Tuesday, December 11, 2007

TechForward Got VCs Funding

What Company Is Offering:
TechForward empowers customers to keep pace with innovation while protecting the environment by promoting reuse and recycling. If you have ever had the experience of buying a device, and then finding out weeks later that something new is coming out that you want more, you should look into Guaranteed Buyback™. They currently offer Guaranteed Buybacks™ for laptops and iPods, and will soon be adding similar services for other consumer electronics devices. TechForward, Inc. is a privately-funded company based in Los Angeles.

How Much They Got From VCs:

It has raised a second round of funding from New Enterprise Associates. Prior investor First Round Capital also participated in the round. Financial terms of the funding was not disclosed. TechForward sells plans--similar to an extended warranty--which allows people purchasing computers and consumer electronics to guarantee a specific trade-in value on those items. The firm said the funding will go towards expanding the reach of its product.


http://www.techforward.com/

Green Shopping

What Company Is Offering:
The EVO Tree is intended to be a fun, engaging way to give people a sense of their environmental impact and get them thinking about their daily habits and choices. While it is a simple, visual representation, it is based on the integration of several complex data models used to assess a wide range of environmental impacts.

How It Works:
They do not sell products on their site. Rather, they connect you directly with online sellers. Their focus is on aggregating and presenting valuable content along with green products and services. Their intention is to make it easy and accessible for everyone to make better choices and go green.

EVO has partnered with Trees For The Future. In honor of their site launch, they have committed to planting 100,000 trees. Since 1988, Trees for the Future has helped thousands of communities in Central America, Africa, and Asia improve their livelihoods and their environment by planting nearly 50 million trees. They calculate that these trees remove approximately one million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year.
EVO believes that offering people green alternatives to everyday products and services along with a tangible measurement of both their individual and collective impact on our ecosystem will engage consumers to make progressively better choices. Start by offering eco-alternatives but aim to raise awareness and reduce consumption. For the long-term viability of our planet, less is truly more.
More at:http://www.evo.com/

Six Disciplines offers unlimited potential for those suited to own one or more of their franchises

What Company Is Offering:
Six Disciplines offers unlimited potential for those suited to own one or more of their franchises.
These benefits include the freedom to:

Own and operate a new type of coaching business that is revolutionizing the industry
Be a part of a select member of the best coaches in America.
Make a difference in your community.
Experience the thrill of getting an early start in this business opportunity with huge growth potential.

How It Works:

Own a franchise and profit from a program that is revolutionizing the way Small to Medium Size Businesses are formulating and executing strategies and growing their businesses.

Six Disciplines for Excellence, the program uniquely combines a proven methodology, continuous accountability coaching, web-based activity management technology and facilitates individual accountability and organizational alignment to help ambitious businesses reach AND sustain a desired level of performance improvement.
More at:http://www.bison.com/Six_Disciplines

ReQall, the mobile tool that helps you remember your task lists

What Company Is Offering:
Busy lifestyle? Lots to remember? reQall remembers when you can't - ideas, images, appointments, anything! It links together your digital data to remind you -- save you time -- help you get more done. Pick up the phone to reQall - no software required, just your voice! It works with any phone or web browser.

How It Works:

ReQall converts what you say to text, remembering is as easy as searching the web. And you can add to-dos and to-remembers right online. Then, playback via phone as you move through your day.reQall has lots of different ways to give you your data whenever you need it, wherever you are. In My ReQall settings (selected after you login to My reQall), you can chose to get an email or a text message whenever you add something to reQall. You can also get a daily summary email, kind of a daily to-do list. reQall can send you reminders via email or text message for any item that has a time associated with it. You can also always see what you have in reQall via the web or hear what you have via your phone.
More at:http://www.reqall.com/

Wetpaint powers free wiki websites that are available to anyone and easy to use

What Company Is Offering:

Wetpaint powers free wiki websites that are available to anyone and easy to use. In fact, that’s one of the many things that sets Wetpaint apart from other wikis on the web. Creating a Wetpaint wiki is as simple as 1-2-3, so anyone can start a free wiki website they can then share with their family, friends, and the friends they haven’t even met...yet.

How It Works:

Once your site is launched, adding content is easy with the EasyEdit Toolbar. You’ll see that editing a Wetpaint wiki page works very much like a word processor: You can “click” on any open page and start typing. Even better, you can also add photos, YouTube videos, polls . . . it’s all as simple as “click and type.
Start by choosing what topic you want your site to be about, then pick from a variety of site styles, whether you want your wiki to be public or private, and who you want to contribute (everyone, or just a few friends?).
Benifits Of Partners:
Just Add Wetpaint is a simple, all-in-one community solution that delivers key benefits to each partner.
Benefit 1: Increased User Engagement
Deepen user engagement by providing fans a place to connect and build a body of knowledge about your product or brand.
Partner Case Study: 4,000+ User-Generated Pages on the CSI Wiki .
Benefit 2: Wider Reach
Extend audience reach through SEO services built right in to the Wetpaint platform, along with cross-promotion of your brand throughout the Wetpaint network of over 600,000 user-generated wikis.
Partner Case Study: 50% of traffic to the wiki originates from outside the partner’s preexisting network.
Benefit 3: Increased Revenue
Increase revenue opportunities with high-quality content that results in significantly higher CPMs than social networking and forums.
Partner Case Study:T-Mobile launched a wiki sweepstakes to promote their new Sidekick phone, drive user engagement and brand loyalty, and increase phone sales.
More at:http://www.wetpaintcentral.com/

FrontPageBids.com automatically place the ad with highest bid on your site just as it hits the front page

What Company is Offering:

FrontPageBids.com was created to help writers of popular articles monetize the tremendous amount of traffic generated by social networks. Advertisers can place ads on popular articles found on the front page of popular social news sites such as Digg and Reddit dynamically.

How It Works:

FrontPageBids.com automatically place the ad with highest bid on your site just as it hits the front page. They give you 60% of the final bid amount. Now you don't have to hope that your users click on your ads in order to monetize. FrontPageBids.com will give you the opportunity to place your ads on popular articles within categories of your choice. If there are other advertisers bidding on the same category, your position will be determined by the amount of your bid. They will notify you instantly, by email, when your ad is displayed.
More at:http://frontpagebids.com/

Piczo will be offering SMS and MMS messaging on the mobile site, along with the ability to upload images directly from their handsets

What Company Is Offering:
Piczo empowers teens worldwide to creatively express themselves, build personal communities, and share ideas and experiences with their friends in a safe online environment. Piczo's customizable content, colorful graphics, glitter text, video, and photo tools spotlight member creativity without requiring technical skills.

How It Works:

Piczo's customizable content, colorful graphics, glitter text, video, and photo tools spotlight member creativity without requiring technical skills. Members share their life stories with friends by designing their sites with multiple pages featuring photos, graphics, videos, music, comment boards, games, and more. Each site can be linked to other friends' sites and users can interact with them and their friends, and meet new people online. And, the "first of its kind" Piczo Zone allows members to share their customizable content with the rest of the Piczo Community. The end results is a vibrant, creative community where members are given the complete freedom to make a site, make friends, or make whatever.

How They Are Progressing:
Piczo has grown to roughly 12 million monthly unique visitors and over a billion monthly page views solely through the viral efforts of loyal members. Rave reviews from these members claim that Piczo is unmatched in the control, ease-of-use, and flexibility it offers them when building their websites.

Recent Updates:
Piczo is the latest to turn to Intercasting Corp. for the development of a mobile network on its Anthem platform. Piczo will be offering SMS and MMS messaging on the mobile site, along with the ability to upload images directly from their handsets, and post comments onto Piczo pages.
More at:http://www.piczoinc.com/

Search Office Space Worldwide--An Office Finder Company

What Company Is Offering:
They are an office finder company. They offer you an impartial advice concerning your office requirements. They will liaise between you and the office brokers they are currently dealing with, the main office brokers around the world, to find you the best suitable office space, location and price. Their services consist in assisting businesses seeking for an office space to rent or office brokers seeking for tenants. They offer you an online service as well as a helpline.

How It Works:

They can take care of the entire process for you from search to the signing of contract and moving in. As part of their professional service they will select your locations, Compare available business centres, Select those of interest and Add to List .It will cost you nothing! They will provide you with a free service. They act as brokers between you and the business centre owners/managers. Theirr aim is to match your needs to the right centre. When the deal is done and you move in they receive commission from the business centre as a pre determine standard rate – nothing is passed onto you.You will receive a detailed applicant report with all the centres you have selected. Your dedicated SOS consultant will contact you to discuss your requirements fully and recommend a shortlist of centres and arrange viewings. We also contact each individual business centre you select to make them aware of your interest and requirements.
More at:http://www.searchofficespace.com/

ClixConnect is a live-chat service that combines a 24/7 online sales and support team with a proprietary live-chat application

What Company Is Offering:
ClixConnect is a live-chat service that combines a 24/7 online sales and support team with a proprietary live-chat application, enabling online merchants to personally engage and actively sell products to every visitor to their website.

How It Works:
ClixConnect combines a call-center with a proprietary live-chat application. ClixConnect enables you to offer live customer support chat to visitors of your website. With the ClixConnect application, you can field incoming chat requests when you're available, and a ClixConnect operator will take care of them when you're not available.


With ClixConnect, you can respond to chat inquiries from visitors to your website when you are available, and when you're not available, a ClixConnect live-chat rep will respond to them on your behalf, 24/7/365.

The ClixConnect application has an innovative technology built into it which enables automated chat recommendations for customers, based upon the product they are viewing. So say someone is looking at a red t-shirt on your website, an automated chat window can appear recommending a blue pair of pants to them.

Upon signing up for the ClixConnect service, you will be prompted to complete a questionnaire. This questionnaire will contain all the necessary information to handle most inquiries. In addition, the ClixConnect operator can search the internet to find the answer to the customer's inquiry. If the ClixConnect operator cannot determine a solution to the customer's problem with the given information, and information available on the internet, the ClixConnect operator can contact you using our Chat-to-Phone service.
More at:http://www.clixconnect.com/

Imeem Partnering with Universal Music Group that will allow users of the social networking site to stream full-length tracks and videos for free

What Company is Offering:
imeem is an online community where millions of fans and artists discover new music, videos, and photos, and share their tastes with friends.
How It Works:
Enjoy the latest videos, music, photos, or blogs posted on imeem. Stay up-to-date with your personal network of fans and friends with "What's New" notifications .Get in-depth stats for all your content and track their popularity. Tag, comment, rate, and share any of your friends' cool (or embarrassing) content. Create or join groups for your favorite band, event, topic, and more. Start discussions with other imeem users and make new friends. Embed your media on other pages (such as your blog, Bebo, etc.). Recommend stuff to your friends or add it to your "Favorites" list
Easily add media to your Del.icio.us, Wordpress, Blogger, or Typepad account (to name a few).

Recent Updates:


Imeem has announced a partnership with Universal Music Group that will allow users of the social networking site to stream full-length tracks and videos for free. The company now has deals with all four major record labels (EMI, Sony BMG, and Warner Music being the other three previously signed agreements) to stream music and videos on an ad-supported basis, becoming the first company in the space to do so.


http://www.imeem.com/

European social network Bahu has secured $1 million in its first round of funding

What Company is Offering:
Bahu is a private social networking site for students from all around the world.

Created by students for students, the site helps you keep in touch with your friends and your school life, meet new people, create and develop your personal page, your own online clubs, listen and share your music playlists, create photo and video albums, decide who are the talents of tomorrow... and much more.

How It Works:

Express yourself, show your talents and stay in touch with your friends !
You'll be able to upload your pics, share your favorite songs, your videos and passions.

How Much They Got From VCs:
European social network Bahu has secured $1 million in its first round of funding, led by Lightspeed-Gemini Internet Lab. Started by students and targeting a student demographic, Bahu plans on expanding further across Europe to France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Russia, Germany, Poland and the Baltic countries, in addition to South America and Asia.


More at:http://www.bahu.com/

Flavorpill--City Guide

What Company Is Offering:
Flavorpill loves culture. They embrace the high-brow, the underground, the low-brow, and the mainstream, and everything in between – as long as it's good.

How It Works:

A city guide for those who like to go out, Flavorpill publishes a daily update of worthwhile cultural event listings, from art exhibits and readings to concerts, plays, and festivals. Every day our teams of editors comb through stacks of emails, sites, papers, and magazines looking for the must-see happenings in their city -- and then get off their computers and go out. We only write about events we personally vouch for and have seen, or plan to go to, ourselves.

Flavorpill is for all of us. It exists to help us to get to know our cities better, to find and experience brilliant artists, musicians, groups, and spaces we weren't aware of – while helping us avoid the derivative, always seeking out the things that inspire us.They invite you to give the site a good pass, subscribe to their weekly email(s), read the listings, and check out the pictures – they think you'll find something worthy, maybe even discover something new.
Recent Updates:
Flavorpill is going mobile. In partnership with mobile local service BuzzD and support from Nokia Nseries, Flavorpill Mobile is the latest piece of its growing network. With the mobile tool, users will get real-time reviews and ratings as well as events listings. The first cities to get FlavorPill Mobile are New York, L.A., San Francisco, Chicago and Miami.

More at:http://flavorpill.com/

MessageDance

What Company Is Offering:
MessageDance enables you to invite friends, family, and co-workers to post messages through email to your Facebook profile, MySpace profile, blog, or any website that you control. You can post messages by email to your own sites as well. Using just one email address, the message goes to all of the places you have MessageDance.

How It Works:

MessageDance will give you an email address that your friends can use to send you a message directly from their email client, and the message will appear on your widget.

Now looking back at the MessageDance community: here you can keep track of all your messages. They’re public, and other MessageDance users can see them, so make sure you have nice friends.All comments (messages) on the site are treated as individual pieces of media, meaning you can respond to them on an individual level, and leave comments. This isn’t possible directly from the widgets (no threaded comments here), but it is possible on MessageDance’s main site.

More at:http://messagedance.com/

LogiXML Is Web-based Business Intelligence Got $5 million from Updata Partners In VCs Funding

What Company is Offering:
LogiXML, the leader in interactive, Web-based Business Intelligence empowers enterprises to turn data into business-critical information with pure Web-based reporting and analysis products. The Company offers a comprehensive platform that addresses all key areas of BI - managed reporting, ad hoc reporting, analysis and data services. Used by thousands of organizations worldwide, LogiXML products are built on standards-based technologies for easy integration, implementation and upgrade. LogiXML's per server pricing model makes its powerful technology the most affordable BI solution on the market.

How Much They Got From VCs:

LogiXML, Inc. , the leader in Web-based Business Intelligence announced that it has secured $5 million from Updata Partners. The company has enjoyed dramatic growth over the last three years and is now adding venture funding to take advantage of domestic and international market opportunities for the Logi 8 Business Intelligence platform. In conjunction with the funding, Carter Griffin, Partner at Updata Partners, has joined LogiXML's Board of Directors.

About VCs:
Based in Reston, Virginia and Edison, New Jersey, Updata Partners is a leading venture capital firm that invests in growth stage information technology companies with innovative intellectual property enabling market-leading products and services. Led by an investment team averaging more than 20 years of operational and private equity experience in the technology industry, Updata Partners seeks investments where the combination of our financial backing and operating expertise will accelerate growth. With nearly $500 million under management, the firm also selectively provides recapitalization and management buyout financing. For more information, visit www.updatapartners.com.

Recent Achievements:
The Web Marketing Association has awarded LogiXML, Inc. a 2007 WEBAWARD for Outstanding Achievement in Website Development in recognition of the graphical, technical and usability features of the www.logixml.com Web site.
More at:www.logixml.com

EdgeCast--Helping You Grow Your Business Online Got $6 million in Series B financing

What Company Is Offering:
EdgeCast offers a superior, cost-effective global content delivery service that gives our customers competitive advantage in the delivery of digital media. Their world-class content delivery platform provides customers the cost benefits and flexibility of controlling their own content delivery network while liberating them from bandwidth contracts, capital investments and operational hassles.

How It Works:
All content types can be delivered on the EdgeCast CDN, and you can leverage EdgeCast's All Edge technology to ensure that your content is always on the edge, close to your global user base. Images, files, home pages, entire websites, and more are delivered lightning-fast from EdgeCast's worldwide Points of Presence (POPs), with 100% guaranteed performance and uptime. E-commerce websites can take special advantage of the EdgeCast network, as their images, files, and other content will load immediately from locations next to the end user in order to enhance the shopping experience, provide fewer abandoned shopping carts, and increase overall e-commerce ROI. EdgeCast clients can also take advantage of our "EdgeRAM" technology, enabling storage of the most mission-critical content directly into the server RAM of the EdgeCast caching servers at our worldwide POPs.

How Much They Got From VCs:
EdgeCast Networks, the superior, cost-effective rich media content delivery network (CDN), today announced that it has secured $6 million in Series B financing led by Steamboat Ventures, a venture capital firm affiliated with The Walt Disney Company.

About VCs:
Steamboat Ventures is a global venture capital fund that invests in digital media, consumer and technology companies in the U.S. and Asia. Steamboat Ventures pursues a distinctive investment strategy, cultivating investment opportunities that are simultaneously financially promising and also possess the potential to have significant strategic interest to The Walt Disney Company. Founded in 2000, Steamboat Ventures has invested in a range of leading digital media and consumer technology companies, including: Fastclick (acquired by VCLK), Iridigm Display Corporation (acquired by QCOM), Pure Digital Technologies, Quigo Technologies, Move Networks, 56.com, and UUSee. For more information, please visit www.steamboatvc.com .
More at:http://www.edgecast.com/