Ajax Girl

Prerollr, a new product that gives bloggers and other content site owners the ability to monetize embedded videos, launched today. The product focuses on creating revenue for the sites actually embedding video, as opposed to the creator of the video content or the service (Youtube, Veoh, etc.) hosting it.

This is a space we’ve covered extensively. See our recent overview of video advertising solutions, as well as coverage of Kiptronic and Adbrite.

Most of those solutions, however, focus on revenue for the content creator as well as (sometimes) the sites showing the embedded content. Prerollr is only focused on the end point site showing content to users.

Advertisements aren’t video - rather they are normal display ads shown over the video player itself, and viewers must click on it to see the underlying video. See a demo here (it should work on all browsers except Firefox with Macs, which is coming soon).

Publishers can choose to show ads sold by Prerollr directly and take a revenue split, or promote their own content or ads. If a publisher shows their own content, Prerollr will take 25% of the inventory to show their own ads and generate revenue.

Integration is dead simple. Once a publisher has created an account they simply add a bit of code to the header file of the site, and ads will then be shown over all supported embedded videos. Most popular services are supported.

Prerollr was co-founded by Allen Stern (CenterNetworks), Felix Shinir and Sam Falah.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/134439746/

ValueClick has acquired MeziMedia for up to $352 million, in a deal consisting of $100million in upfront in cash, with an additional sum of up to $252 million to be paid depending on MeziMedia’s revenue and earnings performance through to 2009

LA based MeziMedia is a comparative shopping company that operates sites including Smarter.com and online coupon site CouponMountain.com.

The Wall Street Journal reported ValueClick Chief Executive Tom Vadnais saying that acquisition of MeziMedia was consistent with ValueClick’s acquisition philosophy and “gives ValueClick comparison shopping scale in the U.S., greater search marketing expertise and a presence in China.”

MeziMedia is said to be profitable with annual revenues of $40million.

ValueClick has been rumored as a takeover target itself recently, following the acquisitions of DoubleClick by Google and aQuantive by Microsoft.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/134428421/

Time is flying by. I have gotten back into the conference mood with some time on the Adobe event, where I got to give an ignite-style presentation on Google Gears, and popped by Mashup Camp today.

Before I look around we will be time for The Ajax Experience and as I look over who is speaking at the event, I get excited.

It is always great to hear from heavy hitters like Brendan Eich, Kevin Lynch, and Chris Wilson. They have different thoughts and opinions on the Web, and the direction it should be going. I can’t wait to get an update on their current thoughts. I am sure there will be some gentle IE 8 ribbing too, but Chris can more than handle himself.

Here are a few other presentations that I am excited about too:

• Achieving a runtime CPAN with Dojo’s xdomain resource loader
• JavaScript on Client and Server
• Case Study: Dodging the Pitfalls of Enterprise Ajax Applications
• Ruining the User Experience
• Prototype Patterns

The sessions are only one piece of the action though. The fun part is getting the community together throughout the show to get to know each other, share the pain and fun of developing Ajax applications, and plan the future. See you there!

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/134421581/the-ajax-experience-t-9-days

Streakr, a site that in private testing had a lot of buzz (we’ve covered it twice previously) launched in beta today.

Streakr is pitched as follows:

Streakr brings users the best of the web. They simply download a ‘discovery’ bar onto their browsers which, at the touch of a button, finds dozens of new websites that match their interests. They can then rate the sites they like and dislike by stamping them with a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ icon. Once selected, the URLs are saved onto their personal profile page and indexed for future reference. The sites, which users can also review, can then be shared with fellow Streakrs via the social network.

The politest way of describing Streakr: MySpace and StumbleUpon got together and had a learning impaired child.

When first mentioned in March, Streakr was suppose to be a site with “attitude”, and yet the only attitude Streakr delivers is a social network that looks nearly identical to MySpace (complete with ugly profile pages) but lacks nearly all the features. Then there is the site surfing/ toolbar feature that is nothing more than a StumbleUpon clone. Users are also given the ability to search for friends on other social networking sites, however why someone would search for friends on other sites via Streakr and not Google, or the social networking sites themselves was not explained and there is no aggregation tools that could make this an interesting feature.

To be fair it’s only a beta launch, so perhaps Streakr will deliver a more compelling product in the future, but clearly the hype had no place in reality. If you’ve always wanted to be part of a social network built around a StumpleUpon style service, you might find some enjoyment from Streakr, for the rest of us; there is not a lot to see.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/134412541/

Truphone , which offers free internet phone calls over WiFi networks, has encountered quite a few road blocks in their journey toward growing their VOIP startup.

Some carriers purposely disabled VOIP features used by Truphone on their Nokia N95s. VOIP has been labeled a possible method for terrorists to communicate untracked. Finally, T-Mobile refused to interconnect with Truphone’s network and VOIP carriers in general, making it impossible to call T-Mobile numbers. The rule didn’t apply to fellow VOIP startup Jajah, in which T-Mobile was an investor, because Jajah makes the final connection to callees using the existing phone network instead of VOIP.

Today finally brings some good news, as the company has secured an injunction against T-Mobile UK, forcing the local carrier to interconnect with the service by Monday, July 23rd under the Competition Act.

We’ve included a video of James Tagg making the announcement below:

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/134386313/

Question and answer reference site Answers.com has purchased Dictionary.com’s parent company, Lexico Publishing, for $100 million in cash. Lexico can really serve all your lexical needs because it also owns Thesaurus.com and Reference.com. The deal is expected to close later this fall.

The deal has some major benefits for Answers.com. In 2006, Lexico generated revenues of $7 million, EBITDA of $2.9 million and net income of $2.8 million. It also generates approximately three times the total page views of Answers.com and is expected to add 22.5 million monthly unique users, making Answers the #28 property on the web.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/134366166/

Online music has been one of the most tumultuous categories online. Ever since Napster launched in the late 90’s, the music industry has been scrambling for a new model. DRM was once thought the industry’s saving grace, but consumer frustrations and movements from big players like Apple have reversed the trend. Some are even streaming it for free.

Luxembourg-based Jamendo (launched in 2005) is grass roots site, following the DRM free music trend by helping artists distribute their music under the Creative Commons license. They just closed their series A round of funding from Mangrove Capital Partners today for an undisclosed sum. You may not have heard of Jamendo because their growth has been focused in areas like the Continental and Central European markets. However, Jamendo intends to put the money toward growing in North America, Brazil, India and Russia.

Artists can upload their tracks to the service and pick what type of creative commons license they want to list their music under. Listeners can create profiles, review music, post videos, and play the tracks in Jamendo’s player. Tracks can be put into easily shared playlists or downloaded from the site.

In exchange for uploading their music unknown artists get promotion and distribution from fans gushing about their tracks embedding the songs on their sites, and sharing albums across P2P networks. Donations are also appreciated.

Jamendo claims over 140,000 active users with nearly 4,000 albums and over 40,000 user reviews. Creative Commons does have a competing public license music search engine powered by OWL, but lacks the social networking aspect.

There’s no word on a business model yet, although the site currently runs banner advertising. Imeem is a close competitor to Jamendo, which lets users listen to Snocap and indie artists, while splitting ad revenue with the track owner. Amie Street’s demand based music pricing is also another model to watch. Jamendo may follow a similar model.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/134357848/

Healthline has dipped it’s hand into a $21 million series B financing led by GE/NBC Universal’s Peacock Equity Fund, a joint venture between GE Commercial Finance’s Media, Communications & Entertainment business and NBC Universal. This is on top of their $14 million round last January.The round also includes smaller investments from Aetna Ventures, LLC, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, U.S. News and World Report, and previous investors VantagePoint Venture Partners and Reed Elsevier Ventures.

They’ve also struck some deals with Aetna, AOL, Ask.com, and NBC Universal’s iVillage Total Health to use their search and navigation technology. AOL used to have a content deal with WebMD, has since opted for other content partners, with Healthline joining to power their search.

Health search remains a strong vertical because searching for health related info doesn’t simply use keywords, but include symptoms and related diseases. There are a host of other health search engines in this space. Microsoft’s recently acquired their closest competitor, Medstory, which competes directly with Healthline’s recently released symptom search. Other search engines include Healia, Kosmix, and even health meta-search engine Mamahealth.com. Google has their own lesser known health search engine based on the Co-op platform.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/134347658/

Our next Fireside Chat will go down tomorrow (Tuesday) afternoon. Do you have a question you’d like to see us ask our entrepreneur/inventor guests? Post it in the comments.

The participants:

1. Brian Crabtree of Monome (creators of the monome 40h).

We aim to refine the way people consider interface.
we seek less complex, more versatile tools: accessible, yet fundamentally adaptable. we believe these parameters are most directly achieved through minimalistic design, enabling users to more quickly discover new ways to work, play, and connect. we see flexibility not as a feature, but as a foundation.

2. David Rose, CEO of Ambient Devices (creators of the Ambient Orb and the Ambient Umbrella).

Ambient devices elegantly embed digital information into the objects and environments that surround us. These displays are in the form of sound, air pressure, motion, light, smell, and other media that complement the full range of our human sensory modalities. They exist in the periphery of our senses, where they provide continuous information without being distracting.

3. Nathan Seidle of Spark Fun Electronics.

Spark Fun Electronics is a team of “tinkerers” (e.g. Picture frame Tetris) who started an emerging resource for hard-to-source hardware and helps students and researchers create proof-of-concept gadgets quickly and cheaply. They also do product development and consulting.

The site was designed with the electronic fool in mind. Every item we stock has large, clean pictures online just so you can be sure of what you are getting. We have plenty of links to resources and help online to get you steered in the right direction…You may already have your Ph.D. in Material Physics or you may be a curious kid who’s ready to wire up your first kit – we’ve been there and we know how to help.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/514-questions-for-entrepreneurinventor-fireside-chat

Paying your bills online has grown in popularity. It cuts out the delays and frustrations of mail and about three quarters of US households are doing it.

Billeo is officially releasing to their bill pay toolbar to make managing these payments and even online shopping a little easier. The toolbar (IE, Firefox) stores your payment credentials, payment receipts, and reminds you when bills are coming due through an alert flag and email. A lot of payment services offer easy recurring payments by credit card, so it may not be for everyone.

With the toolbar, you bookmark your bills as you surf the internet, specifying how often Billeo needs to remind you to pay. Whenever you come to a payment page, Billeo recognizes when you are on one of their 6,000 payment points and offers to fill out the form. It works for bill pay and shopping sites alike. When you get to the confirmation screen, you can save the receipt. Billeo will cache it as an image on their servers. Your Billeo account will also register the payment so you can look at your billing trends over the months and see how you compare with the average spent by everyone on the service.

Billeo’s toolbar seems to be in a good position to solve at least part of the personal finance problem, monitoring your payments online. Billeo can easily track all of your online payments, whereas services like Billmonk and Buxfer need to have the info imported. The major drawbacks for the service are the need of a toolbar to use the system at all, as well as the failure of previous form filling programs like Microsoft Passport.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/134329574/