Roundup: LGC Wireless bought, RockYou also bought? and more

1) LGC Wireless to be acquired by telecom components company
2) Rumors abound that News Corp. is buying RockYou for hundreds of millions of dollars
3) Myspace + Skype: newly-joined parts of the “Web 2.0 address book”
4) Apple finally decides to return developers’ love
5) Treemo, another mobile and online content sharing service, raises 2.5 million
6) LiveScribe, a near-magical pen for taking written and audio notes at the same time, raises $22 million

LGC Wireless to be acquired by telecom components company — LGC Wireless, which sells technology that improves spotty wireless coverage in garages or in thick-walled buildings, will announce the purchase by the end of the month, we’re told by sources. LGC’s offering always made a lot of sense, because coverage from the main carriers like Sprint, Verizon and others have been poor in many shielded areas. Problem is, the carriers balked at paying for the company’s services, seeing it as a needless expense: Most consumers seem to simply sigh and put up with crappy service. LGC kept plugging away though, and nine years and $93 million in venture backing later, it is finally getting bought by a large, unnamed telecom components company.

Rumors abound that News Corp. is buying RockYou for hundreds of millions of dollars — Last night, Valleywag posted an anonymous tip that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. will buy top widget-maker RockYou for the bubbly purchase price of $800 million — considering the company is still developing its revenue model. Today, an apparently different anonymous tipster told Facebook-focused blog AllFacebook a similar rumor but with a lower price: A mere “$300 and $500 million, with earnouts that could push the $600 to $650 million range.” We asked RockYou and the company flatly denied the rumors, saying only that the tipsters must “have us confused with a different company.” Murdoch will be presenting at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco later today. We’ll see what he has to say about any possible acquisitions, as well as any news about the rumored Myspace developer platform.

Myspace + Skype: newly-joined parts of the “Web 2.0 address book” — The social network subsidiary of News Corp. and the internet calling subsidiary of eBay will introduce a feature in November to let Myspace users make Skype calls through Myspace’s instant-messaging feature.

This pairing of social information and a popular communications service is the tip of the proverbial iceberg, according to Tim O’Reilly. He thinks that social networks will grow into a “social network operating system” that combines social information about you and your friends together with all of your contact information from across email, phone and IM.

This, remember, is also the original vision behind Facebook’s developer platform — the thousands of toy-like widgets on Facebook right now are just another small chunk of the iceberg’s tip.

Apple finally decides to return developers’ love — Since the iPhone release earlier this year, developers have hacked, cracked and otherwise abused the phone’s software platform in every way imaginable, despite repeated cautions from Apple that the phone’s firmware shouldn’t be tampered with. In many cases, the result of installing outside applications has been an unusable iPhone.

The company has finally decided to respond to strident pleas and threats from legions of unhappy developers by releasing a software developer’s kit (SDK) next February. The SDK, which will give developers easier access and more information to create new applications, should encourage innovation and even some startups based on the iPhone platform.

Now, to connect your social information on Facebook with your contact information in your iPhone.

Treemo, another mobile and online content sharing service, raises 2.5 million — PaidContent has more on the Seattle company.

LiveScribe, a near-magical pen for taking both written and audio notes at the same time, raises $22 million — The funding was led by VantagePoint Venture Partners, reports PEHub. Our previous coverage of the company is here; check out the video, below, to see more.