Friday, August 10, 2012


Insights and Opinions: The Odd Couple: Angels and Accelerators
Southern California has the one of the largest gathering of organized angel investment groups, and a huge crop of startup accelerators: there's only one problem, which is they don't naturally work together. For our Insights and Opinions section today, Steve Reich, an angel investor and advisor, gives his take on the subject in his editorial, The Odd Couple: Angels and Accelerators. At a recent accelerator event on the West Side, a friendly young founder told me that he had been coached by his (More info...)
posted on Friday, August 10, 2012(Full story)

Rubicon Project Beats Google In Advertising Reach Report
Los Angeles-based Rubicon Project said today that it has passed Google in the latest, comScore Media Metrix monthly ranking of Ad Focus properties. Rubicon reports that the the July 2012 comScore ranking found that Rubicon Project now reaches 96.2% of the U.S. Internet audience, or more than 212 million visitors, which surpasses Google's Ad Network reach by more than 6 million visitors. Rubicon's advertising network and tools are used by web publishers to optimize the return on their online adve (More info...)
posted on Friday, August 10, 2012(Full story)

Burner's App Ditches Unwanted Callers
Have you ever wish you could hand someone your phone number, but just let them use it once or twice before it disappeared? You can do just that with a brand new app for the iPhone, Burner, released by a Los Angeles company yesterday. The app--which costs $1.99 in the App Store--allows iPhone users to create disposable phone number on demand, something which could be useful handing your phone number to the guy you just met at a bar, the person on Craigslist you want to sell your couch to, or havi (More info...)
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How Broadcom Taps Israel For Technology Growth, Innovation
How is Irvine-based Broadcom continuing to grow its business? By acquisitions, it seems. Broadcom has acquired at least 48 companies since 1999. As an unintended side effect, those acquisitions have made Broadcom a major player in Israel's high tech industry, according to the article from ZDNet, where the firm has acquired 11 companies in the last four years. The article says that Broadcom has about 800 employees in Israel.
posted on Friday, August 10, 2012(Full story)

Zillow Planning To Hire 100 In Irvine
Orange County's latest, high tech employer, Zillow, launched a grand opening of its new offices on Michelson Drive this week, saying that it plans to hire up to 100 people in its new office in the location. Zillow, which operates the online real estate site known for its "Zillow Zestimates", had said in April that it would be opening up a new location in the OC, looking to tap into what it says is a "highly talented local job market." The firm is taking advantage of both Orange County's strength (More info...)
posted on Friday, August 10, 2012(Full story)

Blizzard Entertainment's Battle.net Hacked
Irvine-based Blizzard Entertainment said late Thursday that there was "unauthorized access" of the firm's Battle.net service. Blizzard said the unauthorized access exposed email addresses associated with Battle.net accounts in all regions outside of China, including scrambled passwords, answers to personal security questions, and other information related to mobile and dial-in authentication. Blizzard said it did not believe those hackers gained access to credit card and other payment data.
posted on Friday, August 10, 2012(Full story)

Interview with Ali Benham, Tealium
If you head up marketing for an Internet company, you're undoubtedly used to having to work--or fight--with your IT department to help maintain your web site and manage all of the changes you need done. Plus, you undoubtedly have a lot of third party "tags"--small code snippets--all of your website to get your analytics tools and other software to work. How do you streamline that process? Last month, San Diego-based Tealium (www.tealium.com) announced a healthy, $10.5M funding round for tag mana (More info...)
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Activision's Pitfall Returns
Are you old enough to remember the popular Pitfall! adventure came on the Atari 2600? Well, Pitfall! is back, thanks to a reboot by Activision, which released a new version of the game yesterday for the Apple iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Pitfall inspired the whole genre of jump-and-run games (for the iPhone set, think "Temple Run"). The new Pitfall! is "inspired by the original 1982 classic", Activision said. The new game comes out of Activision's Leeds, UK studio. Although Activision did creat (More info...)
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Prolacta Tops $1M In Philanthoropic Donations
Monrovia, California-based Prolacta Bioscience, the venture-backed company which is turning donated breast milk into human milk fortifier for premature babies, reported this week that it has donated more than $1M to various charitable organizations over the past five years. The firm makes donations in the name of mothers who contribute their excess milk to the company. Prolacta said that it has donated more than $406,000 to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and $61,000 to Make-A-Wish, among other org (More info...)
posted on Friday, August 10, 2012(Full story)