The new investment brings the total amount of money that Business Insider has raised to $18.3 million. In the memo to staff, Business Insider CEO and editor-in-chief Henry Blodget writes, “This capital will allow us to continue to invest aggressively in many areas of the business, including editorial, tech/product, sales and marketing, subscriptions, and events. As we mentioned last night, it will also allow us to expand our office.”

Blodget tells AllThingsD that “the new deal values the company above the $50 million valuation it earned during its last round in 2011.”

Business Insider reportedly lost about $3 million, or a quarter of its revenue, in 2012, though Blodget says the site turned a small profit in the first quarter of this year. Business Insider is known for its short news pieces and slideshows. According to the BI memo, Jeff Bezos said that he “sees some parallels with Amazon.” Blodget said the site will now include a disclosure statement whenever it writes about Amazon.

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Vasona is one of a myriad of companies that develop traffic shaping technologies for mobile networks, but Vasona sets itself apart not in what it optimizes but where it does that optimization. As I wrote back in January:

Where Vasona distinguishes itself from the lot is in the level of precision it can target with its traffic shaping techniques, said Biren Sood, CEO of the Santa Clara, Calif.,-based company.

Most optimization technologies apply the work across entire classes of data in the network core, or they follow specific subscribers as they move to and fro, throttling back their speeds or compressing their videos regardless of the prevailing network conditions.

But Sood said that the network should be treated as a collection of its parts, rather than as a unified whole. Congestion occurs at the individual cell, so carriers should optimize their networks accordingly, applying traffic management techniques only where congestion dictates, Sood said.

“We understand the nature of the cell, and we understand the capacity of the cell,” Sood said. “With that understanding we can get the right bits to the right applications in the most efficient way.”

I checked back in with Sood on Monday, and he told me that Vasona plans to use the funds to scale its operations and trial activity globally. The company is already engaged in several trials with operators, Sood said, though he wouldn’t reveal specific operators (given Vodafone is an investor, it might be a safe bet). Vasona has now raised a total of $22 million.

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The company said it will use the new funding to develop new technology, continue hiring, expand its user base internationally, and make strategic investments. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners and FirstMark Capital all participated in the round as well.

“Our focus is on helping millions of people discover things they love and get inspiration to go do those things in their life,” said Ben Silbermann, Pinterest co-founder and CEO announced in a statement provided by the company. “This investment gives us more resources to help realize that vision.”

It was reported earlier this month that the company was in funding talks that would raise its valuation above $2 billion. Most recently, Pinterest had raised $100 million in May 2012, putting the company’s valuation at $1.5 billion at the time. The May round was led by Japanese site Rakuten, in addition to Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners and FirstMark Capital.

The company allows users to pin photos to virtual pinboards, collecting them in groups called boards around the web. Pinterest has exploded in recent success, especially with women, and has continued to drive increasing amounts of traffic on the web. CEO Ben Silberman spoke at GigaOM’s Roadmap conference in November, explaining that they didn’t set out to target any specific group in building the site:

“When we built Pinterest, we didn’t build it with a specific demographic in mind,” Silbermann said. “We built it for ourselves.”

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Pinterest allows users to bookmark images across the web and post them to personal boards, then share and like people’s photos to create virtual pinboards. The company was a stealthy startup success, and most recently raised a funding round of $100 million in May 2012 that put its valuation at $1.5 billion. That round was led by the Japanese site Rakuten, along with Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners and FirstMark Capital.

A Pinterest spokeswoman said the company has no comment on “speculation or rumors.”

Speaking at GigaOM’s Roadmap conference in November, Pinterest CEO Ben Silberman talked about how the company has appealed to a variety of people who aren’t necessarily early tech adopters in New York and San Francisco, although they didn’t necessarily set out to capture any particular user:

“When we built Pinterest, we didn’t build it with a specific demographic in mind,” Silbermann said. “We built it for ourselves.”

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FarmLogs has designed software-as-a-service platform that helps small growers plan, manage and analyze their agricultural operations with the aim of maximizing crop yield and therefore profits. FarmLogs will track inventory, forecast profits, and digitize paperwork. It even follows the weather. The software is hosted in the cloud, which subscribers can access through an Android app, an HTML app optimized for the iPhone and iPad or a standard web browser.

Crain’s Detroit Business has an excellent description of just how sophisticated FarmLogs’ software is:

According to [CEO and co-founder Jesse] Vollmar, a midsize farm of 3,000 acres might have 60 separate fields, which can get complicated when it comes to keeping track of what needs to be tilled, watered, planted, fertilized, sprayed or harvested.

FarmLogs does that, with color-coded calendars for each bit of the mosaic that makes up the Google Earth image of a decent-size farm.

FarmLogs has hourly weather forecasts so farmers can plan when to get in or get out of fields. It tells them the price all the area grain elevators are paying for various grains, as well as prices at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. It has video feeds of various experts at the Chicago Board of Trade talking on issues of the day.

The $1 million round was led by Chicago’s Hyde Park Ventures and Ann Arbor’s Huron River Ventures with Hyde Park Angels, Silicon Badia Ventures, First-Step Fund and angel investors also participating. According to Crain’s, that includes the $245,000 in seed funding it raised from Silcon Valley’s Start Fund and Andreesson Horowitz.

While farming might seem like an odd place for tech investment, FarmLogs points out that agriculture employs 36 percent of the global workforce. Big agribusiness companies like Cargill and ConAgra Foods, being gigantic corporations, have access to technology that not only engineers their food products but streamlines their business operations. Smaller farmers, though, don’t have access to such resources.

An emerging sector of startups is starting to feed that small farm base. For instance, New York City’s FarmersWeb has built an online e-commerce platform that links small growers and meat producers to local restaurants, grocery stores, institutional kitchens and wholesalers.

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For those who see the recent rise of ed tech startups as a sign of a frothiness in the sector, this report could be yet more evidence that ed tech is getting over-inflated. Over the past few months, reports of a brewing bubble have swirled around the ed tech blogosphere, with some drawing parallels between the recent surge in ed tech companies and the dot com boom in 1999. Perhaps to nip that kind of talk in the bud, CB Insights headlined its report: “There is no ed tech bubble.”

Heightened funding in education technology is mirroring financing trends in the wider world of technology, the company said. About 70 percent of the deals were at the seed and Series A stage, meaning that ed tech startups will similarly face a “Series A crunch.” And CB Insights says that’s a healthy thing for the market. If too many of these emerging startups get follow-on funding, that could be a sign of a bubble. But, for now, they say, it’s just too early to tell.

According to the report, one-third of the funding last year went to just about ten companies — take a look at a list of them below.

1. Desire2Learn  – $80m

2. Open English – $43m

3. Lumos Labs – $31.5m

4. Echo360 – $31m

5. 2U – $26m

6. Chegg – $25m

7. Kaltura – $25m

8. Edmodo – $25m

9. The Minerva Project – $25m

10. Orbis Education – $24.33m

Regardless, you can be sure that 2013 will see even more investment in ed tech and the B-word will likely continue to surface. But as Audrey Watters over at HackEducation has argued before, asking whether there is a bubble in tech is a limiting question. What’s important about the new crop of ed tech companies isn’t just how much money they can raise but how much value they can generate — for students, teachers, schools and investors.

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The startup didn’t need the funding, said COO Andrew D’Souza, but given Felicis’ familiarity with education (it has also invested in startups Inkling and Piazza), they wanted to work with them.

“They know the space really well and mobile is a big focus for them as well,” he said. “We heard their vision for what higher education will look and we share a similar vision.”

As opposed to “clickers” that give professors just a basic way to gauge their students’ engagement, Top Hat lets teachers use the smartphones, laptops and tablets students already bring to class as complementary teaching tools. With the software, teachers can create in-class contests and competitions, as well as provide demonstrations and experiments. As students increasingly rely on mobile technology and web-enabled devices out of the classroom, Top Hat shows one way educators can put it to good use in the classroom.

In the past six months, its grown its team from 20 people to 70 and nearly doubled the number of colleges and universities using its platform to 285. About 90 percent of the colleges using its technology are in North America, with the majority based in the U.S.

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There are multitudes of parking spot locator and reservation apps, but SpotHero is trying to set itself apart from the pack by becoming a parking broker of sorts. As co-founder and COO Jeremy Smith explained at Excelerate’s demo day in August, SpotHero has built the back-end systems that not only allow lot owners to notify drivers of parking availability, but to tailor space reservation and parking pass offers based on inventory, demand and specific customers needs.

By using SpotHero’s platform, parking lot owners can sell discounted spot reservations for specific hours or days and even sell monthly passes through the startup’s website and consumer facing Android and iOS apps. Lot owners can even bid against each other for a customer’s business, Smith said.

Parking in a big city like Chicago may seem like a scarce resource, but in reality during most hours lots are sitting half empty. Consequently national and regional parking lot companies have taken a shine to SpotHero’s e-commerce platform in hopes of filling up those empty spaces. The service has been available for less than a year, but the startup claims to have generated more than $2 million in revenue for parking companies, even though its available in just two cities, Chicago and Milwaukee.

SpotHero was the first of the Excelerate’s 2012 class to raise funds, announcing an investment from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups the week before demo day (SpotHero won’t be participating in 500 Startups’ accelerator program though, choosing instead to remain in Chicago). SpotHero plans to use its new funding to hire more developers and expand beyond the Midwest.

Image courtesy of Alex 92287.

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There had been a number of reports about Spotify seeking new financing in recent weeks, including some that pointed to a high likelihood of Coke being involved. The soda maker struck a first partnership with Spotify in April, which included Spotify powering Coke’s music sites and Coke adding Spotify to its Facebook presence. Coke also sponsored a Spotify music hackathon in New York earlier this year.

This isn’t the first time Coca-Cola is trying its luck at digital music: The company launched its own download store dubbed MyCokeMusic in the UK and other countries in 2004, but the endeavour was hampered by its use of Windows media DRM, and eventually closed down in June of 2006.

The new round of funding brings the total amount of money raised by Spotify to $288 million.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Erik Pitti.

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Buoyed by Double Fine Adventure, which earlier this year received $1 million in just one day, the games category went from the eighth most funded to the second most funded ($75 million) in less than a year.

But more launches doesn’t mean more successes—that rate has held at about 44 % for the site overall, according to Kickstarter spokesman Justin Kazmark. Film and video, the most common Kickstarter category, is the seventh most likely category to be successfully funded. (Note: Kickstarter only consider projects that are completely funded to be successes.)

And some categories fare better than others.

While dance has the fewest launches, it has the highest success rate at 70 percent.

Kickstarters range in price from under a thousand dollars to over a million dollars, with the median funding in the $1,000 to $9,999 range.

Kickstarter’s co-founder Perry Chen spoke at our Roadmap conference earlier this week — he answered questions about a possible IPO and other topics.

Here’s video of Kickstarter co-founder and CEO Perry Chen speaking at Roadmap 2012 last week.

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