What you need to know - 06/08/11

Square might be raising $50 million at a $1 billion valuation; Apple, Amazon, Google, war and peace

Apple's just-announced iCloud and iTunes Match, along with Amazon Cloud Drive and Google Music Beta, is ushering in a new era of digital music listening that's good for both casual and hardcore listeners.

Of course, when things are great for consumers, it usually means there's a vicious war going on. And there is: between Apple and pretty much everyone.

Amazon has no plans to back down against the nexus tax legislation that’s popping up in states across the country. At least that was the sentiment that CEO Jeff Bezos conveyed at Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting in Seattle.

 buuteeq, a Digital Marketing System (DMS) for independent hotels, closed a $3.5 million Series A investment round led by angel investors Mike Galgon and Geoff Entress led the round, along with Benaroya Capital Company and other angels.

Lightbank and online pawn broker Internet Pawn want to put a new spin on the traditional pawn shop with the launch of Pawngo.com.

The number of people using home energy management (HEM) systems will reach 63 million by the year 2020, a nearly 63x increase over 2011.

Rally, provider of Agile application lifecycle management (ALM), secured $20 million in funding led by Meritech Capital Partners.

ServiceMax, a suite of cloud-based, collaborative and mobile field service applications, raised a $14 million round of Series C funding led by Mayfield Fund.

Square is raising a $50 million round at a $1 billion valuation, according to rumors.

Twitter officially released its own automatic link shortening service for Twitter.com.

UberMedia launched Uber50 for iPhone, the 50 Cent-themed version of UberSocial, the company’s flagship Twitter application.

Virsto Software, developer of software for virtual machine storage, raised $12 million in a Series B round of funding led by InterWest Partners, with participation from previous investors August Capital and Canaan Partners.

YapStone, provider of Electronic Payments as a Service (ePaaS) for property management and other vertical market segments, raised a $50 million minority investment led by Accel Partners.