Roundup: Obama’s big Bay Area night, Xbox 360 sells out in Japan, Hulu going international and more

Venture Beat — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 02:07:17 -0700

Here’s the latest action:

Obama Bay Area event sets fund-raising record — Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama visited the Bay Area and racked up $7.8 million in fund-raising, a record for a single event, according to Draper Fisher Jurvestson’s Steve Jurvetson, who, with his wife Karla Jurvetson, donated in $9,200.

Xbox 360 sells out in Japan — The Microsoft gaming console has never been able to gain a strong foothold in the country which prefers its own Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation 3. Perhaps the tides are turning — or perhaps this shortage was staged, as many commenters are speculating in the comments on Kotaku. Either way, there will be more in the country next month.

Hulu closer to going international? — The popular NBC and Fox-based video streaming site is apparently trying to hire people to expand to other countries, according to GigaOm. That will remove perhaps the biggest knock people have against it — if you’re outside the U.S., you can’t watch it!

Tsavo gets funding — The new southern California start-up that is buying up content and advertising start-ups, akin to Demand Media, raised $20 million from American Capital. The start-up is the latest project of Michael Jones, who has just left AOL, where he worked for two years after AOL bought his previous text-voice-video chat software company, Userplane, for about $40M. TechCrunch has more.

American Airlines takes Wi-Fi to the skies — The airline has started rolling out its in-flight Internet service powered by Gogo, according to CNET. For now it’s only on non-stop flights between New York and San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles and New York and Miami.

iPhone update 2.0.2 is meant to address 3G issues — Suspicions that the new software update was meant to address iPhone 3G connection issues have been confirmed by an Apple representative talking to USA Today’s Ed Baig.

Salesforce.com posts solid numbers — It’s the first software as a service company to exceed a $1 billion annual revenue run rate, according to the release. It saw record revenue of $263 million, up 49% year-over-year.

VC in the middle of online escort scandal — William Ferretti, the co-founder of Medstar Television and a self-described venture capitalist, faces felony charges. Vallywag has more.

Don’t tweet for money when raising funding — Jason Goldberg, the founder of SocialMedian, sent a tweet (Twitter message) out this morning letting people know he was raising more funding and to contact him if you were interested in participating. One problem, Mike Arrington of TechCrunch, who is also a lawyer called him out on that being illegal because it was technically an unregistered public offering. The tweet was deleted.

BioImagene gets a new round — The digital pathology company has landed a $26 million fourth round. Burrill & Co. led the round with Ascension Health Ventures, National Healthcare Services, Artiman Ventures and ICCP Ventures also participating.

Personalized talk radio company Stitcher launches an iPhone app — Watch the video below for more.