Trackvia provides software as a service for transforming ordinary spreadsheets into versatile databases. The Colorado-based startup has raised its first major round of institutional funding, the amount of which (while not disclosed) is being described as a “typical Series A”.

The round’s investors include two VCs out of the Rockies – Flywheel Ventures and Access Venture Partners – plus some notable angels, including Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Prior to this Series A, Trackvia had raised less than $1 million since launching in February 2006.

Trackvia appeals to SMBs that need to organize, access, and analyze business critical data that might typically be placed into Excel or Access files. By importing these files into Trackvia, the data can be searched and queried as with traditional relational databases. It can also be used to generate statistics, print out mailing labels, run email campaigns, create custom views, and generate web forms (think Wufoo). Images and other files can be loaded and associated with entries, and the system retains a comprehensive change history for all entries. Permissions can also be set on a per-entry basis.

Trackvia competes with Blist (review) and DabbleDB (review), although its customers don’t tend to bring these companies up; they’re more likely to mention Intuit’s QuickBase and Act. Trackvia’s executives suggest that its customers are not so much interested in sharing their data broadly but are rather looking for better ways to handle information internally.

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Blist, a browser-based database management application, has raised $6.5M in Series A from Frazier Technology Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures.

The company launched in private beta at DEMO this year, although we first covered them this past November.

In addition to this funding announcement, Blist is also rolling out data importing, sharing, and charting features. The new charting capabilities can be seen in the picture to the right.

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BitGravity

Content delivery network BitGravity is launching its streaming video offering, BG LiveBroadcast. The company aims to make streaming video online as instantaneous and high-quality as streaming video on TV, while adding an extra layer of interactivity and customization.

BitGravity already provides on-demand (i.e. recorded) video delivery for fifty clients, including Revision3 and Tom Green. Its streaming video service promises to bring the same robust scalability to live events, allowing thousands if not millions of viewers to watch the same shows simultaneously.

If you want to stream live events using BitGravity, you can request a machine from them that will come preloaded with all the requisite software. Costs will then accrue depending on how much bandwidth you consume.

Blist

Blist, a web-based application that promises to make database management as easy as using Excel, is launching in private beta this Tuesday. A number of improvements have been made to the product’s design since we covered it this past November.

Of particular note is a new “visual query builder” that makes the construction of complex queries easy with a drag-n-drop interface. Blist’s approach to relational data is also notable; relationships are established primarily in the “design” phase of database construction, obviating the need to explicitly extract relational data during query time.

If you become Blist beta tester, head over to InviteShare to share your five invites with others.

Eyealike

Eyealike is announcing a service called Eyealike Copyright that will hunt down copyrighted material found in videos posted across the web. Eyealike purportedly has a knack for finding copyright material mixed in with user generated content on sites like YouTube.

The company claims that its technology can “process hundreds of images and video clips per minute by still objects, object movement, and facial recognition” with 95% accuracy and a “near zero false positive rate.” Its web interface, pictured left, features a prominent “Send Notification” button that will allow companies like Viacom to speed up the process by which they send out take-down requests.

GoldMail

With GoldMail, you can send slideshows accompanied by audio messages to friends, family, and business contacts. The goal is to enrich communication over the net by providing a way to send not only your voice but visual materials, such as photos and diagrams, that reinforce your message as well.

While GoldMail soft launched a little while ago for consumers, it’s rolling out a business offering at DEMO with which companies can brand the service to their liking. For two examples of how organizations have used the branded service, see messages by the Mia Hamm Foundation and the Oakland Raiders.

Enterprise pricing will start off at $5,000 per year, or $500 per month, for 10 seats. GoldMail will perform all of the customization work for their clients.

good2gether

good2gether seeks to help non-profit organizations broaden their reach by connecting them with media partners, sponsors, and volunteers. It’s described as part search engine, part social network.

The main benefit to non-profits seems to be derived from the partnerships good2gether makes with media companies, a list of which will be announced at DEMO. Apparently these partners will include “major newspapers from six of the top 10 media markets”. Just how these media partners will benefit the non-profits is unclear.

MOLI

MOLI is a social network with the mantra “control your privacy”. Members, whether individuals or businesses, can manage multiple profiles, each of which can be made public, private, or hidden. For individuals, the value proposition seems to lie in the ability to create different personas for different contacts (friends, family, colleagues, etc.). I’m not sure just how this functionality will benefit companies who want to establish online presences.

The company says its target audience is “25 to 55 year old knowledge workers (art and fashion designers, technologists, musicians, etc.) and the under served small businesses community”.

SceneCaster

SceneCaster is a virtual world offering that launched at DEMO in the fall and was well-received.

The company will use DEMO 2008 to promote its “SceneWeaver” technology, which allows users to access 3D environments through any XHTML compliant browser. The idea in a nutshell is to bring Second Life-like experiences to the browser, and it even works on the iPhone (no Flash or other plugins are needed).

Online retailers can integrate SceneCaster with their websites to create 3D storefronts, and others can use the technology to create their own 3D webpages.

StandoutJobs

StandoutJobs wants to help companies recruit more effectively by providing them with Netvibes-like pages that contain information for prospective employees. Companies can customize their StandoutJobs sites to include components that inform visitors about company culture, job opportunities, current employees, and more. Other, livelier features such as Flickr photos and quirky corporate videos can be added, too. While companies using StandoutJobs may risk looking like they’re trying too hard, these portals may also add a more personalized touch to the recruitment process.

Voyant

Voyant is launching a web-based financial software offering called Voyant @Home intended for individuals who want to gain “direct control over their financial health”. The software has been billed as particularly useful for generating “what if” scenarios and forecasts stemming from your current financial situation. Users can also use the service to track their financial goals.

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I recently had the opportunity to see a demo of a product coming out in early 2008 called Blist (pronounced like “bliss” with a “t” at the end) that will take on DabbleDB and Trackvia by giving users the tools to easily create and manage databases online.

Blist’s initial target demographic will be Excel users who need more functionality and are trying to make their spreadsheets act like databases, but who don’t have the skills or tolerance to even use Access. Blist will not require users to know any SQL, the language commonly used for interacting with databases (in contrast, recently reviewed Zoho DB does require knowledge of SQL). The company behind Blist seeks to eventually replace traditional databases completely by making its product robust and appealing enough for database application developers as well. The end result: no more databases behind the firewall, since they all end up existing in the cloud.

Blist’s plans are obviously ambitious. They are not only designing a better user interface for manipulating databases, they are also building a sophisticated database architecture that will allow them to replicate data geographically, thereby preventing data loss from natural disasters. Their entirely SaaS-based database solution will also provide an API so you can link your applications up with it. If Blist ever has a chance of replacing traditional database servers, its API will need to be very capable indeed so that applications can run all of the same queries they run now. Blist’s CEO Kevin Merritt says that the API will eventually allow for a large range of operations, but the initial API will be fairly simple and will rely on XML.

Since Blist won’t be ready to convert database administrators right off the bat, the quality of its user interface will determine its initial success. Either Blist will come across as intuitive and succeed, or non-technical users will go right back to using Excel. From the brief demonstration I saw, Blist does look impressively easy to use and very functional, too. As you might be able to tell from the screenshots – which show how Blist could have been used to organize our candidate data for the TechCrunch40 conference – the program looks and feels more like a full-fledged desktop application than DabbleDB. It currently supports fourteen data types, with more coming soon. Data can be viewed in table mode (as in Excel), page view (so you can edit entries using a form), or calendar view (so you can see entries with associated dates in a calendar layout).

What really makes Blist a database application is the ability to apply various “lenses”, or views, to the data. These lenses are like queries since they allow you to view the data by particular criteria. But you won’t need to know any syntax: just change the fields in a form to construct your query. Right now, lenses can only be used to view data in different ways. Blist will become much more useful, in my mind, when users can also implement lenses to manipulate data. Once that is possible, it will closely match the functionality of GUI database tools like MySQL Query Browser.

Since Blist is an online application, the company has taken care to integrate features that distribute and share data. Databases in Blist can be easily shared with other Blist users through the standard interface. They can also be spread over the internet via widgets that pull out samples of data from particular databases. If you are a blogger who wants to publish some of the raw data you have used for analysis, you’ll be able to drop a Blist widget into your post that will highlight some of the main data points and allow users to gain access to the original data set. For example, I wouldn’t have to make unwieldy charts like this one for white label social networking solutions, because I could just drop in a Blist widget with all the data and viewing capabilities instead. These widgets, like most, can also be embedded on other webpages across the net.

While Blist is gunning for the $15 billion relational database market, they have not yet figured out pricing (although they do intend to charge both casual consumers and business users). The company will start by focusing on the North American market and will move to other regions from there. Blist has not accepted any external funding yet but will be looking to raise some soon.

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