Googler's form AngelPad incubator, Apple's jail-broken iPhone patent, Avast raises $100M,
It's Monday morning, and you know what that means. It's time to catch up on everything that happened in the digital world over the weekend and this morning, so that you can start the week in the know. Here's what's happening:
Apple has a patent that would allow them to disable the jail broken iPhone. Ever since the iPhone came out people than finding ways to get around the legal constraints associated with the operating system and carrier. While Apple has never supported the practice, revoking warranty on any device it finds to be jail broken, they took things one step further when they petition for patent that would allow them to disable jail broken devices by allowing them to "“shutdown any telephone service to the electronic device, shutdown the electronic device itself, or otherwise suitably extract the functions of the electronic device.”
Google tests a search as your type feature. Originally discovered by blogger Rob Ousbey and allows an end user of the site to see search results while they are still entering data, and without having to hit the enter key. This allows users to refine their search on the fly, and also allows Google to display more Adsense ads as the ads displayed change with the text being typed.
Text Digger's assets have been acquired by Federated Media. Text Digger is a five-year-old startup that claims to empower its end users to "businesses like yours to improve the findability of Internet and intranet content by providing scalable solutions for related search, automatic tagging, and semantic keyword generation." Its technology to help companies tag and organize content as well as be discovered by search engines was purchased by the advertising network for an undisclosed amount. FM plans on using the technology to begin making its ad platform more robust. TextDigger will remain a stand-alone company and will focus on its roots - vertical search. To-date, the San Jose, Calif-based company has raised $5 million in funding from companies True Ventures, Intel Capital, CBS Interactive and angels.
Liquid pubs, a digital publishing platform, launched today. The Liquid pubs, a digital publishing platform, with specific interest in smart tablets and other mobile devices, with an iPhone or Android based operating system, began operations today. In addition to offering the publishers and newspapers that sign up for the service standard text and images, the service will also offer a motion images service, allowing users to bring life to their stories. The service also offers both payment processing options and the ability to check your readership stats in real time, eliminating the need for integrating multiple solutions.
Avast software has raised $100 million in private equity from investment firm Summit Partners today, with Summit taking a minority share in the company. Avansts flagship product, avast! antivirus, runs on the freemium model, with the basic version available to the public at no cost while the upgraded version requires paying a fee. It is estimated by the company that one in every five PC's online today is using one of the version of the Avast product. No word yet on how the funding may be used.
A new incubator called AngelPad is expected to launch on September 10. The incubator, comprised of former Googlers, will act as a mentorship program. The incubator will focus on technology and Web-based startups. According to its site, the team is made up of Thomas Korte, Richard Chen, David Scacco, Vibuh Mittal, Gokul Rajaram, Deep Nishar, and Keval Dasal.
Pocket Gear, a mobile app store for multiple platforms, raised $15 million dollars in series B round funding. The shop, which sells applications for Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian, and Java based phones received the funding from multiple sources including: Trident Capital, the Blackberry Partners Fund and TomorrowVentures. Though no plans have been announced for the funding that this Durham, NC based company has acquired.
VoIP comes to the Blackberry. VoIP, or voice over Internet protocol service allows end-users to make inexpensive phone calls around the globe. While other smart phone makers such as iPhone, Android and Symbian have all had VoIP applications available for some time now Blackberry has been hold out. That is until yesterday when TringMe, an Indian VoIP start up based in Bangalore announced the release of this application yesterday. The TringMe application is compatible with OS versions 4.2 and 5.0, it is available by visiting https://bb.tringme.com on the blackberry browser. in addition to standard calling the VoIP service also features a one click conference call mode.
