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Conduit Labs, a yet-to-launch gaming virtual world, just closed a $5.5 million series A round with Charles River Ventures and Prism Venture Works. In addition to the financing, CRV’s Susan Wu and Prism’s Will Kohler have joined the company’s Board of Directors.

The details on the site are in flux and scarce. However, the service will be in the emerging space of “immersive online gaming meets social networking”. Their vision is to combine the best of social networking and online virtual world gaming, which Co-founder Nabeel Hyatt loosely termed as “Facebook meets World of Warcraft”. They don’t want to recreate a social network online, but rather marry existing networks (even perhaps Last.FM) with a 3D gaming experience. In the real world you can call up some friends and play a simple game of basketball. Conduit wants you to enable you to do the same thing easily online.

The product will be a 3D virtual world that runs on Flash through your browser. Once online you’ll get to connect with friends to play games. Flash will make the application more accessible than a lot of the existing 3D virtual worlds, which require long downloads. HiPiHi recently tried to help solve this problem by pushing for virtual world interoperability. They also want to make the games more accessible than existing online MMORGs aimed at hardcore gamers. The games aim to capture the casual social experiences of games like Wii Tennis or Guitar Hero.

The team behind Conduit Labs has a significant amount of experience with casual games and 3D worlds. Some of Conduit Lab’s co-founding members (Dan Ogles, Michael Sheidow, and Daniel O’Brien) served leading roles in creating games like Guitar Hero, Asheron’s Call, one of the first 3D massive multiplayer worlds, and the Lord of the Rings Online.

The company was founded by Nabeel Hyatt in April, while an entrepreneur in residence for Prism Venture Works in Boston, Massachusetts. They’re currently a team of 4, but will be expanding to 10 in the next 6 weeks.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/146766464/

Back in September last year Michael suggested everyone check out BlogMusik quickly before it was shut down. BlogMusik is a service born in France that lets you search for mp3 files on the web and listen to them in streaming mode for free. At the time the service was young and had no particular licensing agreements. A few months later, the SACEM, the organization in charge of collecting payments for artists’ rights sent them a cease and desist letter with a view to stop the service. A lot has happened since (beyond a rather nice site redesign and addition of sharing features).

BlogMusik will announce tomorrow that they came to an agreement with the SACEM, clearing the service of copyright infrigement accusations. The details of this agreement are not are not being disclosed, but other deals suggest it is based on a revenue sharing mode. BlogMusik’s business model is relying on advertising and affiliate revenue coming from the sales of songs on iTunes and Amazon. This agreement should cover BlogMusik for any music they host wherever the music is listened from. However they still have to come to an agreement with organizations representing majors and labels (Pandora had to face new webradio rates imposed by the RIAA). This is being taken care of according to the CEO of the company and new agreements should be announced soon.

All in all this is a good news for BlogMusik The company now has an opportunity to become a true free legal alternative to listen to music on the internet. Unlike Pandora this is a music on demand service where you choose the titles you want to listen to (although you have a smart playlist option to generate automatically radios out of a song or an artist).

BlogMusik.net will also change name and become Deezer.com. This is a good thing i had a hard time getting the UR/nameL right with this “k” in the middle (not mentionning the .net).

RadioBlogClub, another popular french service was forced a few months ago to change hosting provider following a complaint sent by the same SACEM. The service was interupted a few days and opened again as fresh as new. To date no official licensing agreement was made with the company.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/146764211/

Back in september last year Michael was suggesting to quickly check out BlogMusik before it disappears. BlogMusik is a service born in France that lets you search for mp3 files on the web and listen to them in streaming mode for free. At the time the service was young and had no particular licensing agreements. A few months later, the SACEM, the organization in charge of collecting payments for artists’ rights sent them a cease and desist letter with a view to stop the service. A lot has happened since (beyond a rather nice site redesign and addition of sharing features).

BlogMusik will announce tomorrow that they came to an agreement with the SACEM, clearing the service of copyright infrigement accusations. The details of this agreement are not revealed but like with other media companies we can assume it is based on a revenue sharing mode. BlogMusik business model is relying on advertising and on affiliation revenues coming from the sales of songs in iTunes and Amazon. This agreement should cover BlogMusik for any music they host wherever the music is listened from. However they still have to come to an agreement with organisations representing majors and labels (Pandora had to face new webradio rates imposed by the RIAA). This is being taken care of accord to the CEO fo the company and new agreements sould be announced soon.

All in all this is a good news for BlogMusik that has an opportunity to become a true free legal alternative to listen to music on the internet. Unlike Pandora this is a music on demand service where you choose the titles you want to listen to (although you have a smart playlist option to generate automatically radios out of a song or an artist).

BlogMusik.net will also change name and become Deezer.com. This is a good thing i had a hard time getting the UR/nameL right with this “k” in the middle (not mentionning the .net).

RadioBlogClub, another popular french service was forced a few months ago to change hosting provider following a complaint sent by the same SACEM. The service was interupted a few days and opened again as fresh as new. To date no official licensing agreement was made with the company.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/146764211/

The TechCrunch20 Panel of Experts is now nearly complete. Today we add Esther Dyson, Guy Kawasaki and Yossi Vardi to the impressive list of individuals who will judge the startups launching at the conference and determine who will ultimately win the $50,000 top prize.

The final companies for TechCrunch20 have been selected, and more announcements are coming soon. Register for the event, which is being held in San Francisco on September 17-18, here.

Esther Dyson and her company EDventure specialize in analyzing the impact of emerging technologies and markets on economies and societies. She is the author of Release 2.0, a book which discussed how the Internet has affected our lives. Esther has been a board member or early investor in numerous startups, including Flickr, PowerSet, ZEDO, Medscape, and Medstory. In addition to her active roles in a number of not-for-profit and advisory organizations, Esther enjoys private aviation and commercial space startups and hosts an annual Flight School conference in Aspen.

Guy Kawasaki is CEO of early-stage venture capital firm Garage Technology Ventures and an active blogger. Guy was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, CEO of ACIUS and founder of Fog City Software. Guy has written eight books, including The Art of the Start. He sits on the board of BitPass, FilmLoop and SimplyHired. His most recent venture is launching Truemors, a site dedicated to democraticizing information by encouraging everday people to post news.

Yossi Vardi is one if Israel’s hi-tech veterans, having helped build some 40 hi-tech companies in Internet, software, telecommunications, electro-optics, energy, environment and other areas. Several companies Dr. Vardi co-founded became successful public companies, among them Alon, Advanced Technologies, and Granite Hacarmel. Internet companies backed by Dr. Vardi include Mirabilis Ltd, ICQ (acquired by AOL), Gteko (acquired by Microsoft), Scopus and Answers.com. He is a member of the World Economic Forum, on the board of Amdocs, and the advisory board of 3i. He has served as an advisor to the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/146732384/

It’s a seemingly trivial feature, but Twitter’s lack of a search function led me and others to use Google or other search engines to try to figure out someone’s Twitter page. Today they’ve added that feature and allow search via name or other profile information (location, bio, and url).

It seems that Twitter has become much more stable since the launch of competitors like Pownce, Jaiku, Yappd and others. And now we’re getting new feature releases too. The wonders of competition.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/146735373/

The American Intelligence community has joined the social networking phenomenon with the launch of A-Space, a MySpace style social network.

The move is said to be part of the ongoing effort to transform the American Intelligence community following the failure to detect the 9/11 terrorist attacks or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

In a FT.com report, Thomas Fingar, the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis said that A-Space would be “MySpace for analysts” that will break down firewalls across the “traditionally stove-piped intelligence community.”

A-Space will initially be voluntary “to assuage worries of spies concerned about blowing their cover.” The service will be equipped with web-based email and software that recommends areas of interest to the user “just like Amazon suggests books to its customers.” The site will also allow users to create and modify documents and determine user privileges

The US Director of National Intelligence will open the site to the entire intelligence community in December.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/146727999/

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Google announced the addition of YouTube style embedding to Google Maps this morning.

Google Map mashups have been popular for a long time now, however for the non-programming inclined including a Google Map on a blog or website hasn’t always been easy. The new embed feature (as above) now provides an easy way for anyone to include an active map on their site.

Embedded maps can be customized in terms of size and can also include driving directions, search results, or a user generated map.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/146722281/

GreyStripe has passed the 14 million downloads mark on its free mobile gaming content site Gamejump.com in just over 12 months.

Gamejump.com’s model provides downloadable mobile gaming content ad supported and free in a market where paid downloads are the norm. Ads are displayed before and after each game.

Greystripe took $8.9million in Series B funding in May, in a round led by Steamboat Ventures, the VC arm of the Walt Disney Company; good credentials for a gaming content provider.

Gamejump.com features 800 games by 70 publishers and includes a variety of genres to appeal to different users. Gamejump has seen users download an average of 3.4 games each and the number of females users downloading games has been fairly close to the number of male users.

Greystripe recently signed a deal with Konami, the publisher of titles including Frogger and Dance Dance Revolution, that will see Konami’s extensive catalog of games being provided for free to Gamejump.com users. The paid mobile download industry likes to label free game services as delivering inferior quality; the provision of Konami content would seem to suggest that this isn’t the case, and certainly it’s a positive sign that the free ad-supported model of mobile gaming may actually be a winner.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/146715995/

We’re pretty big fans of Microsoft’s new Silverlight platform. And just about everyone will agree that Tafiti, a new Microsoft search site built on Silverlight, is pretty darn easy on the eyes. They even got the Jackson Fish Market team (they are creating new visually stunning products) to help out on the project.

But will many people use it? It still uses Microsoft search, which in my opinion is not as relevant as Google or Yahoo. And the site, while pretty, runs very slow.

I think people want fast results served on a clean white page with as little clutter as possible (example). Bells, whistles and pretty graphics are fine, but functionality rules.

That being said, Microsoft isn’t out there claiming that this is their new search paradigm. It’s an experiment to show the power of Silverlight, and at that it succeeds.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/146682685/

European web chat startup eBuddy, which is in a fight-to-the-death struggle with Silicon Valley based Meebo, just added support for MySpace instant messaging tor their product.

eBuddy now supports MySpace IM, AOL, ICQ, GoogleTalk, MSN and Yahoo. Log in to some of all of these services from the eBuddy home page.

MySpace says they now have over 18.5 million users of the service, which soft launched in September 2006. By comparison, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and AIM have 224 million, 93 million, 30 million and 30 million users, respectively (Comscore worldwide - July 2007). GTalk trails the rest, with just 4.8 million users.

Rumor is that Trillian, a downloadable piece of software that also accesses all major IM networks except Skype, will be adding MySpace support soon, too.

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/~3/146636216/