Shaker is a virtual world startup based in Israel that has raised $15 million in a new round of funding. This round was led by Menlo Ventures’ Shervin Pishevar. Michael Arrington’s CrunchFund was already an investor in Shaker and they also participated in this round. Shaker was the champion at TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference.

Mr. Number is a mobile application for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry app that informs your friends when it is a good time to call you. Mr. Number also tells your friends whether you prefer text messages at the given moment. Mr. Number also does a lookup-based caller ID and it can block calls and messages from certain numbers. You can also report spam calls. Mr. Number has raised $3.5 million from Menlo Ventures. Mr. Number plans on using the funds to scale and build additional functionality. Shervin Pishevar and DuBose Montgomery of Menlo Ventures will join Mr. Numbers board of directors as part of this round. Mr. Number CEO Jason Devitt pointed out that nearly 3 million people have signed up for the service so far. [TechCrunch]

MindJolt is a gaming company that is run by MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe. DeWolfe left MySpace a few years after News Corporation acquired the social network company.

Gowalla is a location based social networking website that has raised $8.4 million in funding. Greylock Partners was the lead investor and the company plans to use the funding to strengthen their development capabilities. Thus far Gowalla has raised over $10 million since they started in 2007.

“Gowalla has rapidly attracted a passionate user base by creating an innovative, useful service that is also a lot of fun,” stated Greylock’s David Thacker. “It’s exciting to discover new places and earn stamps for your passport from places as diverse as Buckingham Palace and the Sydney Opera House to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the coffee shop down the street. Gowalla also connects you with your friends, letting you share your travels and meet up with others in real time.” Thacker has joined the Gowalla Board of Directors as part of the investment.

LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman also joined Gowalla’s board of directors as an observer.

Other investors in Gowalla include Jason Calacanis, Kevin Rose, Maples Investments, Shasta Ventures, Ron Conway, Gary Vaynerchuk, Shervin Pishevar, and Chris Sacca. Previous investors Alsop-Louie Partners and Founders Fund also participated in this round.

Social Gaming Network (SGN), the online game development company behind F.A.S.T., iBowl, and Vampires vs. Werewolves has launched a platform thats a bit different from their normal state of business. SGN created a product for toys to read data from the Internet and communicate that information to kids through the audio source within the toy. The demo that ToyBots used at the TechCrunch50 conference was called Woozee.

Woozee had the ability to read stories to children at night from previous audio recordings made by a parent or guardian. This way if a parent or guardian wanted to read a story to their children at night, the toy would be able to do it while they were away on a business trip. Pretty creepy eh? This means that Tickle-Me-Elmo would be actually read Goodnight Moon to your kids for you. As if kids’ imaginations weren’t already wild enough.

Toys could also have a network of friends that connect with other toys. ToyBots already has a telecommunications deal in place that they will announce later on. Some of the potential revenue streams include royalties and licensing costs. ToyBots would even give developers an SDK to create applications for the toys. Shervin Pishevar is the founder and CEO of ToyBots.