SlideShare,the “YouTube for presentations,” has been focusing its efforts on becoming the premier platform for professional and business content. Today, SlideShare is going freemium with the announcement of tiered, paid plans for businesses. SlideShare lets anyone share presentations and video and also serves as a social discovery platform for users to find relevant content and connect with other members who share s...

Energy storage system producer 24M Technologies spun out of lithium-ion battery maker A123 Systems today to become a separate venture. The company raised a $10 million Series A funding round from Charles River Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners. The company raised an additional $6 million in a grant from the Department of Energy‘s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). The funding will h...

Have you been looking for a way to call your Facebook friends on your iPhone or your Android device? Haven’t figured out their numbers yet? A new solution from Vonage offers free calls to all you Facebook friends who, virally, have downloaded the same app. The calls work over WiFi and 3G/4G networks. The app, called Vonage Mobile for Facebook, is an odd, viral solution for voice communications. The app trolls...

This week for OMG/JK, the show on TechCrunch TV that I do with fellow writer Jason Kincaid, we decided to switch things up a bit. Because there was a major announcement, Facebook Places, that we both covered, we decided to devote the entire show to that one topic. Yes, it’s a little longer than usual (about 20 minutes), but I think the conversation is pretty interesting and dynamic. Obviously, we talk about...

Back in February 2009, we wrote about the relaunch of Virb, a social network owned by MediaTemple’s venture platform (mt) Ventures. Instead of trying to take on goliaths like Facebook, the site hoped to offer users a complimentary social network, with features like an activity aggregator (think FriendFeed), theming, and skinning. Unfortunately, it didn’t gain much traction, so today the site is morphing...