todaytest 05/30/2008

• WebGuild: Google's Eric Schmidt: Google Big on Mobile and Wimax

  tags: utr3, mobile

  • Tuesday, May 27, 2008

    
    
    
    
    

    
    

    
    Google's Eric Schmidt: Google Big on Mobile and Wimax
    
    

    
    
    
    

    
    

    
    

    Google CEO Eric Schmidt, interviewed in Germany, offered several insights into the future as Google sees it. Here are some standout items from that interview. Schmidt quotes are in italics:
    
    There is still a lot of revenue in search - as we get the technology better or as we can do more targeted ads. There is no limit for search marketing. People assume that there is a limit, but we have many more ideas about technology.
    
    .... mobile will be a larger business than the PC-Web. But it will take a few years.
    
    On Google's investment in the Wimax initiative to bring broadband outside of the phone carriers: We are concerned that the carriers in the United States might close off the network.
    
    MySpace did not monetize as well as we thought. We have a lot of traffic, a lot of page views, but it is harder than we thought to get our ad network to work with social networks.
    

todaytest 05/23/2008

• Ludacris backs crowdsourced music site WeMix (Tech Confidential - The Note)

  tags: music

todaytest 05/22/2008

• William Morris Launching Agency 3.0 With Amp’d Founder Adderton | paidContent.org

  tags: agency, william, morris

  • William Morris Launching Agency 3.0 With Amp’d Founder Adderton

    
    

    
    By
    Rafat Ali
    - Tue 20 May 2008 06:15 PM PST
    

    
    

    
    
    

    William Morris Agency is launching a new branded content and marketing division, called Agency 3.0, working with former Amp’d Mobile CEO and founder Peter Adderton. The division, which will operate as a separate company, has most of the creative team behind Amp’d’s critically acclaimed content services, and has signed on Qualcomm and Clearwire as clients, we have learned, though the company refused to confirm these clients. Our sources also say that WMA is going to invest as much as $3 million into the venture over time, though again, the company refused comment on any amount.

todaytest 05/08/2008

• CBS Web guru Quincy Smith talks Digg partnership | The Social - CNET News.com

  tags: hollywood, la

  • When CBS Interactive announced on Tuesday that its CBSNews.com property had entered a content partnership with Digg, there wasn't a whole lot of information released other than the fact that election-related headlines from Digg would appear on CBSNews.com and that the news site's political news and video clips would be accompanied by Digg buttons.

    
    
    

    The amorphous press release was intentional, CBS Interactive President Quincy Smith said later Tuesday in an interview with CNET News.com. It's not always easy to deal with Digg's notoriously opinionated community, which has shown a tendency to cause a mild to major uprising if something pops up suggesting the site has made a move without the users in mind.
    
    

• Interview with Richard Wolpert, The Mail Room Fund review at Kaboodle

  Richard Wolpert is the head of the Mail Room Fund, a new venture fund backed by William Morris, Accel Partners, Venrock, and AT&T. Wolpert is well known for his work as Chief Strategy Officer for RealNetworks, as president of Disney Online, as well as for his angel investments. We sat down for breakfast a few days ago to chat with Richard about the new fund, his angel investments, and what he sees as the promise of Los Angeles. Richard Wolpert: We started the fund about two months ago, called the Mail Room Fund. That's sort of an LA play on the garage, if you will. In Silicon Valley, everything gets started in the garage--in LA, and although we're not specifically focused on entertainment, a lot of famous people got started in the mail room. So, David Geffen got started in the mail room, Barry Diller started in the mail room, William Morris specifically. So it's the Mail Room fund, and it's partnered with AT&T, Accel, Venrock, and William Morris. The idea is to specifically invest in companies in LA, that are in the broad Internet consumer space. So there's a little bit of an assumption that since William Morris is involved, we're just working with entertainment companies, and just looking at content, but it's actually the contrary. We're looking broadly at Internet consumer plays and services, and technologies that support those plays. Our ideal investment per deal is about a million dollars. And, we're looking for earlier stage things, things that have not or are not to the Series A stage yet. We're off and running. What's your ideal investment--what do you want to see in a company, how far along do you want them to be? Richard Wolpert: If I could answer that question with just 20 words, I'd be smarter than I am. But, I'll give you some guidelines. In terms of the entrepreneur, the most ideal is someone who has had a successful exit. My first company, I got funding, and hadn't had a successful exit. So, that's not a requirement for us, but if you've got value out of a successful exit, the odds that you know what you are doing are great. To the extent that they haven't had a successful exit, if it's a group of young guys, who are sharp and working hard but also open to knowing they need help, that's something we're completely happy and willing to do as well. I would say we're looking at a mix of companies right now. We haven't announced or done any deals yet, and if I can think of two of the ones that are more interesting. One is a guy who has done this twice before, and one are some guys who just got out of college three years ago, and this is basically their first thing. It just depends on their talent, the space, their ability to learn, and their experience. Richard Wolpert: In terms of kind of company, we are saying broadly consumer Internet. Some people think that's so broadly ambiguous it doesn't mean anything. We're not doing hardware in any sort. Not doing back end storage. We're not doing at this point pure content plays -- like "fund this TV/webisodic series" -- we're not doing those sorts of things. We're trying to avoid the hits bet -- the hits bet being somebody who needs $20 million dollars to build something and we won't know until they've spend $20 million dollars if it's a hit or not. One of the things that is very different about 2008 than 2000 is that you don't need $5 million dollars to build a web site. So when we ask people to come to us--who have spent half a million dollars--and have a couple of good people on their team, and have actually built something to show for it, and they need a million/million and a half to get to the next step, that's very, very interesting. When we have people come to us, saying "here's our idea" and need $5 million dollars and 18 months to show for it, we don't think that is that interesting --based on the tools and how the market works today. We think the market is such that you can actually launch -- some level of a service -- even if it's not the ultimate service or a complete vision, for a million or million and a half dollars. We are looking for people who get See less »

  tags: utr, vcs

todaytest 05/04/2008

• Myka

  tags: utr2

  • Hello, my name is Dan Lovy. I'm the president of Myka. On March 20th, 2008 we announced our product. Myka quite simply, lets you download torrents to a hard disk that is connected directly to your TV. We don't lock you into any service. It's Bit Torrent.

    
    

    The response has been just amazing. If you Google 'myka bittorrent' you get 50 pages of news articles about us. When we started, people thought we were crazy! They would say,"You're going to make a product that is completely open!" or, "How will you control what people watch?" Myka is not AppleTV. We let you get

todaytest 05/02/2008

• Marshall Kirkpatrick » How to Build an RSS and Blog News Site for Your Project

  tags: blog

  • 
    How to Build an RSS and Blog News Site for Your Project
    

    
    05.01.08
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

    
    

    
    

    I'm excited to unveil my latest consulting project, a fairly extensive RSS-based microsite put together with Sun Microsystems for next week's JavaOne conference. It's called BlogCentral. Turns out today is international RSS Awareness Day! This might have been a better fit for Enterprise RSS Awareness Day last week, but that's ok.

todaytest 05/01/2008

• Bezos’ Bucks Back Kongregate

  tags: utr, success

  • Bezos’ Bucks Back Kongregate

    
    

    
    
    

    
    Print
    All Articles
    
    
    
    Letter to the editor
    
    
    Podcast
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

    
    
    
    on 30 April 2008, 12:45
    
    by Ken Schachter
    
    
    
    

    
    
    

    
    

    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    Billionaire investor Jeff Bezos is putting $3 million behind San Francisco-based Kongregate, an online casual games site that draws its content from Indie developers.
    
    The investment brings Kongregate’s investment total to $9 million, with a $1 million angel round and a $5 million investment by Greylock Partners, a backer of Red Hat, Digg and Facebook.
    
    The investment by Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon.com, comes through his person investment fund, Bezos Expeditions.
    
    Kongregate competes with companies like Miniclip in trying to build large audiences for casual games offered through an Internet browser. Kongregate, founded in June 2006, offers more than 4,000 Flash and Shockwave games from more than 1,500 developers.
    
    Kongregate Chief Executive Jim Greer likened the "super-angel" funding round to an insurance policy.

• UMG, Sony invest in music startup MOG (Tech Confidential - VC Ratings)

  tags: utr

todaytest 04/25/2008

• Fyreball User Login - Fyreball - Annotated

  tags: utr2

  • Fyreball is a fast, fun and better way to share the best stuff with your friends.
    See a video or picture that made you laugh 'till you snorted?
    Got a web game that you can't stop playing? Fyre it up.
    

    
    We're gonna stop with the jibber jabber now, because that's boring.
    Sign up and see what we're talking about!

todaytest 04/24/2008

• Ex-Googlers working on stealth social search | Tech news blog - CNET News.com - Annotated

  tags: utr2

  • Ex-Googlers working on stealth social search

    
    
    
    

    
    
    Posted by Stefanie Olsen
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    | Post a comment
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

    
    
    
    
    

    
    

    Nathan Stoll, former product lead of Google News, has been quietly working on a new social search service he started with the help of two other Google refugees, CNET News.com has learned. The site, called Mechanical Zoo, is poised to launch in beta next month.

    
    
    

    The San Francisco company, which is about 9 months old, has an impressive team of tech veterans. It was co-founded by Stoll; Max Ventilla, a former business development manager at Google; and Damon Horowitz, a longtime computer scientist and former lead engineer of Perspecta, a search software company that sold to Excite@Home in the dot-com heyday. Fritz Schneider, who was an application-security engineer at Google for about five years, heading up the Google Firefox team, is also a part of the 12-person staff.

todaytest 04/22/2008

• U.S. Lags in Social Media Creation, per Survey - Annotated

  tags: utr2

  • NEW YORK A new global study of social media use reveals that
    the U.S. severely lags behind Asian and South American countries in
    participation rates.
    
     
    
    Consumers in the U.S. and Western Europe are more likely to be
    passive social-media participants -- sharing videos and reading
    blogs -- while those in emerging markets often create content
    through blogging, social networks and video and photo sharing
    sites.
    
    
    
    
    "By and large, in the U.S. we're a country of voyeurs," said David
    Cohen, U.S. director of digital communications at Universal McCann,
    which conducted the study. "We love to watch and consume content
    created by others, but there's a fairly small group that are doing
    that creation -- unlike China, which is a country of
    creators."

todaytest 04/20/2008

• TechCrunch UK » Blog Archive » Web Mission 08: UK startups to visit Silicon Valley - Annotated

  tags: utr2, startups

  • based on their business viability and the strength of the management team. And they looked for a mix of companies that showed the breadth of what the UK has to offer in this space. The aim is for the companies “to explore new opportunities for growth with key people in Silicon Valley.”

    
    

    So, without further ado, the confirmed companies for Web Mission 08 are:

    
    

    Groupspaces - Web-based tools for groups

    
    

    Tioti - A social network around TV

    
    

    Exabre (TheFilter) - Advanced music recommendation

    
    

    Coull - Interactive video platform

    
    

    Zogix - Employee services platform

    
    

    Byteplay (dotHomes) - Real estate search engine

    
    

    Trampoline Systems - Enterprise software harnessing social behaviour

    
    

    Hubdub - News prediction social network

    
    

    WAYN - travel and lifestyle social networking community

    
    

    TrustedPlaces - Venue recommendation network

    
    

    Slicethepie - Enabling bands to raise money directly from their fans

    
    

    Mydeo - Mainstream application for storing and sharing video

    
    

    Skimbit - Research and share decisions

    
    

    Huddle - Enterprise 2.0 collaboration

    
    

    Rummble - Mobile social networking and recommendation

    
    

    Zebtab - Desktop TV application

    
    

    Silobreaker - Contextual and graphic search results

    
    

    Kwiqq - Social Website builder

    
    

    edocr - Making business documents interactive

    
    

    ShortFuze - Online movie creation tools for social networks

• Coull - Annotated

  tags: no_tag

  • To read more about the Web Mission (including an agenda) go to: www.webmission08.com

    
    

    
    

    The 20 companies embarking on the Web Mission are: 

    
    

    
    

    Groupspaces - Web-based tools for groups

    
    

    Tioti - A social network around TV

    
    

    Exabre (TheFilter) - Advanced music recommendation

    
    

    Coull - Interactive video platform

    
    

    Zogix - Employee services platform

    
    

    Byteplay (dotHomes) - Real estate search engine

    
    

    Trampoline Systems - Enterprise software harnessing social behaviour

    
    

    Hubdub - News prediction social network

    
    

    WAYN - travel and lifestyle social networking community

    
    

    TrustedPlaces - Venue recommendation network

    
    

    Slicethepie - Enabling bands to raise money directly from their fans

    
    

    Mydeo - Mainstream application for storing and sharing video

    
    

    Skimbit - Research and share decisions

    
    

    Huddle - Enterprise 2.0 collaboration

    
    

    Rummble - Mobile social networking and recommendation

    
    

    Zebtab - Desktop TV application

    
    

    Silobreaker - Contextual and graphic search results

    
    

    Kwiqq - Social Website builder

    
    

    edocr - Making business documents interactive

    
    

    ShortFuze - Online movie creation tools for social networks

    
    

    
    

    Details on the 20 selected companies are listed in TechCruch.    

    
    

    Click here to see the article on Netimperative’s website.  

todaytest 04/19/2008

• With a nod to the Valley, CBS Interactive shuffles management | The Social - CNET News.com - Annotated

  tags: utr, la

  • CBS Interactive, the media giant's digital division, has announced the opening of a Silicon Valley office and an executive reshuffling to focus on growth, President Quincy Smith announced Thursday.

    
    
    

    The CBS Interactive satellite office in Menlo Park, Calif., has opened, with its eye on tech partnerships and acquisitions. The Valley branch will "allow the company to better facilitate existing partnerships in the area, and future ones as well," a release from CBS explained.

todaytest 04/18/2008

• eXelate Raises $4M for Delayed-Ad Exchange - Annotated

  tags: utr2, advertising

  • In another example that investments in Internet advertising startups are far from cooling, eXelate is announcing a $4M investment from Carmel Ventures.

    
    

    The Israeli company offers a marketplace called the “eXelate Targeting eXchange” which is focused on what they are calling “Delayed-Ads.”

    
    

    Here’s how it works: An ad network participating in eXelate’s exchange purchases from publishers the right to place Delayed-Ad cookies on users with vertical-specific interests (travel, automotive, etc.). When such users later visit publisher sites that fall under the realm of the ad network, they are shown targeted ads relevant to the interest-specific site they received their Delayed-Ad cookie on. Hence, “Delayed-Ad.”

• Attributor Launches Service to Track Copyright Infringement Across the Web - Annotated

  tags: utr2

  • Every media company on the planet knows that its articles, songs, photos, and videos are being copied and spread willy-nilly across the Web, but they don’t have a clue what to do about it. They are not even sure what to do about all of their stuff that is just on YouTube (should they let Google monitor itself or create some vague industry guidelines and hope that every site follows them?). A startup called Attributor in Redwood City, Calif. says it can monitor the Web for copied content no matter where it may be, help publishers and media companies track it all, and help them decide what to do about it.

    
    

    Attributor was founded in 2005 and has raised $10 million from Sigma Partners, Selby Ventures, Draper Richards, First Round Capital and Amicus. The enterprise version of its service launches today, although it has been testing it with Reuters and AP for about six months. The enterprise service will cost anywhere from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year (a more limited self-serve version for bloggers and smaller publishers could cost as little as $6 or $7 per month, and will launch in 2008). CEO Jim Brock gave me a demo of Attributor last week in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria.

• Want To See How I Make A Screencast? « Demo Girl - Annotated

  companes should see this and make screen casts for our site

  tags: utr

  • Want To See How I Make A Screencast?

    
    

    14Jan08

    
    
    
    
    
    
    

    
    
    

    
    

    Not all screencasts are created equal.  What I mean by that is, there are lots of different tools one can use in order to create a screencast.  There are different types of software and applications such as Jing, Demo Builder, CamStudio, uTIPu, and what I use, Camtasia Studio.  There are also lots of different settings and effects you can use within those tools.  I decided to show you what steps I go through before, during, and after recording a screencast to end up with what you normally will see as an end product on DemoGirl.  This is not really a tutorial on how to use Camtasia Studio.  It’s more of a way for me to show you what settings I use when creating a screencast.  Hopefully it will be useful to those just getting started.

    
    

    At first, I wasn’t sure how I was going to record a screencast showing how I record a screencast.   Sound confusing?  Yeah, it did to me too.  Then I remembered that even though I long ago upgraded to Camtasia Studio Version 4, I still have Version 3.  So, I made the recording with version 3 but showed you all of the features I use in version 4.  Pretty nifty, huh?  Here’s my screencast tour of how I make screencasts for DemoGirl:

    
    

    Click Here To Watch The Screencast 7m49s

    
    

    Want this screencast on your site?  Click here to get the code for this and other DemoGirl screencasts

• Demo Girl - Annotated

  tags: no_tag

  • Want To See How I Make A Screencast?

    
    

    14Jan08

    
    
    
    
    
    
    

    
    
    

    
    

    Not all screencasts are created equal.  What I mean by that is, there are lots of different tools one can use in order to create a screencast.  There are different types of software and applications such as Jing, Demo Builder, CamStudio, uTIPu, and what I use, Camtasia Studio.  There are also lots of different settings and effects you can use within those tools.  I decided to show you what steps I go through before, during, and after recording a screencast to end up with what you normally will see as an end product on DemoGirl.  This is not really a tutorial on how to use Camtasia Studio.  It’s more of a way for me to show you what settings I use when creating a screencast.  Hopefully it will be useful to those just getting started.

    
    

    At first, I wasn’t sure how I was going to record a screencast showing how I record a screencast.   Sound confusing?  Yeah, it did to me too.  Then I remembered that even though I long ago upgraded to Camtasia Studio Version 4, I still have Version 3.  So, I made the recording with version 3 but showed you all of the features I use in version 4.  Pretty nifty, huh?  Here’s my screencast tour of how I make screencasts for DemoGirl:

    
    

    Click Here To Watch The Screencast 7m49s

    
    

    Want this screencast on your site?  Click here to get the code for this and other DemoGirl screencasts

todaytest 04/16/2008

• Entrepreneurial Series: Plain English Term Sheets - Mysteries Revealed - Annotated

  tags: blogpost

  • Location:
    WEBINAR
    
    
    Series:
    (none)
    
    
    Description:
    
    
    
    Entrepreneurial Series: Plain English Term Sheets - Mysteries Revealed
    
    
    
    Tuesday, April 22, 2008
    
    12:00-1:00pm Program
    
    
    WEBINAR
    
    
    
    The Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council's Entrepreneurial Cluster presents a special call-in talk show on term sheets. This plain-English discussion is designed for entrepreneurs and business people and features star lawyers Jeff Stoler of McCarter & English, LLP and Sarah Reed of Lowenstein Sandler PC (and former in-house counsel for Charles River Ventures). James Geshwiler of CommonAngels moderates.

• Boston startup events and resources - Annotated

  tags: boston, utr

  • 
    Boston startup events and resources
    
    

    
    
    

    
    

    Boston loves startups. The Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council is doing a great job setting up events. Watch the MTLC site for future dates. Here are just a few of the upcoming events this week and next.

    
    
    

     

todaytest 04/11/2008

• Ustream and more (Tech Confidential - VC Ratings) - Annotated

  Ustream.tv Inc. of Los Altos, Calif., disclosed an $11.1 million Series A round of funding

  tags: success

  • INTERNET

    
    

    USTREAM
    Online video broadcasting platform Ustream.tv Inc. of Los Altos, Calif., disclosed an $11.1 million Series A round of funding. Investors in the round were DCM and the Band of Angels, both of Menlo Park, Calif., and Labrador Ventures of Palo Alto, Calif. Other Ustream stakeholders include Western Technology Investment of San Jose, Calif., and Infinity Venture Partners Incubator Fund of Japan. Ustream enables individual users to create live broadcasts of events and claims to have gathered more than 2 million users and 250,000 broadcasters since the site was launched in March 2007.

todaytest 04/09/2008

• StartupCamp5AttendeeList - StartupCamp - Annotated

  tags: utr2

  • StartupCamp5AttendeeList

    
    

    
    

    From StartupCamp

    
    

    
    

    Jump to: navigation, search

    
    

    Who's Coming to Startup Camp San Francisco

todaytest 04/05/2008

How William Morris and other Hollywood agencies are getting into tech startups and investing » VentureBeat  Annotated

tags: la

All manner of Hollywood businesses are looking at how they can make themselves profitable online. The future isn’t clear for stalwarts like the larger music labels and movie studios. But there are other power players in the media who are making moves. In particular it’s worth looking at the role that Hollywood talent agencies are starting to play in connecting technology companies with the media and advertising industries.

All four of the largest talent agencies are looking at how to put themselves at the center of digital media. Perhaps the one most open about its efforts is the William Morris Agency, which recently partnered with Silicon Valley venture firms Accel Partners and Venrock, and telecommunications giant AT&T, to co-invest in promising media-related startups. WMA’s rival, Creative Artists Agency (CAA), has also been looking at raising a large digital media fund, together with Draper Richards Jurvetson — although it’s still little more than rumor.

Beyond investing in promising startups, WMA sees itself as a sort of “extended business development” arm of a technology startup, much like the role that it takes for the actors, directors, writers, musicians, professional athletes and other “talent” (celebrities) it represents. Take, for example, its role in helping Sunnyvale, Calif.-based mobile video company MyWaves.

William Morris and MyWaves’ growth

todaytest 04/04/2008

Xoopit Launches Private Beta of First Application for Webmail to Help People Discover, Organize and Share Rich Media in the Inbox; Also Announces $5 Million Series A led by Accel Partners and Foundation Capital  Annotated

tags: utr2

 Xoopit Launches Private Beta of First Application for Webmail to Help People Discover, Organize and Share Rich Media in the Inbox; Also Announces $5 Million Series A led by Accel Partners and Foundation Capital

    The inbox is the largest untapped social network in the world and has
remained relatively unchanged for two decades, until now



    SAN FRANCISCO, March 31 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Xoopit released the
first product to bring the power of the social web to email by combining
the benefits of social networks and media management within email
environments. Xoopit finds the pictures, videos, and files buried in
webmail's gigabytes of free storage, and allows users to share, comment,
and post them to their contacts on other social networks and blogs. The
product was released today in private beta with initial client support for
Google's Gmail and automatically imports shared media from the top photo
and video sharing networks such as YouTube, Flickr, Kodak, Shutterfly, and
Picasaweb.

todaytest 04/03/2008

iControl, Vlingo and more (Tech Confidential - VC Ratings)  Annotated

tags: success

Internet

Vlingo
Mobile voice search startup Vlingo Corporation has secured a $20 million Series B financing led by Yahoo! Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif. Also participating were existing investors Charles River Ventures of Waltham, Mass., and Sigma Partners of Boston. Cambridge, Mass.-based Vlingo plans to will use the capital for international expansion and product development. Yahoo! will take a seat on the company's board of directors. The Internet portal uses Vlingo's voice-powered interface to enable searches on mobile phones for its Yahoo! oneSearch product. --G.W.

todaytest 04/02/2008

Social gaming picks up momentum  Annotated

tags: utr2

Social Gaming Network, whose games include War Book, spun off from Freewebs earlier this year and started operating in Palo Alto this month.

"We're in the Pong stages of social gaming," said Shervin Pishevar, CEO of Social Gaming. "In terms of building new ideas, you should expect to see innovation for what it means to be a game and tap into the social graph, the people you enjoy playing games with."

Veeple uses Flash to make videos come alive with ad links » VentureBeat  Annotated

tags: no_tag

The Los Gatos, Calif. company can embed anything — including advertising web page links — into videos. It does so by putting an interactive overlay on top of a video in the Adobe Flash format. It thus makes the video come alive with links and other creative features. Users can thus imprint their own thoughts on a video in the parts where they want and then share it with their friends.

You can place a “VeeSpot” on any part of a video and make that spot interactive. You can turn it into a speech or a thought bubble with a sarcastic message. You can also record a voice message that plays when someone clicks on the VeeSpot. If you want, you can quickly share that video with family, friends, or everyone you know.

Omnisio also uses its Flash overlay to allow people to make comments on videos. (Our coverage). PLYmedia also allows movie viewers to embed comments in speech bubbles in movies.

With Veeple, you can also embed an ad link, such as an eBay logo, into a video. Users who click upon Madonna’s sunglasses in a video can thus link directly to a site where they can buy those glasses.

Scott Broomfield, CEO of Veeple, says that Veeple can distinguish itself from its rivals in a variety of ways. The company has its own object recognition technology that it can use to find and recognize objects within a video. Hence, if an advertiser puts a VeeSpot on an object in a video, that VeeSpot will appear whenever that object appears in the video.

“We consider these links within a video to be unintrusive to the viewer,” Broomfield said. “Since viewers aren’t putting up with 30-second commercials, we consider this to be the next logical step for video advertising.”

todaytest 04/01/2008

Online Chat, as Inspired by Real Chat - New York Times  Annotated

tags: no_tag

Vivaty, a start-up based in Menlo Park, Calif., is creating 3-D virtual chat rooms that people can add to the Web pages and social networking profiles on the sites where they spend most of their Internet time.

The company has been quietly working on its technology for three years and will begin a private test period on Facebook this week in advance of a wider introduction this summer. It is backed by the blue-chip venture capital firms Kleiner, Perkins Caufield & Byers and Mohr Davidow Ventures.

Vivaty turns a flat profile page into a three-dimensional live chat room. Users choose characters to represent themselves from a list of preternaturally handsome avatars — a requirement for any such service — and proceed to one of a dozen environments, like a gothic urban warehouse or seaside villa.

With videogame-like precision, they can then navigate that virtual space, which may feature their Facebook photos hanging from the walls and a YouTube video playing on a widescreen TV. Up to 15 others can choose avatars and enter the same room at the same time for text-based live socializing.