Dyn, the worldwide leader in Internet Infrastructure as a Service, announced today it has acquired Trendslide, a mobile dashboard app startup. The acquisition expands Dyn’s services to now include mobile data and analytics offerings for online businesses. While this mobile app was traditionally intended to be a sales/marketing tool, Dyn will now position it as a DevOps tool for its customers.  READ MORE

Extreme Reach, Inc., the leading video platform for integrated TV, online and mobile advertising, announced today a significant investment by Spectrum Equity, a leading growth equity firm focused on the information economy. Spectrum Equity’s investment is in excess of $50 million for a minority stake in Extreme Reach. The financing will support the company’s rapid growth and expansion through acquisitions. READ MORE

FeedHenry, a provider of cloud- based mobile enterprise application solutions, today announced that it has secured $9M (€7M) in a funding round led by Intel Capital. The funding includes a seven figure investment from existing investor Kernel Capital. Other existing investors VMware Inc., Enterprise Ireland and private investors also participated and were joined by new investment from ACT Venture Capital.  This new funding will provide FeedHenry with the capital to accelerate the international roll out of its mobile application platform that draws on critical cloud-based technology.  READ MORE

As per SEC Filings, Proletariat in Cambridge, MA has raised $2.25M in funding.  Proletariat is a tablet and mobile game developer creating high quality free-to-play games.

Mobiquity, a professional services firm creating innovative mobile solutions and apps that drive business value, today announced its acquisition of Providence, R.I.-based Vertical Performance Partners (VPP), an enterprise-class mobile software provider, to its portfolio of services. Mobiquity now will offer Velocity, VPP’s customizable software for branded interactive live meetings, events and training sessions, to its enterprise client base. Leveraging the power of Velocity, already proven in the pharmaceutical industry with customers such as Bristol-Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson, Mobiquity can now help businesses get the most value out of meetings and training programs by using mobile to engage and empower attendees. READ MORE

TripAdvisor®, Inc., today announced it has acquired Tiny Post (tinypost.co), the highly acclaimed app that lets you write over photos and turn them into stories.  The Tiny Post team will be based in TripAdvisor's Palo Alto office.

"The Tiny Post team have created a wonderful app that shows the possibilities of combining travel photos with social and mobile," said Steve Kaufer , co-founder and CEO TripAdvisor, Inc.  "We think Tiny Post is a great fit with our continued drive to provide engaging and sharable content and I am happy to welcome this strong team to TripAdvisor."  READ MORE

EverTrue, an education fundraising platform, today announced a $5.25 million Series A funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from existing investors Boston Seed Capital, TechStars CEO David Cohen, Bonobos CEO Andy Dunn and Trunk Club CEO Brian Spaly. Bain Capital Ventures joins a prestigious list of higher education leaders who have invested in EverTrue including Harvard Corporation Member Paul Finnegan, Brown University Trustee Sam Mencoff, Northwestern University Trustee Tim Sullivan, University of Pennsylvania Overseer Jim Perry, Georgetown Regent Brendan Carroll, former University of Chicago Trustee Ned Jannotta and Buckley School Trustee Thomas Lehrman.  READ MORE

Balbus Speech has raised $20K in seed funding from RoughDraft.vc.  Balbus Speech is a company that was founded by Jack McDermott, a junior at Tufts University.  They build web / mobile platforms that help people in speech therapy find their voice.

Battery Ventures participated in a $1.2 million seed round for iPhone app Polar. Other investors in the round include Yahoo founder Jerry Yang at AME Cloud Ventures; John Lilly at Greylock Partners; Maynard Webb from Webb Investment Network; and Ash Patel at Morado Ventures. Polar is a super-fast and easy way to create and vote on great-looking photo polls.

Ping4 in Nashua, NH has raised $4M in funding.  Ping4alerts! is a free Hyperlocal Mobile Alerts app that instantly notifies you of dangers and emergencies wherever you are in the world.

Intrepid Pursuits LLC, maker of the location-based music discovery app Timbre, has secured a seed funding round of $360,000 to commercialize and further develop the app as it launches world-wide.  Atlas Venture, Boston Seed Capital, and Bantam Group led the round.

Acme Packet® (NASDAQ: APKT) today announced that it has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) for $29.25 per share in cash representing a fully diluted equity value of $2.1 billion. Net of cash this represents an enterprise value of $1.7 billion.

The combination of Oracle and Acme Packet is expected to accelerate the migration to all-IP networks by enabling secure and reliable communications from any device, across any network. Users are increasingly connected and expect to communicate anytime and anywhere using their application, device, and network of choice. Oracle Communications along with Acme Packet can help service providers and enterprises meet these demanding requirements by delivering an end-to-end portfolio of technologies that will support the deployment, innovation and monetization of all-IP networks.

Excerpt from the Crashlytics blog post - What an incredible journey this past year has been — today, we’re excited to announce: we’re merging with Twitter to take our platform to an entirely new level!

Our Product

We started Crashlytics a little over a year ago to address a huge hole in mobile app development. With hundreds of millions of devices in use around the world, it was impossible for developers to fully test every edge-case and catch every bug before release. Even worse, when problems did crop up, it was often difficult and complicated to find the root cause. App developers were stuck with little insight into what happened and forced to rely on vague end-user feedback to diagnose problems.

True Office, the company that gamifies regulatory and compliance training, has secured US$3 million Series A funding from investors including Rho Ventures, the Partnership for New York City Fund and Contour Venture Partners.  The investment underlines the growing importance of enterprise gamification and its application in business-critical areas such as regulatory and compliance training.

Enterprise mobile application management (MAM) pioneer Apperian, Inc. today announced that the company has received a strategic investment from Intel Capital, Intel’s global investment and M&A organization. The additional capital builds on previous investments from top firms including Bessemer Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and North Bridge Venture Partners and brings Apperian’s total funding to date to $28 million.  The investment comes at a time where Apperian is seeing significant growth due to the increasing demand for technology that can help enterprises manage and secure mobile applications and tackle BYOD head-on.

Redstar Ventures, a Cambridge-based “venture foundry” announced on Wednesday that the early-stage venture capital fund Avalon Ventures has led an investment in LoopIt, an operating company from Redstar Ventures. The investment is the first external seed funding for LoopIt and will be used for research and development of its “conversation engine,” which is designed to help consumers tap friends across their social networks for advice when shopping online. Redstar said LoopIt is just one of the operating companies it will formally announce in 2013.

Avis Budget Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: CAR) and Zipcar, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZIP), the world's leading car sharing network, today announced that Avis Budget Group has agreed to acquire Zipcar for $12.25 per share in cash, a 49% premium over the closing price on December 31, 2012, representing a total transaction value of approximately $500 million. The transaction is subject to approval by Zipcar shareholders and other customary closing conditions, and is expected to be completed in the spring of 2013. The Boards of Directors of both companies unanimously approved the transaction, and Zipcar shareholders representing approximately 32% of the outstanding common stock have agreed to vote their shares in support of the transaction.

As reported by the Boston Business Journal, Nara is Cambridge has raised $3M in funding, which was led by Account Management LLC.  Nara is a consumer based recommendations service.

Adelphic Mobile, developers of an innovative mobile advertising platform that enables brands to target their mobile customers with relevant ads, announced today that it has received a $10 million investment.  The investment was led by Google Ventures with participation from original investor Matrix Partners.  As part of the new investment, Rich Miner of Google Ventures has joined Adelphic’s board of directors.  The new funds will be used to accelerate product development and scale the company.

As per SEC filings, Getabl in Boston, which powers Pingup has raised $4M in funding.  Pingup is a enables consumer to business text-based communication.

As per their company blog, Lookout Gaming has raised $1.3M in seed funding from Atlas Venture, NextView Ventures and gaming industry veterans Mark Jung and Jeff Natland.  Lookout Gaming is a stealth mode startup that is changing the world of mobile gaming forever. We're creating a totally new kind of gameplay for gamers and unlocking new revenue streams for developers that will dwarf those coming from today’s archaic banner ads.

Per Scott Kirsner's Innovation Economy blog, Cignifi in Cambridge, MA has raised $1.5M in funding led by Omidyar Network.   Cignifi is revolutionizing the way financial service companies meet the needs of an estimated 2.7 billion people worldwide with a mobile phone but no access to formal financial services. Cignifi has the first proven credit scoring solution capable of closing this gap.

Spindle in Boston, MA has raised $2.3M in funding.  Investors in Spindle include Polaris Venture Partners, Atlas Venture, Greylock Partners, Lerer Ventures, SV Angel, Broad Beach Ventures, Project 11, Ray Ozzie, and Raman Narayanan.  Spindle is building products that weave the online social world together with the world around you.

As per SEC filings, Scratch Wireless in has raised $900K in funding.  Scratch Wireless provides free mobile smartphone service in the USA.  As long as you are connected via WiFi you pay nothing for voice, text messaging, picture messaging, and Internet.

Per the WSJ, Aquto in Boston, MA has raised $8M in funding from Matrix Partners & North Bridge Venture Partners.  Aquto is a stealth mode startup, whose mission of Aquto is to change the mobile industry when it comes to how mobile internet services are bought and packaged.

Zmags, provider of commerce-enabled digital catalogs and publications, today announced that it has completed a $6 million investment led by North Atlantic Capital. The firm’s managing director, David Coit, joins Zmags’ board of directors. Zmags’ previous investors – OpenView Venture Partners and NorthCap Partners – also participated in the round, which will be used to accelerate growth and fuel product innovation to meet the needs of large retail and consumer brands looking to engage with shoppers across mobile, social and online channels. This brings Zmags’ total funding to $18 million.

Zmags is the only technology provider that enables retailers and brands to build engagement and commerce directly into digital catalog and publication experiences across all channels and devices from a single platform. In Q3 2012, the company signed 74 new accounts, representing a 28 percent increase year over year. Additionally, Zmags continued to deliver bespoke digital shopping experiences for world-class brands such as Musician’s Friend, Harper’s BAZAAR, Kenneth Cole, Express, The Container Store, Serena & Lily and PartyLite.

Perfecto Mobile announced it has secured $15 million in the company’s third round of financing. In recent years the company has achieved over 100 percent annual revenue growth, established a customer base of more than 600 organizations, and led the market in product innovation. This latest funding, led by Globespan Capital Partners, a global venture capital firm specializing in information technology, joined by existing investors Carmel, Vertex and the Waisbein Fund, will further Perfecto Mobile’s business growth and accelerate continued innovation.

ByteLight, a provider of LED (light-emitting diode) based indoor positioning technology, today announced that it has received $1.25 million in funding from individual and institutional investors, led by VantagePoint Capital Partners. ByteLight will use the funding to build its team, deploy at pilot locations and expand its ecosystem of lighting partners. Using ByteLight’s LED lighting-based indoor positioning solution, commercial and enterprise building owners, public safety officials, retail outlets and public spaces such as airports, museums and convention centers can target customized information, special offers and other data directly to users based on their precise location inside a building.

Localytics launched a new app marketing platform on top of its enterprise app analytics service and secured $5.5 million in Series B financing. Polaris Venture Partners led the round with all existing investors including New York Angels, Launchpad Venture Group and Hub Angels participating. In just three years Localytics has established itself as the leading enterprise app analytics and marketing solution supporting over 350 million devices. The new funds will be used to expand the app analytics and marketing automation platform.

Sand 9, Inc., a pioneer in precision MEMS timing products for wireless and wired applications, today announced that Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC), a world-leading provider of telecommunications equipment and services to mobile and fixed network operators, has invested $3 million in the company.

Timing devices provide the ‘heartbeat’ for all electronic applications, which include wireline communications infrastructure and cellular base stations, as well as mobile and wireless applications. Sand 9’s micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) timing products offer significant advantages over legacy quartz crystal solutions, which currently dominate this market. Sand 9’s timing products offer greater immunity to electromagnetic interference (EMI) and vibration in combination with low noise and high stability, which ensures precision timing—even in ruggedized environments.