Wanderful Media has raised another $ 9 million from the long list of media companies that were already backing the startup and its local deal service Find&Save.
The announcement comes after the relaunch of Find&Save last month. The service allows readers to browse deals aggregated from newspaper circulars, retailers, and other data sources. That was the first big redesign since Wanderful acquired Travidia (the print-to-digital conversion company that started Find&Save), and at the time, CEO Ben T. Smith IV told me that it was Wanderful’s first opportunity to put its own stamp on the product. That involved adding more personalization and social features, such as the ability to create shopping lists and to follow retailers and other users.
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Google is facing another competition investigation, according to the Financial Post. The Canadian Competition Bureau has informed Mountain View of its plans to launch a formal investigation of its Canadian operations. It has not yet requested any information or documents from Google but has informed the search giant of its intention to launch a probe.
Singapore’s largest telecoms provider, SingTel, plans to set aside $ 1.6 billion (S$ 2 billion) over the next three years for startup acquisitions. Like those it has made in recent years, these are expected to be in the digital media space. All of these can be tracked back to the major restructuring of SingTel’s business arms last year, where it divided itself into three pillars called Consumer, ICT and Digital Life. The first two focus on consumer and enterprise segments, respectively, but the Digital Life arm is most representative of the change. The division was set up as a reaction to over-the-top competition from third party content providers, and SingTel said Digital Life was going to compete head on, providing smart TV, digital magazines and local content. Some of acquisitions so far include restaurant review sites, Hungrygowhere and Eatability, and photo app Pixable. SingTel has also been bullish as a VC. In 2010, it set up a separate venture arm called Innov8 to specifically look at acquisitions that would boost its current play in the telecoms arena. Innov8 was set up with an initial fund size of $ 160 million (S$ 200 million), and has since acquired firms like mobile ad company Amobee. Innov8 has also raised rounds in startups like mobile ad exchange Nexage and Chinese game publisher Yodo. SingTel runs telecoms operations in other countries in the region, like Optus in Australia. It has significant stakes in other carriers like Globe in The Philippines (44 percent), Bharti in India (32 percent) and Telkomsel in Indonesia (35 percent). Altogether, its operations in the region cover about 400 million mobile subscribers.
Though it’s but a baby in the app world, Vine is already making brands, advertisers, and especially media industry members chomp at the bit for some 6-second looping action. 
Vidyo has raised yet another round of funding, this time $ 17 million. That brings total funding to $ 116 million, with the financing coming from inside and outside investors. Triangle Peak Partners was the lead new investor in the round, joining previous investors such as Juniper Networks, QuestMark Partners, Menlo Ventures, Rho Capital Partners, Star Ventures, and Four Rivers Group.
Bitcoin’s wild surge in value has made it even more of an attractive target for hackers. Another wallet service called Instawallet said it is suspending itself indefinitely until it changes its security architecture. The crypto-currency, which currently trades at $ 129.90 to the dollar, has risen by almost fourfold in the last month as new clarity in U.S. financial regulations and a banking crisis in Cyprus helped send Bitcoin’s value skyward. But that’s also increased the load of hacking attacks on all of the major exchanges and Bitcoin service providers. The thing is that without a trusted third-party payments processor, Bitcoin transactions are irreversible and happen anonymously. So it’s almost impossible to reclaim losses after theft, making wallets for the crypto-currency an ideal target for online thieves. It’s not clear how many customers Instawallet had or how much it is holding on behalf of others. Bitcoin Magazine said in late February that while Instawallet was one of the easiest services to use, it was also the least secure because it used a “URL as password” mechanism for protection. Instawallet says it is going to open a claims process for any customers who stored funds with the service. If there are multiple claims for the same URL, they’ll presume that the first claim filed is the legitimate one. (Scary, indeed!) INSTAWALLET SERVICE NOTICE The Instawallet service is suspended indefinitely until we are able to develop an alternative architecture. Our database was fraudulently accessed, due to the very nature of Instawallet it is impossible to reopen the service as-is. In the next few days we are going to open the claim process for Instawallet balance holders to claim the funds they had stored before the service interruption. Important information on claims submission: For the first 90 days we will accept claims for individual Instawallets. Your wallet’s URL and key will be used to pre-populate a form to file the claim. After 90 days, if no other claim has been received for the same url, your Instawallet balance under 50 BTC will be refunded. If several claims have been filed for the same url, we will process those claims on a case by case basis, under the presumption that the claim we received first belongs to the legitimate balance holder. Claims for wallets that hold a balance greater than 50 BTC will be processed on a case by case and best efforts basis. Instawallet
Google’s been awfully busy these past few weeks, but it seems that between 
This year’s SXSWi did not the herald the next Big Thing in tech, as some 
How long until Google shuts down Feedburner? The company just announced that it is shutting down Google Reader on July 1. That’s a sad day for all of us who still regularly use it, but its demise was probably inevitable. Reader had been lingering in a stasis for months (maybe even years) now, especially since Google ripped out its social core in favor of focusing on Google+ and barely dedicated any staff to maintaining it. The last RSS-focused product Google closed was AdSense for Feeds, its ad product for site owners who wanted to monetize their RSS feeds. With Reader and AdSense for Feeds gone, the last RSS product standing at Google is Feedburner – and all signs point to that getting the ax sooner or later, too. Just like Google Reader, it’s been a very long time since Feedburner got any updates and everything points at a total neglect of the product at Google: Its stats are sporadically unavailable, it never even got the visual refresh that virtually every other Google product got, the Feedburner blog (now called AdSense for Feeds – after the already closed product…) has been updated three times since April 2010. The FeedBurner Status Blog hasn’t been updated since last September. I always assumed Google would keep Feedburner on life support for as long as it could, but the fact that they are shutting down Reader shows that they are willing to make these unpopular moves and close products that form the basis of a larger ecosystem (I’m sure the teams at Reeder, Feedly and other Google Reader-based services are scrambling right now). I can’t imagine that Feedburner will live through many more of these spring cleanings given that it is Google’s last RSS-focused product that’s still standing. If you are actively using Feedburner, I think it’s time to start taking full possession of your feeds again (which isn’t easy). RSS may still be the plumbing that makes a lot of applications tick, but don’t look for Google to provide a platform for RSS much longer. Image credit: Glen Van Etten on Flickr.
Services on code-sharing site 
Facebook today added a new member to its board of directors, Susan Desmond-Hellman, M.D.. Dr. Hellman currently serves as the chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco. Prior to taking on the chancellorship at UCSF in 2009, Desmond-Hellman served as president of product development at biotech giant Genentech, where she worked for 14 years. Today, she also serves on the board of directors at Procter & Gamble. She completed her clinical training at UCSF and is board-certified in internal medicine and medical oncology; she holds a BS in pre-medicine and a medical degree from the University of Nevada, Reno, and a master’s in public health from the University of California, Berkeley. Desmond-Hellman is now the second woman on Facebook’s current board, alongside Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg. She’s also the second board member from the high realms of academia, alongside University of North Carolina president emeritus Erskine Bowles. The timing of the announcement is likely coincidental, and of course Desmond-Hellman is not defined solely by her gender, but it’s a complementary news item on the same day that Sandberg’s non-profit ‘Lean In‘ organization has officially launched. Lean In is aimed at encouraging women to stay engaged and ambitious in their careers as they build their family lives. The remainder of Facebook’s board includes Mark Zuckerberg, Marc L. Andreessen, James W. Breyer, Donald E. Graham, Reed Hastings, and Peter A. Thiel. Here is the announcement: Facebook announced today that Susan Desmond-Hellmann , M.D., M.P.H., chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), has been elected to the company’s board of directors. “Sue has a great track record of building and managing a diverse set of organizations, so her insights will be valuable as we continue to expand into new areas,” said Mark Zuckerberg , founder and CEO of Facebook. “Her experience shaping public policy and operating public companies fits well with the rest of the board and will make us an even stronger company.” “I’ve always been drawn to organizations that do ground-breaking work,” said Desmond-Hellmann. “Facebook has an ambitious mission and long-term vision of innovation that is transforming how people connect with one another. I’m proud to be part of a company that is serving such an important purpose in the world.” As UCSF Chancellor, Desmond-Hellmann oversees all aspects of the university and medical center’s strategy and operations. She previously served as president, product development at the biotechnology pioneer,
Simulmedia has raised another $ 5 million in funding in an inside round from existing investors, the company confirmed today. The money comes from Time Warner Investments, Avalon Ventures, and Union Square Ventures, which together have put a total of about $ 32 million into the company since it was founded in 2009.
After 13 years as a partner at VCs Doughty Hanson, Ivan Farneti says he is “returning my badge and my gun” and moving back into the entrepreneurial life. The move had been doing the rumour mill rounds for the last couple of weeks but was only confirmed today. It’s a slightly unconventional move for a previous Internet VC. In a couple of weeks he will take on the new role of Executive Director for… 
Another big enterprise deal to report as 
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