HealthGuru.com publisher HealthGuru Media has raised $3.2 million in Series C funding, the company announced on Wednesday. The round was spearheaded by Castile Ventures with HealthGuru’s existing investor Village Ventures also pledging fresh funds.

The investment will help the company drive more traffic to its video-centric health website, which currently receives 2 million visitors a month. The site currently features more than 1,000 videos covering about 75 health conditions that are also distributed through Youtube and MySpace TV.

Fairly young visitors in the 13-24 age group account for almost half of its total visitors, although the content is tailored to the health needs of 18 to 40 year olds.

IBM is hoping its latest war cry can somehow pierce the din that Windows 7 seems to be generating. In September, the company struck a partnership with Canonical, the UK-based sponsor of Ubuntu, which resulted in the launch of an Ubuntu-based desktop bundle in Africa.

The cloud- and Ubuntu-based software package, which is part of IBM’s Smart Work Initiative, will soon be debuting in the States. The Ubuntu-based desktop package includes IBM’s free Lotus Symphony productivity suite and Lotus Notes, which is a business email and collaboration solution.

The IBM Client for Smart Work will only arrive in the U.S. in 2010 despite IBM positioning it to rival Windows 7 – on the brink of launch - in the enterprise market. It will be available both as a run-of-the-mill desktop and as a virtualized desktop.

"If a company is a 'Windows shop,' at some point it will need to evaluate the significant costs of migrating its base to Microsoft's next desktop," said Bob Picciano, General Manager, IBM Lotus Software. IBM and chums are clearly targeting those businesses that are not too keen on Windows 7.

Santa Clara-based chip maker Marvell has launched a new range of CPUs called ARMADA. Based on the ARM instruction set, the new processors will power “smartphones, smartbooks, consumer and embedded devices, and displays.”

The largest producer of ARM chips in the world claims its ARMADA chips will enable mobile devices to deliver PC-like performance. Support for Adobe Flash and Blu-ray functionality should also enable ARMADA-toting mobile devices to deliver a rich multimedia experience.

Based on their intended device segment, the new application processors fall into four different series: the ARMADA 100, 500, 600 and 1000. "Launch of the ARMADA family represents a watershed event in mobile computing,” said Marvell’s co-founder and VP, Ms. Weili Dai.

The Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications has decided to make broadband access a legal right of every Finn. Recognizing broadband access as a legal right may seem relatively easier for an affluent European country with a population of only 5.5 million.

But that is not enough to belittle its courage in setting a precedent for other countries of the world. The Finnish government hopes to implement its latest edict beginning July 2010. Initially, every Finn will have the right to a one-megabit broadband connection. Finland had previously vowed to legally guarantee access to a 100 Mb broadband connection by the end of 2015.

The all-in-one PC segment is now experiencing its share of Windows 7-induced buzz. MSI has announced three new entrants into its Wind Top family of all-in-one PCs, all of which are based on Nvidia’s Ion platform and support Windows 7. 

The 21.5-inch Wind Top AE2220 is all set to hit the market in late October, with the launch of the 20-inch AE2020 and the 21.5-inch AE2220 Hi-Fi expected next month. According to a Digitimes report, the AE2220 features full HD output besides HDMI and VGA ports for hooking up game consoles and other devices.

The same report pegs its price at just a shade over $1000 (NT$35,000). HP, Gateway and Acer are other notable names that have already announced similar offerings which support Windows 7.

The PC industry is keenly awaiting the launch of Windows 7 in the hope that it will deliver it from its woes. Probably, Apple also has its sights firmly fixed on the sandglass counting down to the launch, but for a different reason, of course. Apple need not be fazed by the launch, though, if Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall is to be believed.

According to his analysis of previous Windows releases, a Windows launch has no negative bearing on the sale of Macs. In fact, previous Windows releases have acted as a catalyst for Mac sales.

"We have concluded that no negative correlation exists on Apple's (AAPL) hardware sales when Microsoft launches a new OS. Ironically, we believe new OS launches from MSFT may have even acted as a 'delayed accelerant' to AAPL's computing sales," Marshall wrote in a report.

Google’s rendition of our planet is ready for a massive 2D to 3D transition with the launch of its browser-based Google Building Maker tool for Google Earth. It is a new tool that lets almost anyone create 3D buildings for Google Earth. All you need is a Google account, the latest version of Google Earth and some rudimentary imaginative faculty to hit the ground running.

The internet giant defines the new tool as the progeny of “Google Maps and a gigantic bin of building blocks.” At the moment, it is possible to create 3D building in around 50 cities across the globe, though the 3D buildings can be viewed from anywhere in the world. The user is free to choose any building in the cities currently covered by the tool.

The model has to be created using the existing aerial shots of the selected location and 3D shapes. The finished product can then be submitted for review to the Google 3D Warehouse (an online repository of 3D models). If chosen, it is added to Google Earth’s 3D building layer.

“One of the best ways to get a big project done — and done well — is to open it up to the world. As such, today we're announcing the launch of Google Building Maker, a fun and simple (and crazy addictive, it turns out) tool for creating buildings for Google Earth,” Google’s Mark Limber (Product Manager) and Matt Simpson (User Experience Designer) wrote in a blog post announcing the launch of Building maker.

A Hendersonville, Tennessee woman was arrested by local police after she “poked” another woman on Facebook. No, it is still perfectly legal to poke others on the social networking site unless the person being poked has a protection order against you.

But 36-year-old Shannon D. Jackson apparently believes that poking someone on Facebook is not acknowledged as a form of communication, and so does not violate the protection order against her, which explicitly bars her from communicating with the petitioner – the woman she contacted - in any manner whatsoever: “no telephoning, contacting or otherwise communicating with the petitioner.”

According to an affidavit filed by the police, they have obtained screenshots of the victim’s Facebook page that offer evidence of the poke. Any violation of a protection order is punishable with up to 12 months in jail and a fine not exceeding $2,500. Alas! Just writing “I will never poke anyone on Facebook who has an order of protection against me” a thousand times won’t suffice.

Online display ads account for around a third of the $40 billion online ad market. Advertisers mainly commission display ads to apprise internet users of their presence and not necessarily in the hope of immediate results. But click-through rates for display advertising have slumped to such abject levels that it is just too optimistic to expect immediate results with banner ads. 

According to market research firm comScore, American internet users are increasingly becoming immune to display advertising. A recent comScore study found that the number of American internet users that click on a display ad at least once every month fell by 50% over a 20-month period. But according to Andrew Lipsman, director of industry analysis at comScore, it is not always correct to measure the success of online ads with number of clicks as the yardstick.

Google has armed its Sites tool with some new features. It now supports RSS feeds and custom templates. It is now possible to import Picasa Web Albums photos from the “Insert” menu, which also makes it possible for a user to import other forms of data from various Google service. Sites is a drag-and-drop tool for building intranets and simple websites.

 Another option is to upload photos directly to Picasa, which can now be accomplished from within Sites itself, just in case they are not already hosted online and you still wish to add them to your site. RSS feed of a page built using the Sites tool can be accessed quite easily by adding posts.xml to the end of its URL.

After Gizmodo crowned constant rumors of a Zune phone by posting the first pictures of two phones it claimed were part of Microsoft’s secret "Pink" phone family, other rumormongers scampered to find (or fabricate) more Pink rumors. Now, rumors of Pink’s prenatal demise are assuming pace.

MobileCrunch was recently approached by an anonymous source “with a seemingly exhaustive knowledge of Microsoft’s Project Pink.” Their source told them that it is highly unlikely that the Pink will ever see the light of day and cited many reasons for its imminent scrapping.

Apple Insider has also found its anonymous knight in stealthy armor. It identified its source as a Microsoft/Danger insider. For those of you who don’t know, Danger is the company that developed the T-Mobile Sidekick before being bought by Microsoft for $500 million in 2008. Danger is rumored to have been converted into “Pink”.

The insider source echoed the claims made by MobileCrunch’s source. But then the anonymous-source ego came into the picture and he made a desperate attempt to prove his superioriy as the more conscientious anonymous source of the two. He believes that the person who originally spilled the beans is clearly a “disgruntled former or current employee.”

“I have my share of disgruntlement about the situation, but it never occurred to me to do something like that. This is actually the worst possible timing for Microsoft for this information to come out (on the heels of the awful reviews of WM 6.5), and I suspect that it has already caused irreparable damage to their relationships with a number of key partners, to which I say, 'Bravo, leaker, well played.' Now allow me to twist the knife...,” he said. He is quite certain that Microsoft had intentionally leaked photos of “Pure” and “Turtle” – the two Pink phones.

But the move seems to have backfired as the tepid response to the leaks seems to have given Microsoft cold feet. I hope you are in the vicinity of a few grains of salt. 

Super Talent and Toshiba today announced a new range of co-branded SSDs called the UltraDrive DX. The official press release was largely dedicated to UltraDrive DX’s twin-layer encryption. It features password encryption as its first line of defense and hardware data randomization technology as the second.

Data randomization occurs with every write to the drive but still fails to prevent the drive from marching at sequential read speeds of up to 230 MB/sec and sequential write speeds of up to 180 MB/sec.

“As the first Toshiba co-branded SSD on the market, UltraDrive DX features a Toshiba controller and Toshiba’s MLC NAND flash memories. The DX provides superb security and reliability features combined with cutting edge performance in both read and write speeds,” said Joe James, director of marketing at Super Talent. 

Hit the jump for pricing details.