In This Update:
• Google Begins Effort to Find Internet Blockers
• Live Cargo Buys CMWare
• Mobile Advertising Start-Up AdMob Raises Another $12.5 Million
• YouTube Said to Be Near Hollywood Deal
• Kodak Posts Loss, to Cut up to 4,500 Jobs
• Obama Meets with Technology CEOs
• VirtuOz Raises $11.4 Million for Virtual Agents that Learn
• WPP Invests $25 Million In Online Audience Researcher Omniture
• GamesCampus and Cybersports Move into Online Sports
• Google Exec Katie Jacobs Stanton Joins Obama Administration
• Eight Mobile Technologies to Watch in 2009, 2010
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Google Begins Effort to Find Internet Blockers
REUTERS
Google Inc on Wednesday unveiled a plan aimed at eventually letting computer users determine whether providers like Comcast Corp are inappropriately blocking or slowing their work online. The scheme is the latest bid in the debate over network neutrality, which pits content companies like Google against some Internet service providers. The ISPs say they need to take reasonable steps to manage ever-growing traffic on their networks for the good of all users. Content and applications companies fear the providers have the power to discriminate, favoring some traffic over others. Google will provide academic researchers with 36 servers in 12 locations in the United States and Europe to analyze data, said its chief Internet guru, Vint Cerf, known as the “father of the Internet.”
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Live Cargo Buys CMWare
PE HUB
Live Cargo Inc., Greensboro, N.C. (www.livecargo.com), a leading provider of mobile streaming, IPTV, web-based social networking and an infrastructure and data center for storage of user generated content, has acquired CMWare Inc., Plainsboro, N.J. (www.cmware.com), a mobile marketing technology company. The sale was an equity and cash transaction and was facilitated by Progress Partners Inc., who was retained as the investment bank(1), to assist with the asset sale process, which included technology assets and intellectual property. Commenting on the acquisition, Live Cargo’s CEO, Doug Young, said, “I see this as a strategic fit in the telecommunications market as well as other vertical markets where large numbers of subscribers are located, such as education, medical, real estate and social networking sites (like Facebook).
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Disclaimer: CMWare is a former client of Progress Partners

Mobile Advertising Start-Up AdMob Raises Another $12.5 Million
CNET
Mobile advertising start-up AdMob announced on its blog on Thursday that it has added $12.5 million to the Series C funding round that it began amassing last fall. The money comes from the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund and Northgate Capital, adding to the round’s existing lead investor Sequoia Capital and repeat investor Accel Partners. The funding brings its Series C total to $28.2 million.AdMob recently launched a business unit specifically to handle advertisements on Google’s Android platform. The reason for the Series C round, the company said, is to keep up growth, even as the advertising industry takes a hit. It’ll be focusing on some new international markets, as well as expanding its sales and business development teams in the United States.
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YouTube Said to Be Near Hollywood Deal
NEW YORK TIMES
YouTube and the William Morris Agency, the Hollywood talent agency, are close to signing a deal that would place the company’s clients in made-for-the-Web productions. The deal would underscore the ways that distribution models are evolving on the Internet. Already, some actors and other celebrities are creating their own content for the Web, bypassing the often arduous process of developing a program for a television network. The YouTube deal would give William Morris clients an ownership stake in the videos they create for the Web site. Two people close to the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by their companies to speak publicly about the deal, described the arrangement as YouTube’s most sweeping attempt to date to add professionally produced videos to its Web site, which mostly features amateur videos uploaded by users.
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Kodak Posts Loss, to Cut up to 4,500 Jobs
REUTERS
Eastman Kodak Co posted a sharp quarterly loss and said it would cut up to 4,500 jobs this year after suffering a dramatic decline in demand for digital cameras and commercial printing equipment. The report sent shares of Kodak down 25 percent to a historical low, making the company one of the biggest percentage losers on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday. The maker of cameras, picture frames and consumer printers and provider of commercial printing services, also plans another round of restructuring to cut costs, the latest in a string of such moves dating back to at least 2003.
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Obama Meets with Technology CEOs
CNET
As part of his efforts to advocate for the passage of the so-called “stimulus” bill, President Obama met with a number of chief executives from the technology sector and other industries on Wednesday to discuss the economy. Tech company leaders present at the meeting included IBM’s Sam Palmisano, Google’s Eric Schmidt, Applied Materials’ Mike Splinter, Motorola’s Greg Brown, and Micron’s Steve Appleton. Obama called it a “sober” meeting but said the economic package moving its way through Congress will create more jobs and lay a foundation for long-term growth.
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VirtuOz Raises $11.4 Million for Virtual Agents that Learn
TECH CRUNCH
VirtuOz , a company that develops virtual support agents, has closed a $11.4 million Series B funding round led by Mohr Davidow Ventures, with Galileo Partners and Eric Hahn with Inventures Group also participating. The company’s “Virtual Agents” are basically intelligent chat bots that can walk users though sales, help, and support questions automatically. Virtual Agents generally appear as chat avatars (you can see one below), and are apparently so realistic that the company says that 69% of customers end their conversation with a “Goodbye”.
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WPP Invests $25 Million In Online Audience Researcher Omniture
PAIDCONTENT
WPP Group has made a $25 million investment in web analytics firm Omniture as the two plan are putting together a marketing consultancy. The move represents the direction WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell has charted since buying audience researcher TNS Media Intelligence this past fall. As Sir Martin told me at an industry conference last month, the company wants to be seen as having broader offerings than just creative advertising or media buying. Driving ROI and offering an array of consumer insights is the best way to attract and retain marketers.
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GamesCampus and Cybersports Move into Online Sports
VENTURE BEAT
Taking on giants is part of the startup life. Two young game companies are taking on the giant sports franchises of traditional video game companies by launching online sports leagues. That’s unexplored territory that, for some reason, the giants haven’t dominated yet. GamesCampus of San Jose, Calif., has adapted an online baseball game created by Korea’s Neowiz to the U.S. market and will launch an online sports title under the name MLB Dugout Heroes. It secured the license for the online game from Major League Baseball. The free-to-play game will compete in a way with more traditional MLB console titles that sell for $60 from Take-Two Interactive.
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Google Exec Katie Jacobs Stanton Joins Obama Administration
PAIDCONTENT
Google CEO Eric Schmidt may not be interested in the new federal CTO post but a member of his team is headed to Washington, D.C.: business development exec Katie Jacobs Stanton is joining the Obama administration as “director of citizen participation,” MediaMemo reported and we have confirmed. As Peter Kafka notes, the title doesn’t clearly define what Stanton’s responsibilities will be when her new job begins in March. But given her background at Google -she worked on the search giant’s election team, on its Open Social initiative, and helped launch Google Finance in 2006-she likely will be involved in the development of online tools that help Americans get more involved with what’s going on at the White House. Stanton joined Google in 2003, early enough to be in on the IPO; she previously served as a production manager at Yahoo.
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Eight Mobile Technologies to Watch in 2009, 2010
READ WRITE WEB
Analyst firm Gartner has just released a report that highlights eight up-and-coming mobile technologies which they predict will impact the mobile industry over the course of the next two years. According to Nick Jones, vice president and analyst at the firm, the technologies they’ve identified will evolve quickly and will likely pose issues that will have to be addressed by short term strategies. The eight technologies identified include the following: Bluetooth 3.0, Mobile User Interfaces + Mobile Web/Widgets, Location Awareness, Near Field Communication, 802.11n & Cellular Broadband, and Display Technologies.
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