ViVu, an online video conferencing platform, has raised $3 million in Series A funding led by Inventus Capital Partners, with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Quest Venture Partners and entrepreneur Bill Carrico participating. The company says that the new financing will be used for sales and marketing efforts. ViVu's "video as a service" lets anyone create a live video webcast that can be used for online meetings and events, sales presentations, demos or training sessions. ViVu's cloud-based technology can be enabled via a PC, Mac or smartphone and provides an auditorium like-view within the browser (see above) making it ideal for large conferences.
Israeli TodaCell has raised a $1M round to be used to market the company's mobile ad inventory optimization solution that analyzes users' click patterns across ad campaigns that span category verticals and age groups. Through the analysis TodaCell can go back to advertisers and recommend which campaigns will better perform on any of the inventory in its publisher network. The technology doesn't offer a 'hit-the-ground-running' proposition as it may take a month or two for TodaCell to analyze a publisher's inventory in order to make 'intelligent' recommendations. Sure, a bit of downside, but I'm not aware of learning machine technologies that offer instant results.
Coda Research Consultancy in a new report forecasts mobile broadband search and display ad revenues in the US to grow to $4.2 billion in 2015, up from $1 billion in 2010. The firm predicts that 70% of those revenues - or nearly $3 billion - will come from search advertising, and sees a bright future for local search in particular. SMS revenues on the other hand are forecasted to drop to a mere 3% in the next 5-6 years, down from 55% in 2010.
Startup Peerset is launching an advertising data tool that generates psychographic recommendations and ad placement advice, based on content analysis. Peerset’s proprietary technology organically links interests, values, lifestyles and attitudes to brands, letting advertisers see the constellations of these links. Sound confusing? That's because Peerset's technology is fairly complicated. The startup basically examines interactions on social media sites and then interprets these connections and provides recommendations to brands and advertisers based on the results. For example, if the ad subject is "Fashion," Peerset may determine that the ideal audience is also communicating about "Sex and the City," "sushi," and "Madonna." Peerset says that this data can help advertisers and brands figure out what audiences are likely to engage and connect strongly with a product or service.
Gil Elbaz wants people to make lots of spreadsheet tables filled with fun and important facts and share them across the Web. Later today, he will be launching Factual, which he describes as "a platform for anyone to share and mash open data."Elbaz previously was the co-founder of Applied Semantics, which Google bought in 2003 for $100 million and turned its technology into AdSense. With Factual, he is trying to collect a rich repository of structured data (i.e., data neatly placed in rows and columns in his database), all contributed by developers, publishers, and "data enthusiasts." So if you love making spreadsheets, Factual is for you.
A class action lawsuit brought in 2006 by several Yahoo! pay-per-click search advertising customers has been settled, one of the parties involved who received an e-mail about the settlement informs us. In the e-mail, administrator Rust Consulting lets the concerned parties ("all persons that purchased, directly or indirectly, Yahoo! pay-per-click advertising in the U.S. marketplace") know that the court has granted preliminary approval of the Settlement and has provisionally certified the Settlement Class. The lawsuit (PDF) alleges that customers contracted for targeted ad placements through two products, “Sponsored Search” and “Content Match” (and predecessor products provided by Overture and GoTo.com) and that Yahoo! breached its contract with its customers by allowing Yahoo! ads to be displayed in spyware, domain name parking sites (bulk registration sites), pop-ups, pop-unders and typosquatting sites. According to the message, which is reproduced on a dedicated website about the case, plaintiffs brought claims for breach of contract, unjust enrichment, misrepresentation, civil conspiracy, and unfair business practices.
Do you like sounding like an idiot? Does the thought of doing so in front of millions of people appeal to you? Then Yahoo has just the thing for you (or, rather, Y!ou).Yahoo has just launched Yodel Studio, a site for you to yes, record yourself yodeling. The idea is for Yahoo users to remix the service's signature sound for a chance at recognition, most notably, on Yahoo's homepage which is visited by tens of millions of people each month. Yahoo is also pledging up to $130,000 for local and global charities on behalf of each yodel submitted.
Hopefully you just read Michael's post about Why Desktop Touch Screens Don’t Really Work Well For Humans. The answer is so simple that a lot of people overlook it: No one wants to hold their hands at monitor-level all the time, you'd get tired very quickly. If you're looking for a quick answer as to why many touch screens like the TouchSmart line haven't seen success in the past, that'd be it. But that's not good enough. We need a solution, because as much as some people would like to hold on to the past, we're not going to be using a keyboard and mouse forever to interact with computers.Certainly, having a touch screen computer thatsits at an angle like an architect's desk is one solution. The issue there is that you need the screen to be big enough so that your hands don't completely obstruct what you're doing. Hopefully Microsoft will unveil some version of the Surface that works like that. But another potential solution comes by way of a brilliant proof of concept video for something called 10/GUI.
Hewlett Packard refreshed their TouchSmart line of computers today. If you're not familiar with these, imagine an iMac all in one computer that has a touch screen, and you're most of the way there.I really like the TouchSmart line, and use a second generation machine as my main Windows test computer. The touch interface is done via infrared, which is a very cost effective way of creating a touch interface on a large screen. Microsoft, in fact, uses it in their experimental TouchWall product that can make a touch screen of virtually any size wall (more TouchWall footage). Overall I give the TouchScmart top marks - the only drawback is that it is inexplicably heavy at something like 60 lbs., and no one seems to know why. But since it sits on your desk, it's not like you're lifting it very often, so it doesn't really matter.But the machine is still all wrong. Anyone who has used one for a long time will tell you that they quickly revert to using the keyboard and mouse. And it isn't because of the software or touch technology - both are fine.
Last year, there was a lot of coverage of Google striking a deal with satellite imagery company GeoEye to be able to use the high resolution images from its new GeoEye-1 satellite for their Google Earth and Maps products. The exclusive deal saw Google shift away from its partnership with rival DigitalGlobe, which provides many of Google's rivals with imagery. Now, it looks like Google is back on board with a new DigitalGlobe satellite.In a post today on its Lat Long Blog, Google reveals that DigitalGlobe has just launched their next-generation satellite dubbed WorldView-2 (no idea if this is to one-up GeoEye-1), and that the company will be getting new imagery from it. In the post, Google notes that it works "directly with several commercial satellite imaging providers." Presumably, that means the deal with GeoEye is still in place, and now Google has found itself on yet another state-of-the-art satellite that peers down on all of us, gathering data.
If there's been one shining star on social network applications platforms, it's been casual gaming: Zynga is rumored to be making an absolute killing with their games, and Mochi Media's unified Flash payment platform has shown some very impressive early results. Now hi5, one of the world's most popular social networks, is looking to capitalize on the trend. On Wednesday, the social network will be launching a totally revamped site that places a much stronger emphasis on games and virtual currency, along with a new avatar system. The site won't go live for everyone for a few days, but you can check it out now at http://new.hi5.com.The new hi5 still retains many of the same key features you'll find on any social network — your profile consists of a photo or avatar, you can browse through your friends, and so on. But there's clearly a much bigger emphasis on the site's games and virtual currency (called 'Coins') than there was in the past.
Earlier this year, we wrote about Dictionary.com's nifty iPhone app. Since April, the app has seen 3 million downloads and is steadily growing in popularity. Today, Dictionary.com (which as part of the Ask.com network that also includes Thesaurus.com) is launching a similar application for BlackBerry smartphones, which has a few key differentiating factors from its sister iPhone app. In addition to providing users with more than 500,000 words, definitions and synonyms, the app also features audio pronunciations, spelling suggestions, a "Word of the Day" for both English and Spanish and the ability to view a recently searched terms list. One of the features that is exclusively available on the Blackberry app is the ability to access a definition or synonym while reading or drafting an email. The app lets you highlight the word and you'll be given an option to find a synonym or definition. The app also has a native feature that lets you email or SMS text any word and its definition to yourself or a contact.
Every so often I think to myself, "what ever happened to Evite?" Then I get an email invitation and realize that it's still alive. While some of the early adopters and tech elitists may have switched to services like MyPunchbowl, Socializr, Pingg, Cocodot, and even MySpace and Facebook, Evite lives on in the minds of many of those outside of the tech sphere. And that's why Someecards now wants to kill it with a new Invites section of their site.Okay, maybe that's a little harsh. "The thing is, there's really nothing wrong with Evite. It's just not fun, which is really our big point of differentiation. Our site will be fun. And if you're planing a party, shouldn't it start off from the point of sending out the invites being fun rather than lame?," Someecards co-founder Duncan Mitchell explains.
One of the big trends we've seen over the last few years is the push to bring local businesses online. No longer are online reservations and purchases solely available through major brands — it's now quite easy for a local business to set up a storefront online, and plenty of them are doing it. Now a new site called RentCycle is looking to tap into a slightly different market: the rental industry, which encompasses everything from power tools at Home Depot to scuba gear at a local shop in Hawaii.The company launched in a limited alpha last week, and has since signed on over 20 local rental businesses. The first 100 Techcrunch readers to sign up here with the promo code "techcrunch" will be able to sign up for free.
