AllThingsD » interactive http://allthingsd.com Thu, 23 May 2013 19:01:35 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 http://allthingsd.com/theme/images/logo-rss.jpg All Things Digital http://allthingsd.com/ 144 22 Former Homestead Founder Returns to SV Curious -- And With $7.5 Million in Funding http://allthingsd.com/20130501/former-homestead-founder-returns-to-sv-curious-and-with-7-5-million-in-funding/ http://allthingsd.com/20130501/former-homestead-founder-returns-to-sv-curious-and-with-7-5-million-in-funding/#comments Wed, 01 May 2013 12:30:04 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=317167 Curious_Logo-feature

Justin Kitch — the founder and CEO of Web 1.0’s Homestead small-business site that was sold to Intuit in 2007 — is returning with Curious, a lifelong learning startup aimed at connecting teachers and students on “subjects as varied as salsa dancing, integral solving, pipe soldering, jewelry making and knife sharpening.”

A little eclectic, perhaps, but the new company has raised $7.5 million from Redpoint Ventures, as well as prominent individual investors such as Bill Campbell.

That amount is a lot, but is part of a new rush to fund a range of educational startups of all kinds. Most recently, Lynda.com raised $103 million in January for its popular software, creative and business video courses. Other high-profile and well-funded MOOC — massive online open course — providers include Udacity and Coursera.

Curious will offer short-format video-based interactive lessons, noting that it currently has about 500 of them collected from a private beta phase, with 100 teachers and 10,000 learners in 140 countries.

In a post on the new effort, Kitch wrote: “To be clear, the earth would still be rotating on its axis without our launch today. But it would be without one little new idea that just might turn into something big.”

Here’s the official press release:

CURIOUS LAUNCHES NEW MARKETPLACE TO TEACH OR LEARN ANYTHING ONLINE

Platform Designed for Lifelong Learning Gives Teachers Tools to Easily Build, Market and Monetize Content

Already More than 500 Interactive Video-Based Lessons on Everything from Brewing Beer and Creating Excel Spreadsheets to Learning Conversational French

May 1, 2013 — Menlo Park, CA – Curious.com, Inc., today unveiled a new marketplace for lifelong learning where students and teachers can connect around subjects as varied as salsa dancing, integral solving, pipe soldering, jewelry making and knife sharpening. The company debuts as the home to hundreds of short, engaging video-based lessons for consumers interested in learning about anything, anytime. Founded by former Homestead CEO and founder and Intuit executive, Justin Kitch, Curious also provides teachers with the tools to market, share and monetize their lessons as well as interact with their students. The company has received $7.5 million in funding from Redpoint Ventures, individual investors Bill Campbell and Jessie Rogers, and a personal investment from Mr. Kitch.

“No matter what you want to learn, there is a great teacher somewhere in the world who could teach you. However, those teachers often don’t have the tools or the marketing expertise to teach online. The internet hasn’t caught up to them yet, which means that people trying to learn on the web are too often stuck wading through piles of low quality content and are then underwhelmed with the static way content is delivered,” said Mr. Kitch. “We believe online learning needs to be more fun and digestible for the lifelong learner in all of us, and easier and more lucrative for the world’s best teachers. Curious was designed from the ground up with those two objectives in mind.”

Curious Turns Passionate Teachers into Entrepreneurs with Free, Easy-to-Use Tools

With Curious, teachers don’t have to take out loans, deplete their savings or put their professional lives on hold trying to start a web business from scratch. At no cost, Curious offers teachers the Curious Lesson Builder which allows them to build, publish and market informative, entertaining lessons to attract followers and turn their passion into profits by earning supplemental income. Curious also links related lessons, tracks how many views a lesson has received and enables learners to submit projects and create “Curious Cards” to share their achievements and interact with teachers. Teachers can work with students on a highly personal level to answer questions, review projects and provide feedback.

“With Curious, we’re able to reach a whole new audience — and on a much bigger scale,” said Curious teacher Jennifer and Kitty O’Neil. “The Curious Lesson Builder makes presenting our videos easy. Curious takes care of everything else, and we can focus on what we do best, teaching. Now that we’ve connected with Curious, we’re taking our business to a whole new level.”

“I was once asked at a job interview what inspired me as a teacher and I said it was helping people to achieve something they previously thought beyond their ability,” added Curious teacher Guy Badger. “Curious helps show people that they really can accomplish more than they realize and, with the right teacher, learning can not only be fun, but can develop confidence and might just assist someone in landing that dream job.”

Bite-Size Lessons Optimizes Anytime, Anywhere Learning

Through the Curious Lesson Player, Curious allows learners to engage on their own time. Whether they have 10 minutes or several hours, they can watch short-format videos and interact with teachers and the Curious community through a host of multimedia features to discover something new, improve a skill, or follow a passion. No scheduling means students can take lessons at their convenience, stop lessons whenever they want, post questions as they arise, and share projects in-process or upon completion. Curious currently houses more than 500 lessons, adding more each day. Thanks to overwhelming interest during its private beta phase, the Curious community is already comprised of more than 100 professional teachers and over 10,000 learners from 140 countries who share perspectives, knowledge, and experiences at launch.

Curious includes free lessons as well as lessons that cost a few dollars. The company has introduced its micropayment system, Curious Coins, to make it easy for learners to securely purchase premium lessons whenever they want without repeatedly using their credit cards for nominal transactions. To celebrate its launch, Curious will offer new learners $20 of free Coins. Because most premium lessons cost only a dollar or two, learners have ample opportunity to explore all that Curious has to offer.

Founders Reunite and Secure Funding, This Time to Transform Online Learning

Curious rejoins the leaders of Homestead, which became the world’s largest small business website platform before being acquired by Intuit. Mr. Kitch, Thai Bui, (Homestead co-founder and CTO; Curious CTO), and John Tokash (Homestead Director of software development; Curious co-founder and Head of Engineering) applied their key learnings from growing Homestead, helping businesses quickly and easily build excellent, user-friendly websites, to Curious. The Curious founders have since directed their vision, energy and talents to develop an unparalleled interface and learning community that teachers and students will embrace. Similar to Homestead, Curious revolves around empowering the “little guy” with all the tools and marketplace presence of larger competitors to bring the best content to the largest audience.

“Justin, Thai and John wanted to create a home for learning where consumers make every second matter,” said Redpoint Ventures general partner and lead investor, Tim Haley. “As industry veterans, these guys know how to build compelling consumer products and services. Curious already offers a wide-range of outstanding content, an array of expert teachers from around the world, and a highly engaged user community — all from its beta period. The result is that anyone who comes to Curious on Day One will find compelling lessons on the topics they want and they’ll fall in love.”

To start teaching and learning now, please visit www.curious.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130501/former-homestead-founder-returns-to-sv-curious-and-with-7-5-million-in-funding/feed/ 0 Parties -- Not Panels or Products -- Were the Animating Spark at SXSW http://allthingsd.com/20130311/at-south-by-southwest-the-parties-are-the-main-event/ http://allthingsd.com/20130311/at-south-by-southwest-the-parties-are-the-main-event/#comments Tue, 12 Mar 2013 02:34:33 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=302496 feed party

Standing in the Starbucks line at the tail end of my last day in Austin, I’m not happy. I’m tired and somewhat underwhelmed by the tech-focused things I’ve seen during South by Southwest’s Interactive sessions. My feet hurt like hell. To top it off, some jerk accidentally steals my iced Americano.

And then it happens — a “South By” moment. The jerk, whose name I learn is Andy, returns with my coffee (already half-sipped), and we start chatting as the barista makes our new drinks. Turns out he went to college with my colleague Liz Gannes, and is a now an employee at a major tech company I’m interested in. We exchange numbers, and promise to meet for coffee at some point after the conference. And then he asks the usual question that bookends every SXSW conversation: “So, what parties are you headed to tonight?”

Moments like these are fast becoming the value of South by Southwest Interactive, once considered a premier place to discover the latest trends in tech, and the companies that will define the landscape of devices and the Web in the years to come.

Instead, many make the trek from Silicon Valley, New York, and other tech hubs for the chance to meet like-minded people, perhaps wander in and out of a few panels, and network, network, network.

“I have one friend who comes to South By exclusively for the parties, without going to a single panel,” said Nick Tommarello, founder of the Y-Combinator-incubated startup WeFunder, who was attending South By for the third time. “I come here to hang out with all of my friends.”

The parties are indeed something else. Venture capital firms rent out entire restaurants off Austin’s Sixth Street thoroughfare, offering open bars and top-tier music acts. Big-time Internet companies like Twitter host rooftop ragers, with throngs of people waiting around the block to get in. And then there’s the Path party, the highly exclusive, not-so-secret shindig that’s been thrown by the social startup for the past few years. It’s become so difficult to get into that even its own investors were rumored to be turned away at the door.

SXSWToolKitMake no mistake — this is where the real work of South By is done. Young, nerdy engineers and slick biz-dev types hop from one party to the next almost systematically. Partnerships are forged, secrets are traded. And the hosts use the occasion to attract promising talent, each party offering a glimpse into the “good life” after recruitment.

“The budgets for some of these things that I’ve seen are insane,” one Silicon Valley venture capitalist, who preferred not to be named, told me. “They just keep getting crazier and crazier.”

As a result, fewer startups use the occasion to launch significant product updates and releases at South By, in fear of being drowned out amid a sea of loud marketing noise, raucous parties and ridiculous publicity stunts.

“I’ve seen no apps that I really care about here,” said Matt Ceniceros, director at Austin-based marketing company PulsePoint group. Indeed, it’s almost a complete 180 from last year, when apps like Highlight, Banjo, and other location-based discovery apps gained much buzz — some would call it hype — at the conference, and then failed to take off in the months that followed.

Even larger companies like Facebook held only small, informal gatherings targeted mostly at members of the press, with no significant product launches. Twitter took the opportunity to treat many of its ads and media brand partners to a night of fun, but had little to say in the area of news.

“We felt there was way too much noise and distraction for the press at SXSW to choose this as a effective launch venue,” one startup employee told me, who preferred that I not name her, as her company was still in ‘stealth mode.’ “This was a good call,” she said.

Instead, companies like hers found it better to meet reporters and potential investors for drinks, or perhaps a chance introduction in a hotel lobby bar. Even for writers — people like me — it’s a time to meet new sources, VCs and startups, with the aim of formally catching up after the conference is over.

Later that evening, Andy from the coffee line ends up texting me. He’s at the Mohawk, an outdoor bar and late-night music spot, and wants to know if I want to join him in wandering around to different parties later in the evening. With just 12 hours before I have to catch a flight back home to San Francisco, I tell him I’ll be meeting him shortly.

It’s time to get to work.

RELATED POSTS:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130311/at-south-by-southwest-the-parties-are-the-main-event/feed/ 2 Attention SXSW Hipsters: Watch This Video and Get Some Much-Needed Help http://allthingsd.com/20130310/attention-sxsw-hipsters-watch-this-video-and-get-some-much-needed-help/ http://allthingsd.com/20130310/attention-sxsw-hipsters-watch-this-video-and-get-some-much-needed-help/#comments Sun, 10 Mar 2013 18:49:31 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=302066 hipsterkitteh

I have loved this video since it appeared on YouTube a few weeks ago, and now I have a chance to post it in context, as I recover from Day #1 at the SXSW interactive festival in Austin, Texas.

As I wrote in a broader cultural post about the annual event for Vanity Fair this week:

“No matter how young you are, you’re too old for SXSW. I already feel about 136 or so getting on the plane headed to Austin from San Francisco. It’s loaded down with fresh-faced hipsters, all eager to make a splash at the interactive part of the annual festival, with the enthusiasm of out-of-control puppies headed for the park, pulling on their leashes.”

That’s a perfect segue into this video, which asks the important question: “Are you ironic? Do you have a beard? You may be suffering from HIPSTER. Luckily, there’s a cure.”

By the way, from the looks of things at SXSW, where I always feel as if I am in some endless indie loop of “Girls” on HBO, this really will help:

RELATED POSTS:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130310/attention-sxsw-hipsters-watch-this-video-and-get-some-much-needed-help/feed/ 0 Some More Inconvenient Truths (Including Spider Goats): Al Gore Talks About "The Future" at SXSW http://allthingsd.com/20130309/some-more-inconvenient-truths-al-gore-talks-about-the-future-at-sxsw/ http://allthingsd.com/20130309/some-more-inconvenient-truths-al-gore-talks-about-the-future-at-sxsw/#comments Sat, 09 Mar 2013 22:06:12 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=301972 goresxsw380

Former Vice President Al Gore took to the stage at the SXSW interactive festival today to tell a packed auditorium at the Austin Convention Center about the future.

No, really, “The Future,” which is the name of his new book, with the heavy-duty subhead “Six Drivers of Global Change.”

Among these drivers are — no surprise for him — severe environmental damage, as well as overpopulation and changes in biology via technology, and all the problems that come with that. Among the other critical issues, Gore also noted money politics, the ever-more-sophisticated antibiotics for livestock, and the reliance on supercomputers for stock market trading.

Gore told AllThingsD editor Walt Mossberg in an interview that some of these global developments were both a “peril and opportunity.”

But, in all, it’s a pretty depressing picture overall that he is painting, despite pointing out that knowing you have a problem is the first step.

“Our country is in very serious trouble,” he said. “But that does not mean I am not optimistic.”

Which is right before Gore started reeling off the problematic pressure that money has put on politics. “Our democracy has been hacked,” he said.

“American democracy has never been perfect, but more often than not, the will of the people did drive policy,” he added. “Congress today is utterly incapable of passing any reform of any significance unless they get permission from special interests.”

For example: “The NRA is a fraud,” about the National Rifle Association and its links to gun manufacturers.

“I wish I could get you to be more outspoken,” joked Mossberg.

“Timidity has always been an issue with me,” joshed Gore back.

spider goat

Gore, who often likes to talk in full and very extended paragraphs, slowly worked through the rest of the list, before he got to the issue of spider goats.

Indeed, spider goats, which are created using genetics to mix the genes of spiders and goats.

“You can’t farm spiders for a number of reasons, so people are talking the genes from spiders and splicing them into goats,” explained Gore. “They look like goats, then these spider goats secret silk through their udders. ‘Everyone okay with that?’”

Um, no.

Still, Gore added that there are “blessings” that come with genetic engineering, including the elimination of a range of devastating diseases.

Gore soon moved onto the issue for which he is best known — global warming — after his movie “An Inconvenient Truth” gained worldwide attention.

“It’s not me saying it — I’m delivering the message. Every single national academy of science on the planet agrees with this, he said, before moving onto the recent devastation of Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast. “Mother Nature has the most powerful voice in this debate.”

But Mossberg and Gore soon parried over the sale of Gore’s media company, Current, to Al Jazeera.

You sold your network to Al Jazeera, which is owned by a government that’s a big oil producer,” asked Mossberg. “How could you do that?”

While hemming and hawing about that, Gore then came back with a good one: “I don’t ask you why you continue working for Rupert Murdoch.”

This meant war, since this site is owned by News Corp. “Last I checked, he’s not in the oil business,” countered Mossberg.

“He’s also not strictly in the news business, either,” said Gore.

Oh dear, time to get back to global warming, because it’s getting hot in here.

It was then onto a short Q&A, with one question about the Internet — an issue near and dear to Gore’s heart. In truth, despite all the jokes, he was critical when a senator to turning the Internet over to the people, from its origins as a government project.

And in this Gore finally pointed to a bright glimmer of hope. “The future of democracy,” he said, “may well depend on the continued freedom and independence of the Internet.”

RELATED POSTS:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130309/some-more-inconvenient-truths-al-gore-talks-about-the-future-at-sxsw/feed/ 0 Moon Shot: Earthbound Investor Milner Talks About Origins of the Universe at SXSW http://allthingsd.com/20130309/moonshot-earth-bound-investor-milner-talks-about-origins-of-the-universe-at-sxsw/ http://allthingsd.com/20130309/moonshot-earth-bound-investor-milner-talks-about-origins-of-the-universe-at-sxsw/#comments Sat, 09 Mar 2013 17:18:21 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=301943 yuri

There were, of course, the questions on his famously huge Facebook investment many years ago, and why he’s put money in Y Combinator to spur startup innovation.

But it’s clear from his mainstage interview at the SXSW interactive festival in Austin this morning that high-profile Russian investor Yuri Milner of DST Global has been striving to think much bigger thoughts of late.

While he’s gotten a lot of attention for his big bets in the social networking site, as well as with Twitter, Spotify, Airbnb and many others, he’s slowed his investing in the U.S. considerably to focus more on what he and many others in Silicon Valley are calling “moon shot” ideas.

“Somehow, we have lost interest in big ideas,” said Milner, in an onstage interview with Vanity Fair contributing editor Bethany McLean about shifting away from thinking — which he has funded, in part — that has gotten more short-term and pragmatic. “I think we still have a destiny as human beings.”

That has included starting up his Fundamental Physics Prize, which has now become the priciest academic award, last year. And, more recently — with Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and Genentech mogul and Apple Chairman Art Levinson, among others — the launch of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation.

As Mike Isaac wrote when that initiative was announced less than a month ago:

“The first round of prize recipients includes 11 scientists from a range of research disciplines, including studies in genetics, cancer research and neural behavior. Each of the 11 prize winners will receive a $3 million award for their work, and Brin, Zuckerberg, Milner and the rest of the sponsors have agreed to a five-year commitment to awarding prizes.”

Milner, who was a physicist in his early career, said onstage that he has been disheartened to see that not enough younger people choose to go into fundamental science anymore. Thus he is aming to make it more attractive via his prizes.

“We don’t have enough heroes who are admired by a large portion of the population due to their scientific achievements,” he said, noting that it will require rewarding individuals in a “disproportionate manner.”

Still, in the Q&A session, the crowd in the Austin Convention Center wanted to know mostly about more earthbound questions, such as what tech company would last 100 years, as IBM has.

According to Milner: Google, Facebook and Wikipedia, due to network effects.

Another attendee wanted to know what he thought it takes to be an entrepreneur these days.

“It’s almost a heroic effort, and kind of goes against set ways of doing things,” answered Milner.

Then someone wanted to know how the political arena could be similarly transformed.

“That, I don’t know,” said Milner.

Moon shot, indeed.

RELATED POSTS:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130309/moonshot-earth-bound-investor-milner-talks-about-origins-of-the-universe-at-sxsw/feed/ 0 People of South by Southwest -- Please, Free Grumpy Cat http://allthingsd.com/20130309/people-of-south-by-southwest-please-free-grumpy-cat/ http://allthingsd.com/20130309/people-of-south-by-southwest-please-free-grumpy-cat/#comments Sat, 09 Mar 2013 13:53:07 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=301931 grumpy_cat_rageLet me be clear: I am not exactly an animal rights activist.

But as I walk off a red-eye into Austin, Texas for the South By Southwest tech, music and film conference, the coming week of interactive media events isn’t at the forefront of my mind.

I’m worried sick about a cat. A grumpy cat.

For the uninitiated: “Grumpy Cat” is the latest Web-borne viral meme manifest in furry form as “Tardar Sauce,” a cat whose face is in a state of permanent frown. Tardar Sauce’s — Tard for short — famous face is “likely due to feline dwarfism,” according to her owners’ website. And after her scowling mug made it to the front page of the social site Reddit late last year, Tard’s popularity exploded.

But it’s that burst of Web fame that has brought Tard straight to Austin, where she’ll be on display inside of the meme-friendly site Mashable’s tent during part of South by Southwest’s Interactive portion of the multi-week show.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve been to South By before, but I have. Imagine a citywide frat party, populated by out-of-town hipsters, local “bros” and Silicon Valley hucksters, all awash in a sea of cheap booze and blaring music. While it may be great for entrepreneurs and musicians looking for a week of hedonism, it’s far from being the ideal place for a dwarf kitten to relax.

grumpycatfriskiesTard already has massive lines of people waiting outside Mashable’s tent for the chance at a photo op. She has grown so sought-after that “#grumpycat” was a trending hashtag on Twitter on Friday. The crowd’s lust for cute cat pics is already a breakout hit.

I’m not cool with it. If I were a grumpy cat, the absolute last place I’d want to be is stuck in the middle of a 24-hour party for days on end, where throngs of drunk partygoers waited for a chance to take a picture with me. God knows I have a hard enough time being around them as a human capable of rational thought. Who knows what it’s like for that poor cat.

Mashable, on the other hand, maintains that Tard is perfectly content in her Friskies-sponsored king-sized bed, living the life in pampered city. And her owners told the Austin Chronicle that Tard is doing just fine, and is calm when she’s confined in her travel carrier.

But I don’t buy it. I’d imagine animals — especially the grumpy ones — don’t want to be the center of a nonstop barrage of attention, much less in a climate as unforgiving as South by Southwest’s.

So, good people of Austin, I implore you, if you see anyone from Mashable or Friskies during your time at South By, tell them one thing:

“Free Grumpy Cat.”

Even if it means not getting your picture taken with her, I’m sure Tard will love you for it. In her own frowny way, of course.

RELATED POSTS:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130309/people-of-south-by-southwest-please-free-grumpy-cat/feed/ 32 This Year at SXSW, the Next Killer App … Maybe Isn’t http://allthingsd.com/20130308/this-year-at-sxsw-the-next-killer-app-maybe-isnt/ http://allthingsd.com/20130308/this-year-at-sxsw-the-next-killer-app-maybe-isnt/#comments Fri, 08 Mar 2013 12:34:30 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=301489 In recent years, the annual SXSW Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, has become a hive for new platforms, with early tech adopters buzzing about the latest and greatest apps, sending some of them into flight.

SXSWApps

But this year, the next big app is … well, it isn’t clear. After asking nearly a dozen of the hippest, smartest, earliest-adopting people I know in tech, media and digital advertising, the consensus is:

No idea.

What — no new killer app?

Of course, SXSW will still go on and will probably even be fun, even if there isn’t a new app that “wins” the event. And here’s why:

SXSW Interactive was never really a launchpad for apps. With the exception of Foursquare — which the social location company hustled to finish in the few weeks leading up to the 2009 conference — most noteworthy apps haven’t actually launched during the conference.

Twitter didn’t, despite popular mythology, although its numbers did swell during the 2007 SXSW conference. And some articles that year ventured to say that SXSW was a “tipping point” for the newish microblogging site. But the first tweet? It came a year before that.

Also not new-kids-on-the-block were the messaging apps that were all the rage in 2011. GroupMe, now owned by Microsoft, launched the August before; Beluga had been around long enough to get acquired by Facebook just before SXSW that year.

The hype machine is broken. Last year’s pre-conference predictions were over the top. Remember Glancee, Highlight and Sonar? These were hot. They were changing the world! In theory, these apps were taking geolocation services to the next level. Some call this SoLoMo. Others call it MoLoSo. (I get these confused and it hurts my head.)

In any case, users quickly ran into battery issues with their smartphones, since these types of apps constantly track and ping users when other app-happy friends are nearby. And by the end of that week, AllThingsD writer Liz Gannes reported, a good SXSW icebreaker question was asking which apps people had deleted during the event, not downloaded.

Highlight creator Paul Davison said the company never sought out that kind of attention. “We had a lot of visibility after SXSW, which was great,” he says. “But after coming back, we said, ‘Okay, we really need to spend some time building out infrastructure and optimizing battery life. We need to make this a long-term product, not a festival product.’” Highlight has just released a new version of the app, hoping to take a second stab at success at SXSW this year.

There are too many apps. App fatigue isn’t a new theory, but it’s one I’ve heard mentioned a lot more in recent days. “I think it might be more difficult for newer companies to launch things there now,” says Tristan Walker, entrepreneur-in-residence at Andreessen Horowitz, who was part of the early days of Foursquare. “There are only so many new apps you want to download, and you’re not going to benefit from having 16 of them on your smartphone.”

Venture capitalist Bill Tai echoed this sentiment: “There are so many apps, the barrier is harder to break through.” But Tai, who has backed a brand-new app called Posse that he hopes will gain traction at SXSW, added, “I do think some app makers still see it as a good place to launch.”

Exciting hardware is stealing some attention away from apps. It’s hard to imagine SXSW becoming the next CES-like miasma of gizmos and gadgetry, but the New York Times’ Jenna Wortham highlights a hardware trend in her piece this week, with keynotes coming from Tesla’s Elon Musk and the founder and creator of the Ouya gaming console, as well as plenty of 3-D printing sessions to go around.

SXSW isn’t just about apps. It’s about the networking … at the parties. And the non-digital, real, live, human-to-human connections you’ll make … at the parties. And the interesting keynotes and panel sessions … followed by parties. So, if you’re looking to get value out of this year’s fest, you might want to consider this piece of advice, courtesy of Ad Age: Stop looking for the next big app.

Also: Get to a party.

(Feature image: Rondo Estrello / Flickr.)

RELATED POSTS:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130308/this-year-at-sxsw-the-next-killer-app-maybe-isnt/feed/ 3 Artificial Intelligence, Al Gore, Modern Blogging and More: Where to Find ATD at SXSW http://allthingsd.com/20130307/artificial-intelligence-modern-blogging-and-more-where-to-find-atd-at-sxsw/ http://allthingsd.com/20130307/artificial-intelligence-modern-blogging-and-more-where-to-find-atd-at-sxsw/#comments Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:40:47 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=301218 Time again for app-flicking, party-hopping, BBQ-eating and, somewhere in between all that, panel-picking.

AustinSXSW

The interactive portion of the SXSW festival — known as “South By” to hip conference goers — kicks off Friday in Austin, Texas.

And speaking of panels, members of AllThingsD will be moderating a few key ones throughout the fest that you won’t want to miss. (We promise not to call you out if we see you hungover and sleeping in the back row. Just come.)

First off, nobody knows more about blogging than the boss, Kara Swisher, who has literally made liveblogging Yahoo’s earnings calls an award-winning venture. So on Saturday, March 9, at 12:30 pm local time, she’ll be interviewing Mr. WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, about the current state of blogging. More details here.

Later that afternoon, AllThingsD’s other boss, Walt Mossberg, will interview former vice president and New York Times bestselling author Al Gore about his new book, “The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change” — described as “a frank and clear-eyed assessment of the emerging forces that are reshaping our world.” That panel takes place at 3:30 pm local time.

Early risers, reporters who snoop and sources who snitch should add Peter Kafka’s panel to the calendar: At 9:30 am Saturday, he’ll be joined by panelists Ed Lee of Bloomberg News, Greg Galant of MuckRack and Joe Ciarallo of Salesforce.com (formerly of Buddy Media) to discuss the shifting dynamics between reporter and source in the age of social media. Here are the details on Peter’s panel.

And on Monday, March 11, I’ll be moderating a panel on artificial intelligence — think robots, “smart” calendars and natural-language search apps — with Dror Oren, executive director at SRI International; Raj Singh, founder of Tempo AI; and Nadav Gur, co-founder and CEO of Desti. That panel takes place at 3:30 pm.

And, of course, if you see us elsewhere — at the Mailbox/Dropbox/Highlight cocktail hour Sunday, at the Path/Spotify/A-Grade party that same night, at the Funny or Die + Team Coco’s Comedy Climax Party on Monday, or just hanging around the GroupMe Grill — come say hello.

(Feature art courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.)

RELATED POSTS:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130307/artificial-intelligence-modern-blogging-and-more-where-to-find-atd-at-sxsw/feed/ 2 Gavin Newsom Talks About Transparent Government (Video) http://allthingsd.com/20130211/gavin-newson-talks-about-transparent-government-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20130211/gavin-newson-talks-about-transparent-government-video/#comments Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:02:36 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=293483 IMG_3803

Last week, I ambled over to the Founders Den in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood to talk to California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom about his new book, “Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government.”

For the book, described as a “rallying cry for revolutionizing democracy in the digital age,” the former San Francisco mayor, who also ran for governor of California, interviewed dozens of politicians, Internet players and other digital thinkers.

Newsom’s point is to turn citizens into collaborators in the operation of government, changing it from what he describes as a “vending machine” now to an inclusive and interactive social platform.

Here’s my longish video interview with Newsom:


[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130211/gavin-newson-talks-about-transparent-government-video/feed/ 0 Former MySpace and NFL Digital Exec Jeff Berman Tapped as President of Hollywood's BermanBraun http://allthingsd.com/20130107/former-myspace-and-nfl-digital-exec-jeff-berman-tapped-as-president-of-hollywoods-bermanbraun/ http://allthingsd.com/20130107/former-myspace-and-nfl-digital-exec-jeff-berman-tapped-as-president-of-hollywoods-bermanbraun/#comments Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:55:18 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=282763 Headshot copy

Longtime digital exec Jeff Berman is joining Hollywood production company BermanBraun as its first president.

Berman — who is no relation to BermanBraun co-founder Gail Berman — comes to the firm from the National Football League where he has been in charge of its Web, mobile, social and non-console gaming efforts. While there, he worked on several new initiatives, such as its multi-party video chat for Fantasy Football.

Several years before that, he was a top exec at social networking site Myspace, finally ending up as president of sales and marketing, where he was in charge of branded advertising, sales operations, entertainment, content and marketing. Efforts there by Berman included the now defunct Web-only series “Quarterlife,” which also had a very short life on a major network.

The Yale Law School grad was also on the board of Buddy Media, which was sold to Salesforce.com last year.

He’s an interesting person, then, for BermanBraun, which focuses on content across multiple screens, including big branded Web sites such as Wonderwall for Microsoft’s MSN and also more traditional entertainment shows. Its juicy-looking television series “Deception,” for example, is set to appear on NBC this week. It now has about 130 employees, mostly working at its Santa Monica, Calif., HQ.

“We needed an exceptional leader to manage the company,” said BermanBraun co-founder Lloyd Braun, who was once a top media exec at Yahoo. “And Jeff is someone who has skillsets in a whole bunch of areas and an emotional intelligence that is as important to what we do.”

Braun said Berman would initially focus on his area of expertise — digital — but that he would become more involved in the television and movie arenas over time.

BermanBraun — which considered raising funding last year — is at an interesting juncture in its development, trying to form a new kind of independent Hollywood media company that straddles analog and digital.

Berman said he was attracted to the opportunity there.

“I had a great job, since there is nothing bigger than the NFL,” he said in an interview yesterday. “But Lloyd and Gail have an incredible vision across platforms for entertainment.”

He added that content was just at the beginning of development online, but was finally poised to explode with the popularity of tablets, smartphones, interactive TV and other such devices, as well as social and e-commerce tools.

“The mind reels, there is so much that has happened and can happen,” said Berman. “I don’t know if there is a better time to be at such a place to create these new franchises — [BermanBraun] is a laboratory, where stuff is actually working.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130107/former-myspace-and-nfl-digital-exec-jeff-berman-tapped-as-president-of-hollywoods-bermanbraun/feed/ 0 As Fantasy Football Servers Fumble on Game Day, Yahoo Rolls Out More Homepage Tests Ahead of December Launch http://allthingsd.com/20121111/as-fantasy-football-servers-fumble-on-game-day-yahoo-rolls-out-more-homepage-tests-ahead-of-december-launch/ http://allthingsd.com/20121111/as-fantasy-football-servers-fumble-on-game-day-yahoo-rolls-out-more-homepage-tests-ahead-of-december-launch/#comments Mon, 12 Nov 2012 01:35:24 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=268350 Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer is continuing her tweaking of the critical homepage of the Silicon Valley Internet giant. “Bucket tests” of new iterations are rolling out today to small sets of users across the service, as the company zeros in on launching it widely in the first week of December.

This is a massive move and also a risky one. Yahoo’s homepage sees about 170 million daily users who click in to do a variety of things. That huge traffic means that advertising placements earn big bucks from marketers — which inside sources said is typically upwards of $350,000 for a prime placement for a day, rising in price depending on complexity.

Thus, making any dramatic change to the powerful homepage is a big deal for Yahoo’s bottom line, especially in the important fourth quarter, when big advertisers spend a lot of money online and expect big results.

And the latest versions are certainly a major shift from Yahoo’s older look, with the latest using an interactive tiled approach at the very top that suggests the design spawn of Microsoft’s Windows 8 and Flipboard’s elegant social reading app.

As I noted last week, along with experiments in infinite scrolling, a simplified logo and giving search more prominence, Yahoo’s homepage change seems to be aimed at being consumed on touch-responsive, non-PC devices.

That’s no surprise, since Mayer declared in a recent earnings call that Yahoo was going to veer toward a “mobile first” sensibility. “Yahoo will have to be a predominantly mobile company,” she said.

She also has to aim at being a reliable digital company, it seems. In a bit of unlucky timing — even as Yahoo prepped the home page redo, as well as major overhauls of other products — its hugely popular Fantasy Football offering went down right as eight games were about to start at 10 am PT.

Yahoo acknowledged the slowness in its servers on Twitter, noting: “We’re still working to fix fantasy server issue & will update ASAP. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience & appreciate your patience.”

Fantasy Football fans were livid, although this has happened before, especially to those who waited to do their lineup. But some were also funny about the screw-up, as you can see below:

 

 

As of two hours ago, Yahoo said it was still working on the problem. Presumably, it will be the first fix-it challenge for new COO Henrique De Castro, who starts this week.

Hopefully, Yahoo will not have such problems with the homepage rollout, once the final version is selected.

Until then, please check out two images of yet another version, which is similar — although not the same — as the one I posted last week. In the latest design, for example, the swooshy scroll at the top is smaller and a 300 by 250-sized ad unit is back in place at the top. Overall, it is a little bit more conservative, although still streamlined.

Here they are, along with a more dramatic one from last week and also a recent Yahoo homepage:

.

(Mark Sanchez photo: Debby Wong / Shutterstock.com)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121111/as-fantasy-football-servers-fumble-on-game-day-yahoo-rolls-out-more-homepage-tests-ahead-of-december-launch/feed/ 0 Exclusive: Yahoo's Mayer Aiming for Twitter's Stanton for Big Media Role http://allthingsd.com/20120810/exclusive-yahoos-mayer-eyeing-twitters-stanton-for-big-media-role/ http://allthingsd.com/20120810/exclusive-yahoos-mayer-eyeing-twitters-stanton-for-big-media-role/#comments Fri, 10 Aug 2012 07:07:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=239960

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has been trying to recruit Katie Jacobs Stanton, Twitter’s head of international markets, to take a major job on the media side of the Silicon Valley Internet giant, according to multiple sources close to the situation.

While she holds that globally-focused role at the social communications service, Stanton is an obvious choice for Mayer, who actually was once her boss at Google, including when Stanton was the product management leader in the launch of Google Finance.

More importantly for Mayer, Stanton was the key driving force in creating Yahoo Finance, perhaps its most powerful content site, when she worked there from 1999 to 2002.

In other words, she knows media.

It does not seem likely Stanton will leave Twitter, but it makes a lot of sense that Mayer would try to get her.

It’s not clear what job Mayer is offering Stanton, but it is presumably a big one. One source said it could involve running Yahoo’s powerful home page, while another said it might be an even larger role.

Ross Levinsohn, the top Yahoo exec who left recently, had been overall head of media and sales for the Americas at the company. When he was named interim CEO of Yahoo earlier this year, he had elevated Mickie Rosen as SVP of media and commerce.

Rosen is still in that role now, where she has purview over all Yahoo media and commerce efforts worldwide.

But many expect Mayer to soon begin to replace Yahoo’s top exec team with choices of her own. She has already started an overhaul of its communications team, and has been recently focusing on human resources and its product leads, too.

But media is a critical unit at Yahoo, and Stanton would easily be on any short list of candidates to fill key jobs there.

At the San Francisco-based Twitter, her focus has been on raising its profile abroad, where it has been growing by leaps and bounds. That has often been in high-profile ways, such as its use in the Arab Spring protest and after Japan’s earthquake and tsunami.

Stanton came to Twitter from a stint in Washington, D.C., including at the State Department, where she did the laudable mobile donation campaign for Haiti that raised $32 million for victims of the devastating earthquake there. She was also the White House’s first director of citizen participation, and got the Obama administration tweeting via @whitehouse.

At Google, she also worked on its Open Social efforts, as well as on launching its interactive discussion tool, Google Moderator.

But Yahoo Finance is probably still her biggest hit, and one of the few properties on the site that has remain a huge success, despite the company’s many troubles.

Stanton graduated from Rhodes College, and later got a master degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

I have an email into the apparently silent new PR spokeswoman at Yahoo, as well as the much more communicative spokesman at Twitter, and will update if I get a response.

We’ll see if Mayer can land Stanton, but if you want to get a good idea of the always affable and charming exec, here is a video of her in action — love her “can we go boy, girl, boy, girl” in the Q&A part at the end — at a recent event in Germany, when Twitter was opening its office in Berlin:

In related news, after picking up a midlevel Google product PR person last week to work closely with her on corporate communications, Mayer seems to have grabbed another exec from the search giant. She’s hired a policy manager named Patricia Moll Kriese to become Yahoo’s senior director for corporate projects (whatever that means!).

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120810/exclusive-yahoos-mayer-eyeing-twitters-stanton-for-big-media-role/feed/ 0 Mayer Will Extend Free Food to NYC Too, While "What Is Yahoo?" Question Is Hereby Banish'd http://allthingsd.com/20120807/mayer-will-extend-free-food-to-nyc-too-while-what-is-yahoo-question-is-hereby-banishd/ http://allthingsd.com/20120807/mayer-will-extend-free-food-to-nyc-too-while-what-is-yahoo-question-is-hereby-banishd/#comments Tue, 07 Aug 2012 22:22:54 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=238754

New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer descended on two of its New York offices today, declaring that she would summarily be granting free food to all there as she had recently done to much acclaim at its Silicon Valley HQ.

After firmly establishing herself as the munificent provider of free Odwalla juices for all, the former Google exec plunged into much more serious topics with the group of Manhattan-based employees. The New York staff is mostly focused on advertising — Yahoo’s most important business.

A number of Yahoo senior execs, as well as its several hundred others, were there to hear Mayer for the first time since she got the job about a month ago in a surprise and very high-profile hire, beating out media-focused candidate Ross Levinsohn.

In any case, Mayer seemed to be talking the language of the crowd, noting that Yahoo was an advertising company first and foremost.

A key area of focus is obviously display, she noted, as well as improving its ad network efforts. Mayer also told those gathered that the mobile strategy for Yahoo has moved around way too much, which is a nice way of saying there has been pretty much no direction under past CEOs.

Indeed, mobile efforts have been a longtime weakness of Yahoo.

Mostly, though, it was the same kind of things the energetic former Google exec has been saying to the Yahoos at its Sunnyvale HQ: Faster decisions, more accountability for top execs, hipper culture, all-hands meetings, question-rich involvement for employees.

In other words, in a performance coming soon to a Broadway theater: Google Clone — The Yahoo Edition.

One notable new aside Mayer made, several sources noted, was that she was not going to be answering the perennial query that has tripped up its leaders for years now: What is Yahoo?

She apparently does not like this line of inquiry one little bit and told the crowd it was not the right way to look at the long-troubled company or how to define it.

Now I am intrigued, since she is essentially correct in the concept that Yahoo is about what it does well more than anything else.

Not being able to execute has been a long-time issue for Yahoo, which has stumbled from one thing to the next in a much less disciplined manner than all of its competitors.

That said, every one of them still clearly communicates a basic core promise via strong execution, even as each has added on new businesses, for example:

Google = fab search, Amazon = top-notch retail, Apple = elegant devices, Microsoft = dominant Windows, Facebook = best social networking.

Yahoo — which ousted CEO Scott Thompson dubbed a technology-enabled media company (and he was right on that score) — has, of course, been about too many things, from a directory to an advertising service to a content provider and distributor.

Mucking up the works, though, have been a thousand other lesser efforts not done well and most of which have petered out.

In any case, the simple question of what Yahoo is has been banish’d for now, and Mayer will presumably not be answering that nettlesome query, even if it bubbles up on her nifty new interactive employee Q&A system.

But, if you really want to know, I can tell you exactly what it is at this moment in time and going forward: Yahoo is whatever Marissa Mayer says it will be.

More to come on exactly what that means.

Until then, here is my favorite quote from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” about being banish’d:

Hence-banished is banish’d from the world, And world’s exile is death: then banished, Is death mis-term’d: calling death banishment, Thou cutt’st my head off with a golden axe, And smilest upon the stroke that murders me.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120807/mayer-will-extend-free-food-to-nyc-too-while-what-is-yahoo-question-is-hereby-banishd/feed/ 0 Yahoo Gets Googley Q&A Tool at Friday FYI and Uses It to Ask About Exec Accountability and Leaks http://allthingsd.com/20120806/yahoo-gets-googley-qa-tool-at-friday-fyi-and-uses-it-to-ask-about-exec-accountability-and-leaks/ http://allthingsd.com/20120806/yahoo-gets-googley-qa-tool-at-friday-fyi-and-uses-it-to-ask-about-exec-accountability-and-leaks/#comments Mon, 06 Aug 2012 12:55:34 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=238089

Well, it wasn’t as tasty as free food this week at Yahoo, but in her second official all-hands meeting with employees — now reportedly called “Friday FYI” — new CEO Marissa Mayer rolled out another new Google-inspired Q&A tool to get the company talking about what matters.

The system allows anyone at the Silicon Valley Internet giant to post questions, ideas or suggestions on a variety of topics, which can then be voted up and down.

Actually, it’s been in use internally at — you guessed it — Google for some time, and is even available to the general public in a product called Google Moderator. Mayer has been importing a lot of corporate practices from the search giant where she worked for her entire career — from free food to better swag to these weekly confabs to, now, its method of hearing from the staff.

While Yahoo previously used its Messenger product to garner questions for its less-regular all-hands meetings, this is apparently a new interactive tool built by the company’s engineers (and not using Google’s free APIs, as far as I can tell).

It seems to be working fine, and there were a number of questions that bubbled up.

That included one about Mayer’s thoughts on her current executive team — which is still largely inherited from a series of previous administrations, despite some departures recently — and also how her regime will hold them accountable.

Algorithmic accountability among Yahoo execs? Things have changed!

Even better, declared the questioner of that particular query, to whoops from the audience: “I want an honest answer!”

But Mayer was diplomatic, only saying she was “pleasantly surprised” by the top execs. She also noted that the management would have quarterly goals that are transparent to the whole company. (I won’t say they do that at Google, but — ahem — they do that at Google.)

Mayer went through a number of questions in a precise and cut-the-mustard manner that employees seem to be enjoying, overall.

One very voted-up question was about leaks to the media, in particular to this Web site, and whether a board mole hunt has been successful (obviously not). Also, of course, what she was going to do about the situation.

Apparently, Mayer said she won’t be tracking down leakers, and that this new openness will solve the problem.

Good idea, but all that lovely transparency also needs some pretty good products if it’s going to work.

And product focus most definitely appears to be the path now. Mayer also showed off the new Yahoo Mail — which has been under revamp for a while, and was started under former Chief Product Officer Blake Irving — with some good response from Yahoos (last week, it was a look-see at its recent iteration of its IntoNow video offering).

There are other interface changes that have been in the works too, likely under the direction of Tim Parsey, Yahoo’s head designer, who also came on under Irving.

In fact, a lot of what Irving had pushed, including keeping advertising technology in-house and also maintaining control of key monetization engines, is the likeliest path going forward. The ad tech outsourcing deals, pushed by the interim CEO and his strategy head Jim Heckman, are apparently gone (and so are Levinsohn and now Heckman).

Also of interest to many at the company is the increased involvement of co-founder David Filo, who has become much less quiet under Mayer. I’d expect him to report directly to her — he’s actually been reporting for years to a variety of product and tech execs, despite owning more than six percent of Yahoo.

Thus, here’s my question for the new Q&A system for next week: So, when’s Jerry Yang showing back up?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120806/yahoo-gets-googley-qa-tool-at-friday-fyi-and-uses-it-to-ask-about-exec-accountability-and-leaks/feed/ 0 Exclusive: BermanBraun Buys Most of Shelby Bonnie's Whiskey Media http://allthingsd.com/20120315/exclusive-bermanbraun-buys-most-of-shelby-bonnies-whiskey-media/ http://allthingsd.com/20120315/exclusive-bermanbraun-buys-most-of-shelby-bonnies-whiskey-media/#comments Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:30:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=186692

In a deal that was just signed, longtime Silicon Valley exec Shelby Bonnie has sold his social publishing start-up, Whiskey Media, to Santa Monica-based entertainment and interactive production company BermanBraun.

As part of the deal, BermanBraun will get three key sites of San Francisco-based Whiskey, including video entertainment-focused Screened, tech-testing site Tested, and Anime Vice, which covers anime and manga comics. It will also acquire Whiskey’s content-publishing platform.

Two other sites owned by Whiskey — games-oriented Giant Bomb and comic-book database Comic Vine — will be sold to another media company, which is rumored to be CBS Interactive.

Heaped on top of the niche content, aimed at passionate fans, Whiskey mixes in a lot of social networking, as well as user-generated content, along with its professional fare.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

But the major reason for the acquisition is that BermanBraun — which also makes popular sites for large portals such as Microsoft’s MSN (the Wonderwall celebrity site and Glo, aimed at the women’s lifestyle arena) and AOL (upcoming sites on weather, men and pets) — needs to be able to scale its online content production. The Whiskey platform should be able to allow it to more easily grow and create new sites more quickly, as well as mine data across them.

“With the addition of Whiskey’s first rate team and powerful, state of the art publishing, data and social tools platform, we will be able to further enhance our user experience and engagement, and provide our advertising partners with unparalleled data insights,” said Lloyd Braun and Gail Berman, who run BermanBraun, in a statement. “One of the other great parts of this acquisition is that we will have Shelby Bonnie in our lives. We have enormous respect for Shelby personally and professionally, and his insights, relationships and acumen will be invaluable to us.”

Bonnie, who was once CEO of CNET, which he helped found, added: “I have had the pleasure of knowing both Lloyd and Gail for years and they are two incredibly high integrity people who bring passion and creativity to the interactive space. As we see a dramatic changes in the whole media landscape, success will demand new skills and talents. BermanBraun’s content skills and vision joined with the Whiskey platform will create a combination that I believe is without equal. I couldn’t be more excited for the combination.”

Here is a video interview I did with Bonnie in mid-2010 about Whiskey:


[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120315/exclusive-bermanbraun-buys-most-of-shelby-bonnies-whiskey-media/feed/ 0 Cisco Acquires Israeli Video Software Firm NDS for $5 Billion http://allthingsd.com/20120315/cisco-said-close-to-5-billion-bid-for-israels-nds/ http://allthingsd.com/20120315/cisco-said-close-to-5-billion-bid-for-israels-nds/#comments Thu, 15 Mar 2012 12:00:54 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=186597 Update: This deal was just confirmed by Cisco, which moments ago pushed out a press release. I’ve embedded the text below, and will revise the post momentarily.

Networking giant Cisco Systems said today it will acquire NDS — an Israeli firm that specializes in software that delivers video and interactive entertainment to TV set-top boxes in a secure manner — for about $5 billion in cash plus the assumption of debt.

NDS is 51 percent owned by Permira, a private equity firm, and 49 percent owned by News Corp. (which also owns this Web site). Word of advanced talks on the deal were first reported today by the Israeli business newspaper Calcalist (in Hebrew), and then summarized by Israel’s English news service Ynetnews.

Cisco shares are getting whacked in pre-market trading. As of 8:33 am ET, the shares are indicating down 22 cents, or more than 1 percent, to $19.98 a share.

NDS had traded publicly on the Nasdaq until it went private in 2009, and Ynetnews says the current talks peg the company at a valuation of about 35 percent north of what it was trading for at that time. Founded in 1988 by a group of scientists, it was acquired by News Corp. in 1992 for $15 million, and first listed its shares on the Nasdaq in 1999. In 2009, News Corp. teamed with Premira to buy out the shares for $3.7 billion, and delisted it from Nasdaq.

Word of the talks also come at an interesting time for Cisco, what with those recent rumors that it has been mulling an exit from the set-top box business. Set-top boxes carry a relatively low margin in the 30 percent range, which doesn’t do anything good for Cisco’s overall gross margin, which is north of 60 percent.

Rumors popped up in various outlets that the business was on the block, fed in no small part by the fact that Cisco sold off its set-top manufacturing operations to Foxconn last year, as part of its larger reorganization. CEO John Chambers slapped that idea down pretty hard during the last earnings call, saying Cisco remained “totally committed to the set-top box business.” Now we know why.

The press release is below:

Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire NDS

Acquisition of NDS Will Expand Cisco’s Ability to Transform How Service Providers and Media Companies Worldwide Deliver Next-Generation Video Experiences to Subscribers

SAN JOSE, CA and LONDON–(Marketwire -03/15/12)- Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO – News) today announced its intent to acquire NDS Group Ltd., a leading provider of video software and content security solutions that enable service providers and media companies to securely deliver and monetize new video entertainment experiences.

NDS uses the combination of a software platform and services to create differentiated video offerings for service providers that enable subscribers to intuitively view, search and navigate digital content anytime, anywhere and on any device.

The acquisition of NDS will complement and accelerate the delivery of Videoscape™, Cisco’s comprehensive platform that enables service providers and media companies to deliver next-generation entertainment experiences. Acquiring NDS will broaden Cisco’s opportunities in the service provider market, expanding its reach into emerging markets, such as China and India, where NDS has an established customer footprint.

Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately $5 billion, including the assumption of debt and retention-based incentives, to acquire all of the business and operations of NDS. The acquisition has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies.

The acquisition is expected to close during the second half of calendar year 2012, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory review in the United States and elsewhere. The net impact to Cisco is expected to be accretive to EPS in the first full year on a non-GAAP basis.

Highlights/Key Facts

Cisco’s open, standards-based Videoscape platform, which spans the cloud, the network and end-user clients, is a key part of the company’s overall video strategy to deliver TV experiences that make access to content more visual, mobile and social for consumers, while protecting and enhancing the value of content for service providers and media companies.
The addition of NDS’s leading software solutions, such as the end-user viewing client and content security solutions, combined with its systems integration expertise, will accelerate the delivery of the Cisco Videoscape platform.
This acquisition reflects Cisco’s increased strategic focus on video, one of its five foundational priorities, and its investment in software and services revenue streams and competencies.
This acquisition underscores Cisco’s commitment to its “build, buy, and partner” strategy to grow through a combination of organic innovation, targeted acquisitions and strategic partnering.
In terms of valuation, on a forward-looking basis, the acquisition is generally in line with the earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) multiples paid when NDS was taken private in 2009, and is within the multiples ranges for comparable deals, including Cisco’s acquisition of Tandberg.
A significant portion of NDS’s software, services and content protection business is recurring, with long-term contracts, typically with an average duration of approximately five years.
Prior to the close, Cisco and NDS will continue to operate as separate companies. Upon completion of the transaction, NDS’s global operations, including sites in the United Kingdom, Israel, France, India and China, and its approximately 5,000 employees will join the Cisco Service Provider Video Technology Group (SPVTG), led by Senior Vice President and General Manager Jesper Andersen.
Dr. Abe Peled, NDS Executive Chairman, will be named Senior Vice President and Chief Strategist for Cisco’s Video & Collaboration Group, of which SPVTG is a part. Dr. Peled will report directly to Marthin De Beer, Senior Vice President, Cisco Video and Collaboration Group.

Quotes

John Chambers, Chairman and CEO, Cisco

“Our strategy has always been driven by customer need and on capturing market transitions. Our acquisition of NDS fits squarely into this strategy, enabling content and service providers to deliver new video solutions that leverage the cloud and drive new monetization opportunities and service differentiation.”

Dr. Abe Peled, Executive Chairman, NDS

“Cisco and NDS are helping drive the transition that will enable service providers and media companies to offer new revenue-generating video experiences. NDS’s open software video platform and services are highly complementary to Cisco technology, and together we are uniquely positioned to enable service providers to deliver fresh and exciting multi-screen video services to their customers. A key component of NDS’s success has been our open software and services model, working with a wide range of set-top box manufacturers to enable greater choice for our customers; following this acquisition this strategy will continue and expand the choice of hardware solutions available to service providers worldwide.”

Dave Habiger, CEO, NDS

“This is a transformational opportunity for not only NDS and Cisco, but also our service provider customers and their consumers. Together we make the connected vision a reality.”

Investor and Media Events:

John Chambers, Cisco’s Chairman and CEO, Ned Hooper, Cisco’s Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, and Abe Peled, Executive Chairman of NDS, will host a joint investor call on March 15 at 6:00 a.m. PDT to discuss the proposed transaction. The dial-in number is 517-308-9354 (international) and 800-619-2472 (United States). Conference call replay will be available from 10:00 a.m. PDT, March 15, 2012, to 4:30 p.m. PDT, March 30, 2012 at 203-369-3287 (international) and 800-469-5424 (United States). The replay also will be available via webcast from Thursday, March 15, through April 13, 2012 on the Cisco Investor Relations website at http://investor.cisco.com.

John Chambers and Abe Peled will host a joint Web-based video press conference on March 15 at 9:30 a.m. PDT. Members of the media are invited to watch this live webcast by clicking here. Please note that online registration is required. A broadcast replay will be available within 24 hours. For more information on this announcement, please visit newsroom.cisco.com.

RSS Feed for Cisco: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/rss.html

Tags / Keywords:

Cisco, NDS, video, service provider

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO – News) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

About NDS

NDS Group Ltd. creates the technologies and applications that enable pay-TV operators to securely deliver digital content to TV STBs (set-top boxes), DVRs (digital video recorders), PCs, mobiles and other multimedia devices. Over 90 of the world’s leading pay-TV platforms rely on NDS solutions to protect and enhance their business.

NDS’ VideoGuard® is the world’s market-leading content and service protection solution, deployed in 125 million pay-TV households. VideoGuard conditional access (CA) and digital rights management (DRM) technologies safeguard pay-TV service revenues exceeding $50 billion. NDS middleware, which enables a host of advanced services for subscribers, has been deployed on 214 million devices. NDS DVR technology, centred around XTV™, is a leader in the global industry with 47 million units deployed. (Deployment figures as of 31st December 2011).

Headquartered in the UK, with over 5000 employees, NDS remains committed to investing in technology and development with over 75% of its employees dedicated to pioneering work at development centres in France, India, Israel, Korea, UK and US.

Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco’s trademarks can be found at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company.

NDS is a registered trademark or trademark in the U.S. and certain other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120315/cisco-said-close-to-5-billion-bid-for-israels-nds/feed/ 0 Party On … And On … And On, Geek (But Not Much Else): A Newbie Reflects on SXSW http://allthingsd.com/20120314/a-newbie-reflects-on-south-by-southwest/ http://allthingsd.com/20120314/a-newbie-reflects-on-south-by-southwest/#comments Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:00:50 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=185141

Never having been to South by Southwest, I really didn’t know what to expect after I landed in Austin.

As I take off on a plane away from Austin, I have a few observations, many of which seemed to be shared by others I chatted with.

To be clear, I’m referring to the interactive piece of the event. I have far too poor taste in music and movies to pass judgment on those portions, nor did I stay for those parts.

The event is an incredible party.

SXSW Interactive is actually a conference surrounded by many, many small (and not-so-small) parties. But the parties are so numerous and so close to the conference that it is more like one big party than it is a discrete set of events.

It’s mostly a marketing and PR thing.

Marketing and branding are a big part of any event, but they seem to be the raison d’etre for this conference.

South by Southwest is a great place to try to identify your company as hip and edgy, and there are plenty of the kinds of folks in attendance who help decide those sorts of things. It’s also a good barometer for which companies have lots of money to throw around. (Full disclosure: AllThingsD hosted two parties, one for the launch of its new All Things Reviewed site — which was very lovely, if we do say so ourselves.)

It’s not a big place for news.

Folks looking for lots of interesting headlines were disappointed. As far as big trends, the closest thing I saw was the need for a breakthrough in battery life for all our digital gear.

While SXSW has been a place where apps and services have taken off in years past, most of those have been apps and services that help aid the sort of schmoozing that is the best part of the Austin event.

There were good discussions to be had, both onstage and off. I had good chats with people I knew and many people I didn’t.

It’s a terrible place for sleep.

Largely because of the fact that it is one big party, it is very hard to achieve downtime in Austin. There is literally always something going on, and with so much good food and music, even wallflowers can be persuaded to leave their comfort zones. The enforced insomnia was exacerbated by the fact that the event coincided with the shift to Daylight Savings Time, depriving conference-goers of one more precious hour of sleep.

I talked more about some of my experiences on Monday’s “Digits” show, as well as in an interview on Southern California Public Radio’s “Madeleine Brand Show,” discussing the trends from Austin:


[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120314/a-newbie-reflects-on-south-by-southwest/feed/ 0 The Essential SXSW Tech Tool Kit http://allthingsd.com/20120307/the-essential-sxsw-tech-tool-kit/ http://allthingsd.com/20120307/the-essential-sxsw-tech-tool-kit/#comments Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:29:58 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=181252 Hey, over here! Yeah, you — the person who’s pretending to respond to work emails while trolling the Internet today for anything related to “Apple” and “iPad.”

There’s something else happening this week: SXSW Interactive, where techies gather to share ideas and drink and flick their barbecue-sauced fingers over their smartphones as they rave about the next big app that’s going to connect them to the person … standing right next to them.

AllThingsD will be there in full force, as my colleague Liz Gannes wrote. And it’s a good thing she did, because SXSW travel planning tends to be so haphazard that it’s hard to know if you’re going or not until it’s in writing. For ourselves, and for others who are heading down to Austin, we’ve put together the Essential SXSW Tech Toolkit for the five days of the festival.

RSVP to All Your Parties With One App
At this point, whether you’re going to SXSW or not, you’ve probably received a hundred or so party invites, and have painstakingly responded to them one by one. On the off chance that you still need to RSVP, there’s an app for that. WillCall, nicely profiled on TheNextWeb, is a last-minute-ticket-purchasing app that’s letting techies RSVP to 50 SXSW parties in a few clicks. WillCall’s standard mobile app runs on iPhone and Android devices, but for SXSW RSVPs, users will have to log in to this Web app through Facebook Connect.

You’ve RSVPed. Should You Bother Waiting in Line?
Now that you’ve responded to all those party invites, how do you determine which ones are worth waiting in line for? Localmind, a Quora-for-Foursquare app that lets users pose live questions to people in various locations, is working with a mobile karaoke lounge called (RV)IP to give real-time information to app users about what’s happening in downtown Austin. Localmind users will be shown all of the parties and events going on, and will be able to send questions to people at the events to get the scoop on what’s going on inside the party. (During the afternoon, the kararoke RV transforms into a mini spa, offering free massages, treats, and maybe most importantly, phone charges. What more do a bunch of overworked geeks need?)

The Official SXSW Mobile App
Okay, parties aside: We’re in Austin for work. And that means navigating the maze of venues, panels and pop-up stands. Womzit, a recently-launched “word of mouth” iPhone app that lets users make a recommendation by snapping a photo, rating the object or place, and sharing it with friends, is powering the official app of the conference, called SXSW GO. SXSW GO lets users browse panel schedules and speakers, search for venues, view full maps, and offers various social options, including the ability to post photos, share via Twitter and Facebook, and check out conference attendee profiles. The app is available for iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7.

Because You Can Never Have Too Many Photo Apps
Pixable is like a Pinterest for Twitter and Instagram, only you log on through Facebook Connect. (I know, my head hurts, too.) Here’s what you need to know: During SXSW, Pixable will be showcasing shared Twitter and Instagram photos in a real-time updated stream, provided that the photo posts are tagged with #SXSW. In order to access the feed, log into Pixable and select the Hashtags dropdown in the upper right-hand corner. The app is available on the Web, on iPhone and on Android phones. Pixable will also be showing off its SXSW photo feed at the FEED House, a 20,000 square foot art space in downtown Austin that’s being transformed into an interactive experience by Twitter and Samsung.

Get in (Rain) Gear
Sorry to be a Debbie Downer, but it’s supposed to rain in Austin this weekend. Before you leave your sleeping quarters to hightail it or hail a pedicab to the Convention Center, check your smartphone’s weather app. And pack an umbrella, just to be on the safe side. Opportunistic tech start-ups, now’s your chance to put your stamp on a range of wet-weather gear. You’re welcome.

How to Get Around Town
Peer-to-peer services are all the rage: You can use Airbnb to rent out your apartment, TaskRabbit to outsource your chores, ParkatmyHouse to share your driveway, and Done to do it all for a good cause. Since getting around SXSW can be challenging, why not rent someone else’s car? Getaround helps people “un-idle” their cars by offering an online marketplace for them to rent them out. After launching last month in Portland, Ore., it’s now bringing its services to Austin, just in time for SXSW. Rental fees start as low as $3 an hour — though the typical compact car costs about $45 a day — and each rental is insured for up to $1 million.

What About the Local Mobile Social Craze?
What about Highlight, you ask? Or Sonar, or Glancee, or Kismet, or NTRO? Some of those mobile social discovery services have already been pretty hyped-up. We’ve got them on our radar, as well, and are going to take some time to evaluate how the apps work, both in a crowded tech space and IRL (that’s Internet speak for “in real life”), to see which ones stand out from the pack.

What we’re really interested in are the next next big mobile social discovery check-in apps, ones that would invite us to parties that haven’t been planned yet, allow us to check in to bars that haven’t been built yet, or connect us with people that don’t exist yet. Like Foursquare, only … Futuresquare. You read it here first.

(Feature photo courtesy of Flickr/DHGatsby)

RELATED POSTS:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120307/the-essential-sxsw-tech-tool-kit/feed/ 4 Luminate Raises $10.7M in New Funding, Adds Image App Store http://allthingsd.com/20120223/luminate-raises-10-7m-in-new-funding-adds-image-app-store/ http://allthingsd.com/20120223/luminate-raises-10-7m-in-new-funding-adds-image-app-store/#comments Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:00:39 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=177191 Luminate, the Silicon Valley start-up aimed at making digital images interactive, said it had raised $10.7 million in a Series C round of funding, led by Nokia Growth Partners and also including existing investors. It also said it was launching an Image App Store to “provide a central location for publishers to browse and choose the specific image apps they wish to leverage for their sites.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120223/luminate-raises-10-7m-in-new-funding-adds-image-app-store/feed/ 0 Exclusive: Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Blake Krikorian Joins Amazon Board http://allthingsd.com/20110907/exclusive-silicon-valley-entrepreneur-blake-krikorian-joins-amazon-board/ http://allthingsd.com/20110907/exclusive-silicon-valley-entrepreneur-blake-krikorian-joins-amazon-board/#comments Thu, 08 Sep 2011 04:47:48 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=118330

Well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur Blake Krikorian has joined the board of Amazon, according to several sources close to the situation.

Krikorian — who is considered one of tech’s most savvy execs with regard to video and media distribution — co-founded Sling Media, the maker of the innovative video device Slingbox, in 2004.

(He demoed it at the second D: All Things Digital conference in 2004.)

It was sold in 2007 to EchoStar Communications for $380 million. After a short stint there, Krikorian left and has since been working on a variety of projects and making various investments.

Those include some promising start-ups, such as Lytro, Kno, Clipboard, Chirply and Tasty Labs. Another company he invested in, Clicker, was sold to CBS earlier this year.

He has also been a sought-after exec — sources said he had offers over the last year from Google and also Zynga.

Amazon certainly could use a director such as Krikorian as it seeks to enter the media distribution space more aggressively. It is about to launch a Kindle tablet, for example, and also is a major bidder for the Hulu premium video service.

It has been rumored that Amazon will soon offer an interactive television device, too.

Krikorian certainly has much experience in the arena. One of his first jobs was at the fabled General Magic, which pioneered the creation of one of the first interactive mobile products before the Internet.

He also started a mobile computing unit for Philips Electronics, as well as working in adjacent arenas at other firms.

The University of California at Los Angeles graduate has a degree in mechanical engineering.

Other directors on Amazon’s eight-person board, besides CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, include Kleiner Perkins’s Bing Gordon and Hewlett-Packard’s Jon Rubinstein.

Krikorian, who declined to comment, will be its ninth member.

I also have an email in to Amazon PR, and will update if I get a response.

UPDATE: No need, as here is the 8-K regulatory filing by Amazon announcing the appointment:

AMZN-20110908-8K-20110908

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110907/exclusive-silicon-valley-entrepreneur-blake-krikorian-joins-amazon-board/feed/ 0 Exclusive: Apple's Mobile Ad Head Andy Miller Departs for Highland Capital http://allthingsd.com/20110817/apples-mobile-ad-head-andy-miller-departs-for-highand-capital/ http://allthingsd.com/20110817/apples-mobile-ad-head-andy-miller-departs-for-highand-capital/#comments Wed, 17 Aug 2011 15:00:25 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=110984

Andy Miller (pictured here), the high-profile VP of mobile advertising at Apple, is planning on leaving the company, according to sources close to the situation.

Sources said Miller — who sold Quattro Wireless, the mobile advertising company he co-founded in 2006, to Apple in early 2010 for $275 million — will become a general partner at Highland Capital, the Boston-based venture firm that had funded Quattro.

Apple will search for a replacement for Miller, whose staff was told of the impending departure today.

Since Miller got to Apple, he has reported directly to its CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs, who noted after the acquisition:

“We tried to buy a company named AdMob, but Google came in and snatched them from us. So we bought Quattro, and they are teaching us. We are making ads that are different than anything I’ve ever seen.”

But Apple’s ad aspirations have been a bit of a bumpy road, as the company has tried to fine-tune the offering, even as competition — from Google, Facebook and a range of start-ups — has increased in the fast-growing space.

Not surprisingly, Apple shut down Quattro in favor of its much ballyhooed iAd platform a year ago. Via iAd, Apple has promised to serve up interactive rich-media ads on iPhone and iPod touch apps.

Some marketers balked at Apple’s tight control over iAds and their high prices, but recently the company has tried to give Madison Avenue more flexibility.

That’s because, while still small, mobile advertising will be a huge market. As The Wall Street Journal recently reported: “Marketers spent just $743.1 million on mobile ads in the U.S. in 2010, up 79% from $416 million in 2009, according to research firm eMarketer.”

At Highland, Miller will be working on a range of digital investments from its Silicon Valley office, sources said, and not just in the mobile space.

He has a varied background: Miller worked for mobile content company m-Qube and also WatchPoint Media, an interactive television start-up.

I have contacted Apple PR for a comment, but have not yet heard back.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110817/apples-mobile-ad-head-andy-miller-departs-for-highand-capital/feed/ 0 Viral Video: Dorktastic Kinect Jockey! http://allthingsd.com/20110810/viral-video-dorktastic-kinect-jockey/ http://allthingsd.com/20110810/viral-video-dorktastic-kinect-jockey/#comments Wed, 10 Aug 2011 07:15:35 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=108006

I shall say no more than this: Pretty please watch this video for the Champion Jockey interactive game, which you can play on Microsoft’s Kinect player, if only for the bobbing and weaving dude who demos it.

If only.

I must underscore how much this looks like my high school prom date’s dance stylings, but it’s even better than that, since I could not completely appreciate those at the time.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110810/viral-video-dorktastic-kinect-jockey/feed/ 0 Pixazza Changes Name to Luminate, Launches Image Apps Platform http://allthingsd.com/20110727/pixazza-changes-name-to-luminate-launches-image-apps-platform/ http://allthingsd.com/20110727/pixazza-changes-name-to-luminate-launches-image-apps-platform/#comments Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:00:14 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=103038

Pixazza is dead. Long live Luminate.

Well, from a brand perspective, at least, as the image advertising start-up changes to an easier-to-say name and also launches a new platform for image applications.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up — which is backed by Google Ventures, CMEA Ventures, August Capital, Foundation Capital and Shasta Ventures, as well as by angel investors Ron Conway, Gideon Yu and Maynard Webb — aims to do for Web photos what the search giant did for text.

The new name for the company that called itself “AdSense for images” pretty much speaks for itself.

In addition to Luminate’s previous sharing, commerce and advertising apps, the company will offer information, navigation and public service apps, which you can see below

Luminate says its interactive images are viewed three billion times per month.

Here’s the official press release for the name change, as well as the image app platform:

PIXAZZA, INC. REBRANDS ITSELF AS LUMINATE, INC.

New Name Better Reflects Vision For Making All Online Images Interactive

Company Enables Images at Rate of 30 Billion Image Views per Year

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — July 27, 2011 — Pixazza Inc., the worldwide leader in making images interactive, today announced its new company name — Luminate, Inc. With its new services and the introduction of a groundbreaking new platform (see separate release: Luminate Launches World’s First Platform for Image Apps), the company opted to rebrand itself with a name that better reflects its bold vision of making every image interactive.

“We started the company to change the web by offering information relevant to online images, engaging consumers in a novel way while offering advertisers and publishers additional revenue streams,” said Bob Lisbonne, CEO of Luminate. “We’ve since developed the technology and scale to enable images to do even more. Moving forward as Luminate, we will continue to elevate the role of the image and dramatically improve the web experience.”

Rapidly scaling to accommodate the new demand for interactive images, Luminate now reaches more than 150 million unique visitors per month.

Its publisher network also has grown to more than 4,000 publishers, and the company enables images at a rate of 30 billion image views per year. This is significant because just as page views are commonly used to measure web site traffic, Luminate tracks image views, which count the number of times a web publisher serves up a Luminate-enabled image. It is a clear marker of audience interest.

The name change and announcement of the Luminate™ platform for image apps, comes on the heels of an innovative partnership with Hearst Digital Media. The company’s explosive momentum has also been a draw for top talent including CRO and head of publisher development, Chas Edwards, formerly of Digg; Terry Murphy, CFO, formerly of LiveOps. Luminate also added Elliot Schrage, the Vice President of Global Communications, Marketing and Public Policy at Facebook, as a strategic advisor to the Luminate Board.

Please visit www.luminate.com to learn more about how Luminate is changing the way consumers, publishers and advertisers use and interact with online images.

LUMINATE UNVEILS WORLD’S FIRST PLATFORM FOR IMAGE APPLICATIONS

Company Brings Images to Life with Image Apps Designed to Create Rich Consumer Experience

Luminate Transforms Images Into a Canvas to Shop, Share, Comment, Examine, Curate, Search and Socialize

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — July 27, 2011, Luminate, Inc., formerly known as Pixazza, Inc., today unveiled a groundbreaking new platform for image applications. For the first time ever, consumers can launch applications within the individual images on their favorite websites.

With this exciting new platform, Luminate opens a new world of image apps, breaking down a wall and bringing flat, static images to life. Online images become more than visual stimuli — they become a gateway for accessing rich and relevant content across the web. The apps available on the Luminate™ platform will allow consumers not only to conduct their favorite everyday online activities such as shopping, sharing, commenting and navigating directly from the images, but can also facilitate entirely new services made possible by the development of apps specifically for images.

“Image apps transform images from static pixels into interactive experiences,” said Luminate CEO Bob Lisbonne. “Just as phones evolved from merely voice calls to smartphones with apps, now consumers can enjoy relevant apps inside every online image. The explosive use of images fueled by mobile, social, and cloud computing trends sets the stage for Luminate’s pioneering new image apps platform.”

How It Works:

When a consumer sees the Luminate icon in the corner of an image, it indicates that the image is interactive. Consumers simply mouse into the image and choose from a variety of image apps. They can easily share an image or specific points within an image with their friends, discover statistics about their favorite athletes, see where to purchase similar products to those featured in a photo, uncover the latest information about a particular event, reveal geo tag or Wikipedia information, read more content about the people or places featured in an image, listen to music or see a movie trailer related to an image.

Image Applications:

Image applications will span a number of key categories including: Commerce, Information, Social, Organization, Advertising, Navigation, Public Service, and Presentation. Luminate’s platform currently offers such applications as: unique Twitter Share, Facebook Share, and Email Share apps that give consumers the power to select precisely what they want inside an image and share it with others; an information app called Annotation that allows publishers to quickly and easily tag any spot within an image and add information relevant to that image; a commerce app called Products, which enables consumers to mouse over the image and interact with tags on the picture; and an Advertising app that offers publishers a seamless way to place relevant advertisements within an image.

Luminate plans to roll out new applications frequently to address the varying needs of consumers, publishers and advertisers. Its platform is designed to ultimately enable the development of any conceivable app that is relevant to a particular image. It is this capability that will help define the future of web images.

This cutting edge platform for image apps comes from the company that pioneered the use of images as real estate for delivering ecommerce and advertising three years ago as Pixazza, Inc. With the introduction of the new platform, the company has been rebranded as Luminate, Inc. (see separate release: Pixazza, Inc. Rebrands itself as Luminate, Inc.) as it takes the next step in executing its vision to make every image on the web interactive.

The Luminate Approach:

What makes the Luminate platform so compelling is its breakthrough ability to link images with applications and content beyond the website where the image is viewed. To create the best possible consumer experience, Luminate focuses on all of the data relevant to a particular image or part of an image. Luminate has long employed a unique recognition system that combines visual algorithms with human crowdsourcing. With its new platform, the company has multiplied the sources and ways to uncover information about images. In addition to the data derived from its team of experts, the company can avail itself of information from end users and publishers with the goal of creating a richer, more immersive experience for the end user. Luminate has the most sophisticated system in the industry for tagging relevant content.

“The reason images remained stagnant for so long is because it is remarkably difficult to contextualize their composition and link them to other pieces of relevant content across the Internet,” said James Everingham, CTO of Luminate.

“We were the first to develop the technology to overcome these complexities, turning images into an even more valuable asset. With our platform and the introduction of image apps, we believe that the entire Internet can become connected in a more meaningful way.”

To learn more about how Luminate is changing the way consumers interact with images, please visit www.luminate.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110727/pixazza-changes-name-to-luminate-launches-image-apps-platform/feed/ 0 Artists Experiment With Interactive Music Videos http://allthingsd.com/20110513/artists-experiment-with-interactive-music-videos/ http://allthingsd.com/20110513/artists-experiment-with-interactive-music-videos/#comments Fri, 13 May 2011 21:56:11 +0000 John Jurgensen http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=41082 Director Chris Milk’s new music video, released yesterday, introduces a young woman roaming a postapocalyptic landscape, and features a song from the coming album “Rome” by Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi. But for some viewers the video’s main attraction will be the technology used to create it.

In “3 Dreams of Black,” which Milk prefers to call an interactive film, the viewer takes control in certain sequences, using the computer mouse to steer a stampede of morphing wildlife, or build structures in a vast desert. Five months in the making, the video shows off a burgeoning technology called WebGL, which allows an Internet browser to render 3-D graphics in real time.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110513/artists-experiment-with-interactive-music-videos/feed/ 0 Viral Video: "Super 8” and "Portal 2” Interactive Movie Trailer http://allthingsd.com/20110422/viral-video-super-8-and-portal-2-interactive-movie-trailer/ http://allthingsd.com/20110422/viral-video-super-8-and-portal-2-interactive-movie-trailer/#comments Fri, 22 Apr 2011 07:15:34 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=42998

Though BoomTown was dubious, this trailer for the upcoming J.J. Abrams movie “Super 8″ is pretty cool beans.

It is in the style of an interactive video game–in fact, Abrams worked with the creators of the recently released “Portal 2″ to embed it right into the video game–and turns out to be mighty scary, since the film concerns an escape of dangerous aliens after a train derailment.

Check it out:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110422/viral-video-super-8-and-portal-2-interactive-movie-trailer/feed/ 0