According to Zag, the firm will provide a turnkey, fully integrated auto buying program for the site, which will offer resources to research and compare vehicles, read AAA editorial reviews, and configure and purchase vehicles. Zag provides the technology to power affiliate car buying services, allowing members of associations like the AAA to get fully configured, exact quotes on new cars at pre-negotiated prices. Santa Monica-based Zag.com , the online car buying software firm headed by Scott Painter, announced this morning that it has inked a deal with the AAA, to power a new service called AAA Automaker.

The firm also bolstered its research, posting reports on all of those firms, and also reported that it had over 4,000 users sign up in its first two weeks. Brighthouse is a technology incubator headed by both Brogger and Scott Painter, who also co-founded Zag and CarsDirect. Santa Monica-based SharesPost , which has created on online marketplace for sellers and buyers of private company stock, reported to its users late Friday that the firm now has sales of LinkedIn, Linden Lab, Tesla Motors, and SugarCRM going into escrow. The firm--which launched in early June--also said that

Santa Monica-based TrueCar , the automotive pricing spinout of Zag Automotive, annoucned today that it has hired the Chief Evangelist from Edmunds. TrueCar is using real-world sales data from automotive dealesr to power its service, which allows both consumers and dealers to research recent pricing trends and actual pricing data from local markets. The firm said that Jesse Toprak will serve as the firm's Vice President of Industry (Tresnds & Insights) at the company, and will analyze and report on automotive related topics, trends and insights. Toprak spent nine years at Edmunds,

Among features of the site are private company research, escrow serviecs, and electronic signatures. SharesPost was founded by Greg Brogger; the firm is one of the companies incubated by Scott Painter and his BrightHouse incubator; Painter is the former CEO of CarsDirect, currently founder at Zag, and has been quietly helping to fundraise and incubate a number of local startups through BrightHouse. Santa Monica-based SharesPost , a new startup out of Scott Painter's BrightHouse incubator, said Tuesday morning that the firm has launched on online platform which will match buyers and sellers of private equity.

We co-founded Zag together, and I was the COO of CarsDirect. Towards early 2007, Scott and I had taken Zag to a level of some measure of stability, and we were thinking about the next thing. We've teamed up with a bunch of research providers, with more over time, to help members reach a reasonable conclusion. Yesterday, Santa Monica-based SharesPost (www.sharespost.com) launched a new service of particular interest to the venture capital and high tech startup market, a new, online service which facilitates the buying and selling of private company stock. We caught up with