McLean, Virginia-based widget development company, Clearspring has raised $18 million in a third round of funding. This round of funding was led by New Enterprise Associates. Novak Biddle Venture Partners also participated in this round. This brings Clearsprings total funding to $35 million. Previous investors include Steve Case, Mark Jung, and Ted Leonsis. Clearspring is banking on ads built into widgets.

Clearspring primarily utilizes two services. LaunchPad and WidgetMedia are two of Clearspring’s biggest services. LaunchPad enables users to create, pubish, and distribute widgets across social networks. And WidgetMedia allows users to monetize widgets.

Clearspring clients include the NBA, RockYou!, NBC, Facebook, Adobe, Time, JibJab, MySpace, The Discovery Channel, Maxim.com, and Blogger. The company was founded by Hooman Radfar and Austin Fath.

Information Source:
[1] Widgeteer Clearspring Gets Its Big $18 Million Third Round by Joseph Weisenthal

Xoom is one of the biggest money transfer companies on the Internet today.   The $20.29 million Series E funding was sent to Xoom from Sequoia Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Fidelity Ventures, and DAG Ventures.

Xoom is based in San Francisco, Calif. and previously raised $15 million in Series D in 2006.  Cumulatively, Xoom raised over $50 million to power its business operations.

Xoom makes money transfer easy in 4 steps:
1.) Enter your contact info, recipient’s info, and the amount of money to be sent.
2.) Select a delivery method.
3.) Select a payment method (Visa/MasterCard/eCheck, Discover, Paypal).
4.) Send your recipient a tracking method.

However, due to all the third parties involved, its rather difficult to support all of the developing countries for their operations.  This is why Xoom is limited to only Argentina, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Hong Kong, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Paraguay, Peru, Phillippines, Sri Lanka, Uruguay, Vietnam.  I’m assuming that with this new round of funding, Xoom will be able to expand its operations to support other countries. 

Recipients of money transfers for Xoom do not necessarily require a bank account or Internet connection to receive funds because Xoom has money transfer partners to provide ways to send money to family and friends in other countries.

Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital, Dick Kramlich of New Enterprise Associates, Anne Mitchell of Fidelity Ventures, Keith Hartz of the founding team of Xoom, and Keith Rabois sit on the Board of Directors for Xoom.