Minted.com, an e-commerce service for stationery and cars, has raised $5.5 million in Series B funding in a round led by Benchmark Capital, IDG Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Marissa Mayer, and Jeremy Stoppelman. Minted connects independent graphic designers to consumers looking for prints such as holiday cards, notebooks, calendars, and wedding invitations. The designer makes a percentage of every sale of their design.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has acquired Zagat, a recommendation and reviews website. The brand Zagat has started over 32 years ago by Tim and Nina Zagat.

At SXSW Google’s VP of location services Marissa Mayer reported some stats about Google Maps. Mayer noted that about 150 million people use the mobile version of Google Maps. Mayer also reported that Google Maps guided users about 12 billion miles per year and that it saves travelers 2 days of travel time each year. About 40% of all Google Maps usage is from mobile devices. On Christmas and New Years Day, mobile use of the service surpassed the Google Maps on desktop Internet. [BoyGeniusReport]

One Kings Lane is a website that was co-founded by Alison Pincus, the wife of Zynga CEO Mark Pincus. One Kings Lane raised a $23 million second round of funding led by Greylock Partners with participation from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Kleiner Perkins is a previous investors and so is Greylock partner Reid Hoffman. Reid Hoffman, TriplePoint Capital, and Marissa Mayer also participated in this round of funding. One Kings Lane sales were up 500% over 2009 and over 75% came from repeat customers. One Kings Lane is very similar to Groupon as it is a daily deals website. [TechCrunch]

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has launched a new service called Google Instant. Google Instant predicts what you are searching for as you type and finds the results as your are typing. This will help people save a lot of time — about 2-5 seconds per search according to Google.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has confirmed that they have acquired Boston-based company ITA Software, just hours after we posted speculation that the deal was in discussions.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) added a new feature that lets people add your favorite photos to the background of Google.com. Google has set up collaborations with artists, photographers, and sculptors to create a background image gallery. You can also choose an image or photo from your own computer or Picasa Web Album. Marissa Mayer announced the new feature on the Google Blog.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has added spelling corrections to Google Suggest. “This week we launched an update that makes Google Suggest even more intuitive and simple. If you’re typing a query for which there are no search completions to offer, and yet some of your search terms do seem to be misspelled, Google Suggest will now offer a “Did you mean” suggestion for your query—giving you an option to correct your spelling right away and get on with your search,” said Google VP of Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer on the Google Blog. And if you’re a fan of Google Suggest, you may like our list: 130 of the strangest Google Suggestions [Link].