Ajax Girl

Sequoia backed Meebo launches Meebo Platform this evening, allowing third party developers to create applications for the Meebo web chat service. They’re celebrating the launch with a big party in San Francisco with hundreds of the company’s closest friends.

Like Facebook Platform and the recently announced MySpace Platform it consists of a set of APIs to give developers access certain user features and information. Developers will be able to include Flash applets and Javascript snippets within the applications.

Unlike MySpace and Facebook, however, the platform is not open to all who choose to come. The company is announcing four partners this evening and opening up a sandbox area for developers to build potential applications. Those that Meebo thinks will make the user experience richer, will be permitted to launch.

Meebo Platform will allow developers to monetize their applications, but it’s not open. Meebo will sell ads into the applications directly and split revenue 50/50 with the application developers.

Four partners are being announced this evening along with the launch. All are communication based: Tokbox (video chat), Talkshoe (conference calls on the fly), Ustream (lifecasting) and Pudding Media (PC to PC VOIP calls).

Games and other types of applications will come next. Basically, any type of application that can benefit from having either instant access to friends who are online right then and/or the need to communicate with them via instant messaging, would do well on the platform. With the communications partners, they simply use the friends list and presence indicator to help start a voice or video communication on the third party platform. For gaming and other applications, it may simply embed a game within a chat environment, allowing players to communicate real time with each other.

Meebo will also be hosting an open-door developer day on November 22 in their Silicon Valley offices. Developers can show up, show off their applications, talk to Meebo about potential applications, etc.

We mentioned current Meebo user stats in a post about them last week.

The image below shows the Tokbox application in action.

Meebo

Loading information about Meebo…

cb_widget_report_widget(”cb_widget_1193714753″); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_0_1193714753″,”meebo”);

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/176991864/

Yahoo is releasing version 9.0 of its popular instant messaging software, Yahoo Messenger, for Windows tonight. All in all, the update contains nothing revolutionary but does introduce some useful features.

Most remarkably, you can now add embed objects - such as movies, images, and maps - into chat conversations. Also handy: you can synchronize the playback of online videos and share Flickr photos in a slideshow, although only with one friend at a time.

Yahoo has also redesigned the user interface of Messenger’s friends list, bumped up file transfer limits to 2GB per-file, begun automatically scanning transfered files with Norton AntiVirus, added call forwarding to its VoIP offering, and designed new skins. Users can now send SMS messages to their friends’ cell phones with the desktop client. And Messenger has been localized for six new markets - the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India (in Hindi), and Vietnam - raising the sum of localized versions to 25.

While AOL has the most unique instant messaging users in the United States - and MSN has the most worldwide - Yahoo claims that their user base grew by 19% in the past year whereas AOL only grew by 2%.

I asked Yahoo representatives whether they were planning to integrate Yahoo Messenger with their other properties, such as the new social network Mash, but they declined to give any specifics. Hopefully their vague insistence that Yahoo is always looking for ways to integrate its products will lead to something experimental and new, like a Yahoo Messenger-Mash hybrid. A “real-time” social network with extensive chat, messaging, and VoIP calling functionality would be very interesting competition for Facebook and the like. It would also up the ante on MySpace and its integration of Skype, and take on startup FlickIM.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/177001541/

Fora.tv, which wants to become the C-SPAN of the Web, closed a $2 million seed round from Adobe Ventures and Will Hearst. The site has about 1,500 hours of public speeches from people like Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker and neurologist and New Yorker contributor Oliver Sacks. It gets its videos through partnerships with organizations like the Aspen Institute, the Commonwealth Club, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Long Now Foundation, and, yes, C-SPAN. In fact, founder and CEO Brian Gruber once worked at C-Span as its chief marketer. He prefers calling Fora.tv the “thinking man’s YouTube,” but admits the comparison to C-Span is apt in that Fora.TV is “about deep unfiltered, unmediated content.” But Fora.tv covers more than just politics. It also contains speeches from the leading lights of science, business, technology, and culture. If you are into that sort of thing.

Even if you are, sitting through an hour-long speech on the Web is hard for anyone. That is why Fora.tv breaks up each video into 3-minute chapters and indexes them so that busy brainiacs can find just the clip they are looking for and move on. Each video is transcribed overseas for easy indexing and searching. As Gruber puts it: “We want to crack the code of how do you take intelligent video content and give it to the modern viewer who has some form of ADD.” His business model is selling sponsorships for specific channels, which start at $100,000 for the entire year. Pfizer is one current sponsor. Gruber is selling access to a hard-to-reach audience, not to a lot of viewers (he says the site attracts only 250,000 unique visitors a month).

Even so, $2 million is peanuts when it comes to building a Web video destination, even if it is a niche site. Gruber plans to raise another $5 million in an A round within 90 days.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/177001540/

Automattic, the company that created the Wordpress.com blogging platform and oversees the Wordpress.org open source project, has rejected a $200 million acquisition offer, says multiple sources. Half the price was to be paid in cash, half in stock in the buyer.

The company, which has raised just $1.1 million in capital, has been on a tear lately. They acquired avatar startup Gravatar earlier this month. And Comscore says Wordpress.com had nearly 63 million unique worldwide visitors in September 2007, up 66% from May’s 38 million visitors. What I don’t know is the company’s revenue.

Building a real business around open source software is doable - see RedHat’s $4.1 billion market cap as an example. And rumor is that MySQL is planning an IPO of their own in the near future. For Automattic to spurn a $200 million offer means they are thinking along the lines of going public themselves, or at least a significantly higher acquisition price. Down the road, with the benefit of hindsight, we’ll know if they made the right decision or not.

Automattic declined to comment on this post.

Automattic

Loading information about Automattic…

cb_widget_report_widget(”cb_widget_1193706811″); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_0_1193706811″,”automattic”);

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/~3/176944091/

Following the announcement of Hulu early this morning, reports came pouring in about NBC Universal President & CEO Jeff Zucker’s vocal disdain for Apple turning media revenues “from dollars into pennies”.

Disputes over revenue shares caused the pair to split back in August, letting their contract lapse after this December. But positive reviews of Hulu seem to have made Zucker more at home criticizing iTunes. He detailed how NBC U felt slighted by iTune’s continual refusal to test higher $2.99 (Apple claimed $4.99) price points or share iPod sales, especially since 30-40% of all iTunes video downloads were from NBC content (Zucker claimed 40%, Apple 30%). All together, he said, NBC made just $15 million in revenue during the last year of its deal with Apple’s iTunes.

But squabbles over prices don’t seem to be all that’s in play. NBC recently struck a deal with Amazon to distribute their downloads for the same $1.99 iTunes price or a $1.89 per episode subscription, although the revenue share can vary. What NBC wants more than money, now, is control of their own digital destiny.

Zucker highlighted NBC’s own success online, specifically pointing to the large numbers of viewers already tuning in to NBC’s TV shows online. Zucker describes NBC.com as a “a small cable channel in our universe that is becoming very successful”, claiming 50 million TV show streams during October. That’s 8 million more than the 42 million streams served in the site’s first four months of operation to 6.9 million viewers. Although both numbers don’t state whether shorter and longer video clips are lumped together. For comparison, a hit TV show like “Heroes” can attract 16 million viewers in a week.

Yet, how profitable can NBC U’s venture into the ad-supported streaming model be? That all depends on costs and advertising revenue the service can command. On TV, an average hour-long primetime show can net $3.46 million in advertising revenue (41 cents per household). NBC has not disclosed it’s online earnings, earlier reports show online and offline aligning. A Hollywood Reporter article estimated $25 CPMs for a 15-second preroll Internet video spots, while general TV households in primetime might be an average $21. Video CPMs for the male 18-34 demographic, though, could reach as high as a $120 online and $198 on TV.

All things considered, going it alone may pay off for NBC.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/176970473/

What do you get when you combine Google Maps with hyper-local news and comments? You get a map-based news site called YourStreet, which officially launches tomorrow (although the site is already up). The site detects where you are located and serves up news stories about events that recently occurred in your city or neighborhood, as well comments from YourStreet members who live nearby.

For instance, when I checked out the site earlier today from my office in downtown Manhattan (yes, we found a NYC office!), it showed me a bunch of push pins on a Google Map. One was an item titled “Punk is Dead, Long Live Punk” about the former digs of punk rock club CBGBs. Another one was from the Buffalo News, noting the collapse of a building a few blocks away from my office that was linked to the 1906 murder of architect Stanford White, who had conducted an affair there with a 16-year-old chorus girl. And in the conversations section, one member, referring to a revered outdoor burger spot in Madison Square Park, asks, “When does the Shake Shack close?” (You mean, it closes for the winter?!!)

The startup has developed an algorithm that extracts geographical information from stories, such as street names, neighborhoods, and cities. It then geo-codes the articles against a longitude and latitude database so that it can place them on a map. The site will start off with regular Google AdSense ads, but that same algorithm will allow it to place local ads with extremely fine granularity. “The thing that distinguishes us,” explains CEO James Nicholson, “is that we can get down to a specific street level on the ads.” If he can attract enough local visitors to YourStreet, the local dry cleaner may also want to show up to advertise there. The localized ads will be simple text ads at first, but they could also eventually be push pins of a different color.

YourStreet has been self-financed so far by Nicholson to the tune of about $400,000. His last company, Netventures, was sold to CNET in 1999 for about $12 million. YourStreet was one of the startups in the TechCrunch40 Demo Pit.

YourStreet

Loading information about YourStreet…

cb_widget_report_widget(”cb_widget_1193698983″); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_0_1193698983″,”yourstreet”);

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/~3/176911603/

In other mapping news (see EveryScape post), I love all the competition going on in online mapping between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and even MapQuest. The latest in the feature race comes from Microsoft’s Live Search Maps. In addition to finally releasing its 3D Bird’s Eye view a couple weeks ago (see video below), Microsoft has also upgraded some of the basic features of its maps. For one thing, it has fixed what I consider to be a major bug in most mapping apps: overly-detailed driving directions. You can now have the option of skipping the first nine “turn left at the stop sign two blocks from your house” type of directions and just start the guidance from the nearest major highway—which you probably know how to get to anyway. Thank you, Microsoft, for treating us like humans.

In addition to the abbreviated directions,other improvements include:

—Landmarks are now given in driving directions that indicate you’ve gone too far.

—Black is the new red. Traffic speed is now shown with four colors (green, yellow, red, and black). Black means total standstill, versus red, which means creeping logjam.

—In some cases, Live Search Maps will now actually re-route your directions around bad traffic.

—Guided search gives you Yellow Page categories in a left-hand panel, and individual business details are now populated right on the map from sources like Judy’s Book or CitySearch.

—3D fly-throughs now support force feedback if you are using an Xbox 360 videogame controller, and buildings go transparent when you run into them.

—Microsoft even (admittedly) stole a line editing feature from Google Maps.

Competition is good. Here’s the video of Microsoft’s 3D Bird’s Eye view, which was first hinted at last May:

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/~3/176813243/

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.”

Is this basically a twist on behavioral targeting and retargeting? Generally speaking yes, except that eXelate restricts itself from building user profiles like traditional behavioral ad networks such as TACODA. Nor does it retarget traffic within the ad networks employing its system.

eXelate may not be revolutionary, but it doesn’t have to be. The online marketing pie is huge and many players, even the non-revolutionary ones, can still claim their stake. This is especially true in international markets where the US-based heavy hitters are at a cultural disadvantage.

eXelate

Loading information about eXelate…

cb_widget_report_widget(”cb_widget_1193670651″); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_0_1193670651″,”exelate”);

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/~3/176784271/

Newsweek has confirmed our story that MySpace cofounder Tom Anderson, who automatically becomes everyone’s first friend when they register for the site, has lied about his age. Newsweek based their confirmation on “professional license information, voter registration and utility and telephone service applications” (our story was based on a statement by a MySpace executive).

When MySpace was founded in 2003, Anderson claimed to be 27 years old. At the time he was actually 32. Today he claims to be 32, when in reality he celebrates his 37th birthday next week, on November 8. Anderson’s Wikipedia page has been updated to note the controversy. His MySpace page, for now, continues to perpetuate the fiction.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/176771235/

John C. Gunther is building a technical computing application that generates all of the data that it charts via client-side computations. He didn’t want to create the charts on the server side, and decided to use GWT to do the work for him.

This is how he created GChart.

To see it at work, check out the chart gallery that has examples such as:

Which creates:

For other graphing needs check out Plotkit and Dojo Charting.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/176726690/gchart-gwt-charts-without-jsni-plugins-or-server-round-trips