Monday, August 24, 2009Gorilla Nation Pins Down WWELos Angeles-based Gorilla Nation reported Monday afternoon that it has signed on World Wrestling Entertainment as a client. The firm, which provides advertising sales representation to web publishers, said it is now the exclusive, North American digital sales representative for the WWE, and will augment WWE's existing sales and sponsorship teams for its WWE.com and WEEKids.com web site.
posted on Monday, August 24, 2009(Full story)
Two Southern Californians In Amazon Commercial Contest FinalsTwo Southern Californians are in the running for $10,000 for their entries into a user generated advertising effort from e-commerce site Amazon.com. According to Amazon.com, it has selected five finalists to compete for the $10,000 in Amazon gift card, plus a trip to a film festival in New York City. Two of those finalists for the “Your Amazon Ad Contest” are from Los Angeles--David Keenan of Hacienda Heights for his entry "Not Available", and Angela Kohler of Los Angeles, for her entry "K (More info...)
posted on Monday, August 24, 2009(Full story)
Ligand Buys Drug Development FirmSan Diego-based Ligand Pharmaceuticals reported Monday that it has acquired Connecticut-based Neurogen, a developer of small-molecule drugs to improve the lives of patients suffering from psychiatric and neurological disorders. Ligand said it would pay approximately $11M for the firm in common stock in the merger. In addition, Ligand said the sale would entitle Neurogen shareholders to cash payments for sale or licensing of certain assets, and reaching specific milestones. Neurogen has a partner (More info...)
posted on Monday, August 24, 2009(Full story)
Semicoa Returns To Life, Gains Private Equity BackingCosta Mesa-based Semicoa Corporation, a supplier of military and high reliability components, announced Monday that it has relaunched the firm with backing from private equity firm Vance Street Capital, which is based in Los Angeles. The firm said it will focus on its bi-polar transistor portfolio as well as new offerings in the discrete semicnoductor marketplace. Financial details of the private equity investment were not disclosed. The firm's return from the dead comes shortly after a settleme (More info...)
posted on Monday, August 24, 2009(Full story)
Conexant Completes Product Line Sale, Chops 100 EmployeesNewport Beach-based Conexant reported Monday afternoon that it has completed the sale of the firm's Broadband Access product lines to Ikanos. The deal was worth $54M. Conexant had said it would sell the unit in April. As part of the deal, the company said it cut approximately 100 Conexant employees, which will reduce the firm's expenses by approximately $3M per quarter. The firm said the cuts were be made worldwide, and will bring the firm to approximately 600 employees total.
posted on Monday, August 24, 2009(Full story)
Emulex In Patent Cross License With IBMCosta Mesa-based Emulex announced today that the firm has signed a multi-year, cross licensing patent deal with IBM. According to Emulex, the deal covers integrating the firm's OneConnect Universal Converged Network Adapter architecture with IBM's platforms, including its IBM System p, System x, and BladeCenter products. Financial details of the patent licensing deal were not disclosed. Emulex's products handle hardware offload and acceleration of TCP.IP, iSCSI, and FCoE protocols, along with co (More info...)
posted on Monday, August 24, 2009(Full story)
Zumbox Scores $8MWestlake Village-based Zumbox, a developer of a system for sending electronic mail to postal addresses, announced today that it has raised $8M in a funding. The firm said the funding came from Art Bilger of Shelter Capital Partners; Rick Braddock of Fresh Direct; Michael Eisner of the Tornante Company/formerly of Walt Disney; Bill Guth of Guthy-Renker, and Donn Rappaport, the firm's CEO and founder. Zumbox develops a service--aimed at marketers, businesses, nonprofits, and the government--to tar (More info...)
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Southwest Airlines Ramps Up Wireless Rollout with Row 44Southwest Airlines is expanding the firm's deployment of Wi-Fi service on the company's planes, the firm said late Friday, with a fleetwide rollout of wireless systems from Westlake Village-based Row 44. Southwest said that the rollout, which will begin in the first quarter of 2010, will include certifying Southwest's full fleet for Row 44's satellite WiFi service. Southwest has been testing Row 44's service since February of this year. No details on the size of the deal has been disclosed by ei (More info...)
posted on Monday, August 24, 2009(Full story)
Interview with John Hanna, FunnelSourceOne of the startup areas where we've been seeing renewed activity in the last few months is in the enterprise software space--specifically, in software-as-a-service applications targeted at corporate customers. One of the local firms attacking that market is Los Angeles-based FunnelSource (www.funnelsource.com), a developer of software-as-a-service tools that provide analytics to sales teams. We spoke with the firm's CEO and co-founder, John Hanna:
How'd you end up starting the company, and w (More info...)
posted on Monday, August 24, 2009(Full story)
mobileStorm Simplifies OfferingsLos Angeles-based mobileStorm, the email marketing and digital marketing provider headed by Jared Reitzin, has revamped the company's offerings. The firm said that it now will offer two different product packages for its customers, including "Go", targeted at marketers looking for mobile, email, and SMS marketing tools, and "Pro", with marketing tools aimed at large businesses. The firm's new offerings and site actually launched on August 18th, according to Reitzin in his blog, and is the output (More info...)
posted on Monday, August 24, 2009(Full story)
Sorenson Adds South Korean LicenseeSan Diego-based Sorenson Media, a developer of video encoding and decoding software, announced this morning that it has signed on Seoul-based Chips & Media as a licensee. The firm said that Chips & Media will use its software development kits to provide video decoding on Chips & Media's silicon. Financial impact of the license deal was not disclosed by the companies. Chips & Media develops video chipsets targeted at low power, consumer multimedia devices.
posted on Monday, August 24, 2009(Full story)
Solarflare Launches LAN-on-motherboard ProductIrvine-based Solarflare Communications, which develops 10 Gigabit Ethernet chipsets, announced this morning that it has launched a new family of 10Gbe controllers, including a LAN-on-motherboard product. The LAN-on-motherboard product is the company's first designed to be integrated onto the motherboard of computers directly. The firm claims its new chipset has half the consumption of other solutions, and support for ten times the number of virtual machines and virtual NICS than its competitors. (More info...)
posted on Monday, August 24, 2009(Full story)
iRise Signs Research FirmEl Segundo-based iRise, a developer of software visualization tools, said today that it has been adopted by market research firm BuzzBack Market Research. The firm said that BuzzBack will be using its visualization software for developing new web-based product ideas. Financial impact of the win was not disclosed. iRise develops software used to mock up web-based applications, before actual coding and development. The firm is backed by Morgan Stanley Venture Partners and Deutsche Bank.
posted on Monday, August 24, 2009(Full story)