Lotame is an digital advertisement company that focuses on social networks.  Yesterday, Lotame announced a $13 million Series B venture round of funding.  The lead investor in Lotame was Emergence Capital and Battery Ventures along with Hill Crest Management joined in.

With this round of funding, Lotame plans on using the funding to enhance products, improve marketing, and further business developments.  Lotame’s clients include Flixster, Huffington Post, and Fotolog.

“Lotame has demonstrated leadership and a track record of success in monetizing the biggest opportunity in online media since the advent of search advertising,” stated Jason Green, general partner at Emergence Capital. “Lotame is producing unparalleled results and insight for publishers and advertisers by leveraging a unique targeting platform that translates social media inventory into valuable real estate that brand advertisers love. With dozens of blue chip advertising clients and a growing publisher network reaching tens of millions users today, Lotame is clearly the company to beat in the space. We are looking forward to working with this tremendously talented team and applying our expertise to help build the digital marketing leader in this new category.”

Lotame’s key product is called Crowd Control.  Crowd Control allows advertising agencies to build campaigns tailored to an audience that has relevant interests.  Lotame is based in Elridge, Maryland and has offices in New York and Boston.

Related Link:
1. Lotame

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has updated the software that runs the connectivity of the iPhone last night.  This update should be able to resolve some of the connectivity problems that many Apple customers have been complaining about. 

“We have had complaints about connectivity in the Netherlands but have not had more complaints than usual for a 3G phone in Germany. Our technicians said today Apple has issued a software update but it is too early to tell if the problems are solved,” mentioned a spokesman at T-Mobile.  T-Mobile is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG (ADR) (NYSE:DT).  AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) also confirmed that Apple made the software update. 

Although the iPhone is selling by the millions, many users have had problems with dropped calls and slow Internet speeds.  The iPhone 3G handset will be launching in another 20 countries in two days.

Related Link:
1. Reuters

Media6° is an up and coming New York-based start-up company.  Media6° uses social graph data to provide marketers with target audience information.  Media6° recently raised $9 million Series A, led by U.S. Venture Partners.  Other investors include Coriolis Ventures and Contour Venture Partners.  Several angel investors also participated.

“Media6° creates fully customized audiences for advertisers based on currently available advertiser data,” stated Joe Doran, CEO of Media6°. Prior to starting Media6°, Doran worked at Microsoft Inc. (NASDAQ:MSFT) as the General Manager of AdCenter.

Media6° has several patent pending algorithms that have a focus on connecting existing customers to potential consumers within a social graph. 

“Media6° is revolutionary. It is the first company we have seen to tap the potential of social data for advertisers,” stated Tim Connors, General Partner of U.S. Venture Partners. “The early work with 30 alpha and beta customers since April points to the enormous promise of Media6° and the work that Joe and the team have undertaken.”

Tim Connors and and Ted Maidenberg of U.S. Venture Partners will be joining the Board at Media6°.

Related Link:
1. Media6Degrees.com
2. Media6° Press Release

Mendeley is a start-up based in London.  The idea for Mendeley came about when the founders discovered that there isn’t an easy way of sharing their collection of research papers while pursuing their PhDs.  This turned into a business opportunity for them. 

The Mendeley desktop software also complements the research-sharing website.  Mendeley Desktop software is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux.  The software extracts text from PDF files and integrates it into a user’s profile.  Other users will be able to find specific research papers through the form of search and tags. 

“As the database of Mendeley Web grows, you will be able to view statistics about emerging research topics in every academic discipline, and readership statistics for each individual paper” stated Victor Henning, co-founder of Mendeley. “Soon we will also include a recommendation engine. Basically, it’s like a Last.fm for research.”

Stefan Glänzer, a seed investor and executive chairman of Last.fm was intrigued by the concept.  Stefan Glänzer joined Mendeley as executive chairman and then brought in the founding engineers of Skype to help out with building Mendeley.

“There are plenty of websites that want to become ‘the Facebook for researchers’” stated Eileen Broch, an investment director at Ambient Sound Investments (ASI).  “Mendeley, however, is not just another social network. It’s a truly valuable integration of software and web technologies that solves some of researchers’ day-to-day problems – which is why we decided to invest.”

ASI is the investment group that was created by the four founding engineerings at Skype.

Related Links:
1. Mendeley
2. ASI
3. OpenPR

Casual Male Retail Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CMRG) is a specialty retail company for big and tall men’s clothes.  CMRG has launched a social network tailored to a demographic of large-sized men at the ages of 18-24.  Planet Propaganda, a Wisconsin-based advertising agency helped CMRG plan the social network.

BoldXL.com features blog posts, videos, and artcles as it relates to big and tall men.  Articles on BoldXL.com makes fun of expensive, upper-scale fashion.  The content is intended to make people comment on their articles.

“This is the first time we’ve tied traditional e-commerce with social media marketing,” stated Della Bernarda, CMO of CMRG. “We’ll be testing to see if there are other kinds of functionality we need to add, like the ability to create profiles, but for now, we’re seeing promising levels of interaction.”

Related Links:
1. BoldXL.com
2. MediaPost

David Katz used to work at Yahoo! as the head of sports and entertainment.  Katz has gone down the entrepreneurial path and has started up his own shop in the form of a sports social network called SportsFanLive.  And the site is currently in Beta. 

SportsFanLive has features such as fantasy games, customizable sports RSS feeds, profiles, news about favorite teams, video feeds, etc.  SportsFanLive has a fictitious currency used for betting against each other in fantasy sports.  The currency is called “BuxBets.” 

Katz’s biggest competitor is his former employer.  Yahoo! Fantasy Sports has one of the biggest user-bases in the fantasy sports.  TAKKLE is another competitor of SportsFanLive.  Currently SportsFanLive is only available to residents in the U.S.

Related Links:
1. SportsFanLive
2. ArsTechnica

TinEye is a new search engine that helps photographers track who is using their images.  The search engine was developed by Canadian company, Idée Inc.  Users upload an image to TinEye and then TinEye does a pixel-by-pixel search across the Internet to find instances of the image uploaded.

“TinEye does for images what Google does for text,” stated Leila Boujnane, CEO of TinEye. “We are not limited by words, Google can only find an image if a particular search word is in proximity to it. We have the ability on a large scale to tell somebody where one of their images has appeared and how it’s being used.”

I’m very impressed by this TinEye. This is a great way for photographers to track how their images are being used. It doesn’t matter if the image was digitally altered or cropped. TinEye is also launching an alert service to notify image owners when their photograph appears on the web.

TinEye doesn’t have to be used just for preventing copyright infringement. Below is an example of how TinEye was used for other purposes.

“It’s being used by researchers who need to find where an image came from to provide attribution, even people who are trying to find out who people are in old photos,” stated Boujnane. “We had somebody who had a photograph of a soldier who’d arrived on the beach at Normandy and they couldn’t find their name. They did a whole bunch of searches on TinEye and found a tiny little photo on an American website that listed everybody who’d gone to Normandy with a photograph. That’s exactly when TinEye is useful, when you have an image but no words.”

Idée’s TinEye licenses are already being used by Adobe, Associated Press, and Digg.

Below is a video demo:

Related Link:
1. PC Pro
2. TinEye.com

WellNet Healthcare is a health management company that plans on launching the beta version of their new social network, Point to Point Healthcare very soon.  WellNet started in 1994 and has been collecting medical and pharamaceutical information about their members since they started.  Using this information, WellNet plans on helping clients evaluate health plans.

Through Point to Point, members will be able to schedule checkups online, create a wellness journal, and rate practitioners.  washington-based companies, Peterson Cos., Dewberry, and Kiplinger Washington Editors will be some of the first tests of the social network.

Other features included in the social network include prescription alerts, an online guide to help members find new specialits, and insurance claims help.  WellNet will be promoting the service to 300,000 of the primary care doctors in their network.

“It depends how simple it is to use these online tools,” stated Joseph Heyman, Chairman of the American Medical Association’s board. “Most physicians right now are on a hamster wheel. They have trouble keeping up. If it means extra work, and it’s not a time-saver, they’re generally not interested.”

Some of WellNet’s notable competitors includes MedBillManager.com and Revolution Health.

Related Links:
1. Washington Post
2. WellNet Healthcare

Last week, there was a fire at the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) office.  The fire took place on Tuesday last week and no one was hurt.  But the damage caused by the fire will cost $2 million in damages according to the Santa Clara County Fire Department.  The fire occurred at 10PM.  Water damage and smoke caused the most damage. 

The fire was most likely caused by construction work.  Several construction workers were redoing the roof of the building.  Fortunately, the building was not a research and development building.  It has not yet been determined where the workers of that office building will be shifted.

Related Link:
1. Macworld