Ajax Girl

One of the hardest to get beta accounts right now is Seesmic, Loic Le Meur’s new startup that went into private beta in early October.

The service, which can most easily be described as a video Twitter, is popular with the 300 people who are beta testing it so far. Le Meur says that more than half of them are extremely active, and 200 videos are being posted daily.

There are over 5,000 people on the beta invite wait list. But if you’ve gotten to this post quickly enough, you can get in immediately. The first 100 people to send an email to techcrunch@seesmic.com will be given beta accounts. Everyone after the first 100 will be added to the beta list.

At some point, Le Meur says, existing beta holders will be able to invite others to join as well. As soon as that functionality goes live we’ll add Seesmic to InviteShare.

Disclosure: I have also become an investor in Seesmic and have updated my disclosures on our about page.

seesmic

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

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/188037445/

Duncan Riley said “BrightSpot.tv on the other hand comes with some interesting backers that might just make it a breakout in the space.”

He was wrong. It’s now in the TechCrunch DeadPool.

BrightSpot.tv

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

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/188017249/

What’s the top news story on TechMeme this fine Tuesday afternoon?

It’s a story about the sudden disappearance of the word “is” from Facebook’s status message yesterday. Then, today, it reappeared. For a brief period of time, users could create a status message that did not include the word “is” in it.

Wired Magazine saw fit to write on it, as did most of the other top tech blogs.

I say we all need a vacation. Badly.

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

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/188007692/

Yesterday Amazon released an eBook reader/service called Kindle. Yesterday a lot of people wrote reviews of Kindle. Yesterday barely anyone on the planet had actually used Kindle, but they just couldn’t wait to tell you how much it sucked.

There’s a lot of premature hating going on. Hypercritical negativity is in season among a large set of the web’s independent tech observers.

Most of the 300 reviews on Amazon’s Kindle product page were overwhelmingly negative. Most of the blog posts on the web were overwhelmingly negative. Much of the tech news/review sites were overwhelmingly negative. Again, few people had actually used a Kindle. And none of the reviewers had a chance to live with one yet.

One thing we have all had a chance to live with are books and newspapers. They’re stacks of dead trees. Bulky blocks of words. They take up a lot of space, need to be pushed around by plane and truck, and quickly fill up your carry on if you want to take more than a couple with you. When you buy a book, you’re buying a tiny piece of furniture that you usually carry with you the rest of your life. Moving? Time to pack up the books!

I know book lovers like to talk about the permanence of books, but I think that’s overrated and over-romanticized. Some people love to build extensive physical libraries to house their books. Not me. I’d prefer to read it and move on. Sure I could buy a book, read it, and sell it or give it to a friend or a library, but I’m just looking for the knowledge, not the inventory or an exit strategy.

That’s not to say books are bad. Books are wonderful, important things. But they’re also terrible at a lot of things. You can’t search paper. You can’t bring that many with you at once. They suck up valuable resources in production and transportation. They take up a lot of space. They leave an artifact when you’re done with them.

I’m not suggesting we get rid of books as we know them. Ever. I’m suggesting there’s plenty of room for another model that shines the spotlight on convenience rather than the legacy attributes of print.

The Kindle sounds like a really interesting device with an interesting value proposition. It’s not tethered to a computer. That’s big. It’s more about the convenience and benefits — your books, small size, instant new books, morning paper delivery — than the physical product or the technology.

Kindle isn’t the first eBook reader, but it’s the first portable bookstore. That’s novel. A book in 60 seconds whenever I want it at used-bookstore prices. And the daily push newspaper feature sounds like one hell of a bonus. I love getting the paper, but I hate getting the paper. What a complete waste of resources just so I can get yesterday’s news. I like that there’s some genuinely new thinking behind Kindle. We should embrace this, not tear it to shreds before it even has a chance.

So I’m going to withhold judgement. Our Kindle arrives today. We’re going to live with it for a while and then we’ll write an honest review. Until then…

Full Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in 37signals.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/712-kindle-ignites-the-flames

Casual gaming is a big business. A video games analyst at IDC, Schelley Olhava, estimated 2.6 million casual games were purchased ($52.7 million) last year. But in game advertising firm NeoEdge says they can triple the revenue of these games by serving ads instead of charging. Their rich media ads are served as pre-roll, post-roll, or interstitial advertisements in games. Today they’ve taken the system, Neo ARM, out of private beta and opened it to all developers.

MochiAds is another casual gaming advertising system we’ve covered in the past. Unlike MochiAds, NeoEdge doesn’t rely on developers to insert ads through a self-serve toolkit, but instead adds the advertising code to a developer’s game themselves (a potential bottleneck). Revenue from the ads are split about 50-50. NeoEdge says they can integrate with more formats than just flash games (i.e. download games), although flash appears to be format affecting most developers. Their system delivers the ads dynamically from their servers over the internet, making it possible to target ads based on demographic info provided by publishers.

But 100% free doesn’t seem to be the whole story. Long before social networks casual gaming sites discovered the value of micro-transactions. King.com collected $27 million from gaming micro-transactions last year. Nexon made $250 million in revenue in 2005, mostly through micro-transaction game upgrades. Kongregate is launching their own micro transaction system for game developers as well. A blended monetization model between ads and micro-transactions seems the best strategy for getting the most money out of visitors.

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

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/188028348/

Putting together a new presentation for a conference/meeting can be stressful. What do you say? How do you say it? How do you structure it? What’s first? What’s last? How do I pull it all together?

I used to build my presentations first and then talk them out second. I’d make an outline or create some slides to get started. I’d try to think logically about how to begin, how to fill the middle, and how to end. Then once I had all the slides done I’d talk through them for the first time. I usually wasn’t happy with the outcome. I’d over-think and under-deliver. This process churned out clinical, sterile presentations. Yuck.

Last year I tried something different. I just started talking (out loud, to myself) about something I was passionate about. Maybe I’d look at a screen from Highrise and just talk about it. Why did we do that? Why did we make this decision? Or maybe I’d just stat ranting about my aversion to functional specs or meetings. Or maybe I’d just go off about collaboration and productivity. Or maybe I’d gush on about VC investments or the state of small business software.

Whatever it was, I’d just talk first and write second. I found that going off on an unstructured rant would expose all sorts of fresh ideas. In 30 minutes I could churn out four or five solid directions instead of spending 30 minutes outlining just one.

I also found that the ideas developed more naturally this way. I made better points and the persuasion was more powerful. Talking without a plan mined thoughts I didn’t know I had.

I encourage you to give this technique a try sometime. It works really well for me. I hope it helps you.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/710-presentation-tip-talk-first-write-second

Deep in the Googleplex there is an engineering team thinking about how to extend Google’s reach into your TV. Its work goes way beyond the Google TV ads currently being tested by EchoStar (and targeted with help from Nielsen). It even goes way beyond the development of a Google set-top box, which has been hinted at in the past. In fact, Google may very well want to do to the set-top box what it is trying to do to the mobile phone with its Android operating system—create an open-source hardware platform and attract developers to build applications on top of it. At least that is the unconfirmed rumor I’ve heard from two knowledgeable industry sources.

“That’s been a persistent rumor, yeah,” says Peter Barrett, chief technology officer for Microsoft TV (and the only source willing to be attributed by name). “You would have to ask them about whether they are doing anything like that and whether it is a good idea or not,” he adds. So I put the question to Vincent Dureau, the head of Google’s TV technology team and the former chief technology officer at OpenTV, who was hired by Google two years ago. “There are rumors about what Google does all the time,” he says. “We have been totally focused on advertising so far.” Google’s policy is not to comment on future products. But Dureau never denies the rumor outright. He couches his response with phrases like “so far” and “at this stage.” And, when pressed, he does allow that there is “a lot of potential” for turning the TV set-top box into a platform for applications, but insists, “I have no insights as to what form of applications will be deployed on those set-top boxes or not.” Perhaps. Or perhaps he just doesn’t have any insights he is willing to share with us. Fair enough.

Let’s read through the tea leaves ourselves then. So far, Google’s aspiration has been to change the way advertising is sold on TV. Through its partnership with EchoStar, it is automating the way TV ads are bought and sold, and changing the way they are measured (by studying the second-by-second logs from millions of set-top boxes in an anonymous fashion). But why stop there? The modern set-top boxes you get from your cable or satellite TV provider are basically computers. They are loaded with a few limited applications—a program guide, DVR menu, customer-service messaging, and not much else. They are closed boxes, tightly controlled by the cable and satellite TV companies. For the most part, there are not a lot of interesting applications that run on set-top boxes.

An open-source operating system like Android for the set-top box could change that. If creating applications for set-top boxes was more like creating applications for the Web, we’d be able to do a lot more things with our TVs—especially if those set-top boxes were also connected to the Web. Want instant messaging and caller ID on your TV? No problem. Want customized information widgets for the TV that scroll breaking news, weather, sports scores or stock quotes from sources you choose in your own ticker at the bottom of the screen? No problem. Want to turn that annoying ticker off? No problem. Want to control the camera angles on that basketball game? No problem. Want to add the live video stream from your friend’s cell phone who is at the game? No problem. Want to create your own video mashup of fight scenes from various movies that you can edit right on your TV and share with others on their TVs? No problem.

Oh, and what about new forms of advertising? Inserting ads into pay-per-view or triggering them when someone presses fast-forward on their DVR require applications of a different sort. You might not like that, but the TV industry would. Any new video ad unit that starts to gain traction on the Web could be ported over to regular TVs—clickable overlays, contextual video ads, unobtrusive sponsorship icons. Why not even let viewers program their own ads with a laundry list of categories and companies to choose from? They might actually watch them.

When it comes to advertising, Google is not shy about stating its ambitions. “We are confident we are going to revive the television advertising industry,” says Dureau, “by bringing new advertising to it.” Already, Google is trying to make TV ads more relevant, easier to target, and cheaper to deploy. As a result, Google thinks it can attract more ad dollars from smaller businesses that may not have been advertising on TV before.

“In many ways,” says Dureau, “we think that television is becoming like the Internet in that there is a multiplication of channels. This creates challenges for viewers, advertisers and creators.” He is already addressing the concerns of advertisers. An Android-like project for the set-top box could help address the concerns of viewers and creators by giving people more control over their TV viewing experience. And making the set-top box more useful by opening it up to a bounty of applications could mean more advertising opportunities. Those apps would be yet another way to keep viewers glued to their TV sets.

Before Google announced Android, many people thought Google was developing its own mobile phone. But the point of Android is to get other companies to build the phones and a new set of applications for them. Google wants to supply the underlying technology to make it happen, and finally bring the mobile world into the Web age. It should be obvious by now that Google is much happier when it is creating technology platforms—for mobile apps, for social apps, for advertising— than one-off consumer products. Why should it be any different when it comes to television? (And remember, Andy Rubin and others on Google’s Android team used to work at WebTV and TV software startup Moxi Digital, although Android is not officially part of Dureau’s group).

In any case, Google would not be the first to try this. Some of the hypothetical applications I describe above are already being developed for Microsoft’s IPTV set-top boxes, which runs Microsoft Mediaroom. Anyone can write an application for Mediaroom on the PC and easily make it work on an IPTV set-top box (or an Xbox or an HD-DVD drive, both of which come with Ethernet jacks). There are only about 50 or so third-party apps for Mediaroom right now, however, because making TV apps easier to build is not enough. Getting cable or satellite TV providers to put those apps on their set-top boxes is the bigger battle.

“Service providers are open to good rich apps on their network if they do emerge,” says Microsoft’s Barrett. Not surprisingly he does not think that an open-source, Android approach is the way to go. “Trying to make a level playing field,” he says, “really is not in the service provider’s interest. It is in Google’s. But if you just throw the doors open, the TV or the phone becomes unusable pretty quickly.” The same argument is why Apple is cautious about allowing third-party apps on the iPhone. You don’t want some random app crashing your cell phone or your TV. But that just means device makers or carriers need to certify that the apps are safe. The still-closed mobile world is moving in this direction despite these issues.

The prospect of opening up the TV to Web-like applications holds a lot of promise, especially if those same apps can run on the Web or mobile phones with a few tweaks. Whether people will want those apps on their TVs is another question entirely. So far, the answer has been no. But that could just be because it has been too difficult to get apps onto those set-top boxes. For this to work, Google would have to convince at least one cable or satellite TV provider to let viewers try out the resulting apps on its service. Google already has a strong relationship with EchoStar, which I hear is for sale. My understanding is that Google is in the early stages of developing its Android set-top box strategy. It may end up deciding not to pursue it. But it is the type of thorny problem that Google engineers (and ad sales executives) thrive on.

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

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/187823760/

Last week was my first TechCrunch MeetUp in Boston. We took over a club called the Estate right near the Boston Common. About 800 people came, and I think I talked to half of them. Mike was regaling the other half. And our CEO Heather, who put this all together (Mike and I just showed up to gab), was making sure everything went off without a hitch. It was hard to move more than a few steps without hearing another startup pitch, shaking a venture capitalist’s hand, or bumping into another blogger like Nick Carr, Allen Stern or Don Dodge. One TechCrunch fan drove all the way from Virginia to attend the event. See pictures from TechCrunch Boston here and here.

The highlight for me was meeting some great entrepreneurs and learning about some new startups (some still in stealth) that I will be writing about soon. NowHound, a search engine for live Web video, launched at the MeetUp. And OurStage, MyPunchBowl, MZinga and TripAdvisor all celebrated new product launches. I caught up with a number of companies on video here, hosted courtesy of Brightcove. (And the OurStage camera crew helped us shoot it). Also check out Andy Plesser’s interview of MZinga here. Please send additional links of your own coverage to us, and we’ll add them to our Boston MeetUp page.

One thing I learned about TechCrunch MeetUps is that there are really good prizes. We gave away an iPhone from CrunchGear’s own iPhone Hacking Station. ZoomInfo gave away a Wii console. Moola matched up two TechCrunch Boston MeetUp audience members in a live head-to-head online game of “Hi/Lo” on Moola.com for $5,242.88 (or level 20 on Moola’s Tower) with Boston-area attendee Ross Levanto winning the game and taking the prize; see the coverage here. Perkett PR and MyPunchbowl served some specialty cocktails. I tried the TechPunch, but never quite made it to the wine bar hosted by Wine Library TV. It’s not easy being the host.

Video from the event:

Thank You Sponsors
Thanks again to our nineteen event sponsors who made Friday’s Boston MeetUp possible.

Please take a few minutes to learn about the services of our hosts on our dedicated Boston MeetUp page and here. New video will be uploaded as we receive additional highlights, so please check back for the latest coverage.

Event Co-Host:
IDG Ventures Boston: early-stage venture capital firm with $280 million under management. The firm is focused on investing in consumer, information and life sciences technology companies. IDGVB portfolio companies that will be represented at TechCrunch MeetUp Boston include Acinion, BzzAgent, go2 Media, GuildCafe, Infobright, Mall Networks, MOBIVOX, SimpleTuition, Transpera and VidSys. Thanks again to general partners David Aronoff, Jeff Bussgang, Michael Greeley and Chip Hazard for co-hosting the event with TechCrunch.

Partner and Product Launch Sponsors:

Brightcove: the market-leading Internet TV platform, used by media businesses around the world to distribute and monetize direct-to-consumer, broadband video programming. See the Brightcove player in action on our Boston MeetUp 11 page.

Moola: has created a “Massively Multi-player Rewards Game” (MMRG) that is half loyalty program and half super-jackpot game show with 175,000+ member community.

Mzinga: provides workplace and customer community solutions that transform business processes to produce a more energized workforce, greater customer loyalty, and positive bottom line impact.

OurStage: is the only purely democratic online competition where the fans decide who’s the best in emerging music, film and video.

TripAdvisor: is used 25 million people each month to start their travel plans and who are pioneering the next generation of online travel guides.

ZoomInfo: a business information search engine used to quickly find information about 3.5 million companies and 40 million business people.

Communications Sponsor
PerkettPR, Inc.: provides results-based communications solutions for emerging Web 2.0 companies and established technology leaders.

Product Sponsors
Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment: is intelligently connecting gamers on a massive scale with its innovative Social Networks at Play™ (SNAP) games.

CoreBlox: is all about enabling people to easily locate and exchange information.

NowHound: is the Internet’s first live-media search, and is launching out of stealth mode tonight during the TechCrunch Boston Meetup.

Power Play Development Corporation is the parent company of Poker Creations, a gaming software development company and National League of Poker, the Internet’s leading poker-centric social media portal.

MyPunchbowl: is a new website for event and party planning with unique features such as: “Pick a Date”, “Save the Date”, “Party Checklist” and more.

SnapYap: is an exciting new suite of live video communications tools, the first of which is launching during the TechCrunch Boston MeetUp. Check out SnapYap’s video wall of the MeetUp.

Event Sponsors
Prism VentureWorks: is a Westwood, MA and Santa Monica, CA based venture capital firm built by experienced entrepreneurs in technology and life sciences with approximately $1.25 billion in capital under management across five funds.

You Be the VC: equal parts incubator and American Idol, is a competition to find the best new entrepreneurs in the U.S.

We’d like to also thank Memo Media for digital event signage; Gary Vaynerchuk at Wine Library TV for fabulours wine; and EventBrite for seamless ticket management for MeetUp attendees.

(Photo courtesy Erik Kastner)

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

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/187992316/

Sony BMG Music Entertainment has agreed, in exchange for a slice of Yahoo’s advertising revenue, to let Yahoo’s users upload videos and music clips containing its produced content.

The deal comes just over a year since Sony made a very similar agreement with Google that also entailed the release of “thousands” of music videos on Google Video (and, soon after, YouTube as well). While Google has actually secured distribution deals with all four major labels by now, this deal is Yahoo’s first and it does not suggest that Sony will actively release produced content onto Yahoo Video.

Yahoo has also suggested that it will begin using “video identification and filtering technology” by early 2008, which sounds similar to the technology deployed by Google last month.

Yahoo Video, while a fraction of YouTube’s size in terms of users, comes in at second place among all video-sharing sites.

No word yet as to whether today’s announcement involves talent-discovery site Crackle in any way.

Via Associated Press

Crackle

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

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/187892050/

Advertising technology startup Clickable has raised another $3 million from its lead investors Union Square Ventures and Pequot Ventures, in a follow-on round to the $3 million it raised last July, confirms CEO David Kidder. He is calling it an A-1 round. Former CEO Jonathan Miller has also joined Clickable’s board, a fact we reported back in September during TechCrunch40, where Clickable launched.

Velocity Investment Group, the tech buyout fund Miller recently started with Ross Levinsohn, is not an investor in Clickable. The startup is developing Web-based ad campaign management tools.

Clickable

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

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/187869642/