Ning CEO Gina Bianchini is stepping down from the CEO position at Ning.  Now she will become an executive-in-residence at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz.  Ning co-founder Marc Andreessen also co-founded the venture firm.  Ning COO Jason Rosenthal will take Gina’s position. Over the course of existence, Ning raised about $120 million in venture capital.  Below is a statement from the company [AllThingsD]:

Weedle is a website that allows users to find specific skills and pitch their own.  They compete with websites like Elance.com, Freelance.com, etc.  Weedle is based in Ireland and they plan to use the cash to expand in the U.S.  The funding was provided by several Irish business entrepreneurs. [paidContent]

Tim Bray, the co-inventor of XML and a tech blogger was a Sun Microsystems employee (now property of Oracle). Now he has joined the Google Android team.

“Google and I have been a plausible match for a long time. Web-centric, check. Search, check. Open-source, check. The list goes on,” stated Bray in a blog post called Now A No-Evil Zone. “We’ve talked repeatedly over the years, but the conversations all ended at the point when I said ‘…and I don’t want to move to the Bay Area.’”

Bray had an offer from Oracle, but he declined. “I’ll maybe tell the story when I can think about it without getting that weird spiking-blood-pressure sensation in my eyeballs.” [TBray.org]

Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell have started an early-stage fund called Lightbank. They plan to invest as much as about $10 million annually in technology companies. This includes startups that need financing that range from $100,000 to $1 million. The two want to help make Chicago a technology hub that helps support the heaps of “untapped entrepreneurial talent.”

Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell met at the University of Michigan. Both founded companies in the past. Lefkofsky founded InnerWorkings, a printing company that went public in 2006. In 2005 the two started a transportation company called Echo Global Logistics. That company went public last year.

In 2007 Eric and Brad started Groupon and raised about $36 million. Groupon has over 3 million subscribers. Between the two of them, Eric and Brad raised over $150 million in funding and generated about $1.5 billion in returns.

GyPSii has raised $11 million in funding in an effort to raise a total of $40 million. GyPSii is based in Holland and they have announced a Twitter application called Tweetsii. The funding was provided by Schroders. GeoSentric is the company that oversees GyPSii. They previously raised about $13.1 million from Horizon Group and Schroders in 2007. The funding is “to support marketing and additional development of GyPSii applications.” GyPSii is basically a mobile location-based application where users can check in and out.
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Facebook announced on their blog that they will be opening up an office in Hyderabad, India. This is about one week after they announced an office in Austin, Texas. Facebook said that between both offices, the company will be able to better serve ad companies, users, and developers. Facebook is recruiting people for both locations on their online sales and operations teams. Facebook has about 8 million users in India. [Facebook Blog]

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL) has filed a lawsuit against Toshiba, Hitachi, and Sharp for price fixing of LCD displays.  The lawsuit was filed at a U.S. district court in San Francisco.  Dell did not decide what they are seeking as a result of the lawsuit. This isn’t the first time Sharp faced a similar charge. In November 2008 LG, Sharp, and Chunghwa pleaded guilty for LCD display price-fixing conspiracy. [ZDNet]

BroadSoft Inc. revealed that they are filing for an IPO in a filing with the SEC.  BroadSoft will be offering about $103.5 million of common stock. The company is based in Gaithersburg, Maryland.  BroadSoft develops software that enables fixed-line, mobile service provides, and cable service providers to deliver voice and multimedia content over Internet protocol-based networks. BroadSoft will trade under the symbol “BSFT” within the The NASDAQ Global Market. [RTTNews]