Vlingo, a startup that specialize in providing voice-powered user interface is announcing a whopping $20 million in a round B financing. This round was led by Yahoo!, joined by existing investors Charles River Ventures and Sigma Partners. According to Vlingo (PDF), they’ll use the capital to fuel international expansion and continue its product research and development. As part of the deal, a Yahoo! nominee will join the company’s board. In December 2006, Vlingo also received $6.5 million in Series A financing from Charles River Ventures and Sigma Partners.

Vlingo has a pre-existing relationship with Yahoo!, as they are the provider for the voice recognition for Yahoo!’s oneSearch mobile search service (PDF). Many startups are trying to invent new technology to improve the existing mobile technology arena in the face of disruptive technologies and trends. Vlingo has a distinctive mobile speech technology whereby users are allowed to speak their queries instead of writing text formats on their mobile phones. The integration of Vlingo into Yahoo!’s oneSearch will help to bolster mobile search services particularly when users can speak their queries into the search box prepared by Yahoo! oneSearch.

Vlingo, Ma.-based, was founded in 2006, having just launched a beta version of its voice-powered interface in August last year and was named as one of IDC’s “Ten Emerging Mobile Players to Watch” in this year.

You can visit the Vlingo-enable Yahoo! oneSearch at http://m.yahoo.com/voice.

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.

Modu, an Israeli mobile startup has unveiled its so-called thinnest, smallest, yet lightest mobile phone. This phone can be considered as first of its kind by a mobile phone manufacturer, in spite of the model has not yet launched to the market, Modu phone has been nominated by the Guinness World Records. Modu developed this phone primarily is its strategy to break into the U.S. market. According to a lot of sources on the Web, this phone weighs 1.5 ounces and measures 72mm x 37mm x 7.8mm, and is slated to be launched in October this year. Given the size of this phone, Modu might cause a lot of stir as iPhone launched by Apple.

Though Modu is not intended to compete directly with iPhone, Nokia, Sony, and many other mobile phone manufacturers, but reading the built-in features will probably know that the company is operated by following the conventional wisdom. The features, or options of most of the mobile phones such as keypad, GPS, SMS, media player, digital camera, or even bluetooth, you’ll expect that Modu phone also has these features. An one-up feature Modu phone available is the casing feature. As reported by Reuters, Modu’s plan is to sell a range of casings along with its cell phone so that consumers can cheaply transform phones into anything from a messaging device, a music player or a gaming device.

Currently, Modu is backed by SanDisk Corp, and three markets that are Italy, Russia and Israel are identified as their first target markets. To know more about Modu phone, there is a video uploaded to the YouTube, as embedded in the below.

via [Reuters]

Today Photobucket launches its newest service which is the mobile Web for the users. According to Photobucket, this new service allow users to do a broad list of things related to photos such as view photos in the album on Photobucket, upload photos and videos from the camera phone, share photos with friends via email, search Photobucket’s vast library for photos and graphics, view tagged photos and find related images as well as browse the daily dose of fun images that found on Photobucket’s home page. Though mobile Web became a recent trend and it is inevitably a new part of a Web 2.0 expansion strategy, not that many of the mobile users or subscribers prefer to use mobile Web than traditional Web. In order to encourage more users in using their mobile Web service, Photobucket has provided this service to all the mobile subscribers with almost all Web-capable cellular devices can use it, notwithstanding the normal carrier rate is remain.

Of course, the mobile Web and traditional Web will grow closer, Photobucket plans to improve this service that include viewing, sharing and searching for video, embedding content on social networking sites from mobile devices and accessing linked tags on third party sites.

Now Friendster directory has a new widget that allowed Friendster users to access their profiles on mobile phones. This mobile widget is known as FriendsterToGo, a newly launched widget that dubbed as Friendster “Go Mobile” application, and it is the first mobile application that designed exclusively using the Friendster Developer program.

This widget is created with the purpose of bringing the Friendster users, amounted to 56 million a totally different social experience. By adding this widget to their profiles, Friendster users can conduct their Friendster activities on their mobile phones, such as update their status, see the latest status of their friends, share photos, view other users’ profiles, and many more. However, the only requirement for them is the login to this FriendsterToGo mobile site with their Friendster email addresses and passwords.

FriendsterToGo was created by guideCast, a mobile brand agency that based in Toronto, Canada.

Buzzwire, a media service company that provides streaming internet content such as audio, video and live radio to their users’ mobile phones has raised $8 million in a round B financing. This round of venture capital was led by new investor Sequel Venture Partners, alongside with existing investors Matrix Partners and Spark Capital. In addition, Ron Bernal of Sequel will join Buzzwire’s board of directors.

Buzzwire is using this round on its technology improvement, from testing to deployment with major carriers in the U.S. and overseas. Additionally, the CEO for Buzzwire stated that they’ve reached a deal with with one of the top U.S. carriers.

Buzzwire, formerly known as 4th Media, has launched its beta service of mobile streaming in July this year. One of the notable features of Buzzwire is they let their users create custom playlists via a simple Web and mobile user interface that does not require a client download. Having emerged from a stealth mode, they have previously raised $4 million in its first round, that makes the total amount raised by Buzzwire to $12 million.

Dopplr, a UK-based invite-only social network for travelers, is launching a brand new mobile service. This service, i.e. Dopplr Mobile is currently open to 25 leading mobile network companies such as China Mobile, Vodafone, KDDI, T-Mobile, Orascom, SK Telecom, just to name a few. It is a measure that Dopplr has taken in order to tap into the mobile traveler market as Dopplr is a platform that focused solely on providing travelers the social networking activities. In prior to this, the beta users of Dopplr can only share their travel plans, add trips, link the travel schedules with friends, send visit reminders, and see whereabouts of their friends on the Web, but now with the extension of mobile service, Dopplr users will experience a same kind of service with their mobile devices. The mobile devices Dopplr Mobile currently supports include: Nokia Nseries and Nokia Eseries ranges, Apple iPhone and RIM Blackberry.

In tandem of the launching of Dopplr Mobile, Dopplr also announcing Dopplr Mobile 25. Those frequent travelers that want to get the invitation to join Dopplr, if they have a valid email address from an organization listed in the Mobile 25, they can use this to get invites and join this traveler social network.

Short message service (SMS) is ubiquitous. Now SMS not only can be used by some companies as the marketing services, or for the notification purposes, it also can be acted as a valuable service for a search engine company in delivering search results. Last month, Google India launched the SMS services to its Indian users, now it’s Google China’s turn. On a new Google China’s mobile SMS site, you’ll notice that there are variety of information requests can be done through SMS at this moment. Users can enter queries to their mobile phones and send the request to 999333, Google will reply the users with the search results in SMS format, as shown in the below picture. This service is being offered by Google China as free of charge, however users have to pay the SMS fee imposed by the carriers.

With this new offering, SMS can be used as a way to request information from Google China. Simple request such as finding the location of China’s Wal-Mart, stock price, weather, train details, etc to some complex request such as word translation, i.e. translate a sentence from Mandarin to English, or currency rate are now available. This type of service is not new in the market and I believed users have a certain level of expectation toward this SMS service, thus Google China must ensure their messages must arrive to the users in a fast manner as well as at a sensible time (for example, not until the users forgot when she sent the SMS request).