Australia's Effective Measure closes $4M round for audience measurement technology

Effective Measure, an Australian startup that makes audience measurement technology largely used on the other side of the world, has announced a $4 million round of funding from Rho Ventures.

“These new funds will enable us to extend our leadership position in audience measurement and deliver enhanced capabilities to Web publishers and advertisers,” CEO Scott Julian wrote in a prepared statement. Rho partner David Carlick will join Effective Measure’s board of directors.

The company’s clients … Continue Reading

HBO Go launches for Verizon FiOS customers, streams HBO content over the web

Expect to hear the term “TV Everywhere” quite a bit over the next few years. It’s an initiative by Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Inc. to bring cable content to subscribers via streaming video on the web. Basically, it’s the cable networks’ answer to Hulu and Netflix Watch Instantly.

HBO Go is one of the first attempts by Time Warner as part of the TV Everywhere initiative. The site launched today for Verizon FiOS subscribers, … Continue Reading

Online firms and toy companies clash over kids virtual worlds

For many years toy and video game companies have been battling each other for the mindshare of kids.  Toy companies have strong products targeted at children from pre-school up to about second grade, when they turn 7 or 8.  Then, at about age 8, video games start to replace traditional toys.

The typical business model enables video game companies to license their products to toy companies to generate additional revenue.  At the same time toy … Continue Reading

Three Tesla employees dead in Palo Alto plane crash — CEO Musk, execs not involved

[Update: Senior electrical engineer and plane owner Doug Bourn, electrical engineer Andrew Ingram and senior manager Brian Finn have been identified as the passengers on the plane by sources close to the company. We are still awaiting confirmation from Tesla Motors or the East Palo Alto Police Department.

NBC Bay Area has published a letter of remembrance from one of Bourn's friends, also suggesting that he was involved. You can read the letter … Continue Reading

Video ad tech maker YuMe raises $25M

YuMe, a Redwood City, California startup that makes video advertising technology, announced today that it has inked a $25 million fourth round of funding led by Menlo Ventures.

Shawn Carolan from Menlo has joined YuMe’s board of directors. Existing investors Accel Partners, BV Capital, DAG Ventures and Khosla Ventures also participated in the round.

YuMe makes the ACE online video ad management platform. They recently added a feature called Triple Play that inserts a call … Continue Reading

No escaping social email: Facebook and MySpace coming to Outlook

Microsoft announced a lot of progress today with its Outlook Social Connector, which brings social network data to the inboxes of people who use the popular email program. Outlook’s integration with LinkedIn, which was launched November, is now live as a public beta test, and Microsoft says it has also struck deals for similar integration with Facebook and MySpace.

Broadly outlined, Outlook Social Connector might sound similar to Google Buzz, the Gmail-based social networking tool … Continue Reading

Mobile-health apps emerge at Mobile World Congress 2010

M-health is the use of mobile technology to improve medical services. It’s a new business in mobile tech that requires an uneasy alliance between the notoriously conservative health care industry and the technology-driven mobile world. Applications include collecting health data from patients, delivering healthcare information and direct provision of care. There is a plethora of m-health companies at Mobile World Congress 2010. Here are just a couple of examples:

AlcoSystems

Alcosystems specializes in tracking blood … Continue Reading

FCC announces 100Mbps broadband initiative as part of upcoming National Broadband Plan

In the run up to the official announcement of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, due to be presented next month, we’re beginning to hear more about the FCC’s specific goals for broadband adoption in the US. FCC chairman Julius Genachowski has spoken about the need for universal broadband in the past, and we also reported recently that agency is looking into buying back wireless spectrum from broadcasters.

In his remarks at the NARUC conference (PDF) … Continue Reading

Genieo launches automatically generated personal homepages to the public

There’s a host of companies offering personalized homepages for web users. However, personalizing these sites can take time and energy. Users often have to upload preferences such as RSS feeds or widgets.

Israel based startup Genieo is looking to change that by launching the public beta version of a desktop application that automatically generates a personalized homepage based on your browsing activity. It uses a new technology called micro behavioral targeting (MBT).

The company explains, … Continue Reading

New York Times turf war may kill iPad version before launch

Gawker has word of a turf war going on over at the New York Times for control of the iPad version of the paper. According to an anonymous NYT insider, it boils down to this: The NYT print circulation folks want to charge $30 a month for access to the tablet version of the paper, while the digital operation side wants to go for a more reasonable $10 a month fee.

Apparently, the print group … Continue Reading

Loopt eyes "Holy Grail" of location ads as it signs another content deal

Location-based social network Loopt signed another content deal today, bringing in recommendations, menus and offers from foodie e-mail newsletter Tasting Table. When Loopt players “check-in” into restaurants or look up spaces in the game, they can get reviews and leave tips for other users.

Content deals are more or less par for the course these days in location-based services. Startups like Gowalla and MyTown accumulate hundreds of thousands of users who play their games and … Continue Reading

PlaySpan's Ultimate Game Card expands worldwide

PlaySpan’s Ultimate Game Card has expanded the world over.

Sold in retail stores, the prepaid card lets players who don’t have credit cards sign up for online games. They can use cash to buy the cards and, as with an iTunes gift card, type the card’s code into an online account to pay for a subscription or buy virtual goods inside a game.

Last June, we noted how the game card was avaiable in 45,000 … Continue Reading

Open Feint X aims to make iPhone games as social as Facebook apps

Facebook game companies have become financial juggernauts. That’s because games spread in a viral way to lots of Facebook users. And a small percentage of those users buy virtual goods with real money. If the iPhone could duplicate that pattern, it might also one day generate lots of revenue for game companies.

That’s what Aurora Feint wants to make happen with its Open Feint X social game platform for the iPhone. If it works, it … Continue Reading

Social games can rocket to millions of users thanks to RightScale

One of the amazing things about the new era of social gaming is that tiny companies can launch a game on Facebook and see their users grow to the tens of millions within a matter of weeks.

That’s possible thanks to web services companies that specialize in outsourced server infrastructure capable of handling the online needs of tens of millions of users. Amazon.com’s Elastic Compute Cloud provides this server infrastructure, essentially renting data centers to … Continue Reading

Textfree nears 2 billion text messages on iPod Touch, iPhone

Did you know you can use your iPod Touch as a free SMS text machine? Or that you can skip the texting charges on your iPhone plan?

If you’ve got a WiFi network, you’re in. Textfree, an app launched nine months ago by startup Pinger, has already delivered over a billion text messages to and from Apple handset users.

CEO Greg Woock — pronounced “woke,” it’s Dutch — a veteran of Handspring, told me on … Continue Reading

Build your own Q&A site with Qhub

Qhub, a British startup launched on Wednesday by the founders of the popular question-and-answer site Blurtit.com, is a site for building other Q&A sites.

Community Q&A sites, where people answer one another’s questions, are one of the more utilitarian results of the user-generated content trend among startups. Instead of snarky one-liners, members share their hands-on knowledge.

The best Q&A sites are focused and specialized, rather than general. Bizmore, for example, is designed specifically for mid-sized … Continue Reading

Richard Garriott comes down to earth with Facebook game startup Portalarium

The last we heard from video game designer Richard Garriott, he was in outer space. Taking time off from game design, he dished out $30 million to take a private space flight to the International Space Station.

Now he has come down to earth, giving up on massively multiplayer games. But today, he is coming out as one of the founders of Facebook game company Portalarium.

The new startup says a lot about the direction … Continue Reading

Roundup: Google Buzz's privacy problems, HTC's new Android phones

Here’s the latest action:

Privacy concerns build around Google Buzz — And it’s not just coming from random bloggers and users. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy watchdog group, has filed a complaint urging the Federal Trade Commission to investigate about Google’s new social networking tool for violating the company’s user privacy agreement and even federal wiretapping laws. Meanwhile a spokesperson Canada’s privacy commissioner also said their office is “looking into the issue.”

HTC … Continue Reading