TAMPA - Freelancer.com, the world's largest freelancing marketplace, today announced the acquisition of vWorker, the fourth largest marketplace globally. Headquartered in Tampa, vWorker has over 2.5 million enterprise and professional users from around the world, who have been paid over US$139 million through the site from 1.3 million projects.

Founded by Ian Ippolito in 2001 originally as Rent A Coder, the marketplace was one of the earliest companies of its kind in the world. It rapidly developed an exceptional reputation for attracting quality programmers and grew at an astonishing pace.

TAMPA – Tampa-based MamaBear App was recently named “One of the World’s Most Promising Companies” by news source CNBC. The first-of-its-kind MamaBear app first launched in August 2012 and monitors location, social media and safe-speed driving.

The company was chosen by CNBC after the news source reviewed contenders from Startup Open, an annual competition developed by the Kaufman Foundation recognizing promising young ventures and listed MamaBear as one of the top 25 most promising companies for the year, kicking off Global Entrepreneurship Week.

ORLANDO – Startup game maker, Row Sham Bow announced today that its newest game, Letter by Letter is now available on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Android devices. Letter by Letter is a brand new game from Row Sham Bow with an exciting new twist. Players take over the board by spelling new words and stealing their opponent’s letters in this easy to learn yet surprisingly strategic word puzzle game.

Players must spell words to take control of the most spaces on the board. By adding letters and stealing letters from opponents, players increase their scores while simultaneously decreasing their opponent’s score. Convenient turn-based gameplay lets players play whenever and wherever they want to. Players can challenge their friends via Facebook or email, or make new friends through random matches.

BOCA RATON – The Enterprise Development Corporation of South Florida will showcase 18 early-stage companies today, who will present at its 15th Annual Emerging Technology Business Showcase.

The conference will feature 12 minute investor pitches and product demos from 18 of South Florida’s most promising early stage companies. The showcase will also feature a luncheon panel discussion; “Raising Capital in this Economic Climate”, and presenter exhibits, and networking opportunities.

ORLANDO - Bright House Networks today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire the business of Telovations, a Tampa-based Cloud Communications provider that delivers businesses hosted voice solutions, including PBX and managed SIP trunking. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed in the release.

The acquisition will help Bright House Networks to meet the diverse needs of the enterprise market with cloud based and managed services, as well as continue to offer small and medium sized businesses additional services.  Telovations pioneered the delivery of “Communications-as-a-Service”, which enables businesses to deploy communications devices and applications on a pay-as-you-go, as-needed basis, eliminating the need for capital investment and ongoing overhead.

University of Florida President, Bernie Machen and Governor Rick Scott go on CNBC to talk about bringing tech jobs to Florida.