Wednesday roundup: Valleywag's take on Findory,
Zino's investment tally, Battelle on SpamArrest, etc.
There's a lot happening, so here is a quick look at some of the stories
I am tracking:
The big funding announcement of the day is a $59.5
million whopper in Cambridge, Mass.-based online video distribution
company Brightcove, an investment
that could send shudders up the spines of Seattle competitor GridNetworks.
(It has raised
about $500,000). Or maybe it will just "validate" the online video
market even more.
A record
flight for Insitu's spy plane
Insitu's unmanned aircraft
ScanEagle just completed its longest
flight of 28 hours and 44 minutes, eclipsing the aircraft's previous
record of 22 hours and 10 minutes. The 15-year-old Bingen, Wash. company,
which received a $23
million investment for the spy plane last May, used a kerosene-based
fuel on the record flight.
Zino Society, the Seattle
club that combines wine and angel investing, said that it helped
facilitate $7 million in
funding for life science, consumer and technology companies last year.
The club now boasts 238 members.
Quality control problems at the Redmond factory of Physio-Control has
led parent company Medtronic to suspend
shipments of external defibrillators in the U.S., a move that will
also result in the delay of Physio-Control spinning
off into a publicly-traded company.
Gnomedex founder and blogger extraordinaire Chris Pirillo discusses why
he subscribed to Clearwire, noting that the Kirkland wireless Internet
provider offers a good backup for when Comcast goes down and provides a
separate network on which to transfer large files.
Valleywag has a funny
post on the best ways "to wind down a faltering startup," using
Findory founder Greg Linden as an example. Earlier this week, the Seattle
entrepreneur said he was shutting
down the online personalized news service after
accomplishing many of his goals
Seattle biotechnology upstart Inologic has won a $1.07 million
contract from the Department of Defense to continue research on a drug
that could protect fire fighters, military personnel or others who are
exposed to radiation. The contract is especially of interest given the
recent death of ex-Russian spy Alexander
Litvinenko, who died of exposure to the radioactive material
polonium-210.
The Future of Real Estate Marketing comments on Oodle's new online
real estate index, questioning the quality of the data from the San
Mateo, Calif.-based online classifieds service since most of it is culled
from the Internet.
Click
here for a listing of conferences, events and social gatherings in
Seattle's high-tech industry. To submit an event for consideration on the
calendar, e-mail me
here.
John Cook
