Roundup: Agami shuts down, Amazon’s new book-site collection, and more
Toyota working on Segway killer — The transportation robot is called Winglet and comes in three sizes. See screenshot, via ZDnet.
Network storage company Agami shuts down — The Sunnyvale, Calif. company raised $85 million and competed against companies that went public, including 3Par. The shut-down was sudden, catching employees by surprise — apparently, a major debt-holder wanted its money back.
Illinois mandates online cancellation for game subscriptions — An Illinois family found it difficult to cancel a recurring online game subscription fee — by phone so they talked to their politician friends…. The state just signed a law into being that mandates online game companies include an option to cancel online.
Amazon buys rare-book site AbeBooks — AbeBooks is a marketplace that offers more than 110 million used or rare titles, and it has been bought by online book giant Amazon. AbeBooks is itself a minority owner in reading list sharing site LibraryThing, a competitor to Amazon-backed Shelfari.
Security company McAfee buys Reconnex — Mountain View, Calif.-based Reconnex provides business data loss prevention software; McAfee purchased for $46 million in cash. Reconnex raised $36 million.
Third time not the charm for SpaceX’s latest launch — The privately-funded space rocket startup was attempting to launch three satellites into space, but the rocket blew up minutes into the flight. That was the third launch attempt, but a fourth is slated for later this year — the company says its determined not to give up.
AOL buys Friendfeed competitor SocialThing — When it comes to services that let you share what you’re doing on various web sites within in a single interface — “lifestreaming”, if you will — I prefer Friendfeed and Facebook. AOL, meanwhile, has bought smaller Friendfeed rival Socialthing.
Flickr cofounder Caterina Fake joins stealthy startup Hunch — Fake talks about her move here, you can sign up for Hunch here.
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About the Author, Eric Eldon
Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.