StartUp Beat

5/31/07 – Entrepreneur Jason Calacanis today launched Mahalo.com, what he describes as a "human-powered" search engine, at the Wall Street Journal's D Conference in San Diego.  The company is based in Santa Monica.

Calacanis says the site is currently being launched in Alpha with the Internet’s 4,000 most popular search terms completed.  The company says it hopes to reach 10,000 search terms by the end of the year, at which point it will enter Beta, and launch shortly thereafter.

Mahalo also announced the closing of two rounds of financing to date.  Lead investors include Sequoia Capital, Elon Musk and NewsCorp.  The company says additional investors include CBS Corporation, Hubert Burda Media, Allen & Co., David Bradley, Gigi Brisson, Sandy Climan, Mark Cuban, Matt Coffin, Ted Leonsis, Jonathan Miller, Mark Pincus, Ryan Scott and Fred Wilson.

Mahalo – www.mahalo.com

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5/31/07 – Unstrung and SoCalTech are reporting that IdeaLab startup ClearMesh Networks has closed its doors.  Citing multiple sources, Unstrung says the company officially shut down last Friday after IdeaLab stopped funding the Pasadena-based wireless optical broadband mesh company.  It was apparently unable to attract other investors.

ClearMesh offered Ethernet connectivity that enabled large corporate, medical, education or government campus environments to integrate data, voice-over-IP, and surveillance video and other applications that demand large amounts of network capacity.

In March, the company released what it called “its next-generation wireless mesh solution”—the ClearMesh Sentry Mesh.  A company spokesperson told StartUp Beat at the time that it had 3 customers and was running ten trials of its technology. 

Unstrung says that the company is now trying to sell its technology, according to an unnamed source.

ClearMesh – www.clearmesh.com

IdeaLab – www.idealab.com

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5/31/07 –  Touting the success of its wi-fi network deployment at last week’s Interop show in Las Vegas, Westlake Village-based Xirrus today announced that it has been selected by Interop for a third time to deploy its Wi-Fi Arrays—this time at the upcoming Interop New York 2007.

Xirrus, which has been one of the most active early-stage companies in the region recently in terms of customer wins and service deployments, provides high performance, long range wi-fi products.

The company says it needed only 12 of its Wi-Fi Arrays to provide coverage for the entire Interop event.  The Xirrus network successfully supported voice, video and data applications for the 20,000 Interop attendees, according to Xirrus.

Interop, part of the CMP media company, is a major showcase of IT innovations and solutions that takes place in various locations throughout the world several times a year.  The New York show will be held in late October at the Jacob Javits Center.

Xirrus, which was founded in 2004 by former Xircom (sold to Intel in 2001) executives, is backed by investors that include U.S. Venture Partners and August Capital.

Xirrus – www.xirrus.com

Interop – www.interop.com

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5/31/07 – El Segundo-based Siderean Software has received $2.5 million in new debt financing from BlueCrest Capital Finance, L.P., according to the companies.

Siderean’s information access platform, Seamark Navigator, uses patented relational navigation technology that allows customers to keep pace with information access requirements.

Siderean was founded in 2001, and its backers include Clearstone Venture Partners, InnoCal Venture Capital and Red Rock Ventures.

Siderean Software – www.siderean.com

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5/30/07 – Los Angeles-based Spot Runner, the Internet-based television ad agency, and LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell, the provider of client development solutions for the legal profession, today announced a strategic alliance that enables Martindale-Hubbell-affiliated law firms to purchase local television advertising campaigns to help promote their services in select areas of practice.

Spot Runner says its platform brings law firms affordable, targeted TV advertising campaigns on top-rated broadcast and cable channels such as CBS, CNN, ESPN and Fox News at a fraction of the cost of traditional ad agencies.

As a result of the partnership, TV advertising will now be a part of the suite of marketing services Martindale-Hubbell offers to its client base, allowing law firms to choose from an exclusive library of high-quality, pre-produced ads in a variety of practice areas, according to the companies.

In collaboration with Martindale-Hubbell, Spot Runner says it will personalize the ads with the firm’s specific information, logos and even their own images.  Martindale-Hubbell’s account representatives will work directly with law firms to guide them through the process.

The program will be launched initially on a limited basis in specific states, with expanded availability expected through the rest of the year, according to the companies.

Spot Runner’s investors include Index Ventures and Battery Ventures.

Spot Runner – www.spotrunner.com

LexisNexis – www.lexisnexis.com

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5/30/07 – Irvine-based Integrien has announced the release of the latest version of its Alive integrity management software.  The company says the new features included in Alive 5.6 add to its ability to predict and prevent slowdowns and failures in mission-critical business services.

Through its patent-pending Problem Fingerprint and self learning capabilities, Integrien says Alive 5.6 helps organizations predict and prevent problems and application outages before they occur.

Integrien says Alive 5.6 includes new features that leverage current investments in IBM Tivoli, as well as providing insight into how the performance of IT systems impact business services.  Through its partnership with IBM, the company says Alive now provides enhanced IBM monitoring integration to add value to existing IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM) implementations by auto-correlating and analyzing the data ITM collects from disparate devices, systems and applications to predict, prevent and resolve problems.

Integrien also cites the addition of Linux support, new JBOSS and WebSphere adapters and bulk server configuration tools in the new version, which the company says enables organizations to quickly and easily implement Alive without having to worry about interoperability issues with other infrastructure components.  Integrien says Alive 5.6 includes high availability and disaster recovery support, which it describes as a co-located passive system that takes over monitoring within five minutes of an event, with a maximum of 10 minutes of data loss.

Integrien was founded in 2001 and, after initial funding from the Tech Coast Angels, has secured investments from Clearstone Venture Partners and Acartha Group LLP.

Integrien – www.integrien.com

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5/29/07 – Los Angeles-based mobile content and service provider Amp’d Mobile is no stranger to media speculation about its business, and now several high profile blogs are writing that the company’s founder and CEO, Peter Adderton, may have left the company.  Amp’d has not yet commented about the rumor.

The company, along with Westwood-based Helio, operates in the highly-competitive mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) market.  Amp’d has raised a ton of cash, through five rounds of funding.  The company has also had a big year in terms of expansion and partnerships, announcing that it is approaching the 200,000 subscriber mark, expanded internationally into the Japanese and Canadian markets and signed multiple content deals with major players in entertainment—including MTV, actor Jack Black and producer Howard Gordon.

Although there has been much debate about the viability of MVNOs like Amp’d, perhaps the company’s best argument for its future growth is the strong average revenue per user the company reports—more than $100 per user, according to the company’s latest announcement.  Industry experts say this is nearly twice the average for mobile providers. 

The company also has built a strong executive team, in addition to Adderton, that includes former senior executives at Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA and Boost Mobile.

Amp’d Mobile – www.ampd.com

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5/29/07 – LogicalApps, based in Irvine, is opening a research and development facility in Hyderabad, India.  The plan was announced earlier this month, and the company says the new Indian facility will augment research and development efforts at its Irvine headquarters and its New York City office, while also extending the company’s customer support capabilities.

Jag Padala was tapped to head the new Indian office.  LogicalApps says Padala, who has led the company’s engineering team since 2002, has over 15 years of IT experience in the enterprise software industry.

The company provides embedded governance software for enterprise applications through its ACTIVE Governance flagship product.

LogicalApps – www.logicalapps.com

Posted by startupbeat at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/25/07 – Buzznet, a Hollywood-based social media network, today announced it has closed a $6 million round of financing led by Redpoint Ventures and Anthem Venture Partners.

Buzznet, founded in 2005, says it now counts more than 6 million users and claims the fastest growing social networking audience, according to market research firm Hitwise.

Initially focused on music, Buzznet says it distinguishes itself by offering unique tools and versatility that enable web users to program, participate, interact and create multimedia communities.

The company says it is also focused on attracting musicians and other celebrities to create and grow their own active online communities where they can personally interact with their fans.

Buzznet – www.buzznet.com

Posted by startupbeat at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/25/07 – Low.com, a consumer financial portal owned by Los Angeles-based Oversee.net, has introduced new products that it says improve the current industry standard for FICO and Social Security mortgage leads.

Called Choice and Choice Plus, Low.com says the new products protect consumers and lending partners from the negative effects of extraneous credit pulls, leads without a consumer’s consent, and improve consumer security by protecting data and adhering to a rigorous privacy policy.

The Choice product allows lenders to receive an Internet lead with a FICO range of the consumer’s credit score.  According to Low.com, unlike other lead companies, the service provides lenders with the ability to pre-set an optimal band of FICO scores aligned with their lending objectives.

Low.com says the Choice Plus product will allow lenders to not only see the FICO range, but to also receive verified social security information with that lead.  The company also says that while the Choice Plus lead will pass on the verified social security information, the lenders will not have the ability to pull credit without first receiving the consumer’s consent.

Oversee.net operates a wide ranging network of web sites and services in addition to Low.com that include LiveDigital.com, DomainSponsor.com, Revenue.net, LowFares.com and BlogSource.com.

Oversee.net – www.oversee.net

Low.com – www.low.com

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5/25/07 – Los Angeles-based Shipwire.com this week announced that it has partnered with Stone Edge Technologies to offer its fulfillment services with the Stone Edge ecommerce product for small businesses.

Shipwire’s technology will be integrated into the Stone Edge Order Manager, an e-commerce business management operations tool that Stone Edge says is currently used by nearly 2,000 merchants to automate and streamline operations.

The companies say that the integration will allow small businesses to reduce the time spent managing inventory and fulfilling customer orders.  Businesses will also have the ability to add a new sales channel, such as eBay auctions, and arrange to have inventory sent directly to Shipwire warehouses and on to customers.  In addition, Shipwire says it offers the ability to import shipment tracking data for emails and customer lookups along with automatic synchronization of inventory information.

Shipwire, a participant in DEMO 07 earlier this year, is a fulfillment service focused on small businesses and allowing companies to outsource the process of receiving, warehousing and shipping merchandise.  The company says it offers quick set-up and “hands-off” administration, enabling an account to be configured and operational in less than 15 minutes.

Shipwire.com – www.shipwire.com

Stone Edge Technologies – www.stoneedge.com

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5/24/07 – Sonos, the Santa Barbara-based developer of wireless multi-room music systems for home entertainment, has introduced the Sonos Bundle 130, which includes three of Sonos’ key products—the Sonos ZonePlayer 80, the Sonos ZonePlayer 100 and the Sonos Controller 100.  Sonos says the bundle enables customers to wirelessly stream music to two rooms and control it from anywhere.

The company says that in a recent survey, new customers said they strongly preferred a mixed bundle as the ideal way to get started with Sonos’ home entertainment service. 

As part of the launch of the new Bundle 130, Sonos says all previous bundles—the ZP100 and the ZP80—will be discontinued.

The Sonos Digital Music System is a multi-room music system with a full-color Controller that allows users to listen to digital music all over a home.  The company also announced this week that it has integrated the Pandora personalized radio service into its digital music system.

Sonos – www.sonos.com

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5/24/07 – Santa Monica-based Boingo Wireless, the wholesale network aggregator and operator of neutral-host wi-fi networks, today announced the signing of a roaming agreement with FON, a Madrid-based wi-fi company.  Boingo says the agreement will provide access to an additional 130,000 hot spot locations—more than doubling the company’s network size.

Boingo says the additional locations provide a broader network of wi-fi connections in areas that complement Boingo’s existing commercial locations.

Boingo touts the benefits of the expanded network for business users in particular.  The company says it gives business travelers the best choice of wi-fi hot spots by combining worldwide locations from more than 150 leading wi-fi operators into one network.  Boingo says users can connect to any of these locations with a single account using Boingo’s free wi-fi client software, which it says combines more than 660 network names into one Boingo Wireless network and stores the user name and password to simplify identifying and connecting to commercial wi-fi.

Boingo Wireless – www.boingo.com

FON – www.fon.com

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5/24/07 – Irvine-based Integrien, which provides integrity management solutions, has announced the filing of three patents for new technology that addresses the measurement and management of distributed, interdependent systems in order to predict and prevent failures.

The company says these patent-pending methods are key to its competitive advantage and enable users of its Alive integrity management software to predict and prevent service slowdowns or outages before they impact the business.

Integrien says the first patent-pending technology, “System and Method for Generating and Using Fingerprints for Integrity Management,” relates to Integrien Alive’s Problem Fingerprint technology.  A Problem Fingerprint is a capture of the time series of abnormal events building up to a class of distributed application problems, which according to Integrien, provides an IT support team with a trail of application-specific evidence needed to determine resolution rapidly for the first occurrence of a problem and captures it for future reference.

The second patent filed, according to the company, titled “Self-Learning Integrity Management System and Related Methods,” covers Integrien’s overall capability to learn automatically what is normal in an enterprise’s IT infrastructure and analyze events in real-time to automatically identify potential problem areas.

Integrien says it also filed for a patent for the “Non-Parametric Method for Determination of Anomalous Event States in Complex Systems Exhibiting Non-Stationarity,” which it says is a method for determining out of normal behavior while simultaneously resolving issues with non-stationarity and data churn of network type data.

The company, which has a host of strategic partnerships with leading vendors, was recently awarded a High Tech Innovation Award from the AeA Orange County and Inland Empire Council.

Integrien – www.integrien.com

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5/24/07 – Fulcrum Microsystems, the Calabasas-based fabless semiconductor company, and Irvine-based Solarflare Communications have announced a collaboration on a new 10GBASE-T switch reference design that the companies say is the highest density, most cost-effective 10G Ethernet switch on the market today.

The companies made the announcement at the Interop show this week in Las Vegas, where they are conducting demonstrations of the switch.

Fulcrum and Solarflare say the new platform combines Solarflare’s 10Xpress 10GBASE-T physical layer technology with Fulcrum’s FocalPoint 24-port, low-latency Ethernet switch chip to create a 1U-high switch that features 20 10GBASE-T ports and four XFPs.

Fulcrum says its FocalPoint 10-Gigabit Ethernet switch chip family features the industry’s highest density and performance, lowest latency and greatest power efficiency for 10-Gigabit Ethernet switching.

Solarflare says its 10Xpress is the industry’s first standards-compliant 10GBASE-T PHY chip.  10Xpress enables 10-Gigabit connectivity via twisted pair copper—what the company says is a cost-effective alternative to expensive fiber infrastructures—while providing the familiar ease-of-use, which has helped copper fuel past Ethernet expansions.

Solarflare Communications – www.solarflare.com

Fulcrum Microsystems – www.fulcrummicro.com

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5/23/07 – Sonos, the Santa Barbara-based developer of wireless multi-room home music systems, today announced it has released a new version of the Sonos System Software that brings the Pandora personalized radio service to the Sonos Digital Music System.

Sonos says the addition of Pandora expands its home audio experience, providing access to more music services than any other whole-home digital music system on the market.   The free software upgrade is available to all registered Sonos customers via Sonos’ wireless handheld Controller, according to the company.

The integration of Pandora with the Sonos system allows users to create and play up to 100 radio stations based on their favorite songs or artists, according to Sonos.  Users can rate the music they hear to further refine the station’s playlist on the fly.

The partnership allows Sonos Digital Music System users to create and play Pandora radio stations all over the home without installing an application or turning on a computer.  

Sonos says it is offering new and current customers a free 30-day trial of Pandora starting today.

Sonos – www.sonos.com

Pandora – www.pandora.com

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5/23/07 – Monrovia-based Prolacta Bioscience, a biotech company that provides the only commercially available human milk fortifier made exclusively from human milk for infants in the neonatal intensive care unit, announced today that it has secured more than $12 million in funding.  It also says that former Baxter Bioscience president John Bacich has been named chairman of the board.

Alta Partners led the financing and was joined by DFJ Frontier, Arcturus Capital, DFJ Mercury, Funk Ventures, Phillip Capital, Gideon Hixon Fund and Draper Associates, according to Prolacta.  The company says Alison de Bord, director at Alta Partners, joined the board in connection with the financing.

Prolacta says it currently sells the first and only human milk fortifier, made from 100 percent human milk, for use in the neonatal intensive care unit.  Fortifier is added to a mother’s own milk, or to donor milk, which is critical for a preemie or sick baby’s ability to grow and develop.

The new funding will support greater commercialization and sales of Prolacta’s successful product line, as well as the development of additional products that meet the specific nutritional needs of these critically ill and premature infants, according to the company.

Alta Partners – www.altapartners.com

Prolacta Bioscience – www.prolacta.com

5/22/07 – Westlake Village-based wi-fi provider Xirrus today made a spate of announcements at the Interop show in Las Vegas.  Perhaps most significantly, the company debuted a solution for the remote powering of Xirrus Wi-Fi Arrays over Gigabit Ethernet data connections.  Xirrus says the solution streamlines wi-fi installation by reducing cabling and increasing deployment options.

In addition, the company announced the successful integration of the DiVitas Networks mobile-to-mobile convergence solution with its wi-fi technology.  DiVitas Networks operates in the converged-mobile market and is now the first vendor to ship a solution that converges cellular and wi-fi networks, thus enabling seamless roaming, back and forth, among disparate networks, according to the companies.

Xirrus also announced that its Wi-Fi Arrays have achieved Polycom’s VIEW (Voice Interoperability for Enterprise Wireless) Certification for use with SpectraLink wireless telephones.  Polycom says it is deploying 50 SpectraLink NetLink 8030 Wireless Telephones to the InteropNet team at the show that will utilize the Xirrus wi-fi network throughout the event to facilitate mobile communications for the tradeshow’s wireless environment.  Through extensive interoperability testing, Polycom’s VIEW Certification Program guarantees excellent voice quality on converged wi-fi networks, according to the companies.

As the official wi-fi network provider of Interop Las Vegas 2007, Xirrus says its Wi-Fi Arrays will be on display throughout the conference and live SpectraLink voice over wi-fi demonstrations are available at the Xirrus and Polycom booths.

Xirrus – www.xirrus.com

Interop – www.interop.com

5/22/07 – Santa Monica-based linguistic search technology startup Cognition Technologies announced that founder and CTO Kathleen Dahlgren, Ph.D., is a featured speaker today at the 2007 Semantic Technology Conference in San Jose.  The company says that Dahlgren’s presentation “Improved Precision and Recall with Linguistic Semantics,” will discuss how computational linguistics and an understanding of word meanings can dramatically enhance the capabilities of search technology.

Cognition is the creator of CognitionSearch, an evolutionary meaning-based linguistic search technology that the company says dramatically increases the precision and recall of search results when compared to traditional search methods and technologies.  Based on computational linguistic science, Cognition says the technology, in essence, teaches the computer the meaning of virtually all of the words and phrases in the common English language.  As a result, CognitionSearch “understands” both the user query and the content of the documents being searched, thereby delivering higher performance in the areas of precision and recall, the two main metrics that are commonly used to evaluate the effectiveness of search engine technology.

Dahlgren, an adjunct professor at UCLA, is the author of Cognition’s primary patent, “A Natural Language Understanding System,” which the company says describes a linguistic method for controlling the explosion of potential parses.  She has also published several scholarly articles on Linguistic Science and is the author of “Naïve Semantics for Natural Language Understanding.”  She has a doctorate in linguistics and has done post-doctoral work in computer science at UCLA.

Cognition Technologies – www.cognition.com

CognitionSearch – www.cognitionsearch.com

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5/21/07 – Leads360, the Los Angeles-based provider of on-demand lead management solutions, has announced the release of what it describes as a “Pull Distribution” engine.

Based on the functionality of its “Push Lead Distribution,” the company says Pull Distribution allows salespeople to review lead information prior to taking a lead and adding it to their queue.  The information available to users can be customized by an administrator to encourage users to take leads that best match their selling abilities, according to Leads360.

As a result, the company says that Pull Distribution’s main value lies in its ability to restrict sales people from getting leads unless they are ready to work them—addressing the problem of lost or unworked leads, and ensuring that leads are getting to the most appropriate team member in the shortest possible time by analyzing past performance trends and lead quality.

The service also allows a vendor to increase competition among users, ensure that leads are being worked by available resources, reduce the need for distribution recycling programs and increase the variety of distribution methods available to a sales team, according to Leads360.

Leads360 – www.leads360.com

5/21/07 – MyNextDeal.com, the Thousand Oaks-based vertical search engine for commercial real estate listings, has announced a new data sharing agreement with the Commercial Investment Multiple Listing Service, CIMLS.com.

MyNextDeal says it will index commercial property listings from CIMLS, further extending the exposure CIMLS members receive for their available property listings.

MyNextDeal’s commercial real estate search engine includes all commercial property categories, including office, industrial, retail, multifamily, hotel, land and specialty properties, according to the company.  The site currently features more than 400,000 commercial property listings and claims that it is the world's largest search engine for commercial real estate.

CIMLS.com is an open commercial real estate listing service.

MyNextDeal – www.mynextdeal.com

CIMLS.com – www.cimls.com

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5/21/07 – Calabasas-based fabless semiconductor producer Fulcrum Microsystems and Teranetics today announced a collaboration on what the companies describe as two pizza box-style switching platforms—a gigabit ethernet switch with 10GBASE-T uplinks and a dense 10GBASE-T switch.  Fulcrum and Teranetics made the announcement at the start of the Interop show in Las Vegas and say that both platforms represent complete reference designs that enable original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers to go to market quickly with differentiated solutions.

Both platforms will be a part of the Ethernet Alliance technology demonstrations taking place at the Interop show this week.

Fulcrum says its FocalPoint chip family is a breakthrough in 10-gigabit ethernet switch chips and features an industry-leading 200 nanoseconds of total latency.  Teranetics says it has developed innovative 10-gigabit ethernet solutions over copper infrastructures based on the 10GBASE-T standard with increased scalability and improved throughput at a dramatically reduced cost that makes ownership of 10-gigabit ethernet links possible for more data centers and enterprise networks.

Santa Clara-based Teranetics is a provider of silicon solutions that enable higher data rates over structured copper cabling. 

Fulcrum Microsystems – www.fulcrummicro.com

Teranetics – www.teranetics.com

Posted by startupbeat at 08:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/18/07 – Placentia-based VidShadow, an online video-sharing network, has acquired a minority interest in Los Angeles-based MyNuMo, an online community that lets its members create, share and sell mobile content.  The companies say the investment includes a partnership that will give users of both services unique content-sharing opportunities through a platform that is now expanded to include both desktop and mobile devices.

MyNuMo says its portal delivers independently created content that is rated and promoted by its users and delivered to any mobile phone.  The company recently announced a content partnership with SuperStock, a stock photography company, to convert images for download to mobile devices.

MyNuMo – www.mynumo.com

VidShadow – www.vidshadow.com

5/18/07 – Fonality, the Culver City-based open-source telephony company, today announced that after an in-depth evaluation to select a new voice-over-IP-capable phone system, BLADE Network Technologies, a former subsidiary of Nortel, selected Fonality’s PBXtra over a comparable system from Nortel.

Fonality says it was able to deliver a sophisticated and easy-to-use phone system at less than 50 percent of the cost of a proposed Nortel system.  The company claims that, in addition to Nortel, it is regularly beating out incumbents including Cisco and Alcatel in the small to medium size business market.

BLADE ultimately chose PBXtra because it is a fully-functional IP PBX system that is easier to scale, use and manage than a Nortel system, according to Fonality.

Fonality says PBXtra is now deployed in more than 2,000 businesses with over 45,000 users in 37 countries.

The company says all flavors of  PBXtra—Standard, Professional and Call Center—support advanced enterprise features like voice-over-IP calling, advanced auto-attendant features, telecommuters, branch offices, drag-and-drop call control, conferencing and intra-office intercom for a fraction of the cost of traditional phone systems with similar features.

Fonality - www.fonality.com

BLADE Network Technologies – www.bladenetwork.net

5/17/07 – The AeA Orange County and Inland Empire Council has announced that early-stage companies Axiom Microdevices and Integrien are winners of its 2007 High-Tech Innovation Award.

Axiom Microdevices, based in Irvine and founded in 2002, received the award in the Semiconductors category.  The company provides fully integrated power amplifiers for the cell phone market. 

Integrien, also based in Irvine, was given the award in the Software category.  The company provides integrity management solutions that help businesses maintain application availability and service levels.

The AeA says the theme of the awards, “The Race to Innovate,” focused on global competitive challenges facing America.  In conjunction with Project Tomorrow, AeA Orange County and Inland Empire Council recognized educators and students for their innovative use of math, science and technology in the classroom and the community, according to the group.

Last week’s award ceremony featured City of Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle as master of ceremonies, as well as a keynote address from Ed Coleman, chief executive officer of Gateway.

AeA – www.aeanet.org/orangecounty

Integrien - www.integrien.com

Axiom Microdevices - www.axiom-micro.com 

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5/17/07 – RCR Wireless News reports that Los Angeles-based mobile phone service and entertainment provider Amp’d Mobile has raised prices for its handsets across the board.  According to the article, the price hike ranges from $100 to $10, depending on the phone model.

Amp’d offers enhanced mobile phone service on a 3G network that includes original content and entertainment features.  Its handsets are specially equipped for Amp’d’s unique content services.  The company operates in the tough mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) space, along with Helio, another Los Angeles-based firm, among others.

Over the first five months of the year, Amp’d has announced several big content partnerships and  expanded to international markets.

Amp’d Mobile – www.ampdmobile.com

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5/16/07 – Pasadena-based Evolution Robotics, the provider of robotic technologies for consumer products, has announced that there are now more than two million products in the market powered by the company’s technologies.  Evolution Robotics, which made the announcement at the RoboBusiness 2007 show in Boston, partners with companies to help make their products smarter by delivering solutions for robotic vision, navigation and intelligence at a low cost.

The company says that over the last year, it has partnered with Bandai Networks, WowWee and Bandai Toys among others on a range of products including visual search applications for mobile phones to navigation solutions for smarter robotic vacuum cleaners.

Evolution says solutions currently being deployed on the market include ViPR, a vision solution that gives electronic devices the ability to detect and recognize complex visual patterns; NorthStar, a low cost localization solution that enables mobile robots (think robotic toys and vacuums) to intelligently navigate within indoor settings using a proprietary micro-GPS system; vSLAM, a vision-based navigation solution that lets robots autonomously build a map of their location and keep track of where they are based on what they see; and ERSP, a software development platform for robotics that includes tools for ViPR, vSLAM and the Evolution Robotics Software Architecture.

The company is an IdeaLab startup.

Evolution Robotics – www.evolution.com

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5/16/07 – Siderean, the El Segundo-based provider of relational navigation solutions, this week debuted Seamark Navigator 4.5, the newest version of the company’s information access platform.  Through its patented relational navigation technology, Siderean says Seamark Navigator 4.5 provides users with the ability to dynamically identify relationships between sets of information, create the context to drive action and increase user participation in the information flow.

Siderean says the new version of Seamark Navigator leverages semantic technology to enable users to harness content from across the enterprise and on the web, allowing users to master information access and discovery.  The product also enables more user participation, providing users with new tagging, voting, ranking and reviewing capabilities, according to the company.  

Siderean cites improvements in usability, scalability, security and management capabilities as key highlights of this release.

Siderean Software – www.siderean.com

5/15/07 – Irvine-based WiSpry, the fabless semiconductor company that develops low-cost, high-performance radio frequency micro-electro-mechanical systems for the wireless industry, today announced that Russell Garcia has been named president and CEO.  Jeffrey Hilbert, the company’s co-founder, former president and CEO, will remain on the company’s board and with WiSpry as executive vice president of development.

Garcia has more than 20 years of experience in the semiconductor industry, previously serving as vice president of marketing for Silicon Systems/Texas Instruments Storage Products.  He also led and executed the integration of product, customer and organizational strategies for Texas Instruments Storage Products Group.

Most recently, Garcia served as president and CEO of u-Nav Microelectronics, a venture backed fabless GPS semiconductor company.  In this role, he developed a new entity from a Finland research and development operation to a global semiconductor company.  Previous roles include technical and management positions at Plessey Semiconductors and Hughes Aircraft Company.

WiSpry - www.wispry.com

5/15/07 – Xirrus, the Westlake Village-based provider of high-performance, long-range wi-fi products, will be the official wireless provider for Interop Las Vegas 2007 this month.  Xirrus says its network will deliver over 8 gbps of wi-fi bandwidth across 500,000 square feet of the Mandalay Bay Convention Center using 11 of the company’s Wi-Fi Arrays.  Xirrus says it was awarded the deployment based on merit after a lengthy selection process and after providing a seamless wi-fi network at last year’s Interop New York.

The Xirrus Wi-Fi Array is the only device that utilizes high-gain, sectored antennas that deliver twice the range and four times more coverage than any current generation Access Point, according to the company.  The patented Wi-Fi Array platform integrates four, eight, or 16 radios with an onboard gigabit switch, wi-fi controller, firewall, and dedicated wi-fi threat sensor into a single ceiling mountable device.

Xirrus – www.xirrus.com

Interop – www.interop.com

Posted by startupbeat at 07:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/14/07 – Amp’d Mobile, the Los Angeles-based mobile phone service and content provider, and Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation, have announced that Amp’d has selected Teradata’s customer relationship management application for its marketing initiatives.

The companies say the first phase of the project will begin with Amp’d’s integration of 10 sources of operational data into Teradata’s enterprise data warehouse, allowing Amp’d’s marketing team to enhance customers’ experience through segmentation and creation of multichannel campaigns based on customer behavior.

The goal of the project, the companies say, will be to make mobile data such as ring tones, games and videos available at the “subscriber level,” with eventual integration of Amp’d’s handset and web site information.

Teradata and Amp’d also announced an agreement to develop a strategic partnership around this implementation.  As part of this agreement, Teradata says it will be able to leverage the intellectual property gained to augment its solutions for the wireless industry.

Amp’d Mobile – www.ampd.com

Teradata – www.teradata.com

Posted by startupbeat at 08:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/14/07 – Los Angeles-based Oversee.net, an online media company in the domain and online marketing services businesses, and Think Partnership today announced that Oversee and its operating company Revenue.net will use the ValidClick DirectAds private-label pay-per-click platform as part of its direct navigation advertiser solution.  As a result, the companies say advertisers can now bid on pay-per-click ads placed across Oversee’s search network.

The companies say the ValidClick DirectAds will provide Revenue.net and Oversee with features including a branded interface, flexible payment processing options, an XML deployment structure that allows Revenue.net to publish ads as they see fit, an API to allow effective campaign management for larger advertisers and agencies, and ValidClick’s patent-pending real-time click fraud detection and prevention technology.

Think Partnership, a provider of interactive performance-based marketing, says its ValidClick DirectAds service enables publishers to create and manage their own branded marketplace for advertisers.

Oversee.net – www.oversee.net

Think Partnership - www.thinkpartnership.com

Posted by startupbeat at 08:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/11/07 – Los Angeles-based mobile service provider Helio today announced the long-anticipated availability of its Ocean phone.  The Ocean is a dual-slider 3G phone combining a traditional numeric keypad and a separate full QWERTY keyboard in a single device.

The company also announced that Helio memberships are now available with unlimited voice minutes.  Called the “All-In” membership, the plan offers unlimited voice minutes at $145 per month and includes unlimited text messages, picture messages, 3G network access and Helio services.

Helio says the Ocean allows the merging of multiple services like instant messaging, text messaging, picture messaging and email from the major portals and Internet service providers in one location.  The company also says that because it runs over a nationwide high-speed 3G network, Ocean allows over-the-air music downloads, video-on-demand, a high-resolution camera, an HTML browser, GPS-enabled Google Maps for mobile, the Buddy Beacon location service, web search from the device home screen, integration of instant messenger presence into the address book, GPS tagging of photos and videos, and MySpace on Helio.

Helio has been the subject of much speculation about its financial viability moving forward, as quarterly reports from investors EarthLink and South Korea-based SK Telecom have continually showed the company losing money at a rapid clip.  However, the Ocean, with its dual-slider design and data services delivery ability, has garnered a lot of attention, cited by some as a possible “savior” for the company, and compared favorably by others to Apple’s iPhone.

Helio says the Ocean is now available at Helio Stores and through the company’s web sites for $295, and will be available at select GameStop and EB Games locations beginning May 21.

Helio - www.helio.com

Posted by startupbeat at 08:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/11/07 – eJamming, the real-time Internet collaboration technology and service for musicians, says that the company reached its first-month goal for sign-ups within three weeks of its public launch.  eJamming, which is based both locally in Valley Village and Florida, made its official debut earlier this year at the DEMO 07 show.

eJamming provides a virtual practice and recording studio for musicians and singers worldwide though which they can write, rehearse, record, learn and play together over the Internet.  The company says it has solved the latency issues that have hampered collaborative services of this type in the past.

According to chairman and president Alan Glueckman, more than 2600 musicians have signed up for the eJamming service and downloaded eJamming AUDiiO software since it was made available on March 28.  The company also says that about half of its members have already participated in three or more eJamming AUDiiO sessions, more than 83 percent have already recommended the service to a friend, and more than 60 percent cited “saving travel time and effort” as key to their interest in eJamming.

eJamming - www.ejamming.com

Posted by startupbeat at 08:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

5/10/07 – Santa Monica-based web media company Demand Media has announced that Charles S. Hilliard will join as president and chief financial officer effective June 1.  The company says Hilliard will report to Richard Rosenblatt, co-founder, chairman and CEO.

Hilliard most recently served as president and CFO of United Online. Demand Media says Hilliard will lead the company’s finance team as well as its general business operations.

Hilliard has served as United Online’s CFO since April 1999, when he joined its predecessor, NetZero, and was promoted to president of United in May 2006.

Prior to United Online, Hilliard was an investment banker for nine years with Morgan Stanley & Co. and Merrill Lynch & Co. where he was involved with the execution of over $34 billion of strategic and financing transactions.  Hilliard graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration from USC and earned an MBA from the University of Michigan.  He began his career as an accountant with Arthur Andersen & Co.

Demand and its fully-owned subsidiary eNom recently released its ME.tv domain and online video product.  The company also owns a number of web content properties including Answerbag.com and eHow.

Demand Media - www.demandmedia.com

Posted by startupbeat at 07:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/10/07 – Xirrus, the Westlake Village-based provider of high-performance, long-range wi-fi products, has been recognized by the Pacific Coast Business Times as the Technology Company to Watch for 2007.

The honor came as part of the “101 One Hundred,” a report that honors the top 50 private companies, 50 public companies and 10 companies to watch.  This is the sixth anniversary of the Pacific Coast Business Times’ 101 One Hundred.

The Pacific Coast Business Times is a weekly business journal founded in March 2000 for residents and businesses in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties.  News content focuses on local business news especially in the Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo technology corridor along Highway 101.

Pacific Coast Business Times – www.pacbiztimes.com

Xirrus - www.xirrus.com

Posted by startupbeat at 07:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/9/07 – EI Solutions, the systems integration arm of Pasadena-based Energy Innovations, today announced that it has been awarded the contract to develop the Pacific Northwest’s largest solar-powered generating facility for Puget Sound Energy, the utility subsidiary of Puget Energy.  The company says the new 500-kilowatt solar-powered generating facility will roughly double Washington State’s entire output of solar power and will be located alongside the utility’s Wild Horse wind-power facility in central Washington.

EI Solutions says it topped a field of 12 finalists to design and construct the solar-power installation, which will be four times larger than any existing solar facility in the Northwest.  In addition, this will be the first commercial installation to use solar panels manufactured in Washington State, according to EI Solutions.

The $3.7 million Wild Horse solar project will include more than 2,500 photovoltaic solar panels, mounted in two separate locations across five acres.  EI Solutions says it is expected to begin construction of the solar project in June, with final completion planned before year’s end, with the facility’s designed output expected to serve the equivalent energy needs of about 300 households.

Energy Innovations is an IdeaLab startup.

EI Solutions – www.eispv.com

Energy Innovations - www.energyinnovations.com

Posted by startupbeat at 08:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/9/07 – Santa Monica-based Boingo Wireless, the wi-fi network aggregator and operator, today announced it has entered into a roaming agreement with Tokyo-based livedoor that adds the company’s Tokyo metropolitan wi-fi network to the Boingo Roaming System.

Boingo says that with thousands of power-pole mounted access points, livedoor’s network covers 80 percent of the outdoor area located within the Yamanote Line, the circular train line that defines the boundaries of metropolitan Tokyo.

The agreement with livedoor marks the second Asian hot zone to join the Boingo Roaming System and, according to the company, is the latest installment in Boingo’s continuing effort to expand its network into business hubs throughout China and Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia.

In a nod to international business travelers, Boingo claims to combine more than 60,000 hot spot locations from more than 150 leading wi-fi operators into one worldwide network.  The company says its users can connect to any of these locations with a single account using the company’s free wi-fi client software, which combines more than 660 network names into one “Boingo Wireless” network to simplify identifying and connecting to commercial wi-fi networks.

Boingo, founded in 2001 by EarthLink and Helio founder Sky Dayton, also provides access to this network to partners that include BT Infonet, EarthLink, Fiberlink, Nextel Communications, Verizon Business and Telecom Italia.

Boingo Wireless - www.boingo.com

Posted by startupbeat at 08:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/8/07 – Bid4Spots, the Encino-based online auction of radio advertising time, today announced the launch of a new reverse auction marketplace for radio airtime in the United Kingdom.

The company says the U.K. auction was a response to a request from commercial broadcasters there, who evaluated various electronic platforms and chose Bid4Spots for its innovative approach to selling inventory.  Bid4Spots U.K. officially launches with its first auction in Q3 this year, with the weekly auctions being held every Thursday, according to the company.  Bid4Spots U.K. is being advised by U.K. radio specialist RadioWorks, with Paul Mitchard, a radio advertising veteran, appointed to manage operations.

Bid4Spots says its U.S. marketplace for terrestrial radio is currently used by more than 2,300 radio stations nationwide, more than 1,300 advertisers and more than 260 ad agencies participating.

The company faces potential competition from Google, which last year purchased dMarc Broadcasting in a bid to enter radio ad sales.  So far, however, implementation of the Google system has been limited.

Bid4Spots utilizes reverse auctions that allow radio stations to compete for advertisers’ dollars and bid the ad rates down.  The idea is to give advertisers and ad agencies simple access to radio at competitive rates, and broadcasters an easy, flexible way to sell last-minute airtime, increase revenue and attract new advertisers.

Bid4Spots - www.bid4spots.com

Posted by startupbeat at 06:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/8/07 – Culver City-based Fonality, the open source telephony company, has announced a partnership with PC Mall for distribution of the company’s business phone system, PBXtra.  PC Mall is a large direct marketer of technology products to business, government, educational institutions and consumers.

The companies claim that the deal makes PC Mall one of the first direct marketers to sell business class voice-over-IP phone systems directly to small-and-medium size business customers.

Fonality says its small business-focused PBXtra Standard, PBXtra Professional and PBXtra Call Center support advanced enterprise features like voice-over-IP calling, advanced auto-attendant features, telecommuters, branch offices, drag-and-drop call control, conferencing and intra-office intercom for a fraction of the cost of traditional phone systems with similar features.

Fonality - www.fonality.com

Posted by startupbeat at 06:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/8/07 – Westlake Village-based Xirrus, the provider of high-performance, long-range wi-fi products, announced today that its family of wireless Arrays has been certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance certification program.  The certification ensures users of the strongest modes of wi-fi security and interoperability using an advanced enterprise wireless security infrastructure, according to Xirrus.

The latest certifications cover interoperability across specific wi-fi standards, and wireless security for specific systems that provide government-grade security mechanisms for personal and enterprise use.

Xirrus says its patented Array platform integrates 4, 8 or 16 access points with an onboard gigabit switch, wireless controller, firewall and a dedicated threat sensor into a single device.  In addition to the family of Arrays, Xirrus also offers a centralized management system, RF planning tools, and wireless intrusion detection and prevention products.

Xirrus – www.xirrus.com

Wi-Fi Alliance – www.wi-fi.org

Posted by startupbeat at 06:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/7/07 – El Segundo-based Ripple, a company that delivers hyper-local content on flat screen panels in retail locations, today unveiled a new online self-service advertising tool that the company says enables any business in the country to simply and cost-effectively create, place and manage ad campaigns on its network.

Ripple says it has built a network of more than 400 high traffic locations throughout Southern California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii, reaching nearly 10 million individual consumers per month.

The company says it is now aggressively expanding its footprint with retail location partners, and expects to reach a few thousand locations nationwide by the end of this year.

The content served to each location in the Ripple Network is both geographically and demographically specific, according to Ripple.  Local sports scores, weather, traffic, news and information from top-tier content partners is displayed on HD television screens at locations that include coffee shops, bookstores, shopping malls, fast food outlets and juice bars, with advertising appearing alongside the content.

Ripple was founded in 2004 and received its initial funding from Trinity Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Ripple – www.rippletv.com

Posted by startupbeat at 08:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/7/07 – Los Angeles-based security software developer CyberDefender today announced the availability of its CyberDefender safeSEARCH toolbar.  The product is a free browser plug-in that enables Internet users to receive real-time phishing attack warnings as soon as new threats are discovered and, according to the company, offers real-time protection from common online scams designed to steal personal information.

CyberDefender says safeSEARCH relies upon its patent-pending anti-phishing technology to alert users to web sites that the company has determined to be unsafe.

The toolbar, available to users of Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, is also designed to warn users about online hijacking attempts as they occur—detecting whether the URL that a user arrived at matches the original URL generated in the search results from the safeSEARCH results box, says CyberDefender. 

The company was founded in 2003 and says its products have been downloaded by more than 12 million consumers.  Investors include ARC Investment Partners, ITU Ventures, Oceana Partners and Centrecourt Asset Management.

CyberDefender Corporation - www.cyberdefender.com

Posted by startupbeat at 08:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/4/07 – Santa Monica-based eNom, a domain wholesaler and wholly-owned subsidiary of Demand Media, announced today it sold approximately $500,000 in .TV names in the first 24 hours of the domain’s availability.  The .TV top-level domains (TLDs) were released to market late Monday afternoon by eNom after a five-month hiatus.

The release of the domain names this week was timed in conjunction with the introduction of Me.tv, what Demand calls the first integrated suite of proprietary social media tools that allow anyone to own, program and share their own personal video-centric web site with social networking features and content controlled by them.  The company says the tools are provided free with a .TV domain name purchased through Me.tv or through an eNom reseller.

Demand Media – www.demandmedia.com

eNom – www.enom.com

Me.tv - www.me.tv

Posted by startupbeat at 07:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/4/07 – Santa Monica-based Teleflip, which offers a service that allows the receipt of email and text messages on any mobile phone from any PC, has announced it is been named a recipient of the prestigious Red Herring 100 Spring award—given to the top 100 private technology companies headquartered in North America, based on the magazine’s criteria.

As part of the award recognition, Teleflip is presenting this week at the Red Herring Spring 2007 event.

Teleflip was founded in 2004 and recently debuted its flipMail service that allows users to have emails delivered directly to their cell phone, regardless of wireless carrier or mobile handset, from any email account or service.

Red Herring – www.redherring.com

Teleflip - www.teleflip.com

Posted by startupbeat at 07:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/4/07 – Xirrus, the Westlake Village-based provider of high-performance, long-range wi-fi products, has announced that Technology Marketing Corporation’s (TMC) Communications Solutions has awarded the company a Product of the Year award for the Xirrus Wi-Fi Array.

The Xirrus Wi-Fi Array is the only device that utilizes high-gain, sectored antennas that deliver two times the range and four times more coverage than any current generation access point, according to the company.

Communications Solutions says its Product of the Year award “recognizes vision, leadership and attention to detail.”

Communications Solutions – www.tmcnet.com/comsol

Xirrus - www.xirrus.com

Posted by startupbeat at 07:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/3/07 – The Los Angeles-area technology community includes a diverse group of companies in a wide range of industries—from the very technical to products and services that bridge technology and usability for the masses or those with specialized interests.  Patricia Handschiegel, for one, has managed to combine a background in technology with a love for fashion in Los Angeles-based StyleDiary.net.

The site combines online publishing with social networking to create a fashion-focused online community in the tradition of MySpace or Friendster for those who want to show and share fashions and related information. 

The company was founded in 2004, and founder and CEO Handschiegel says it began simply as an online magazine that included articles with photos sent in from readers. 

“I had been working in technology and moonlighting in the fashion industry as a journalist and stylist and thought a site that focused on the style of real, everyday people would have legs,” said Handschiegel.

The real differentiator for the site is the community aspect, which was implemented in May of 2005.  StyleDiary is now a fully-formed platform for sharing styles, getting fashion advice, and of course, connecting with other style enthusiasts.  Handschiegel says that the site includes entries from people from more than 72 countries.

A quick scan immediately reveals the popularity of the site's social networking features, where users create profiles and upload photos of outfits and fashion purchases, and share wish lists.  Users can search these “diaries” to see what others have uploaded to the site.

But Handschigel also emphasizes the editorial content, and says she sees StyleDiary as a media company, not just a fashion-focused social network.  Recent articles included “wedding style” and “building a gym wardrobe.”

The sheer number of active personal diaries indicates a solid member base, and while the company does not divulge subscriber numbers, Handschigel says the site gets more than 4.5 million page views a month.  Anecdotally, she says industry buyers, designers and trend forecasting firms visit the site to monitor trends.

The company currently relies solely on advertising for its revenue, but Handschigel hinted at new revenue-generating initiatives planned for later this year.  The company hasn’t raised outside funding to this point.

StyleDiary.net - www.stylediary.net

Posted by startupbeat at 07:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/3/07 – Irvine-based Integrien today announced that former Mercury Interactive CFO and IBM Tivoli Systems president David J. Murphy will join the company’s board of directors.

Murphy has more than 25 years experience in enterprise software companies, and most recently served as senior vice president and CFO of Mercury Interactive Corporation.  

As a member of its board of directors, Integrien says Murphy will bring significant knowledge about the needs of Integrien’s market, as well as experience in building high-growth businesses.

Integrien is a provider of integrity management solutions that help businesses maintain application availability and service levels.  The company says its Alive product pinpoints the source of problems when a distributed application suffers performance degradation or outage.

Integrien - www.integrien.com

Posted by startupbeat at 07:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/3/07 – Fonality, the Culver City-based open source telephony company, today announced that more than 1,000 businesses are using the company’s PBXtra Call Center Edition software to deploy call center operations.  The company says its product allows small-and-medium size businesses (SMBs) to run a call center operation at a fraction of the price of traditional systems, allowing them to successfully compete with larger contact centers.

The PBXtra Call Center Edition, according to Fonality, is a full-featured call center for SMBs that supports agents working on premise, at home or from any remote location, and includes feature-rich capabilities such as branch office agent sharing, on-the-fly recording, barging, monitoring, text whisper/coach, web and phone agent log-in, real-time and historical graphical queues and agent presence management.

This milestone follows on the heels of Fonality’s announcement that it reached the 2,000 customer mark for its standard PBXtra system.  The company has been one of the more active early-stage companies in the Los Angeles area this year.

Fonality - www.fonality.com

Posted by startupbeat at 07:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/2/07 – Los Angeles-based Reunion.com has entered into a strategic partnership with Wink, a search engine that indexes individuals’ online profiles.  The companies say the deal is a multi-year, multi-million dollar agreement where Reunion.com members and its affiliates will have access to Wink People Search.  In addition, the companies say Reunion.com will be the exclusive distributor of Wink People Search Services to other “people search” sites.

Reunion.com says it now has 28 million users, and claims it is adding nearly one million new members each month.  The company launched in 2002 and recently completed a $25 million round of funding.

Reunion.com – www.reunion.com

Wink - www.wink.com

Posted by startupbeat at 07:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/2/07 – DomainSponsor, Los Angeles-based Oversee.net’s domain monetization business, today announced that it has partnered with NICIT, a company in the German-speaking domain name aftermarket, to hold a live auction at the DOMAINfest Amsterdam show.  The company says it will be the first live domain auction of its kind.

DomainSponsor says high value domains will be auctioned live on site at the show, with the balance of the domain names being offered through NICIT’s online auction site.  Participants can submit domains, pre-bid and bid during the live auction.

DOMAINfest is a two-day regional seminar and networking event created specifically to respond to the needs of “domainers” operating in the European business environment.  The event takes place May 16-17 at the Hilton Amsterdam.

DomainSponsor – www.domainsponsor.com

Oversee.net – www.oversee.net

DOMAINfest - www.domainfest.com

Posted by startupbeat at 07:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/2/07 – Metabeam, a digital media technology company, announced yesterday that it is extending the functionality of its Metamenu media navigation development product.  The company, founded in 2005, is based in Manhattan Beach and Seattle.

Metabeam says the new modules in its Metamenu product for digital media artists build on existing functionality to enable producers to mix, match and customize design elements to fit the needs of their content.

Many of the new Metamenu modules are available now to members of the Media Experience Trade Association and are being incorporated into the web services Metamenus.com and SimpleROM.com, according to Metabeam.  Additionally, the company says it is participating in Sonic’s Extended Developer Group, a certified program for the creation of third-party plug-ins for its high-definition authoring platform Scenarist.

Metabeam - www.metabeam.com

Posted by startupbeat at 07:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/1/07 – Santa Monica-based Demand Media, the web media company, and its wholly owned subsidiary and wholesale registrar, eNom, have announced that premium “.TV” domain names will be made available today.

The company says it is bringing the .TV names to market in conjunction with the release of proprietary tools to create video-centric web sites with social networking.  Demand says the tools will come with every .TV registration, free of charge.  Nearly 53,000 names that have been off the market for close to five months will be available at www.domainsindemand.tv.

In December, Demand announced a strategic alliance with VeriSign to leverage Demand’s new media platform to increase .TV registrations.  The company was co-founded by former Intermix Media/MySpace.com CEO Richard Rosenblatt and runs a number of web content properties including eNom, Answerbag.com and eHow.

Demand Media - www.demandmedia.com

Posted by startupbeat at 07:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/1/07 – Marina Del Rey-based Simula Labs has changed its name to DevZuz.  The company says the new name reflects a refined focus on enabling enterprises to take advantage of open source technologies throughout the application development life cycle.

The company says the DevZuz name is part of its evolution from an open source venture partner with more than 55 customers to a stand-alone vendor offering the delivery platform to connect businesses directly to open source projects and developers.

DevZuz says it gives enterprise IT organizations, which require access to open source components for faster time-to-market delivery capabilities, professional-grade backing of a subscription support infrastructure and enforceable service level agreements for all DevZuz-hosted open source artifacts.

To complete its transition from a venture partner, DevZuz has sold its interest, including technology, intellectual property and customers, in LogicBlaze, Inc. to IONA Technologies.

The company recently completed its consolidated Series A financing of $9.25 million with backing from Mission Ventures and Redpoint Ventures.

DevZuz - www.devzuz.com

Posted by startupbeat at 07:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

5/1/07 – El Segundo-based Siderean Software has announced it has entered into a reseller agreement with Inxight Federal Systems, a provider of government software solutions for information discovery.  Siderean, which provides relational navigation solutions that allow users to sort through and organize information, says that effective immediately, it will be added to Inxight’s GSA-approved price list.

The GSA is a centralized federal procurement agency that offers a fast and cost-efficient method for government agencies to procure products at a certified price and without an extensive RFP process.

Inxight says its software structures unstructured data by “reading” text and extracting important entities, such as people, places and organizations.  It also extracts facts and events involving these entities, such as travel events, purchase events and organizational relationships.  Siderean says its Seamark Navigator product then builds on this newly structured data, providing an intuitive, easy-to-use relational navigational interface that allows users to quickly put multi-source content in context to drive improved discovery, access and participation across the information flow.

Siderean – www.siderean.com

Inxight Federal Systems - www.inxight.com

Posted by startupbeat at 07:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5/1/07 – Westlake Village-based Xirrus, provider of high-performance, long-range wi-fi products, announced today that the Best Western Antlers Hotel in Vernal, Utah, has deployed a Xirrus Wi-Fi network throughout the property, delivering free wi-fi access to its guests.

Best Western Antlers says it chose Xirrus after having previously deployed two other wi-fi networks from other vendors that delivered spotty coverage and failed to provide their guests with reliable high-speed access.

The announcement is part of a series of recent customer wins and deployments for Xirrus.  Others have included a hospital in Liverpool, England, Charleston Southern University in South Carolina and Frost & Sullivan’s Mobile and Wireless Enterprise Conference in March.

Xirrus - www.xirrus.com

Posted by startupbeat at 07:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)