Archive for October, 2009
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
By Allan Maurer
ATLANTA – Looxii, a company founded by two Georgia Tech grads who conceived the business while still in school, has raised $97,500 according to a regulatory filing.
Founded by Daniel Upton and R. Adam Rice, the company develops social Web applications that turns qualitative data into practical information.
The company revealed the funding in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It did not cite investors.
The company’s products include Twinqs, which provides all the links from a twitter feed and includes five people who have tweeted each link and each person’s last five links tweeted.
Users can login with their twitter account and start perusing links from all over the place. By clicking the Twinqs button, users can see who else has tweeted the same link. They can then see that person’s other posted links and start following them if they like what they see.You can try the product here: www.twinqs.com.
Looxii (“Look see) was part of Shotput Ventures inaugural class of eight companies. Upton and Rice developed the idea as part of the class.
Online: www.looxii.com
Posted in Georgia, Internet/New Media, IT, Money | Comments Off
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. economy grew by a 3.5 percent annual rate in the months ending Sept. 30, the Commerce Department said Thursday. It marks the first time the U.S. economy posted growth number in year.
Government spending, exports and consumer spending, including that stimulated by the cash-for-clunkers program and tax rebates for first time home buyers – led to the economic growth.
The Commerce Department also said the growth came without a concurrent spike in inflation.
On the other hand, job growth remains elusive and may lag economic growth by months, analysts say.
Posted in Economic Development, Studies, surveys, reports, Washington, DC | Comments Off
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
WASHINGTON, DC – HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today released a new report, Lower Premiums, Stronger Businesses: How Health Insurance Reform Will Bring Down Costs for Small Businesses. The report outlines the many ways health insurance reform will lower health care costs for small businesses and is available now at www.HealthReform.gov.
“Small businesses drive our economy and create jobs, but they are struggling as health care costs continue to rise,” Secretary Sebelius said.
“The high cost of care is making it difficult or impossible for these businesses to offer care or grow their business. Health insurance reform will bring costs down and give small businesses the relief they need.”
The report notes:
- Small businesses, the backbone of job creation in our economy, are disproportionately burdened by the financial strains caused by rising health care costs. On average, small businesses pay up to 18 percent more than large firms for the same health insurance policy.
This difference is due in part to high broker fees (which can be up to 10 percent of premiums), and health plan administrative costs that are three times those in the large group market.
- In a recent national survey, nearly three-quarters of small businesses that did not offer benefits cited high premiums as the reason.
- Nearly half of workers covered by a small business employer have insurance that limits the total amount the plan will pay for medical care and nearly one in ten small business workers have a health plan that does not offer prescription drug coverage.
- Workers in small firms are more likely to shoulder burdensome out-of-pocket health care costs. Thirty-six percent spent more than 10 percent of their household income on out-of-pocket medical expenses in 2007, compared with 27 percent of workers in larger firms.
Health insurance reform, the report says, will bring down costs for small businesses by creating a health insurance exchange, providing a small business tax credit, ending the “hidden tax” on small businesses that provide health insurance and preventing arbitrary premium hikes.
It also says reform will ensure Americans have stable, secure insurance coverage, limit out-of-pocket spending and eliminate caps on benefits.
Read the complete report, visit www.HealthReform.gov.
Posted in Government/Defense, Healthcare, Legal, Washington, DC | Comments Off
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
MIAMI – Scrapblog, a service for creating and sharing multimedia scrapbooks online, has appointed digital media veteran Jill Braff to head the company as President and CEO.
Carlos Garcia, who founded Scrapblog and served as CEO for the past 3 years, will transition to focus on partnerships and will continue to be an active board member.
Braff most recently led worldwide publishing efforts including licensing, marketing and sales as SVP of global publishing at Glu Mobile.
In 2008, Braff was named by Digital Media Wire as one of the top 25 digital entertainment executives to watch and in 2007 she was honored as one of the 40 most influential people under 40 in Silicon Valley by the Silicon Valley Business Journal, and in 2006 Braff was named one of the game industry’s 100 most influential women by Next Generation.
Prior to joining Glu Mobile, Braff held senior marketing positions at Sega of America and Konami of America. In addition to her gaming experience, Braff also held management positions at consumer web service companies Photopoint Corporation and Ancestry.com. She also held positions at The Learning Company, Nintendo of America and Griffin Bacal.
Separately today, Scrapblog announced the launch of its new QuickMix product.
Scrapblog enables everyday people to express themselves online in a creative way. Through its multimedia scrapbooking service, users can aggregate their social media from multiple sources in a web-based drag and drop application.
Online: www.scrapblog.com
Posted in Florida, Internet/New Media, People | Comments Off
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
BALTIMORE, MD – Is Facebook ready for its star on Hollywood walk? A new Columbia Pictures film will depict the origin of social networking site Facebook, the Baltimore Sun reports.
The movie starts shooting in Balitmore next week with Johns Hopkins University doubling as Harvard.
Jesse Eisenberg will portray Facebook founder Mark Zuckererg and Justin Timberlake will be founding president Sean Parker.
The film will also shoot in Los Angeles and Boston.
Posted in Internet/New Media, Maryland | Comments Off
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
NEW YORK – Less than half of print media executives surveyed by Forrester Consulting think their companies are aggressively investing in new media.
Forrester conducted the survey for Zeta Interactive, a digital marketing firm. “We’ve felt as if a lot of people in the media world were denying the shift of consumers from offline to online,” said ZAeta CEO Al DiGuido.
The survey, he said, shows a clear need for print media to play catch-up when it comes to consumer media use. DiGuido said a shift from print to digital has definitely occurred.
“I think there is a sense that eventually people will move back to print. I think the opposite is true.”
Only 12 percent of the print execs surveyed thought their firms were being aggressive with online strategies.
Budget constraints and low end-user adoption were cited as challenges in pursuing more aggressive digital strategies by the execs.
Forrester surveyed 150 print media executives from industries that use print, mainly retail and publishing.
Posted in Internet/New Media, Studies, surveys, reports | Comments Off
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
DURHAM, NC – Stem cell company Aldagen Inc. has refiled to go public and has raised $7.3 million of a targeted $10 million debt and warrants raise, according to SEC filings. The company hopes to raise as much as $80.5 million selling stock on Nasdaq under the symbol “ALDH.”
Venture-backed Aldagen has raised about $56 million from investors who include Aurora Funds, Intersouth Partners, Tall Oaks Capital, Tullis Health Inventors, Harbert Venture Partners, Trelys Funds.
The company has several of its regenerative stem cell therapies in late stage clinical trials. Aldagen’s technology lights up stem cells with high levels of the enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) so that they emit a green fluorescence. ALDH plays a role in controlling how stem cells develop.
The company has started Phase III studies, testing its ALD-101 product to see if it improves the effectiveness of grafts following cord-blood transplants that treat inherited metabolic disease in children.
It also plans to start Phase III trials of another product to treat critical limb ischemia. It completed a Phase I trial of ALD-201 for treating ischemic heart failure.
The company has a net loss of $6.7 million in the first nine months of 2009 on revenue of $337,000 and from March to September, it lost $51.4 million.
Previously on TechJournal South: Aldagen advances treatment pipeline with $18M round
http://techjournalsouth.com/news/article.html?item_id=5224
Online: www.aldagen.com
Posted in Biotech, IPOs, North Carolina, Pharma | Comments Off
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
By Allan Maurer
ORLANDO, FL – Voxeo Corp. has raised $4.5 million in equity from a single investor according to a regulatory filing. The company sells interactive voice response (IVR) or VoIP platforms and services. The profitable business has posted 100 percent year-over-year growth since 1999.
The company revealed the new funding in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company says its hosting and premise platform solutions, and developer services – powered by VoiceXML and CCXML – are used by over 45,000 customers and 100,000 developers to create and deploy any telephone application they desire.
According to its Web site, Voxeo has invested over $50 million in infrastructure, technology, and programs to deliver versatile, standards-based platforms and hosting solutions for IVR and VoIP telephone applications.
IVR applications allow users to retrieve information such as bank balances, flight schedules, and movie show times from any telephone.
Voxeo offers a solution that overcomes previous limitations of the technology and replaces aging, proprietary IVR boxes and applications with simple, usable, voice-driven, VoiceXML and CCXML-powered IVR platforms, hosting services, and developer solutions.
The company acquired Motorola’s OEM VoiceXML browser business, including full and exclusive rights to Motorola’s VoxGateway VoiceXML browser earlier in October.
It acquired IMified, the world’s largest hosted instant messaging application development and deployment platform in May.
IMified offers a hosted platform that enables the delivery of automated Instant Messaging (IM) services–also known as IM agents or IM bots–that work with leading instant messaging platforms from AOL, Cisco/Jabber, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo.
In December last year, it acquired Germany’s VoiceObjects, the world’s leading provider of self-service application development and analytics solutions.
The company has won a number of awards, including being named to the Top ten best places to work in Florida, hte 2007 product of the year award from Communications Solutions, and the Frost & Sullivan Product Innovation Award.
It has received media attention from TechCrunch, InfoWorld, eComm, Fierce VoIP, and Red Herring, among other outlets.
Online: www.voxeo.com
Posted in Florida, Internet/New Media, Money, Telecommunications | Comments Off
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Venture capital returns annualized for the last ten years fell 14.3 percent according to Cambridge Associates data the National Venture Capital Association released.
There’s a simple explanation. The year 1999 was stellar for the VC industry. In the last three months of 1999 alone, the return to fund investors was 83.4 percent.
The NVCA noted that the returns show a large difference in the exit markets then and now.
NVCA President Mark Heesen said that without the strong IPO market of a decade ago, “Venture capital may still outperform the other major market indices, but by far less than the industry did in the last decade.”
Online: www.nvca.org
Posted in venture capital report, Washington, DC | Comments Off
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC – CED, formerly the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (www.cednc.org), a private, nonprofit organization that promotes entrepreneurial efforts in the Triangle region of North Carolina, say 15 of its member companies are participating in Internet Summit 09 at the Raleigh Convention Center Nov. 4-5.
A conference to promote forward thinking on topics related to the Internet economy and Web-oriented technologies, the Summit is nearly sold-out and fewer than 100 seats remain.
CED members participating include:
MemberHub.com, Preation, Inc. and Shoeboxed, Inc. have been selected to demonstrate their innovative Web-based technologies and representatives from 12 other member companies will offer their expertise during dynamic panel discussions.
These include Cliff Reeves of Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team; Gary Milner, global interactive marketing director at Lenovo; David Morken, CEO of Bandwidth.com; Keith Moore, chief marketing officer of iContact;
Jeffrey Revoy, president of interactive services at CenturyLink; Joe Colopy, CEO of Bronto; Rich Lee, founder and CEO of Hosted Solutions; Jason Caplain, general partner and co-founder of Southern Capitol Ventures;
David Jones, partner at Southern Capitol Ventures; Dean Gels, director of RBC Capital Markets; Richard Kristof, co-founder and CEO of American Research Institute;
Jud Bowman, president and CEO of PocketGear, Inc. and co-founder and former CTO of Motricity, Inc.; and David Spitz, COO of ChannelAdvisor.
“We are excited to see the depth of involvement that CED member companies have at this year’s Internet Summit,” said Joan Siefert Rose, president of CED. “The 15 companies represented this year offer outstanding services to the rapidly evolving Internet economy.”
Presented by TechJournal South and Southern Capitol Ventures, the Internet Summit supports Web-oriented entrepreneurial activity, innovation, and the resultant economic development of the Southeast region.
Online: www.internetsummit.org; www.ced.org
Posted in Events, Internet/New Media, North Carolina | Comments Off
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