Tuesday, March 13, 2007


X PRIZE Foundation Appoints Genomics Director
Los Angeles-based X PRIZE Foundation, the nonprofit which was behind the Ansari X Prize, said Tuesday that it has appointed Marc Hodosh as senior director. Hodosh will head the group's $10M Archon X PRIZE for genomics. Hodosh was most recently a consultant to inventor Dean Kamen at DEKA Research & Development, and also was president of ID One, a facial technology recognition firm.
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VentiRx Licenses Small Molecule Compounds
San Diego-based VentiRx Pharmaceuticals announced Tuesday morning that it has licensed small molecule compounds from Array BioPharma. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. VentiRx has gained exclusive worldwide rights to Array's compounds, which are expected to yield candidates in oncology and allergy areas. The deal includes equity in VentiRx plus milestone payments and royalties as part of the program.
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Kyriba Lands $14.4M
San Diego-based Kyriba, a developer of web-based cash and treasury management software, said this morning that it has received a $14.4M funding round. The firm said that the oversubscribed round was led by BRED Banque Populaire, and also included GRP Partners and existing investors. Kyriba provides software-as-a-service used by companies for cash and liquidity management. The firm said the funding will go to accelerating the firm's growth in North America and Europe, expand its sales and marketi (More info...)
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United Online Expands DSL Service
Woodland Hills-based United Online has expanded the firm's NetZero Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) broadband service, the firm said Monday evening. United Online said that its DSL service is now available in major metropolitan areas served by Covad Communications Group. NetZero's DSL service is targeted at its customer currently using dial-up service, and allows access to DSL ranging from $19.95 to $34.95 per month, depending on location, with download speeds ranging from 768kbps to 3.0Mbps.
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MTV, Yahoo, Mark Burnett Launch User Generated Awards Contest
Santa Monica-based Yahoo! Movies has partnered with MTV and Mark Burnett Productions, saying Monday that the companies will give aspiring filmakers with the chance to showcase their talents in a user-generated video contest. The companies will feature a "Best Movie Spoof" User Generated Category which will be part of MTV's 2007 Movie Awards. Users will be able to submit their own original movie shorts parodying films to Yahoo's Movie site, which will be selected for the awards. Five finalists w (More info...)
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VMIX Adds NBC Channel
San Diego-based VMIX Media announced today that it has launched a new custom channel focused on content from NBC Universal Television. The New NBC Channel will feature content from NBC Shows such as "30 Rock", "Heroes", "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" and "Scrubs" as well as other titles. The new NBC channel will mostly include clips and promotional videos from the broadcast network. VMIX is a provider of online video sharing and slideshows.
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MindTouch Launches Community Site
San Diego-based MindTouch, a vendor of wiki software products for the business market, said today that it has launched a new Wiki community site. The firm said that its Wiki.is is a community wiki site targeted at allowing users to create their own wiki projects. The new wiki sites will offer both free and premium accounts, with free sites running contextual advertising ads and limited storage. The ad-free version will cost $60 per year, and also included more storage and other options.
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Solarflare Gets SMC Design Win
Irvine-based Solarflare Communications and SMC Networks announced Monday that SMC will incorporate Solarflare's products into a new family of 10 Gigabit Ethernet network cards. The two said that SMC will offer new products, including 10GBASE-T switches, optical server adapters, and 10GBASE-T server adapters all based on Solarflare's controllers and silicon. Solarflare develops PHY chips that implement 10 Gigabit Ethernet on twisted pair copper using the 10GBASE-T standard.
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Fonality Signs Canadian Service Provider
Los Angeles-based Fonality has signed on a managed service provider in Canada for its PBX products, the company said today. Fonality said that it is in a partnership with Tricon Technical Services to provide its products in the Canadian SMB market. Tricon is a provider of IP communications solutions focused on the small and medium business market. Fonality is a provider of a PC-based PBX system using the Asterisk open source software stack for IP telephony.
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Earthanol Gets $7.1M
Newport Beach-based Earthanol raised $7.1M in a venture round last week, according to @Ventures, the venture capital business of CMGI. Earthanol is a developer of waste-to-ethanol production plants. The round also included Nth Power, Sail venture Partners, and Calvert Funds. Earthanol is focusing on projects based on dairy industry waste and cellulosic biomass.
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