Codeacademy, an online classroom for the aspiring programmer, has netted $2.5 million in venture funds. The company announced yesterday that it had completed its first round of financing, led by Union Square Ventures and other firms. The company was launched this past summer, and claims that more than 500,000 people have used the site since then. READ MORE
Redbox has tried to position itself as the easy way to rent DVDs locally. How customers will respond to the decision by Coinstar, the company that owns Redbox, to raise rental prices from $1 to $1.20 may determine the company’s future. The announcement comes as Netflix bleeds subscribers and tries to figure out its own position in the market. READ MORE
A regular whiteboard seems pretty old fashioned considering everybody seems to be using online collaboration through platforms like Box.net, not to mention the digital whiteboards we’ve been hearing about for a while now. Now there’s another high tech whiteboard solution to add to the growing list of products simplifying teamwork between geographically diverse parties. READ MORE
The Chinese electric car maker BYD Motors (for “Build Your Dreams”) has established a beachhead in Southern California. The company has a new North American headquarters in Los Angeles, and a new agreement with Hertz. The car rental company will be using BYD’s electric buses to shuttle travelers between the airport and their rental cars. And some of those rental cars will be electric BYD vehicles as well. READ MORE
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes has been called upon by the Knight Foundation, a sponsor of innovative media projects, to bring a venture-capital mentality to the befuddled industry. Hughes will take a position on the Foundation’s board. Hughes and digital media experts from MIT and Harvard will join board members like ProPublica founder Paul Steiger in finding ways to make journalism profitable again. READ MORE
Zaarly, a start-up that helps users outsource their errands, announced Tuesday that it had closed a $14.1 million financing round led by Kleiner Perkins and Sands Capital Ventures. The company has now raised a total of $15.1 million over two rounds of financing, and says it will use the money for technical development and to expand operations. READ MORE
A thermostat, says Palo Alto-based Nest Labs, should work for the homeowner. The company, led by former Apple executive Tony Fadell, has developed a digital thermostat that the company says will help homeowners save energy and money. When the product comes on the market in November, it will compete with existing digital thermostats manufactured by Honeywell and 3M. READ MORE
OpenSky, an e-commerce site on which users receive product recommendations from celebrities, cognoscenti, and gurus of all brands, has raised $30 million. The company is six months old, has offices on the West Coast and in Nashville, and has now raised a total of $49 million over three funding rounds. READ MORE
Could your Facebook friends make you smarter? Researchers at University College London are asking that question. Their recent study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, showed that users who reported having a higher number of Facebook friends tended to have more grey matter density in the amygdala. READ MORE
When shoppers at a fashionable clothing store in Tokyo pull an item off the rack, an image of the item on a model appears right above their heads. That’s thanks to a new use of RFID technology that uses a tag to trigger the ad when the hanger is removed from the rack. The images tell shoppers what the clothes look like on (or at least on a model) and also what other items might go with them to make up an outfit. READ MORE
