Publish2, an online news aggregation platform that currently in private beta testing phase, has successfully raised $2.75 million in a Series A financing from Velocity Interactive Group, a leading global digital media and communications investment firm. What makes Publish2 stand out of the competition race is its uniqueness of the market it tend to serve. It has the similar features that look like Digg, but only designed to empower journalists on discovering, organizing, and ranking the most important news for them.

Publish2, co-founded by Scott Karp and Robert Young, both have vast experience in the media industry. In regard to this funding, Scott Karp, President and CEO of Publish2 said, “This financing allows us to continue building a strong team aimed at developing a Web platform for journalists that helps them bookmark and organize news articles as part of their story research and staying on top of their beats, connect with other journalists with similar interests, and contribute to their newsrooms’ editorial efforts in linking to interesting news around the Web. By working closely with Velocity Interactive Group and having the guidance of both Ross and Jon on our board will help us continue making the best strategic moves as we move to publicly launch the site.”

On the about page of Publish2, they mentioned their platform is the Digg for professional journalists. While on the Web, Web news is a bit of glut now, and Publish2 seemed to be fulfilling its role in reinvent the news model of journalism. Nevertheless, the time has come to recognize that by providing an easy bookmarking tools for journalists, it will help them to deliver their insightful articles convincingly.

via [PE HUB]

Microsoft will have its own video platform soon, that name after Microsoft Videos. As showed in Microsoft Videos’ landing page, they already entered the preview testing phase, and it shouldn’t take long before it’s fully launched in next month. What users can expect from this site? At first, the content are initially focused on the U.S. territory, but most important for the users are now they’ll have the chance to feel the greatness of Silverlight, another Microsoft’s technology released in last April.

Could Silverlight become the killer application in the rich media platforms? At least Microsoft think so at the time when they launched Tafiti. Microsoft Videos will be another example where developers can use Silverlight to build a decent Web application. So, Adobe, you watch out.

I am very pleased to announce that I have another blog, Facebook Watcher. It has been created by using the wordpress.com platform, and later available with my own domain, and hosted on the same grid server as TagEdge hosted on. Facebook Watcher has been existed for nearly half a month, and all the posts are randomly written by me. Despite the fact that my heavy workload, I promise myself to allocate some time to properly write about Facebook few times in a week. Of course, TagEdge will continue as my first and priority blog to look after.

Frankly, I believe that Facebook will be another hot thing not only in North America, but also in South East Asian countries. I hope that Facebook Watcher will join as a blog to disseminate the news of Facebook’s growth throughout the world. In fact, Facebook Watcher was firmly established as a blog to report every important news about Facebook, and aimed to be the best Facebook blog in Asian countries. And sooner or later, all my future Facebook news will no longer be posted here, but posted to the Facebook Watcher.

Lastly, I hope you all will like that blog, and subscribe to the RSS feed of Facebook Watcher.

Thank you.

Google has lost another high-profile executive to Facebook in less than a month. Ethan Beard, Google Director of Business Development has resigned from the company and will start work at Facebook. Why Facebook over Google, Ethan Beard told TechCrunch:

I think Facebook is great for a variety of reasons: the company has an innovative product with amazing growth, the team they have assembled is first rate, and the business is at a very exciting time in its development. I am excited to join Facebook at a time and in a role where I can have a significant impact on its core business and bottom line.

Other Facebook high-profile executives that previously worked at Google include Sheryl Sandberg (now COO), and Gideon Yu (now CFO).

via [TechCrunch]

According to Sohu of China, Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing has officially announced his investment about $100 million in one of the world’s hottest social networking site, i.e. Facebook, despite TOM Group, a company he holds a majority stake has denied the news before. According to the Sohu news, his mobile phone division, Hutchison-Whampoa’s mobile products will likely be allowed to access Facebook in the near future.

“Facebook is doing very well and we could have some synergy between the 3G services of Hutchison and Facebook, so the customers could use Facebook on mobile phones,” Li said during an earnings news conference for his company Hutchison Whampoa Ltd.

This investment showed that the value of Facebook in Asia is potentially increasing especially in the Hong Kong and China market.

Microsoft Japan is seemed to be heavily promoting Windows Vista series of products in Japan. Two weeks ago, they launched Windows Vista Ultimate SP1, and now it’s the Windows Vista Home Premium upgrade edition. This upgrade edition will only offer 2,500 set, which will be included at no additional charge for existing Windows XP or Windows 2000 Professional to upgrade to Windows Vista Home Premium. It has a special Sakura CD box, for those who purchase this upgrade edition will also entitle to a one-year Windows Live OneCare and a special designed Windows Vista user manual.

Modu, an Israeli startup that I profiled in last month has made a big leap by successfully raising a whopping $100 million in a round, reported by Globes. This funding was made based on the venture capital assumptions behind the company’s valuation at $150 million. Currently, there are no detail on whom has invested in this round. In previous round one, Modu has raised $20 million from Genesis Partners, Gemini Israel Funds, SanDisk and from the founder, Dov Moran himself.

I will profile this startup again when it release its thinnest phone on the earth in this October. Stay tuned.

We’re crazy about making friends online. And if you’re worry you’re not making enough friends on any of the social networks, check this out, the newly launched nclüdr. Frankly, I don’t know how to pronounce the name, but I do recognize it’s another Facebook clone. The landing page, its yellow orange color instead of blue reminds me a lot of Facebook. What make this nclüdr different is the selling point of the site, by attracting potential users to make friends within a minute with billions of members available on the site. If you always ask yourself this question, “How often have you found yourself stuck on a handful of friends?” Then you should join this site.

The sign-up process is relatively simple, just tick a few answers to the questions you’ve given to, nclüdr will assign you a personal profile. One fascinating point is that you can regenerate your profile if you’re not satisfied with the one they assigned you, and you do not need to remember the username and password if you want to re-enter the site again since there’s no username or password you need to fill-up.

I just created a profile which name after “problem,” as shown in the below. I personally feel that it is a prank site, and you do not need to build a personal profile you can proud of, and it reminds me of another proverb, there’s still plenty of time to be a perfectionist. Yeah! I guess.