Webpage to 3D space provider ExitReality has soft launched today via a cross promotion with CKE Restaurants (Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s) that will see the product promoted to millions via the Carl’s Jr website and through a MySpace advertising campaign.
I originally sat down and spoke to the ExitReality team (the company has its HQ in London, but the dev team and CEO are in Australia) for TechCrunch back in April. At the time they explained that the product dynamically creates 3D spaces for social networking pages (no need to install anything on the site or for site owners to be signed up, the visitor only needs a plugin), but they held back on some of the other details. Here’s what they didn’t tell me the first time
ExitReality can turn ANY webpage dynamically into a 3D space, meaning the product is not limited to social networks
any rich media content, such as video or music, can be dragged into a space, and all items can be copied
Their platform is built on open standards including Collada, VRML and others
The open platform means that existing 3D objects built on the same standards can be easily included in any 3D space, including most objects from Google 3D/ SketchUp
They have also incorporated a “virtual space search engine” that means anyone with their plugin can enter any 3D space on the web built on open standards. They already have over 3,000 spaces indexed, including some really incredible builds, instantly providing landmark content
Stateless Systems has launched a professional, subscription based version of its hosted content management system CushyCMS.
I interviewed Guy King from Stateless for the CushyCMS launch in April (the post includes a demo video) and he mentioned then that the long-term plan for CushyCMS was to offer a professional subscription version. King tells me that the demand for a professional version of CushyCMS was strong from the day the service launched, so they immediately started building it. As of last week, the free version of CushyCMS has more than 4,600 active users, a tidy number given this isn’t an every day consumer based product.
CushyCMS is a simple content management system that aims to make life easier for web designers by simplifying content management. Web designers use CushyCMS to give content editors (for example a client) access to part, full or many pages at a granular level (headings, images, sidebars, etc), enabling them to update or create standards-compliant content directly from a browser without messing with the sites coding.
CushyCMS Pro is being offered at $28/month and features branding support, including a custom logo, colors and domain (e.g. acmedesign.clienteditor.com). There is no set-up fee or minimum subscription length and both PayPal and AlertPay are accepted.
In addition, several new features have been added to the free version of CushyCMS, including SFTP support (secure FTP), Improved WYSIWYG editor and Support for IIS and other Microsoft-based FTP servers.
Former TechCrunch writer Duncan Riley edits The Inquisitr, a daily dose of tech, pop and penguins.
Dutch startup Scoutle marries different networking ideas to deliver what they call an “Automated Social Networking for Bloggers.”
Scoutle operates via webcrawlers they call Scouts. Users create their own personal Scouts, for example one for their blog, another for their Facebook or similar profile, and the scouts “walk through the Internet,” by meeting other Scouts with similar interests or profiles, creating a contact between both.
Results from the Scouts are constantly being compared, delivering a realtime guide that allows users to see which blog on a certain topic, in a certain language or country is most relevant to the user at a specific moment. Users can also create networks based on specific topics or personal groups and see who is best ranked within these networks.
Automation
The interesting thing about Scoutle is not that its another social networking service, it’s the focus on automation. Little input is required from users to make connections, the Scouts do most (if not all) of the work usually needed to participate in any social networking site. Users can sit back and simply choose whether to visit the profiles delivered via new connections.
We’ve seen various link swapping/ promotional/ blog traffic systems before, however Scoutle’s move into social networking is an interesting mix, sort of StumbleUpon based on a shared interests, profiles and widgets. The site launched in beta May 8 and is available in English and Dutch.
Former TechCrunch writer Duncan Riley covers tech, pop culture and penguins at The Inquisitr.
This is my last post at TechCrunch as a full time writer (I may yet do the occasional guest post). It’s exactly 12 months to the day since I started writing here and the date seemed like a good time to go. I won’t bore you with a self indulgent retrospective; if you are interested in my reasons and thoughts I did a podcast with my old site The Blog Herald yesterday – listen to here.
We cover some amazing startups here at TechCrunch, and for every service we cover there’s probably a dozen we miss as well, given the hyper-inflated nature of the second great web boom. You can appreciate a service without ever actually going on to use it, but the better ones can change the way you interact with the web or run your working day. I thought as this is my last major post here that I’d share some of the services that I actually use. I started using most of them based on posts at TechCrunch, so if you like these turned out to be my practical standouts in the sea of noise.
Evernote has completely changed the way I deal with paper (yes, old fashioned paper). Its been described as everything from a scrap collection through to a bookmarking service, but at its core its a database service with industrial strength OCR capabilities. To use, you can clip data or a link, type a note, add a photo (with support for webcams) or scan info in. Everything added can be tagged and indexed, and is searchable via the text within each document, for example a wine label with no other information becomes searchable by every word on the label itself. I scan every paper bill or letter I receive, allowing me to shred/ dispose of them cutting down on the need to file things manually. More importantly it cuts out the need to have to go through my filing cabinet searching for the bill later. The service has a desktop client and web interface, so you have the security of knowing that your scanned documents always have a local copy, but if you’re at another computer or on the go, you can easily access the same data.
Billed as “a knowledge sharing solution for the new enterprise” ThoughtFarmer can be used as a standalone intranet or extranet, a collaboration hub or “the knowledge-sharing component of an existing intranet.”
Like others in the space, ThoughtFarmer embraces the Wiki model, offering an open and democratic authoring environment with no barriers to content creation. The service then adds structure and social networking to the wiki core.
It’s a solid service, but the standout has been in the marketing campaign. References to a mysterious Canadian company Tubetastic started appearing online in the last couple of months. The site is accessible via login only, and no one was really sure exactly what it was (Tubetastic’s motto is “we make tubes, a whole series of them.) I received my Tubetastic employees package today, complete with employee badge, company organization chart, letter welcoming me to the company as a “sales associate” and login details to the site. The TubeTastic site turns out to be a demonstration of ThoughtFarmer in a fun and engaging way. Demo video of the service is above.
WidgetBucks has announced the expansion of its ad widget network through an agreement with Marchex. The deal touches on key growth areas for WidgetBucks: premium CPM display advertising to its publisher base and expanding distribution of CPC product ad widgets.
The deal with Marchex sees WidgetBucks powering local, debt/ finance, and pay-per-call advertising across Marchex’s local content network. WidgetBucks’ ad widgets will be integrated into hundreds of sites across Marchex’s content network.
Since launching in October 2007, WidgetBucks has seen some amazing growth rates. The service is now delivering over 700 million impressions per month and is projected to grow to 2 billion a month by the end of the year. Since launching, WidgetBucks has served over 3.5 billion impressions from 20,000 active publishers. According to comScore, 70 million unique users saw WidgetBucks ads in March 2008, and as we’ve previously noted, WidgetBucks is now ranking in the Top 10 list for niche ad networks.
Like the Firefox sidebar, the AIR app allows users to filter the view by type of data, comment or bookmark any entry, and users can also reply via Twitter.
The big selling point for the new app is an inbuilt movie/picture viewer, allowing users to view content without the need to revert to a browser window.
Hands on its definitely one of the nicest looking desktop apps in this space, content is rendered clearly and attractively, compared to say Twhirl which isn’t super pretty out of the box. The app though does lack many of the features that have made Twhirl popular, such as click support for direct messaging in Twitter, color customization, and easy access to archives and user details. In its defense it is an alpha release, and not all users will want for the extra features provided by Twhirl. Definitely worth a look if you’re a Twitter and FriendFeed user.
disclosure: Michael is an investor in Seesmic, which owns Twhirl
Google has added support for Notes to Google Reader, allowing users to share notes or add notes to shared stories.
The add a note feature is located in the “Your Stuff” menu at the top of the Google Reader sidebar. Tumblr style, the feature allows users to share with friends “whatever pops into your head (for better or for worse) by typing anything into the text box at the top of the Notes page,” according to Google.
The share items with a note gives users the ability to add a note with any shared Reader item. Google explains:
If you are like me, you might want to share something in Reader, but think your friends might not “get” why you are sharing it. Use the “Share with note” button on the item toolbar to create a copy of that item with your own note attached to it. Now your friends won’t have to wonder if the B-movie about an evil floor lamp you shared was intended to be funny, sarcastic, ironic or the real motivation behind your next movie night.
Users can also add notes from the browser with a Reader Notes bookmarklet. Minor changes include the choice of new styles from the shared items page, and the Google Reader list view will now highlight when an item is being shared by a friend.
The new additions will provide additional appeal to Google Reader’s sharing feature, which has slowly grown in popularity over the last 12 months (least I see more and more friends sharing this way). The ability to have a discussion around shared feeds is still missing, but as we noted back in September is being developed by Google.
thanks to Bowrd for the tip
Not content to leave Tom Cruise alone in a self promotional Adwords Campaign, the American Government is buying Adwords units in defense of American Foreign Policy.
The ad (pictured right) reads “Peace & Security, Creating security through improved relations and cooperation” and links through to a page on America.gov with a motto of “Telling America’s Story.” The page includes stories on Syria and Nuclear Reactors, Terrorists and other Bush Administration foreign policy news.
It’s not clear whether this ad is being displayed within the United States itself, or simply to the rest of the world. Tax payer money well spent, or waste of money propaganda via Adsense units? You can be the judge.
The Pirate Bay may get all the headlines, but BitTorrent directory Mininova continues to grow. Stats from the site above (some are public, some via a non-published link) show the site is quickly racing towards 5 billion downloads after having only passed 4 billion February 18.
On comparison, Mininova comes out ahead on traffic. The Pirate Bay doesn’t offer a download figure, only concurrent users, with the site having passed the 10 million user mark in January. Both Alexa and comScore rank Mininova in front of The Pirate Bay, Alexa ranks The Pirate Bay at 101 to Minivova’s 52. comScore records over 30 million monthly page views for Mininova to Pirate Bay’s 24 million.
The break down of what is being downloaded is interesting. Video (movies and TV) make up 60% of the downloads on Mininova vs 19.55% for music. TV Shows are the most popular category at 38.7%; if we presume the music industry is broken based on illegal downloading, wouldn’t the demand for TV shows also demonstrate that the TV business is in trouble as well, even as services like Hulu try to offer a legal alternative?
One thing that can be taken away from these stats: that BitTorrent isn’t going away, its general usage and acceptance in the community is accelerating despite attempts by the RIAA and others to harass users.
(thanks to Ashley Smith for the tip)
RSS Reader News Alloy is to shut due to a lack of funding. Michael first reviewed the site in January 2006 and it was mentioned again in a round up of RSS Readers later that year.
The following email was sent to News Alloy users:
You received this email because you are registered user of News Alloy Project – Web2.0 based Feed Reader. (http://www.newsalloy.com/)
Bad times finally came, my contract with our hosting provider is over so i will shut down the site in a couple of days, please grab your OPML for your convenience.
Future plans:
If you are interested for project to stay alive and get it under your wing please contact me, we need new dedicated hosting (quite powerful).
In case you want to get full ownership of the domain and grab all sources feel free to ask. It will cost not that much as fat cats are asking.
Also i’ve developed new version about 6 months ago which is half ready – News Alloy 2.0.
It looks much brighter, faster, pure Javascript UI, rich featured and impressive look and feel. But to make it complete i need funding. Thats for sure.
If You want to have look – please let me know to get an invitation.
If none is interested i will put other project on the top of News Alloy domain.
Please keep in mind that News Alloy project was developed by one single person who was in charge of everything – coding, design, promo and PR.
Now I’m open for interesting contracts and custom jobs in the area of web development and system administration.
Thank you for staying with us,
Volodymyr Danylyuk,
Project Developer and Maintainer
I’ve never used News Alloy before so I’m not sure that it’s worth saving, but it might be a cheap entry into a ready made startup, or a decent value add for an existing company.
A new app from the American Social Health Association aims to spread Chlamydia on Facebook to raise awareness of the disease.
The Morph Monkey Facebook app looks fairly benign at the start. Users can select pictures of their friends to see what their combined child will look like. As the user goes to morph the images, a pop up box informs them that they’ve given their friend Chlamydia (video demo above).
It’s a clever way of spreading the message on Facebook, but I’m not sure how many people will be impressed by being tricked into running an app that is just a marketing tool with a health message. You can try it out here.
thanks to Michael Seibel for the tip
Moshi Monsters, from UK startup Mind Candy officially launched last week with a product that marries the ideas behind Neopets and Tamogotchi with a social network for kids.
Users adopt their own Monster and keep it happy by solving daily puzzles that are sent to each player. Monster owners can interact with their pets by tickling them, playing games, shopping, designing their rooms, and shortly by dressing them up. One core element being promoted for Moshi Monsters is the ability to build an emotional bond between the user and their Monster, which is achieved through flash animation and a complex behavioral engine. Monsters develop their own unique personalities depending on how well, or badly, they’ve been treated.
Players can connect and communicate with others through the Friends Tree, visits to other Monster rooms, Monster blogs, Newsfeeds, and a messaging system. The site is geared towards kids, so online safety is a top priority and the Moshi Monsters team monitors site activity to make sure it remains safe.
Now admittedly it sounds like Neopets or similar services with some social networking thrown in for good measure, but where Moshi Monsters stands out is with $10 million in backing from Index Ventures, Accel Partners, and Newmediaspark. Sure, money should never be the final judgement on any site, but well known VC firms think there’s something here worth investing in. I’m also no judge on what kids like (mine isn’t quite old enough yet to use this) so ultimately you (or your kids if you have any) can be the judge.
TechCrunch UK has more on the Moshi Monsters from when the site first launched in closed beta back in October 2007.
Amanda Congdon, arguably the first great female star of online video is back with a new show, Sometimesdaily.
Congdon, for those who aren’t familiar with her work, was the original host of Rocketboom who was fired in mysterious circumstances back in December 2006. Congdon appeared briefly in 2007 as a video blogger for ABC with the series “Amanda Accross America” until she parted company with ABC in September 2007.
The new show is billed as “an off-beat, interactive variety show exploring life’s themes through the inquisitive eyes of Amanda Congdon.”
It’s good to see her back, and she’s certainly looking healthy from the video above. I guess she didn’t want to appear in a future episode of online stars, where are they now or something similar.
Tripwolf is a social travel guide and trip planner that allows users to get a feel for how a destination will feel, look and sound, and adds a social recommendations layer on top.
The site offers advice and recommendations by locals and experienced travelers, and users get highly personalized travel recommendations from friends, peers and like-minded travelers. Users can create new locations, upload and edit content, then share their favorite places from around the world with friends.
The Austrian based startup has backing from European startup incubator i5invest and is currently in closed beta testing, with a planed June launch date. The final version will also include support for booking travel arrangements, and an iPhone version is also on is also planned.
We have 200 invites for TechCrunch readers for the closed beta test. Click here to sign up; first in, best dressed in terms of invites.
While the battle for Yahoo continues unresolved, some Microsoft employees are breaking the suspense (or is it now boredom) by winning new awards for Redmond.
The Baudboys is an a capella group consisting entirely of Microsoft employees and is billed as Microsoft’s Finest A Capella. The group: Graham Sheldon, Ric Lewis, Owen Braun, Elliot Lewis, Dave McEwen, Jon Schwartz, Mark Adolph and Paul Eng, “risks the rath of fellow employees by rehersing in on-campus conference rooms,” and sing a variety of popular and original music.
Casual singing isn’t new in tech, but these guys are serious, having taken first place in the Harmony Sweepstakes Northwest Regional and qualifying to go through to the national final.
The group regularly performs at Microsoft’s Redmond Campus, and was even spotted earlier today at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley offices. You can hear more of the group on their MySpace page here.
Recommendation Ventures, the company behind social music and video recommendations service Scouta has signed a new deal with EPG provider IceTV to provide intuitive content recommendations to IceTV users.
The new service, IceTV Recommendations will be provided to IceTV users as part of the IceTV EPG service. The service allows users to receive personalized suggestions and an opportunity to discover and record new TV shows. Suggested TV shows are displayed as an IceTV Recommendation using a separate icon within the IceTV electronic program guide, allowing IceTV users to easily locate and then select them for more information. From there users can set the recommended TV show to remotely record onto their compatible digital
recording device at home within a few clicks.
We mentioned Scouta’s move into white label recommendation provision back in March. The company has had some success with its core Scouta TV offering, but now sees its core business opportunities going forward as a backend recommendation engine provider for other sites.
Big sport has come out against Google’s WiFi 2.0 plan by arguing that use of white space spectrum will cripple sporting events by interfering with wireless headphones.
The Sport Technology Alliance, representing the National Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the PGA Tour, and ESPN is calling on the FCC to require that technology companies wanting to sell wireless whitespaces devices to prove that their devices don’t interfere with wireless headphones (wireless headphones already operate in white spaces). Ken Kerschbaumer, executive director of the Sports Video Group made the following colorful argument:
We are deeply troubled by the crippling disruption and harm that portable devices will cause to live sports events. These devices could knock out wireless communications systems like headsets used by coaches and officials, microphones used by referees to announce penalties and calls, and microphones used by journalists to conduct interviews with athletes and coaches...Any interference caused by wireless white spaces devices would seriously impair US sports event programming, affecting hundreds of millions of sports fans – denying them full enjoyment of these events. Without a doubt, sports fans will be the real losers here if the FCC fails to protect wireless microphones.
The group specifically targeted Google’s proposal, arguing that it is flawed as the plan would place the burden on existing wireless microphone users, requiring them to purchase and install “beacons” which would jam white space device transmissions.
Free music equals serious web traffic, at least that’s what Coldplay have found with the free release of “Violet Hill” on their website April 29.
According to figures release by Hitwise, the Coldplay website shot to the top of the rankings in the Bands and Artists category, with 52% of visits to the site coming via an email sent to registered fans. Exclaim News reports the single was download 600,000 times in the first 24 hours.
One song doesn’t make a revolution, and we’ve already seen experiments from other bands including Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead (the latter being a poorly executed publicity stunt). This sort of traffic does demonstrate some sort of tangible benefit for Coldplay, and therefore in favor of offering music for free. In Coldplay’s case they also insisted that those wanting the free single had to provide an email address, post/ zip code and country of origin; given just shy of 50% of those visiting the site for the free music weren’t registered fans, that’s around 300,000 new Coldplay fans now registered at the site (and still growing), 300,000 people Coldplay can now market albums, concerts and merchandise to.
See some of Michael’s posts here and here on the death of the paid music industry.
A Federal Court found today that AOL, Real Networks and Yahoo owe $100million to songwriters and composers as back payment for streaming music online.
The court ruled on a request from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers to establish reasonable compensation for the playing of their works. Notably ASCAP represents writers and composers and not the record industry, so the request for money is on top of any existing licensing agreements with the RIAA and its constituent members.
The court found that “reasonable license fees” are owing from AOL, RealNetworks, and Yahoo for the music streamed and distributed from their sites, retrospective to 2002, at a cost ASCAP counts at $100 million.
Unsurprisingly, ASCAP was happy with the decision:
“The Court’s finding represents a major step toward proper valuation of the music contributions of songwriters, composers and publishers to these types of online businesses – many of which have built much of their success on the foundation of the creative works of others,” said ASCAP President and Chairman and Academy Award-winning lyricist, Marilyn Bergman. “It is critical that these organizations share a reasonable portion of their sizable revenues with those of us whose content attracts audiences and, ultimately, helps to make their businesses viable. This decision will go a long way toward protecting the ability of songwriters and composers to be compensated fairly as the use of musical works online continues to grow.”
The Digital Media Association, a trade organization representing online streaming and music providers, said that the are not opposed to compensating composers and writers, but object to the model imposed by the court, with demands companies hand over 2.5% in part of all revenue as compensation, not just revenue from the music services themselves.
eBay has released a copy of its complaint against Craigslist (document above). eBay lodged the lawsuit last week in the Delaware Court of Chancery claiming that Craigslist executives took actions that unfairly diluted eBay’s economic interest.
From the document itself, the tipping point would appear to be eBay’s move to offer Kijiji, its classifieds service in the United States. Craigslist viewed Kijiji as a competitive activity that canceled some shareholder rights held by eBay since it became a Criagslist shareholder in 2004. The short story is that eBay believes Craigslist went to far when enacting the competitive activity clause.
Chinese social networking site Xiaonei has raised $430 million in funding from Softbank, according to a report from VentureBeat.
Xiaonei was founded in December 2005 by Qinghua University graduates Wang Xing, Wang Huiwen, Lai Binqiang and Jacky, then was acquired by Oak Pacific Interactive in 2006 for an undisclosed sum. As of November 2007, the site was said to be the most popular social networking site among university students in China, with 15 million registered users and 8.8 million active users.
The company likes to call itself the Facebook of China, and we’d never guess why (note, shot as run through Google Translate, they don’t offer an English version from what I could see):
Mobile phone ad platform provider AdMob has launched AdMob Mobile Analytics, a Google Analytics style service for mobile advertising.
AdMob Mobile Analytics offers businesses a free solution to maximize commerce, advertising and content on the mobile Internet. AdMob Mobile Analytics helps mobile site owners understand their audience, optimize their content and improve usability. The suite allows users to track site performance metrics such as unique visitors, duration of visit, page performance, as well as user details including geography, operator and device specifics. This information helps mobile site owners tune their sites to the specific consumers visiting their mobile Web presence.
Notably, the service is ad provider agnostic: users can track campaigns by any provider as well as ad campaigns from AdMob.
Wine Tasting is more of a traditional pursuit, like minded people gathering together to taste fine wine. Twitter wine tasting has been tried before, a wine tasting party that gathered web notables in person to try wines tried the concept back in March. But until now no Twitter wine tasting event has focused on providing wine over a broad geographic region with a focus back on providing feedback via Twitter.
Project Vino, an Australian wine site focused on community recommendations, tried the Twitter wine tasting model today. The site sent three bottles of Kirrihill (South Australia) wine to 12 prominent Australian Twitter users, with the only obligation being to tweet their thoughts to Twitter at the designated times.
Project Vino CEO Hugo Sharp had this to say on the event:
This event is one of the earliest instances of using Twitter to transfer an event as social and active as a wine tasting, into online realms. The end result? A resounding success. When you have a social drink which is best enjoyed sharing experiences with friends, it works perfectly with online communication tools.
As one of the twelve sent the wine it was both a fun, and an informative experience. It helps that the Kirrihill Wine was good, but the networking and good word of mouth will make the 3 cartons an easy spend. Reviews can be found via @projectvino. An experiement that was suppose to last 45 minutes kicked on well and truly past the testing time, a positive sign that the wine was well received.
DBMS offers a portfolio of digital brand security services, including domain name management, global brand expansion services and digital brand monitoring solutions. Services include brand and fraud protection and “global digital brand expansion.” According to a release Verisign put out when the service launched in 2006, the service “benefits marketing executives by allowing the marketing team to holistically and globally manage the customers’ online experience with the firm’s brands.”
Melbourne IT was originally part of Melbourne University and was Australia’s equivalent to Network Solutions, maintaining a monopoly on .com.au registrations until 2002. The company is best remembered locally as one of the boom/ bust stocks of the first dot-com bubble, reaching lofty heights after listing in 1999. Melbourne IT was one of the first companies globally to be granted access to .com sales, being one of five granted the rights to .com sales by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers as Network Solutions monopoly was slowly unwound in 1999. MelbourneIT built a global client base based on undercutting Network Solutions rates at the time by 10%.
Stateless Systems has launched a professional, subscription based version of its hosted content management system 
MySocial 24×7
Not content to 
Tripwolf
Big sport has come out against 
Melbourne IT
