Friday, May 2, 2014


Facebook, Oculus Face Legal Challenge From ZeniMax
The acquisition of Irvine-based Oculus by Facebook, which was announced in March, is one of the fastest, largest, and most significant acquisitions out of Southern California's technology ecosystem in many years. However, it's not going to be the smoothest--as both Facebook and Oculus are now fending off a lawsuit from a company, saying that its virtual reality headsets use its intellectual property--and that one of its former employees improperly shared its technology with Oculus. ZeniMax Media (More info...)
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LA Mayor Garcetti Launches Entrepreneur-in-Residence Program
In a bid to boost the Los Angeles economy and create new jobs in the city, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Friday that he has created a new "Entrepreneur-in-Residence" program, which will help the city in developing initiatives and policies aimed at growing, assisting and sustaining entrepreneurs in Los Angeles. The effort--which is being sponsored by Ernst & Young LLP--will allow two entrepreneurs to spend a year helping the city with its efforts to create jobs. The first two EIRs at the c (More info...)
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Audience Media Acquired By Zinio
Audience Media, which has offices in Temecula, just outside of San Diego, has been acquired by San Francisco mobile magazine publishing firm Zinio. Financial terms of the buy were not disclosed. Audience Media's headquarters are in Barcelona, Spain. Zinio said the buy will help expand its footprint in digital publishing services.
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Domain Associates Portfolio Firm ProteinSimple Files For IPO
San Diego-based life sciences investor Domain Associates has yet another company that has filed for an IPO, after the S-1 yesterday of protein analysis tools developer Protein Simple. Protein Simple said in its IPO filing that it is looking to raise up to $86.25M as PRTN on the NASDAQ Global Select Market. Domain Associates owns around 11 percent of ProteinSimple before the IPO; other fellow investors include Wellcome Trust, Essex Woodlands Health Ventures, Novo AS, and LVP Life Sciences Venture (More info...)
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Exploring A Brave New World Of Domain Names, With Rightside
It's a brave new world in the domain name marketplace, with a lot of changes due to the sudden proliferation of new, top level domains (gTLDs). To get some insight into how those names are changing--we caught up with Steve Banfield, SVP and GM of Registrar Services over at Rightside (www.rightside.co) -- which is in the midst of spinning out from Santa Monica-based Demand Media. Steve gave us some insight into that split, and how Rightside is focusing on the new world of gTLDs. (Editor's note (More info...)
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FreshRealm Gets $10M For Food Technology
Santa Paula-based Calavo Growers--best known for the growing and marketing of avocados--announced Thursday that its subsidiary, FreshRealm, has raised $10M in funding for a new, food distribution technology. The funding came from Impermanence, LLC. According to Calavo, FreshRealm is developing a temperature-controlled, resuable shipping vessel and cloud-based software aimed at improving food distribution and reducing food waste. The company said that FreshRealm has been beta testing its hardware (More info...)
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SpaceX Gets Injunction Against ULA
Hawthorne-based SpaceX, the commercial rocket firm led by technology mogul Elon Musk, has scored a win in the courts, and has been granted an injunction by a U.S. Court of Federal Claims judge in a lawsuit against the United Launch Alliance (ULA). The injunction prohibits the purchase of Russian-made rocket engines by the ULA, which is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, saying that those purchases may violate new U.S. sanctions against Russia due to that country's activities in the U (More info...)
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Frequency Releases New APIs
Los Angeles-based Frequency, the Internet video watching service led by Blair Harrison, has released a new set of APIs to allow device manufacturers and others add Internet video capabilities to their products, the company said Thursday. According to Frequency, the new Frequency Source services are aimed at device manufacturers and platform operators to bring free-to-watch, Internet video to their devices. Frequency already offers its video watching apps on iOS, Android, connected televisions, a (More info...)
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Everbridge Wins Nation's Capital
Glendale-based emergency communications and notifications provider Everbridge has scored a major win in the the nation's capital, saying that it has been selected by the National Capital Region (NCR) to deliver emergency notifications, communications, and related services across the Metropolitan Washington, D.C., area. According to Everbridge, it will provide emergency notification services--including weather, threat, and social alerts--to the region, which includes jurisdictions, cities and cou (More info...)
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