Tech Roundup: Vuclip Announces ‘Clippie Awards,’ a Handful of Acquisitions, and More

Milpitas-based NextG Networks was acquired by Crown Castle International last week, for a whopping $1 billion. NextG makes outdoor antennae systems, and Crown Castle owns a significant portion of the nation’s cellular network towers.

Milpitas-based Linear Technology Corp. this week announced plans to acquire the Hayward-based Dust Networks Inc. Linear Tech specializes in high-performance analog integrated circuits. Dust Networks provides low-power wireless sensor network technology. Linear Tech said the acquisition will help the company offer more complete services to its clients.

Milpitas-based independent mobile video service provider Vuclip announced this week that it has opened the first annual “Clippie Awards” to “people's choice” voting. The voting will capture top mobile video selections globally, as well as selections specific to the countries of the U.S., India and Venezuela. The winning people's choice clips will be announced in January, along with a special report of the most viral mobile videos in various categories for  2011. Voting categories include “funniest,” “most sentimental,” “best ad clip” and many more.

 Kineto Wireless, a supplier of Smart Wi-Fi solutions for mobile operators, today announced it has added new capabilities to its Smart Wi-Fi Application that enhance the end user service experience when connected to public Wi-Fi networks, or “hotspots.” Smart Wi-Fi is an application provided by mobile operators to their subscribers that enables all mobile services – such as voice, SMS, MMS and RCS - to be delivered over existing Wi-Fi networks. To date, operators have focused the use of Smart Wi-Fi on private Wi-Fi networks, such as those at subscribers’ homes and offices, as a way to address indoor coverage challenges as well as offload their macro network. However, many mobile operators are now looking to also leverage public Wi-Fi networks to realize additional offload and performance benefits. According to the Wireless Broadband Alliance, 47 percent of mobile operators surveyed believed further adoption of public Wi-Fi was "very important or crucial," and that the number of public Wi-Fi access points could increase more than 400 percent to 5.8 units worldwide by 2015.

According to SF Gate's "Business Insider" column, Cisco – one of the largest employers in Milpitas – and Sunnyvale-based Juniper Networks have been fighting over a particular “genius” engineer that knows tech secrets of both companies. Well, it appears Cisco may have finally won. After two years at Juniper, SF Gate is reporting that the genius engineer is jumping ship to return back to Cisco to help run the company’s server provider business. So, what’s so special about this man? This article says, it’s that he is both a Cisco Fellow and a Juniper Fellow—a special designation for an engineer that really knows a company's technology. In this case, he knows the most valuable asset for both of these companies—the operating systems that run their network gear.

Milpitas-based Simplion Technologies was recently named one of the fastest-growing private companies in Silicon Valley in 2011 by the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal. Simplion is a pure-play Salesforce.com consulting company. This is the fourth year in a row Simplion has made the list, sitting this year in the number 23 slot. The Business Journal compiles the list based on sales growth over the previous three fiscal years.