A stealth startup in New York City called Kohort has raised a pretty hefty “seed” round of $3 million from a large group of VCs and angels. IA Ventures led the round. But other investors getting in on the action include RRE Ventures, Countour, FF Venture Capital, and both David Cohen and David Tisch of TechStars (investing personally).

CEO Mark Davis is well-known in New York City venture circles. He is himself a former VC with DFJ Gotham. Davis is also the founder of both the Columbia Venture Community and the New York Venture Community. His co-founder and CTO is Steve Blood

It’s time for the much-awaited part two of our sit down with Internet big-thinkers Reid Hoffman and Tim O’Reilly. We invited the two in the studio last week to talk about what Hoffman has called “Web 3.0″– the use of an explosion of data being collected about our real lives online.

Last week, we talked about the undeniably scary aspects of Web 3.0– data and privacy and how we can trust companies or governments in a Web 3.0-era. This week, we talk about the good things: The realm of innovation that all this data opens up. From self-driving cars to sustainable mega-cities, in this segment Hoffman and O’Reilly give us their Web 3.0 wish list.

Enjoy!

Here comes the Veer! Is the world ready for a 2.6-inch touchscreen phone? Who knows! That’s the fun part. HP just sent out invites to a May 2nd “Launch Party” which, as the name suggests, is likely for the launch of the Veer. However, Monday May 2nd might not be the day the Veer hits the general retail market although the first week of May sounds about right. Now this doesn’t seem like a press event — at least we didn’t get an invite. Instead it seems that this is for retail associates of some level because after registering, a note pops up indicated that a Best Buy or AT&T ID or business card is required to attend. AT&T, eh? Yeah, the small phone hitting the ol’ telephone & telegraph company.

As expected, real estate listings and search site Zillow has just filed its S-1, which indicates that the company will be pursuing a public offering. Zillow wants to raise $51.75 million in the offering, according to the SEC filing. It’s important to note that this is a placeholder amount that could change in the coming months. It appears that Citigroup is one of the underwriters of the IPO (others include Allen & Company, ThinkEquity, Needham & Company, and First Washington Corp.).

Zillow, which saw 19 million visitors in March, is now listing 100 million U.S. homes, including homes for sale, homes for rent and homes not currently on the market. For the years ended December 31, 2008, 2009 and 2010, the company generated revenues of $10.6 million, $17.5 million and $30.5 million, representing year-over-year growth of 49%, 65% and 74%, respectively. Unfortunately, in terms of income, Zillow has been taking a loss for the past three years, according to the filing.

If you work in online advertising, until recently there hasn’t been a very good way to find out which ads are running across the Internet. Search engines like Google index the underlying web pages, and strip out the display ads. But if you work at an ad agency or are a sales guy at an online publisher getting ready for a meeting with a big brand, it helps to know what display ads they are running. You could click the refresh button on a bunch of big sites a few dozen times, or you can go to Moat, which is a search engine for display ads.

But the ad search engine is just eye candy. Moat is working on so much more, including heatmap engagement analytics and a crowdsourced marketplace for display ad designers. The New York City startup is self-funded with $3 million from co-founders Jonah and Noah Goodhart (who are brothers), and Mike Walrath. All three were involved with Right Media, the ad exchange Yahoo bought for $850 million in 2007 (Walrath was the founder and CEO, and the Goodharts were investors).

Unlike other automakers, Tesla is headquartered in the hills of Palo Alto next to beautiful rolling hills with lush green scenery and horse crossing signs. As you can imagine, a place like this would have some of the best driving roads in the country. We were slightly disappointed that the man behind it all, Elon Musk, was out of town. But coincidentally this gave us the perfect opportunity to borrow his personal Roadster Sport while he was gone.

Walmart this morning said it is buying Mountain View-based Kosmix, a heavily funded social media technology provider that has built a platform that enables users to filter and organize content in social networks, in order to connect people with information that matters to them, in realtime.

What is the retailing juggernaut doing picking up a social media startup, which has raised $55 million in funding from a slew of investors over the past few years?

Facebook Pages — the social network’s profiles meant for businesses, celebrities, and public entities — are becoming an increasingly important way to establish a long-term relationship with customers and fans. Many businesses are sprucing up their Pages with applications, and everyone is always on the hunt to get more Likes and Comments on their Updates (posts with higher user engagement will show up in more News Feeds).

Facebook’s built-in Insights tool does a decent job helping you keep tabs on your Page’s performance, but there’s some data that may be even more important: how your arch-rival is doing. Which is where ContentAide, a new startup from VentureBeat writer Cody Barbierri, comes in handy.

Exclusive - Elite Media Worx, the startup behind local deals bidding site Bidmyway, has secured $1.35 million in financing as it gears up for the public debut of its ‘eBay for deal-of-the-day sites’.

Four Directions Holdings led the round, joined by senior management and other investors, including Brad Ohlemacher, President of EMC Precision.

Bidmyway is billed as an ‘online-to-offline bidding service’ that basically allows people to name their best price, in true Priceline.com fashion, but for local goods and services, specifically.

Alright, who is up for a round of Lily Allen Tetris? Yes, that’s right, now you challenge your friends to various games on Facebook and select the music as well. But this is about more than just background music. MXP4′s new social music gaming app – ca…