Vudu, yet another video for TV company

Vudu, a Santa Clara, Calif. company promising a better way to bring video to your television instantly, has emerged from secrecy today -- with a story given exclusively to the New York Times.

The company, which does not yet have a Web site and hasn't launched yet, says it improves upon TV set-top offerings being developed or already offered by Apple TV, Comcast and Time Warner -- none of which have really perfected the experience of bringing new or old movies to your screen. Comcast, for example, is incredibly frustrating, say people we know who ... » Continue reading

by Matt Marshall 04.30.07       Comment

Evite threatens to sue Socializr for copyright infringement

Ticketmaster, owner of the popular invitation service Evite, has threatened to sue Socializr for copyright infringement, saying the company's service looks strikingly and confusingly similar to Evite's.

In a letter sent April 3, Ticketmaster's law firm, Quinn Emanuel, said two invitation design templates offered by San Francisco start-up Socializr were exact copies of Evite's, and another design is very similar. See letter here. The letter also said Socializr's invitation event creation page, design galleries and guest list options menu were all strikingly and confusingly similar in format, layout and features ... » Continue reading

by Matt Marshall 04.30.07       Comment

Yahoo answers GoogleClick, buys Right Media for $680M

Updated

Yahoo has acquired online ad exchange company, Right Media, for $680 million, a move that shows Yahoo is not resting in the wake of Google's purchase of banner ad company Doubleclick earlier this month.

The WSJ reported the story just now.

Right Media is notable because it is an ad exchange, where buyers of Internet ads (publishers) and sellers (advertisers) can find each other and negotiate prices with the efficiency created by a large marketplace. This is significant because it is more transparent than Google's platform for publishers, Adsense -- and could therefore give ... » Continue reading

by Matt Marshall 04.30.07       7 Comments

Yahoo loses VP of consumer search, to Accel Partners

Yahoo, the Sunnyvale search engine trying to stem shrinkage of its market share in search, has lost a key search executive to a venture capital firm.

Andrew Braccia quietly quit as Yahoo’s vice president of consumer web search earlier this month, and begins tomorrow (Monday) with Accel Partners, a well-known Silicon Valley venture capital firm.

The departure comes after a particularly tough time for Yahoo and Microsoft, both ceding ground to Google in search (see most recent data here). In the last month, Microsoft's search property has seen two top executives leave.

Braccia, 31, ... » Continue reading

by Matt Marshall 04.29.07       Comment

Agloco, the Web 2.0 pyramid company, to release Viewbar

Agloco, the company that pledges to pay you for surfing the Web, is about to deliver the download that will let you start earning credit.

The Stanford, Calif. company is leading wave of new pyramid-like companies seeking to arbitrage advertising dollars on the Web. By banding together some 700,000 people who have signed up for its service, Agloco believes it can wring out greater advertising dollars on their behalf. As it tracks the pages surfed by its members, it learns about their habits and preferences, and is able to tell advertisers more about your ... » Continue reading

by Matt Marshall 04.29.07       1 Comment

Secretive Silicon Valley company, OptiSolar, builds largest solar farm

A secretive Hayward, Calif. company has just announced it will build the largest solar power "farm" in North America, using solar cells manufactured in Silicon Valley.

The site, near Sarnia in Ontario, Canada, will be enough to power between 10,000 and 15,000 homes on sunny days, drawing on a monstrous 40-megawatt capacity. The company, called OptiSolar, is backed by private equity firms apparently with oil connections. It has studiously avoided saying anything until this announcement.

The deal is significant, not merely for its size, but because it was scooped by such an unknown company. Why wasn't ... » Continue reading

by Matt Marshall 04.27.07       23 Comments

LiveMarkets launches ad chat

LiveMarkets launched a service yesterday that lets Web site visitors click on an advertisement and immediately IM chat with a salesperson from the advertiser.

While other startups offer ways of managing the buyer-seller relationship online, LiveMarkets keeps the chat live on the page, right on top of the banner ad, text, or other part of the site. It's the latest significant innovation in an online advertising market that is booming.

Using LiveMarkets, the advertiser agrees with the publisher about where the chat box will show. The chat service is useful, because it's ... » Continue reading

by Eric Eldon 04.27.07       1 Comment

Roundup: Scribd hype, Stockpickr, Red Herring, Cozmo and lots more

Here's the latest action:

Scribd hype -- Maybe because it calls itself the "YouTube for documents," the young Scribd is getting a lot of interest from Silicon Valley's venture capitalists. We've talked to some eager to invest. Rumors are leaking out, including at Gigaom and Techcrunch that the round is almost done, with GigaOm saying it is done and citing a large $10 million valuation. We talked with Scribd's Trip Adler today, and he didn't want to say much. He said those other reports are "inaccurate." He hasn't closed the round yet, he ... » Continue reading

by Matt Marshall 04.27.07       1 Comment

The incubator bubblet: YEurope, Techstars, HitForge…

We were just talking about the buzz YCombinator has generated with its incubator model.

Now others are copying it. Paul Böhm has launched a European clone, called YEurope, and his site is awfully similar to YCombinator's. (Techcrunch has more about YEurope's copying of the investment model too, which is based on the number of founders, i.e., 5000€/each, and taking a 2-10% stake in the company.) Eight start-ups travel to Vienna to work on their companies.

Others are popping up, another strange reminder of the good ol' days of 1999, when ... » Continue reading

by Matt Marshall 04.27.07       2 Comments

BoomTown launches….again

The Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher wrote the BoomTown column during the dot-com boom. It faded after the bubble burst. Now she's back with a BoomTown blog. With the Dow breaking the 13,000 barrier at new highs, and the technology-strong Nasdaq creeping steadily upward since 2002, this may indeed be an appropriate name.

Her blog is part of the All Things Digital site, just launched with Walt Mossberg, the well known reviewer of personal technology.

Swisher is a talented writer, and this should be fun to watch. She starts with a piece about ... » Continue reading

by Matt Marshall 04.26.07       2 Comments