VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Struggling smartphone maker BlackBerry Ltd. has hired Ron Louks as head of its loss-making devices business. Louks had served as chief executive officer at OpenNMS Group and as head of technology at Sony Ericsson.

Northern Virginia-based private equity investment manager has invested an undisclosed amount in Nexercise, a Maryland-based free motivational health and fitness app for iPhone and Android.

Tech giant Google has purchased Timely, the alarm clock app created by BitSpin, for an undisclosed sum, making all its versions including the upgraded one, completely free.

Google Inc., which acquired startup Bump Technologies last year for $30 million to $60 million, will end the operations of smartphone file-sharing app Bump and photo-aggregating software Flock on January 31.

Singapore's National Research Foundation has poured in $500,000 in funding in health care startup Ring.MD to give Asian residents easier access to healthcare services online.

Palo Alto, California-based Cyanogen has closed $23 million in Series B funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Tencent to expand its workforce and develop its CyanogenMod mobile operating system.

Troubled smartphone maker BlackBerry on Tuesday announced that John Sims will join the company as head ofmits gloabl enterprise services business. Sims is a former executive at German software firm SAP.

New York-based venture capital firm Zelkova Ventures and several angel investors have committed $2 million in seed funding for North Brooklyn on-demand laundry startup FlyCleaners.

San Francisco-based gaming startup nWay has raised USD5 million in a funding round led by Translink Capital to build out its ChronoBlade massively multiplayer online (MMO) game.

Palo Alto, California-based digital magazine service Flipboard has confirmed with VentureBeat that it is raising a further USD50 million as the second half of its third funding round.

Social media giant is in talks for its first acquisition of a product firm in India, Bangalore-based performance analysis and monitoring tools startup Little Eye Labs.

Chinese analytics provider Umeng confirmed its acquisition by e-commerce giant Alibaba for an undisclosed amount, following the rising trend of China-related mobile acquisitions this year.

Finland-based tech startup Jolla Ltd announced that it will launch of its first pricey smartphone called Jolla on Nov 27, which is powered by Nokia's obscure MeeGo software.

San Francisco-based mobile gaming powerhouse TinyCo landed USD20 million in a funding round from Pinnacle Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, to be used for the development of its iOs and Android games.

California-based company Selligy raised USD2.8 million in a Series A round to fund the integration of its customer relationship management (CRM) app with iPad and Android devices.