Ajax Girl

Benchmark Capital put $8 million to work with Swedish game site Power Challenge, the company will announce today. Power Challenge is a rich Internet application - a game that runs in java and plays very much like a video game. Users build and customize their teams and play against others for points and status. The quality of game play is high and is designed to push the boundaries between traditional PC gaming and online gaming.

Power Challenge, along with its sister site Manager Zone (acquired earlier this year), says it is adding 4,000 new players daily. They’ll use the cash from the financing to fund the development of new games titles, which are currently limited to soccer and hockey. The games are currently playable only on Windows PCs.

The company was founded in 2004.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/116480195/

Jossip is reporting that corporate focused video blog WallStrip has been acquired by CBS News for $5 million. The report states that an announcement is expected early this week and involves WallStrip host Lindsay Campbell being the next Amanda Congdon for CBS, fronting online shows.

I spoke to some one close to the deal who confirmed Jossip’s story. He told me that New York based Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson, who had previously invested $500,000 in WallStrip, negotiated and sealed the deal. The deal is said to be focused on signing Lindsay Campbell. CBS was keen to have Campbell on board and a cast iron contract meant that acquiring WallStrip was the only way they could get to her.

WallStrip as a video blog/ show has previously met with mixed revues. The dry topics and patchy scripting being pulled off only by the shining talent of Campbell. As a deal it has a sense of “What The?” about it. My source described the deal as 10x Wilson’s investment of $500,000 on revenue of $0. I can’t confirm WallStrip’s income but it begs the question in terms of ROI for CBS if WallStrip’s advertising revenues are low. Campbell has talent but if this was the driving reason behind the buy, they’d better hope she can tap dance as well.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/116454695/

Seattle-based Redfin, a real estate company that we started tracking a year ago, will be featured on 60 Minutes tonight at 7 pm Pacific on CBS. The video of the segment is here. This is great mainstream coverage for this startup. 60 Minutes has 13 million TV viewers, most of which knew nothing about Redfin until today.

They have an intruiging and aggressive business model, which is summed up by CEO Glenn Kelman’s statement that “Real Estate is by far the most screwed up industry in America.” Instead of providing useful real estate information to consumers and then pointing them to real estate professionals like competitors Trulia and Zillow, Redfin is doing their best to completely remove real estate agents and brokers from at least half of a home sale.

Redfin combines MLS listing information (homes for sale) with historical sales data (homes already sold) into a single map. If you find a home you like and want to place an offer, Redfin will represent you in the buying process (they have a call center with licensed real estate professioinals to guide you). Here’s the good part: They reimburse you 2/3 of the buy-side real estate fee directly on closing. The average amount reimbursed to the buyer is about $10,000.

They operate in a limited number of markets (Seattle, San Francisco/bay area, Southern California, Boston), but are expanding steadily. They’ll be in Washington DC and Chicago this summer.

Redfin has closed over 500 home sales and has saved customers an aggregate of $5 million in real estate broker fees. The company did $1 million in revenue last year.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/116442446/

Like Gmail years ago, today’s mark of being a Silicon Valley “insider” is being part of the Joost beta. Until recently it was nearly impossible to get in because current beta users had very few invites. Recently, however, the company started allowing many more people in as they prepare to launch.

We’ve gotten dozens of requests for invitations. To streamline the logistics, Andrew Michael, a moderator on the TechCrunch Forums, published a thread to distribute invitations quickly. If you are looking to get into Joost beta before they launch, that is the place to do it.

Get your Joost invitation here.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/116420238/

When AllFreeCalls shut down in February as a result of litigation, most people thought it was gone for good. The service, which allows people to call overseas for free by exploiting a regulatory loophole, was simply too good to be true.

Founder Pat Phelan vowed to bring the service back. And today he says he’s done it, under a new name and using a new back end service provider.

The new service is available at Yak4Ever. Like AllFreeCalls, all users have to do is call an access number in the U.S. and then forward on to an International number for free.

There are a couple of differences in the service though. First, users must register before making calls (this was not required previously). Also, international numbers must be pre-set. At registration you enter up to ten phone numbers and each is given a code (1-10). When you dial the access number you simply enter the code for the number you want to dial. The service is live now, but calls cannot be made until Monday.

There is now less flexibility in making calls to unique phone numbers, but for people who call the same friends and family all the time this will become very popular very fast. AT&T and others are going to continue to fight to kill this, since they are effectively subsidizing the service.

I’m removing the service from the DeadPool. For now.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/116418235/

MyBlogLog, the ubiquitous blog widget that shows pictures of recent visitors to a site, was one of the “instant” success stories of 2006 - Yahoo acquired the company before most people even had a chance to hear about it.

Like many blogs, we had the MyBlogLog widget on TechCrunch for months. We eventually removed it due to performance issues (it slowed down the site on a couple of occasions) and this incredible amount of spam that started to appear.

Some of that may be changing, David Dalka says. At a conference in Chicago yesterday, MyBlogLog community manager Robyn Tippins told the audience to expect several upcoming services changes.

Users should expect a rebranding and redesign of the service as well as a new widget for blogs with hover-over features. They will also be looking for a way to easily turn off presence so that users can hide the fact that they visited a certain site.

A redesign will be good. What will be even better is a commitment to 100% uptime. As a widget company it is not acceptable to slow down or take down partner sites. MyBlogLog’s first priority must be performance.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/116413260/

Formally announced during the week with funding of $12.5 million, Encyclopedia of Life aims to be an online reference source and database for every one of the 1.8 million species that are named and known on earth.

Encyclopedia of Life is a collaborative effort. Tens of thousands of citizen scientists with expertise around the world are responsible for the creation of content.

The Encyclopedia will be developed by bringing mashups of content from a wide variety of sources. This material will then be authenticated by scientists so that information listed is vetted and known to be authoritative. Data is then supplemented when and where new data is discovered in the field – from scientists across the globe – to ensure it stays current. Software tools will mine scientific literature in order to provide regular updates from external sources.

Encyclopedia of Life is being developed to serve as a comprehensive resource for everyone; scientist, teacher, student, media, any interested party. The Encyclopedia’s goal is to become a valuable learning and teaching resource for anyone who has an interest in life on Earth.

But is it better than Wikipedia?

Thomas Goetz writes at Epidemix that Wikipedia “sucks when it comes to Science topics”, not for being inaccurate, but unapproachable. “On science, there’s a oneupmanship going on, and a topic will be honed to an ever-greater level of expertise. That’s great for precision and depth, but horrible for the general user”.

Without seeing more than screen shots of ,the final product at Encyclopedia of Life it’s difficult to judge decisively whether the new comer will be superior to Wikipedia on Science, and yet it sounds far more approachable in terms of readability. Visually Encyclopedia of Life wins by a country mile.

Will Encyclopedia of Life be better than Wikipedia? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/116288683/

Co-authored writing online has been around for a while and picked up considerably with the introduction of wikis. Notably, Lawrence Lessig used a wiki to help update his book “Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace“. Collaboration is catching on, especially in journalism (iReport, Wired Assignment Zero). Here are two sites that take a lighter look at collaboration, letting you anonymously co-author short stories and books.

Portrayl

Potrayl is a small project we discovered in TechCrunch Forums that launched this month. The site lets members write their own stories a chapter at a time or more importantly collaborate on them.

Anyone can start a story. All you need is to describe the what the story will be about and kick start it with a first chapter. From there, the crowd takes over. Other users can edit unlocked chapters, end the story, or add new chapters to the previous ones. Chapters can be closed to collaborative editing or left open in draft mode. Stories can also fork into alternate storylines as users add new versions of existing chapters that take the tale into a new direction.

As a story is developing, you can subscribe to it via RSS and follow the developments for any of the storylines. Once a story is finished, you can view the whole storyline in PDF. Unfortunately stories don’t support graphics within their pages, so it’s text only.

Ficlet

Ficlets is an AOL site that lets users collaborate on short stories. Ficlets are a little different from Portrayl stories. Ficlets are unstructured short stories to which other users can contribute prequels and sequels instead of co-editing and adding chapters. Instead of maintaining distinct storyline threads, Ficlets shows users all the prequels and sequels that inspired or were inspired by the current story, which can also be followed via RSS. Each short story also supports reader ratings and comments so authors can get feedback about their stories.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/116273609/