Monday, April 18, 2011


DOE Provides $2.1 Billion For Southern California Solar Plant
The Department of Energy said Monday that it is providing a $2.1 billion loan guarantee, for a solar thermal power plant located in Riverside County. The DOE said the guarantee, for Units 1 and 2 of the Blythe Solar Power Project, will go towards 484 megawatts of generating capacity at the concentrating solar thermal power plant. The DOE said the plant--being built by Solar Trust of America, LLC--will create over 1,000 construction jobs and approximately 80 operations jobs in the City of Blythe. (More info...)
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UberMedia Losing TweetDeck To Twitter, Says Report
Upping the ante in the battle between Pasadena-based Twitter client software firm UberMedia and Twitter itself, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Twitter is buying Twitter client software firm TweetDeck. According to the WSJ, Twitter is in talks with TweetDeck to acquire the firm for around $50M. The buy directly contradicts multiple reports that TweetDeck was to be acquired by UberMedia in February. The journal cited "people familiar with the matter". If so, the battle between UberMedia (More info...)
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MarketShare, Ticketmaster Partner On Pricing Tools
Los Angeles-based MarketShare, a provider of marketing analytics software, and Ticketmaster, the ticketing firm, said Monday that they have partnered. According to the two, they will develop a suite of dynamic pricing tools for clients, to help them price their live events. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. The companies said they expect to offer the products this year, via LiveAnalytics, a newly launched Ticketmaster company focused on developing rich-data analytics products. Ma (More info...)
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Google Boosts Wind Project For SoCal
Search engine giant Google is making another, big investment in an energy project benefiting Southern California. The firm said this morning that it is investing $100M in a new wind farm in Oregon, which will be supplying Southern California Edison with 845MW of renewable energy. Google said the investment raises its total invested in clean energy to $350M The Shepherds Flat Wind Farm is based near Arlington, Oregon, and is specifically being constructed to supply energy to Southern California. (More info...)
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SharesPost CEO Takes On WSJ Article
SharesPost, the secondary marketplace for venture backed, privately owned shares of such companies as Twitter and Facebook, is taking on the Wall Street Journal for an article published last week. The firm's CEO, David Weir, said in an email to users that the article--which investigated the firm's accreditation process--"badly misrepresented" the company's policies and procedures. SharesPost--a spinout of Santa Monica's Brighthouse incubator run by Scott Painter and Greg Brogger--was the target (More info...)
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Apax Gets Early Approval On Epicor Acquisition
Private equity firm Apax Partners said this morning that it has scored early termination of the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust waiting period on its buy of Irvine-based Epicor Software. Apax, which is buying Epicor for $976M, along with Activant Solutions. Apax had announced the acquisition on April 4th.
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CoDa Therapeutics Adds $19M
San Diego-based CoDA Therapeutics, a developer of chronic wound healing biopharmaceuticals, announced this morning that it has raised $19.2M in a series B financing round. The round came from Domain Associates, GBS Venture Partners and BioPacificVentures. CODA said that it expects additional series B funding from additional investors at a future date. The new funding will go towards further development of its products.
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Demand Media Defends Fiscal Outlook
Santa Monica-based Demand Media, the online publishing firm headed by Richard Rosenblatt, said Sunday that it is reaffirming its financial outlook for fiscal year 2011. The firm said its estimates, provided February 22nd, still stand, despite a third party report that search engine algorithms made at Google have impacted eHow, the company's question and answer site. Demand Media said that that report "significantly overstated" the negative impact of those Google changes. Demand Media said it exp (More info...)
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ImaginAB Licenses UCLA Technology
Los Angeles-based ImaginAb, a biotechnology firm spun out by UCLA faculty members, announced this morning that it has concluded a technology licensing agreement with the school. ImaginAb said that it has licensed technology related to novel fluorine chemistry for the rapid and robust labeling of proteins, peptides and biomolecules for diagnostic imaging with Positron Emission Tomography (PET). Financial details of the license were not disclosed. ImaginAb said it now has exclusivity to the techno (More info...)
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DriveCam Wins Air Liquide
San Diego-based DriveCam, a provider of driver monitoring systems, said today that it has scored a new contract with Air Liquide Industrial U.S. LP. Air Liquide, which delivers gases to industrial, health, and other industries , has signed a five year contract with DriveCam. Financial impact of the deal were not disclosed. DriveCam will supply its systems and technology to help improve safety at Air Liquide. DriveCam is venture backed by Chopra Ventures, Insight Venture Partners, Integral Capita (More info...)
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Quest Software Enhances Storage Software
Aliso Viejo-based Quest Software announced this morning that it has enhanced its Quest ChangeAuditor, its auditing software for network attached storage (NAS). Quest said that it has added new support for EMC Celerra and NetApp filers to the software. The software collects information about changes and access to data on those file servers, for security and compliance purposes.
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Regulus Therapeutics Names Chief Scientific Officer
La Jolla-based Regulus Therapeutics, a biopharmaceuticals firm developing microRNA-based medicines, said this morning that it has named Neil W. Gibson as its Chief Scientific Officer. Gibson joins the firm from PFizer, and previously has served at OSI Pharmaceuticals, Bayer, and also has served at the University of Southern California, the National Cancer Institute, and elsewhere. Regulus has major deals with GlaxoSmithKline and sanofi-aventis on various drug targets.
posted on Monday, April 18, 2011(Full story)