Jingle Network has free directory service (uses ad revenue from competitor)

Jingle Network (www.free411.com) has a free directory service. The business model relies on competitor bidding - search for one company and the site serves up a competitor's number - if you select that number then the service bills the competitor.

Oh, and it also raised $26 million in a second round of funding (more). Article indicates that the US market is worth $8b.

Directory service for Mobile Subscriber stalls in US

According to Wired report, the two-year implementation of Wireless 411 service in the US isn't going anywhwere. The service is required to have written consumer opt-in, due to consumer privacy concerns.

This is the very reason that this will fail: patchy sign-up leads to patchy results - a chicken 'n' egg problem.

Facebook raises $25m

Greylock Partners, of San Mateo, led the latest round, and is joined by Palo Alto's Meritech and existing investors Accel Partners and Peter Thiel, an investor and former chief executive of PayPal.

That should keep 'em going for a while... and stave off acquisition for a while (honestly, the founders say they never intended to sell - see previous post).

Mobile Sync for Plaxo

Sync your Contacts over the air with the Plaxo Online Service (from WebIS). Only for Windows Mobile devices though. It claims to work better than ActiveSync...

See link for more info.

Google offers online calendar service

Will integrate with MS Outlook & mobile devices shortly (from Silicon Beat). Contacts next?

Jigsaw raises $12million

Jigsaw allows you to buy other people's contact information, without their permission - clearly designed for salesmen - story from Silicon Beat. If they continue in this business model, they'll need all the money they can get to stave off privacy lawsuits and / or crank out the most amazing PR turnaround coup.

Opera and JAJAH announce partnership

    

See Opera's Press Release.

I don't think this is actually too significant technically - as I guess it is the same as a FireFox Extension. (Commercially, I think it is novel for Opera to announce a 'Widget' for Opera 9.)

However, if the service is truly rendered in each page that you browse - that would nice. Particularly if you think of Opera Mobile - a mobile browser stealing voice minutes from a mobile operator - OUCH!