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McAfee to Pay $465 Million for Secure Computing
REUTERS
McAfee Inc. the world’s No. 2 security software maker, said on Monday it plans to buy Internet security company Secure Computing Corp for $465 million in cash.The move gives McAfee a suite of software, services and hardware products to protect hackers from getting past the perimeters of computer networks. McAfee is already the No. 2 provider of anti-virus software. Symantec Corp. is the largest.
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SanDisk Announces SlotMusic, a New Way of Distributing Music
PULSE2.0
SanDisk Corporation has announced today that they are working on a new way to sell music. Four of the major music labels are backing the initiative which is called SlotMusic. SlotMusic will contain full albums distributed through a MicroSD memory card. Wal-Mart and Best Buy are a couple of the first retailers that will be selling the SlotMusic. The four labels participating in the new form of music distribution is Universal, Sony BMG, EMI, and Warner Music Group.
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Comcast Details Changes for Managing Web Traffic
REUTERS
Comcast Corp has provided U.S. regulators details of how it plans to change the way it manages Web traffic over its high speed Internet network without blocking any applications or content.The move comes after the Federal Communications Commission voted last month to uphold a complaint that Comcast had violated the regulator’s open-Internet principles by hindering peer-to-peer traffic from applications such as BitTorrent.
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Microsoft Authorizes $40 Billion Buyback; Ups Dividend
PAIDCONTENT
The Microsoft board has authorized the company to spend $40 billion on buying its own shares through September 30, 2013. In addition, the company is upping its quarterly dividend to $.13 per share, from $.11 previously. No doubt the company will keep making acquisitions, but once Yahoo fell through, there was nothing out there likely to move the needle. Hence a big share buyback was always a possibility. Just last month, UBS analyst Heather Bellini predicted a major buyback. Of course, the company isn’t obligated to spend the whole $40 billion. In the announcement, the company says it may tap the debt markets from time to time for working capital and to fund the share buy.
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Answers.com Writes off Brainboost Acquisition; Does Away with Direct Ad Sales
PAIDCONTENT
Last week, the troubled Answers.com filed an S-3 with SEC. In it, it discloses that it has written off its acquisition of Brainboost Technology, the developer of the Brainboost Answer Engine (BAE) that it bought in December 2005 for about $4.56 million, $4.0 million of which was in cash. The reason? It says that its WikiAnswers site of user-gen questions is growing much faster, and both BAE and WikiAnswers are effectively focused on similar areas, answering complex natural language questions.
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Online Video Syndication Service Voxant Acquired By Anystream
PAIDCONTENT
Online video encoding and content management firm Anystream has acquired another small vendor in its sector: it has bought out online video syndication service Voxant. Financial details were not disclosed. Both of the companies are based in Virginia, and share two venture investors SoftBank Capital and Court Square Ventures, which probably helped in the deal. Voxant is an online video syndication provider, tying up with mainstream and long-tail content providers and syndicating it to its network of third-party websites. It received a $10.5 million round back in 2006, from SoftBank, Court Square, and Longworth Venture Partners.
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A New Kind of Venture Capitalist Makes Small Bets on Young Firms
NEW YORK TIMES
From the day he founded Etsy in 2005, Rob Kalin refused to raise money from venture capital firms to expand his company, which hoped to bring the sale of handmade crafts from small local fairs to the international marketplace of the Web. He met with several top firms, but they all wanted a 20 percent stake in his start-up company. When one of his board members advised him to visit Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures in 2006, he went grudgingly, certain the meeting would turn out like the others. Instead, Mr. Kalin was impressed when Mr. Wilson said he would settle for less than 5 percent of the company in the first round of fund-raising.
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CBS Launches Eyemobile for iPhone to Target Citizen Journalists
TECHCRUNCH
CBS on Monday announced that Eyemobile for iPhone is available now in the iTunes App store for those users that want to submit photo and video content to the company’s new citizen journalism site, CBSeyemobile.com. Eyemobile for iPhone lets users upload content from their iPhones and view what others are uploading while on-the-go. If they so choose, users can comment on the uploads, as well. CBS Eyemobile is a direct competitor to similar services already offered from cable networks.
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Swaptree Raises 3.3$ Million
TECHCRUNCH
The company, which is creating a network of users who swap books, CDs, DVDs and video games, just raised a third round of financing – $3.3 million from Safeguard Scientifics. The total raised over three rounds is now $5.6 million.To create a trade the company finds up to four users who have and want items that form a match. Then everyone prints out address forms from the site and pays the shipping to mail it directly to the next person.This is a model that was tried and later abandoned by the recently acquired Peerflix. Peerflix was DVD trading only, though, and charged a transaction fee. Swaptree doesn’t charge a transaction fee, and the group-trade approach that covers books, music, movies and games means lots more matches.
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