Sundog has been using short clips featuring billionaire Richard Branson, actress Kate Winslet, actor Gael Garcia Bernal and rapper Dizzie Rascal to draw attention to it ahead of its online release.

The strategy seems to be working: The official Breaking The Taboo YouTube channel has clocked more than 300,000 views since its launch on November 16. But why would Sundog release the entire film for free on YouTube ahead of its TV broadcast? I got in touch with the company to find out, and a spokesperson sent me the following response:

“We have decided to go with a YouTube release as the important thing for us as a company is not monetary gain but raising awareness and spreading the word on global issues — we aim to educate and inspire people and we can do that best through a free, social medium like YouTube where so many more people will be able to access it.”

The movie will be available for free for one month starting December 7. It is part of a larger campaign to change drug policy that has attracted support from a variety of people including Mexico’s former president Vicente Fox, Napster co-founder Sean Parker and Sting.

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It’s fair to say that the site, which provides game-like online courses to teach people how to code, has had a blockbuster year so far. It’s spent 2012 seeing enormous growth, adding new marketplace features, and gaining a legion of fans, including New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.

But even though the site has seen a breathless rise to prominence, the money isn’t just being used to keep the servers spinning while demand grows: it’s got ambitions too.

Ahead of an on-stage interview with me at LeWeb London on Tuesday, co-founder Zach Sims told me that the new funds “give us the ability to go international” — something useful given that 50 percent of the company’s user base already comes from outside the U.S.

And in a post on the company’s blog, he explains his belief that the latest investors are well-placed to help it achieve that expansion.

“A few weeks after we launched Code Year, we met Neil Rimer and Saul Klein of Index Ventures.  Saul told us, about the world he wanted for his kids – one where code was a foreign language as important as Chinese and English for people to learn.  Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins visited our office around the same time and painted a picture of a few industries that needed to be shaken up – education chief among them.”

“It became clear that we needed partners who both understood the importance of a global company… and the process of scaling a company far beyond the nine people we have grown to now.”

It’s actually the first investment from Index’s new €350 million early stage fund, but still, it’s only eight months since the business announced its last round of funding, a $2.5 million round from investors including Union Square Ventures, Ron Conway’s SV Angel and Michael Arrington’s Crunchfund.

This time round Union Square is following up, with Index’s Saul Klein leading the round and KPCB’s Mary Meeker joining in too.

So what do they see in it?

Index’s Klein told me that he was excited by Codecademy for many reasons, but not least because “it’s not a content-needy educational publisher” but “a marketplace for students and teachers.”

He also pointed out that with a global depression, it made sense to back a company that gives people the chance to learn new skills and potentially find jobs that they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to access.

That seems a proposition that is not just popular with VCs but also a magnet for billionaire tycoons: not only did Bloomberg express his support for the site, but investors include Russian Yuri Milner (who adds to his previous investment) and Virgin founder Richard Branson.

Here’s my chat with Zach Simms at LeWeb:

Photograph of Codecademy founders Zach Sims and Ryan Bubinski used under Creative Commons license courtesy of Hack NY

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Here’s a handy quote attributed to Path founder Dave Morin:

“We are delighted to announce that last week we closed a significant round of funding with a new set of investor partners. It is important to us to work with investment partners who share common values around quality and building for the long term. Our “Path” has only just begun, and we are looking forward to continuing to bring world-class design and simplicity to the world of mobile personal networking.”

And here’s a link to the blog post by Redpoint announcing why it led the investment in Path. Among other reasons, it was because the firm was “struck by the combination of audacious vision, intellect, product sense, leadership, humor and modesty of Dave Morin and the design brilliance that Dustin Mierau brings to Path.”

News about the funding round was first reported by TechCrunch a month ago, with Business Insider nailing details about Redpoint leading the investment. And the whole thing resurfaced again earlier Monday in a report from AllThingsD.

I’m terribly happy for Dave Morin and co.: After all, Path is one of the few apps that I use every day and keep on the home screen of my iPhone. But Om has a bit more tempered view of Path’s potential success. Check out his story on why Path is no Instagram here.

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Press releases from Virgin and Square do not give any indication of how much money Branson has invested in the company, which was started by Twitter founder and (current) executive chairman Jack Dorsey. We have contacted Square, Dorsey and Branson to ask and will update this post as we learn more.

Square raised $100 million at the end of June in a round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. At the time, that valued the company at $1 billion.

Square built a business initially on an iPhone-based mobile payments service that is now avaialbe for both iOS and Android devices. It provides a square-shaped dongle to merchants, who can plug the device into a phone to make instant card transactions. Some 800,000 merchants in the U.S. are now using the dongles, and there are around $2 billion in payments processed annually through the platform. At the standard 2.75 percent commission that Square charges merchants, that works out to annuals revenues of $55 million from those transactions going to Square.

Last week, the company upgraded its payment app, Card Case, which now uses geofencing technology built into smartphones to let a user make purchases without even presenting the device. About 20,000 merchants have signed up to work with the Card Case app to date.

How will Richard Branson’s investment in Square figure in the company’s strategy? It seems unlikely that Branson has taken an interest in Square as a simple financial investment. Rather, Branson could prove to be a key figure for Square as it looks to make its payment services more ubiquitous.

Square has said it plans to launch in international markets in 2012, and Branson’s international Virgin empire could help with that.

Not only does Virgin operate national and international airlines, but it has a number of other travel interests, including train services in the UK. It also runs a number of financial services, as well as gyms, mobile operators and a pay-TV company: all opportunities to increase the number of Square transactions and give more exposure to the brand on a global basis.

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Solazyme’s shares will start trading on the Nasdaq today under the symbol SZYM, and we’ll see how well the stock does on its debut. Next-gen biofuel IPOs from Amyris and Gevo fared well on the public markets when they debuted last year.

Solazyme engineers efficient algal strains and grows its designer algae in fermentation tanks without sunlight by feeding it sugar. Then, using existing industrial equipment, it extracts the oil. Solazyme is a leader in the algae fuel space, but competes with Sapphire Energy, Craig Venter’s Synthetic Genomics, and a handful of other companies looking to scale up algae oil production.

While Solazyme isn’t currently selling its algae in large volumes as fuel, it is currently selling algae-based specialty biochemicals, cosmetics and food supplements. For example, Solazyme struck a deal with Dow Chemical to make an algae-based fluid for transformers.

Solazyme has raised at least $125 million throughout its eight years of existence, from investors including Chevron’s VC arm, Morgan Stanley , Richard Branson, and food and personal product giant Unilever . Unilever wants to use algae to replace palm oil, because the harvesting of palm oil has led to deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia and has drawn the criticism of environmentalists.

But ultimately, Solazyme wants to scale up algae oil production to tackle the biofuel market. Solazyme is looking to commercialize its fuel technology in the 2013 time frame, with a production cost target of $60 to $80 per barrel. To get there, it will have to build a commercial-scale algae plant, which can cost over $100 million (one reason it needs cash from an IPO).

Solazyme updated its financials in its latest S-1, and for the first three months of 2011, ending March 31, reported $7.74 million in revenues. That’s slightly up from revenues of $5.76 million for thee first three months of 2010. At the same time, over the first three months of 2011, Solazyme lost $7.29 million, an increase from a net loss of $3.95 million for the period in 2010. For the full year of 2010, Solazyme lost $16.28 million on revenues of $37.97 million.

There is a total of 10.98 million shares of Solazyme common stock being offered, with Solazyme selling 10.38 million shares and 600,000 shares coming from selling stockholders. Solazyme is also offering the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase another 1.65 million shares.

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GreenRoad has developed a technology — including an embedded computer in the car, a GPS and cellular connection and a website to remotely check on driving progress — that can help corporate fleet drivers become safer and greener drivers. The IT tech monitors drivers and gives them consistent feedback (green light, yellow light, red light), and then rewards them for changing their driving behavior.

The company says its technology can help companies save significantly on fuel costs (10 percent less fuel), as well as fewer crashes (50 percent fewer accidents). GreenRoad says its technology is embedded in 60,000 corporate fleets.

Check out our Green Overdrive episode we did on GreenRoad in March, with then CEO Patrick Burtis.

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The “advice” came out of an onstage interview with both Branson and CNN founder and environmentalist Ted Turner, and Turner echoed the call to action: “Let’s do it. Let’s do it now before it’s too late. Let’s stop doing the dumb things and let’s start doing the smart things.”

What both Branson and Turner are asking is for the group of negotiators at COP 16 to find common ground and to create some sort of agreement on countries’ carbon emission reduction goals. That’s looking like a very difficult task, given countries are split over whether to continue with and extend the Kyoto Protocol, which has a deadline of 2012 (what developing countries want), or to beef up the Copenhagen Accord (what the U.S. wants) and abandon Kyoto (what Japan sounds like it wants).

Branson urged the delegates to start with small targets, as did United Nations Framework Convention on Climcate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres in a speech on Saturday morning. Branson: “As long as they do it fairly and equally and across industries and on a global basis, no one’s going to suffer. And it doesn’t have to be very much initially and then encourage people to go after clean energy.”

It’s clear that if the negotiations stall again in Cancun — as they did last year in Copenhagen — businesses will be ever more responsible for stepping into the role of implementing energy efficiency and clean energy as part of their corporate strategies. Branson, who co-founded the Carbon War Room, a group for business leaders to come together to fight climate change, said, “Between us all, with enough commitment, we’ll have to get on top of it.”

Sunil Paul, early stage cleantech investor and founder of the Gigaton Throw-Down project, expressed a similar sentiment to me last week, saying, “Even in the absence of government action, companies are taking actions.” Branson and Turner spoke in conversation during a dinner for Paul’s Gigaton Awards, held at the World Climate Summit, and which awarded prizes to businesses that showed leadership in carbon emissions reductions. 3M won the overall award, while Vodafone, Nike and Suzlon received awards in their respective categories.

The interview was one of the first times that Turner and Branson appeared in conversation together, and when asked if they would work together to help businesses fight climate change, Turner said,  “We’re toiling in the same vineyard, and we’re in contact with each other. When we can help one another, we’ll do it.” The two genuinely seemed to like each other, and when the interviewer pointed out that Branson’s space port was being built next to Turner’s ranch, Branson joked, “Anywhere in America is next to Ted’s properties.”

The COP negotiations continue this week, and will likely get more heated later in the week as countries’ ministers arrive.

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The bill, which now heads to the Senate, modifies the Internal Revenue Code to give algae fuel companies the same incentives enjoyed by cellulosic biofuel makers, who use non-food crops and agricultural wastes to produce transportation fuels. The bill also allows algae fuel producers to take a 50 percent bonus depreciation deduction on their production plants.

Algae is rich in oil, but growing it and squeezing the oil out of these organisms has shown to be difficult and expensive. The concept isn’t new, but it has received a lot more government support in recent years because of a national agenda to find alternatives to fossil fuels. Some algae fuel developers won a share of the more than $600 million in biofuel project funding announced last December.

The strong government backing has helped to make algae companies attractive to venture capital firms and high-profile individual investors, including Richard Branson of the Virgin business empire, who recently put money into startup Solazyme. And Bill Gates invested in San Diego-based Sapphire Energy via his Cascade Investment. Sapphire has won not only a $50 million grant from the energy department but also a $54.5 million in loan guarantees from the agriculture department to build a demonstration project in New Mexico.

Given the difficult path to mass production, some companies have sought market opportunities outside transportation fuel to get more near-term revenues. Aurora Biofuels recently changed its name to Aurora Algae to help it market the omega-3 fatty acids from algae for pharmaceuticals and high-protein feed for fish farms and other customers. Solazyme also is marketing its algae oil as ingredients for food and cosmetics and has lined up food and personal care product giant Unilever as an investor and customer.

If this federal tax breaks come through, perhaps they will be able to help algae makers get over the economic hump, and transition from selling beauty products to selling fuel.

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Image courtesy of Synthetic Genomics.

Neither Branson nor Unilever disclosed the amounts of their investments, but Solazyme said the financings were part of the Series D round announced last month. Solazyme said in August that it had raised $52 million for the Series D round, but reportedly the amount has been bumped up to $60 million since then.

British entrepreneur Branson, best known for his Virgin brand that’s spawned everything from planes to cell phones, personally invested in Solazyme for this round, while his venture firm Virgin Green Fund has backed other biofuel companies like Gevo. Branson said in a statement that he was “excited about Solazyme’s potential to make oils for fuels, chemicals and foods at scale.”

Unilever, which makes food and personal care products that can use algae oil, already had an R&D partnership with Solazyme, and has tested the algae oils in its products. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Unilever wants to use algae to replace palm oil, because the harvesting of palm oil has led to deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia and has drawn the criticism of environmentalists.

The first applications for Solzayme’s algae oil will be food and products like lotions. When I visited Solazyme’s headquarters last year, I drank some of the company’s prototype algae milk (like soy or rice milk), and checked out some of their oils and lotions under development in their labs (see image to the left). In that sense, Unilever will be a very important partner.

Ultimately, the company wants to scale up algae oil production to tackle the biofuel market: hence why a company like Chevron is interested. The company is looking to commercialize its technology in the 2012-2013 time frame, with a production cost target of $60 to $80 per barrel. To get there, it will have to build a commercial-scale algae plant, which can cost over $100 million.

Unlike some algae fuel companies that grow algae in open ponds, Solazyme engineers efficient algal strains and grows its designer algae in fermentation tanks without sunlight by feeding it sugar, then using existing industrial equipment to extract the oil. Solazyme is a leader in the algae fuel space, but competes with Sapphire Energy, Craig Venter’s Synthetic Genomics, Aurora Biofuels and a handful of other companies that are looking to scale up algae oil production. The market could even be getting too heated; earlier this year, a company called PetroAlgae, which grows algae, filed an S-1 announcing its plans to go public.

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Cleantech Financing Trends: 2010 & Beyond

Whatever the motivation, I’m not alone. The gift card business has nearly quintupled since 1999, to stand at some $100 billion. According to credit card-processing firm First Data, sales of merchant-branded gift cards were up 2.1 percent during the most recent (and economically challenging) holiday season. But along with the growth in the number of gift cards being purchased has come a unique problem: More and more people are forgetting to use them. According to some estimates, nearly $5 billion worth of cards go unclaimed every year.

In my case, I simply ignore some of these cards that I receive, mostly because they represent brands that don’t measure up to my sensibilities. Pottery Barn, The Gap and Macy’s are among the brands found in my unused gift card collection. I’ve often thought how great it would be if I could swap them for cards from retailers that I do patronize, like Amazon or iTunes.

Anson Tsai and Tim Wong had the same thought, and to that end have created Cardpool, a San Francisco-based startup that offers a platform to buy or sell (and eventually trade) unused gift cards. This tiny little company has raised about $130,000 in angel funding from the likes of Mitch Kapor and Y Combinator. Tsai’s MIT classmate and close friend, Xobni co-founder Adam Smith, is another angel investor in the company that launched last week.

“If you look at it, many of the systems in the financial industry are totally broken and consumers are the ones who are taken advantage of,” Tsai said. “Gift cards are a broken industry.” It is said nearly $30 billion in gift cards have gone unclaimed over the years.

Tsai plan for generating revenue for Cardpool involves building a black box that marries gift card trade data (buying and selling information) with machine learning and analytics and using the system to make money off the arbitrage. The problem is that in order to do that, the company needs to have very high trading volume on its platform.

And there is also a very crowded marketplace to consider. Several small startups, such as Gift Card Rescue, Rackup, Swap A Gift, Plastic Jungle and Gift Card Buy Back are also looking to profit off the unused gift card market.  Frankly, it’s hard for me to tell one service from another as they’re all remarkably similar.

Tsai believes that the sheer simplicity of his service is what’s going to help Cardpool stand out amongst the sea of competitors. He’s also confident that the automated back end is going to help the company get a leg up. That said, Tsai and Wong clearly have their work cut out for them.

They are going to have to figure out a way to get more users to their platform. For now, the early signs are encouraging — Cardpool saw about 100 transactions in its first week. If they can grow that number to a few thousand transactions a day, they might have a big enough business.

Last week, when I met with Tim Brown, chief executive officer of IDEO, the Palo Alto-based design powerhouse, we marveled at Mint, the finance startup that was recently acquired by Intuit for a whopping $170 million. We talked about why it was a breath of fresh air because it removed the complexity surrounding financial services, cheating the system, in a way, in order to make consumers’ lives a little bit easier. In other words, Tsai and Wong are right that this act of simplifying and demystifying financial services is a wide-open opportunity –- one that is ripe for the taking.