Posts Tagged ‘MediaBeat’
DEMO: Fox-backed Bitbop brings mobile TV streaming to Android
Bitbop is one of 70 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2010 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.
Streaming mobile video startup was dubbed when it launched back in March. Bitbop offers access to a hefty selection of popular TV shows for $9.99 a month. It’s adding movies to its library soon, but those will only be available on a pay-per-view basis. Thus far, the company has only supported certain BlackBerrys, but today at DEMO, Bitbop is officially launching its app on a slew of Android devices.
The services works over 3G, 4G, and Wi-Fi, so you don’t have to be worried about being tied down to a wireless network. It comes from Fox Mobile Group, a division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
The service competes with Hulu’s own mobile offering, which also requires a $9.99-a-month Hulu Plus membership but so far is only available on the iPhone. BitBop offers a handful of shows, like the überpopular “Jersey Shore”, that Hulu doesn’t have access to on its site — so it may be able to attract hardcore fans on that fact alone. (The conflict is curious, though, since News Corp. is an investor in Hulu and provides it with online versions of its TV shows and movies.)
Bitbop also allows users to download episodes, instead of just streaming — an advantage that may put it ahead of Hulu and Netflix for many.
Like any mobile video offering worth its salt, BitBop’s platform uses variable bitrate streaming to automatically adjust video quality depending on available bandwidth. The platform also offers social media integration (Facebook and Twitter), and carrier billing, among other features.
Bitbop has its roots in Jamba, a company founded in 2000. VeriSign and Fox turned that company into a joint venture in 2006, and Fox , turning the unit into Fox Mobile.
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DEMO: Mediaspectrum wants to lead newspapers into a shiny, iPad future
Mediaspectrum is one of 70 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2010 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.
There’s a lot of excitement about — but even so, not every publication has found the time or money to build their own app. (Cough cough, VentureBeat.) But a Burlington, Mass. company called is announcing a new product today called Adrenalin, which should help newspapers and other publications make the leap.
Jay Cody, Mediaspectrum’s vice president of marketing, acknowledged that an app-building service is nothing new, but he said Mediaspectrum has paid particular attention to both publishers’ and readers’ needs on the iPad. Publishers just set up a special feed with their content, then Adrenalin pushes the content, along with advertising, into the app. Publishers will log into their accounts, track statistics, and add iPad-specific content, like an extra photo gallery. Since users might want to read their iPad even when they don’t have an Internet connection, the apps can store some of of the articles (say, the last day or so — it’s up to the publisher) to be read offline.
As for the advertising, publishers can sell ads themselves, and Mediaspectrum plans to create its own advertising network among Adrenalin apps. Cody said one thing special about Adrenaline is the fact publishers can even sell advertisements through the app itself. So if you own a business and are reading your local newspaper on the iPad, you don’t have to go to a website or call a sales team to place the ad — you just purchase the ad on the iPad and upload your content straight into the app. Advertising can be viewed offline too.
And if publishers don’t just want to make money from advertising, they can also charge a monthly subscription fee using Andrenalin.
The new iPad app-maker is built on top of Mediaspectrum’s existing editorial and advertising tools for newspapers, and it could be customized for other tablets too. Cody said the opportunity for media organizations on these devices could be bigger than the Web, because the advertising is so much more engaging and users spend so much more time in the apps. For example, The New York Times has rate on ads in its iPad app, compared to 0.01 percent on its website.
“Even if you cut that in half, that’s still massively larger than what’s happening online,” Cody said.
Mediaspectrum plans to make money from Adrenalin by taking a cut of the advertising revenue, though it might offer the service for free to some publishers. The self-funded company is aiming to sign up traditional print publishers and the top tier of blogs, Cody said.
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Contour’s hands-free video camera marks location as it records
is introducing a hands-free video camera today that can mark your location as it records high-definition video.
The ContourGPS video camera has global positioning system (GPS) navigation built into it. The camera, which comes with goggles attached, is targeted at outdoor enthusiasts who like to take video while they’re on hikes, skydiving, or otherwise doing something that requires they have both of their hands free. Users can share videos online with a community of like-minded adventurers and can share stories about their videos. The site combines video playback with an online map.
The product is a cool gadget that foretells how video and location technology are going to spread in the future. Marc Barros (right), chief executive of Contour, formerly known as VHoldR, said that GPS allows explorers to map their own adventures and discover new places posted by other users. It’s like combining a Flip video camera, the YouTube user-generated video site, and Google Maps together into a single easy-to-use product, Barros said.
Contour GPS captures location once per second with high accuracy. It comes with Contour Storyteller, an application for the Mac or PC that lets you edit and organize your videos. The Seattle company’s web site, Contour.com, will let users watch a ski run down a mountain while tracking its progress, speed and elevation on a map.
“We call this new form of storytelling “Video Mapping” said Barros. “The inclusion of GPS brings a whole new level of context to any video, making location, speed, time, and conditions as important as what you recorded.”
The company is targeting the estimated 100 million outdoor enthusiasts around the world. It’s new camera costs $349 and will be shipping worldwide in the coming days on web sites such as , , and .
Contour started out as VholdR, making cameras for outdoor enthusiasts. It was founded by Barros and another colleague in 2004 as part of an entry into a University of Washington business plan competition. The company won third place and $20,000. It has 35 employees. Rivals include hands-free camera maker GoPro. Barros said the company is profitable and has had a string of successful outdoor cameras. The company raised $1 million at the end of 2007 from angel investors and made it onto the Inc. 500 list this year, at No. 183, by growing revenues 1,500 percent over three years.
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Stanford student creates YouTube Instant, gets job offer from YouTube CEO
Stanford student Feross Aboukhadijeh, in a nod to the recent unveiling of , has created a for YouTube videos — and it’s caught the attention of YouTube CEO Chad Hurley.
After spotting YouTube Instant, Hurley over to Aboukhadijeh, saying he loved the idea and asking if he wanted a job.
Aboukhadijeh, who goes by the Twitter handle FreeTheFeross, back to find out if Hurley was serious about the offer — because, after all, this is the Internet. It looks like Hurley was, indeed,
Aboukhadijeh the launch of YouTube Instant on Y Combinator’s Hacker News feed, a news aggregation site similar to Digg and Reddit. It behaves much the same way Google Instant does — as a viewer types in the video they are looking for, the engine guesses the video and begins playing it immediately.
YouTube, which was acquired by google four years ago for about $1.65 billion, might this year according to some analyst predictions.
We’ve reached out for confirmation from YouTube and will update when we hear back.
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Ooyala lands $22M to extend its online video platform
Online video platform announced today that it has snagged $22 million in funding from new and existing investors. The round was over-subscribed, and the company expects to land another funding slice within 60 days from over-eager investors.
The company offers a video platform for content owners to upload their video, analyze audience engagement, and easily monetize video content. The company says it has doubled its global customer base over the past year, with several hundred new publishers jumping on its platform. It serves over 550 customers on 5,000 sites and reaches an audience of over 100 million users a month.
The Mountain View, Calif., company was founded by former Googlers, and has thus far raised a total of $42 million in three and a half years. This latest round saw major interest from Asia — Shanghai-based CID Group, and Tokyo-based ITOCHU Technology Ventures, led the round. They were joined by existing investors Sierra Ventures and Rembrandt Venture Partners.
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Blue Mars abducts journalist from Second Life; will other virtual citizens follow?
has specialized in writing about 3D virtual worlds. Under the name Hamlet Au, he has reported from inside ’s virtual world of for three years and he still maintains a about it. But now he is moving on to the greener pastures of the latest cool virtual world, Blue Mars.
Journalists are fickle. But Au’s shift from Second Life to — a terraformed virtual planet where he will write an in-world blog dubbed — is like an epitaph for an era and the beginning of a new one.
There is a business opportunity here, as one generation of technology gives way to another. World of Warcraft, a six-year-old fantasy role-playing virtual world, has more than 11 million users and generates more than a billion dollars a year in revenue for publisher Blizzard Entertainment, a division of Activision Blizzard. By contrast, virtual worlds such as Tabula Rasa and never caught on, resulting in losses of tens of millions of dollars. If opinion makers such as Au say that one world is cool and another one obsolete, other users may take notice.
Second Life itself was built mostly on its perception of coolness. Founded in 2003 by Philip Rosedale, Linden Lab’s Second Life became a virtual world in which Residents, as users of the online world were called, could create anything they wanted. Second Life’s growth really took off as it stopped charging subscription fees and users began engaging in commerce, selling the virtual goods they created. (Au is pictured left with his Second Life avatar).
Second Life went into its own hype cycle a few years ago, landing on the cover of . One company, Digital Pastry, which makes women’s shoes for Second Life, has generated more than $1 million in revenues from the sale of 200,000 pairs of virtual shoes since early 2007, for example. But as corporations such as IBM and Dell moved to cash in, users got tired of the fad. They moved on instead to the simpler graphics and to Facebook.
Vivaty, Metaplace and There.com shut down their virtual worlds. Second Life has held its own, ; but it also succumbed in some ways as its parent firm and; its efforts to become a productivity tool for real-world enterprises has stalled. Watching these developments, Au, who is the author of , .
“I’m convinced that Blue Mars is the cutting edge,” said Au, in an interview. “It’s been thrilling and frustrating to see Second Life’s trajectory. It could take them a long time to fix their problems. ”
Au said he believes that if any virtual world has a chance of unseating social networks, then it will be something that looks like Blue Mars. Blue Mars’ graphics are based on the visually arresting 3D engine from Crytek that powered games such as Crysis, but its activities are aimed at casual game players, such as those who enjoy parlor games on web sites or social games on Facebook. Au thinks that somebody will pick up the mantle of building a community around user-generated content. That passion is why the Honolulu-based maker of Blue Mars, Avatar Reality, chose Au for the job. As he was with Linden Lab from 2003 to 2006, Au will be a paid contractor for Avatar Reality, though Au says he will remain objective when reporting.
It will be very tough for any virtual world to reach the kind of mass market that Facebook has secured. One problem is that 3D worlds have often required hefty computers and big downloads. Second Life’s flaw is that it takes a couple of hours to learn how to navigate through it, whereas other virtual activities are instantly fun. . Once Blue Mars launches that capability (which would resemble technologies being fielded by OnLive, Otoy and Gaikai), users will be able to participate in the high-end 3D world even if they don’t have sophisticated computers. That may happen in the next couple of quarters.
Au isn’t alone in defecting to Blue Mars. John Zdanowski, former chief financial officer of Linden Lab, is now Avatar Reality’s CFO. Au will be joined in Blue Mars by virtual style and fashion columnist (pictured in avatar form, right). Au paid heed earlier this year when a group of die-hard Second Life “steampunk” artists set up shop in Blue Mars as if they were colonists. Au thinks that Blue Mars will be more attractive to the broader third-party development community because it embraces the kind of graphics tools that animators already use.
Blue Mars launched its open beta in October, 2009, and began selling virtual land to third-party developers in January. The company was founded in 2006 by Henk Rogers, who introduced Tetris to the world, and Kazuyuki Hashimoto, former chief technology officer of Squaresoft and former vice president at Electronic Arts.
Au says he will continue his older Second Life blog, New World Notes, on a part-time basis.
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My6sense looks to soften information overload for Android users
There’s a lot of information coming through the tubes of the Internet these days, like RSS feeds, Facebook updates and Twitter posts. Most of them aren’t worth reading for the everyday user. My6sense’s new Android app, launching today, hopes to cut through most of that chaff.
The phenomenon of information overload online has opened up wide a new market for applications to chop out content readers don’t find interesting. My6sense’s app uses an intuition engine to figure out what users are interested in reading and getting rid of the rest of the noise. Its information isn’t ordered chronologically but by relevance as determined by the engine.
The focus for My6sense is on links: The app automatically removes any status update that doesn’t provide some kind of new content. Of the 20,000 updates that someone typically sees each day, the only ones that pop up in the feed are updates that contain some kind of link.
The Android app now integrates the Google Buzz as well, in addition to the usual assortment of media feeds. My6sense is a of DEMO Spring 2010 conference, the product-launch event coproduced by VentureBeat. It started its offerings with an iPhone app.
The Israeli company has raised $2.5 million to date.
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