London - Songkick, an online concert recommendation engine, has raised around $1.1 million in a new round of financing, from individual investors including Accelerator Group founding partner Saul Klein, VentureBeat reported.

New York - The New York Times on Wednesday launched a beta test of a new social media feature, TimesPeople, that lets recommend stories to one another and view lists of friends' recommended stories on a "news feed"-like readout, CNET News.com and Beet.tv reported. The feature is currently only available as a Firefox plug-in, but will eventually be available without the need for a separate download.

London - Peter Gabriel-backed online entertainment service The Filter on Tuesday announced its official launch, offering a catalog of 5 million songs and 330,000 movies, Billboard reports. The site offers recommendations based on a user's existing media library, as well as data from similar services like Last.fm. The Filter also aims to eventually offer cross-media picks, such as movie recommendations based on musical tastes.

Alviso, Calif. - TiVo (NASD: TIVO) announced on Wednesday that it will make Disney (NYSE: DIS) movies available for download to broadband-connected TiVo digital video recorders directly through the television.

Somerville, Mass. - The Echo Nest, a developer of enhanced music search, recommendation and interactivity technology, on Thursday launched Recommend, an API that can be used to offer a music discovery and recommendation tool n ay website, blog, social network or retail site. The API is powered by The Echo Nest's Musical Brain, "an automated machine learning platform with an in-depth understanding of the cultural and acoustic factors that inform music preference."

Herzliya, Israel - Jinni, a developer of personalized content search and discovery technology, has raised a $1 million first round of financing from Start-Up Factory, Globes Online reported.

Bath, England - The Filter, a new media recommendation and discovery service, announced on Tuesday the launch of an invite-only private beta, and the raising of $8.5 million in funding, from backers including musician Peter Gabriel's Real World Group and Eden Ventures. "We believe one of the many joys of the internet would be freedom of choice, but many of us are now drowning in an ocean of options," said Gabriel.

San Francisco - Richrelevance, a provider of personalized recommendations for e-commerce businesses, announced on Tuesday that it has raised a $4.2 million second round of venture capital financing, from Greylock Partners and Tugboat Ventures.

San Francisco - Loomia, a provider of personal recommendation technology and the "SeenThis?" application on Facebook, announced on Wednesday that it has closed a $5 million first round of funding, led by Asset Management Company.

London - Songkick on Wednesday introduced its live music recommendation service, which scan's a user's music library and alerts users when a band they like -- or may like -- is playing in their area.

New York - Outbrain, a provider of ratings and recommendations for blogs, news and RSS content, announced on Tuesday that it has closed a $5 million first round of financing, led by Gemini Israel Funds and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Paris - Criteo, a provider of personalize purchasing recommendations for online shoppers, has raised $10.3 million in its second round of venture capital financing, led by Index Ventures.

Corvallis, Ore. - MyStrands, the developer of a social recommendation engine that provides real-time recommendations of products and services to Internet and mobile device users, announced that it has raised $24 million in new funding, led by Spanish bank BBVA.

Needham, Mass. - Matchmine, a developer of content recommendation technology, has raised $10 million in financing from the Kraft Group.

Corvallis, Ore. - MyStrands, a developer of social recommendation technologies, on Wednesday introduced MyStrands.TV, a service that lets users create personalized music video streams from videos hosted on YouTube. Channels can be created for individual artists or genres, and shared with friends.

San Francisco - Vadver, a developer of video search technology based on user recommendations, has raised $1.7 million in its first round of funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, NewTeeVee reported.

Bath, U.K. - Exabre, the developer of a music recommendation service called The Filter, has received $5 million in new funding, led by musician Peter Gabriel and Eden Ventures, The Independent reported.

Sunnyvale, Calif. - Minekey, a provider of online content discovery and a recommendations widget, has raised $3 million in its first round of venture capital financing, led by NEA IndoUS Ventures, PEHub.com reported.

New York - News aggregation site Congoo plans to add user recommendations for stories along with its software-powered selection of items from 25,000 news sources, the Associated Press reported. Congoo aggregates around 150,000 news stories each day, including some free versions of articles from subscription-based sources. The site aims to turn its service into more of a social network, where users can create profiles and provide input through recommendations, a la Digg. "At the end of the day we do feel we have a good proprietary algorithm, but we do miss stories," Congoo founder Ash Nashed told AP.

Needham, Mass. - Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), a provider of enterprise search technologies, announced that it has acquired AgentArts, a provider of recommendation and personalization software for music, video, games and mobile entertainment.