Data storage software company Nexenta has raised $24 million in Series D financing led by new investor Four Rivers Group, with participation by existing investors Menlo Ventures, TransLink Capital, Javelin Ventures, Sierra Ventures, Razor’s Edge, and West Summit Capital.

In addition to Four Rivers, new strategic investors Presidio Ventures and UMC Capital participated. The company also announced the appointment of Mark Lockareff as chief executive officer, with former CEO Evan Powell assuming the new role of chief strategy officer.

Nexenta’s data storage software, NexentaStor, offers scalable, cloud-and virtualization-optimized storage solutions for enterprise. Total storage under management exceeds 660PB and Nexenta has enabled an estimated $400 million in hardware storage sales for its reseller partners. In the past year, the number of Nexenta-powered storage deployments of one petabyte or greater grew to 33.

(Image courtesy of Steve Troughton-Smith)

I’m no great fan of Apple’s Passbook, but it seems at least a few people at Samsung have taken a shine to the same general concept. Earlier today, Samsung officially outed a new Samsung Wallet app at its Developer Day here at MWC that will allow users to store coupons, membership cards, tickets, and boarding passes on their smartphone. Sound familiar?

The concept doesn’t just sound familiar, it looks familiar too — the brief video below (courtesy of Frandroidtube) highlights an application that includes some skeuomorphic design touches that seem awfully Passbookian. Developers itching to tinker with Samsung Wallet can have a look at some early API and UI guides, and Samsung’s Wallet developer page says the API can be used starting on March 7th — just ahead of the company’s big New York Unveiling of the Galaxy S IV.

America’s elite institutions came out in full force for computer science education. First, the House of Representatives voted to update its traditional students arts competition to include a nationwide mobile apps competition. Then, to top off the day, the nation’s leading geeks, from Mark Zuckerberg to Bill Gates, helped launch a national nonprofit to encourage young programmers.

For now, the congressional competition will include students from each congressional district and “initially focus on developing applications for mobile, tablet and computer platforms” reviewed by community leaders and entrepreneurs in these fields. However, given that technology rapidly changes over time, the competition has been designed with the ability to evolve for the future,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (CrunchGov Grade: A), who is one of TechCrunch’s Most Innovative People In Democracy.

“This program will introduce students to STEM fields and encourage those who are already interested to explore them,” says Matt Lira, senior advisor to Cantor.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) minister Miao Wei announced yesterday (link via Google Translate) that the Chinese government plans to increase the number of households with broadband access, with more than 70 percent of China’s Internet users getting 4M broadband service by the end of 2013. The initiative is part of the 2013 Broadband China project, which aims to increase FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) coverage by more 35 million households this year. In 2012, the number of households with FTTH increased 49 percent to 94 million, the MIIT said. The government also plans to expand the number of public wireless hotspots by 1.3 million this year, Miao said.

MIIT’s latest update on its Broadband China project follows an earlier one in September (link via Google Translate), when the Ministry said it plans to have broadband coverage in China hit 250 million users by the end of 2015.

Expanding broadband coverage is crucial to improving Internet infrastructure for small- to mid-sized businesses in China, especially since the country is lagging behind other member countries in the Organistion for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED). As of December 2012, China had 564 million Internet users, a penetration rate of 39.9 percent, according to a report by the China Internet Network Information Center.

Adobe mobile Photoshop strategy has so far kept more heavyweight editing to tablets with Photoshop Touch, and left the iPhone with Photoshop Express. But today the company has officially released Photoshop Touch for iPhone and Android smartphones, which inherits virtually all of the functionality of the more powerful tablet app, with an interface tailored to the smaller screens.

Photoshop Touch for phones brings layers (which decrease to three if you’re editing at max resoltuion), the popular Scribble Selection feature which lets you use imprecise finger selection to pick out precise parts of a picture, and also carries over all the filters, paint strokes sharing and other components that make up Photoshop Touch. There’s also the unique Camera fill feature that allows a user to fill in a layer in their creations using their device’s camera. Projects from the phone version can be synced and edited using Photoshop on either tablets or the desktop, too, thanks to Adobe’s Creative Cloud service.

Clearly a lot of attention was paid to making sure that the functionality of Photoshop Touch was not lost in translation as the app was redesigned for smaller-screen devices, but I asked Photoshop Product Manager Stephen Nelson about whether or not we might see more differences introduced into the phone and tablet versions (which sell as standalone apps rather than as a single universal piece of software) down the road.

You wouldn’t think that a Pinterest where you can buy stuff would be one of the hottest Series A deals of the quarter, but it was.

Wanelo, a site that allows you to bookmark items that you like, and, this is crucial, allows you to buy those items via direct links from the site, has been the prettiest girl at the party for the past month or two, while it completes its raise.

Of course, its popularity among investors is boosted by the fact that its mobile app is in the “Top 30 Free Apps” in the App Store currently (at # 30) and has been oscillating between the #1 and #2 slots in “Free Lifestyle.” Yet, the high valuation for a ecommerce company is a surprise considering the sector is sharply divided into “Haves” and “Have Nots.” The company monetizes through affiliate commissions on items sold through the site.