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Comcast, the Philadelphia-based cable giant, has finally announced that it’s buying Plaxo, a Mountain View, Calif.-based social networking & connected address book company, for an undisclosed amount of money. Plaxo, whose co-founders include Sean Parker, has raised $23 million since 2002 from VC firms including Sequoia Capital, Globespan Capital Partners and DAG Ventures.

This has been the worst-kept secret, with people speculating about the price of this acquisition. Plaxo and Comcast officials declined to comment on the price when I had a conference call with them earlier today. Even today the price range is being pegged between $100 million and $170 million. I have on authority that the price is $170 million including earnouts. This is yet another megamillion-dollar bet by the cable firm in its ongoing transformation into a web-based company with an eye on advertising dollars.

Plaxo Pulse is one of the most attractive aspects of Plaxo, Sam Schwartz, executive vice president of Comcast Interactive Media, said. He pointed out that this type of news feed could end up in the set-top box, and be utilized for adding social features to many Comcast services, including Fandango and Fancast. Comcast has a project called Tru2Way that allows developers to write applications for the set-top box.

While I understand that Comcast wants to socialize its various offerings, I have reservations about their ability to extend what is a more professionally focused address book-based tool into the consumer, non-techie market place. That said, Plaxo could be useful for Comcast in its small business market ,where the cable giant has had some success.

Schwartz hinted that Comcast triple-play subscribers might be able to make calls to each other using the VoIP technology via Click2Call. Free calls in regions where Comcast is available with Plaxo makes a lot of sense and has potential.

Recommended Reading: Dan Farber on Comcast-Plaxo.

Not many of you know Gopal Raju, a man who has played a big role in my journalist life. He passed away this week and his passing brought back some bittersweet memories.

I can still remember the first time I met Gopal Raju. Joe Aranha, a NY-based freelance photographer introduced us. I was terrified to meet the man who had started and built India Abroad, one of the largest Indian American weekly newspapers. He did nothing to put me at ease but he gave an opportunity to write for his paper where I met some people who became lifelong friends. He sent me on assignments that made me appreciate the virtue of traditional, pound the pavement reporting, that has stuck with me.

There were many times when we didn’t see eye-to-eye, but that didn’t diminish my respect for the man and his ability to put out a fine paper. As they say, we are all a sum of many parts. Mr. Raju (as I used to call him) played a big part in my life. Good bye … front page will be ready Sunday at 6 pm!

Strands, a social recommendation startup whose core product is focused on music, today made another move aimed at expanding into other areas with an agreement to buy NetworthIQ for an undisclosed amount. With the acquisition of NetworthIQ, Corvallis, Ore.-based Strands is looking to further build its moneyStrands personal finance application by giving users quality recommendations based on their entire financial portfolio. Competing personal finance startup Mint is similar in functionality, but only gives recommendations based on individual aspects of a user’s financial situation.

Todays news comes on the heels of Strands’ acquisition of Expensr, also a personal finance application. Over the last six months, funding for the four-year-old company has risen to some $55 million from investors including Spanish Bank BBVA, Grupo Zeta, Dabaeque and Sequal, so Strands appears to be using at least some of that money to try and replicate its success with music in personal finance.

Earth2Tech has learned that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Beyers has chosen Joel Serface, the director of the Austin Clean Energy Incubator, to be an entrepreneur-in-residence. Serface will pull technology out of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory under a Department of Energy-sponsored program aimed at commercializing federal clean energy research. Prior to his job in Austin, Serface worked at several venture firms, including as a partner at Eastman Ventures, the venture arm of the Eastman Kodak company; as a director at Sierra Ventures; and as a principal at Alliant Partners. To read the full story, go here.

RailsConf, the largest gathering of Rails developers, is fast approaching. The conference provides examples of business models, development paradigms, and design strategies; this year’s session, which will be held in Portland, Ore., from May 29-June 1, will also feature advanced-level topics and sessions, notably those centered around design or coding techniques, testing tools, and deployment techniques. As a media partner, GigaOM readers can get a 15 percent discount off registration; click here and enter discount code “rc08ggo.”

Like the rotary dial, the keyboard’s role as a technological interface will soon come to an end as more information — especially visual information such as photos and videos — is stored on computers. And Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates hopes to help put the nail in the keyboard’s coffin, according to his presentation at the 12th Annual CEO Summit. In his keynote Gates focused heavily on natural user interfaces that combine touch, pens and speech to navigate computers and phones and that he expects to be available within the next decade. The keyboard, he made clear, is on notice.

He also briefly prophesied the formation of mega data centers built by “Microsoft and others” for cloud computing, but stayed mostly on the topic of Microsoft’s Sharepoint product and new forms of navigation. As part of the changing user interface he showed off an “intelligent whiteboard” from the R&D labs, which is essentially a Surface table standing up.

The demo unit, which had cameras located inside to track Gates’ hand movements, took a few tries before it noticed Gates. That’s never a great sign, but once it worked, the navigation was similar to what one would do on an iPhone writ large. It was less of a whiteboard than a giant, touch-controlled monitor. I can’t see myself dropping my keyboard for this, ever.

But with Microsoft pushing it, I will likely get the chance to try it. The computing giant may not be behind the sexiest Web 2.0 technologies or originating great user interfaces such as tabbed browsing, but it is very good at taking those technology successes, integrating them, and pushing them into a broad market over time.

It’s kind of like the Banana Republic of tech firms, taking different pieces of cool and edgy clothing (technologies), and assembling them into watered-down, business- and consumer-friendly outfits (products). Not everyone wants to wear Banana clothes, much like not everyone wants to use Windows, and Microsoft doesn’t always succeed, but so far Gates’ visions still count for something.

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