2tor has announced that they have raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Redpoint Ventures and was co-invested by Novak Biddle Venture Partners and City Light Capital.  The company was founded by Princeton Review Inc. founder John Katzman.  2tor is an online education company that helps universities manage online courses.

“2tor is proving that online education can be excellent and innovative. We are delighted to have Redpoint, Novak Biddle, and City Light on our team, as well as the expertise, commitment and perspective of their partners,” stated Katzman in a press release. “With them, we will continue to scale up our first program, ready the launch of our second, and step up to the role as the bridge between great universities and online learning.”

As part of the funding, Redpoint Partner Greg Martin and Novak Biddle General Partner Philip Bronner will be joining the 2tor Board of Directors.

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

It was announced earlier this week that Arlington, VA based company, Clearspring Technologies has raised $2 million in venture capital from Novak Biddle Venture Partners and a couple of other investors. Clearspring Technologies offers a widget syndication service for 2 types of people: Content Owners and Developers.

For content owners, Clearspring offers a partnership for brand name distribution through the forms of widgets. Clearspring enables you to package text, video, images, and applications into portable widgets. Then launches these widgets stamped with your brand across blogs and social networks. After this is complete, content owners can manage their widget content through a client interface. Lastly, Clearspring allows content users to analyze the real-time data statistics.

Widget developers can also benefit from Clearspring Technologies services. Clearspring allows developers to “push your widgets out to existing widget galleries in one click [source].” Developers can also analyze advanced statistics tracking on their widgets through Clearspring.

Christopher Marentis is the current CEO of Clearspring and is a former senior vice president of AOL Business Development. The two founders of Clearspring are Hooman Radfar and Austin Fath. Other Clearspring investors include Joel P. Adams, Miles R. Gilburne, and Bobby Yazdani.

[Source: BusinessWire]