Crenk » startup

Yahoo! Buys a Start-Up Site

Dean — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:05:40 +0000

Yahoo has confirmed that is has purchased a small start-up located in San Francisco in order to add better photo functionality to their Web Mail. The company which has been bought out is called Xoopit and is an emerging contender in the photo sharing world. The service allows users to share photos easily on a host of different sites such as Flickr and Facebook by taking them from their e-mail inboxes.

On the company blog, Bryan Lamkin, the senior vice-president said:

“ Why is this such a big deal? Yahoo! Mail is actually home to one of the largest online photo repositories in the world. And every day, millions of you use Yahoo! Mail as your primary way to share the photos of important moments in your lives. While social networks and community sites are great for sharing photos with everyone you know, we realize it’s not for everyone or every occasion. For many, email is still best for sharing photos among a more select group of friends or family. And now we’re making it all that much easier for you.”

Xoopit seems over the moon with the new deal. They have updated their homepage screaming Yahoo! everywhere. On their company blog they said that “the Xoopit team today sees this acquisition as an exceptional path for us in achieving our vision. Over the last few months, we have left every conversation with the Yahoo! team thinking that together we can wow the world”

The specific financial deal has not been revealed but it is estimated to be in the region of $20 million. That amount of money is no chump change for a new group of start-up creators who will hopefully go on to create even better websites and services in the future.

Blah Girls: Why Isnt Ashton Kutcher Pushing It on Twitter?

Steven Finch — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:00:03 +0000

Over the last few days there has been a lot of talk and discussion surrounding Ashton Kutcher and CNN. First he manages to get almost as many followers on Twitter as CNN (almost 900K). Then he challenges CNN to a race to get to 1 million followers first. If he wins, he’ll “”ding dong ditch” Ted Turner’s house.

This made me think a bit about Ashton and his original tech startup the Blah Girls. Blah Girls launched with a lot of press and publicity (mainly due to Techcrunch and Michael Arrington), but now it seems to be a very basic gossip blog with a cartoon attached.

Blah Girls produce a weekly vidoe who is pretty much a catoon spoof. The videos are very well develop and quite cool. However, these videos and Blah Girls in general doesnt seem to be getting much traction at all. The Blah Girls Youtube channel has over 3,500 subscribers but each video seems to be lucky to get more than 1000 plays. Plus for some reason YouTube has given Blah Girls a partner page, but they dont seem to meet the requirements of being a YouTube partner (apart from the fact that Ashton is quite well known).

Back to the site itself it seem that is had an initial push at launch but then has been slowly growing at the same pace as a normal gossip blog. The site has a great design, but there seems to be a huge gap of white space between the video section and where the actual blog starts. Ashton I really think you need to take a look at the design and try to piece it all together a bit better. Additionally, Ashton why arent you twittering about Blah Girls on your Twitter stream? Im sure 1m followers will really help you in pushing your site to the next level faster, plus you have a benefit that no other gossip blog has, your already bloody famous!

SaySoMobile: Make Money Receiving Text Ads On Your Mobile Phone

Steven Finch — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:43:01 +0000

Are you sick and tired of receiving crappy spam messages in your inbox every single day? Well why only receive spam in your inbox when now you can also receive it on your mobile phone! This all comes from a new startup called SaySoMobile.

SaySoMobile is a new startup in which users can sign up and receive advertisements straight onto their mobile phone and in return the user makes a little money. Its that simple!

The idea is simple. Advertisers want access to people which gets their message across as much as possible for as little as possible. This new startup allows advertisers to target certain people in certain countries with advertisements direct onto their mobile phones via messages. Advertisers know that with this method the high majority of ads will be opened before they can be deleted, thus having a higher possibility of providing them a return on their investment.

Im very interested to hear from people using this service to make a little extra money, mainly to see if the money they are making is worth the intrusiveness of the advertisements.

Lovely Charts: Best Web Based Tool For Flowcharts and Wireframes

Steven Finch — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:03:05 +0000

Lovely Charts is a slick new web-based tool for creating flowcharts and wireframes. Features you’d expect from a similar desktop app come standard: copy-paste, undo up to 20 steps, and pan/zoom all work the way you’re used to. Objects snap into place, and the basic drawing tools are all there. The only drawback? You can only save one chart at a time until you upgrade to the pro version. Depending on your needs, though, the 18 euro for 6 months might be worth it to you.

The advantages of having a web-based wireframe app are obvious if you’re a designer who works from home and an office. You can access your stuff from anywhere, and let collaborators work on it if need be. Lovely Charts also comes pre-stocked with some network diagram symbols and wireframe templates that could save you a lot of time. You might want to wait to buy until they implement a few more export formats. JPG and PNG are currently supported, with more on the way.

Timecamp: Keep Track of Your Employees Time

Steven Finch — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:23:17 +0000

Are you an employee looking to keep track of your employees time? Are you trying to work out how to best optimise the time of your employees, because they are your largest overhead? Well introducing Timecamp. Timecamp is a new tracking tool that seems to be very similar to Basecamp but for employee tracking. It’s like history book or google analytics, but works with people’s time. Increase team productivity, eliminate “time killers”, get more done and stay focused.

The service seems very straight forward and also seems to be a relatively new startup. Im not so keen on it being so closely based to Basecamp, but it is a simply idea with a simple solution. Currently the have a free pricing for individual users, but also a $8 per month pricing for any other additional users you want to add to the system.

If you have used Timecamp it would be great to hear your feedback.

Tsavo Media Purchase Open Source Food

Steven Finch — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 09:40:58 +0000

Several hundred thousand palates can’t be wrong. With this, Tsavo Media announced that it has acquired Open Source Food (OSF) from Egg & Co., a venture of Tokyo-based web producer Jon Anthony Yongfook Cockle.

With the acquisition, OSF has been renamed NibbleDish and will join Tsavo’s new network of content sites for consumers, currently in development.

Yongfook will remain with the company. A serial web-app builder, Yongfook is also responsible for the popular lifestreaming software Sweetcron and analytics tool Gumtrail. From his base in Tokyo, he works with various Japanese companies as an outside consultant, building web apps and overseeing production.

Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Stimator: Real Website Valuation Estimator

Steven Finch — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 09:32:34 +0000

Stimator is a real-time website value estimator that aims to deliver the most accurate economical value that a website could worth by collecting important data from different sources as well as market places.

There are six major factors involved in the calculation:

Top Level Domain – Stimator take in account the strength of a TLD.
Financial - It uses Yahoo Finance to get all data needed to perform the variations of the financial market.
Real Sells – The service was built to delivery real results (at least the most possible ones). The math used to determinate a website value was study using real website sells such as: Sedo, Sitepoint Marketplace etc.
Web Factors – Stimator collects information from the website itself and from several major sources during the calculation stages before presenting the final estimated result.
Estimation - The calculations are made to give what is called the “economic value”.
Observations - The main mission is to avaliate domains and sub-domains. After each calculation, Stimator presents a report with the main relevant factors that it can extract from the examination. This factors will give the users an idea of how the site is performing.

Using Stimator Crenk is worth $17,351 which is kind of a realistic valuation. Anyone interested in offering me that much for the site?

Accomedion: Keyboard Harmonica and Accordion iPhone App

Steven Finch — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:21:23 +0000

Accomedion is a new musical instrument application that combines a keyboard harmonica and an accordion.
Sound sources from keyboard harmonica are used, and chord buttons similar to the ones on accordion are attached. The wide range of tunes will be played as accompaniment.

Main functions
- Capable to shift between major chord and minor chord
- Capable to record and replay up to three tunes
- Five demonstration tunes are stored. Capable to play in accordance with the tutorial guide.
- You can play it like a real keyboard harmonica by blowing the microphone. (iPhone only)

You can download this application from the iTunes store here.

Jango Launches Music Vertical Advertising Network

Steven Finch — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:42:10 +0000

US music site Jango announced the launch of Jango Music Network (JMN), dubbing it as the world’s largest and most targeted cost-effective ad network for the music vertical.

The current JMN inventory of music sites reach a collective total of 30 million unique monthly visitors in the US alone. JMN also features a unique methodology that maps brand preference to musical taste and uses it to help advertisers target audiences that will be particularly receptive to their brand.

Dataopedia: Look At Your Sites Key Metrics In One Place

Steven Finch — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:37:12 +0000

Not too long ago the guys over at Killerstartups launched a new service called Dataopedia. Dataopedia is a basic solution that allows users to type in any url and find quickly key metrics from various sources.

Metrics that are measured include Google PR, Alexa Numbers, Compete and Quantcast analysis, Social media breakdowns, Twitter news, Technorati links, Friendfeed and url registration information. Currently, Dataopedia pulls in all this information from various partners including Crunchbase, Compete, Digg, Getsatisfaction and more.

There’s also something interesting buried at the bottom of the site profiles: an ability to comment on the site using Disqus. While that’s not likely to have the reach of a Google Search Wiki, it provides yet another way to gather details about the site and its reputation.

Dataopedia does a great job of pulling all the key quantitative and qualitative site measures required in todays world of web 2.0. There is still a lot of improvements that can be made with the user interface, but over it is probably already leading in this specific market, even thought market is very small.

First Look: Chordica: iPhone App That Allows Anyone To Easily Make Music

Steven Finch — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:14:18 +0000

I received a very interesting email today about a new iPhone / iPod Touch application that will be launching in the App store very shortly. Take a look at the video below and let me know what you think about Chordica.

Wordpress.TV: Your Video Resource Directory For Everything Wordpress

Steven Finch — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:00:25 +0000

WordPress.tv is your visual resource for all things WordPress. To make it easy for you to find up-to-date, WordPress-themed video content within a couple of clicks. Without having to wade through spammy promotional videos, out-of-date content, and missing chunks of presentations. WordPress.tv is there waiting for you, you can learn anything related to WordPress by watching the videos there.

Additional to basic Wordpress tutorials they have a section specifically for WordCamp videos in which is Wordpress related sessions in which professions talk about Wordpress and how to use it affectively and efficiently.

ReviewMyWeb: Free Competive SEO Analytics Tool

Steven Finch — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 04:32:47 +0000

Review My Web is a FREE web site review. We stack you up against your competitors on Google, Yahoo, Blogs, and other key channels like Web 2.0, SEO, PPC, Social News, Blogs and much more.

The process is very simple, head over to Review My Web and add in the website you want analytics for and then also type in two competitors and then your email address. It normally only take up to five minutes for the report to then be sent to your email address, and its that simple.

Review My Web is a great free seo analysis tool, but it would also be great to see previous results and compare if everything is moving in the right direction.

Just Hear It: New Music Streaming Search Engine That Claims To Be Legal

Steven Finch — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:23:42 +0000

In the last week or so we have been really taking a keen focus on music streaming service and even posted a specific review about MixTurtle. Today we have come across yet another music streaming service that might be worth a look. This new streaming service is called Just Hear It. Just Hear It has been created by two college students Nicolae Ivanescu and Cosmin Panait.

Just Hear It is very similar to MixTurtle, Seeqpod and Songza. It lets the user search for tracks that are online and add them to a playlist. Just Hear It claims to be completely legal, following DMCA guidelines, and paying royalties to all of the major performing-rights organizations, like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. In the future, Just Hear It aims to negotiate licenses to share revenue with labels.

After playing around with the site it still seems to have the same issues as Seeqpod and Songza, every now and then you will find the track that you want to listen to, but it simply wont play or the file is corrupted or incomplete. Im not really too sure if there is anything more annoying than setting up your playlist and half the songs playing.

However, because Just Hear It claims to be completely legal, I’m very curious to see how this business develops. They need to have a very strong business model and I’m guessing that will be based on advertising revenues.

NewsGator Launches AdBurner. Ad Optimisation Tool for Premium Publishers

Steven Finch — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:18:16 +0000

NewsGator has announced today that they have launched a new product called AdBurner. AdBurner is a program that provides a turnkey advertising based solution for premium publishers, which helps them to optimise ad revenues around key web 2.0 technologies with no incremental effort.

AdBurner is aimed at optimizing the CPM for, and process of, inserting and managing advertising into NewsGator’s publisher products suite, including services as diverse as widgets, related content, and iPhone applications. The initiative is built around best of breed advertising partners Technorati, Admeld, Gigya, Medialets, and Tremor Media.

This is a very interesting moving from NewsGator and Im very keen to test the product for them. Currently, the new product doesnt seem available via their website, so would be great to hear from the NewsGator team.

TechCrunch50 Showcases Startups

Luis Sandoval — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:39:45 +0000

TechCrunch has been a well known site for everything tech and media related. With millions of readers and followers, TechCrunch has done an amazing job in helping young fledgling startups get noticed. What began as TechCrunch 20, then 40, and now 50, it looks to once again be the opportunity that every startup is waiting for.

In just under a week the San Francisco Design Center Concourse will be transformed into a showcase floor for entrepreneurs, new technology, and VC’s looking for the “next big thing.” The DemoPit, where all the magic happens. Paired with this display are panels of speakers who will share their thoughts and expertise with the attendees, expected to be over 900 this year alone.

The event gives the startups an opportunity to share, explain, and possibly have their ideas funded. Companies have a high chance of being launched at this event, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Thanks to all the sponsors who help support and foster an event where these startups can find growth and a possible future!

Keep track of this event, and check back here for some of the highlights of the event.

TripTouch: Simple Yet Affective Travel Information

Steven Finch — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 22:32:50 +0000

TripTouch is a Tel Aviv startup that focuses on the travel industry. The site is built for independent travellers who want to make the most of their trips around the world. The site is a social network mixed with search facilities. They have partnered with Kayak to provide accommodation and travel search, which seems to mix in nicely with the overall look and feel of the site.

Everything on TripTouch is based around local feel, so once you select which town anywhere in the world you would like information on, then you will receive local photos, news, travel information, weather, currency information and the ability to search for flights and accommodation. Everything in one spot!

Additionally, they have added a social network in which also acts as information when searching locations. For example if I travel to Brisbane (AUS) and write a little comment about the place, then it will appear in the search results when someone else looks for the same location.

Currently, TripTouch is still in beta stage but it has the making of the one stop shop for travelling information.

Edgeio Assets Purchased by LookSmart

Steven Finch — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 10:36:55 +0000

The auction for the Edgeio assets has finished and Looksmart have walked away with all the assets for $280,000. Patrick Chapman talked to Mike Arrington about the purchase yesterday and said it still too early to know what Looksmart will do with the Edgeio assets.

I have read a lot of articles in the last few weeks about Edgeio and how there company was destined to fail (mainly from all the traffic coming from Techcrunch), but I think the technology is quite good and the idea was very sound but execution was quite poor. Im glad Looksmart has taken over the assets and im interested to see where they can fit them in to their portfolio.

The Rubicon Project : How Can I Get My Invite

Steven Finch — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 10:39:50 +0000

I was read ShoeMoney yesterday and he reviewed a new advertising product that I had to mention on here.

Welcome to the Rubicon Project. The Rubicon Project is a new product that has already received $6 million in funding and is based around the very competitive market of online advertising. About a year ago I had an idea of starting an advertising network based around an open marketplace, since then this has been done several times over and it seems when someone comes up with a new idea it is only a month or so before there are 10 of them in the market.

The Rubicon Project however is a unique advertising model that actually has ties with over 300 ad networks, including the big boys like Google, Yahoo and ValueClick.

The Rubicon Project ensures your website is making as much money as possible by optimizing it for not only the highest paying advertising company but also for demographic/geographical data.

Now unlike a few selected people I am still waiting for my Invite to their private beta. However in the mean time make sure you head over to the Rubicon Project and have a look at their 3 min. video.

Redfin and Financial Modeling

Steven Finch — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:38:35 +0000

Guy Kawasaki posted a very interesting article on Monday, “Financial Models for Underachievers: Two Years of the Real Numbers of a Startup“.

The post is written by his friend Glenn Kelman who runs Redfin. Glenn decided he wanted to bare his financial soul so that other entrepreneurs could get greater insight into the witchcraft called financial modeling. The article is a two part posting in which he reveals his numbers and his lessons. It is very interesting for a young entrepreneur, so make sure you take a look!

Shvoong Releases Homework

Steven Finch — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 10:19:02 +0000

Shvoong Homework is designed to assist students of all ages manage and organize their homework. Instead of using messy and disorganized notebooks, students can use Shvoong Homework to type-up their schoolwork, keep it organized, and then share it with individual or groups of classmates, the entire class, students from other schools entirely, or no one at all.