The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Anyone Interested In Buying A Geo-Aware Social IM Service?
- NSFW: Sleepless in London. It’s scary outside the bubble
- Video Professor To Leverage “Strong Brand Equity” To Raise $10 Million
- “This Means Something:” Why the Magazine Industry Is Suddenly Crowing About Tablets
- Google Officially Launching Chrome Extensions Next Week
- Google Music Pays For Listeners On Bing
- KIT Digital To Retire The Feedroom And Nunet, Projects 2009 Revenue Of $46M
| Anyone Interested In Buying A Geo-Aware Social IM Service? Posted: 06 Dec 2009 07:06 AM PST
The company is not too shy about e-mailing all the usual suspects to see if they’d be interested in acquiring them outright, so either they wanted this to become public knowledge and we’re helping them, or they’re so desperate to find someone to take the service off their hands that they really had no other option left but to contact anyone who could be potentially interested by e-mail. Or both, of course. RadiusIM bills itself as a social IM service. It’s a web-based application that enables people to communicate with their contacts on instant messaging networks such as Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, AIM, Google Talk and Facebook Chat. The startup saw early on that there would be demand for location-awareness features in communication services and made it possible for users to see where their friends were hanging out and meet new people based on their own geographical location. Alas, apparently there wasn’t enough traction or enough interested advertisers to make the venture viable, so the company is resorting to e-mailing potential buyers to take over the service and its existing user base (they claim to have over 1 million registered users who have, according to their website, sent almost 2 billion messages to each other since its inception). We’ve contacted the company for confirmation and/or more information, and will update when we hear back. But radiusIM is now officially on deadpool watch. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  |
| NSFW: Sleepless in London. It’s scary outside the bubble Posted: 06 Dec 2009 05:14 AM PST
And to think I was so organised 24 hours ago. My column was written – 1000 words on a big subject of the week; a big subject that I now can’t talk about, for reasons I also can’t talk about. Don’t ask. Still, I’m a professional and there’s no use crying over spilt milk – I’ve spent five pounds on a coffee, opened a fresh Google Document and am all set to write am alternative column on how happy I am to be back in London, and how excited I am for the opportunity to catch up with all the amazing and inspiring start-ups my erstwhile home has to offer. But therein lies the problem. While I’m certainly happy to be here – it’s my 30th birthday tomorrow, and there is a party planned – the truth is, I’m just not all that excited about London’s current crop of dot com hopefuls. When I moved to San Francisco at the start of the year, I promised myself I’d head back to the old country twice a year – mainly to keep my cynicism topped up and to make sure I didn’t lose the accent that your American women find so endearing. But also for a third, more serious reason: I don’t want to forget my roots. The London technology scene is where I cut my columnising teeth, and it’s Brit entrepreneurs that first inspired me to try – and fail – my hand at building a start-up. Whereas Valley entrepreneurs point to Facebook and Google as their inspirations, mine came in the form of Moo, Last.fm and Bebo. Smaller fish perhaps, but each with a uniquely British vibe that somehow made them more fun; more human. Also – say what you like about San Francisco as a technology hub, but the London scene’s parties shit all over the rest of the world. But recently something has changed. I noticed it when I last visited back in June and, in what turned out to be my penultimate column for the Guardian, I called time of death on London’s start-up scene. Everyone was running out of money, I said, people were getting laid off in their droves, and all the real action is – as ever – in San Francisco. Two days later, Guardian Tech’s freelance budget ran out of money, my column was laid off and I was hired by TechCrunch in San Francisco. QED. And since then London has only become less relevant as a home for dynamic exciting start-ups. Take ‘Silicon Roundabout’. Last year, Dopplr co-founder Matt Biddulph noticed that a number of high profile start-ups – including Moo, Last.fm, and of course Dopplr – were all based within walking distance of the old street roundabout in East London. He jokingly suggested that the region be renamed ‘Silicon Roundabout’. Today the Old Street roundabout remains but Dopplr – and Biddulph – have left for Berlin, Last.fm is owned by CBS in New York and Moo has just opened a US base of operations in Providence, Rhode Island. A similar story is true right across the Capital, with Bebo laying off almost all of its local staff and countless other London 2.0 poster children looking to the US for money or a new base of operations. The idea that a company can thrive – or even survive – in London alone seems entirely implausible; ridiculous even. Off the top of my head I can’t think of a single exciting web business that has come out of the UK in the past six months. Spotify is the nearest candidate and that was created by Swedes. Moreover, in the few short months since my last trip back home I’ve gone utterly native in my attitude towards my homeland. I see plenty of my Brit friends when they visit San Francisco, but rather than asking for news from the old country, I’m more likely to ask them when they’re going to come to their senses and move to the Valley. I still visit TechCrunch Europe several times a week – Mike Butcher always does a solid job at covering what’s going on over here – but even there I’ve noticed a curious change in my attitude to what I read. Where once I read TCEU through the eyes of a local – noting new companies and inwardly congratulating the latest Belgian company to secure funding – I now look at European technology news in the way American news channels cover foreign stories about escaped bears. Not to learn anything useful, but rather to amuse myself on how parochial foreigners can be. Oh, bless, the French have launched their own rival to Facebook. Ho ho ho. Things have got so bad that I’ve even started to mentally turn on my friends who are still toiling away near Old Street. A couple of days ago, one such friend – who I won’t name, sufficed to say he’s CEO of a hot London start-up – emailed me an amazing screed in response to a post by one of my TC colleagues hyping a Valley-based rival. The thrust of my friend’s complaint was that his company has been virtually ignored by TechCrunch.com even though TechCrunch Europe had hailed it as one of the continent’s rising stars. This disparity he blamed on the fact that TechCrunch (US) is only interested in local companies, created by people who happen to be friends of our writers. Six months ago, I’d have agreed with him – I mean, there really no need for ten thousand Pandora stories for every Last.fm post, or four hundred Foursquare plugs for every mention of Rummble. But on reading my friend’s email this week, my first response wasn’t sympathy, but apathy. Mate – I thought – that’s just the way it is. TechCrunch is based in San Francisco and so are most of the companies TechCrunch covers. Those are the rules of the game. If you don’t like it, stop whining and get on a fucking plane. But the fact is, my friend is right; and I’m wrong. There are hundreds of amazing technology companies outside of the Valley, many of which haven’t taken a penny of American money and are making money hand over fist without a single San Francisco-based user. Just read a couple of Lacy’s recent dispatches from India of China; or week’s worth of TechCrunch Europe posts and you’ll see that’s true. The problem – my problem – is that living in the Valley has it easy to forget, or care, about them. The skin of the bubble is just too thick and the voices from Europe (and beyond) just too faint and distant. And so I’ve taken my own advice and got on a fucking plane. In the three weeks I’m in town, I’m planning to meet as many UK-based start-ups as possible, to keep half an eye on what comes out of LeWeb next week, to catch up with friends who are still doing cool things near Silicon Roundabout, to re-avail myself of the kick-ass social scene here – and above all to remind myself that the old country is still home to plenty of new thinking. And then at the end of the month, I’ll return to the bubble – re-energised with cynicism and hopefully slightly less convinced that Foursquare represents the most important thing in the future of the world. I mean, everyone here knows that’s Spotify. But all that will have to wait until next week. I’ve got a birthday to have first – and right now I just need to get some sleep. Hello London. And goodnight. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Video Professor To Leverage “Strong Brand Equity” To Raise $10 Million Posted: 06 Dec 2009 05:11 AM PST
The company’s product offering was one of the scams we called on in our ScamVille posts. The company lures in potential customers by offering free learning CDs. But they are then billed up to $290 for products they never intended to buy. We outlined how the scam works here, and also point to a number of other sites with thousands of consumer complaints. According to a revenue chart, revenues for the company peaked in 2006 at around $135 million, but dropped to under $80 million in 2007 and were just $40 million in 2008. Projected 2009 revenues are nearly $100 million.  “VPI's competitive advantage is the superior quality of its learning programs, its use of subject matter experts, and the trusted relationship that the brand has earned with consumers,” says the document. It fails to point out the hugely negative reviews and complaints in this article as well as Amazon and epinions. The document also boasts:
And to all those 20 million “customers” who’ve already been scammed one time by Video Professor: look out, they’re coming back for another dip at the well:
The complete document is below:   Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| “This Means Something:” Why the Magazine Industry Is Suddenly Crowing About Tablets Posted: 06 Dec 2009 01:25 AM PST  Whenever companies do something inexplicable, the nerd in me always comes back to that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind when Richard Dreyfus keeps building models of a mountain, culminating in a huge, muddy mess in his kitchen. Throughout it all he keeps saying "This means something." Well, the latest molehill into a mountain is the move by Time Inc. and Conde Nast, among others, to build a tablet-based interface for their flagship titles. This means something, but what it means is that the homes of Time and Gourmet (oh, wait), aren't going to take the coming industrial disruption lying down. |
| Google Officially Launching Chrome Extensions Next Week Posted: 05 Dec 2009 02:57 PM PST
Two sources close to the situation say that Google plans to unveil its Extensions Gallery at some point next week, probably in the middle of the week. This makes sense since Add-on-Con 09, a conference devoted to browser add-ons, is taking place next Friday, and Google Chrome is a Gold Sponsor of the event. Obviously, Google will probably want to have something they can actually show off at the event, rather than just a developer dashboard. Apparently, the Extensions Gallery will be much like the Chrome Themes Gallery. It will be a page that lists a bunch of extensions and has a button to one-click download the ones you want. Presumably there will also be a link to learn more about what each extension actually does. Several developers already have their extensions ready to go for Chrome. We’ve profiled Aviary’s and Shareaholic’s recently. And actually, there have been hundreds of extensions unofficially available for Chrome for some time via sites like Chrome Extensions. This morning we profiled 11 of the best ones found there. Initially, Extension support will only be for the Windows-based version of Chrome. Even though the launch of the beta version of Chrome for Mac is imminent, that version will not have extension support built-in. However, the latest builds of Chromium (the open-source browser that Chrome is built off of) for Mac does support extensions, and even has an extension manager that works. It would appear that the Linux build of Chrome will support extensions whenever that beta is available. Extensions will be very important for Chrome as it attempts to hit Google’s stated 10 percent market share goal in the next couple of years. Extensions have been one of the keys to the success of Firefox, as it continues to steal market share from the once utterly dominant Internet Explorer. Disclosure: Add-on-Con is advertising on this site. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Google Music Pays For Listeners On Bing Posted: 05 Dec 2009 01:08 PM PST
It was bad enough when Bing put ads on Google and in AdSense during its launch to get people to come check it out. (In fact, it’s still the top sponsored results when you search for “bing” on Google, even though Bing.com is also the top organic result at this point also). But now the shoe is on the other foot and Google is buying search ads on Bing for its fledgling Google Music Search. Sure, Google only launched its music search about a month ago and most people probably don’t even know it exists unless they search for a song or artist like “Muse” on Google, and even then they wouldn’t know there is a separate site because the playable song results appear right at the top of the regular search results. But try searching for “Muse songs” on some parts of Bing and you get a paid ad for Google Music search. The ads appear for other artists as well, such as Lady Gaga and Radiohead. Everybody knows that search ads are very effective, especially Google. And if people are searching on Bing for Muse or Lady Gaga songs, buying a search ad is one way to let them know they can also find results on Google. Bing, of course, is happy to take Google’s money (and vice versa). But seeing an ad for one search engine on a competing search engine seems like an act of desperation. It is almost a better ad for Bing because Google is acknowledging that buying ads on Bing is a good idea. (Hat tip to reader Travis Brown of Spacedex). Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| KIT Digital To Retire The Feedroom And Nunet, Projects 2009 Revenue Of $46M Posted: 05 Dec 2009 10:00 AM PST
The company has also shared 2009 expectations and milestones, as well as its strategic objectives for next year. KIT digital expects 2009 revenue of approximately $46 million with an operating EBITDA margin in excess of 10% for this year. According to Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, chairman and chief executive officer of KIT digital, all operational targets have been achieved, including reaching free cash flow-positive status and listing on the NASDAQ Global Market (KITD). The company board and management team have defined four strategic priorities for 2010: complete the integration of Nunet and The FeedRoom, roll out its new VX2 platform on a global scale, work on improving its corporate marketing and visibility and expand in the BRIC markets (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). KIT digital suggests it might be making some strategic acquisitions in the regions for reaching the latter objective. Formerly called Roo TV, KIT digital raised $20 million in 2008 and went public this year to little fanfare, although it is clearly positioned right in the center of a growth market (see this Seeking Alpha profile for more). The company has made 5 acquisitions to date (The Feedroom, Narrowstep, Visual Connection, Nunet, Morpheum and Kamera). Frankly, it’s quietly turning into a very attractive acquisition target of its own. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
I’m tired. Very tired. It’s a little after 4am San Francisco time – noon GMT – and I’m sitting in the arrivals lounge Heathrow airport, thanking the lord for Boingo hotspots and trying to commit these few hundred words to cyberspace before the daylight finally penetrates my brain and my whole body goes into jet-lag meltdown.
Video Professor is trying to raise $10 million in convertible debt, according to an investor pitch document that was forwarded to us. The company “incurred substantial losses which depleted its cash reserves” in 2008, says the document, and is looking to use the new money to “retire its line of credit, purchase media, build strategic alliances, finalize the technical development and launch of the e-commerce platform and accelerate growth.”
A couple weeks ago, Google 
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