Shaydm's Favorite Links from Diigo

WebGuild: Google's Eric Schmidt: Google Big on Mobile and Wimax

Thu, 29 May 2008 16:47:25 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Google's Eric Schmidt: Google Big on Mobile and Wimax

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, interviewed in Germany, offered several insights into the future as Google sees it. Here are some standout items from that interview. Schmidt quotes are in italics:

There is still a lot of revenue in search - as we get the technology better or as we can do more targeted ads. There is no limit for search marketing. People assume that there is a limit, but we have many more ideas about technology.

.... mobile will be a larger business than the PC-Web. But it will take a few years.

On Google's investment in the Wimax initiative to bring broadband outside of the phone carriers: We are concerned that the carriers in the United States might close off the network.

MySpace did not monetize as well as we thought. We have a lot of traffic, a lot of page views, but it is harder than we thought to get our ad network to work with social networks.

Tags: utr3 mobile

Posted by: shaydm

Ludacris backs crowdsourced music site WeMix (Tech Confidential - The Note)

Thu, 22 May 2008 22:18:59 -0000

Tags: music

Posted by: shaydm

William Morris Launching Agency 3.0 With Amp’d Founder Adderton | paidContent.org

Wed, 21 May 2008 20:39:44 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

William Morris Launching Agency 3.0 With Amp’d Founder Adderton

By Rafat Ali - Tue 20 May 2008 06:15 PM PST

William Morris Agency is launching a new branded content and marketing division, called Agency 3.0, working with former Amp’d Mobile CEO and founder Peter Adderton. The division, which will operate as a separate company, has most of the creative team behind Amp’d’s critically acclaimed content services, and has signed on Qualcomm and Clearwire as clients, we have learned, though the company refused to confirm these clients. Our sources also say that WMA is going to invest as much as $3 million into the venture over time, though again, the company refused comment on any amount.

Tags: agency william morris

Posted by: shaydm

CBS Web guru Quincy Smith talks Digg partnership | The Social - CNET News.com

Wed, 07 May 2008 19:23:57 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

When CBS Interactive announced on Tuesday that its CBSNews.com property had entered a content partnership with Digg, there wasn't a whole lot of information released other than the fact that election-related headlines from Digg would appear on CBSNews.com and that the news site's political news and video clips would be accompanied by Digg buttons.

The amorphous press release was intentional, CBS Interactive President Quincy Smith said later Tuesday in an interview with CNET News.com. It's not always easy to deal with Digg's notoriously opinionated community, which has shown a tendency to cause a mild to major uprising if something pops up suggesting the site has made a move without the users in mind.

Tags: hollywood la

Posted by: shaydm

Interview with Richard Wolpert, The Mail Room Fund review at Kaboodle

Wed, 07 May 2008 19:09:11 -0000

Richard Wolpert is the head of the Mail Room Fund, a new venture fund backed by William Morris, Accel Partners, Venrock, and AT&T. Wolpert is well known for his work as Chief Strategy Officer for RealNetworks, as president of Disney Online, as well as for his angel investments. We sat down for breakfast a few days ago to chat with Richard about the new fund, his angel investments, and what he sees as the promise of Los Angeles. Richard Wolpert: We started the fund about two months ago, called the Mail Room Fund. That's sort of an LA play on the garage, if you will. In Silicon Valley, everything gets started in the garage--in LA, and although we're not specifically focused on entertainment, a lot of famous people got started in the mail room. So, David Geffen got started in the mail room, Barry Diller started in the mail room, William Morris specifically. So it's the Mail Room fund, and it's partnered with AT&T, Accel, Venrock, and William Morris. The idea is to specifically invest in companies in LA, that are in the broad Internet consumer space. So there's a little bit of an assumption that since William Morris is involved, we're just working with entertainment companies, and just looking at content, but it's actually the contrary. We're looking broadly at Internet consumer plays and services, and technologies that support those plays. Our ideal investment per deal is about a million dollars. And, we're looking for earlier stage things, things that have not or are not to the Series A stage yet. We're off and running. What's your ideal investment--what do you want to see in a company, how far along do you want them to be? Richard Wolpert: If I could answer that question with just 20 words, I'd be smarter than I am. But, I'll give you some guidelines. In terms of the entrepreneur, the most ideal is someone who has had a successful exit. My first company, I got funding, and hadn't had a successful exit. So, that's not a requirement for us, but if you've got value out of a successful exit, the odds that you know wha

Tags: utr vcs

Posted by: shaydm

Myka

Sat, 03 May 2008 16:53:55 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Hello, my name is Dan Lovy. I'm the president of Myka. On March 20th, 2008 we announced our product. Myka quite simply, lets you download torrents to a hard disk that is connected directly to your TV. We don't lock you into any service. It's Bit Torrent.

The response has been just amazing. If you Google 'myka bittorrent' you get 50 pages of news articles about us. When we started, people thought we were crazy! They would say,"You're going to make a product that is completely open!" or, "How will you control what people watch?" Myka is not AppleTV. We let you get

Tags: utr2

Posted by: shaydm

Marshall Kirkpatrick » How to Build an RSS and Blog News Site for Your Project

Thu, 01 May 2008 20:59:27 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

How to Build an RSS and Blog News Site for Your Project

05.01.08

I'm excited to unveil my latest consulting project, a fairly extensive RSS-based microsite put together with Sun Microsystems for next week's JavaOne conference. It's called BlogCentral. Turns out today is international RSS Awareness Day! This might have been a better fit for Enterprise RSS Awareness Day last week, but that's ok.

Tags: blog

Posted by: shaydm

Bezos’ Bucks Back Kongregate

Thu, 01 May 2008 16:29:45 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Bezos’ Bucks Back Kongregate

Print All Articles Letter to the editor Podcast

on 30 April 2008, 12:45
by Ken Schachter

Billionaire investor Jeff Bezos is putting $3 million behind San Francisco-based Kongregate, an online casual games site that draws its content from Indie developers.

The investment brings Kongregate’s investment total to $9 million, with a $1 million angel round and a $5 million investment by Greylock Partners, a backer of Red Hat, Digg and Facebook.

The investment by Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon.com, comes through his person investment fund, Bezos Expeditions.

Kongregate competes with companies like Miniclip in trying to build large audiences for casual games offered through an Internet browser. Kongregate, founded in June 2006, offers more than 4,000 Flash and Shockwave games from more than 1,500 developers.

Kongregate Chief Executive Jim Greer likened the "super-angel" funding round to an insurance policy.

Tags: utr success

Posted by: shaydm

UMG, Sony invest in music startup MOG (Tech Confidential - VC Ratings)

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:04:47 -0000

Tags: utr

Posted by: shaydm

Fyreball User Login - Fyreball

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:45:59 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Fyreball is a fast, fun and better way to share the best stuff with your friends. See a video or picture that made you laugh 'till you snorted? Got a web game that you can't stop playing? Fyre it up.

We're gonna stop with the jibber jabber now, because that's boring. Sign up and see what we're talking about!

Tags: utr2

Posted by: shaydm

Ex-Googlers working on stealth social search | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:35:46 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Ex-Googlers working on stealth social search

Posted by Stefanie Olsen | Post a comment

Nathan Stoll, former product lead of Google News, has been quietly working on a new social search service he started with the help of two other Google refugees, CNET News.com has learned. The site, called Mechanical Zoo, is poised to launch in beta next month.

The San Francisco company, which is about 9 months old, has an impressive team of tech veterans. It was co-founded by Stoll; Max Ventilla, a former business development manager at Google; and Damon Horowitz, a longtime computer scientist and former lead engineer of Perspecta, a search software company that sold to Excite@Home in the dot-com heyday. Fritz Schneider, who was an application-security engineer at Google for about five years, heading up the Google Firefox team, is also a part of the 12-person staff.

Tags: utr2

Posted by: shaydm

U.S. Lags in Social Media Creation, per Survey

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:28:11 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

NEW YORK A new global study of social media use reveals that the U.S. severely lags behind Asian and South American countries in participation rates.

Consumers in the U.S. and Western Europe are more likely to be passive social-media participants -- sharing videos and reading blogs -- while those in emerging markets often create content through blogging, social networks and video and photo sharing sites.

"By and large, in the U.S. we're a country of voyeurs," said David Cohen, U.S. director of digital communications at Universal McCann, which conducted the study. "We love to watch and consume content created by others, but there's a fairly small group that are doing that creation -- unlike China, which is a country of creators."

Tags: utr2

Posted by: shaydm

TechCrunch UK » Blog Archive » Web Mission 08: UK startups to visit Silicon Valley

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 04:52:21 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

based on their business viability and the strength of the management team. And they looked for a mix of companies that showed the breadth of what the UK has to offer in this space. The aim is for the companies “to explore new opportunities for growth with key people in Silicon Valley.”

So, without further ado, the confirmed companies for Web Mission 08 are:

Groupspaces - Web-based tools for groups

Tioti - A social network around TV

Exabre (TheFilter) - Advanced music recommendation

Coull - Interactive video platform

Zogix - Employee services platform

Byteplay (dotHomes) - Real estate search engine

Trampoline Systems - Enterprise software harnessing social behaviour

Hubdub - News prediction social network

WAYN - travel and lifestyle social networking community

TrustedPlaces - Venue recommendation network

Slicethepie - Enabling bands to raise money directly from their fans

Mydeo - Mainstream application for storing and sharing video

Skimbit - Research and share decisions

Huddle - Enterprise 2.0 collaboration

Rummble - Mobile social networking and recommendation

Zebtab - Desktop TV application

Silobreaker - Contextual and graphic search results

Kwiqq - Social Website builder

edocr - Making business documents interactive

ShortFuze - Online movie creation tools for social networks

Tags: utr2 startups

Posted by: shaydm

Coull

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 04:51:31 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

To read more about the Web Mission (including an agenda) go to: www.webmission08.com

The 20 companies embarking on the Web Mission are:

Groupspaces - Web-based tools for groups

Tioti - A social network around TV

Exabre (TheFilter) - Advanced music recommendation

Coull - Interactive video platform

Zogix - Employee services platform

Byteplay (dotHomes) - Real estate search engine

Trampoline Systems - Enterprise software harnessing social behaviour

Hubdub - News prediction social network

WAYN - travel and lifestyle social networking community

TrustedPlaces - Venue recommendation network

Slicethepie - Enabling bands to raise money directly from their fans

Mydeo - Mainstream application for storing and sharing video

Skimbit - Research and share decisions

Huddle - Enterprise 2.0 collaboration

Rummble - Mobile social networking and recommendation

Zebtab - Desktop TV application

Silobreaker - Contextual and graphic search results

Kwiqq - Social Website builder

edocr - Making business documents interactive

ShortFuze - Online movie creation tools for social networks

Details on the 20 selected companies are listed in TechCruch.

Click here to see the article on Netimperative’s website.

Tags: no_tag

Posted by: shaydm

With a nod to the Valley, CBS Interactive shuffles management | The Social - CNET News.com

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:58:11 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

CBS Interactive, the media giant's digital division, has announced the opening of a Silicon Valley office and an executive reshuffling to focus on growth, President Quincy Smith announced Thursday.

The CBS Interactive satellite office in Menlo Park, Calif., has opened, with its eye on tech partnerships and acquisitions. The Valley branch will "allow the company to better facilitate existing partnerships in the area, and future ones as well," a release from CBS explained.

Tags: utr la

Posted by: shaydm

eXelate Raises $4M for Delayed-Ad Exchange

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 06:35:18 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

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.”

Tags: utr2 advertising

Posted by: shaydm

Attributor Launches Service to Track Copyright Infringement Across the Web

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 05:45:21 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Every media company on the planet knows that its articles, songs, photos, and videos are being copied and spread willy-nilly across the Web, but they don’t have a clue what to do about it. They are not even sure what to do about all of their stuff that is just on YouTube (should they let Google monitor itself or create some vague industry guidelines and hope that every site follows them?). A startup called Attributor in Redwood City, Calif. says it can monitor the Web for copied content no matter where it may be, help publishers and media companies track it all, and help them decide what to do about it.

Attributor was founded in 2005 and has raised $10 million from Sigma Partners, Selby Ventures, Draper Richards, First Round Capital and Amicus. The enterprise version of its service launches today, although it has been testing it with Reuters and AP for about six months. The enterprise service will cost anywhere from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year (a more limited self-serve version for bloggers and smaller publishers could cost as little as $6 or $7 per month, and will launch in 2008). CEO Jim Brock gave me a demo of Attributor last week in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria.

Tags: utr2

Posted by: shaydm

Want To See How I Make A Screencast? « Demo Girl

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 05:11:15 -0000

companes should see this and make screen casts for our site

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Want To See How I Make A Screencast?

14Jan08

Not all screencasts are created equal. What I mean by that is, there are lots of different tools one can use in order to create a screencast. There are different types of software and applications such as Jing, Demo Builder, CamStudio, uTIPu, and what I use, Camtasia Studio. There are also lots of different settings and effects you can use within those tools. I decided to show you what steps I go through before, during, and after recording a screencast to end up with what you normally will see as an end product on DemoGirl. This is not really a tutorial on how to use Camtasia Studio. It’s more of a way for me to show you what settings I use when creating a screencast. Hopefully it will be useful to those just getting started.

At first, I wasn’t sure how I was going to record a screencast showing how I record a screencast. Sound confusing? Yeah, it did to me too. Then I remembered that even though I long ago upgraded to Camtasia Studio Version 4, I still have Version 3. So, I made the recording with version 3 but showed you all of the features I use in version 4. Pretty nifty, huh? Here’s my screencast tour of how I make screencasts for DemoGirl:

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 7m49s

Want this screencast on your site? Click here to get the code for this and other DemoGirl screencasts

Tags: utr

Posted by: shaydm

Demo Girl

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 05:09:52 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Want To See How I Make A Screencast?

14Jan08

Click Here To Watch The Screencast 7m49s

Want this screencast on your site? Click here to get the code for this and other DemoGirl screencasts

Tags: no_tag

Posted by: shaydm

Entrepreneurial Series: Plain English Term Sheets - Mysteries Revealed

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:03:00 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Location: WEBINAR Series: (none) Description: Entrepreneurial Series: Plain English Term Sheets - Mysteries Revealed

Tuesday, April 22, 2008
12:00-1:00pm Program

WEBINAR

The Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council's Entrepreneurial Cluster presents a special call-in talk show on term sheets. This plain-English discussion is designed for entrepreneurs and business people and features star lawyers Jeff Stoler of McCarter & English, LLP and Sarah Reed of Lowenstein Sandler PC (and former in-house counsel for Charles River Ventures). James Geshwiler of CommonAngels moderates.

Tags: blogpost

Posted by: shaydm