Vertical content network GlamMedia, Inc., (DEMOfall 05 and DEMOfall 07) has hired Michael Adair, former head of sales finance for Google North America, as vice president of corporate development and finance. He will be responsible for strategic investments and finances. Adair's team managed Google's purchase of dMarc, YouTube, and DoubleClick during his four-year tenure.

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VMware's new CEO and president, Paul Maritz, took aim at his chief rival -- Microsoft -- and told financial analysts Tuesday that he knows how to beat that company, and that includes giving products away.

"The key when it comes to Microsoft is to neither rest on your laurels, nor get mesmerized," Maritz said.

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When Mike Lorion pitches LeapFrog Enterprises' new Tag reading stylus (DEMO 08) during a U.S. Education Department reading conference Monday, teachers won't have to figure out how to squeeze it into their young students' limited computing time. The handheld technology reads aloud words and images by detecting invisible coordinates on popular storybook pages, and could fit into the reading-dominated curriculum taught in 800,000 U.S. pre-kindergarten to third grade classrooms.

The federal No Child Left Behind law made preparing young students for standardized testing a national mandate. This focus might help turn the Tag™ Reading System into the rock star product LeapFrog Enterprises needs to bounce out of a four-year financial hole. While the precise infrared camera in Tag's tip and the optical dots it reads has technology pundits buzzing, veteran computer salesperson Lorion is sure "data correlation will sell it."

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Flypaper Studio, Inc. (DEMO 08) today introduces a subscription version of its interactive presentation application aimed at helping sales people and others produce Adobe Flash-based "stories" that track how viewers respond so creators can make changes if attention wanes, or contact a viewer if she indicates interest. Flypaper Pro cost $195 a year, and until Aug.

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Personalized search engine Delver (DEMO 08) released a public alpha version of its product and a partner program that lets social network Web sites white label Delver as their search engine. So far, no partnerships have been announced. Launched with the product name, Semingo, the product has been renamed Delver. Delver indexes the social networks like MySpace and Facebook, blogs, and social applications such as Flickr and YouTube, cross-connects the data with your social graph, and delivers search results that are relevant specifically to you.

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During Berlin Fashion Week, GlamMedia, Inc. (DEMOfall 05 and DEMOfall 07) and Burda Cross Media today launched a vertical content network targeting women in Germany - jump starting the business by GlamMedia acquiring the key assets and technology of digital marketer Codex Media of Munich and hiring its

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As Jajah, Inc. (DEMOfall 06) launches the second phase of its Internet telephony product for Emobile's customers in Japan Aug. 1, the three-year-old global IP telephony company is working on making its software work on all mobile devices regardless of operating system, including Google's Android, by early 2009, said Trevor Healy, Jajah's chief executive officer.

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Smart phone Web browser start-up Skyfire Labs (DEMO 08) today announced it has hired music marketer Adam Sexton as its chief marketing officer. Prior to joining Skyfire Labs, Sexton had been chief marketing officer for four years at Groove Mobile, a full-track mobile download service bought in March by NMS Communications Corp. for its LiveWire Mobile subsidiary. (Groove launched as Chaoticom in 2000.)

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Open source Web meeting company Dimdim, Inc. (DEMOfall 07) has raised a $6 million Series B round of financing led by existing investors Index Ventures, Nexus India Capital, and Draper Richards. Earlier the Burlington, MA startup raised $2.9 million. The funding will go toward marketing and expanding services, the company said.

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Collaboration software KonoLive by 2Win Solutions, Ltd. (DEMO 08) today moved from private beta to a free "public alpha" version that aggregates a team's emails, documents, and chat history in one place so projects can be more easily shared, ranked, and tagged by team members. The company expects to release its commercial product in September including a "premium" version, said David Friedland, product manager.

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