I got to know Ragnar several years ago and like his unstoppable entrepreneurial spirit and enthusiasm from day one. In 2005 Ragnar and Petra decided to develop software for smart phones and use advertising as a way to 'charge' customers in lieu of charging a download fee. After two years of development and thinking they brought together many industry partners (publishers, ad networks, developers) to bring them into the Smaato mobile open advertising platform.

Now they got rewarded for the risk they took with a commitment from Aeris Capital:

Smaato, a pioneering provider of mobile advertising platform technology announced that it has closed a $ 3.5 million financing round. Smaato was successful in attracting prominent smart angel investors from international media, advertising, mobile and the financial community. Silicon Valley based legal firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati advised on the funding and participated with an investment.

"We are convinced Smaato is at the fore front of this new marketing opportunity. Mobile advertising will be in hyper growth mode for the coming years and we believe Smaato is one of the leading pioneers in this field with an experienced management team and an excellent track record in the recent past. We will be actively supporting Smaato to position the company as a leader in the mobile advertising space," stated Uwe R. Feuersenger, CEO of aeris CAPITAL who also participated in this financing round.

Smaato's mobile advertising platform soma gets increased demand from ad-sales networks, developers and mobile operators. Smaato delivers groundbreaking ways to connect new generation software applications for mobile devices with targeted advertising.

Recently, Smaato announced the new version of their mobile ad-server platform SOMA (Smaato Open Mobile Advertising) that supports mobile Web and WAP advertising delivery.

"Since founding Smaato we are experiencing a growing interest in targeted mobile advertising. With Smaato we are at the forefront for developing innovative advertising solutions to reach the mobile consumer. With the support of our international investors and our advisory board of experienced and globally connected individuals, we will continue to expand our reach within the industry on a global scale", commented Ragnar Kruse, Co-Founder and CEO of Smaato Inc.

Congratulations Ragnar and Petra!

So I admit - I'm a weather freak and I'm trying to constantly watching temperatures in 15 locations around teh world every day (all spots I consider worth living in :)

I was always looking for a Google Maps weather mashup that shows temperatures and precipitation globally. Somehowe I could never find it (it might just be hiding from me).

Today I found it a Wunderground . Pretty nice.

Steve at Partnerup has done the effort to write down COMPLETE list of major M&A deals in the media, internet, tech and gaming industry.

Quite a feat - many interesting deals there I had not seen.

Thanks Steve!

Auren relieves some pressure and rants about the inflated prices and priorities for wine.

First, why is it so important to drink alcohol at a proper meal? I mean, is it so important that we need to alter our state-of-mind while we engage in discourse over a nice meal? Is the company of the others at the meal so bad that we need to mollify it with some alcohol?? Of course not. So why the attraction to ALWAYS have alcohol with a nice meal. Can you imagine a similar fad forming around grape juice (wine without the alcohol)? Imagine buying a bottle of grape juice for $200 ... you'd be laughed out of town. (even when you retort, "but this grape juice was made by Baron de Rothschild!")

There are tons of studies on wine drinkers. They all think they are better wine experts then they really are. Poll 20 of your friends and most of them will be able to tell you why they prefer a $100 bottle to a $10 bottle. But if the labels were switched, they might give you a similar answer. Is it all just a fad??

Auren argues that wine is overvalued and there seems to a wine bubble at its peak. Not quite at the peak but wine is certainly a tad overpriced and overrated.

Growing up in wine happy Germany and closeby France - wine is a part of most home meals (and you can officially start drink by the age of 16) but it's CHEAP. Without much digging you can find pretty agreeable wine for EUR 2. Prices certainly range in teh teens in most shops but that is the end of grocery wines.

Incidentally you will find a lot of wine from California (yeah Zinfandels) as well. The same (well differently packed and probably slightly different grape qualities) are sold in Europe for EUR 3 a pop. Similar wines cost you $10 at safeway and $20 directly in Napa.

There is no doubt wine can improve food but paying $70 for a standard wine in a restaurant seems excessive - bad ROI :)

So we have been doing that for some time - adding blogs to the network but nobody really know that we were doing that with EXISTING blogs.

I outlined that a little here.

In a nutshell - why should you think about it?

Simply - It's more fun together, less hassle and often more money for you. We pay for all services surrounding your blog. You 'just' blog - we do not interfere with what you write at all. Also we help you to make your blog even more famous and after 'the lease' is over you can sell your blog to whoever you wish.



Also Creative Weblogging is a serious organization - check out our existing network of sites. We are around for 3 years - we pay our bills and are friendly folks.

Surprising move by the two largest travel meta-search engines - they become one! Ken Schachter at Redherring comments:

Travel search engine Kayak.com has pulled down $196 million in one of the largest venture rounds of 2007 to acquire rival SideStep, the companies announced Friday.

The financing round was led by prior investor Sequoia Capital, whose partner, Michael Moritz, will join the Kayak.com board of directors. Also, participating were previous Kayak investors General Catalyst Partners and Accel Partners, SideStep investors Norwest Venture Partners and Trident Capital and new investors Oak Investment Partners and Lehman Brothers Venture Partners. The round also included debt from Silicon Valley Bank and Gold Hill Capital.

"It's an extraordinary amount of money to raise," Kayak co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Paul English said. "It's more than a lot of tech IPOs raise."

The acquisition of SideStep accounted for more than $150 million of the venture funding with exiting SideStep investors tapping additional funds from the company's cash horde. Kayak previously had raised $30 million in three venture rounds.

....

Kayak is taking aim at Expedia, the No. 1 web site based on travel searches per month, Mr. English said. At the same time, Kayak partners with Expedia by referring searchers to that site, which serves as a ticket-selling agency. He likened the relationship to a shopping search engine like shopping.com and a retailer like BestBuy.

Travel meta-search seems to be an interesting addition to the rather big online travel market. Being invested and involved in kinkaa I certainly do share some of these bullish forecasts.

Talk was on the street that each Sidestep and Kayak want to go IPO in 2008. Now that will be only KYAK on Nasdaq in 2008 :)