TripIt, a travel aggregation service that is offered as an application on the iPhone and BlackBerry, is now available as a beta app for Google’s Android platform and can be downloaded from the Android Market. Just like us, our colleagues at jkOnTheRun, WebWorkerDaily and TheAppleBlog are all fans of TripIt, and the Android version will allow more people to use this fantastic service. TripIt recently launched an application programming interface for other developers to build their own web and mobile apps.

Skype, with its spinout from eBay complete and its legal troubles with founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis settled, is looking to the future, where it wants to become a ubiquitous real-time communications platform. And that means thinking about the next-generation Skype architecture and hiring a lot of smart people, CEO Josh Silverman said in a conversation earlier today. Continue »

American Express, the company well known for overpriced charge cards, is buying Ted Leonsis and Steve Case’s Revolution Money for $300 million. Leonsis shared this information on his blog. Amex wants to use Revolution Money to build a next-generation offering. Revolution Money has some kind of a next-generation payments technology that brings together offline and online worlds; it’s part of the Revolution group of companies floated by Steve Case. No one I know has either seen it or actually uses it. If there is one company that is going to do offline-online payments, that will be PayPal.

Intel today said it’s invested an undisclosed amount in Joyent, the 6-year-old Sausalito, Calif.-based startup that started out as a web hosting company but eventually evolved into a cloud service provider. Neither Intel nor Joyent disclosed the amount of money invested, but Intel’s investment in the company is a strategic bet for the chipmaker, as it faces a smaller end user base for its silicon thanks to enterprises turning to computing delivered as a service to help limit the number of servers they buy. First the deal specifics. Continue »

Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), one of the most respected funds in Silicon Valley, says that it’s closed NVP XI, a $1.2 billion fund that will invest in diverse sectors and geographies. NVP, which recently recorded a major hit with the $405 million sale of video conferencing equipment maker LifeSize, is one of the few venture funds to close a mega-fund. Khosla Ventures ($1 billion) and Greylock Partners ($575 million) are two other partnerships that have been able to raise mega-funds. At the same time, there have been numerous reports of many partnerships struggling to whip up interest in their second or third funds. “Track record is what that matters,” said Promod Haque, general partner with NVP, in a conversation earlier today. Continue »

This morning news broke that MySpace, the second-largest social network that’s currently reinventing itself as a music destination, was buying imeem, a free online music service that has been remixed (and remade) more times that ’90s dance anthem “Keep on Moving.” TechCrunch, which reported on the news, didn’t reveal what the deal terms were. I have been dialing sources for information, and have found an interesting backstory behind this sale. Continue »

Motorola and Verizon, thanks to their $100 million marketing efforts, are going to sell some 600,000 Droids during the fourth quarter of 2009, according to Mark McKechnie of Broadpoint AmTech, a boutique research firm. He had initially expected about 200,000 device sales following the launch, but he has upped his forecast: Motorola should sell another 200,000 Droids by Black Friday and 150,000-200,000 during the remainder of the holiday season. This would bring the total to some 600,000 Droids for 2009. Continue »