Digg. Reuters. Qmags - The World's Newsstand. Boston’s Uncommon Angels « GigaOM. [qi:056] A few weeks ago I was invited to attend a CommonAngels breakfast. CommonAngels is a Boston based group of angel investors and these breakfasts take place every six weeks to hear presentations from entrepreneurs looking to have their ideas funded. Members of CommonAngels are allowed to bring a guest along and I was lucky to be invited. CommonAngels is composed of 70 private investors and several dozen limited partners in two co-investment funds.
This group is fairly unique in that they have a small permanent staff of three people who manage the group, taking care of the putting the breakfasts together, managing the deal-flow, due diligence, board memberships, and so on. This group is self selected. They take a very hands on approach to the funding process, and will only fund companies in their areas of expertise. If a company was funded by CommonAngels and needs bridge or continuation funding, they can present again and the board member will take part in the presentation. Vodafone Seeks Bigger African Presence. Intec Telecom Rises as Much as 36% After CSG Makes $375 Million Offer. Intec Telecom Systems Plc rose the most in two months in London trading after CSG Systems International Inc. made an offer valuing the telecommunications billing software company at 236.7 million pounds ($371 million). CSG and Intec reached agreement on the offer, which represents a premium of 25.6 percent to the average closing price in the three months to July 22, Woking, England-based Intec said today in a Regulatory News Service statement.
Intec advanced as much as 36 percent, climbing above the 72 pence offer price. CSG, a U.S. provider of billing services to cable- television operators, will fund the purchase using existing cash resources and new debt facilities. The deal will create a “global leader with significant product scope,” Intec Chief Executive Officer Andrew Taylor said in the statement. “Whilst shareholders are likely to welcome an offer, the price feels very low to us,” analyst David Toms at Numis Corp. in London said in a research note. Cable & Wireless Confirms Demerger Plan. Chips, Components & Subsystems - Telcordia Readies 100 ... Telcordia Technologies Inc. is aiming to bring an optical-layer security scheme to market that uses optical phase shifts for its encryption keys and promises the possibility of 100-Gbit/s security. The technology, called Photonic Layer Security (PLS), is something the optical crowd has known about for a while.
An early instantiation got noted at last year's OFC/NFOEC, and details of the scheme were published in August's Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. (IEEE) Communications Magazine. Telcordia hasn't done much publicity for PLS beyond engineering circles, though. A press release is due out Monday, but the organization has given Light Reading the lowdown on the technology. Speed isn't its only selling point. PLS gets around this because unless the recipient has the proper key, the optical signal can't be unscrambled. PLS starts by sending each user's optical signal through an encryption key that changes its phase by different amounts at different points.
Class surprises lesbian teacher on wedding day. A group of San Francisco first-graders took an unusual field trip to City Hall on Friday to toss rose petals on their just-married lesbian teacher - putting the public school children at the center of a fierce election battle over the fate of same-sex marriage. The 18 Creative Arts Charter School students took a Muni bus and walked a block at noon to toss rose petals and blow bubbles on their just-married teacher Erin Carder and her wife Kerri McCoy, giggling and squealing as they mobbed their teacher with hugs. Mayor Gavin Newsom, a friend of a friend, officiated. A parent came up with the idea for the field trip - a surprise for the teacher on her wedding day. "She's such a dedicated teacher," said the school's interim director Liz Jaroflow.
But there was a question of justifying the field trip academically. "It really is what we call a teachable moment," Jaroflow said, noting the historic significance of same-sex marriage and related civil rights issues. "With this ring, I thee wed! " Total Telecom. The News is NowPublic.com | The News is NowPublic.com. USTELECOM Association News. USTelecom dailyLead. PR Newswire: Computer Software. Web Worker Daily. Business -- MercuryNews.com. TelecomWeb :: Global Business News, Market Research and Competitive Analysis.