Social networking connector Tagged has acquired instant messaging and social aggregator Digsby as it attempts to give users more tools to manage their instant messaging, emails, tweets and social networks all in one place.

Terms, including the acquisition price, were not disclosed. The deal is the first acquisition for Tagged.

“The

Tags: acquisitions, group buying, shopping

Companies: Amazon, Atlaspost, Beeconomic, Bezos Expeditions, Dag Ventures, Disdus, Foursquare, Groupon, Kleiner Perkins, loopt, Pelago, Reliance, T Ventures, Trilogy Equity Partners, uBuyiBuy, Whrril

People: Andrew Mason, Jeff Holden

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

One of these days, there will be an “internet of things,” or once-dumb appliances and gadgets smartened up with chips and internet connectivity. Wireless chip maker Atheros Communications believes that day is not so far away.

Today, the San Jose maker of wireless chips is announcing an initiative that will make it easy for internet-aware home appliances to transfer data over electrical wires in the home to a user’s web-connected devices and to the smart grid. This initiative is one of the enabling steps to putting smart appliances on the grid without spending money to wire them with traditional Ethernet-based wiring.

“There will be 100 internet-connected devices per home one day,” said Adam Lapede, senior director of internet of things technology at Atheros, in an interview.

It’s kind of a pipe dream, but it’s a big one that is shared by a lot of companies that want to make everyday appliances smarter, more useful in providing data feedback, and more energy efficient. Atheros has chosen to connect the smart appliances using the HomePlug Green Phy, or a version of the HomePlug AV standard for transferring internet data over home electrical wires.

Atheros, which is in the process of being acquired by Qualcomm, designed the technology so that smart appliances can transfer or receive internet data without consuming a lot of power or taking much of the available internet bandwidth of the home wires, Lapede said. Once connected, these devices will be readable, recognizable, locatable, and addressable. It means they will be able to provide information such as how much energy they are consuming and when is the best time to use them to preserve energy.

“We need to figure out how to reduce the demand during peak usage and improve our efficiency,” Lapede said.

Lapede said the cost of putting internet connectivity is getting smaller and smaller. Atheros, which makes Wi-Fi chips and other related technology, hopes to drive the costs of the connectivity chips even lower by making them in huge quantities and standardizing them across the industry

With the HomePlug Green Phy technology, Atheros is asking software developers to begin developing applications that will use its chip hardware in the future for the internet of things vision. As envisioned, the technology will be integrated into stand-alone gateway devices or into the appliances themselves. It will allow the transfer of data from device to device at a rate of 10 megabits a second or more. That will happen seamlessly, without the need to translate the data from one format to another.

Lapede said that applications will have to use built-in encryption and other security methods to ensure that a neighbor won’t be able to hack another one across the smart grid. Lapede said that the power line technology has rivals, but he believes it is the best way to reach all of the appliances in the home. And while HomePlug AV has a number of rivals, he says chips based on the standard have shipped in the tens of millions of units worldwide. So it makes sense to adapt HomePlug for the internet of things.

Once the applications have been defined and requirements set, Atheros will design chips based on the standard and ship them to customers in the coming years.

“We expect to see traction in 2012,” Lapede said.

Tags: HomePlug AV, HomePlug Green Phy

Companies: Atheros Communications

People: Adam Lapede

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

It looks like Wal-Mart is making a serious investment in social shopping.

Kosmix, a startup that has developed semantic technology that it uses in a number of online services, announced today that it has been acquired by Wal-Mart. Now, AllThingsDigital reports that the acquisition price was more than $300 million.

When I emailed co-founder Anand Rajaraman to confirm the price, he declined to comment. If that’s the real amount, it would be an impressive outcome for the Mountain, Calif., startup. The company was well-funded, having raised $55 million from Time Warner Investments, Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, DAG Ventures, and others, yet it still seemed to be failing a bit to turn its technology into a business.

Kosmix’s first big success was with medical site RightHealth. However, sites focused on other areas didn’t take off in the same way, and the company put its efforts into building a single destination site, where its technology built informational pages around any topic. More recently, the company launched TweetBeat, a site for tracking news and topics on Twitter.

So what is Wal-Mart actually paying for? TweetBeat? RightHealth? In the announcement blog post, Rajaraman says it’s the “social genome” technology underlying the company’s products:

Conversations in social media revolve around “social elements” such as people, places, topics, products, and events. For example, when I tweet “Loved Angelina Jolie in Salt,” the tweet connects me (a user) to Angelia Jolie (an actress) and SALT (a movie). By analyzing the huge volume of data produced every day on social media, the Social Genome builds rich profiles of users, topics, products, places, and events.

Wal-Mart wants to bring this technology to shoppers, offering them “integrated experiences that leverage the store, the web, and mobile, with social identity being the glue that binds the experience,” Rajaraman says.

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Hans Mosesmann with Raymond James this afternoon reiterated an Outperform rating on shares of Intel (INTC), writing that the company’s forecast for Q2 will be critical for the stock when Intel offers its Q1 report tomorrow afternoon.

Mosesmann is looking for Q2 sales to rise 2.6% from Q1, which incorporates a shorter quarter (Q1 was a 14-week quarter, he notes); the inclusion of the recently acquired business of McAfee and Inifineon Technology’s (IFNNY) wireless chip unit; and one week of shipments of Intel’s Sandy Bridge processor that were pushed into Q2.

Mosesmann models $12 billion in revenue for Q2 and 49 cents EPS, while he notes consensus is at $11.9 billion and 45 cents.

Still, he adds, “We suspect that even seasonal (excluding the impact of the acquisitions and extra week in 1Q11) sales guidance of down in the low-single digit percentage range sequentially would be viewed as neutral to favorable given the current bearish sentiment.”

As for Q1, Intel will probably make the midpoint of its Q1 forecast of $11.7 billion, as the company likely saw an uptick in shipments of Sandy Bridge during March. The Street is modeling $11.6 billion and 46 cents.

Mosesmann has a $31.50 price target on Intel shares. Intel stock is down 11 cents, or half a point, at $19.64.

Previously: Intel: License ARM, Buy OMAP, Says Nomura, April 18th, 2011.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Susquehanna Financial chip analyst Christopher Caso this morning cut his rating on Marvell Technology Group (MRVL) to Neutral from Positive, arguing that a cheap stock price is balanced by risk in the form of the hard-disk drive market and ongoing shifts at top customer Research in Motion (RIMM).

Marvell provided a forecast for its April quarter before the Tsunami hit Japan, which means that it couldn’t foresee at the time what may well be a weak Q2 market for disk drives, writes Caso, given supply chain disruptions. He believes Western Digital (WDC), 21% of Marvell’s revenue, “is likely to be affected by [Texas Instruments's (TXN)] motor controller shortage.” Seagate Technology (STX) will be adding some Marvell parts in its PC client business, but Marvell will also lose sockets at Seagate to LSI (LSI), which means Seagate is kind of a neutral, overall, for Marvell, he writes.

Marvell can look forward to getting parts into Hitachi’s drive business, but that’s going to take time. (Hitachi’s storage unit is being bought by Western Digital.)

As for RIM, there are “negative headlines” on the horizon. He expects Marvell will in the second half of this year have, “at least three new phones ramping at RIM,” which makes up 14% of Marvell’s revenue. However, the first RIM phones that eventually use the “QNX” operating system — the one that runs RIM’s “PlayBook” tablet — will probably use a Qualcomm (QCOM) chip, not Marvell’s, he thinks. And the Playbook tablet “will remain at Texas Instruments,” Caso thinks.

Marvell shares today are down 75 cents, or almost 5%, at $15.22.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Shares of disk drive maker Seagate Technology (STX) are down 14 cents, or 0.8%, at $17.50, perhaps because the company was named as a potential buyer in the story this morning by The Wall Street Journal’s Jung Ah-Lee about Samsung (SSNLF.PK) being interested in selling its disk-drive business.

Ah-Lee writes that Samsung is looking to get rid of the division fro $1.5 billion, but might unload it for “under $1 billion,” citing an anonymous source. The source tells Ah-Lee “a potential buyer for the business is hard-disk maker Seagate.”

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Bank Of America Earnings Miss Expectations, Profit Drops (BAC)
The bank reported net income of $2.0 billion, or $0.17 per diluted share, for the first quarter of 2011, compared with $3.2 billion, or $0.28 per diluted share, in the year-ago period and a net loss of $1.2 billion, or $0.16 per diluted share, in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Banks Near Deal With SEC (WSJ)
U.S. securities regulators are in talks with several major Wall Street banks to settle fraud allegations related to mortgage-bond deals that helped unleash the financial crisis, according to people familiar with the matter. The expected settlements, some of which could be reached as soon as next week, collectively mark the biggest attempt by enforcement agencies to hold Wall Street accountable for its role in the subprime mortgage bust. The settlements are expected to vary significantly among banks—but few, if any, are expected to surpass the $550 million penalty that Goldman Sachs paid last year to settle allegations that it misled investors in a mortgage-bond investment called Abacus 2007-AC1.

True Scale Of Glencore’s Trading Empire Unveiled (FT)
Glencore disclosed that it controls 45 percent of the third-party lead market, 38 percent in alumina, and between 30 and 20 percent for aluminium, cobalt and thermal coal. It has a smaller market share for nickel, ferrochrome, oil and grains. The sheer dominance of raw materials trading is set to play into Glencore’s favor as it pushes for a 15-20 percent stake sale worth $9 – $11 billion in London and Hong Kong.

Moody’s Cuts Ireland By Two Notches (Reuters)
Moody’s cut Ireland’s sovereign rating by two notches, to BAA3 from BAA1, to the verge of junk status on Friday and kept its outlook on negative.

Greece To Unveil Austerity Measures To Meet Deficit Goals (Bloomberg)
The government’s medium term-fiscal policy plan will detail more than 22 billion euros ($31.9 billion) of deficit-reduction measures through 2014, most of them in spending cuts, according to Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou. The government is also expected to unveil plans to raise 15 billion euros by 2013 through state-asset sales.

Deutsche Expands Nordic Focus as Bank Lands Biggest Merger Deal (Bloomberg)
Deutsche Bank which won 2011’s biggest Scandinavian corporate-finance deal when it led DuPont Co.’s bid for Danisco A/S, is boosting its Nordic unit as the pace of mergers in the region tops that of Europe and the U.S. “The Nordic market is playing a more important role relative to the rest of Europe,” said Jan Olsson, head of Deutsche Bank’s Nordic investment banking division, in an interview in Stockholm. Deutsche Bank set up a four-person currency team in Stockholm last year. The company also started offering corporate finance services at its Oslo branch, which until 2010 only provided banking to the country’s shipping industry.

JPMorgan Bankers Who Doubted Madoff In 2007 Are Named (NYT)
Those executives are John J. Hogan, the bank’s chief risk officer for investment banking; Matthew E. Zames, who oversees several important bank trading operations; and Carlos M. Hernandez, the head of global equities at the bank’s investment banking unit.

Mexican Economy Shrugs Off Narco War (CNBC)
“The buzz that has surrounded the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and other fast-growing emerging economies in recent years has largely passed Mexico by, and arguably for good reason” said Rafael De La Fuente, an economist at UBS in a research note. Despite the drug war, Mexico’s economy took off last year with growth of 5.5 percent and UBS is predicting 2011 growth will hit 4.8 percent.

JPMorgan Pushes Microchip Card In Race With Wells Fargo (Bloomberg)
JPMorgan will first offer the card exclusively to affluent customers. Clients with a JPMorgan Palladium credit card, which has a $595 annual fee, will receive a chip card by June, the company said. “Initially, we are targeting the technology to our highest-spend clients,” Porter said. “Months after that we will issue the card to Chase-branded products.”

Adidas Debuts World’s Lightest Basketball Shoe to Tackle Nike (Bloomberg)
Adidas introduced the AdiZero Crazy Light shoe in New York yesterday. It has a weight of 9.8 ounces and is more than 15 percent lighter than any competing model, including Nike’s LeBron Air Max 8 V/2.

Luxury Spending By Rich To Rise; Value Sought (Reuters)
Spending by rich Americans on luxury goods is set to grow by $26.6 billion in 2011, with the number of affluent families planning to spend more almost doubling in the past three years, a poll found on Friday.

Firms Tip Scales Back In Favor Of Stocks (WSJ)
Companies such as Expedia are increasingly resorting to spinoffs, share buybacks and other financial engineering to boost market value, often to the detriment of bondholders. And in a switch, holders of investment-grade bonds are more at risk than those holding high-yield securities, because the safer bonds typically provide fewer protections against such shareholder-friendly actions.

Raj’s High Wires (NYP)
Just weeks before his trial on insider-trading charges, Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam wired a whopping $15 million to a hedge fund launched by a former employee and key defense witness, prosecutors told the jury yesterday. Rajaratnam’s investments account for $25 million of a total $35 million in Spottail’s assets under management, prosecutors showed. Rajaratnam, who faces a maximum sentence of 25 years, first invested in Spottail in September, giving Schutte $10 million. Then, on Jan. 4, two months before Rajaratnam was scheduled to go on trial in Manhattan federal court, his family wired an additional $15 million to Spottail, prosecutors said.

World’s Oldest Man Dies In Montana (Reuters)
A 114-year-old retired railroad worker reputed to be the world’s oldest living man died of natural causes on Thursday in the farming community of Great Falls, Montana. Walter Breuning, who had lived in a local nursing home since 1980, was declared oldest man on July 18, 2009, by the Guinness Book of World Records. He retired from the railroad at age 66 and attributed his longevity to restricting daily meals to breakfast and lunch and to downing an aspirin a day.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Analysts and Needham and FBR Capital markets reiterated their top ratings on Riverbed Technology (RVBD) this morning after the company preannounced its first-quarter results yesterday.

The company put revenues at $163 million to $164 million and EPS at 19 cents to 20 cents.

Needham analyst Scott Zeller said  Riverbed is a beneficiary of the ongoing data-center refresh spending cycle and that it is gaining field traction as a result.

“We believe management color in the press release was positive, suggesting the  tone on Apr 19 may be good,” he wrote. “With Riverbed recently trading near five times EV/calendar-year 2012 revenue, guidance would need to be strong to drive shares upward.”

Zeller rates Riverbed at Buy with a $48 price target.

Daniel H. Ives of FBR said the company is experiencing higher revenues across all geographies, which “speaks to strong secular growth trends within WAN optimization.”

“Although many on the Street have been ‘yelling fire in a crowded theater’ on the name, Riverbed once again demonstrated impressive execution in the field as it appears the company is poised to post 30%-plus  top-line growth and continued margin expansion for 2011,” he wrote.

Riverbed is up 14% at $35.08 in afternoon trading.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

I had a chat with Kaufman Brothers analyst Jeffrey Bencik this morning about what seems a meaningful endorsement of solar energy with General Electric’s (GE) announcement yesterday it had achieved record efficiency in a type of solar panel component, made of “thin films” based on cadmium telluride materials, and that GE plans to build what it bills as the U.S.’s biggest solar-panel manufacturing facility, capable of 400-megawatts of production, employing 400 people and resulting in enough power generation to power 80,000 homes a year.

Bencik, who used to cover GE formally, and now covers First Solar (FSLR), among others, tells me that the initiative, “marks a significant shift” for GE in its attitude toward solar. GE was sour on the business not so long ago, but has now understood that solar, as Bencik puts it, is the only energy source not rising in cost, including wind energy.

“Five years ago, six years ago when I asked [GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt] about solar, he poo-poo’ed it at the time, said it was way too far away from cost competitiveness,” Bencik recalls.

Bencik muses that Immelt has seen the writing on the wall as far as cost: “The cost of solar has been cut in half in the last two years, while the cost of every other means of electricity generation has continued to increase because they are all steel turbine-based, and steel costs have been going up.”

“They can see the finish line,” he says of GE with regard to cost, “They can see this is a real business.”

For the solar business, it’s a big vote of confidence, says Bencik, even though it will take several years for the GE initiative to bear fruit. No site has been picked for the plant, and it will take a year or more for construction, then more time to ramp the facility, put out product, etc.

But, this will be the first solar energy company “with the ear of the president,” notes Bencik, referring to President Obama’s having appointed Immelt to his “Competitiveness Council” on industry. “With GE going into solar in a big way, it’s in their interest to have increased incentives for solar,” he observes, alluding to the possible impact on U.S. policy.

And the announcement may make solar real for some investors, he argues, though it will probably help to have GE announce a second facility at some point, to prove that the company is not going to just dabble and then walk away.

“If they follow this up with an additional one, then I think a lot of people will get off the fence,” says Bencik. “A second facility would remove all doubt” among investors.

For First Solar and others, there are more immediate benefits. Their customer base may increase as some prospects see GE coming in and decide the technology’s been blessed. First Solar, in particular, benefits forma the fact that GE has chosen thin-film. GE’s years away from threatening First Solar, and first solar has capacity of 2.5 gigawatts already, dwarfing what GE has planned.

But with a vocal lobby having warned against the health risks of cadmium telluride, First Solar may have gained a big ally in the public health debate.

Bencik maintains a Hold rating on First Solar shares, having downgraded it when it hit $165. He now thinks that, “there’s actually starting to be meaningful upside” for the shares at a recent price of $147.75.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily