devices. The company helps publishers serve advertising on their mobile site, and takes a cut while doing so. reword:
Universal sues Veoh -- Universal Music Group, a record label that has been actively suing music and video-focused startups, is at it again. It is suing Veoh, a site where you can upload and share videos, for letting users upload and share videos that Universal claims a copyright to. Veoh received threatening letters from Universal earlier this summer, and actually counter-sued for court protection against Universal in August, saying that it should not be held liable for what users do on the site. Universal was not deterred. Paid Content has more.
Groxis, the company with a visual search engine, now gets third CEO in little more than a year -- We profiled Groxis and its search engine Grokker here and here. It was an early challenger to Google's search format. Instead of giving you pages of results, it provided spheres, breaking out result by categories. Search for Paris, for example, and you'd get spheres titled “History,” “Museums,” “Universities,” “Hotels” and so on. It was always a bit complicated, however, and it has struggled to find direction. It has moved away from the sphere format, and is clearly still experimenting. We've heard almost nothing new from this company in years. Here's the announcement of its latest CEO, Randall Marcinkio. He replaces Brian Chadbourne, who replaced founder and CEO R.J Pittman last year. Groxis raised $16 million for its search engine Grokker from investors including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Jackson Boulevard Capital Management and Draper ePlanet Ventures.