Kevin Rose, Robert Scoble, and Tim Draper are participating in a NCsoft Operation Immortality experiment to send DNA into outer space.

Kevin Rose is the founder and creator of Digg. Robert Scoble is a tech blogger, social media advocate, and a videographer at FastCompany.TV. Tim Draper is the founder of venture capital company, Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Since this news had Kevin Rose’s name in it, I submitted it to Digg and it became popular within 14 hours. Digg it up if you like the news. Richard Garriot, a game designer is also sending his DNA.

All of these individuals are travelling to the International Space Station on October 12 to send their DNA. Operation Immortality is sending a digital time capsule of the human race on the ISS with DNA samples of musicians, athletes, and some of Silicon Valley’s brightest.

“It is exciting to have Kevin, Tim and Robert join this project and be a part of preserving their accomplishments which have changed our world,” stated Garriott. “These three individuals are some of the most creative and innovative minds in Silicon Valley and we are honored to include them as part of our snapshot of humanity in the 21^st Century.”

Here is the press release of the news.

SkyGrid is a news aggregation and filtering service that is based in Sunnyvale, Calif.  SkyGrid has announced that they have raised $11 million as part of their Series B round of funding.  The lead investor was RRE Ventures.  Previous investor, BlackRock also participated.  Other previous investors includes Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Esther Dyson, a regular contributor to the Huffington Post.

SkyGrid scans millions of news sources and then filters out the important information.  SkyGrid was started in 2005 and is run by Kevin Pomplun.  SkyGrid looks very similar to Bloomberg’s software, but positive news stories are color coded green, negative stories are color coded red, and neutral are white.  Below is a screen shot from GigaOM.

SkyGrid has applied for several patents on their “sentiment algorithm” and seven other components of their search technology.  I haven’t seen any other search engine provide color-coded company stories and blog posts so I am definetely impressed.

SkyGrid’s services are about $500 per month.  The last round of funding added up to about $2.25 million.

Related Links:
1. SkyGrid
2. paidContent

Guidester, Inc. has relaunched as Searchandise Commerce.  Searchandise has raised $7.5 million from private equity firm Cloquet Capital Partners LLC, DFJ Gotham, Wheatley Partners, Milestone Venture Partners, Inflection Point Ventures, and Tim Draper.

Searchandise provides CPC solutions to manufacturers that want to advertise on online merchandising companies like Become.com, Buy.com, and PriceGrabber.  Searchandise uses their partnership with ATG to distribute the ads.  ATG created an ad-supported e-commerce platform.

“Searchandise Commerce has the potential to change the online retail landscape,” stated Burt McGillivray, President of Cloquet Capital. “Combine the company’s established customer base, with its innovative technology and a new and proven executive team, and this is an exciting investment for us to lead. I have worked with John and his team in the past and they have a superior track record of successful ventures. Searchandise Commerce will be no different.”

Related Links:
1. Searchandise press release

“The new media content space and specifically animation, is growing at an explosive rate,” stated Andreas Stavropoulos, Managing Director at DFJ. “aniBoom created a disruptive model harnessing the power and reach of digital distribution to generate tremendous opportunities for animated content created by a massive network of independent professionals around the globe.”

aniBoom, an animation social network for creative minds to collaborate on cartoons has raised a big round of funding at $10 million Series B.  AniBoom is based in Israel and the funding was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson.  DFJ Tamir Fishman Ventures and previous investor Evergreen Venture Partners also participated in this round.  aniBoom raised $4.5 million in February 2007. 

aniBoom was started in 2006 by Uri Shinar.  Uri is also the CEO of the company.  aniBoom wants to become the YouTube of animation according to TechCrunch.

aniBoom has over 4,000 independent creators across 70 countries.  These artists are all working together to help making a music video for songs on Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” album through a contest.

“In teaming up with DFJ and DFJ Tamir Fishman Ventures, we are proud to partner with one of the top venture firms in the world,” stated Uri Shinar.  “aniBoom is the innovator of the now very hot virtual digital animation studios and animation incubation model, and to see the major media and entertainment powers following suit is a strong endorsement of our vision.”

Aniboom is located at www.aniboom.com

 

Dave Sifry’s blog search platform, Technorati has come a long way since it’s inception.  In 2006, Technorati won numerous awards including the Best Technical Achievement and Best of Show at South by Southwest and was also nominated for a 2006 Webby award.

Sifry launched Technorati in 2002.  The name, Technorati is based on the fusion of the words technology and literati (intellectuals).  Technorati allows users to search for blogs, photos, and other media.  Technorati redesigned their platform in 2007 to gain the attention of bloggers, Internet startups, entrepreneurs, and mainstream media.

In the first three rounds of investment, Technorati brought in $21.6 million.  Today the company announced that they have raised $7.5 million out of a targeted $10 million Series D round.  Montgomery & Co. is working on brokering an acquisition of the blog search engine company.

Previous investors in Technorati include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, August Capital, and Mobius Venture Capital.  In this round, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Mobius Venture Capital, and FG Incubation participated.

Upon visiting the Technorati homepage I noticed that at the top it says, “what’s percolating in blogs now.”  The frontpage consists of stories in the media that many blogs are commenting on and linking to.  This approach is very similar to Techmeme and Digg.

Technorati has a feature called Authority and Ranks individual blogs.  The more a blog gets linked to, the more authority and ranking it receives. The top 100 blogs on Technorati are available at: http://technorati.com/pop/blogs/.

Technorati will be making an official announcement next week about the funding and will be announcing a business strategy initiative.  Look for additional Technorati news next week.

Information Sources:
[1] paidContent: More Cash For Technorati: Blog Searcher Gets $7.5 Million Of $10 Million Fourth Round by Joseph Weisenthal
[2] TechCrunch: Technorati Confirms New Financing; New Business Focus Coming by Michael Arrington

Meebo, the online chat application that is powered by AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, and Jabber has raised a Series C round of investment at $25 million. JAFCO Ventures was the lead investor. Other investors include Time Warner, KTB Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Meebo was started in September 2005 and is currently valuated at $200 million.

Meebo is a top 400 site within Alexa.  The online instant message company plans to utilize their partnership through Time Warner by working with its subsidiaries such as AOL, TMZ, New Line Cinema, People Magazine, and CNN.

Meebo will be expanding to Japan and Korea with this round of funding.  Meebo also has partnerships with VideoEgg, CBS, PUMA, and 4 record labels.  Meebo started in September 2005 and has over 29 million users sending over 150 million IMs daily.

The actual name of the company was written on a napkin by the three co-founders.   What is the deal with  coming up with business plans and Internet company names on napkins?

Redux is a social network company based in Berkeley, Calif. VentureBeat just wrote that the company has raised $6.5 million from Alsop Louie Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Redux’s first round of funding was provided by Alsop Louie Partners and Peter Thiel. Thiel is an early investor in Facebook and PayPal co-founder.

Redux was started by Darian Sharazi. Darian used to work for Facebook and also started Fotodunk, a mobile photo-sharing company. Redux has an algorithm that helps people find others with similar interests. Redux allows users to chat on all pages and exchange media.

Below is a video from DEMO.com of Darian presenting Redux:

CafeMom is a social networking site for moms and is also a site for parenting.  The New York-based social network company announced that they have raised additional funding at $12 million.  This round of funding was provided by Highland Capital Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.  Since the site has launched, CafeMom raised $20.3 million total.

CafeMom has several sponsors that have created ad campaigns around their social network.  Clients include Nestle, Unilever, Kraft, Disney, J&J, and Best Buy.  According to CenterNetworks, ad campaigns run for about $200,000-$500,000 on average.

Recently CafeMom released a feature called Hot List.  Hot Lists encourages moms to submit parenting-related news and to “Bump” them.  The feature is a blatant Digg replica.

CafeMom receives about 6 million monthly visitors and 120 million page views [Source: Mashable].

Meebo is an online application that allows users to log into several different instant message systems remotely.  These IM systems include AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, and Jabber.  Meebo launched in 2005 and received $12.5 million in funding from Sequoia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.  Over 100 million IMs are sent daily through Meebo.  Several media companies use Meebo to connect to their fans through by using Meebo’s chat room features.

The rumor on the Internets is that Meebo is looking to raise an additional $25-$30 million.  And that Meebo has hired San Francisco, Calif.-based investment bank, Montgomery & Co. to help find an investor.  If Meebo is able to raise those funds, their valuation could become $250 million.  Meebo receives 29 million monthly unique visitors per month.

Meebo was started by Sandy Jen and Seth Sternberg.  The company also recently hired Martin Green from CNET to work in business development.

[Information Source: VentureBeat/AllThingsD]