Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 20, 2010
It surprises me how many really smart people I meet still doubt the power of Twitter. It seems the urge to be a naysayer of Twitter is really strong for some. I think some of this stems from the early days of Twitter when it was presumed that it was a technology to tell people what you ate for lunch. Twitter never seemed to really take the offense in PR and marketing.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 21, 2010
Last week, we announced our end-of-the-year project, which was to collect and share the opinions of some of the top influencers in Southern California's high tech community. We asked the same five questions of a variety of top technology entrepreneurs, investors, and others, to hear what they're thinking about, and are sharing it here over the next two weeks.
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Tech Zulu Event
DECEMBER 18, 2010
So nice we had to do it twice! We are pleased to announce that Chris Van Dusen will be joining the TZ writing crew. With a knack for helping others understand what/how to use all things in the digital realm, and get down to how it can best fit you or your company, Chris is here to give you information on what you need know. Visit TechZulu for full story.
Startup Professionals Musings
DECEMBER 20, 2010
Whether it’s a business or personal interaction, multiple studies show that as much as 50-90% of the communication is nonverbal. That means that people who are addicted to text messaging and email may be sending only half the message, and receivers often misinterpret even that half. Yet the use of text messaging for business purposes continues to grow, in concert with more of Gen-Y entering the workplace, and a continuing increase in the global rate of texting by everyone.
Advertiser: Aggregage
Office leases are one of companies’ largest expenses, and if your whole team is working from home with no clear end in sight, you may be wondering what to do about your lease.
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 24, 2010
Like many of you, for me this was the year of the unsolicited eCards from random people I barely knew. Let’s be honest, much of this has become spam. I’m not the Grinch. I’m not anti holiday spirit. But if you ARE going to get into it then you ought to do it right. Make it count. Like the team at First Round Capital always does.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 21, 2010
Santa Monica-based Demand Media , the online publishing firm headed by Richard Rosenblatt, has updated its S-1 filing, saying it now has around 3 million articles in the firm's library of content. Demand Media has applied to list on the NYSE as DMD, but has not yet set an offering range or pricing on its IPO. Demand Media filed for an IPO in August.
Southern California Tech Central brings together the best content for technical professionals in Southern California from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Startup Professionals Musings
DECEMBER 24, 2010
Entrepreneurs have to know when and how to say ‘no,’ and be good at delivering the message. All startup leaders are besieged with requests for their time, attention, talent, money, or influence, and sometimes even good requests won’t fit into the time and energy you have available. Startups require focus, so you need to say ‘no’ to some things, in order to do the important things well.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 20, 2010
Last week, we announced our end-of-the-year project, which was to collect and share the opinions of some of the top influencers in Southern California's high tech community. We asked the same five questions of a variety of top technology entrepreneurs, investors, and others, to hear what they're thinking about, and are sharing it here over the next two weeks.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 21, 2010
Los Angeles-based StudioEX , a developer of Facebook and other social games, said Tuesday that it has launched, with the backing of Camelot Media Investments Media Group and $1.9M in funding. The firm develops Galaxy X, an action game which runs within Facebook. According to the firm's executives, StudioEX's development arm is based in South Korea, and the firm is taking game concepts from successful South Korean games and applying them to the US market.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 22, 2010
For the next couple of weeks, we are sharing the opinions of some of the top influencers in Southern California's high tech community. We asked the same five questions of a variety of top technology entrepreneurs, investors, and others, to hear what they're thinking about, and are sharing it here over the next two weeks. Yesterday, we heard from Scott Painter of TrueCar.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 21, 2010
Los Angeles-based Boingo Wireless , which operates a network of Wi-Fi hotspots, reported Tuesday that its software is now being preloaded on Android phones from wireless carrier MetroPCS. The firm said that its Boingo Mobile app--which helps users connect with its WiFi network--will be pre-installed on select, Wi-Fi enabled smartphones through MetroPCS, which provides prepaid, no-contract wireless services.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 22, 2010
Los Angeles-based Fandango , which operates an online website focused on new movies and buying movie tickets, said this morning that it has launched a new application for the Apple iPad. According to Fandango, the new app allows users to pull up movie reviews, see the nearest theaters and showtimes for movies on a map, pull up videos, photos, and trailers, as well as what movies are most popular with its users.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 23, 2010
Santa Ana-based CoreLogic , a provider of consumer, financial and property information, analytics and services to the real estate, mortgage, and other markets, said this morning that it has soled its Employer Services and Litigation Support business to private equity firm Symphony Technology Group (STG). The deal was worth $265M in cash. CoreLogic said those groups will operate under the brand name First Advantage.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 20, 2010
Los Angeles-based OneClickPolitics , a new startup headed by former DoneRight founder Paul Ryan, has surfaced, focusing on helping users connect with elected officials. Ryan was the CEO and founder of DoneRight, which was sold to tree.com in 2009, and also served as CTO at Overture Services. According to OneClickPolitics, it is hoping to address a common complaint of citizens in the country, which is that it is difficult for average people to contact elected officials.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 23, 2010
Irvine-based Digital Map Products said this week that it has partnered with a consulting firm to bring its products to the utility industry. The firm said that it has partnered with iFactor Consulting to help users integrate geospatial data and aerial imagery into the GE Smallworld software. Financial details of the partnership were not disclosed. Digital Map products provides its data and web-based products to the geographical information system (GIS) market.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 21, 2010
Beverly Hills-based Myspace Music , the music side of Myspace, said today along with Fuse , the music television channel, that it has selected the artists for its next "Introducing." showcase of emerging artists. The firms said they have selected Cali Swag District, Rye Rye, Christina Perri, Young the Giant for the program, which showcases new artists through both online and offline promotions.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 21, 2010
Los Angeles-based Hulu , the online television streaming site, is dropping its plans to pursue an IPO, according to a report today from from the WSJ. Hulu had been among the Southern California companies looking to file an IPO. The WSJ cited people "familiar with the matter", saying that Hulu's management and board decided to backburner the IPO effort due to a lack of long term licenses to the content featured on the site.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 20, 2010
Aliso Viejo-based e-commerce retailer Buy.com said today that it has launched a new app for the Apple iPhone, which includes barcode scanning features and speech recognition. The firm said the new app allows users to compare prices from the firm's various third party retailers in its Buy.com Marketplace, in addition to its own website. The firm also said it has tapped technology from MeMeMe to provide speech recognition within its application.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 20, 2010
Los Angeles-based Miso Media , a developer of music education software, said Friday that it has raised a $600,000 round of seed financing. The round came from Google Ventures, Keith Rabois, Laura Ziskin, and other un-named seed investors. Miso Media provides technology to help users learn the guitar and ukelele. The firm's software runs on the iPhone, iPad Touch, and iPad.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 20, 2010
Los Angels-based Capricor , a firm developing stem cell technology to regenerate damaged heart tissue, announced Friday that it has raised $2M in a funding round. The round came from Broadview Ventures and individual investors. According to the company, the funding will go towards clinical trials of its products. Capricor is headed by Linda Marban. The company said it has conducted its pre-clinical research at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the University of Rome.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 23, 2010
A report today says that the latest updates to Demand Media's S-1 are a result of government scrutiny over how the firm is accounting for content developed for its sites. According to AllThingsD, Demand has been discussing how it accounts for content developed for the site with government regulators, over issues of how best to amortize those expenses.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 22, 2010
Irvine-based Loan-Score Decisioning Systems , which develops mortgage product and pricing products, automated underwriting, and other software, has been acquired by Calyx Software. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Calyx is a developer of mortgage origination software for banks, credit unions, mortgage bankers and brokers, and is based in Dallas, Texas.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 22, 2010
Thousand Oaks-based Teledyne Technologies announced this morning that it is acquiring Waterloo, Ontario-based DALSA Corporation , a developer of digital imaging and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Teledyne said it would pay approximately CAD $341M for DALSA in cash. DALSA has approximately 1,000 employees worldwide, and develops high-resolution, high-performance CCD and CMOS imaging sensors, electronic digital cameras and image processing software.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 22, 2010
Santa Monica-based Activision disclosed yesterday that Call of Duty: Black Ops has surpassed over $1 billion in sales worldwide. Activision said, according to its internal estimates, its sell through of the title since November 9, it has racked up over $1 billion in sales. The title had already broken sales records previously held by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 21, 2010
Bolingbrook, Illinois-based Elevance Renewable Sciences , a developer of ingredients for use in personal care products, detergents, lubricants and other specialty chemicals and fuel markets, based on renewable feedstock, has raised $100M in funding, the firm said Tuesday. Elevance is a spinout of Pasadena-based Materia , the material research firm based on research out of Caltech.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 21, 2010
San Diego-based MeLLmo , maker of the Roambi mobile business application for the iPhone, said this morning that it has raised an additional $10M in funding. Names of the investors were not disclosed. The firm said the new round of funding brings its total raised to $20M across three round of funding. MeLLmo said the new round will go towards product innovation and go-to-market strategy.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 22, 2010
Los Angeles- and Chicago-based MK Capital , a venture capital investment firm with $250M under management, has scored with the acquisition today of Indianapolis-based Aprimo by Teradata. Teradata said it would pay approximately $525M for Aprimo. MK Capital led Aprimo's first institutional round, with Managing General Partner Mark Koulogeorge heading up MK's investment in the firm.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 21, 2010
For today's Insights and Opinions section, we have a contribution from Joe Moreno , President of Epics3, in Carlsbad, who provides a quick primer and his opinions on net neutrality. The FCC voted to adopt net neutrality rules this morning. Net neutrality is a complicated and controversial subject. The principle states that if a given user pays for a certain level of Internet access, and another user pays for the same level of access, then the two users should be able to connect to each other at
socalTECH
DECEMBER 23, 2010
We've been sharing the opinions of some of the top influencers in Southern California's high tech community all week, and will also do so next week. We asked the same five questions of a variety of top technology entrepreneurs, investors, and others, to hear what they're thinking about, and are sharing it here over the next two weeks. Yesterday, we spoke with Mark Suster of GRP Partners.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 22, 2010
Beverly Hills- and Berlin, Germany-based Fox Mobile Group , which offers mobile content distribution and mobile entertainment products, has been sold to Jesta Group , Jesta said Wednesday. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Jesta said Fox Mobile Group will become part of Jesta Mobile Holdings. FMG operates the Jamba, Jamster, Mobizzo, iLove, and Bitbop consumer services.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 20, 2010
Coull , a video advertising firm based in the UK, said Friday that it is setting up a new office in Santa Barbara, as part of a link with performance marketing firm RevUpNet. RevUpNet is based in Santa Barbara. Coull said its new Santa Barbara office will initially have a team of seven. Coull offers its services to such firms as eHarmony, eFax, Grockit, Nike, Renault, and Unilever.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 20, 2010
San Diego-based Optimer Pharmaceuticals said today that it has named Gregory Papaz as its Senior Vice President of Commercial Operations. Papaz was most recently at Genentech, and als ohas worked at Roche Pharma, Sanofi-Aventis, and Marion Laboratories. Optimer is developing antiobiotics.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 20, 2010
Pasadena-based Arrowhead Research said this morning that it has launched a new subsidiary, Ablaris Therapeutics , focused on commercializing anti-obesity technology developed at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. The firm said the Ablaris has raised $3M in outside capital, including $500,000 which will be invested by Arrowhead itself. Names of those outside investors were not announced.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 20, 2010
Calabasas-based National Technical Systems , a provider of engineering services, said today that it has completed its acquisition of Mechtronic Solutions , a New Mexico-based engineering services firm. Financial terms of the buy were not disclosed. NTS said Mechtronic Solutions had revenues of approximately $7.5M, and serves the aerospace and defense market.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 20, 2010
San Diego-based Qualcomm announced this morning that it has agreed to sell a block of its 700 MHz spectrum to AT&T, for $1.925 billion. Qualcomm said it is selling its Lower 700 Mhz D and E Block (Channel 55 and 56), unpaired U.S. spectrum licenses to AT&T, as part of its shutdown of its FLO TV business. The spectrum was previously as as part of Qualcomm's FLO TV subsidiary, which provided mobile television services.
socalTECH
DECEMBER 21, 2010
San Diego-based GreatCall , the provider of the Jitterbug wireless phone service, said today that it has inked a new partnership with D&H Distributing. According to GreatCall, D&H will make the firm's entire line of handsets available to consumer electronics retailers nationwide. GreatCall said the addition of the distributor will make it easier for consumers to purchase its handsets and services at neighborhood retailers.
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