Too much going on in the Boston tech scene to keep track of at the moment—and much more coming soon. Here are just a few items that are swirling around my desk today.
—Fast-growing mobile-app marketplace Apptopia says it has brokered a $200,000 acquisition of Bluecloud Solutions’ app portfolio by the fund AppBin. The deal reflects increasing interest from financial and investment firms in acquiring mobile-app portfolios. (Smells a bit like domain-name acquisitions circa 2000, says Apptopia.)
—An influential local figure is moving on to a new role. Travis McCready, who has headed the Kendall Square Association as executive director for the past few years, has left to join the Boston Foundation as its new vice president of program, effective next week.
—Linkwell Health, a Needham, MA-based startup that works with health plans, brands, and retailers to help people make healthier lifestyle choices, has raised $11 million in Series C funding. The round was led by WellPoint and included previous investors Spark Capital and HLM Venture Partners. Linkwell, which has raised about $25 million to date (by my count), is led by CEO Gregg Michaelson and president Ben Gardner.
—uTest, the Southborough, MA-based software-testing firm, has released a mobile-app analytics product out of its newly announced Labs organization. The new software, called Applause, analyzes millions of app reviews from the Apple and Google app stores (it’s sort of like Klout for apps). Mobile analytics and developer tools are a hot topic around town, as Cambridge-based Crashlytics has just been acquired by Twitter.
—The rise of LEDs continues. Boston-based Digital Lumens has hired Matthew Healy, formerly of GE Lighting, to head up business development (he’s an MIT and Harvard grad to boot). DL hopes to ride the wave of smarter, cheaper, more efficient lighting systems as it goes about building a new industry. And, just in case there was any doubt that LEDs are sexy, check out these new photos of the Bay Lights project in San Francisco.
