HP’s buyout of Palm may have won them webOS, but it doesn’t seem to have won them many friends within the company. There are only so many names within Palm that are so oft-mentioned that I could name them off hand — and of those, the talent seems to be disappearing left and right. First to go was interface mastermind Matias Duarte , followed shortly thereafter by Rich Dellinger, best known for coming up with webOS’ incredible notifications system. And now, they’ve lost another; I’m hearing from an unshakably solid source that Lynn Fox, Vice President of Public Relations, left the company earlier this week. Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

With a recent public launch under its belt, OpenSky is adding $6 million in new capital. Existing investors Highland Capital and Canaan Partners invested in the series B financing. A year ago, the company raised $5 million. OpenSky is a social marketing/e-commerce startup which connects manufacturers and distributors directly with influential bloggers who recommend their products and get a cut from resulting sales. It is much more than an affiliate networks. As I described OpenSky when it launched: While OpenSky sounds at first like an affiliate network, it isn’t. Instead of sending customers off to other online stores, they send them to their own stores where they can track sales and follow up with personalized messages. OpenSky hand picks the publishers who are allowed to set up shops and sell in its network. It then strikes deals directly with manufacturers and distributors who agree to drop-ship any sold items to readers who click to buy through an OpenSky shop. Instead of the blogger getting a 3 to 10 percent affiliate fee, they split the net profits 50/50 with OpenSky. The economics work best obviously with high-margin products. OpenSky CEO John Caplan was previously the CEO of Ford Models, and before that the president of About.com. He tells me that “seller conversion rates grow and repeat shoppers buy more frequently” since the launch (before that, OpenSky was in private beta with 250 bloggers). His plans going forward include hiring more people, releasing a distributed cart (for onsite shopping without sending readers off to a store), opening up OpenSky’s APIs, improve the relevance matching between product manufacturers and bloggers/influencers, and better direct marketing support for sellers. CrunchBase Information OpenSky Information provided by CrunchBase

Credit card company Visa has agreed to acquire e-payment company CyberSource for $26 per share, or total consideration of approximately $2 billion to be paid with cash on hand. The price represents a near 34 percent premium over Mountain View-based CyberSource’s Tuesday closing price . The deal will enable Visa to bolster online sales and offer new and enhanced online fraud prevention services to merchants, financial organizations and end consumers. CyberSource is said to process about 25 percent of all e-commerce dollars transacted in the United States. The company serves more than 295,000 merchants through its CyberSource and Authorize.Net branded solutions, including companies like Google, Facebook and British Airways. Most of its revenues come from the United States, although Visa says this positions the company for global growth. Visa and CyberSource have partnered since 1999, and currently collaborate on risk models built into CyberSource’s automated fraud management solutions. CyberSource’s President and CEO, Michael Walsh, will continue to oversee CyberSource’s operations. The company’s Chairman and Founder, William S. McKiernan, will join Visa as an Executive Advisor to assist in the integration of the two businesses. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in Visa’s fourth fiscal quarter of 2010. This is the second significant acquisition in tech land this morning; Salesforce just announced it’s acquiring Jigsaw for $142 million in cash . Who’s next? CrunchBase Information Visa Cybersource Information provided by CrunchBase

The New York Times will begin publishing daily on the iPad, offering readers around the world immediate access to most of the daily newspaper’s contents. The New York Times on the iPad, as the electronic publication is known, contains most of the news and feature articles from the current day’s printed newspaper, classified advertising, reporting that does not appear in the newspaper, and interactive features including the newspaper’s crossword puzzle. The iPad App (address: http:/www.nytimes.com) is part of a strategy to extend the readership of The Times and to create opportunities for the company in the electronic media industry, said Martin Nisenholtz, president of The New York Times Electronic Media Company. The company, formed in 1995 to develop products for the rapidly growing field of digital publishing, is a wholly owned subsidiary of The New York Times Company, and also produces the times service on America Online Inc. Mr. Nisenholtz reports to Russell T. Lewis, the president and general manager of The New York Times, and to Joseph Lelyveld, the newspaper’s executive editor. The iPad-based Times is the newest of dozens of papers available to a global audience on the Internet’s fastest-growing service, which lets iPad users see electronic publications consisting of text, pictures and, in some cases, video and sound. A selection of the day’s news, discussion forums and other material from The Times has been available through the @times service since the spring of 1994 on America Online. The iPad’s global audience means a larger potential readership than that of @times, which is limited to America Online’s subscribers, currently more than four million. The new site also offers new products and services. “Our iPad App is designed to take full advantage of the evolving capabilities offered by the Internet,” said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The Times. “We see our role on the iPad as being similar to our traditional print role — to act as a thoughtful, unbiased filter and to provide our customers with information they need and can trust.” The iPad will also offer access to much of what the newspaper has published the previous week and access to feature articles from as far back as 1980. Mr. Nisenholtz said that initially, at least, no subscription or access fee would be charged for readers in the United States and that the iPad App would generate revenue from advertising. Readers who connect to the iPad App from outside the country will be offered a 30-day trial without charge, but will eventually face a subscription fee. Advertisers that have already announced participation on the iPad App include Toyota Motor Corporate Services, Chemical Bank and the Northeast real estate concern Douglas Elliman. Subscribers will have limited access to archives of Times articles and features dating to 1980, and will be able to copy articles to their own iPads for $1.95 each, Mr. Nisenholtz said. The new service will also offer, for a fee, a customized clipping service that delivers to a subscriber’s electronic mailbox articles gleaned from each day’s editions of the newspaper, based on key words the subscriber selects. With its entry on the iPad, The Times is hoping to become a primary information provider in the computer age and to cut costs for newsprint, delivery and labor. Companies that have established iPad-based information sites include television networks, computer companies, on-line information services, magazines and even individuals creating electronic newspapers of their own. “The New York Times name will get people to look at the product once or maybe twice, and the fact that The New York Times has the kind of reach and credibility it does may persuade people to look three or four times,” said John F. Kelsey 3d, president of the Kelsey Group, a consultancy running a conference on iPad Apps next month. “The market is booming for newspapers on the iPad,” Mr. Kelsey said. CrunchBase Information iPad New York Times Information provided by CrunchBase

Streaming video site Ustream has just pulled in a massive new round of funding: $75 million. This second round was led by SoftBank , a Japanese telecom giant. Previously, the site had raised just below $13 million in funding, which came from its Series A in 2008 and its angel round in late 2007. Perhaps even crazier is that the service is saying that additional funding commitments are pending from other investors in the U.S. and Asia, so the round may actually be larger than the $75 million, which is all from SoftBank. We’re hearing reports that there was quite a bit of competition to be involved in the round, and apparently all the dust hasn’t settled yet. So why on Earth does Ustream need $75 million+? CEO John Ham says in the release that the money will be used to expand on the other side of the world, particularly Japan (obvious, given the SoftBank involvement), China, Korea, and India. Mobile video is particularly hot in some of the Asian countries where their faster wireless networks allow for more functionality than the comparatively slow ones in the U.S. Ustream will open offices and hire staff in all those countries, apparently. Alongside this new round, we’re hearing reports that the founders of the company, Ham, Brad Hunstable, and Gyula Feher were able to sell some shares as a reward. Just a few days ago, Ustream launched a new desktop client to help video producers give their work a more professional feel. Prior to that, in December, Ustream made headlines by being the first big video streaming site to offer that (recording) functionality on the iPhone . Ustream says that its iPhone apps has been downloaded over 1.5 million times to date (it has had other apps before the live streaming one was available too) and notes that 3.8 million people tuned into the service to watch the inauguration of President Obama in January of last year.   CrunchBase Information Ustream Information provided by CrunchBase