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Bloody typical. As if we haven’t got enough to worry about with terrorism, aids, bird-flu, global warming, meteors, turbulent money markets, the rising price of oil, and a looming recession. Now Fortune is reporting that Microsoft may be eyeing the iPhone as a potential outlet for their software, including Office applications and voice control for Apple’s iPhone.

For a little more than a week, a team of the company’s Silicon Valley software engineers has been examining the iPhone software development kit (SDK for short), a set of tools Apple (AAPL) released this month that let outsiders build software for the iPhone and the iPod touch. Microsoft (MSFT) executives aren’t sure yet whether they’ll find worthwhile opportunities to sell iPhone software – but they seem eager to find out.

“It’s really important for us to understand what we can bring to the iPhone,” Tom Gibbons, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Specialized Devices and Applications Group, told Fortune on Monday. “To the extent that Mac Office customers have functionality that they need in that environment, we’re actually in the process of trying to understand that now.”

I know Microsoft has had a large development team dedicated to Mac for some time, but give us a break.  The guys at Redmond are stalking us. Everywhere we turn, Office is there, watching, waiting. I can’t bring myself to take a shower without hiding the kitchen knives away first. Is Steve Ballmer really Norman Bates in disguise? Coming mother.

photo credit: Brymo

PE Hub is reporting that Demand Media, the Santa Monica based domain name aggregator and registrar, has raised $35 million in additional Series D funding. The company has now raised $355m in total.

Their marketing blurb says .. Demand Media^TM is a social media company that connects content creators and large audiences with advertisers through its network of vertical media web properties. By using its proprietary social media tools and the unique distribution platform of the world’s second largest domain registrar, Demand Media provides an interactive, personalized and vertically-focused media experience for users.

3i Group, Oak Investment Partners,  Spectrum Equity Investors.

Sharpcast, has announced the release of the first-ever solution that seamlessly synchronizes both Mac OS and Windows computers, mobile phones and the Web. Built on the company’s patent-pending Universal Synchronization Platform, SugarSync’s powerful software-service combination gives people the easiest way to keep digital media and files automatically in sync across multiple computers, backed up online and remotely accessible from their mobile phones or through any web browser.

SugarSync is available for free trial at www.sugarsync.com. Through a special Founders’ Circle promotion, anyone subscribing to the service by April 15th will receive 50% off his or her first year’s subscription fees and become eligible for future Founders’ Circle offers and exclusive early access to new Sharpcast products.

Founded in 2004, Sharpcast investors are Draper Fisher Jurvetson,  Selby Venture Partners, and SIGMA.

Full Release 

Reuters are reporting that AOL is taking a serious look at New York-based widget-maker KickApps for $90 million.

KickApps is a hosted platform that allows webmasters to quickly and easily deploy user-generated content and social networking functionality directly on their websites. Our company provides a “white label” solution, with all elements precisely matching a website’s existing look and feel. The KickApps platform is highly customizable, scalable and enterprise-quality.

By providing webmasters with a set of sophisticated media management, reporting and administrative tools, KickApps protects websites from pornography, copyrighted material and inappropriate user content that may hurt their brands or offend advertisers. The KickApps platform is a complete content management system and a viral syndication engine for your community (and premium) content.

Investors Softbank Capital, Prism VentureWorks and Spark Capital and others have dropped $17 million into KickApps.

What an excellent Wordpress plugin. Photo Dropper will search Flickr for creative commons images matching your keyword and then inserts them into your blog post. How cool is that!  

Install and activate the plugin. Then when you write a post a panel appears for your key word search. The plugin returns matching potos and you simple put the cursor where you want the image in your post and then select Small, Medium or Large. Easy as that. Each photo inserted bears an attribution so the image creators get credit. I love it. Here’s one I inserted using the key word ‘business’ …

photo credit: keepitsurreal