Ajax Girl

We’re getting reports that Peerflix, the tumultuous company that switched from acting as a DVD-swapping service to an ad network, has been acquired by Brad Greenspan’s LiveUniverse for an undisclosed amount (though we’re guessing it’s pretty low). We’ve asked LiveUniverse to comment.

Peerflix was founded in 2004 as a “peer-to-peer Netflix”, helping users to swap DVDs they owned for a dollar. The site abandoned the flat fixed pricing scheme for a demand-based model in 2006, but that didn’t work well either: in November 2007 it decided to launch a media network that had nothing to do with its original DVD swapping service. Peerflix finally canned the DVD trading business earlier this year, so Live Universe is acquiring it solely for its ad network.

Peerflix is the latest in a lengthy string of acquisitions made by LiveUniverse in the last year. In February, the company acquired Revver, a struggling video portal that shared revenue with content creators. In April, it acquired PageFlakes, a customizable homepage that has been competing in a saturated market that includes iGoogle. Apparently it wasn’t a good match - only four months after the deal, PageFlakes CEO bailed from the company.

Most recently, the company has acquired Jangl, a troubled VoIP services provider, and Meevee, a site that combines TV listings with video.

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Source: TechCrunch
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Shasta Ventures, a venture fund managing $460 million and investments in startups like Mint, Flock and Turn, has promoted Jason Pressman to Managing Director and added a new associate, Evan Liang, to the team.

Pressman, which we named a VC to watch back in 2005, was previsously the VP strategy, business development and operations at Walmart.com. Pressman’s investments include Click Forensics, Doostang, iConclude, Mochi Media, OSS-1701, PopJax, ResponseLogix and Tumri.

Liang was previously a product manager at eBay and in business development at Microsoft.

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Every couple has its ups and downs, but most people try to keep their dirty laundry to themselves. But what about those times when you just can’t come to an agreement with your significant other?

Today sees the launch of SideTaker a site that asks couples to upload both sides of their arguments and let the crowd settle their debates. SideTaker members can vote on which side they agree with, or leave comments to ask for further details or voice their opinions.

The site is hilarious. Disputes range from cheating spouses to toilet flushing, oftentimes filled with more detail than anyone would want to know.

A part of me can’t believe that it’s real - how many couples would actually turn to the web to resolve a private matter? But shows like Jerry Springer and Judge Judy have thrived on this sort of thing for years, so there’s definitely a large audience. And while it may sound ridiculous, there may be a significant demand for text-based dispute resolution. Even if people ignore the comments of others, it’s possible that they’ll be more honest on paper than if they were speaking face to face.

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Source: TechCrunch
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Last July I wrote about MyAWOL, a web-centric music label looking to compete with traditional labels, which are becoming increasingly less relevant as artists turn to digital distribution methods to gain exposure. While the site has the potential to break some new ground in the online music world, it has run into a major snag during its buildup to launch: its name sounds almost exactly like My.AOL when spoken aloud.

In light of this, the company has decided to rename the site to LP33.TV, which should hopefully be less confusing. LP33 is more memorable, but I think the company should consider dropping the .TV extension entirely since they already own the .com.

Along with the name change, LP33.TV is also launching its database for music industry professionals, TheMIDB, which hopes to fulfill the same role as the movie and television industry’s popular IMDB. The derivative name will probably confuse just about everyone, but at least it makes the site’s purpose clear.

The site will welcome user profiles from music producers, executives, managers, writers, musicians, and anyone else involved in the music trade. Users will be able to post their biographes, and the site will facilitate connections between users and allow them to keep track of current and past projects. LP33.tv Founder Andrew Bentley, a former major music label executive, says that TheMIDB fills an important role, as there hasn’t been a comprehensive database of industry professionals.

TheMIDB is only one portion of LP33.TV’s new approach to the music industry, and the company plans to have its flagship consumer site out within the next month.

Earlier this week Amazon and IMDB teamed up to launch SoundUnwound, a user-modified database for music similar to Wikipedia (except all content is approved by Amazon employees). The site seems to be geared more as a consumer-friendly music encyclopedia rather than an industry database.

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Tatango, the ad-supported group SMS service previously known as networkText, spent the last few months in a private beta following a functional and visual overhaul and a round of funding by Bellingham Angel Organization. Now everyone is free to get in on the group texting good times; they’ve opened the doors to the public.

The service is dead simple to use, as it should be. I made the jump from accountless bum to en masse messaging mogul in all of about 2 minutes. Sign up, invite some friends (they have to opt-in, else this thing would be a spam machine), and you (or anybody you dub as a group admin) are able to SMS the entire group at once, either from …. Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

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Source: TechCrunch
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On the heels of a major upgrade earlier this week that added facial recognition and video-editing features to its Picasa photo management service, Google added a new Explore page today that shows off the most popular public photos uploaded by members. In addition to the featured photos, shown in a 3 X 4 grid, the Explore page also shows the most recent photos uploaded in a slide-show widget. Below, it offers a list of the most popular tags. For instance, here are pictures tagged “New York.”

The Picasa Explore page also has a Where In The World? game that is mashup opf geotagged photos and Google Maps. It shows you a photo and you have to guess where it was taken. If you guess wrong, it tells you how far off you are in kilometers. This is fun for outdoor photos, but when people upload geotagged photos of a generic apartment of a plate of food, it can become tricky.

It is not clear how Picasa chooses what photos to feature, but it is obviously borrowing from Flickr’s Explore page, which shows photos based on its on ‘interestingness” algorithm. I find Flickr’s photos much more interesting than Picasa’s (keep working on that algorithm, fellas). Flickr too has a map mashup that shows geotagged photos on a map (although, it is not a game).

By adding new ways to discover public photos, Picasa is taking on Flickr, Photobucket, and Facebook Photos in a more direct way. Globally, Picasa passed Photobucket in July with 48 million visitors compared to Photobucket’s 43 million, according to comScore. It still trails Facebook Photos (97 million unique visitors) and Flickr (63 million). In the U.S., it is much further behind, with only 8.3 million monthly visitors, compared to 18.3 million for Flickr, 23.5 million for Photobucket, and 25.4 million fopr Facebook Photos.

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Source: TechCrunch
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From: “John S.”
Date: September 5, 2008 11:43:36 AM PDT
To: tips@techcrunch.com
Subject: Celebrity Dating Network

How is it that Techcrunch will do countless stories on every idiotic widget created by countless 19 year olds who manage to get their uncles at some VC to fund it because they can back door money to each other yet you guys won’t cover something really interesting? Have you checked out CelebrityDatingNetwork.com? Its the first dating service in the world that allows you to meet and date real celebrities as well as find people who bear a facial resemblance to the love of your life.

Start acting like journalists in search of a wider audience…lol. Crossing over into mainstream media will take more than a re-design of your website. You need to stop doing 50 stories a day about Google Chrome and step into the cool tech zone. We gave you a five day head start on CelebrityDatingNetwork.com Prove to us it wasn’t a mistake and write a story about it that gets picked up by the mainstream media.

John

Posting this purely for entertainment value, and to give TechCrunch readers a taste of what our inboxes look like every morning. I’m not a fan of the service, but as soon as I want to date “actual movie stars” or “ordinary people who resemble my ex” I’ll give it a whirl.

And a note to mainstream media and non-nepotistic venture funds who want to “step into the cool tech zone”: CelebrityDatingNetwork has arrived.

“Sometimes the best way to mend a broken heart is to find someone who looks just like your ex.”

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Source: TechCrunch
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So much for Joost’s carefully prepared plans to release a browser version of their TV over IP service later this month. News leaked this morning that Joost would be abandoning their year old XUL based desktop client in favor of a browser based service that’s more like Hulu and YouTube. Users will still be required to download a plugin that facilitates P2P transfers of files, which is still an adoption hurdle. But at least users can watch videos directly in their browser.

Joost isn’t just moving to a browser format. They’re also creating a video based social network complete with Facebook-style activity streams that shows you friends what content you are watching, commenting on and “shouting” (see last screen shot above).

The new site, which is password protected, is at new.joost.com. We’ve obtained screen shots of the service, below. We’ve also created a video which will be up shortly.

Update: Here’s a video demo of the new Joost

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Source: TechCrunch
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Researchers at Foundation for Research and Technology in Heraklion, Greece - that hotbed of Facebook research - have created a small Facebook application that causes a DDOS on a certain website. The application masquerades as a “picture of the day” app and shows an image from National Geographic. When someone clicks on it, however, it makes a request to a victim’s website, ultimately pulling down about 248 gigabytes of malicious data a day and essentially shutting down the server.

Obviously this application needs a perfect storm to be useful: you need to have a target and create a popular enough application that would encourage multiple installs. While one or two clicks won’t take down a site, the entire population of Facebook clicking on something definitely could.

The researchers wrote about the application in a detailed paper [PDF] and, by extrapolation, were able to tell how hard they could hit target servers provided, of course, the application was as popular as Super Wall or Bumper Sticker. They also recommend shoring up Facebook’s API to prevent this sort of mischief in the future.

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Source: TechCrunch
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Joost, battling for relevance in the online tv world against Hulu and others, will soon no longer require users to download separate desktop software to access the service (its existing software is based on Xul). Instead users will be able to access Joost via a small browser plugin that will continue to use Joost’s P2P technology to distribute video among users quickly.

The service launched to considerable fanfare but has fallen off the radar as of late as the company has been plagued by a shortage of content and, well, users. And as the inertia of the online video business moves away from desktop clients and to the Web, it seems Joost has finally seen the writing on the wall and will launch an online video service of its own.

It’ll be interesting to see how it fares in an already crowded lineup of offerings headlined by Hulu, Amazon, and Fancast.

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