Wednesday, October 9, 2013


NationBuilder Opens Developer API
Los Angeles-based NationBuilder, which develops software-as-a-service to help groups organize their supporters, has opened up a new set of APIs for third party developers. The company--which offers up its platform to political campaigns, nonprofits, activists, and many others--said it has officially released its API, allowing developers to access its services. The firm said it already had a number of companies using the APIs, which allow developers to access a nationwide database of voters, cont (More info...)
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Achates Power Raises $35.2M More
San Diego-based Achates Power--which is developing technology it says radically improves the internal combustion engine--has raised $35.2M more for its efforts, the company said Tuesday, bringing its total raised to nearly $90M. The company said its Series C funding came from Sequoia Capital Partners, RockPort Capital Partners, Madrone Capital Partners, InterWest Partners and Triangle Peak Partners. Achates Power says its technology increases fuel efficiency and reduces greenhouse gas emissions, (More info...)
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PureClick: Google's Display Network Doesn't Perform As Promised
Google's display advertising network, Google Display Network, doesn't perform as promised, according to Santa Barbara-based PureClick. The startup said this morning that its advertisers have been finding that the majority of placement in Google's display network are "irrelevant to their products and services"--as it announced its own product to help advertisers narrow down the most relevant AdSense publishers for their marketing efforts. PureClick said that its product, RelevanceWatch, helps adv (More info...)
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Factual Enhances Healthcare Data
Los Angeles-based data startup Factual has just made a big update to the healthcare data in its giant database-in-the-sky, saying Tuesday that it has released a new set of Healthcare Providers data. Factual says it has added 830,000 new healthcare providers to its data set, so that it now has 2.6 million providers in its service; the company also said it has added a lot of detail on those healthcare providers, and also cross referenced those providers into its Global Places data. Healthcare is o (More info...)
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Cirro Finds $8M For Big Data Software
San Juan Capistrano-based Cirro, a developer of software for data access, exploration, and analysis, announced this morning that it has raised $8M in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Toba Capital, and also included Frost Venture Partners and Miramar Venture Partners. Cirro's CEO is Mark Theissen. The company said the new funds will go towards product development, sales, marketing, and scaling of its business. Cirro is one of the big data companies which was incubated out of Frost (More info...)
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VIZIO Claims Win Against Patent Troll
Irvine-based electronics manufacturer VIZIO says it has won its tenth case against what it calls a "patent troll", after winning a summary judgement of invalidity and non-infringement on two patents held by Oplus Technologies, Ltd. last week. VIZIO said the legal win is the tenth successful fight against what are called Non-Practicing Entities (NPE) by the company. VIZIO has been on a big campaign against what it calls "extortion attempts" by NPEs, which typically buy up large collections of pat (More info...)
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SolarReserve Names New CFO
Santa Monica-based utility scale solar power developer SolarReserve announced Tuesday that it has appointed a new Chief Financial Officer. According to SolarReserve, it has named Tim Rosenzweig to the position, to bolster its renewable energy and financing expertise. Rosenzweig was most recently CEO of Goldwind USA, a manufacturer of wind turbines. He also co-founded wind developer First Wind/UPC Wind, and served at a Nomura-backed private equity fund, GE Capital Market Services, and Lehman Brot (More info...)
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