Thursday, April 21, 2011Impinj Files For IPOImpinj, a developer of RFID chips which has satellite engineering office in Rancho Cordova and Newport Beach, and which was founded by a California Institute of Technology (Caltech) professor, has filed for an IPO. The firm said it is raising up to $100M on the markets. The IPO is being underwritten by Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Needham & Company, Pacific Crest Securities, and Raymond James. Impinj opened up its Orange County offices in January of 2004; the firm was co-founded in May 2000 by C (More info...)
posted on Thursday, April 21, 2011(Full story)
PriceGrabber Launches Local Deals AggregatorLos Angeles-based PriceGrabber said Thursday afternoon that it has launched a new, local deal aggregation service, which aggregates daily deals from over 20 group buying sites. The new deals.pricegrabber.com site, which is in beta, includes deals from Groupon, LivingSocial, DealOn, FamilyFinds, Savings.com, and many others. Pricegrabber said the site covers over 160 metro areas across 10 categories.
posted on Thursday, April 21, 2011(Full story)
CapLinked Hit By Amazon DowntimeManhattan Beach-based CapLinked, which operates a software service to help companies communicate with investors, is one of the firms caught by the widespread Amazon EC2 downtime today. CapLinked said in its blog that its site is temporarily unavailable due to Amazon's hosting service issues. Amazon started seeing errors at its Virginia website at 1:41 AM PDT this morning, taking down such sites as Reddit, Quora, Foursquare, and scores of others. Many web services use Amazon's EC2 software to off (More info...)
posted on Thursday, April 21, 2011(Full story)
Interview with Ray Hoogenrad, BremachSouthern California has a long history and relationship with the automobile industry, and has been seeing a resurgence in interest with the rise of electric cars. Among the high visibility companies here are such companies as Coda Automotive and Fisker Automotive, both of which have raised a huge amount of venture funding. Among the lesser known companies hoping to capitalize on the trend is Bremach USA (www.bremachusa.com), based in Chino, which is creating an electric-powered, utility vehicle (More info...)
posted on Thursday, April 21, 2011(Full story)
AeroVironment Gets $11.5M OrderMonrovia-based unmanned aircraft maker Aerovironment has scoerd a $11.5M order, the firm reported Thursday, for its Puma All Environment (AE) unmanned aircraft system. The company said the win was with the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), the U.S. military's Special Forces arm. Aerovironment said the order came under an existing contract with the USSOCOM, and will be delivered over the next several months.
posted on Thursday, April 21, 2011(Full story)
ScoreBig Confirms Funding RoundLos Angeles-based ScoreBig, a members-only ticketing site, has confirmed its recent $14M funding, saying the Series B funding was led by U.S. Venture Partners. The funding had originally been uncovered by socalTECH via a regulatory filing yesterday. ScoreBig said the $14M, first close also included prior investor Bain Capital Ventures, and brings its total raised to $22.5M. ScoreBig was founded by Adam Kanner, formerly of the National Basketball Association. The firm is looking to help reduce un (More info...)
posted on Thursday, April 21, 2011 (More)(Full story)
MyLife.com Buys CitizenLocal.comLos Angeles-based MyLife.com, the people search service run by Jeffrey Tinsley, said today that it has acquired CitizenLocal.com, a local deals site. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. MyLife said the buy will allow businesses and merchants to promote their offerings to its 50 million registered members. MyLife said it hopes the buy will help lawyers, accountants, plumbers, contractors, and other service providers using its site to generate new clients. CitizenLocal was creat (More info...)
posted on Thursday, April 21, 2011(Full story)
Eka Technologies Launches Geo-Tagging ProductsThousand Oaks-based Eka Technologies said today that it has launched a line of products which provide geo-tagging of photos for Nikon, Canon, Sony, Panasonic, Ricoh, and other digital cameras. According to Eka Technologies, its FotoSpot and FotoMapr peripherals adds GPS photo location and other information to camera photos, using either SDHC memory cards, Bluetooth, or cabled connections. The firm is targeting both amateurs and GIS professionals with the products. Geo-tagging is the embedding of (More info...)
posted on Thursday, April 21, 2011(Full story)
Broadcom Joins Green Network EffortIrvine-based Broadcom said today that it has joined an effort to create more energy efficient networks. Broadcom said it has joined GreenTouch, a global industry consortium focused on improving the energy efficiency of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) networks. Broadcom said it will work with other members of the group to research and invent technology to enable more energy efficient networks.
posted on Thursday, April 21, 2011(Full story)
Netlist Wins Round in Patent Battle With InphiIrvine-based Netlist, a designer of memory subsystems, said this morning that it has scored a win over high speed semiconductor maker Inphi, after a court dismissed a patent infringement lawsuit against the company. According to Netlist, the U.S. Central District of California, Western Division has dismissed an Inphi vs. Netlist patent infringement lawsuit without prejudice, which was originally filed on November 30, 2009. Inphi, which is based in Santa Clara but has major operations in Westlake (More info...)
posted on Thursday, April 21, 2011(Full story)