What you need to know - Thursday 9/8/2010

Kno raises $46 million, Amazon buys Amie Street, Aircell raises $176M, Google announcement coming?

It's a new day, and that means a new chance to begin your day well informed. Let's take a look at what's been going on in the last 24 hours.

HP sues Mark Hurd. Mark Hurd, the former CEO of HP, is being sued for taking a new job at Oracle. HP stated that it believes he "...cannot perform his duties for Oracle without necessarily using and disclosing HP’s trade secrets and confidential information to others.”

Rumors abound as to what Google's logos mean. This week Google has released a series of fun and funky logos, with no particular association. Sites like Mashable have been speculating that this has to do with the event scheduled for this morning at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and a potential overhaul of the real time search feature.

ResearchGATE, a social networking site for scientists, raised an undisclosued amount of funding from notable angel investors, including Mike Birch, who founded Bebo, Matt Cohler, a partner at Benchmark Capital, and Simon Levene an angel investor and former partner at  Accel Partners.

Aircell has raised $176 Million in funding from unnamed investors. The company, which provides in-flight wireless Internet connections at the cost of 12.95 a flight. At the beginning of the year an estimated 700 commercial airliners were outfitted with the service.

Intarcia Therapeutics raises $5 million. The company, which is exploring treatments for conditions like hepatitis C, and obesity, received the funds from companies like New Leaf Venture Partners , Venrock Associates and New Enterprise Associates.

Amazon aquires Amie Street. Amie street, a music download site where songs prices are based on their popularity, has been bought by Amazon, who previously invested in their first funding round. The site will close on September 22, and Amazon will not carry over users credits.

Kno raises $46 Million. The company, which hopes to make a tablet device with two panels, was backed by Silicon Valley Bank and TriplePoint Capital among others. No price point has currently been set for the device.

Virtual currency is unplugging the cord and going mobile.  GWallet, a virtual currency platform for social media developers, announced Tuesday the launch of a new monetization solution that will allow mobile app developers to use virtual currency and branded offers and installs to monetize their apps.  To complete this offering, gWallet is partnering with Mobclix, a leading targeted mobile ad exchange network, to extend its reach into an ever deepening pool of mobile users.