There was no break in San Diego’s tech news leading up to the Martin Luther King holiday. Even though Xconomy observed the holiday, we still managed to round up the news you’ll need to get your week started.
—The early returns on venture capital investing during the fourth quarter of 2010 came in from New York-based CB Insights, showing that VCs provided $6.5 billion in 735 deals during the last three months of 2010. That compares with $5.5 billion invested in 687 deals during the same quarter in 2009—but four big Internet deals accounted for nearly all of the billion-dollar difference. The four deals involved Groupon, Twitter, LivingSocial, and Whale Shark Media.
—I profiled Service-now.com, which has developed Web-based software that enables the chief information officers at big companies and other organizations to readily keep track of their assets, such as computers, software licenses, and other IT resources. At the same time, it generates the kind of information that business executives can use to understand, for example, how the cost of operating a sales force in the field compares with the cost of selling products through an online catalog.
—Carlsbad, CA-based ViaSat said it has rescheduled the launch of its high-capacity ViaSat-1 communications satellite to this summer, a two or three-month delay, after the spacecraft was damaged while being moved during the testing process. Once in orbit, ViaSat-1 is expected to provide multimedia Internet service for rural and sparsely populated suburban areas at an estimated 130 gigabytes per second, which would be the highest capacity satellite in the world.
—Transaction Wireless, a San Diego startup that provides virtual and mobile gift cards for mobile devices, named Doug Schneider as president and CEO.
—San Diego’s St. Bernard Software, which provides web and e-mail security and data protection, and related content management security technology, changed its name to EdgeWave. The company said its stock symbol, which trades
