Recent posts and comments

• GlaxoSmithKline Scoops Up Sirtris

  Zhoop! It’s the sound of another prominent local biotech company being acquired by a far-away pharmaceutical giant.

  Last week it was Millennium, which was snapped up by Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceuticals for... Read more »

• Everquest Designer Joins 38 Studios

  A few weeks ago we profiled a call-center-software startup whose name, Exony, stands for ex-Sony, in reference to the herd of employees who left Sony to start the company. Boston’s video... Read more »

• Red Bend Downloads $10 Million Update

  Today’s mobile phones have so much processing power that they are, in effect, little personal computers—and as with PCs, the software that makes them powerful is continually evolving, even after each... Read more »

• IBM Does Due Diligent

  IBM is at it again, acquiring another local software company. Privately held Diligent Technologies, a Framingham, MA-based maker of de-duplication software that reduces data storage costs for large enterprises, announced... Read more »

• Kiva’s Robots Hit Their Stride…er, Slide

  Kiva Systems may be winning its battle against the science-fiction robots.

  The Woburn, MA, company is a newcomer to a hidebound business. It builds “mobile fulfillment systems” that are overturning all... Read more »

• Spark Capital Leads $5 Million Investment in Lonelygirl15 Producers

  Boston’s Spark Capital is the lead investor in a $5 million funding round for Eqal (pronounced “equal”), the Los Angeles-based independent studio behind the cult YouTube video series Lonelygirl15.

  Spark’s... Read more »

• Google Earth Grows a New Crop of 3-D Buildings, and Other Web Morsels to Savor

  One of my goals with this column—which is now in its third week—is to tell you about new stuff on the Web that’s so delicious you just have to taste it.... Read more »

• Capturing the Personal Essence of Gaming: An Interview with GamerDNA CEO Jon Radoff

  It’s a big day for the company formerly known as GuildCafe, which is announcing a new name—GamerDNA—and a new $3 million funding round from Flybridge Capital Partners (see main... Read more »

• GamerDNA Rises from GuildCafe, Scavenges $3 Million in Venture Gold

  The video gaming and PC gaming industry is big. A whopping $19 billion big in 2007, which doesn’t quite equal revenues from movies ($42 billion) or books ($35 billion), but still... Read more »

• Clean Energy Council Launches Fellowships to Retrain Entrepreneurs for the Cleantech Industry

  It’s hard to kick-start a new regional industry if there’s a shortage of entrepreneurs who understand the business. That’s the problem the New England Clean Energy Council (NECEC) is taking on... Read more »

• OwnerIQ Capitalizes on Intelligence about Users

  I’m one of those people who makes special folders in my filing cabinet for the owner’s manuals that come with every new gadget or appliance I buy. If you want to... Read more »

• Kalido Expands to Bangalore

  Kalido, the Burlington, MA-based data warehouse customization company we profiled in March, said yesterday that it’s opening a product development and servies office in Bangalore, India. The office will complement... Read more »

• Hydroid Dives into Navy Contract

  The Naval Oceanogaphic Office, the wing of the Defense Department responsible for charting the ocean bottom, has signed a five-year support contract with Hydroid, the Pocasset, MA-based maker of robot... Read more »

• Tapping TV Signals: Charles River Adds to Investment in Rosum

  The Global Positioning System helps millions find their way around the surface of the planet every day. But if you’ve ever walked around with a handheld GPS unit, you know that... Read more »

• ArQule Gets a New CEO

  Woburn, MA-based ArQule, which is developing several compounds known as kinase inhibitors as potential cancer therapies, said today that Paolo Pucci, a Bayer senior vice president overseeing Bayer-Schering’s global oncology... Read more »

• QD Vision Collects $9M in Third Round

  PE Week Wire is reporting, based on a regulatory filing, that Watertown, MA-based QD Vision, which is building brighter, more efficient displays based on “quantum dot” technology, has collected $9... Read more »

• IBM and the Art of Acquisitions

  “If you do something 60 times you are going to develop some best practices,” Scott Hebner says.

  This could be said of many things. The thing Hebner is talking about is... Read more »

• Aurora, Draper, BAE Win Contract to Build Long-Duration Surveillance Aircraft

  Talk about a long flight. While the world’s longest passenger jet trip (the 18-hour, 40-minute journey from Newark to Singapore) may be a killer, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has... Read more »

• Cox Radio Picks EveryZing to Make Shows Searchable

  Most radio stations these days have websites where you can listen to streaming versions of their broadcasts. But few have taken the added step of making individual shows available online—in part... Read more »

• 3Com Wins $45 Million in Patent Suit Against Taiwanese Chipmaker

  3Com of Marlborough, MA, said today that a federal jury in California awarded it $45.3 million in its patent infringement lawsuit against Realtek Semiconductor Corporation of Hsinchu, Taiwan.

  3Com charged in... Read more »