A new site called Sketchcast launched moments ago - it’s a tool for bloggers and others to create a presentation to express an idea using a sketchpad and (optionally) a †sound recording, and then embed it into a website. Sketchcasts can also be subscribed in iTunes and RSS readers via a feed.
The video below shows an overview of what it is, using the tool itself.
The idea for the product first came from Richard Ziade in a July blog post where he proposed the term and the general need for such a tool. Ziade isn’t associated with the new company around the tool, but they give him credit for inventing the idea. They also say he gave them his full permission to take the idea and run with it. Which is exactly what they did.
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Showing posts with label the. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Sketchcasting - Another Weapon In The Blogging Arsenal
Eventvue Grabs Angel Round Over The Weekend
The firstTechStars startup has gotten funded over this weekend. Eventvue has closed a round estimated to be about a quarter million dollars from Brad Feld, David Cohen, Dave McClure, Wendy Lea, amongst others. See our earlier coverage of them here.
Eventvue brings social networking to the context of conferences, helping conference goers re-connect or follow up with business they couldn’t follow up with in the limited span of a conference. Networking at a conference is a fairly inefficient process, left up to chance encounters and stacks of business cards. Anything that can help optimize the limited conference time that thousand dollar ticket bought you is an easy sell.
Confabb is the most direct competitor in the space, but has focused on being a comprehensive directory of the who, what, and where of industry conferences rather than on the palm greasing that goes on at the events. More social competitors include Meetup.com and Eventwax. Eventvue is set for a public launch later this year.
Graspr Steps into the Crowded Instructional Video Ring
Teresa Phillips, founder and CEO of Graspr and one-time Yahoo VP, says that “Graspr is not just another video site or social networking community.” I’m not so sure.
The company has granted me access to Graspr prior to its presentation at Demo this afternoon and its public unveiling later this evening. I’ve kicked the tires, and while Graspr explicitly claims to be “the social media and learning company with the Internet’s largest user-generated video showcase for instructional content,” the site could probably be rebranded for any other purpose involving video and members.
This would be totally fine if there didn’t already exist a good video social network for instructional content. But several good ones do exist, including 5min, eHow, Sclipo, SuTree, Expert Village, Instructables, and VideoJug.
To be sure, Graspr works well enough. Everything revolves around instructional videos, so in many ways its like YouTube, et al. In addition to simply browsing and viewing videos, users can jump to particular scenes within videos, add notes to video segments, view related videos, open supplementary files attached to videos, and participate in discussion threads and chat rooms attached to the videos.
On the social networking side of things, users can create profiles and make friends. Their profile pages show all of the videos they have contributed, any of which can be grouped into series.
I’m tempted to label Graspr YASN, but to be fair they will provide an online video editing tool, which helps to differentiate them (well, maybe not from YouTube itself). They also have an ad-revenue sharing scheme in place to incentivise the production of content. I only wish their were more innovative aspects to Graspr that could get me more excited about it.
Global Grind: Ajax, Finally, For The Hip Hop Demographic
The global hip-hop community: twenty four million people between the ages of 19-34, from a range of nationalities, ethnic groups and religions. Their collective spending power is $500 billion annually in the U.S. alone. Naturally, there are lots of online properties dedicated to Hip Hop culture. And now they have a customizable Ajax home page, too.
New York based GlobalGrind launches this morning with some serious backing, a venture round (size undisclosed) from Accel Partners and Russell Simmons.
The service is essentially the same as Pageflakes, Netvibes and other customizable Ajax home pages.
Users set initial interests (video, comedy, news, etc.) and get a set of pre-made modules. You can also add feed URLs directly, create multiple tabs, etc. All standard stuff, even if Global Grind has slightly edgier design than the others.
A lot of the pre-made content is directly related to Hip Hop, though, such as one that shows the most recent beefs between rap artists (just like blogger wars apparently, plus money, sex and guns - see image to right). Users can also make tabs public and share content.
The company was founded by Navarrow Wright, formerly the CTO of Black Entertainment Television. The company has twelve employees.
So…will it work or will it drown in the competition? Frankly, I’m in favor of any experiments which bring technology to people beyond the early adopter tech geek crowd. The Global Grind user base is already tech savvy, though, and aware of a lot of the new web products out there. That means they have to be cool and edgy enough to attract and keep users who wouldn’t think of using, say, Netvibes. Having Russel Simmons involved will certainly help in that area. We’ll check back in on them in six months or so and see how things are going.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Second Life 2.0: The Metanomics Conference
Things are changing in Second Life. The period of glee abandon in which companies joined Second Life, built giant edifices to their offline brands which no one visited, then ran away has passed. We are now seeing those who survived and new players in Linden Lab’s online world build something new, something perhaps more sustainable and in tune to user needs.
On the surface it appears that Second Life is repeating the internet development cycle, but at an accelerated rate. The scandals and useless attempts at bringing offline brands to Second Life parallel the first web boom. After the crash of 2000, many fled the web, whilst a core few remained and over time, along with new players, started to build interfaces that were useful. Second Life today is like 2001-2002, the dawn on a new age; Second Life 2.0.
A rather late comer to Second Life is Nick Wilson. Wilson was best known as a SEO blogger writing for several years at Threadwatch. After selling the site he cast his direction towards Second Life, launching the Metaversed Blog, a chronicle of the ups and downs of doing business in Second Life. Wilson has officially announced the Metanomics Conference in conjunction with Cornell University, a series of events that will explore business and policy in the “metaverse” of virtual worlds over several months.
I asked Wilson whether we were indeed witnessing a change:
The corporations in SecondLife are just ignoring the backlash, and are getting on with it. We lost a few in the initial rush, but those still standing, are standing strong, and leading the way for others. Breaking the trail if you will. Less about showy press splashes, and more about finding really useful ways to use virtual environments to collaborate with colleagues long distance, engage customers and experiment with the platform.
Interestingly Wilson sees those remaining in and now joining Second Life as looking towards longer term goals:
None of these companies really expects to be pulling profit out of virtual ventures right now. but they all see the potential, and firms like Sun, Cisco, IBM, Intel, Amazon are in it for the long haul.
Wilson says that Metanomics is about bridging the gap between those comfortable in Second Life, and those wary of it:
One of the things that I want to do, is use video, podcasts, web to bring this stuff to people in formats they’re more comfortable with. To bridge the gap between those who’re comfortable in SL and those not yet there. Hence partnerships with SLCN.tv for all of these shows and the team up with Cornell.
The conference preview video is below. The first session is September 17, unfortunately smack bang in the middle of TechCrunch 40, but for those not joining us in San Francisco and interested in the potential of Second Life and other online worlds, it would be worth a look.
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Monday, August 27, 2007
gBox: Give The Gift Of DRM-Free Music
gBox
Considering people already pay 99 cents to send their friends virtual gifts on Facebook, I’d expect buying a real song to be an attractive proposition. It also seems like a missed opportunity for a network like MySpace, which runs on Snocap.
You can download the content after its bought for you, but need a special gBox plugin to control the downloads since some content partners (Sony, IODA) will be selling music with DRM. This makes the offering somewhat disappointing, because the plugin will only work for IE (FF on the way) and not on the Mac.
gBox was started in June as an angel funded spin-off from Navio systems. They’re a 20 person company based in Cupertino, California.
Here are some of the most recent CrunchBoard job posts:
Peer to peer lending service Lending Club will close a $10.26 million series A round of financing from Norwest Venture Partners and Canaan Partners tomorrow. This comes a few months after the company’s $2 million angel round. Coinciding with the investment, Jeff Crowe and Dan Ciporin (former ceo of shopping.com) are joining Lending Club’s board of directors.
Similar to other P2P lending sites (Prosper, Zopa, Kiva), LendingClub matches borrowers and lenders. However, LendingClub doesn’t work through their own website, but solely through Facebook on the application they launched at the F8 platform launch conference. Borrows and lenders a linked up using their “LendingMatch” system, which recommends loans based on credit and their social relationships to each other. The idea being that trusted relationships make lending more likely and defaults less likely. The application currently has over 13,000 installs.
Unlike Prosper, interest rates aren’t determined through bidding, but calculated based on the borrowers credit score, debt to income ratio, and amount of the loan. There are no hidden fees, and the interest rate is fixed for three years. In July the service surpassed $500K in loans. They recently claimed a little more than 4 out of 5 loans get funded and haven’t reported any defaults or late payments.
It’s still the early days for this industry, and as TC commenters point out, it’s very much a case of Caveat Emptor.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
37Signals Drives Another Company To The DeadPool
Ok, the title is a bit ridiculous. But 37Signals
Feedlounge
The reader was good but not great, and came out in the middle of the pack when we reviewed the competition in mid 2006. But the company defended its business model until the end - hear our podcast interview
They shut down
If you are in a position to charge for your software and you aren’t that concerned with dominating your category, by all means go for it. But to blindly follow the idea that software must not be free because, damnit, people put a lot of time and effort into it, means you probably shouldn’t be making the business decisions for your company. And if you are entering what is already a commoditized business (online feed readers in this case) that has a price point of zero, you are absolutely crazy to try to charge for that product.
Offering your product for free isn’t always the right choice, either. Often, the right choice is to never have entered the market to begin with. But just because 37Signals tell you you are dumb to go the free route doesn’t mean you have to be a lemming and walk over the cliff.
TimeBridge: Now Synching Your Meetings Through The Web
TimeBridge
They originally started out as a deeply integrated Outlook plug-in launched at the end of last year. While initially distinguishing them from other scheduling competitors, I have a feeling that the plug-in requirement added unnecessary friction to using the system.
Now TimeBridge is back with a full web only interface that integrates with your Google and Outlook calendars, with support for other calendars soon. The new version pushes them in the direction of their Montreal-based competitor Tungle
To make a meeting, you log in to their site, and fill out an email-like form consisting of the email addresses for attendees, meeting topic, and possible meeting times. You don’t have to download anything to use TimeBridge, but it helps if you install the plug-ins. If your attendees don’t have a TimeBridge, you can just suggest times based on your personal schedule. If they have TimeBridge integrated with their calendars, though, you can view what blocks of their scheduled time in a sidebar as you choose times.
After you send out the meeting request, each participant gets a full meeting request form in their email. The form lists the possible meeting times, which participants can select as no good, good, or best. Accepting the meeting request places time placeholders on calendars for people with TimeBridge.
The system then picks the best meeting time by points based on attendee responses with ties going to earlier times. If a an upcoming meeting time hasn’t been settled, you can either pick a meeting time or send reminders to the people that didn’t respond. Attendees with TimeBridge will then see the confirmed meeting slot pop up on their calendars.
The video below outlines the process in greater detail. TimeBridge is a funded through a total of $8.5 million by Mayfield and Norwest Ventures.
iPod v. The Insulin Pump: Adaptive Path Rises To The Challenge
When I wrote about Amy Tenderich’s call for someone to design a better Insulin pump, perhaps by taking inspiration from the iPod, I didn’t really think anyone would actually do it. This certainly wouldn’t be an attractive market for Apple, and there are only so many design firms out there who would be willing and able to dedicate time to the project without being paid.
But I was wrong. Almost immediately San Francisco based Adaptive Path met with Amy and decided to spend time trying to design a more attractive Insulin Pump. They’ve now completed the initial design work and have been writing about it on their blog
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Romney faces fierce fight for the right
His weekend victory in an Iowa straw poll only highlights the tough competition he faces for the conservative vote. By Michael Finnegan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer DES MOINES -- Former Massachusetts Gov.
Huckabee, Iowa Poll's Real Winner?
Iowa: Huckabee pulls second, Paul finishes fifth
http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn
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