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Palm secures $100 million equity funding

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Elevation Partners has agreed to make an additional $100 million equity investment in Palm. Under a definitive agreement, Elevation will increase its investment in Palm by acquiring newly issued Series C preferred stock that is convertible into Palm common stock at a price of $3.25 per share. Elevation will also receive warrants to acquire 7 million shares of Palm common stock at the same price. Prior to March 31, 2009, Palm may elect to cause Elevation to sell up to $49 million of this new investment to other investors on the same or better terms than on which Elevation invested.

“The additional capital from Elevation Partners will enable us to put added momentum behind the new product introductions scheduled for 2009 and will provide us with enhanced stability in unsettled economic times,” said Ed Colligan, president and chief executive officer of Palm, Inc.

Originally posted on December 22, 2008 @ 1:30 pm

Logitech sells billionth mouse

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Logitech has shipped its billionth mouse.

Founded in a farmhouse in Apples, Switzerland in 1981 and shortly thereafter establishing strong ties in Silicon Valley, Logitech introduced its first retail mouse in 1985 and reached the 100 millionth mouse mark in 1996. Sales of Logitech mice topped 500 million seven years later. Today, Logitech sells mice in more than 100 countries worldwide and manufactures an average of 376,000 mice per day and 7.8 million every month.

That’s a lot of mice. Mouse?

Originally posted on December 11, 2008 @ 9:54 am

Anvato raises $2 million to expand its “Human Eye” technology

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Anvato Inc. has raised $2 million of $4 million in Series A funding on the heels of launching its one-of-a-kind video identification and monetization service. Anvato uses computer machine vision to analyze videos and does not require meta-tags or watermarks to be embedded inside the videos. The company uses this technology to track copyrighted videos across the Internet and control their distribution and monetization from a single point. Using Anvato, publishers can opt in advertising where both publishers and distributors convert a legal liability into profits.

Oxantium Ventures was this round’s lead investor.

Anvato said it will use the funds to launch AdMatch, its video advertising platform that enables video publishers to track and monetize their online videos through contextual advertising.

With its Content ID product, Anvato already possesses the unique capability to index any video – including major national broadcast network channels – live and track their consumption on online video distribution sites such as YouTube, Veoh and DailyMotion. AdMatch expands this offering by allowing video publishers to insert relevant, unobtrusive ads into their videos and benefit from the viral distribution of their content.

Originally posted on December 11, 2008 @ 12:32 pm

RightScale raises $13 million in funding

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Cloud computing management RightScale, Inc. has secured $13 million in its second round of venture capital funding, led by Index Ventures. Current investor Benchmark Capital, which led RightScale’s first round of venture financing, also participated in this round.

RightScale will use the proceeds to accelerate product and market development of its cloud computing management platform to meet growing demand, including support for new clouds and expansion into additional geographic markets.

RightScale’s web-based cloud computing management platform lets any organization tap the enormous power of cloud computing for scalable, cost-effective IT infrastructure on demand, while maintaining complete control and flexibility. RightScale reduces the complexity of cloud computing, enabling organizations to deploy mission critical applications in a matter of hours, without the risk of lock-in at any level. With sophisticated “cloud-aware” server templates, the fully-automated RightScale platform requires little knowledge of cloud architecture to deploy, manage and dynamically scale even complex, multi-cloud applications.

Originally posted on December 9, 2008 @ 3:57 pm

NBA team launches social network with KickApps

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KickApps announced that the New Orleans Hornets have launched a social network for fans of the team powered by KickApps. The website is a destination for the supporters to gather online with other fans to share their passion for the Hornets and NBA basketball, create, share and discover fan submitted photos, videos and blogs, and interact exclusively with official club content.

Using social media, the Hornets capitalize on an opportunity to increase their connection with fans by extending the Hornets experience beyond the basketball court. The new website features its own social network with video and photo sharing functionality, forums, and the ability for members to take video and photos from the site to other social networks, blogs and websites using Hornets branded video and photo widgets.

To tip-off participation and activity on the site, the Hornets are holding a competition for fans to name the social network. Fans simply join the network and leave a comment with their proposed name and why they chose it. Additionally, the team has uploaded behind the scenes videos of the Honeybee cheerleaders and press conferences, with additional unique programming planned.

The New Orleans Hornets joins the Phoenix Suns’ Emmy Award winning PlanetOrange.net, New York Knicks, Phoenix Mercury, San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Seahawks, New York Rangers and Arena Football League, as teams that have embraced the KickApps Platform.

Originally posted on November 19, 2008 @ 7:14 am