What you need to know - Wednesday 8/25/10
Elevation sinking $100M into Pandora; Qualcomm Incubator launches; Motorola buys 280 North
It's the beginning of the working day, and you know what that means. Time to get your news fix so that you can begin the day with all of the facts.
Elevation wants into Pandora's box. Elevation Partners’ has been discussing the possibility of buying a stake in Pandora, with a proposed deal worth $100 million. While no official plans have been released to the public, Pandora spokesperson Deborah Roth told TechCrunch that, “We’re aware that Elevation has been interested in buying Pandora shares." They gave no indication, however, as to the likelihood of accepting a deal.
Apple is set to launch iTV and possible 99 cent TV show downloads. Songs may not be 99 cents on the iTunes store anymore, but TV shows may be soon enough. At least to rent them for two days. It has recently come out that Apple and News Corp are in discussions about this rental agreement and rumors circulate that CBS, NBC and Walt Disney Co are also talking about similar deals. No agreements have been reached at this time and both Apple and News Corp have declined to comment on the matter. 
RIM buys Cellmania for an undisclosed amount. RIM, the makers of popular Blackberry devices have purchased Cellmania, a company that develops and distributes applications for mobile platforms on a wide variety of carriers including T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile. This will help them to better manage the infrastructure of the app stores on many popular platforms, though not, of course, the iPhone. This will not represent a major disruption in service since Cellmania has stated that it will continue to support its existing client base in the future. 
Motorola buys new app development platform, 280 North. 280 North, formerly a project from the Y Combinator incubator, has been bought for $20 million. While rumors have been circulating since early summer they were just confirmed officially. 280 North is best know for its creation of a programming language and frameworks known as Cappuccino, which are used to create rich web applications.This technology could be used in the efforts to develop more flavors of the Android operating system, like the MotoBlur.
Y Combinator’s eleventh Demo Day draws investors. Y Combinator had its eleventh annual Demo Day, drawing attention for the 36 companies presenting over the two day span. Companies presenting include: FutureAdvisor, AdGrok, Koduco, FanVibe, GinzaMetrics, HireHive, Hipmunk, PagerDuty, The Fridge, Chart.io, Gantto, Brushes, OhLife, Simperium, GazeHawk, Rapportive, MessageParty, Whereoscope, Leftronic, inDinero, Teevox and 1000memories. 
Qualcomm Incubator launches location start up. Today the Qualcomm Incubator announced the formation of Qualcomm Services Labs, a wholly owned subsidiary company, that will focus on finding ways to fund and launch consumer-focused mobile services such as Neer. Neer is a location check in service that offers more control then current systems available to consumers. Neer was not the only company that the incubator launched, the same announcement heralded the start of Qilroy, Tapioca and Vive. 
Message Party, a start up that makes chat rooms that are location-aware, launched today with their iPhone app. Their system distinguishes itself by allowing you to chat with whoever happens to be around at the moment. This digital parties, as the company has begun to call them use avatars to represent the people in the chat. The avatar is drawn from uses your Facebook profile picture. This start up is funded by YCombinator.