Snaptu, a company promising to bring a high-end application experience to low-end phones, said today that it has raised $8 million in a second round of funding.

Backed by high-profile venture firm Sequoia Capital, Snaptu offers a free application that is supposed to work on any phone that runs Java (that’s more than 2,000 devices total, the company says). That app, in turn, includes a catalog of other apps, such as a Facebook app, a Twitter app, a news reader app, and more. The idea is that everyone can get the application experience that the iPhone has popularized.

In addition to announcing the funding, Tel Aviv, Israel-headquartered Snaptu said that it has passed the 10 million user mark.

The new round was led by Carmel Ventures. Sequoia, which previously contributed an undisclosed amount of funding, also participated.

Don’t miss MobileBeat 2010, VentureBeat’s conference on the future of mobile. The theme: “The year of the superphone and who will profit.” Now expanded to two days, MobileBeat 2010 will take place on July 12-13 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Register now. Tickets are going quickly. For complete conference details, or to apply for the MobileBeat Startup Competition, click here.

Companies: Carmel Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Snaptu

Biotech startup QuantaLife has raised $7.5 million of an expected $15 million in equity, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Pleasanton, Calif., the company is developing a nucleic acid testing platform that can be used for early detection of diseases. Paladin Capital Group is an investor in QuantaLife, which was founded in 2008 at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The company last raised $8 million in 2009.

Companies: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Paladin Capital Group, QuantaLife

Avantis Medical Systems, a biotech company that makes a device used to detect colon cancer, has brought in $1.4 million of an anticipated $4 million round of debt, rights and securities, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Sunnyvale Calif., it is backed by BioStar Private Equity Fund, MedFocus Fund, Mitsubishi and Montreux Equity Partners.

Zipline Medical, a health care startup that has yet to reveal any products or services, has brought in $1 million in a round of equity, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Los Altos, Calif., it is reportedly backed by X/Seed Capital Management. It is too small at this time to have a web site.

Tioga Energy, a company that develops solar arrays for larger power plants, has raised $20 million in a second round of venture funding from MEMC Electronic Materials, NGEN Partners, Nth Power and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Based in San Mateo, Calif., the company previously raised $14 million two years ago.

I use Google Docs for almost all of my writing, and I’ll be the first to admit that it’s pretty bare-bones compared to Microsoft Office. But that may change next year.

For one thing, Google has been making a number of acquisitions that are clearly Docs-related. Over the weekend, TechCrunch reported that the search giant is in the final stages of talks to acquire DocVerse, a startup that lets users collaborate around Office documents, for $25 million. The deal would also bring Google some key hires, since the startup’s co-founders were managers on SharePoint, Microsoft’s popular collaboration service.

This follows the November acquisition of AppJet, a company founded by former Googlers that created a collaborative word processor. (It’s worth noting that Google Docs itself was the offspring of several acquisitions, including Google’s purchase of Writely.)

Meanwhile, Google has been talking up the splash it wants Google Docs to make in 2010. Don Dodge, who just made the move from Microsoft to Google, recently told me, “2010 is going to be the year of Gmail and Google Docs and Google Apps.” Even more concretely, Enterprise President Dave Girouard said last month that Docs will see 30 to 50 improvements over the next year, at which point big companies will be able to “get rid of Office if they choose to.” Presumably features from AppJet and DocVerse will be among those improvements. I’d certainly be thrilled to see the battle between Office Docs become a real competition, rather than upstart Google slowly chipping away at Microsoft’s Office behemoth.

By the way, Google declined to comment on the DocVerse acquisition rumor (as it always does), and the startup didn’t even bother to answer my email. DocVerse raised $1.3 million from Baseline Ventures and assorted angel investors.

A new company called Lookout wants to take on the growing security threats around smartphones. To do that, it just raised $5.5 million in a first round from investors including Khosla Ventures.

San Francisco-based Lookout evolved from Flexilis, a security consulting startup, which in turn was founded by graduates of the University of Southern California. The company is privately testing Windows Mobile, Android, BlackBerry, and iPhone applications, and plans to roll those apps out in 2010. Features include anti-virus and firewall protection from malicious programs, data backup, and the ability to locate and wipe your phone if it gets lost.

Lookout told the New York Times that it wants to be the dominant player in mobile security, playing the same role Symantec does in the personal computer world. (There seems to be an opportunity here — most of the mobile security companies I’ve written about focus on tools for businesses, not consumers.) It also said it will offer free and paid subscription versions of the app.

In addition to Khosla, the funding comes from Trilogy Partnership and angel investors Phil Paul (founder of Paul Capital Partners), Chris Sacca, and Vontu co-founder Joseph Ansanelli.

Oh, and if you’re worried about the security on your own phone and don’t want to wait for Lookout’s app, the company released some tips for phone security:

1. Set a password on your phone.
2. Always keep an eye on your phone while traveling.
3. Don’t click on links in text messages from people you don’t trust.
4. Keep Wi-Fi and Bluetooth off when you aren’t using them.
5. Back up your data.
6. Apply software/firmware updates from your carrier or phone vendor.
7. Only download applications from reputable sources.

Internet telephone company Jajah, one of a host of companies that allow users to make international phone calls cheaply over the Internet, will be acquired for about $200 million by the large Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica’s mobile division, O2, this week, according to a report in the Israeli financial news site TheMarker Sunday.

We reached Jajah’s chief executive Trevor Healy tonight, and he declined comment. However, a source suggested the deal, if there is one, has not gone through yet. [Update: And we just reached someone in O2's press office, and they said this is "entirely speculation" and that they have no comment.]

Last month, TheMarker reported that O2 was bidding for the company against Cisco and Microsoft. If that’s true, the acquisition frenzy is indeed continuing in full force. Jajah has been working hard for years to get noticed. Why is the bidding only starting in earnest now? Well, one answer is that the economy is recovering, and larger companies are rushing to buy up companies with traction while prices are still relatively modest. Jajah is a hell of a lot cheaper than market leader Skype (valued at $2.75 billion), and there are few other companies that come near to Skype in popularity or size. There’s Vonage, and while that company is valued right now at $235 million, it has a lot of baggage with it, namely a bruised history.

But it’s true that mobile telephony is hot. Mobile operators are beginning to accept that VoIP is something consumers will demand, and there may be a land grab brewing.

Jajah boasts about 15 million subscribers and allows calls to 125 countries. I’m personally a big fan of Jajah, having used it since it launched in 2005 to make international calls. It lets me use my fixed phone, because once I dial the Internet call over my PC, the service calls me back on the fixed phone and I can walk around my house chatting just like I would with a normal call.

The company has raised $35 million from Sequoia Capital, Deutsche Telekom, Intel Capital and other investors. It has recently signed big deals to let Yahoo and Microsoft use its technology to serve their customers with Internet calls.

Jajah launched at DEMO.

Applications have been a hot ticket to venture funding this week. Two directory-style startups landed cash to help users navigate the thousands of different apps for iPhone and Twitter. Not a new concept, we recently spotlighted several different companies that focused on leveraging social data to make recommendations for iPhone apps.

The most recent to raise funds is Boston-based OneForty, a Twitter application directory, secured $1.6 million that appears to be lead by Flybridge Capital Partners. An SEC filing states that the company aims to raise $2.4 million, including $370,000 of previous debt. As part of the deal Flybridge’s Jeff Bussgang will join the board of directors.

OneForty now tracks over 2,000 Twitter applications both free and paid and ranks them on platform, tags, categories, search, “essential types” and popularity. Click here for more insight into the search algorithm. The company generates revenue through referrals to paid applications. Future revenue streams could come from helping developers promote their applications to users.

The second directory-style startup to land some cash was Appolicious, a social directory for iPhone applications. According to another filing, the company raised $1.5 million from Apex Venture Partnersand James Crouthamel, the founder of Performics.

Appolicious lets users search through ten of thousands of iPhone applications. While traditional search methods exist such as by category or topic, the company adds a social twist by allowing users to create profiles and “follow” other users. When one of those users comes across a useful app, they can make recommendations to those who follow them.  If you’re wondering how you determine who to follow, each user has a library which holds previous recommendations, ratings and other interests.

Quantivo, maker of software packages that dissect customer behavior and trends, and make recommendations for how to derive revenue from market shifts, has brought in $4.6 million in notes and warrants, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in San Mateo, Calif., the company is backed by Partech International and Foundation Capital.

Oclaro, a San Jose, Calif.-based provider of optical and laser components for a variety of applications has swallowed smaller competitor Xtellus for $33 million in stock, with another $7 million on the way if Oclaro’s stock price falls, and if New Jersey-based Xtellus hits a revenue target of $17 million.

As a public company, Oclaro has clear advantage in a market where customers want to work with the most solid and established player. This attitude hurt Xtellus’ chances at success, even though it successfully raised $33 million from Alta-Berkeley, NanoDimension and Israel Seed Partners.

The venture capital industry we’ve known for the past decade is fading away, and a bunch of question marks hover over its future.

I’m pleased to announce that VentureBeat is partnering with the Founder Institute to kick off an event called Future of Funding, designed specifically to help address these questions.

Here’s the context: The number of VC firms is dwindling, and the amount they’re investing has declined, but that cash is the life-blood of Silicon Valley. The reality of a slower industry (fewer IPOs, the much longer time it takes to get to IPO, and reduced number of big acquisitions) is transforming the way VCs treat their entrepreneurs. Without almost no public discussion at all, VCs are starting to cash out founders and other employees at hot companies like Facebook and Zynga even before they go public — to an extent never seen before. Rather than making founders wait for an IPO or acquisition to get rich, VCs are letting the founders get wealthy early — on the hunch that if the founders can take some money “off the table,” they’ll have the patience to keep building for the long haul. Is this working? Well, it’s a good time to start discussing it.

The VC industry has long been shrouded in secrecy (things like fees, carry and other terms that VCs negotiate with their limited partners are almost never talked about publicly), but now some players are beginning to call for standards and transparency. Much of the public discussion has been dominated by occasional surveys or studies released by the National Venture Capital Association. Strangely, no one independent body has stepped forward to debate these topics aggressively.

So when Adeo Ressi, founder of the Founder Institute, asked me whether I’d partner on his event Future of Funding, it was a no-brainer. He’s lined up an impressive list of early-stage investors, entrepreneurs and others who have followed this industry closely and care about it — from Jeff Clavier, to Mike Maples, Dan Primack, Reid Hoffman and Michael Arrington. I’ll be reaching out to the LP community to get involved too.

We’re offering a great discount for VentureBeat readers, which you can’t get anywhere else: A 20 percent discount on the early-bird price, or $476 (use the code ”VB”). That’s about a third of the $1,356 general ticket price that kicks in on Dec. 25. So move quickly.

Over the past two years, I’ve watched Adeo shake up the once-smug VC industry. It began with his audacious website, The Funded, which for the first time let entrepreneurs comment publicly about what they think of individual venture capitalists. The often negative reviews infuriated VCs, long accustomed to deference. I agreed with many VCs that the ratings were often irresponsible (VCs have to turn down a lot of startups, and so there is no shortage of jilted entrepreneurs ready to vent their sour grape anger, especially when they can do so anonymously at The Funded). In my talks with Adeo, I feared he harbored a knee-jerk animosity toward the VC industry as a whole. VCs noticed it too, and the credibility of his efforts was often questioned. On the other hand, I kept talking with entrepreneurs who loved Adeo’s site, because it provides information about the money men that they’d never had before. Taking money from VCs is a very intimate thing. You’re stuck with the VC on your board for years. Even if entrepreneurs can’t believe everything they read on the site about a VC, at least it would alert them to possible red flags (if a VC was criticized for never having bet on a winning company, the entrepreneur can do some checking about it).

The great thing about Adeo is that he engages with the criticism. For example, he opened up TheFunded with new ways for VCs to respond to criticisms. And he’s since gone on to show that he really cares about helping entrepreneurs: He created the Founder Institute to provide them with new resources, tools and learning.

Here are some other questions the event will address: When negotiating the price of so-called secondary sales, what sort of valuations techniques should be used? In founder cash-out transactions, how widely should investors include other members of a company’s management team in the deal? If the transaction includes the founder and key management, at what point can the entire team walk away from the company? Fees and carry percentages, where are they headed? What other new covenants are LPs discussing? What about the emergence of the so-called “process” VC fund, embodied by Andreessen Horowitz? That new firm, co-founded by Marc Andreessen, appears to have moved away from the typical VC firm practice of having partners sponsor a specific deal, where the partner joins a company’s board after doing diligence on it. Instead, Andreessen Horowitz is hiring a deep bench of researchers and others to do diligence, who then report back to the firm’s management before an investment is made. Other firms like True Ventures and Vantage Point Venture Partners appear to be moving toward this sort of model too. Does this reflect an industry that is becoming more professional?

Are incubator programs working? In an effort to innovate, for example, Polaris Ventures launched Dogpatch, and Charles River Ventures created its QuickStart program, just to name a couple. But the latter, one of the first efforts initiated three years ago, hasn’t shown many great results yet. And what about the innovations started by the larger venture capital firms, such as moves by Sequoia, Battery, Kleiner Perkins and others to raise later stage funds or to diversity into vastly different sectors? The jury is still out on these efforts; some players believe it’s more prudent to retrench.

All of this and more will be discussed at Future of Funding at the San Mateo, Calif., Marriott on February 18.

Again, for VB readers, here’s the significant discount to tickets you can’t get anywhere else, at $476 (use the code ”VB”). That’s a third of the $1,356 general ticket price. See you there!

Knowledge Networks, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based provider of market research and media planning services, announced that it acquired Caduceus Marketing Research, a firm exclusively geared toward health care and pharmaceutical research.

Knowledge is backed by Alloy Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners, Oak Investment Partners, Maveron and Oak Hill Venture Partners.

Quantenna Communications, maker of chips used for wireless video services in the home, has raised $4.5 million of a targeted $15 million fourth round of venture funding, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Fremont, Calif., it is backed by Grazia Equity, Sequoia Capital, Sigma Partners, Southern Cross Venture Partners, Swisscom, Venrock and TPG Ventures.

Bella Pictures, a wedding photography firm, has raised $10.3 million in equity, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in San Francisco, it is backed by Angels’ Forum, Foundation Capial and TPG Ventures.