Mobile application platform HipLogic has raised $7 million in Series B funding from Benchmark Capital, Stage 1 Ventures, Bay Partners, and Accrue Sports and Entertainment Ventures. HipLogic's platform helps improve content discoverability and applications on both smartphone and non-smartphones. Formerly known as Numobiq, the startup raised $4.5 million in Series A funding in 2008. Founded by three veterans from Sun Microsystems, it wants to bring sophisticated applications to the simplest cell phones by keeping all the complexity in the network. In essence, HipLogic is trying to bring the quick, easy interface of the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry to more simple, lightweight phones that are available for the mass market.

  Another day, another set of giveaways in honor of our Gift Guide. Today we have a Samson Go Mic - you know, for podcasting - and a pair of mittens with thumbs that pop off that the manufacturer is calling Mittenberrys but we're calling a cute idea.To enter, just pop over to the contest pages on our Gift Guide.

  Financial information and analysis community Seeking Alpha announced that it has recently closed a Series B round of financing to the tune of $7 million, led by first-time investor DAG Ventures with participation from existing investors Benchmark Capital and Accel Partners.Seeking Alpha also inked a content partnership deal with Nasdaq.com, under which terms it will deliver opinion pieces from its now 3,272 contributors and timely news products like MarketCurrents and Wall Street Breakfast. You can see the integration in effect here and here.

  Zoho is undoubtedly the lesser known name and an underdog in the productivity suite race with Google and Microsoft. But the startup has a compelling strategy: Zoho continuously launches integrations with its competitors and also iterates on it product to offer new and innovative products. Previously, Zoho has launched various integrations with Google sign-ins and with Google Apps. Today, Zoho is launching a full integration between Google Docs and Zoho's Apps.Google Docs users can now attach files from Google Docs to Zoho's CRM within Leads, Accounts, and Cases of Zoho CRM. When users try to attach a document from Google Docs, they will be prompted to authenticate using Google credentials. Google Docs will be listed within Zoho once users sign-in.

  StockTwits, a social and microblogging service for stock investors, has pulled down another round of financing - $3 million in a Series B round led by Colorado-based Foundry Group. Foundry Group partner Seth Levine joined the company's board of directors, and True Ventures, an investor from earlier this year, also participated in the round.The service launched just a year ago as a way for Twitter users to organize, share and discover their thoughts on public company stocks: "Users can eavesdrop on traders and investors, or contribute to the conversation and build their reputation as savvy market wizards. The service takes financial related data and structures it by stock, user, reputation, etc."In September the service moved on from Twitter and built their own platform and Air desktop application. They kept the familiar 140 character format for messages, and users can easily cross-post to and from Twitter.

  Research conducted by London-based Global Web Index, a collaboration between online market research agency Lightspeed Research and Trendstream, suggests that streaming might in fact be the right antidote against content piracy. The findings are in line with other research and conclusions reached earlier this year by The Leading Question, MusicAlly’s consumer research division, which suggested that the number of teenagers who download copyrighted content from illegal sources has fallen dramatically over the past few years in favor of streaming.

  Chicago based Groupon, which was formerly known as ThePoint, has raised a hefty Series B financing - $30 million - from new investor Accel Partners and existing investor New Enterprise Associates. Accel's Kevin Efrusy joins Groupon's board of directors.The company is going gangbusters. They offer users deep discounts on local deals - spas, sky diving lessons, hotels, restaurants, golf, whtaever. Discounts range from 40%-90% of the normal price. If enough people buy into the offer, everyone gets the deal. If there aren't enough people, no one gets the deal. Groupon collects payment and passes it on, minus their fee, to the business.Example - 1,600 people in one day bought skydiving lessons in Chicago, says the company, getting a 44% discount on the $229 price. And the company making the offer normally sells just 6,000 lessons per year. They sacrificed some profit, but gos lots of new customers.Groupon generally takes 30% - 50% of the total price paid for the service, and they are on track, they say, to do $100 million in gross merchandise sales in 2010. They reached profitability in June 2009, just six months after launching the service.

  Dana Hanna updates his Facebook and Twitter, at the altar. Without his bride Tracy knowing he was going to do it. I'm sure she was thrilled:I surprised not only my guests, but also Tracy by pulling out my phone and posting on Facebook and Twitter from the altar during out wedding. I had her phone ready in my pocket, so when she asked for it I could hand it to her. No one knew about this except the minister, and myself.Video below:

  Developers take note: if you've got a mashup built offof Craigslist's data, don't even think about showing it to anyone who works there. At least, that's the lesson learned by developer Romy Maxwell, who says that Craigslist has blocked both his mashup and every single project built on Yahoo Pipes a few days after a friendly Email exchange he had with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. Maxwell is one of the developers behind a new mashup called Flippity, which lets you plot Craigslist listings on a map. In a blog post, Maxwell writes that he had been having an Email exchange with Newmark over the last few weeks, during which Maxwell asked if the techniques employed by his project would be acceptable under Craigslist's restrictive Terms of Use. Newmark replied that "as a rule of thumb, [it's] okay to use RSS feeds for noncommercial purposes." Since the project used RSS feeds and was non-commercial, that seemed to indicate that the project would be OK.

  Venture capitalists like to hire well known entrepreneurs and executives as "entrepreneurs in residence." These are short term jobs, a place for someone to park themselves for up to a year or so after they've sold their company or otherwise have moved on. They sit in on pitch meetings, advise partners and portfolio companies, and plan their next move. And the VC generally, but not contractually, gets first dibs to invest in their next gig.Sometimes people get creative with their titles - Jason Calacanis was called an Entrepreneur In Action during his stay at Sequoia Capital in 2006-2007, but his job was essentially the same.Bessemer Venture Partners is expanding the idea further, and are adding what they're calling a Designer In Residence. Jason Putorti, former lead designer at Mint (now a subsidiary of Intuit), is the guy they hired for the job.

  Xirrus, a provider of enterprise Wi-Fi, has recieved $20 million in a funding round led by InterWest Partners, bringing the total investment in the company to $80 million. Xirrus is also backed by August Capital, US Venture Partners, Canaan Partners and QuestMark Partners.The company aims to replace ethernet in the enterprise, resulting in reduced setup and usage costs for corporate networks. Xirrus has been especially active gaining traction in the university market in the last year. Xirrus constructs Wi-Fi Arrays that improve coverage and performance.

  Aravo, a SAAS supplier chain management tool just raised a whopping $27 million in Series D funding led by Cisco, with other investors participating. In addition, Cisco's web meeting and collaboration platform, WebEx, will be integrated with Aravo's Supplier Information Management (SIM) to facilitate real-time collaboration between buyers and suppliers.This latest investment brings Aravo’s total funding to $50 million. Investors that participated in the latest round Big Sky Partners, Stephen Friedman and William Harrison. Aravo says the new funding will be used to develop new products and to expand sales, marketing, and delivery channels. As part of the agreement, Aravo will work closely with Cisco to power and enhance Cisco WebEx. Aravo’s software includes options to track ISO certifications, sustainability initiatives, and risk analysis.

  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has just written an open letter to Facebook users regarding a privacy overhaul that is due to hit the site in the next few weeks. Soon, users will be able to selectively choose, on a per-post basis, who can see the content they post to the site. Facebook is also going to remove regional networks entirely, largely because some of those networks (like China) consist of millions of users, which makes them useless from a privacy standpoint. If these changes sound familiar, it's because Facebook actually announced them way back in July. Zuckerberg also notes that Facebook now has 350 million users — it has added a whopping 50 million of them in the last two and a half months.Alongside the regional network change, privacy controls will be simplified. As Facebook rolls out the new privacy settings, users will be presented with a page designed to walk them through the new options. Depending on your current privacy level, Facebook will make recommendations, though you'll be able to change them as usual.

  If you've been waiting for some way to put your low- to middling-resolution videos onto a big TV, your prayers have been answered. Flip, through their mouthpiece Walt Mossberg, just dumped out a big bucket of howsyerfather and announced the Flipshare for all to enjoy.Not much has changed since we spotted this device in October. It's not even live on the Flip site yet so it's abundantly clear that the WSJ servers jumped the gun on posting.