The past 24hrs have had a few great announcements for the Boston area tech industry including funding, site launches and new feature announcements. Here is a quick run down of the events.

Invoke Solutions Grabs 7M - First reported in the BBJ, on Xconomy and now TechCrunch, Waltham, MA based online and mobile research firm announced $7 million in venture funding from North Atlantic Capital, Bain Capital LLC and BEV Capital.

Also reported on Xconomy and now on Techcrunch, Loki / Skyhook Wireless launched a new location service that will tell everyone where you are via wifi positioning technology. Do I actually want this? Reminds me of my Stalker.com post from back in 2006. Actually for mobile browsers and us iPhone users, this has great application to enable your map based programs know where they are.

Writers looking for a little extra cash? Andover’s Helium launched their writer marketplace yesterday. It’s basically a elance like platform for publishers to post submission requests including the what they are willing to pay for the article. When I looked yesterday, there were a decent load of requests with prices ranging from 70 - 180 per 700 - 1000 word article. Scott and the guys who actually get paid to write can tell me if this works out to a good per-word rate!

Finally, although I may have missed other stories, the New England Patriots released their Newenglandfootball.com site in an effort to expand their reach to the local fans through high school football teams. I love this story because it shows an innovative attempt to use social media by a major sports franchise but also because it gives the SEO expert in me a legitimate opportunity to reference the Tom Brady And Gisele Bundchen sex tape in a blog post. You dirty pigs are searching for it right now…or you will after this post!

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Technorati Tags: Boston Web 2.0,Tech,Helium,Patriots,Loki,Skyhoow Wireless,Invoke,Waltham,Boston,Andover,Football,Tom Brady,Gisele Bundchen

Valleywag is reporting that Waltham based Lycos is considering shutting down old-school web know-how site WebMonkey. Whether or not this may be a publicity stunt or an idea leaked idea without real intent is yet to be seen. If it is true, this would be a sad day for anyone who learned HTML in the early days of the web.

Valleywag posted an email that was sent around that basically says that the site, started in 1996, maybe “mothballed” and contributors should archive their postings. This may not mean shuttered as ValleyWag points out but it is an interesting rumor to keep tabs on. (I bold rumor because at this point, it’s just a rumor.)

Here is the email that was posted on Valleywag with the details.

Waltham based email marketing outfit Constant Contact recently announced a $15 million round of venture capital led by Greylock Partners ($10 million) and also $5 million from their existing investors, including Commonwealth Capital Ventures, Hudson Ventures, Longworth Venture Partners, and Morgan Stanley Venture Partners. Constant Contact will use the proceeds to fund its current and future growth opportunities.

Hopefully they will use to update the look-and-feel of their property which is a bit dated. However, they do really well and are one of the few vendors in this space to actively market offline as well including drive-time radio.

The company now claims over 65,000 customers - from retail, restaurants, and spas to business services, consultants, nonprofits, and associations. In 2005, Constant Contact doubled its customer base from 25,000 to 50,000 and saw an 84 percent increase in revenue. In addition, the Company experienced a two-year revenue growth of 231 percent between 2003 and 2005. Constant Contact is pla50 people in 2006, bringing the total workforce to more than 200. With a base price of $15 (there is a very small free package) you can do the math to figure out their estimated cash flow.

“Our phenomenal growth in the past few years has shown the important role email marketing plays in the growth and success of thousands of small businesses and organizations across the U.S.,” said Gail Goodman, CEO of Constant Contact. “While we have been operating cash flow positive for the past two years, this additional capital provides us a tremendous opportunity to gain significant market share and expand our reach, given the readiness of the small business market.”

“Given the size of the small business market - more than 25.8 million small businesses in the U.S. alone - there is a huge opportunity for companies that can effectively reach this market,” said Bill Kaiser, partner, Greylock Partners. “Constant Contact has successfully reached and impacted thousands of small businesses and organizations and this is reflected in their rapid growth.”

Good luck to a real player in the online marketing space located in our back yard.

Other Blogs Covering This:

The Alarm Clock

PaidContent

Constant Contact is Constantly Contacting Me

Waltham’s V.i. Labratories (I think the “i” is done on purpose) has secured it’s first round of funding from Rockford Captial and others. The funding will be used to build a core team and market the company’s innovative application security technology.

V.i. Laboratories’ software protection technology is designed to safegaurd intellectual property within applications, enterprises and government agencies. This is a growing field and with all of the high-profie issues in the media lateley, it may spell good news for this local technology start-up.