I’m a day behind with our usual roundup of the previous week’s major business and technology stories from Xconomy San Francisco. So, without further ado:
—Having driven past Box.net’s cheeky anti-Microsoft billboard on U.S. 101 many times, I finally got to meet the company’s young CEO, Aaron Levie, who told me why SharePoint is a dinosaur and business collaboration software is moving to the cloud and getting more social.
—nPario, a Palo Alto, CA- and Redmond, WA-based startup using technology developed at Yahoo to track consumer behavior across Websites, social networks, mobile devices, game consoles, and other platforms, announced a major partnership with Electronic Arts. The Redwood City game giant will use nPario’s technology to help advertisers serve targeted ads to gamers and EA site visitors.
—Evri, a Paul Allen-backed semantic search company with offices in both the Seattle area and the Bay Area, rolled out several iPhone and Android apps designed to show off the company’s ability to aggregate news stories on topics like technology, celebrity gossip, and sports.
—Emeryville, CA-based Amyris Biotechnologies, which has engineered yeast strains to turn sugarcane into diesel and jet fuel, debuted on the NASDAQ exchange, raising $85 million in new capital.
—I took a close look at the “Fast Track MBA” program introduced to San Francisco this year by Massachusetts-based Babson College. Known for its entrepreneurship-oriented curriculum, the college hopes to attract mid-career technology executives, who can take part in the hybrid online/classroom program without having to leave their regular jobs.
—In my Friday column, I argued that it’s time to stop arguing about whether New York, Boston, Silicon Valley, or some other location is the best place to build a startup: today’s telecommunications technology is tying together information workers as if they all lived in one giant city.
—Truste, the San Francisco-based company that certifies the privacy policies of commercial websites, announced an expansion into the mobile realm. It rolled out new certification standards designed to assure consumers that publishers of mobile apps and mobile websites won’t misuse their location data or other personal details.
—Some major venture financing rounds came to light, among them: $21 million for Quantenna, $75 million for Chegg, $15 million for Netshelter, another $15 million for Retail Solutions, $12 million for Ongo, and $14 million for PVT Solar.
