Private equity buying big piece of Nextag

from GigaOM by Om Malik

Having snapped up whatever there was to buy in the brick and mortar world, the private equity investors are now turning their attention to technology sector. Cadance has been linked with big private equity money. Add comparison-shopping engine Nextag to the list.

Some private equity investors, one of them rumored to be Providence Equity Partners, are looking to buy 66% of Nextag for between $1 and $1.2 billion. Of course these are all rumors for now, and while contacted Nextag, we are yet to hear back from their press relations department.

Nextag is said to be doing about $200 million in revenues, with a lucrative mortgage and other lead generation business being the rocket that is driving the company. Internet giants for example – have taken out its peers – MySimon, PriceGrabber, Shopping.com and Shopzilla. Comparison Engines has a great overview of the market so far and news about this deal.

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Video of tot solving Rubik's Cube

from Boing Boing by David Pescovitz

David Pescovitz: This video seems to depict a cute child solving a Rubik's Cube in less than two minutes. Link (Thanks, Jennifer Lum!) Previously on BB: • Michel Gondry "solves" Rubik's Cube with his feet Link • Rubik's Cube solved in 11.13 seconds Link • Rubik's Cube folk art Link

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RIAA and Universal accused of extortion

from Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow: A Florida victim of RIAA lawsuits is striking back, accusing Universal Music Group of being extortionists:

In a new Tampa, Florida, case, UMG v. Del Cid, the defendant has filed the following five (5) counterclaims against the RIAA, under Florida, federal, and California law:

1. Trespass

2. Computer Fraud and Abuse (18 USC 1030)

3. Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices (Fla. Stat. 501.201)

4. Civil Extortion (CA Penal Code 519 & 523)

5. Civil Conspiracy involving (a) use of private investigators without license in violation of Fla. Stat. Chapter 493; (b) unauthorized access to a protected computer system, in interstate commerce, for the purpose of obtaining information in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030 (a)(2)(C); (c) extortion in violation of Ca. Penal Code §§ 519 and 523; and (d) knowingly collecting an unlawful consumer debt, and using abus[ive] means to do so, in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1692a et seq. and Fla. Stat. § 559.72 et seq.

About time.

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Flextronics purchasing Solectron for $3.6 billion

from Engadget by Paul Miller

Don't feel bad if you've never heard of Flextronics, Solectron or both -- we polled our mom on the subject, and she asked when we were going to give up this "blogging nonsense" for a real job -- but these two fairly low-profile contract electronics manufacturers churn out massive amounts of product for other little companies you might have heard of: like HP, Dell, Sony, Ericsson, Cisco, Motorola and Microsoft. Now Flextronics is ending this bitter rivalry in a Coke buys Pepsi-type shocker, forking over $3.6 billion in cash and stock for Solectron. Flextronics will operate Solectron as a subsidiary, and claims the purchase will help it expand scale and market reach, while saving on costs, with the deal to add about 15 percent to earnings, claims the manufacturer.

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Sproose: Human Powered Search Meets Digg

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

Asking how many ways you can make a search engine is like asking how many ways you can scramble an egg, there are a number of different ways and although it’s not rocket science you can still end up with something inedible.

People powered search is the trendiest of egg scrambling search engine recipes at the moment. Service such as ChaCha have contractual employees answering search queries in real time. The Jason Calacanis vehicle Mahalo launched in alpha this week with a Wikipedia meets Google model which aims to provide pre-written results for 10,000 search queries.

Danville, CA based Sproose marries human powered search to Digg.

Sproose is a personalized search engine that combines social networking with peer-moderated rankings giving users the ability to prioritize, customize and fine-tune searches to produce relevant web search results.

Sproose users can effectively categorize and index relevant sites and tailor those for personal or group use. Through collective moderation and scoring users can sort through existing sites to assemble only the most appropriate results.

The results aren’t bad. It isn’t clear where the search results are originally pulled from (I’d guess Google) and the social voting feature on link priority creates a different search experience. Video results come from Blinkx and Sproose indexes over 25,000 sources for news. Whether it will take is another matter; everyone wants to be the next Google and there is no shortage of competitors. I can honestly say though that I’ve seen many worse than Sproose.

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