(TECH) Google Acquires Web Apps Developer LabPixies For $25 Million

"Google has acquired the developer of web applications LabPixies. This is the first time ever that Google buys an Israeli company. Google did not give any financial details of the deal, but Israeli financial news website TheMarker estimated that Google paid $25 million for LabPixies.

LabPixies is a provider of personalized gadget applications for iGoogle, Android and the iPhone. The widget apps range from handy tools such as calendars, news feeds and to-do lists to entertainment and games. LabPixies was one of the first developers to create gadgets for iGoogle, and Google and LabPixies teams have worked on many projects together including the launch of global OpenSocial based gadgets.

As part of the deal, the LabPixies team will be based in Google Tel Aviv office and will anchor the company's iGoogle efforts across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

LabPixies was founded in 2006 by Ran Ben-Yair (CEO), Oded Poncz (VP R&D), Udi Graff (Creative Director) and Nir Tzemah (VP Business Development). Prior to LabPixies, all the company founders worked at the Israeli branch of Samsung's Research and Development Center." (source)

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(TECH) Amdocs To Acquire Mobile Internet App Development Platform Provider Streamezzo

"Customer experience systems provider Amdocs will acquire Streamezzo, a mobile internet application development platform, in order to broaden its solutions in digital services delivery. Amdocs did not give any financial details of the deal, which expect to close during the third quarter 2010.

Streamezzo is a provider of a development platform for the creation and the deployment of rich mobile Internet applications across multiple mobile operating systems and devices. In May 2009, the French startup company has raised €4 million in an investment round led by Innovacom, with participation by existing investors, Sofinnova Partners, Sofinnova Ventures, Qualcomm, NTEC and Telecom Valorisation.

Last month Amdocs acquired MX Telecom, a mobile payments and messaging aggregator with operations in Europe, United States and Australia, for approximately $104 million in cash. The move will aloo Amdocs to continue building its presence in mobile payments and expand the OpenMarket footprint outside of the US.

MX Telecom will become part of Amdocs’ OpenMarket, a leading mobile transaction hub in the United States. OpenMarket provides a comprehensive set of payment, messaging and emerging services to meet mobile business needs. The joint OpenMarket MX Telecom business will provide a hosted platform to extend mobile payment and messaging capabilities through an integrated network and product portfolio." (source)

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(TECH) Digital Video Solutions Provider Imagine Communications Raises $10 Million

"Digital video solutions provider Imagine Communications has raised $10 million from existing investors: Court Square Ventures, Columbia Capital and Carmel Ventures. This round of financing is bringing total venture capital investment in Imagine Communications to more than $34 million.

The investment will be used to expand support to the company's leading MSO customers, while accelerating the commercial deployment of Imagine's solutions for MPEG-4 encoding and transcoding.

Imagine offers scalable digital video platform, enabling system operators to cost-effectively increase both the quality and quantity of digital video services over virtually any system. The Imagine ICE platform can enable up to 50% more streams over existing infrastructure, while Imagine ICE-Q video quality measurement algorithms ensure the highest video quality at any given bit rate.

"This new capital enables us to accelerate the development and deployment of our real-time h.264 encoding, transcoding and streaming solutions to support the growing demand for Internet and mobile video content delivered in multiple formats, including 3D. The core innovations of ICE and ICE-Q are directly applicable to the TV Anywhere challenge," said Imagine's President and CEO, Jamie Howard.

Imagine was founded in 2005 by Doron Segev, SVP Technology and Architecture at Imagine Communications, and Ron Gutman, the company CTO. Imagine is headquartered in San Diego with R&D and engineering in Netanya, Israel." (source)

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(TECH) Secure Email Solutions Provider PostalGuard Raised $4 Million

"Secure email solutions provider PostalGuard had raised $4 million from Israeli venture capital fund Genesis Partners and a group of private investors.

PostalGuard develops a secure email distribution channel platform that allows banks and financial institutions to enhance their relationships with clients, by offering direct bi-directional email communication.

PostalGuard’s solutions allow banks to provide a variety of new services that complement their current interaction platforms, such as branches, website and call centers. These solutions offer significant cost savings, associated with distribution of statements and notifications, as well as the opportunity to increase the number of transactions and enhance customer satisfaction.

"Most banks in Israel and abroad operates large web sites for the benefit of their clients, but the majority of customers continues to use the services provided by the branch and phone,” said Aryeh Mergi, PostalGuard President and Founder. "PostalGuard solutions allow banks to improve the relationship with their clients, leverage marketing offering by using the net and save money on costs associated with paper and postal service.”

PostalGuard has already applied for 6 patents and provisional applications, and has more than 10 additional patents in development. The company's technology was uniquely developed for the banking environment and allows smooth integration with the banking systems, while ensuring reliability and scalability.

In the past year PostalGuard has entered into a strategic partnership with and Syntron following the roll-out of PostalGuard’s secure email solution at a bank in Switzerland. In addition, the First International Bank of Israel has selected PostalGuard as another channel for the transfer of information via encrypted e-mail between customers and bank staff.

PostalGuard was founded in 2007 by Mergi and Ram Cohen, the company’s chief software architect. Mergi was a co-founder of Msystems, which was sold to SanDisk for $1.6 billion on 2006. Prior to working at PostalGuard, Cohen has served the Development Manager of Aliroo, a developer of enterprise information security and management solutions including content assurance and secure messaging solutions." (source)

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(TECH) Social Video Sharing Platform Provider Qlipso Purchases Video Content Web Site Veoh

"Social video sharing platform provider Qlipso has purchased Veoh, an Internet Television company delivering broadcast-quality video programming. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Veoh, founded in 2004, is an established media site with tens of millions of unique monthly visitors. It raised approximately $70 million from venture capital and media investments.

The Qlipso platform enables spontaneous socializing on any website with any type of rich media – video, music, games, PowerPoints, photo slideshows, streaming music and more. The purchase will enable Qlipso's synchronized media sharing and socially-interactive environment to tap into Veoh's library of more than one million videos, TV shows, online games and other interactive content, as well as Veoh's millions of active monthly users.

"By bringing together features of both Qlipso and Veoh, we are taking the best of social, multiplayer online gaming and applying that to mainstream digital content, such as videos and music, for a mainstream audience," said Jon Goldman, CEO of Qlipso. "This provides not only a terrific user experience, but also a vastly improved target audience for advertisers."

"We are thrilled to support Qlipso, a JVP Media Studio graduate, in this strategic move," said Erel Margalit, JVP founder and managing partner. "There has yet to be a significant mainstream social approach to online media sharing that parallels how people consume media in offline social settings. We believe this transaction answers that need, as it provides users with a means to socialize around their favorite media content in a relaxed and social setting."

Qlipso was found in 2007 by Goldman and Ishay Pnueli, the company current CTO. Located in Jerusalem, Qlipso is backed by Israeli venture-capital fund Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP)." (source)

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