VentureBeat

Star Wreck Studios builds permanent community for collaborative movie making

If you’ve heard of the movie Star Wreck, then you’re already familiar with Star Wreck Studio’s operating procedure: Take a community of thousands of online movie-making buffs, and have them collaborate on a feature-length film.

Star Wreck, a $20,000 film, is said to be the most popular internet-created feature film of all time, with eight million downloads all around the world. At first the film was distributed free online, and eventually it was distributed by… Continue Reading

Robot Asimo judges rock-scissors-paper contests

Honda’s humanoid robot Asimo has taken another step on its way to become human-like. Actually, make that superhuman-like. Asimo, which resembles a small astronaut, doesn’t only dance, serve coffee and conduct operas, but now can judge rock-paper-scissors contests.

The judging is made possible by Asimo’s new ability to understand three voices shouting at once. This is actually more than a human is able to do: We humans can only focus on one particular sound source at… Continue Reading

The Ozone Man raises seed funding for air cleaning service

The Ozone Man Inc, a Beverly Hills, Calif.-based start up, has raised $350,000. The company offers ultraviolet ozone generators, using the ozone to clean the air of pollution, odors and bacteria

A customer can buy the Ozone Man Deep Cleaning service, starting from $395, after the air has been inspected by the Ozone Man technicians. The inspection and testing services start from $100. After cleaning, Ozone Man’s ultraviolet germicidal accessories are supposed to keep the air clean. One product is the… Continue Reading

Startup Senseg promises “game changing” tactile technology

Imagine this: an iPhone with a keyboard you can actually feel, even though there are no physical keys.

That’s the goal that many mobile phone suppliers including Apple would love to reach. Touch and feel screens in mobile phones are already available, at least from Samsung and LG, but it seems to be difficult to create a technology that works well enough.

Senseg, a Finnish startup, says that E-Sense, the tactile interface technology they have developed, will be the game changer…. Continue Reading

Planet 9 Studios’ RayGun could make GPS fun

Can someone build a GPS system that’s not a boring necessity and instead is a fun way to socialize with your friends? That’s what Planet 9 Studios, a San Francisco startup, wants to accomplish with RayGun, a GPS navigation and social networking application. It is already available in 2D and is about to launch a 3D version.

With RayGun, you can create an avatar to represent yourself, and move around in the application. You can also share… Continue Reading

Gay Ad Network makes a river from small streams, while PlanetOut struggles

This is a tale of two niche advertising companies: One is a young company planning on a bright future, and the other is an older company that once had such a future. Both target the gay and lesbian audience.

Gay Ad Network, a newcomer in gay-focused advertising, is the newby. The Florida-based start-up says it has doubled the size of its network in a year, and that it’s the largest network, in terms of audience reach,… Continue Reading

California environmental advisor Terry Tamminen on trains, energy efficiency, Al Gore and more

Terry Tamminen is the former top environmental advisor of California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and is also former secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He has a reputation for having “turned Arnie green”.

Tamminen left his post as permanent advisor in 2006 but says he still advises Schwarzenegger as well as the governors of Florida, Maryland and, Minnesota, on the renewal of environmental legislation. Tamminen also has a role in venture capital: He sits on the… Continue Reading

Nokia develops navigating system based on image recognition, landmarks

Nokia, the world’s biggest mobile phone supplier, is developing a new kind of navigation instruction system for mobile phones. With landmark-based navigation you won’t even need to know your address or cross streets to get directions. You just take a picture of a nearby landmark, like the Golden Gate Bridge, with the camera in your mobile phone. Then, Nokia will match your photo with other landmark photos in its mapping database, and tell you where… Continue Reading

Engage’s new dating service: Fall in love – or be publicly embarrassed?

Would you invite friends to an online dating service, to help you in your escapades?

Engage, a San Mateo-based startup, believes you will. Friends are helpful in connecting you with dates in the offline world, so the idea is they’ll vouch for you online as well. In fact, Engage says 262,000 unique visitors used its service last month.

The company officially launches its online dating service today, after two years of testing (see our coverage). That’s a… Continue Reading

SiBEAM delivers high-definition wireless adapters this year, raises $40M

SiBEAM, a company developing technology to stream high definition video more quickly than any existing technology, has raised $40 million in third round of funding.

The financing was led by New Enterprise Associates. The other firms backing up SiBEAM are Foundation Capital and U.S. Venture Partners.

SiBEAM, of Sunnyvale, Calif., is developing a technology called WirelessHD. The technology helps you move rich, high-definition data like video wirelessly from one gadget to another, such as from your portable… Continue Reading

Family network site Sampa raises $1M

Sampa, a Redmond, Wash.-based company offering a family networking service, has gotten a $1 million investment from more than 10 investors, including Seattle angel investor Geoff Entress and former executives at Micorsoft, Netscape and Lightsurf.

Sampa is a free service for families to share blogs, pictures, stories, and vacation plans by creating a private place on the net, similar to MyFamily.com. Sampa makes its money on the ads on the site, about $1,000 a month, says Paul… Continue Reading

Robotics start-up Willow Garage believes open source OS will soon put robots in our homes

If Menlo Park-based start-up Willow Garage has its way, in just a few years you’ll be able to hire a robot to come and clean your house once a week.

The company is building open-source robots and giving them away to university research groups in an attempt to fuel quick improvements to the operating system and rapid build-out of applications to run on it.

The company plans to deliver 10 robots to US universities by the end of the… Continue Reading