Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks was charged by the SEC for selling 600,000 shares of Mamma.com illegally.  According to the Washington Post, Mamma.com started raising investment capital around June 2004 through PIPE (private investment in public equity).  Supposedly Cuban knew about the PIPE upcoming investment and sold his shares before it took place.

If Cuban did not sell his shares, then he would have had $750,000 in losses according to the accusations.  Cuban responded to the allegations on his blog:

I am disappointed that the Commission chose to bring this case based upon its Enforcement staff’s win-at-any-cost ambitions. The staff’s process was result-oriented, facts be damned. The government’s claims are false and they will be proven to be so.

Cuban recently invested in Bailoutsleuth.com, a blog that tracks how the government bailout money is spent.

“Historically, the SEC has liked to make examples of well-known individuals — such as Martha Stewart — because it attracts attention to the subject,” stated Alexander Bono, Chair of Securities Litigation at Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis.

Cuban is currently the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Chairman of HDNet.  Cuban is an owner in IceRocket, a former partner at RedSwoosh, and invested in Weblogs, Inc.  Most of Cuban’s wealth was generated from Yahoo!’s acquisition of broadcast.com for $5.9 billion.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is developing voice recognition search technology and releasing it to the Apple iPhone first and then is expected to offer it on the Android mobile platform later on.  The application is expected to launch soon.

“This is an expansion of types of applications Google has already been developing,” stated Greg Sterling, an analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. “Google has GOOG411, which is the underlying technical engine. They also have a voice-search client for the BlackBerry which is limited to maps. So this is an evolutionary step.”

When someone uses the application on the iPhone, they can ask any question.  The question is converted to a digital file, sent to Google servers, and passes it to Google’s search engine.  The search engine will then send the results back to the caller.  Yahoo! and Microsoft already have established similar services in the past.

“YouTube is offering a cash prize to the first user to upload a video with a shred of originality or artistic merit,” states the description of the YouTube clip below:

YouTube liked this contest spoof so much that they added a tab called “Actually Good” on top of the video. YouTube is hilarious for doing this.

Transpera is a mobile web video company that is based in Santa Monica, California.  The company is led by Frank Barbieri, former President at Viva Vision and former Group Product Manager at Microsoft.   Transpera has raised their second round of funding at $8.25 million from Flybridge Capital Partners, Intel Capital, and First Round Capital.  Transpera also received debt financing from Silicon Valley Bank.

“Transpera is demonstrating true leadership in the mobile video market by building an ever-expanding network of premium content partners and delivering innovative, game-changing advertising opportunities,” stated Jeff Bussgang general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners. “We continue to be pleased with their progress in setting a new standard within the mobile video landscape.”

Transpera will be using the money for expanding their product line and service customers.  Transpera already helps monetize video for AccuWeather, Associated Press, Break.com, Revision3, ManiaTV, Fox, MTV, etc.

Transpera has also hired Brian Monnin as Chief Product Officer.  Monnin is former VP of Publishing Products as Brightcove.

Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) has hired Gregory K. Peters as the VP of Partner Products.  Peters will be “responsible for bringing to market a range of devices from leading consumer electronics manufacturers that are capable of instantly streaming movies and TV episodes from Netflix directly to consumers’ TVs.”

The VP of Partner Products role was created after Netflix decided to bring their services to the XBox 360.  Now Netflix wants customers to be able to stream movies to their own TVs quickly.  Netflix has partnerships with LG, Roku, Microsoft, Samsung, and TiVo.  Peters will be reporting to Netflix Chief Product Officer, Neil Hunt.

Netflix has about 12,000 movies and TV episodes in their library.

“Greg’s expertise in all aspects of the product development lifecycle – from vision to design to implementation – will be a significant asset to Netflix and our partners as we push toward our goal of eventually enabling all U.S. households to stream Netflix to their TVs,” stated Dr. Hunt.

Nick Denton, millionaire and founder of Gawker Media.  Gawker is one of the most visible media companies today with 12 subsidiary blogs.  The 12 blogs include Gawker.com, Defamer, Fleshbot, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Consumerist, io9, Kotaku, and Jezebel.

Denton is putting Consumerist for sale and is rumored to be consolidating Valleywag, a gossip blog centered around Silicon Valley into Gawker.com.  Standing alone, Valleywag receives about one million monthly uniques.

Owen Thomas, editor at Valleywag will be keeping his job but will be publishing on Gawker.  Gawker has between 100-150 employees.

Why is Gawker doing this?
Gawker receives more hits and has a lot more of a broader market.  This makes it easier to sell advertising.  Imagine if you were an advertising company and Gawker is pitching that they own a blog on Internet celebrities and another blog on every single celebrity.  Which would you invest in?

[Via AlleyInsider]

McColo Corporation is a web hosting service company whose clients were mostly cyber-criminal spam gangs and they have been officially knocked offline.  Supposedly McColo was responsible for 75% of the junk e-mail that is sent out each day.

Security Fix, a subsidiary of The Washington Post contacted the Internet providers of McColo to inform them about the amounts of spam that were being sent.  Global Crossing informed Security Fix that they fully comply with law enforcement.  Hurricane Electric, a major Internet provider for McColo stated that they shut them down.

“We looked into it a bit, saw the size and scope of the problem you were reporting and said ‘Holy cow! Within the hour we had terminated all of our connections to them,” stated Benny Ng of Hurricane Electric.

Since McColo shut down, a large number of spam e-mail messages have been stopped.  Nilesh Bhandari, product manager at IronPort reported that on normal days 190 billion spam e-mails are sent out.  Today 112 billion were sent out.

YouTube was taking too much of bandwidth up on military networks so the U.S. Department of Defense blocked it.  YouTube was used by many soldiers to send videos back and forth so Military OneSource setup a new kind of video network.  The project is called TroopTube.  Troops are using TroopTube as a resource for quickly uploading videos and sharing them with their families and friends.

Military OneSource is an organization that provides assistance and online services to members of the military and their families.  OneSource worked with Delve Networks to build the new site.

New users register as a member of a specific armed force, a family member, a supporter, or a civilian Department of Defense employee.  Pentagon employees scan through all the videos to ensure that they are tasteful and do not violate copyright and national security.

YouTube is one of Google’s most expensive ventures.  Between the acquisition price, dealing with the litigation, and managing server expenses, Google has their hands full.  Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt admitted at one point that YouTube should be making more money than it actually several months ago.  Since then YouTube started linking music videos to Amazon and iTunes with a revenue sharing program.

YouTube’s newest strategy is Sponsored Videos.  This is similar to the sponsored links integrated in Google search.  Sponsored Videos ad space is available for individuals or corporations to purchase based on keywords.  YouTube already seems to be monetizing by running movie trailers on the YouTube.com homepage.

“In hindsight, it is a natural transition for YouTube to make. We’ve been working on this for months. The key was, we wanted to make sure we got it right. There are a lot of intricacies involved. YouTube is a video discovery platform. We’ve been integrating with Google AdWords for some time, and now we’re at a place where it can be win and win,” stated YouTube product manager Matthew Liu.

YouTube has roughly 80 million users.