Tech Roundup of the Week: Ford Focus EV, Flud, Legend3D, Sotera

its Focus Electric is the first five-passenger electric vehicle expected to get a 100 miles per gallon equivalent (MPGe) fuel-efficiency rating.

—Xconomy Detroit Editor Sarah Schmid talked with Bobby Ghoshal, the co-founder and CEO of San Diego-based Flud, which launched a new version of its news aggregation app for the iPhone and iPad earlier this month. The Android version is set to launch in January. Detroit-based Ludlow Ventures and Detroit Venture Partners recently funded Flud.

—San Diego’s VMIX launched Givit, an invitation-only platform for sharing videos online with designated friends and family. VMIX said users can download the Givit app for use on the iPhone and iPad. The technology was previously available as an app for Windows or Mac OS-based laptops and desktop PCs.

—San Diego’s Legend3D, a post-production film studio that renders conventional 2D movies as 3D feature films, raised $19 million in a Series E preferred stock offering. Legend3D said the proceeds would be used to further research and development, and to help Legend3D finance some post-production 3D film conversions through partnerships with major Hollywood studios-a new business initiative.

—While San Diego-based Sotera Wireless awaits to learn if the FDA has approved its wireless healthcare monitoring system as a medical device for use in hospitals, Singapore’s EDB Investments led a $12.2 million round of Series D funding. Other Sotera investors include Qualcomm Ventures, Sanderling Ventures, Intel Capital, and the West Health Investment Fund. Sotera, which also signed a commercial agreement with Cerner, the Kansas City, MO-based giants, said Cerner’s corporate venture capital arm also joined in the latest round.

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.