Intel Capital, which is the financial and investment wing of the world’s largest computer chips manufacturer, Intel Corporation has announced that, it has invested $25 million in seven start up companies. Intel has been trying to support start ups especially in the times of the global economic recession, especially financially.

Some of the start up companies that have been provided with capital from Intel are, U.S.-based Joyent and Active Storage. Crucialtec from Korea, Gudeng Precision Industrial Co from Taiwan, V-cube from Japan, Phoenix New Media from China and NeuString from United Arab Emirates.

The latest rounds of investments by Intel Capital is an effort by Intel Corp. to rasie the demand for its products by paving the way for more and more start ups, that would then purchase equipments and other necessary hardware from Intel Corporation. Till this date, Intel’s total investment in companies has been valued at an astounding $219 million. Along with today’s seven funding, Intel Capital has also announced that, it in the process of finalizing ten more funding contracts with other start ups.

Here is an excerpt from the Press Release given by Intel Corp.:

“Joyent, Inc. (Sausalito, Calif.) provides cloud computing infrastructure and services to help customers rapidly and efficiently develop, deploy and manage Web applications and sites, and to improve datacenter performance. Joyent’s unique cloud computing technologies produce unprecedented performance, utilization rates, savings and security. Joyent will use the funding to accelerate its product development and for increased global expansion.

Active Storage (Los Angeles) provides a robust media storage platform for Apple-based infrastructures. The company’s hardware RAID solutions are aimed toward the business and creative industries, particularly video post-production, broadcast, publishing, education and science. The company intends to focus this round of funding on R&D and sales and marketing.

Crucialtec (Cheon-Ahn City, Korea) is a manufacturer of specialized input devices that utilize optical technology for mobile phones, smart phones and IPTV remote controllers. Crucialtec’s Optical Trackball enables users to enjoy the full internet experience with mobile products as they do with a PC. Intel Capital’s investment will help with the development of a new generation of mobile solutions for the global market by providing Crucialtec with additional working capital.

Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (Taipei, Taiwan) is a semiconductor front-end equipment manufacturer that helps customers enhance product yield and reduce production cost by providing customized products with innovative design concepts. Presently, Gudeng Precision is the world’s leading photomask and wafer handling total solution provider, and the company’s products are accepted and certificated by worldwide tier-one customers. Gudeng Precision will use the funding to expand business in China and enhance working capital.

V-Cube (Tokyo) develops and markets Web-based videoconferencing systems. Its flagship “nice to meet you” service enables one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many interactive real-time communications and on-demand services over the Internet. Currently, V-cube is the largest service provider in Japan for Web-delivered visual communications. The investment will be used to further optimize the service for access from mobile Internet devices and netbooks, and to stream high-quality video over WiMAX wireless broadband networks.

NeuString (Dubai, UAE) delivers predictive analytics software and consulting services to mobile network operators, helping companies to achieve greater financial performance. The NeuString Optiprizer software allows operators to optimize pricing, reduce leakage and get real-time reporting on operational metrics. The investment from Intel Capital will be used for sales and marketing build-out and new product development.

Phoenix New Media (Beijing) provides dedicated and comprehensive portals to well-educated Chinese audiences of over 100 million. The portals, which are available on internet and mobile platforms, provide news and information generated from in-depth interviews, commentary columns, and social networks. The key features offered by Phoenix New Media help address Chinese netizens’ diverse needs on information, expression, interaction and entertainment.”

Via Venture Beat.

Joyent, which is an internet cloud service provider, has reportedly raised an unspecified amount of funding from the largest computer chip maker in the world, Intel Corporation. Joyent was funded in the fast by Intel for a joint venture with Intel and Qinhuangdao Economic and Technology Development Zone that enabled the cloud computing firm to expand its reaches to China.

The extra funding from Intel will allow Joyent to expand its infrastructure and put wheels to its product development along with its sales and marketing portfolio. However, as per the filing carried out by Intel to the U.S Securities & Exchange Commission, it seems that Intel has invested  $8.5 million and as per the sources close to the deal, even Dell Inc. has also invested an unspecified amount of money in Joyent.

According to Arvind Sodhani (Executive V.P, Intel),

“Innovation does not stop during economic slowdowns. New technologies are the drivers of growth that help lead economies back to prosperity, and Intel Capital continues to be a leading investor in companies pioneering such advancement. These new and follow-on investments in companies at various stages of development and geographies demonstrate Intel Capital’s unwavering commitment to invest in technology innovation globally.”

Joyent has been in the business of offering private cloud computing services to interested companies and is already in a deal with Dell Inc. where the cloud computing expert’s software comes pre loaded on Dell computers. According to David Young (CEO, Joyent),

“Cloud computing technologies play a crucial role in allowing companies to scale their data center infrastructure to meet performance and TCO requirements. Joyent’s approach to flexible and cost-effective cloud control and cloud development sets it apart and provides measureable performance advantages versus the competition in this fast growing sector.”

Via Gigaom & Joyent.

Subscription Billing is one of the many hurdles that stand in the way of a start up company and it is one of the few primary concerns that consume a lot of valuable time for creation and refining of the software, so as not to create and financial discrepancies.

However, a new start up firm known as Recurly is here to take care of all the subscription billing worries of the start up companies, and give them the freedom to focus on their business models. Recurly provides the users with simple yet effective tools along with an extremely friendly user interface for the start ups to create their own billing systems. The users are also provided with analytics that help the companies to establish a correlation between the payment gateways and its own finances.

Recurly plans to run the business on a more transparent and ethical platform than other companies in the same field. The new start up has a payment policy, according to which, it does not charge its members, till they start earning and then too, Recurly only takes a percentage of the transaction conducted by its members.

There are no hidden charges or monthly fees involved with Recurly. At the end of each month, Recurly will assess the amount of transactions made by its clients and then on the basis of the results, it charges not more than 3% of the total volume of transaction. The percentage can even drop down to 1 or 2%, again depending upon the volume of sales of the client.

Via Recurly.

Microsoft didn’t allow its users to get very used to the Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system which hit the market last year before news of a new version started making the rounds. Windows Mobile 6.5 finally made it to mobiles only last month and there has been frantic news about how cool (or not) the update was; one of the reasons that it made the ‘not cool’ list was the fact that the new update wasn’t free on many devices.

Windows Mobile 6.5 is already old news after Microsoft announced the new Windows Mobile 7 that would be made available in the third quarter of the coming year. Going under the code name of Maldives, the new program for WinMo 7 will start testing with handset makers in the first quarter of 2010. WinMo 7 Maldives will have support touch panels unlike the previous Windows Mobile operating systems, including the 6.5 upgrade.

Support for touch panels would ensure that the operating sysem can be used by handsets much like the Apple iPhone increasing the possible clientele of Microsoft as well as acquiring a stronghold over a section of the market that Apple seems to have been ruling over for the past few years. Meanwhile, news of the WinMo 7 sure helps the tourism industry of Maldives!

Via: Techtree

Since Twitter has never deigned to deploy “professional” resources for companies that have profile on the site, as they said some rumors that have circulated over the network some time ago, a startup got tired of waiting and made the law into their own hands.

The CoTweet is a tool that promises to “help manage corporate accounts” of the microblogging site, as pointed out by the Wall Street Journal, for a monthly fee of $ 1,500 which has attracted people’s respect as Ford, Microsoft, Starbucks and McDonalds.

Among its facilities the CoTweet offers the possibility to permanently store data about their interactions with the public, “including tweets, retweets, responses and direct messages.” In addition the tool allows for monitoring the amount and type of questioning that the company receives and its response time, “when a business goes into Twitter, so it notes that only one person is not likely to be done all the service for the entire site.

“No person may be at work 24 hours a day 7 days a week, “said Jesse Engle, CEO of the company. Any resemblance of his speech about Twitter with the answering service to business customers is not mere coincidence. Soon the company promises to expand its service to other social networks like Facebook.

Those who are interested or cannot afford the $ 1,500 monthly for the service, the CoTweet also has a free version with limited functionality.

Image Credit.

Via: Wall Street Journal.

The Sharein is a service that entered a phase of beta testing in March and promises to be an important ally in time to indicate interesting content to friends, family and clients, adding the key technologies for sharing information.

The operation of the tool is quite simple: through a fast and free registration and you get an account. Simply drag a button to the bookmarks toolbar of the browser or, if Firefox is installed on the machine, download a small supplement.

When you come across an article, video or website and wants to indicate that, just click the icon for the site for a small form is opened. From it, you can send a link to the material via email, or publish in their profiles on social networks Twitter or Facebook.

So far, nothing different from what could be done with the Copy and Paste. But the great thing about Sharein is that when you register, you create an administration panel that lists all the items suggested, how many people received information indicating the link, how many actually clicked on to access it and how many have passed on retweet.

Sharein is not an essential service, not revolutionary. However, it is an interesting way to keep a record of what you found interesting on the web at the same time when he discovers that the other people you know share your opinion. Being free and very easy to use, we recommend its use.

Image Credit.

Via: Sharein.

The recent economic downturn that has plagued almost every sector of the international economy, hasn’t quite been able to deter start up companies from acquiring venture capital, especially in the field of information and technology.

One of the primary investors of world’s leading websites such as, Facebook and LinkedIn, Greylock Partners has announced that, it has successfully created a massive $575 million fund in venture capital in collaboration with Reid Hoffman, the brains behind LinkedIn. This new fund will be readily available for start up companies, that wish to grow and achieve greater heights of success.

However, the impact of the global economic recession has to a large extent shaken the investors and the venture capital firms. Experts believe that, the venture capital investors will slowly be diminished and would be extremely hard to find. The current situation in the financial sector has made it increasingly difficult for the start up companies to take their businesses from drawing boards to board rooms.

According to Andrew K. Golden (President, Princeton University Investment Company),

“It’s clear that Greylock is in the top handful on anyone. As an asset category, venture is not that attractive. But we say investing is like love and tennis — you choose your partner right and everything else takes care of itself.”

Greylock Partners is well renowned for its huge investments in Facebook, Pandora, LinkedIn etc. and is known to be an avid investors, when it comes to start up companies and at the same, the firm also provides supports for the growing companies as well. According to David Sze, who is a partner at Greylock Partners, the $575 million fund will greatly help the firm in providing assistance to upcoming companies, who might have a great idea, but lack the financial resources to put those ideas into practice.

Via New York Times.

While paying for a course in typing now seems unwise, people can dedicate themselves to the tips all over the Internet to learn how to improve their typing. Or, have the TypingWeb, an interesting and free service.

The exemption from registration site, but users who want to take the course seriously and keep a record of their performance can register quickly and free. The only thing the site is charged a certificate, which costs $ 50, and is only required for users who want to prove to future employers that really know how to type.

The course is divided into three main modules: for beginners, intermediate and advanced, in addition to providing specialized courses (including one for those who use Dvorak keyboards!) After a while of use, the service states, including what are your key issues, namely those where your fingers end up failing, for you to train more.

Each module is divided into lessons that can be done in any order the User want. When choosing a lesson, the site displays a virtual keyboard and typing a script that must be followed. Next to the keyboard, the position of two hands is displayed, indicating that the index key must be entered.

Throughout the time course shows the accuracy in the lesson, the average speed of typing and more interesting, a chart with the overall performance. In the end, the site offers a list of key issues and the time elapsed.

Via: Typing Web.

Google Chrome OS is already among us. Or almost. Through an oversight, the browser will be the base operating system of Mountain View leaked on the Internet.

Past excited about Windows 7, the rival produced by Google should become the main launching the coming months. For now, it is possible only to have a pale notion of what lies ahead. Maybe what I’m gonna say is wrong, but chances are the first version to be displayed next Google I / O, an annual conference for developers that occurs in May. The code, however, will be available later this year, according to the official post announcing the news, months ago.

The browser that fell on the network is a modified version of Google Chrome, designed to run on Linux, will be the basis of the new system.

Signs of Chrome OS are still small. In the upper left, an icon takes you to the Google Short Links. To log in, however, you must have an account on Google.com – which prevents us from knowing the purpose of the service. In the upper right of the browser are displayed the time, battery status and available networks. Within the options menu, a guide is titled “Google Chrome OS” and also shows the available networks, and enables change the touchpad sensitivity. For now it’s just it.

Image Credit.

Via: Info.

Not only were the invitations to Google Wave that came to be auctioned on the web. Now the owner of Wavety.com put the entire site for sale.

The auction ends next week. Until the 9:20 on Friday, the page had received eight bids. In two days, the value, which had begun at $ 250, reached U.S. $ 500 and would rise further. Created shortly after the appearance of the Google Sandbox Wave in the first half of this year, Wavety.com is a blog that gathers news and information about robots, gadgets and extensions to the service.

Whoever gives the highest bid will take the fields wavety.com, waviti.com, vawety.com, and vawiti.com vawity.com. But not only that. The package also included the account of the site on Twitter, which has little more than 1 300 followers. To convince their prey – oops! – Their customers, the owner of the page, Jaromir Klimek, says she has a biiiig potential. “The interest in Google Wave is just beginning,” he says.

At least Klimek is sincere when he says that so far has not won anything over the Google sponsored links. He justified the sale by explaining what is involved in other projects, which would have left no time to update the Wavety.com. I know, I know … who buy the site will become the newest millionaire web? Only time Will tell.. .

Via: Tellos.