Social network customization service Ning.com has raised $15 million in Series E funding.  This investment places Ning at a valuation of $750 million.  Last year Ning raised $60 million at a $500 million valuation.

Ning currently has about 29.3 million registered users and over 1 million social networks.  The company was founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini.  Andreessen recently launched his own venture firm with former partner Ben Horowitz.  The venture firm that was started by Andreessen is called Andreessen Horowitz.

“The growth at Ning has been massive in the last year and, combined with the quality of the team and seeing that kind of momentum, it worked out well for us both,” stated Lightspeed Venture Partner Managing Director and co-founder Ravi Mhatre.

[via AllThingsD]

According to iSuppli, The LCD market for large sized panels (10 inches or more) picked up in the second quarter of this year. The market had been declining for nine months before it picked up. Shipments of LCD panels rose by 41.4 percent. The market grew due to a healthy demand for LCDs. 129.7 million units were shipped in Q2.

A full recovery in the market is expected in the second half of this year.

This toaster etches the Microsoft logo onto bread. I have no idea where it came from or who made it.

Image Source: mazw220

Via Engadget

Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff released a mobile manufacturer market share chart today. The chart shows Nokia as having the top market share at 39%. Nokia also tops industry-wide profits at 60%. Interestingly enough, Apple has a very very small market share but a large cut of the profits at 20 percent.

Motorola has about 10 percent of the market but makes no money. Sony Ericsson also has around 10 percent of the market and makes no money.

Apple has a larger share of profits than Research In Motion but RIM has a slightly larger market share.

Via

Yahoo launched a redesigned homepage today. The company said it is their most significant homepage redesign ever. Users can now fully customize their Yahoo homepage. The new design is cleaner than their previous designs. It is also better organized and less cluttered.

One of the best features of the homepage is a new My Favorites panel. The panel includes Yahoo properties as well as external sites such as Facebook and eBay. Users can add their own sites to the panel. Users can also add widgets Yahoo calls Apps from yahoo’s Apps Gallery to the panel.

Users can even enter their own social networking status on the new homepage.

US visitors should see the new design up today. A Yahoo mobile homepage update is scheduled for next week.

Digg’s CEO Jay Adelson said in a company blog post that the the way Digg handles shortened URLs is permanent. Originally, a Digg shortened URL would link directly to the source. Now it links to the source’s Digg story and comments page on Digg.com. However, If you are logged into Digg, the shortened URL will redirect you to the source and not Digg.com.

Adelson said that Digg never wanted to become a URL shortening service. URL shortening services such as bit.ly and tinyurl decrease the size of large URLs so it can be shared over Twitter and other social sites.

The changes apparently took place when Digg founder Kevin Rose was on vacation. At the time, he said he was unaware of the changes.

Digg users are very unhappy about the changes. The DiggBar created a lot of controversy when it was launched. People hated the DiggBar so Digg made it optional for logged in users and discontinued it for logged out users.

Digg did mention that all links created prior to today would redirect to their original story.

To mark Apollo 11′s 40th anniversary, Google added the moon to Google Earth. You can now explore the Apollo 11 landing site on Google Earth. You can even see human artifacts that have been left behind on the moon.

The moon addition was developed in collaboration with NASA Ames Research and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

With Moon in Google Earth, you can:

* Take tours of landing sites, narrated by Apollo astronauts
* View 3D models of landed spacecraft
* Zoom into 360-degree photos to see astronauts’ footprints
* Watch rare TV footage of the Apollo missions

Kelly Katrina Hildebrandt, 20, met her soon to be husband, Kelly Carl Hildebrandt, on Facebook. She was bored one night so she searched for her own name. She found Kelly Carl Hildebrandt’s profile and messaged him. A year later, she is marrying him.

After meeting on Facebook, the two exchanges emails and messages for months before meeting in person. Kelly Carl Hildebrandt visited her and instantly fell in love.

She is a community college student and he works in the financial services industry.

They plan to marry soon.

Via