Kickfire™, Inc. has announced that it has closed a $20 million Series B financing. Pinnacle Ventures led the round and Series A investors Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, and The Mayfield Fund reinvested. The capital will be used to build out the sales, marketing and customer operations infrastructure to bring the Kickfire appliance to market.
Kickfire delivers [...]

President Bush has signed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act after the US House of Representatives had passed the plan on 07/23. It provides aid to homeowners facing foreclosure and protects the country’s two largest mortgage finance companies from collapse.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guarantee almost half the country’s $12 trillion in home [...]

So how profitable are oil companies. In Exxon’s context that reported earnings today, that’s $11.6 billion in earnings for the second quarter. Profits rose 14 percent from a year ago, as crude oil and natural gas prices continued their climb.
The Irving, Texas-based oil company posted earnings of $2.22 a share, on revenue of $138 billion. [...]

The phrase “FBI vs Facebook” has an enticing tone to it and this is why it is likely you are going to receive an email with “FBI vs Facebook” as the subject line. As you can imagine, it is a spam mail and this time FBI has warned public of the worm associated with this [...]

Celeno Communications Inc. has closed a strategic $16 million Series C investment led by Cisco. The cash infusion is intended to help the company scale up sales and marketing activities and enhance next generation product development activities. Miven Venture Partners and the company’s previous investors, Greylock Partners and Pitango Venture Capital, also participated in the [...]

Delta Air Lines today announced increases to some of its domestic and international baggage fees to help offset the 70-80 percent increase in jet fuel prices in the last year.  These changes will apply to customers who purchase a ticket on or after July 31, 2008, for travel on or after Aug. 5, 2008.
Fee changes [...]

Internet video platform, Mogulus has received minority investment from Gannett, a leading international news and information company. In the United States, the company publishes 85 daily newspapers, including USA TODAY, and nearly 900 non-daily publications.
The $10 million investment extends and expands on Gannett’s three-month-old commercial agreement with Mogulus to provide broadcasting services on the company’s [...]

S&Ptoday released May numbers for the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, a measure of U.S. home prices. According to the latest numbers, May 2008 was worse that previous numbers for April indicating a continued downward trend in the real-estate market.
All the 20 Metros’ in the index posted annual declines, nine of which are posting record lows [...]

John McCain used to be very sure that he will be able to stay away from new taxes while balancing the budget by the end of his first term, thanks to the Holy Grail of pork-barrel spending. He has frequently promised not to raise new taxes and in fact has criticized Obama for not supporting [...]

According to a new study by Rand Research Center, to be effective against Al-Qaeda, America should stop “War on Terror” and instead apply “counter-terrorism” strategy. Rand Research Center is a federally funded organization that also counsels Pentagon. The study recommends relying more on policies and intelligence and less on the force to root out terror [...]

Increasing competition in the area of virtualization brought you a freebie on Monday. VMware announced it would let users download its number one product hypervisor ESXi for free. According to a VMware press release, ESXi 3.5 update 2 is available for download immediately from the link - http://vmware.com/products/esxi/.
ESXi is purpose-built for running virtual machines, minimizing [...]

The US economy has had it’s share of challenges this year and the problems remain as we step into the second half of 2008. Rising food prices, gas prices at record highs, lack of credit availability in the economy, a housing market slump and continuing mounting expenses in the war on Iraq ( approx. $540 [...]

Cisco has agreed to purchase Pure Networks, maker of software for easing set up and management of networks and connectivity of a range of devices, applications and services within a home.
Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay $120 million in exchange for all shares of Pure Networks. The acquisition of Pure Networks is [...]

Associated Press is reporting that Republican Presidential candidate John McCain now supports banning affirmative action. On Sunday, McCain was asked if he supported an effort to get a referendum on the ballot in Arizona that would “do away with affirmative action.” McCain’s response was “Yes, I do,” even though he admitted he has not seen [...]

For the 3 months ending May 2008, consumers using GPS devices on the go through their mobile phones surged 82% compared to 3 months ending May 2007. The results were reported by M:Metrics, a subsidiary of comScore. According to the study, the iPhone is the leading device used to access maps in the United States, [...]

If Comcast is your Internet Service Provider, you have a curious reader for your blog, Comcast itself. And if you thought that was not creepy enough, they might even write you back if you get, ahem, lucky.
According to a New York Times article, Brandon Dilbeck is a 20 year old student at University of Washington [...]

Samsung’s innov8 is a new phone with an 8MP camera for completely high resolution photography and multimedia experience. It also offers a surround-sound cinematic video experience, mobile Internet browsing and mobile gaming capabilities. The phone will be available in the global market from August 2008. Starting with Europe in August it will then be expanded [...]

DATAllegro, a maker of high-end data warehousing appliances, has agreed to sell to Microsoft for an undisclosed amount. The company began with a $6 million Series A round from Venrock and Palomar Ventures in 2004, and in total has raised just under $65 million in venture money.
Other investors include Adams Capital, Focus Ventures, Intel Capital [...]