Popularity: 3% [?]

Canaan Partners invests in visionary entrepreneurs and provides them the networks, insights and operational guidance required to build high-performance technology and healthcare companies. For 20 years, they have taken an active and committed role in the companies in which they invest, and have completed more than 69 mergers and acquisitions and 53 IPOs.

With $3 billion under management and a worldwide footprint, the firm’s technology team is committed to catalyzing the growth of innovative companies in the digital media, communications & mobility, enterprise and clean tech industries. Among its successes are DoubleClick, the leading online advertising solution, Match.com, the most popular online dating site in the world, CommerceOne, the company that pioneered B2B ecommerce; Capstone Turbine, first to market and world’s leading producer of commercially viable microturbine energy products; and VOIP equipment supplier Acme Packet, which was one of the top ten performing tech IPOs of 2006. Other Canaan technology investments include Active Networks, BharatMatrimony, Cellcast, Techtribe, Blurb, Cortina, GroundWorks, ID Analytics, Tremor Media and SuccessFactors. Canaan has offices in California, Connecticut, India and Israel.

MENLO PARK, Calif. – February 6, 2008 - Canaan Partners, a multibillion-dollar global venture capital firm, announced today the closing of the $650 million fund, Canaan VIII. Consistent with previous funds, the new fund will focus on building next generation market-leaders in both the technology and healthcare sectors and brings Canaan Partners’ total capital under management to $3 billion.

With a 20-year track record as one of the premier investors in innovative early-stage technology and healthcare companies worldwide, the creation of the new fund will enable the firm to continue its strategy of taking active and significant ownership positions in pioneering companies in the digital media, communications, enterprise, clean technology, biopharmaceutical, medical device and diagnostics sectors.  In addition, the larger fund will facilitate Canaan’s sustained, global expansion by committing up to 25% of the fund to international investments.

Canaan also announced today the promotion of Dr. Stephen Bloch to general partner at the firm. Having been an entrepreneur and practicing physician, Dr. Stephen Bloch joined Canaan in 2002 and knows first hand the challenges of building successful healthcare companies.  Dr. Bloch led Canaan’s investment in Amicus Therapeutics (FOLD), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing next-generation oral therapies for the management of genetic diseases; he also sits on the boards of Advanced Biohealing, a developer of regenerative wound healing therapies, and Marinus Pharmaceuticals, a leader in development of drugs to treat serious neurological disorders. Dr. Bloch joins existing general partners: Brent Ahrens, John Balen, Wende Hutton, Maha Ibrahim, Deepak Kamra, Guy Russo and Eric Young.

Canaan plans to begin investing fund VIII this year. The firm typically leads its deals and maintains double-digit ownership stakes. Canaan’s previous funds have resulted in more than 120 positive exits, including 53 IPOs.  The firm has launched numerous market leaders and disrupters, such as SuccessFactors, the global leader in on-demand performance management solutions which went public this past November on Nasdaq; Acme Packet, maker of VoIP equipment for carriers and one of the top-10 performing tech IPOs of 2006; DoubleClick, the leading online advertising solution acquired by Google; Cerexa, one of the largest private biotech acquisitions in history; and Dexcom, the largest diagnostic IPO of 2005.

“For 20 years, Canaan has been helping innovative technology and healthcare companies achieve exceptional growth and success; the additional capital in Fund VIII will allow Canaan to seek out new, exciting companies and noteworthy entrepreneurs across the globe,” said Deepak Kamra, general partner at Canaan. “In addition to our Silicon Valley base, we have key personnel on the ground in India, Israel and the New York corridor and have already made significant investments in these regions.”

Fund VIII will continue Canaan’s focus on digital media investments, both in its Silicon Valley base where it has funded publishing industry-disruptors such as Blurb, and as well as in the New York corridor, where the firm has already funded digital media front-runners, such as Tremor Media, the largest pure-play video ad network; Associated Content, a leading publisher of user-generated content; and Peer39, a pioneer in targeted, semantic advertising solutions.

With its healthcare investments, Canaan has enjoyed 9 positive exits in 3 years and will continue to focus on biopharmaceutical companies with a special emphasis on combating infectious diseases, such as VaxInnate, developer of novel vaccines for pandemic and seasonal influenza; medical device companies developing next generation devices for the treatment of treat chronic and major diseases, such as ReVision Optics (RVO) whose technology corrects vision lost through the natural aging process (presbyopia); and diagnostics that are tied to specific, personalized therapies, such as Transoma Medical, a leading provider of implantable wireless diagnostic systems for patients with chronic cardiovascular disease. “We deliver superior company-building expertise to entrepreneurs, which in turn generates attractive returns for our limited partners,” said Brent Ahrens, general partner at Canaan.  “We will continue to execute on our proven investment strategy on a global scale.”

The larger fund will also allow the firm to expand its reach in India and in Israel, countries in which the firm has actively been investing via local offices. Canaan has demonstrated early momentum in these areas with key investments in companies such as BharatMatrimony, the world’s largest consumer Internet site for matrimonial services based in India; and LiveU, an innovative provider of mobile video broadcasting technology from Israel.

Tip: Indian Online innovators- keep an eye on it.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Happy Xmas 2007

Popularity: 4% [?]

MingleBox.com is a social networking website targeting youngsters from campus and work. Headed by CEO Kavita Iyer, the site offer basic social networking tools video, photo, blogs, groups and some specials services in campus, cricket , film , fun, love and life.

From the site

minglebox.com is India’s fastest growing community site. Whether its colleges, workplaces or other communities, minglebox has captured the imagination of young people across India. While thousands of such internet buffs are involved in shaping minglebox, behind the scenes is a young team passionate about building a place where people will love to hang out. Our complementary skills in business, technology, media and design help. Between weekly releases, endless arguments over UI and ideas bursting from every desk, our little space on Airport road, Bangalore is always buzzing. For more information, drop us an email and we’ll connect.

Kavita Iyer, CEO

An IIM Ahmedabad, IIT Delhi (Director’s Gold Medallist) alumnus. Worked at ICICI with several of their internet and marketing initiatives and at Wipro Technologies with their product solutions business. As part of the Tata Administrative Service, she was in the core team that launched Tanishq, one of India’s leading consumer brands. Kavita is also a keen Hindustani music vocalist.

Sanjay Aggarwal, CTO

An IIT Delhi alumnus. World class internet technology and software experience. Headed a search group at Yahoo, worked for several years with Appian Communications - a US high tech start up. He started his career at Infosys. Sanjay is an enthusiastic Marathon runner and Bridge player.

Sushma Abburi, Vice President

Masters from Georgia Tech, Atlanta, IIT Delhi alumnus. Consumer business operations and product management professional. Worked with i2 technologies in the US and India. Started her career as a management trainee with HLL and managed operations in detergents and ice creams business. Sushma is a National level athlete and enjoys trekking.

Whatever the claims, it seems that minglebox.com is growing staidly in traffic as per alexa.com ranking.

Permalink to Alexa Ranking

Visit and try yourself the Mingle Box … Click Here

Popularity: 11% [?]

(For those who never know about Give Away of the Day…). Give Away of the Day is a website that allows you to download full version software and games each day for FREE.

From Give Away of the Day website:

About

Welcome to Giveaway of the day project, the new initiative in the software distribution world! Every day we offer for FREE licensed software you’d have to buy otherwise!

Our new initiative, Giveaway of the day, is finally open to its visitors and ready to present hot software titles and best software authors from all over the world. For game giveaways check out Game Giveaway of the Day.We wish you a Happy Giveaway!

Giveaway of the day is a win-win solution for both publishers and clients

The idea behind this initiative is that many sites and publishers offer trial downloads; but only we offer giveaway downloads. What does that mean?

Basically, every day we nominate one software title that will be a Giveaway title of that day. The software will be available for download for 24 hours (or more, if agreed by software publisher) and that software will be absolutely free. That means - not a trial, not a limited version - but a registered and legal version of the software will be free for our visitors*.

The software product will be presented in its full functionality, without any limitations save for those mentioned in Terms and Conditions.

The download link will remain on our web-site for the agreed period of time, together with the review of the software product and the information about other products from the software publisher presenting the giveaway title.

Both reviews and the information on the product line will remain active even when the Giveaway period is over.

The information about Giveaway of the day and the participants of this initiative will be included in our newsletters and distributed among our visitors and subscribers.

We will pay the software publisher for the Giveaway license, and our visitors will only receive those after downloading a special verification program and agreeing to the Terms and Conditions, thus protecting software publishers’ interests and making our initiative beneficial for both clients and publishing companies.

We believe that Giveaway of the day will allow both publishers and clients to meet each other and win together with our initiative.

How can I win with Giveaway of the day?

1. You will get to know new software, for free!
2. You will learn more about the software product, because we will provide a detailed software review for every title we nominate!
3. You will get the information and special offers on all the additional software products from the given publisher.
4. You will be offered an easy access to new software products and new versions of existing ones.
5. Vast software selection as well as the extensive search capabilities of our web-site will allow you to find just the software you need.
6. News of the world of software, daily updated information, new reviews and software downloads - all and everything for you, every day, together with our daily giveaways!

Click Here and Start Downloading Free Software and Games Today.

Popularity: 10% [?]

The all new Apple Computer website ads rocks. Instead of showing simple video ads they use the right hand side box and connected it with top banners for more effective display.
Watch them in action

In future there will be no html, but vhtml(video html) on websites?.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Bangalore-based InstaColl, co-founded by Sabeer Bhatia, Sumanth Raghavendra and Kaushal Cavale, today launched an application called Live Documents, which is a hybrid online-offline office suite of applications with features similar to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

In development for the last two years, the product is truly a ‘Made in India’ product, according to Sabeer Bhatia, chairman, Instacoll.

“I believe Live Documents does what Hotmail (which Bhatia sold to Microsoft for a little over $400 million) did for e-mail,” he said.

Sumanth Raghavendra, CEO, Instacoll, said, “The launch of Live Documents will fill all the gaps that Microsoft has not been able to fill, especially in the online category. With its software and services approach, users can access this via a hosted model, on premises servers or use a plug and play appliance.”

InstaColl is a powerful Instant Collaboration solution that is unlike any other real-time collaboration/web conferencing tool in the market.

In essence, InstaColl is not a new collaboration product - instead, InstaColl extends familiar mainstream desktop productivity tools such as the Microsoft Office suite into rich, interactive platforms that allow users to present, review and edit their documents, spreadsheets and presentations collaboratively with remotely-located colleagues.

Most people have experienced web conferencing and real-time collaboration as a formal session where a set of pre-designated people arrive at a predetermined time and share pre-decided documents and information along a scripted agenda. InstaColl believes that these collaboration occasions are only a small subset of the collaboration that goes on in organizations - where a majority of collaboration opportunities emerge in a spontaneous and on-demand manner. InstaColl is made to support a wide range of ad-hoc, spontaneous collaboration opportunities where users can initiate a session on a spur.

InstaColl adopts a data-centric model where only the data is shared with the applications running locally on individual desktops. This ensures that bandwidth requirements are very low and even dial-up users can experience InstaColl and users can collaborate even if their operating system or application versions are different.

InstaColl’s hybrid peer-to-peer/client-server architecture promises low latency and 100% connectivity. InstaColl allows for seamless collaboration between people inside and outside the firewall, without having to reconfigure the firewall to allow outsider access, which is time-consuming and presents security risks.

InstaColl makes it extremely easy to meet online. Your invited attendees will easily join your sessions in minutes because no pre-loaded software is required and no configuration is necessary; they participate as your guests, at no cost to you or them. Start InstaColling online today!

Visit the Site @ http://www.instacoll.com/products.htm

Popularity: 10% [?]

Hotmail.com co-founder Sabeer Bhatia said he would launch a new internet related product  for mass use in Mumbai on Wednesday.

“It will be a global launch. The product has the potential to surpass the success of even Hotmail. About 100 technologists have been working on the product for months at a start-up in Bangalore,” Bhatia told reporters on the sidelines of a Nasscom function here Monday.

Earlier, delivering the keynote address at the Nasscom product conclave, Bhatia said there was no hard and fast rule for innovation to take place and it could begin informally even with an idea.

“Innovation many a time happens informally, even over a coffee table,” Bhatia told entrepreneurs, setting aside a popular notion that innovations take place at serious business meetings or conclaves of researchers and round-table conferences.

Recalling his own tryst with Hotmail.com, Bhatia said innovation did not require a large workforce and could happen with a few individuals thinking over a solution.

“For instance, i-Pod was conceived as an idea by a group of five bright people. Many a time, great products are those that are developed by a start-up,” Bhatia recalled.

“Don’t be afraid of taking risks because behind every successful product there could be many failures, as evident from the history of product development in the Silicon Valley,” Bhatia said, asserting that a single success story could turn the tide.

Sabeer Bhatia was born in Chandigarh, India in 1968. His father, Baldev Bhatia, started as an officer in the Indian Army and later joined the Indian Ministry of Defence, while his mother, Daman Bhatia, was a senior official at the Central Bank of India.[1] Bhatia was schooled at the St. Joseph’s Boys’ High School in Bangalore. He started his undergraduate education at the Birla Institute of Technology & Science, BITS, Pilani and transferred to Caltech after two years at BITS. After graduating from Caltech, Sabeer went to Stanford to pursue his MS in Electrical Engineering. At Stanford, he worked on Ultra Low Power VLSI Design.

At Stanford, he was inspired by entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs and Scott McNealy eventually deciding to become one himself. Instead of pursuing a PhD after his Masters, he decided to join Apple.After a brief stint at Apple, Sabeer joined a startup company called Firepower Systems Inc, where he spent two years. At this point, Sabeer started working on new ideas for the Internet and he teamed up with Jack Smith, a colleague from Apple Corporation.

The two came up with the concept of a web-based database entitled Javasoft. While pursuing this idea, they subsequently realised the potential of a web-based e-mail system and thus decided to create one called HoTMaiL (the uppercase letters spelling out HTML - the language used to write the base of a webpage).In order to attract attention, the e-mail service was provided for free and revenue was obtained through the advertising on the website. Draper Fisher Ventures invested $300,000 on the project and the service was launched on July 4, 1996.

In less than six months, the website attracted over 1 million subscribers. As the interest in the web-based email provider increased, Microsoft eventually took notice and on December 30, 1997, Hotmail was sold to Microsoft for a reported sum of $400 million.

Well, Bhatia, The internet world is waiting for your  product launch…

Popularity: 8% [?]

Miss Landmine Project online voting is in progress. You can cast your vote at their website.

“Miss Landmine???” What’s this?? From their website

The Miss Landmine project is a possible nucleus for a national female landmine survivor’s network through a CBR (Community Based Rehabilitaion) -programme with practical guidance and support from national authorities (CNIDAH) and international NGOs.

Depending on the level of commitment from local authorities, each participant may be assigned as a Miss Landmine representative in her own province, with responsibilities of coordinating and providing information and assistance to other women in the same situation and monitoring ways of empowerment, such as education and specialized health care.

We are hopeful that a successful Miss Landmine pilot event will function as a catalyst, both to Angola and internationally in other landmine-affected countries, for the project to grow and develop, with or without the assistance of the original Miss Landmine team.

Visit their site at http://www.miss-landmine.org/misslandmine_vote.php

Popularity: 8% [?]

Here read an interesting story of a young executive who leaved his high salaried job in MicroSoft to change the world and started his mission Room to Read. Room to Read’s mission is to provide under-privileged children with an opportunity to gain the lifelong gift of education. It was founded on the belief that education is crucial to breaking the cycle of poverty and taking control of one’s life. We currently focus our efforts on Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, South Africa, and Zambia; countries with a desperate lack of resources to educate their children.

In 1998, John Wood was a rising executive at Microsoft when he took a vacation that changed his life. What started as a trekking holiday in Nepal became a spiritual journey, and then a mission: to change the world one book and one child at a time by setting up libraries in the developing world. He was soon driven to leave his career with only a loose vision of the change he wanted to bring to the world.

Over the next five years John would make the unlikely marriage between Microsoft business practices and the world of non-profits to create Room to Read, an organization that has created a network of over 4,000 schools and libraries throughout rural and poor communities in Asia, Africa, and soon in Latin America (starting in 2008).

The organization is now one of the fastest growing, most effective, and award-winning non-profits of the last decade. John has been recognized in the worldwide media as a “21st century Andrew Carnegie,” building a public library infrastructure to help the developing world break the cycle of poverty through the lifelong gift of education.

Visit his site for more details.. and his mission site @ www.roomtoread.org

Popularity: 8% [?]