R|Mail – RSS to your inbox, just acquired

Randy Charles Morin is best known to some of us as one of the early advocates and defenders of RSS and a member of the RSS Advisory Board, but he also maintains a handful of blogs and has been running his R|Mail service for a few years. Last night he dropped the word that R|Mail was acquired.

My guess is that it wasn’t a big deal, but it’s also a well deserved payoff for Randy, who is one of blogging’s hardest working guys.

Randy had funding options and had offers from several sources, none of which were Canadian. He had been looking for funding later in 2006 and in to mid-January of this year.

The scoop came from PaidContent.org and then Maple Leaf 2.0

Update: An Interview with Randy on MapleLeaf2.0

eqo.com – Instant Messaging and Skype on your cell

eqo.com is a Vancouver, BC based mobile services company that has just gone from Startup to well-funded with a 9 million dollar series B round of funding, which actually included real live Canadian Venture Capital firms Ventures West, Growthworks and the BDC. Their round A was primarily subscribed by BDC Venture Capital from what we understand.

The news was all over the place this morning.

Their app is built for cellphones and gives you access to your AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Jabber, GoogleTalk and Skype contacts, and it goes as far as allowing you to make actual skype calls right from your mobile.

The Mobile App sector has had the most momentum of all the software niches in Canada for some time now and still seems to be inherently more sexy to investors than web startups and seems to be on par with BioTech for pulling in funding (that needs some research).

As for Eqo, you can bet that Canada and our carriers are not their primary target market, but it’s great to have them here and kicking butt. We’ll follow up when we hear more from them.

Contact Eqo

Resources

Our full series on Angel Investors by Craig Hayashi

Canadian Angels & Venture Funds
Corporate Angels – Toronto, Ontario
Maple Leaf Angels – Toronto, ON
Toronto Industrial Angels – Toronto, ON
Toronto Life Science Angels – Toronto, ON
Reseaucapital.com – Montreal, Quebec
Vancouver Angel Network (VANTEC) – Vancouver, BC
Angel Forum – Vancouver, BC
Alberta Deal Generator – Edmonton, AB
Calgary Enterprise Forum – Calgary, Alberta
First Angel Network Association – Halifax, Nova Scotia
Kingston Angel Network – Kingston, Ontario
Ottawa Angel Alliance – Ottawa, Ontario
Purple Angels – Ottawa, Ontario
Saskatchewan Angel Investor Network – Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Winnipeg Angel Organization – Winnipeg, Manitoba