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<title>Haaze.com / kodhitymail / Published News</title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com</link>
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<pubDate>Tue, 14 Jun 2011 07:10:53 +0000</pubDate>
<language>en</language>
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<title><![CDATA[States weigh in on AT&T-T-Mobile merger]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=states-weigh-in-on-att-t-mobile-merger</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=states-weigh-in-on-att-t-mobile-merger</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 14 Jun 2011 07:10:53 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>kodhitymail</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=states-weigh-in-on-att-t-mobile-merger</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Almost three months to the day since AT&amp;amp'T first announced its $39 billion bid for T-Mobile, federal scrutiny of the deal is well under way. AT&amp;amp'T has filed its paperwork with the Federal Communications Commission, the public is weighing in on the FCC's Web site, and opponents and supporters are lining up. Though the U.S. Senate has held hearings as well, only the Department of Justice and the FCC have the official power to approve or deny the merger. AT&amp;amp'T does not have to seek formal approval at the state level, but state governments can make the transaction more complicated if they bring antitrust lawsuits or pass on negative feedback to the FCC. And as CNET's Maggie Reardon has reported, states have extensive oversight over communications through the regulation of rates, cell tower placement, and consumer complaints.That's why it doesn't hurt for AT&amp;amp'T to lobby for the merger not only in Washington, D.C., but also in state capitols across the country (the carrier has even gotten into a tussle with Sprint over a possible state review in West Virgina). And at the time of this writing, AT&amp;amp'T has been successful. Though three states are taking a closer look, 17 state governors have voiced their approval. We'll add to this list as events unfold, but here's how the state are lining up so far.Those in favortable.geekbox th{background-color:99CCFF'text-align:left'font-weight:bold'}table{width:100%'}table.geekbox tr.even{background-color:CCCCCC'}.ratingGood{color:093'} .ratingAverage{color:666'} .ratingBad{color:C00'}Action takenWho sent itDateArkansasLetter to FCC (All letters are in PDF format)Gov. Mike Beebe (D)May 23ColoradoLetter to FCCGov. John Hickenlooper (D)May 27DelawareLetter to FCCGov. Jack Markell (D)June 8GeorgiaLetter to FCCGov. Nathan Deal (R)May 17IdahoLetter to FCCGov. C.L. Otter (R)May 17IowaLetter to FCCGov. Terry Branstad (R)May 26KentuckyLetter to FCCGov. Steve Beshear (D)May 26LouisianaLetter to FCCGov. Bobby Jindal (R)May 19MaineLetter to FCCGov. Paul LePage (R)May 19MichiganLetter to FCCGov. Rick Snyder (R)May 19NevadaLetter to FCCGov. Brian Sandoval (R)May 27North CarolinaLetter to FCCGov. Beverly Perdue (D)May 31OhioLetter to FCCGov. John Kasich (R)June 9OklahomaLetter to FCCGov. Mary Fallin (R)May 16South CarolinaLetter to FCCGov. Nikki Haley (R)May 21TennesseeLetter to FCCGov. Bill Haslam (R)May 27TexasLetter to FCCGov. Rick Perry (R)May 25And those taking a closer looktable.geekbox th{background-color:99CCFF'text-align:left'font-weight:bold'}table{width:100%'}table.geekbox tr.even{background-color:CCCCCC'}.ratingGood{color:093'} .ratingAverage{color:666'} .ratingBad{color:C00'}Action takenNext stepsCaliforniaBy a 3-2 vote on June 9, the California Public Utilities Commission decided to investigate the deal and its effects on the state's consumers and economy.The commission will ask for more information from AT&amp;amp'T directly, and it will hold a series of public hearings around the state. It then plans to issue its findings by October, which is when the FCC has promised to vote on the matter.LouisianaThough Gov. Bobby Jindal is firmly behind the deal, the state's Public Service Commission said last month that it will seek public comment on the merger, though it will not be conducting its own investigation. The commission will present its findings to the FCC and make a recommendation.New YorkAttorney General Eric Schneidermanannounced on March 29 that his office would &quot;undertake a thorough review of AT&amp;amp'T's acquisition of T-Mobile&quot; and analyze the merger for &quot;potential anticompetitive effects on consumers and businesses.&quot;Schneiderman's office has yet to announce what's next.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[With 'Rango,' ILM wrangles first animated feature]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=with-rango-ilm-wrangles-first-animated-feature</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=with-rango-ilm-wrangles-first-animated-feature</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 01 Mar 2011 08:11:03 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>kodhitymail</dc:creator>
<category>Gaming</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=with-rango-ilm-wrangles-first-animated-feature</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Industrial Light &amp; Magic arrived at this fully-rendered frame from the new Gore Verbinski film 'Rango' after several rounds of storyboarding, layouts, and interim animation.(Credit:ILM/Paramount)SAN FRANCISCO--When he started making his new film &quot;Rango,&quot; director Gore Verbinski knew he wanted it to look and feel much like many of the Westerns it evokes: gritty, dirty, and sweaty.&quot;He wanted to be able to smell the breath of the characters,&quot; said Kevin Martel, the film's associate animation supervisor. &quot;The feeling was that if you were to take a deep breath, you'd inhale all that dust and dirt, and you'd probably start coughing.&quot;Making an animated film look live action (images) All joking aside, creating the look of a traditional Western was one of the biggest challenges on &quot;Rango,&quot; which opens March 4 and stars Johnny Depp. And despite a highly photo-realistic feel, the film is actually 100 percent digitally animated. Indeed, &quot;Rango&quot; is the first-ever fully animated movie for which Industrial Light &amp; Magic, where Martel works, has done the visual effects.In fact, Verbinski tasked ILM specifically with making &quot;Rango&quot; feel like a live-action film despite its being entirely computer generated. And for George Lucas' famous visual effects house, that direction actually meshed perfectly with its decades of experience. &quot;I've been calling it photographic,&quot; said Tim Alexander, the &quot;Rango&quot; visual effects supervisor at ILM. &quot;That's the look of the film. It comes from our live-action background and it's a common language with [Verbinski]....Everything we talked about and did, we did like we were on a live-action set.&quot;For most animated films, the actors record all their lines in otherwise empty sound studios. But in keeping with the desire to make &quot;Rango&quot; feel--to everyone concerned--as live-action as a digital film can be, Verbinski convinced his ensemble of actors to perform their roles on a physical, albeit, tinker-toy set based on the tiny fictional Mojave Desert town of Dirt, in which the movie takes place.&quot;It was like a little theater troupe full of talented actors,&quot; Martel recalls, &quot;running around like cartoons...[Verbinski] could explore his ideas early and quickly this way...and the actors could nail their performances more fully, and we could study the actors' nuances, body language, and eyes.If this all seems entirely too analog for a 100 percent digital film, that's because developing this sense of working on a normal film was crucial to Verbinski's vision, according to Martel and Alexander. But this was ILM behind the visual effects and animation, after all, and high-tech definitely played an important role in the making of &quot;Rango.&quot;Lens kitYou wouldn't think that the director of an all-digital film would have something like a lens kit in his quiver of filmmaking tools, but Verbinski had just that. According to Alexander, ILM outfitted Verbinski with a selection of &quot;lenses,&quot; including an 18mm, a 27mm, and a 35mm. &quot;Gore actually loves the 27mm,&quot; Amstrong said of the director, whose previous efforts include the monster hit &quot;Pirates of the Caribbean&quot; franchise.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[iPad pub The Daily pops up on PCs]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ipad-pub-the-daily-pops-up-on-pcs</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ipad-pub-the-daily-pops-up-on-pcs</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 03 Feb 2011 08:10:25 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>kodhitymail</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ipad-pub-the-daily-pops-up-on-pcs</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Curious about Rupert Murdoch's heavily hypediPad publication but not in possession of saidtablet Well, thanks to an LA-based computer programmer and journalist, you can check out The Daily in its entirety on your laptop, Netbook, or PC--though you'll miss out on the tablet-specific bells and whistles.Launched with much fanfare yesterday, the specially designed, subscription-only, multimedia &quot;newspaper&quot; has media observers wondering if it will turn out to be a legitimate glimpse of publishing's future or nothing more than an interesting experiment.After the postlaunch free trial of two weeks, the pub--which is viewable in its intended form only on Apple's iPad--will cost readers 99 cents a week or $39.99 a year. At its unveiling, however, Murdoch and Co. said that though there are no outright plans to make The Daily available for free online, the popularity of social networking means that paid subscribers will be able to share links to Web-page versions of Daily stories with friends--thus making the publication available for free in a stripped-down, piecemeal fashion.Piecemeal, that is, unless you go to Andy Baio's site The Daily: Indexed. The New York Times reports that Baio became aware that the Web versions of Daily stories were available via search engines and decided to compile them into a facsimile of the pub, complete with archived editions.It's not clear how long Baio's site will last, but so far it seems The Daily's publishers are happy to have the additional exposure, and happy for the chance to keep the hype machine rolling. In an e-mail to The Times about the matter, publisher Greg Clayman said, &quot;It's not surprising that people want to share our content, but The Daily is designed for tablets, with a lot of rich media and a litany of interactive features and functionality. We are confident that as readers get to know our content, they will be driven to the full, authentic experience.&quot;Well, maybe. You can check out Baio's site, take a peek at a Daily promo video, and make the call for yourself.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Microsoft tallies 2.8 billion minutes of Facebook IMs]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-tallies-2-8-billion-minutes-of-facebook-ims</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-tallies-2-8-billion-minutes-of-facebook-ims</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 03 Feb 2011 08:10:18 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>kodhitymail</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-tallies-2-8-billion-minutes-of-facebook-ims</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Windows Live Messenger working with Facebook(Credit:Microsoft)Windows Live Messenger is seeing its integration with Facebook chat grow rapidly.Microsoft announced yesterday in a blog post that close to 18 million people have &quot;connected&quot; Facebook chat to Messenger since August, when it became possible to do so. And those folks have now accumulated more than 2.8 billion minutes of Facebook chat. All told, there have been 440 million chat sessions between Messenger and Facebook in less than six months, Microsoft said.Microsoft, which owns a small slice of Facebook, became the first instant-messaging provider to allow its users to chat with friends on Facebook from a third-party platform with the launch of the feature in mid-August. Just three months later, Microsoft announced that 1.5 billion minutes of Facebook chatting had taken place with Windows Live Messenger.Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger app for Facebook currently has in excess of 15.77 million monthly active users. According to third-party app tracking service AppData, the number of daily active users is a little closer to 13 million, making it the No. 3 top app on the social network, third only to Zynga's Cityville and Farmville.Microsoft doesn't cater only to Facebook users. The company also announced yesterday that connections between Messenger and LinkedIn have doubled since the platform's last update, while MySpace and YouTube connections have grown nearly 50 percent.Updated at 9:51 a.m. PTto include more details.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[More privacy suits against Apple may be coming]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=more-privacy-suits-against-apple-may-be-coming</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=more-privacy-suits-against-apple-may-be-coming</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 30 Dec 2010 08:10:09 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>kodhitymail</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=more-privacy-suits-against-apple-may-be-coming</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Earlier this week Apple was sued, along with several app developers, for allegedly sending personal information to ad networks without the users' knowledge or consent. According to one industry lawyer, there could be more lawsuits on the way.Speaking with InformationWeek on Wednesday, attorney Kevin Pomfret said the trend of consumers turning to the courts to protect their privacy is likely to continue. &quot;I would not be surprise if there were more lawsuits,&quot; said Pomfret.A lawyer who advises businesses on privacy issues, Pomfret said the law is &quot;unclear&quot; in this area.Apple is no stranger to lawsuits over theiPhone. The company has been sued by big companies like Nokia, Motorola, and HTC. Apple has also been sued by individuals for not revealing that the battery was not user-replaceable and, in 2009, for MMS not being available on the iPhone.This is also not the first time Apple has been named in a lawsuit against an app developer. In 2009, Tune Hunter sued music-finding service Shazam of patent infringement and named Apple, as well as a host of other companies, in its lawsuit.The latest privacy lawsuit claims ad networks are able to trace an iPhone oriPad using the unique device identifier. The suit says the practice violates federal computer fraud and privacy laws.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Automakers group files appeal over EPA's approval of E15]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=automakers-group-files-appeal-over-epas-approval-of-e15</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=automakers-group-files-appeal-over-epas-approval-of-e15</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 20 Dec 2010 08:10:40 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>kodhitymail</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=automakers-group-files-appeal-over-epas-approval-of-e15</guid>
<description><![CDATA[(Credit:EPA)Did the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency overstep its bounds in its decision to grant a partial waiver approving the sale of gasoline containing 15 percent ethanol for 2007 model year and newer passengercars and light trucksA collective of automakers and engine manufacturers today filled a petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, requesting judicial oversight and review over whether EPA's &quot;partial waiver&quot; approval for E-15 fuels violates the federal Clean Air Act provisions. The petition states the Clean Air Act limits the circumstances under which EPA can approve applications for new fuels and fuel additives.The petitioners include the newly-formed Engine Products Group, comprising the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers, the National Marine Manufacturers Assoc., and the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute.Critics of E-15 say the 50 percent increase in ethanol could damage catalytic converters in older vehicles, as well as engines of boats, motorcycles, ATVs, snowmobiles, chainsaws, lawnmowers, and other gas-powered lawn equipment.&quot;Our organizations collectively represent some 400 million engine products used by tens of millions of people every day in the US. The safe and reliable use of those products is paramount to us and our customers, and the legal action we take today is to protect those customers,&quot; said spokesman for the Engine Products Group, Kris Kiser.According to the complaint, the EPA went outside of its authority when it granted the &quot;partial waiver,&quot; and that the EPA's own statute, passed by Congress in 2007, states that fuels can't be approved for sale if could cause engine failures. Also, the testing EPA used to make its decision was done too late for comments or scrutiny from concerned groups and stakeholders.&quot;While all members of the EPG have and continue to support the development and use of safe and sustainable alternative fuels, the action EPA has taken to permit E-15 to be sold as a legal fuel, even if limited only to certain products, will have adverse consequences for the environment and consumers. A partial waiver, by its nature, necessarily will result in the misfueling of products not designed or tested for E-15 use,&quot; Kiser said.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Google makes Android Voice Search smarter by learning how you speak]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=google-makes-android-voice-search-smarter-by-learning-how-you-speak</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=google-makes-android-voice-search-smarter-by-learning-how-you-speak</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>kodhitymail</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=google-makes-android-voice-search-smarter-by-learning-how-you-speak</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Google is taking a cue from desktop speech recognition software, like the popular Dragon Naturally Speaking program, by bringing personalized voice profiles to Android&amp;'s mobile Voice Search app.So instead of the general speech models that Google has been relying on since it launched Voice Search two years ago, the app can now learn your voice and ultimately become more accurate.By opting in to the app&amp;'s new &amp;''Personalized recognition&amp;'' feature, Voice Search will begin to associate the voice commands you send it with your Google account. It will then use that data to build your personal profile. Google says that accuracy improvements will begin quickly and will improve the more you use the app.Google was bound to do this eventually. With Android, it&amp;'s pioneering the use of voice commands in many areas where you would normally use text. For example, you can dictate a text message on your Android phone with your voice, something that isn&amp;'t possible on the iPhone or other platforms (at least not natively). Building personalized voice profiles like professional speech recognition programs is simply the next step in improving its voice commands.It&amp;'s ironic, in a way, that as our phones are getting smarter, we&amp;'re once again beginning to speak into them. As voice commands improve, I would wager most users would find them preferable to hunting and pecking on touchscreen keyboards.The new Voice Search app is available on Android phones running version 2.2 of the OS or later. It&amp;'s unclear if Google will bring the feature to other platforms, or if it even technically can given the restrictions of other mobile platforms.Previous Story: Biggest shopping boom since before the recession continuesPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: Android, speech recognition, voice commands, voice searchCompanies: Google          Tags: Android, speech recognition, voice commands, voice searchCompanies: GoogleDevindra Hardawar is VentureBeat's lead mobile writer and East Coast correspondent. He studied philosophy at Amherst College, worked in IT support for several years, and has been writing about technology since 2004. He now lives in Brooklyn, New York. You can reach him at devindra@venturebeat.com (all story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com), and on Twitter at @Devindra.VentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Groupon shakes up board with Starbucks CEO]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=groupon-shakes-up-board-with-starbucks-ceo</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=groupon-shakes-up-board-with-starbucks-ceo</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>kodhitymail</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=groupon-shakes-up-board-with-starbucks-ceo</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Daily deals site Groupon announced some changes to its board of directors today, with Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz joining and three of the eight current members stepping down.Late last year, Groupon turned down a $6 billion offer from Google and subsequently raised a massive $950 million round. The company needs to continue its rapid growth if that move is going to pay off for investors, and the board is probably hoping Schultza4a4s experience can help with that, especially as the company faces competition from hordes of similar sites.Co-founder and chief executive Andrew Mason told VentureWire that Schultz was a4Athe top choicea4 when the board starting talking about new members last year, saying, a4ALeta4a4s think really big about this company. If we could have anyone on this board in the world, who would we havea4Meanwhile, R. R. Donnelly CEO John Walter, New Enterprise Associates partner Harry Weller, and 37Signals founder Jason Fried are all stepping down. (Or rather, Mason says they stepped down following the latest financing.) So the board now consists of Schultz, the companya4a4s three founders, Peter Barris from investor NEA, Kevin Efrusy from investor Accel Partners, and AOL vice chairman emeritus Ted Leonsis. The company says ita4a4s leaving the remaining seats open for a4Afuture additions.a4Schultza4a4s venture firm Maveron just invested in Groupon as well &amp;8212' not as part of the recent round but by purchasing shares from existing investors and employees. When asked for more details about the deal, Mason reportedly responded, a4AIta4a4s not news. Ita4a4s not interesting.a4Next Story: Digg&amp;'s redesign fails to address core problems Previous Story: BioWare founders say corporate humility is key to success (video)PrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Companies: Groupon, MaveronPeople: Andrew Mason, Howard Schultz          Companies: Groupon, MaveronPeople: Andrew Mason, Howard SchultzAnthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining the site in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. (All story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com) You can also follow Anthony on Twitter. Have news to share Launching a startup Email: tips@venturebeat.comVentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Did America Lose its Cleantech Mojo, or Did Brazil, Germany and China Just Get More&nbsp'(TCTV)]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=did-america-lose-its-cleantech-mojo-or-did-brazil-germany-and-china-just-get-morenbsptctv</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=did-america-lose-its-cleantech-mojo-or-did-brazil-germany-and-china-just-get-morenbsptctv</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>kodhitymail</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=did-america-lose-its-cleantech-mojo-or-did-brazil-germany-and-china-just-get-morenbsptctv</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Nat Goldhaber of Claremont Creek Ventures thinks that 2011 will be the year of the cleantech IPO&amp;8230'finally. So does that mean that America hasn&amp;'t totally lost the cleantech race after allThe mosta4soptimistica4scase is that we&amp;'re in a clump of countries leading the pack. The glass-half-empty version: Politics, boneheaded legislation and our lousy capital markets will saddle America&amp;'s culture of innovation, giving other surging hot spots a leg up. In the second part of our interview with Goldhaber, we talk about America&amp;'s cleantech mojo.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Meebo closes $25M in funding as content sharing gets hotter]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=meebo-closes-25m-in-funding-as-content-sharing-gets-hotter</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=meebo-closes-25m-in-funding-as-content-sharing-gets-hotter</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>kodhitymail</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=meebo-closes-25m-in-funding-as-content-sharing-gets-hotter</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Online-chat and content-sharing providerMeebo is closing a $25 million round of funding led by Khosla Ventures, the company confirmed, as investors try to muscle in on every aspect of the burgeoning social networking space.Mountain View, Calif.-based Meebo currently reaches 180 million unique users monthly through its a4Aone-stopa4 hub of social networking and chatting network.It has also created a a4AMeebo Bar,a4 which appears at the bottom of websites searched and then routes users to specific brands that match their past preferences and searches.Once there, the average user spends 60 seconds looking at one of Meeboa4a4s 8,000-plus publisher partners, nearly double the amount they would spend watching a traditional television ad.The recent funding news coincides with the companya4a4s launch yesterday of a new browser extension called the Meebo MiniBar, which will be more general than the Meebo Bar and let users share when they check in to websites, but not which particular page they are on or what they are doing.Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg told All Things Digital, which originally broke the news pre-announcement, that 87 percent of the companya4a4s advertisers in 2009 returned in 2010, with the Meebo Bar achieving a 1 percent click-through rate. Advertisers on average doubled their budgets after that first year with the site.That a4Acatch alla4 rate has been making Meebo a prime target for venture capital shops searching for already overachieving startups and impressed by a site which has locked down more than $60 million since its launch in 2005.&amp;''We&amp;'re really excited to be working with Gideon, Vinod and the rest of the team at Khosla,&amp;'' Sternberg told VentureBeat. &amp;''When we sat down with them, we truly had a meeting of the minds when talking about where Meebo is headed with web check-ins. We think there is huge potential to navigate the entire Web by people.&amp;''Sternberg also told TechCrunch that he puts Meeboa4a4s success down to a4Abuilding a product for normal people, not Silicon Valley,a4 and added that the company is tackling the discovery problem much more efficiently than past hot properties like Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious.a4AI think very few things are so broad that they reach most of the users on the Internet and this is one of those,a4 KV founder Vinod Khosla told All Things Digital.Khosla will be joined in this round of funding by existing backers Sequoia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Meebo raised $25 million in its last round of funding in 2008.Next Story: Amazon.com starts movie studio to fund budding filmmakers Previous Story: Yakaz brings location to social classified adsPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: social networkingCompanies: digg, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Khosla Ventures, meebo, Sequoia Capital, StumbleuponPeople: Seth Sternberg, Vinod Khosla          Tags: social networkingCompanies: digg, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Khosla Ventures, meebo, Sequoia Capital, StumbleuponPeople: Seth Sternberg, Vinod KhoslaRiley McDermid is a contributing reporter to VentureBeat. She was previously the online editor at institutional investing and trading forum Markets Media, which she joined in 2008 from Dow Jones/MarketWatch in New York. Her work has appeared in the The New York Times, the Associated Press, Portfolio Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Barrona4a4s. She has won awards from the American Society of Business Publishers and Editors, the Magazine Association of the Southeast, the Mississippi Press Association and the Atlanta Press Club, and was a finalist for the Pacemaker Prize for excellence in news reporting.VentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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