Executives at the now-bankrupt solar manufacturer Solyndra won’t testify at the Congressional hearing which is looking into allegations of improper dealings between the green tech company and the White House. Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison and CFO Bill Stover have announced they will plead the Fifth during questioning, on advice of their legal counsel.
The company, the first to be financed by the government’s stimulus plan, has left taxpayers on the hook for $535 million in federally guaranteed loans, and is being held up by some as a high-profile example of President Obama’s failure to properly manage government subsidies. → Read More
Exclusive-Flush with $45 million new funding in new funding, Kleiner-backed social commerce network Lockerz has acquired personalized video curation platform Vodpod and all related assets from parent company Remixation. This acquisition does not include Vodpod’s social video app, ShowYou. ShowYou will remain independent from Lockerz and was not acquired. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Vodpod allows users to create socialized, hand-crafted channels with anyone. Websites and users can easily pull and organize video into channels (and this feature will continue uninterrupted for publishers and users). VodPod originally launched as a YouTube competitor with some social bookmarking features. Then, VodPod decided to disable user-uploaded videos and to concentrate on its bookmarking functionality and launched a widget that allows bloggers to include their most recently bookmarked videos into their sites. → Read More
Lookout, a company that offers security services for a number of smartphones, has raised $40 million in new funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. Current investors Khosla Ventures, Accel Partners and Index Ventures also participated in the round. Andreessen Horowitz’s Jeff Jordan from will join the company’s Board of Directors. This brings Lookout’s total funding to $75 million.
The fact is that as more and more consumers adopt smartphones (a number in the billions by 2015, according to Gartner), these devices are at risk for mobile app malware, phishing scams, drive-by downloads and malicious sites on mobile browsers. Similar to the way consumers protect their computers, there is a need for an application that protects smartphones. Lookout has basically dominated this market with an easy to use offering. → Read More
In July, we covered a study released by Pando Networks that outlined some striking disparities in the current quality of internet access and speed across the U.S. Among the study’s more revealing findings was the size of the gap between those at the front of the pack in terms of connectivity speeds and those at the back — a difference of tenfold. Interestingly, Rhode Island came in as the state with the fastest download speeds, compared to Idaho which brought up the rear with an average speed of 318KBps.
Today, Pando Networks has released another study that reveals the speed and reliability not just of the U.S. but of the global landscape in an attempt to provide a comprehensive look at the accessibility of the world’s data. Interestingly, the average global download speed is 580KBps, showing among other things that Idaho’s speed pales in comparison to worldwide average. But what may come as a surprise to some is that the U.S. ranked in at 26th with an average speed of 616KBps, compared to South Korea, the world speed champion, which came in with a blinding average speed of 2,202KBps. → Read More
Rumor has it that HP isn’t quite happy with Leo Apotheker’s plans for the company and that he may be fired less than a year after taking the job.
As you’ll recall, Apotheker’s background is in SAP and massive business apps and, because when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail, he figured HP could make all sorts of cash selling the same software to businesses while killing and spinning off various parts of their hardware business. → Read More
Exclusive - Starting today, Home Shopping Network will begin selling – for the first time – an online storage product on air.
With a reach of about 89 million households per week in the United States, this could be quite a big deal for the online storage provider in question.
So who is it? Dropbox? Box.net? Mozy? Carbonite?
No Sir Ree Bob, it’s MiMedia (earlier coverage)! → Read More
While there’s a bit of a learning curve, 3Defy is a great demo of, at the very least, the latest in Flash programming. It’s basically a site that lets you add 3D effects to 2D photos that you upload or link. Using a fairly rudimentary set of brushes and tools, you set an object in a scene and try your darnedest to push, pull, and bend it until it looks realistic.
It’s a bit wonky right now and there’s a ridiculous sign-up process just to play around, but the resulting images are fairly striking and you can embed them in web pages or link them out to friends and neighbors. I made this one. It’s horrible. → Read More
AdRise is launching today as an advertising platform for connected devices and TVs. AdRise is a real-time bidding platform that allowing advertisers to reach audiences via Internet-connected TVs, and publishers to earn ad revenue.
AdRise says that because a billion connected TV sets will be sold by 2015, and more than 50% of Netflix usage is on connected devices, there’s a huge opportunity to create an ad network that serves these devices. → Read More
At F8 on Thursday, The Social Network will by all accounts be making its official foray into music, with scrobbling and music content galore headed straight for our news feeds. Ahead of Facebook’s new music service, Vimeo is announcing its own musical news, thank you very much, that has some interesting implications for artists and filmmakers and music technology. You may know Vimeo as the quality YouTube alternative that’s long been a place for semi-pro videographers, filmmakers, and Vloggers to host, share, and present their video content. Today, Vimeo is taking its long-awaited leap into the music world with the “Vimeo Music Store” — a custom-designed music licensing solution that will allow Vimeo’s video buffs to search for, discover, and license songs for both non-commercial and limited commercial use. → Read More
As everyone is well aware by now, a key part of every social network is gaming. Even when Google+ launched amid fanfare this summer, everyone quickly wondered: where are the games? And they quickly came. Now Tagged, the social network that few people seem to talk about (but is still alive and well) has made a purchase to bolster their own gaming prowess: WeGame.
Terms are not being disclosed, and it’s not yet clear how the two services intend to work together (if at all). But again, social + gaming, it’s a key matchup. WeGame will remain open for now while the team begins work on new projects and integrations on Tagged. The plan is to talk about how Tagged will use WeGame’s technology “in the coming months”.
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The Web-based social performance platform Rypple is now available on the iPhone, the company is announcing today. Like the desktop-sized website, the new mobile application will allow managers to give real-time feedback to staff, provide coaching, track goals and publicly recognize colleagues for doing great work.
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Popular personalized radio service Pandora, which went public in June, has just announced that it’s rolling out its overhauled, HTML5-based music player to everyone. The service has been testing the player since July, and it’s a huge improvement over the old Flash-based experience. Everything looks much more modern, it’s faster, and it’s easier to use.
The other big piece of the news: Pandora is removing the cap on how much music ‘free’ users can listen to every month. Historically Pandora has let users stream 40 hours of music a month, at which point they were prompted to upgrade to a premium ‘Pandora One’ account (which run $36 a year). Starting today, that cap is gone, so users can listen to as much as they’d like. There’s still a significant incentive to upgrade though, as Pandora One users never have to deal with ads.
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Startup incubator and network TechStars has raised $24 million in new funding from the Foundry Group, IA Ventures, Avalon Ventures, DFJ Mercury, SoftBank Capital, SVB Financial Group, RRE Ventures, Right Side Capital Management, TechStars Alumni, and several individuals. TechStars is actually already directly funded by over 75 venture funds and angel investors, but this new funding will be used to offer every single new TechStars company an additional $100,000 in funding in the form of a convertible note immediately upon acceptance into TechStars.
TechStars, which launched in 2007, is a “startup boot camp” for tech entrepreneurs in which selected startup receive up to $18,000 in seed funding (or $6,000 per founder up to three founders in exchange for 5 percent of the company), three months of mentorship from successful entrepreneurs and investors, and the opportunity to pitch to angel investors and venture capitalists at the end of the program. → Read More
In the past few months, have you felt like something’s missing? Apple’s new Fall release strategy has made it seem like someone just knocked Christmas right off the calendar, and so of course we’re all thinking: “You’ve made me wait, Apple — this better blow my mind.”
Well, have hope for the iPhone 5 because apparently the next-gen iPod touch isn’t much to get excited about. According to sources from MacRumors as well as separately leaked info from a Concord Securities analyst, many of the hardware changes we’ll be seeing on the long-anticipated iPhone 5 won’t be showing up on the next iPod touch. → Read More
Microsoft and Nokia have teamed up on a package of new tools aimed at getting Nokia developers prepared for the transition to Windows Phone. Announced today are three jointly developed tools and guides, the most notable being the addition of Symbian Qt to the Windows Phone API mapping tool.
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E-commerce solutions company Rearden Commerce today announced that it has raised a monster round of funding, securing a whopping $133 million in new financing from current backers American Express and JPMorgan Chase, as well as from new investor Citi.
In addition, the company announced that it has acquired HomeRun.com, creator of the HomeRun social buying service and its OfferEngine platform, which powers group commerce programs for third-party consumer websites. → Read More
After months of leaks and speculation, it seems as if Apple is finally ready to unveil its next iPhone. AllThingsD pegs the announcement date as October 4th, which falls in line with most of the previous rumors concerning the next iPhone’s fall rollout.
With Steve Jobs gone, his hand-groomed successor Tim Cook is expected to take over the dog and pony show. Apple’s future likely hinges more on his on-stage presence than just a piece of hardware. → Read More
Market Leader, a NASDAQ-listed provider of online marketing and technology solutions for real estate professionals, this morning announced the acquisition of RealEstate.com.
Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but the agreement includes the RealEstate.com domain name and website, as well as a network of more than 250 participating brokerage companies and “hundreds of other real estate domains”. → Read More
Even more news from the Netflix camp, which has just signed an agreement with media juggernaut Discovery Communications to renew and expand their licensing deal.
The companies this morning announced a two-year, non-exclusive licensing agreement that allows Netflix users to stream prior-season series and specials, including an expanded selection of additional seasons of popular series from Discovery, TLC and Animal Planet. → Read More
Zimride, a service that makes it easy to find people to ride-share with, has raised a $6 million Series A funding round led by Mayfield Fund. This round brings Zimride’s total funding to around $7.2 million, after a $1.2 million seed round last year that included Floodgate, K9 Ventures and Keith Rabois.
Zimride’s platform solves a common issue: helping people coordinate their carpools. It does so by helping people with spare seats — and those looking to fill those seats — get in touch with each other. Users also have the option of paying each other directly through the site.
Zimride is currently used in 120 different networks, each of which connects users belonging to the same university of business. Through the platform, students and employees can can arrange to either carpool to work/class, or to coordinate one-off rides. → Read More
