Intelligent Search Attracts Cash
ThoughSpot, a startup focused on data visualization and intelligent search, just snapped up $10.7 million in funding from Lightspeed and other investors.
The cash is expected to be used to build a new data search appliance for business. “The data search appliance will let business users – especially enterprises – analyze, explore and search data, and comes at a time when there is great promise in the Big Data sector and related analysis,” the company said.
Lightspeed Venture Partners, meanwhile, believes it is money well spent. “At Lightspeed, we’re extremely excited about our partnership with the ThoughtSpot team as they rethink business intelligence for the enterprise and bring the power of search to business data,” according to a Lightspeed blog post.
ThoughtSpot founders Ajeet Singh and Amit Prakash have experience with both Google (News 
- Alert) Analytics and Bing. The company’s in-memory database and relational search engine and in-memory database are designed in large measure to hunt for numerical data.
“Why not build a simple, clean interface that users can easily understand, paired with the performance and flexibility of an in-memory, scale-out database appliance?” the company asks.
Wegener Snagged by Novra
Wegener Corporation (News - Alert), which serves audio, TV and data distribution networks, is being bought by Novra Technologies. Novra is involved in digital signage and datacasting.
“This acquisition represents an exciting improvement for Wegener Corporation and its customers. There are product synergies with very little overlap that strengthen and broaden the offerings of the combined companies,” said Troy Woodbury, president and CEO of Wegener Corporation, in a statement.
“We are working on major projects in Latin America and we believe real progress will be made in the domestic digital signage market during fiscal 2014. Strong improvements have been made in channel partners and digital signage product capability. We are encouraged by the opportunities in the future.”
Apptopia Entices New Investors
Apptopia, which sells apps and services through its marketplace, just picked up some additional cash.
While the investment amount wasn’t disclosed, the company had previously raised over $1 million, according to reports.
The round was led in part by Tim Schumacher, a co-founder of Sedo, which is a marketplace for domains. “Apptopia can certainly become for apps what Sedo became for domain names – namely an efficient market place in a fragmented environment,” Schumacher told Silicon Allee.
For Amazon, it’s Gaming On!
Amazon sells nearly everything these days. It’s even one of the cheapest sources for bicycle parts. Now the online retail giant wants to get deeper into gaming, and there are even rumors the company is building an Amazon game console.
At the same it appears Amazon wants to sell more games and related services, and here Amazon has acquired Double Helix Games which could certainly write games for an Amazon console.
