N-trig, the provider of DuoSense™ technology combining pen and zero-pressure touch for mobile computers into a single device, announced today that they have completed a fund-raising round of $28 million from Canaan Partners, Evergreen Venture Partners and current investors. In addition to the investment round, N-trig has recently secured a credit facility of $5 million from Plenus, a leading Venture Lending Fund in Israel. The company has its headquarters in Israel with U.S. headquarters in [...]

Today’s Q&A Wednesday is with Justin Britten and Daniel Wilson, founders of a new company named Compulsivo. Their first product is a website that helps companies manage their beta programs named Prefinery. Q: How did you first get the idea for Prefinery, and how have you bootstrapped it so far? Prefinery is the outcome of our own frustrations with running effective software beta programs.  We have worked in the software industry making traditional “box” software [...]

This is the time of the year when the Austin-based private companies announce that they had record results in 2007. As private companies they never seem to release actual sales figures (except for Zilliant), but they usually express results as percentages. This week we saw results from Powered and Mirage Networks. Powered creates online consumer learning programs for companies such as HP, Epson, Motorola, and Sony. The company claimed a “record year of growth and [...]

FiveRuns, a company that provides enterprise class management services for Ruby on Rails, announced that Todd Barr has joined the company as Vice President of Business Development. Todd previously held various positions at Red Hat including Senior Manager of Partner Development, and Senior Director of Customer Marketing. Barr will help to expand the Rails Application Management Partner (RAMP) program.

Invodo, an Austin-based provider of online video software and services has raised around $1.2M of a planned $1.5M Series A financing. The company provides rich media management software and services to allow companies to utilize video to engage customers. The company claims that rich, video-based product information will decrease abandonment rates for online retailers and also decrease return rates. The company touts online exercise equipment company SPRI as an early customer, and you can view [...]

Austin-based Spiceworks, a provide of ad supported IT management software, announced that they are releasing a co-branded version of the Spiceworks product for users of CMP’s bMight.com website. The bMighty website is a CMP community site focused on IT professionals in the small and mid-sized (SMB) category. If you visit the website, you’ll see a link for Free Tools at the top of every web page. If you look at their free tools page, Spiceworks [...]

It’s a little light on the Austin tech news right now. If we don’t start hearing some interesting things about the emerging technology companies in town, we’re going to starting writing editorials about how silly we think it is for Freescale to announce the acquisition of SigmaTel one day, release SigmaTel earning the next day, and have the chairman of Freescale leave the day after that. We don’t write about the public technology companies in [...]

It’s been a little crazy over at Yahoo lately. Microsoft wants to empty the bank account in their direction, but Jerry says it’s not enough. Microsoft could take its offer to the shareholders, but Wall St thinks Gates will up the bid. On the same day Yahoo buys another company for around $160M and gives pink slips to over 1,000 employees. No word on how Yahoo’s Austin office fared. Imagine if Microsoft invested $45B in [...]

Austin-based Pyxis Technology announced that they have extended their B round to include a strategic investment from KT Venture Group. Existing investors Austin Ventures, CMEA Ventures and Formative Ventures also participated in this round. The new funds will be used to accelerate deployment of the Pyxis NexusRoute high-performance, yield-aware auto-router announced in September of 2007. Pyxis Technology delivers software and services to address the problems that chip designers face in the routing of nanometer-scale integrated [...]

Dell, which has been a buying spree these past couple of months, has acquired a company in its own backyard, MessageOne. MessageOne, a provider of services for e-mail management, archiving and business continuity, will be rolled into Dell’s Software-as-a-Service suite, for a price of about $155 million in cash. According to Steve Schuckenbrock, president, Dell Global Services, and chief information officer, “This is a valuable acquisition for Dell. MessageOne’s offerings add key capabilities to our [...]