What you need to know - 08/09/11

Barnes & Noble giving out free books with the Nook; newly public tech companies taking a beating

Apprenda, the deploy anywhere Platform as a Service (PaaS) stack for .NET, closed a $10 million Series B round of funding led by Ignition Partners with participation from previous investors.

Bagcheck, a startup backed by Sutter Hill Ventures, Morado Ventures, Jonathan Katzman and Peter Fenton, was acquired by Twitter.

In celebration of the new school year, Barnes & Noble is launching a new promotion: buy a Nook and get $100 worth of free books and study tools.

bloomspot is looking to shake up the daily deal model with some critical new changes.  Additionally, the company also announced Tuesday that it has secured $40 million in funding.

A report released by comScore found that eCommerce sales were up 14% in the second quarter of 2011 compared to last year.

The Google+ app is now available on the iPad and iPod Touch, in addition to iPhone and Android.

HotLink, emerging from stealth to revolutionize system management of heterogeneous computing, secured $10 million in Series A financing led by Foundation Capital with participation from Leapfrog Ventures.

Across the board, newly public tech companies took a beating Monday as investors reacted to Standard & Poor’s pre-weekend downgrading of the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA-plus.

Lumenpulse, a company that manufactures LED lights for commercial buildings and urban environments, secured a $16 million Series A round led by private investors, with participation from Lumenpulse’s management team and board of directors.

Nanigans, a real-time bidding platform for Facebook that optimizes advertiser spend for downstream actions and lifetime customer value, closed $3 million in Series A financing.

The New York Times launched a new site, beta620, which will be where Web users can try out new features that the NYT is experimenting with and provide feedback.

Nielsen, provider of information and analytics around what consumers watch and buy, acquired Marketing Analytics, provider of marketing mix modeling, analytics and advanced planning software.

SinglePlatform, simplifying digital communications for local businesses, raised $3.25 million in funding led by DFJ Gotham Ventures with new and old investors.

LivingSocial, Twitter and Square, three of the hottest tech companies to emerge in the last few years, are each seeking to prevent their newest shareholders from selling company stock on the secondary markets.