debbiegage

Obama's chief information officer, Vivek Kundra, was at NASA Ames this week to lay out the government's plans for cloud computing. He's making some big changes, starting with the admission that the federal government wastes billions of dollars a year on information technology. Federal CIOs have been motivated to build data centers and acquire hardware and software to protect their turf, it seems -- the Department of Homeland Security alone has over 23 data centers, Kundra said. From 2000 to 2006, energy consumption by the federal government doubled, and uncoordinated purchases of hardware and software have caused cybersecurity problems because they give spies and hackers more entry points into government networks. Also interesting, though, is the number of venture-funded startups that are now offering social media software to all federal agencies over the government's new online store, apps.gov, which also opened this week.

Despite the fact that Accel won TWO awards this week -- it got the top spot on Red Herring's Top 100 Global Venture Capitalists list and was elected to Dow Jones Private Equity Hall of Fame -- Accel's Jim Breyer did not sound upbeat today when he was interviewed about the economy from the PEA conference by CNBC. "I don't think things are nearly as optimistic as we've been led to believe at this conference," he told CNBC's Rebecca Jarvis. "I have a great fear that today there is very little of a small business and consumer-led recovery. Until we see a small business and consumer-led recovery, I would advise great caution for the time being."

Capital is still tight in clean tech, but not everybody is having trouble getting it. Sources say PureSense -- which makes a wireless irrigation manager that lets farmers precisely manage how much water they deliver to individual plants (they can check results on their iPhones) -- is about to close a B round. Chief Operating Officer John Williamson said he can't provide any information on PureSense's funding activities. PureSense is an interesting company because it does more than just help farmers save water -- a big headache in drought-ridden California, where most of PureSense's customers are now. Crops that are watered properly also require less fertilizer and pesticides, which helps the environment, and they grow better.

Give Microsoft credit for getting itself on the same stage as Google at TechCrunch 50 with just a fraction of Google's users -- but both companies touted what appears to be demoware and are skilled marketing machines. Microsoft this morning introduced "visual search" -- the ability to use Bing to search through pictures of products in the travel, health, shopping and other categories. Want a digital camera? Scroll through an array of 1500 pictures, lined up like the racks of guns Keanu Reeves surveyed in the movie "The Matrix." Google this afternoon introduced Google fast flip --

The one-year-old startup -- which bills itself as "Twitter for the enterprise" -- launched last year at TechCrunch 50 and claims to be within a quarter of being profitable, just on the $5 million it's already raised from the Founders Fund and Charles River Ventures. Furthermore, most of its 40,000 customers still don't pay (Yammer's Phil Spitzer says "over 10%" of them do), and Yammer can't process all the customers that call the company and ask to pay. Why would customers ask to give Yammer money? Some of them are Fortune 500 companies, and Yammer has created some strong incentives to pay --

Mint.com CEO Aaron Patzer confirmed here at TechCrunch50 that his online personal finance company has agreed to be acquired for $170 million by Intuit. He was whisked away from the throngs shortly thereafter, but I managed to sneak a few minutes with Mark Goines, who was one of Mint.com's earlier investors. He told me that Mint management had no plans to sell the company when Intuit called and offered to buy it. After all, the company had launched only two years ago and earlier this year had raised $14 million in Series C funding at an increased valuation. Overall, the firm had raised around $31 million from groups like Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, First Round Capital, Shasta Ventures, Sherpalo Ventures, Felicis Ventures and Hite Capital Goines, who once ran Intuit's TurboTax and Quicken business units, said Mint.com was the best of several startups he looked at that were offering personalized money management. He said the decision to sell was

Venture investment in India slid to $117 million in the first half of this year, down from $413 million last year -- a nearly 72 percent drop. The number of deals was down too, from 67 to 27, according to a survey by Venture Intelligence and the Global-India Venture Capital Association. Battery Ventures (which said this month it would close its Indian office) isn't the only U.S. firm pulling back, according to Naren Gupta, a longtime Silicon Valley tech executive who co-founded Nexus India Capital in Mumbai and Menlo Park's Sand Hill Road. More U.S. VCs and private equity investors have been leaving India over the last year than coming in, he says."The only difference with Battery is they announced it."

Nokia today acquired "certain assets" of Plum, a tiny (10-person) software company that lets people create private social networks on iPhones and other devices. Various Web sites also use the software under their own brands. You'd think VCs would be shouting from the rooftops about any exit these days given the rough economy, but no. The investors -- Levensohn Venture and Vulcan -- aren't saying how much they invested or how much they got out of the deal, although they are of course "pleased." Nokia and Plum CEO Hans Peter Brondmo aren't talking much either.

Psilos is launching a startup in California, SeeChange Health, to sell insurance plans for people with chronic but manageable diseases. If you take care of yourself according to medically accepted standards, you save money on premiums and the medical industry saves money on care. SeeChange's product is designed for individuals and small businesses, but the startup is a subsidiary of a holding company Psilos put together that combines an acquisition -- HNA Triveris, a 19-year-old New Jersey company that administers claims for employers who insure themselves -- with technology from other Psilos portfolio companies. Triveris has a robust electronic health record, according to Lisa Suennen at Psilos, and another Psilos company, HealthEdge, has a transaction processing system for managing insurance plans. The idea is to to use the technology to customize different health plans for the same employer, since employees are likely to have different and sometimes multiple chronic diseases.

Sequoia is said to be getting aggressive about using new ways to invest very early in young companies, in an attempt to bridge the gap between small angel investments and traditional Series A rounds from VCs. The firm isn't talking about its plans -- which aren't launched, according to a source -- and did not return calls seeking comment. For what it's worth, Sequoia already advertises itself as doing seed stage rounds, investing between $100,000 and $1 million in startups in energy, financial services, healthcare services, internet, mobile, outsourcing services and technology.