San Francisco - RateItAll, a distributed consumer rating Web application that lets users, find, share and solicit opinions on any topic, has raised an undisclosed sum of funding from investors including Accelerator Ventures, JAIC America, Pacific I&T Ventures and Eric Di Benedetto.

McLean, Va. - Clearspring Technologies said that its widget syndication and tracking service has been independently audited and accredited by the Audit Bureau of Circulations Interactive (ABCi). It marks the first time a widget company has had its numbers validated by an outside agency. The ABCi concluded that, as of June 16, Clearspring fairly stated the metrics for its widget platform and employed the necessary internal controls and processes to ensure proper delivery and tracking of widgets.

Seattle - Mpire, the parent company of WidgetBucks, a online ad network of retail and shopping widgets for online publishers, announced on Thursday that it has raised a $10 million second round of financing, led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

San Mateo, Calif. - Social media applications developer RockYou announced on Monday that it has raised $35 million in a third round of venture capital financing, led by DCM.

Los Angeles - Universal Motown recording artist Lil Wayne's new album, "Tha Carter III," will be made available for purchase and download directly from his website, social network pages and other sites using the Musicane widget, the label said. Downloads sold via the commerce-enabled widget will be delivered as 320 Kbps, DRM-free MP3s.

San Mateo, Calif. - RockYou, a developer of social applications and widgets that enable photo slideshows, glitter text, voicemail and other features, has raised $1 million in new financing from Doll Capital Management (DCM), VentureBeat reported.

McLean, Va. - Clearspring Technologies, a provider of services that help media companies and advertisers syndicate and track widgets, said on Wednesday that it has raised $18 million in its third round of funding.

Seattle - Amazon.com (NASD: AMZN) on Thursday launched the Amazon MP3 Clips Widget, which bloggers and website owners can post on their sites to offer song samples from the catalog of over 5 million tracks at the Amazon MP3 store. Users can also generate revenue if they join the Amazon Associates program, which offers up to 10% in referral fees when visitors click through the widget to purchase songs from Amazon.

San Francisco - Sprout, the provider of a Web-based platform for the creation of Flash-based widgets, mashups, mini-sites, banners and other forms of distributable Web content, announced on Tuesday that it has closed a $5 million second round of financing, led by Polaris Venture Partners.

Denver - Radio broadcaster Clear Channel (NYSE: CCU) is looking to add a personalized Web radio player to its station websites, and is in talks with Pandora, but no deal has yet been finalized, Billboard reports.

San Francisco - Sonific, a provider of licensed music widgets and free music applications for social media, said on Tuesday that it will take its service offline "as a consequence of the unworkable music licensing situation and the resulting lack of solid revenue modeling," co-founder and CEO Gerd Leonhard wrote in a note on Sonific.com. The company had attracted 80,000 users to its service and amassed a library of over 200,000 licensed songs.

London - The Random House Group, Bertelsmann's publishing arm, on Monday announced the launch of a new Web widget that lets consumers browse and search through selections of books. The customizable widget, which will appear on sites for book wholesalers Gardners and other sites, also lets consumers purchase books directly via a "Buy Now" button. Sites featuring the widget will contain the words "Open the Book" at the top of each book's cover art.

Los Angeles - The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), the video game industry's voluntary agency that provides game ratings for parents, on Tuesday began offering a new widget that can be placed on websites and social network profiles, or downloaded to a desktop, that will provide easy access to ratings on over 14,000 titles. "Last year, the ratings search feature of our website was incredibly popular, with more than 4 million ratings searches having been conducted," said ESRB president Patricia Vance. "There's clearly a huge appetite among consumers for ratings information, and providing this widget will make it that much easier for them to make informed purchase or rental decisions."

Mountain View, Calif. - FriendFeed, a service that lets users keep up with what Web pages, photos, videos and music their friends and family are sharing, has announced the release of a developer platform. The FriendFeed API will allow developers to integrate the service into other applications, such as creating a mobile phone interface, or FriendFeed blog widget.

San Francisco – San Francisco-based software company ShareThis has announced that it's raised $15 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Reservoir Venture Partners, RPM Ventures, and Blue Chip Venture in a second round of funding, CNET reports.

Palo Alto, Calif. - Gigya, a developer of technology for distributing, tracking and analyzing widgets, said on Monday that it has raised $9.5 million in its second round of funding, led by Mayfield Fund.

New York - CBS's (NYSE: CBS) music discovery service Last.fm on Thursday announced the launch of a new section that showcases third-party applications designed to work with the service. The company estimated that activity around third-party applications on other websites added 19 million users to its service in January, in addition to the 21 million active users engaging with the Last.fm site itself. "We'll be moving into mobile, games consoles and partnering with other great media platforms to guarantee that Last.fm continues to drive the best music discovery and listening on the Web," said co-founder Richard Jones.

Dulles, Va. - Looking to further expand on its online advertising strategy, AOL (NYSE: TWX) said on Monday that it has acquired San Diego-based Goowy Media, the developer of a technology platform and related analytics tools for widget creation, syndication and reporting. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

San Francisco - Widgetbox, a provider of Web-based widget application development and distribution tools, has raised $8 million in its second round of venture capital financing, led by Northgate Capital, TechCrunch reported.

San Francisco - Kadoink, a developer of mobile music marketing widgets, has raised $7 million in its first round of funding, from Sutter Hill Ventures and angel investors, VentureWire reported.