Madison based Alice.com has raised $3.6 million in funding from a group of Spanish investors. This current round brings the total amount raised to $18.2 million since launching in 2008. Alice.com is the leading digital retail marketplace for purchasing household essential goods and is now home to over 600 manufacturers and thousands of household brands. Alice.com recently completed a merger with Spanish company Koto.com and has since expanded to an international European audience.

PerBlue’s Parallel Kingdom recently passed the 1 million players milestone. Parallel Kingdom was the first location-based RPG on iOS and Android, and originally launched in 2008. The game has since expanded to the Web and is available on Facebook, Chrome, and Kongregate. It was also a recent finalist for “Best Mobile Game” in the Mashable Awards.

CE member Murfie.com recently completed a funding round of $1.4 million, led by the DaneVest Tech Fund. Murfie was also selected as one of only 13 companies from around the world to participate in the TechStars Winter 2012 Boston Program. The TechStars program is considered the top accelerator in the world, and Murfie will receive three months of intensive top-notch mentorship and the chance to pitch for additional funds at the program’s conclusion. Murfie has already accumulated 120,000 CDs from it’s members, and ads 1,000-2,000 new CDs every day. More information is available here.

Madison based clean tech company AquaMost has recently completed a $4 million Series B round of funding. AquaMost is developing a new type of water purification technology called photoelectrocatalytic oxidation (PECO), which was invented at UW-Madison. The round consisted of $3 million from investors lead by the Golden Angels Network, and a $1 million phase II SBIR grant.

CE member The Madison Fund made its first microloan this Fall. The Madison Fund is a nonprofit which gives microloans to budding entrepreneurs in Madison, and their efforts were recently showcased in the Wisconsin State Journal. They aim to give 10 to 20 loans over the next six to 12 months ranging in size from $500 to $5,000.

Check out the full article here.

Murfie.com co-founder and CE member Matt Younkle was recently featured in the Executive Q&A section of the Wisconsin State Journal. Murfie is the latest venture from the serial entrepreneur, which turns your physical CDs into digital bits to be traded or sold online. Murfie currently has over 70,000 CDs stored that its members have sent in, and receives more than 1,000 new discs each day. They are also in the process of raising $1.25 million in funding, which is on track to be fully committed by the end of the year.

“There’s terrific energy around entrepreneurs and startups in Madison and it’s only getting stronger.” – Matt Younkle

Check out the full Q&A here.

Not only is Madison the most educated city in the US, it was also just rated one of the 10 Great Cities for Young Adults by Kiplinger Magazine. Young, smart people are the cornerstone of Madison’s Capital Entrepreneurs community, and we agree that Madison is an amazing place.

Madison consistently ranks as a top place to live, work, and play (check out the list here), and was also recently named the best place to live by MensHealth Magazine, the most educated city by Reuters, a top city to live by Outside Magazine, and has the most bike commuters.

CE member company Sector67 and 94labs were recently featured in the Sunday edition of the Wisconsin State Journal. Sector67 and 94labs were highlighted as entrepreneurial hubs in Madison and are “helping entrepreneurs create products and start companies more rapidly than ever before.”

CE member Michael Fenchel’s mobile art collective was also highlighted, as well as the upcoming Build Madison – a 24 hour community create-a-thon taking place at Sector67 this weekend.

Check out the full article here.

CE member company Murfie.com was recently featured in The Wall Street Journal. Murfie will take all of those CDs you have sitting around into the cloud age. They’ll send you a nice box in the mail, and then you send them your CDs. They’ll rip them and you’ll have digital versions on their website that you can sell and trade. It’s basically a huge online used CD store where you can buy/sell/trade albums for a good price point.

From the article:

Murfie wants to become the Internet’s largest used-CD emporium. (It takes a 30% cut.) As a used-CD store, they are unique in that buyers don’t need to wait for a disc in the mail—the music can be downloaded. And because these are used-CDs you’re buying, the prices are lower than normal. An example: I found John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” for $4 ($3 for the CD plus $1 for the rip and download) on Murfie. It’s $8 on iTunes.

Read the full article here (if you’re not a WSJ subscriber, just Google the article’s title: ‘Sending Your Discs to Cloud Heaven’ and click through from there to read the full article).

The Capital Entrepreneurs Open Social will be this Wednesday August 24th from 7-9pm at Brocach.  Our open social is part of the Forward Technology Festival, a 10 day series of events highlighting technology and entrepreneurship in Madison.  The event is free and is one of the best ways to meet and network with some of Madison’s entrepreneurs.  If you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve wanted to join, but haven’t made it our or someone in the community interested in entrepreneurship, come out to the CE open social for some beers, snacks and networking.

Registration is required, just send us an email with your name and what you do to let us know you’re coming so we can make sure we have enough space for everyone.