Wednesday, July 13, 2011Scopely Gets Angel FundingLos Angeles-based Scopely, a stealth mode firm headed by former Applied Semantics co-founder Eytan Elbaz, has raised a round of seed funding. The funding came from Terry Semel, Lerer Ventures, Howard Lindzon (StockTwits), Gil Elbaz (Factual), David Cohen (TechStars), Dave Tisch (TechStars), the Collaborative Fund, Evan Rifkin (Burstly), and Clark Landry (GraphEffect). Scopely says is is preparing to "disrupt a segment of the social web". Elbaz was a co-founder of Applied Semantics, the firm whic (More info...)
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Edmunds.com Battling Escrow ScammersSanta Monica-based Edmunds.com is again warning people about a continuing scam where criminals are using official sounding--but fake--escrow services to swindle people out of money. Escrow services are online services which hold money until a transaction successfully occurs, and are heavily used for online automotive purchases. According to Edmunds.com, it has seen 413 reports of escrow scams since March of 2010 which have used the company's name, with at least 35 of those victims losing money. (More info...)
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Lead360 Finds CFOLos Angeles-based Leads360, the developer of sales lead management software, said today that it has named Darian Hong as its Chief Financial Officer. Hong was most recently CFO of AT&T Interactive. Hong also has served at Spirent Communications, Harris Corporation, and Eaton Corporation. Leads360 is venture backed by Rustic Canyon Partners.
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StockTwits Inks Deal with BingSan Diego-based StockTwits, the finance discussion and microblogging site headed by Howard Lindzon, has inked a deal with Microsoft's search engine, Bing, the power parts of the search engine's Bing Finance site. According to Microsoft, it is tapping StockTwits to include real-time, financial information on the site; among those features is the inclusion of an "Hourly Buzz" tab tracking interest in stocks, plus links to messages from StockTwits about those stocks. The addition came along with a (More info...)
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Southern California Leads In Green Jobs, Says ReportA report released today from the Brookings Institution counts the region as among the job leaders in clean economy jobs. According to the latest Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment report, the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana metropolitan area was among the areas with the largest amount of clean economy jobs, with 89,592 jobs--even more than the 51,811 clean economy jobs in the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metropolitan area. San Diego, which was counted separ (More info...)
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Border Stylo Launches New ProductLos Angeles-based Border Stylo, the developer of browser extension for sharing and having conversations about web sites, said today that it has launched a new product called GlassThis, which breaks free of browser extension barriers. The firm said its new product allows users to tap into conversations on top of any website, without having to load software or browser extensions. Previously, the firm's Glass browser extension required that users run either Firefox or Safari to participate in conve (More info...)
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SpaceX Set To Unveil New Launchpad At VandenbergHawthorne-based SpaceX, the commercial spaceflight and rocket developer headed by tech mogul Elon Musk, is getting set today to break ground on a new launchpad at Vandenberg Air Force Base. SpaceX says it is investing $30M in a new launch pad at the base, north of Santa Barbara, as a place to launch its upcoming Falcon Heavy rocket. Vandenberg is a common location for rocket launches from NASA and the U.S. military. SpaceX revealed plans for its Falcon Heavy in April, saying that the new rocket (More info...)
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Interview with Aviv Grill, Miso MediaToday's interview is with Los Angeles-based Miso Media, a developer of iPad-based music education software, which uses note detection to help users learn guitar, ukulele, and banjo. The firm is backed by Google Ventures, as well as a number of well known angels. We caught up with founder Aviv Grill to dig deeper into what the firm is doing.
First off, let's talk a little bit about your software. What does your software do?
Aviv Grill: We just launched our 2.0 product, which is called MisoM (More info...)
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Active.com Brags About Social Media GrowthSan Diego-based Active.com, the sports and fitness site owned by Active Network, is bragging today that it has reached more than one million social media fans. Those fans include both Facebook fans and Twitter followers, as well as other social sites. The firm said it saw a 297 percent increase in its social media fan base over the past year. The site attributed some of the gain to the integration of Badgeville into its site, and the gamification of its services; that integration awards "badges" (More info...)
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SRS Powers Samsung Infuse 4G, Droid ChargeSanta Ana-based SRS Labs, the provider of surround sound and other audio technology, revealed today that it is powering the surround sound on Samsung's Infuse 4G and Droid Charge. The company said its SRS 5.1 Mobile technology is being used on the two smartphones. SRS was already powering Samsung's Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab audio. Financial details of the win were not announced.
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