Wednesday, November 28, 2012Playsino Hits 1M InstallsSanta Monica-based Playsino, which publishes social, free-to-play, casino games, has just passed the one million install mark, the firm announced today. Playsino develops social, casino games which run on Facebook, and is venture backed by IDM Venture Capital, Eric Schmidt (Google), Michael Robertson (MP3.com), Carlos Bhola (Vonage), Kamran Pouzanjani (PriceGrabber), and William Quigley and Jim Armstrong (Clearstone Venture Partners). The firm's CEO is Brock Pierce, a gaming industry veteran who (More info...)
posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2012(Full story)
CYBERsitter's Battle Against Chinese HackersWhat happens when you file a lawsuit against a country for copying your software code? In the case of Santa Barbara-based Solid Oak Software--the company behind the CYBERsitter Internet filtering software--apparently, someone from that country mysteriously sends a team of hackers to kneecap your business. In a report published this week, Bloomberg details what it calls a "China Mafia-style Hack Attack" against Solid Oak after the firm sued China over stealing its source code for China's own Inte (More info...)
posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2012(Full story)
Geni Acquisition Opens Up Service For UsersThe acquisition today of Los Angeles-based family tree and genealogy site Geni has one big benefit: its users now have full access to the service, without having to pay for premium features. As part of the acquisition, Geni.com said that it has removed tree limits, which lets users add unlimited profiles of people to their family tree, something which had disappeared as part of a move towards a premium model last year. Geni.com also said that it will now let users download free family trees to t (More info...)
posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2012(Full story)
On-Ramp Wireless Names Operations VPSan Diego-based On Ramp Wireless has named an operations VP this morning, saying it has named Brad Wallace to the position. On Ramp Wireless, which provides M2M and other wireless monitoring systems for the smart grid, oil and gas, industrial, and other industries, said Wallace joins the company from MicroPower Technologies, the EvoNexus Incubator firm developing wireless surveillance products. Wallace was co-founder, COO, and CFO at MicroPower. Wallance also has served at Intel, Archos North Am (More info...)
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Geni.com Acquired By MyHeritageLos Angeles-based genealogy site Geni.com has been acquired by MyHeritage, an online genealogy website. Financial terms of the buy were not disclosed. As part of the acquisition, Geni.com's founder, David Sacks, joins MyHeritage's board of directors. MyHeritage.com said it has raised $25M in a new round of funding at the same time, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Index Ventures, and Accel Partners. Geni.com offers up an online, family tree site, and was the parent company of Yammer.com, the en (More info...)
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How DinnerDate.com Takes Online Dating Offline, with Andrew Connell
Andrew Connell is the CEO of DinnerDate.com, a startup which has been in beta in San Diego for the last few months, and is just now expanding out to new markets. The startup--created by Robert Earl (Founder and CEO of Planet Hollywood), Grant Hosford (formerly of eHarmony), and Connell (formerly of Nokia)--is using the Internet to arrange group dates at local restaurants, to connect people in person and offline. We spoke with Andrew about the startup and what it's all about.
What's DinnerDa (More info...)
posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2012(Full story)
SpaceX's Elon Musk Plans To Invade MarsForget just delivering astronauts to space: Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, has much bigger plans than just mere transport to space: he wants to build a colony on Mars. Musk said over the past few days that he'd like to transport 80,000 people a year to the Red Planet. Musk first made his Mars colony idea public in London earlier this month, and has been providing more details via Twitter in the last few days.
posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2012(Full story)
Regulus Therapeutics Names VPLa Jolla-based Regulus Therapeutics', which is developing microRNA therapeutics in the oncology, fibrosis, hepatitis C and metabolic diseases areas, said yesterday that it has named Victor Knopov as its Vice President, Pharmaceutical Development. Knopov previously was at Nitto Denk Technical Corporation. He also served at Diversified Bio-Medics, EnGene, Marina Biotech, and Inex Pharmaceuticals.
posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2012(Full story)
CallFire Powers Obama Nevada Election MonitoringSanta Monica-based CallFire reports today that its services were used in the recent election day, by Obama for America In Nevada. CallFire said its cloud telephony services were used to develop interactive voice response applications to let volunteers at polls provide regular updates on election day activities. The application is just one of the many election-related applications CallFire has powered over the last few months. CallFire provides voice APIs, text messaging, and other cloud telephon (More info...)
posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2012(Full story)