Skype founders sue eBay for copyright violations
Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis filed suit today against eBay, the owner of their the intenet telephone technology since 2005, alleging that the auction site violated a copyright agreement that it wouldn’t share the proprietary code powering the service.
The suit is officially being brought by Joltid, another company owned by the duo — which, incidentally, also founded video-sharing site Joost. The trouble started when eBay moved on plans to sell off most of… Continue Reading
Joost removes Volpi as chairman, complicating eBay’s Skype sale
Mike Volpi, the former chief executive officer of online video site Joost who stepped down in July, has now been removed as chairman by the company’s shareholders, and is under investigation for his activities during his leadership.
Many are questioning Volpi’s dual roles at Joost and Index Ventures — a thorny subject involving eBay’s sale of Skype. He joined the private equity firm in June when Joost officially threw in the towel on becoming a web television… Continue Reading
Roundup: Realtime animation, CNN sources Twitter, Joost ousts CEO
StudioGPU replaces computer animation render farms with $5,000 PC — I’ve seen the demo with my own unbelieving eyes. A single graphics accelerator card on a standard Intel-powered PC can now render in seconds what used to take a roomful of servers all day. Hollywood-based StudioGPU, a privately-funded startup, has released MachStudio Pro, a software tool that lets computer animators design and render scenes nearly in real-time. StudioGPU’s demo setup fits on a restaurant table… Continue Reading
Joost: For sale, or just fortifying?
The buzz in the online vid biz is that Joost, a once touted video portal, might be headed for a buyout. After two years of going it alone, the company is rumored to be in talks with Time Warner Cable and satellite providers for a possible deal, reports CNet’s anonymous source.
Though this is still considered speculation (a Joost spokesperson said the company doesn’t comment on rumors), it’s fair to say the company has seen its… Continue Reading
Hulu jumps on the social bandwagon with Hulu Friends
To celebrate its one-year anniversary, Hulu launched its brand new social networking feature Hulu Friends today, allowing users to connect the video site to their Facebook and MySpace profiles. The service will record users’ Hulu activities on their newsfeeds, allowing them to discover new videos watched, recommended and shared by their friends and other Hulu users. They can even tie in their Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo address books for broader reach across their entire social… Continue Reading
Index Ventures infuses biotech and cleantech with $438.8M
Index Ventures just announced the closure of a $438.8 million fund intended to finance young biotechnology and cleantech portfolio companies. This is the sixth seed and early-stage fund the London-based firm has raised. Perhaps best know for its prescient investments in technologies like Skype, MySQL (sold to Sun Microsystems for $1 billion) and Betfair, Index has been relatively insulated from the economic downturn and is looking to expand its reach in the health care and… Continue Reading
Joost is loosed on the iPhone. Looks great, performance an issue
Joost, the once mega-hyped online video startup, has just launched a free application for the iPhone to grant mobile access to its videos. With a nice, clean interface, this app could be a winner — if it can get over the performance issues currently plaguing it.
The app gives you access to more than 46,000 videos ranging from popular movies (like Men in Black) to music videos (I see a lot of Beyonce) to television shows… Continue Reading
Roundup: Amazon vs eBay, YouTube search ads, and more
Here’s the latest action:
Amazon is like Apple, eBay is like Microsoft — Or at least that’s the tech-industry analogy that comes to mind when reading this piece about the increasingly competitive battle between the two e-commerce giants.
“Black” silicon is a better light receiver — A silicon variation discovered in Harvard University’s labs and licensed out to a company called SiOnyx, is far more receptive to light than ordinary silicon. The substance (pictured) may be useful for X-ray… Continue Reading
Sling Media video portal takes live TV, clip-sharing online
Sling Media, known primarily for the SlingBox, a device that can stream your home television signal to you anywhere in the world, is branching onto the web today with a limited beta release of Sling.com, a video portal that will let users not only watch premium and live video content, but also share clips of their favorite shows with friends.
Sling.com will give users access to a library of video content — movies, television and popular… Continue Reading
Roundup: Brin’s blog, O’Reilly gets serious, Joost’s browser version goes live and more
Here’s the latest action:
Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin starts his own blog — Dubbed “too“, Brin starts off by detailing his fears of getting Parkinson’s disease since it runs in his family. Compelling stuff. Too bad it’s nearly impossible to read with his choice of light blue text on a black background. CNET has more.
O’Reilly gets serious — Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media, used his keynote address at the Web 2.0 Expo in Las Vegas to call… Continue Reading
Joost’s desktop client is toast
Since early on in its testing phase, I found Joost to be a compelling take on Internet Protocol Television (IPTV). Let me rephrase: I found the idea of Joost to be compelling. It offered free video content on the web in a way that was somewhat similar to a television experience but added the interactivity that the web offers. The service’s problem was in its execution — namely that it required a seperate desktop client to… Continue Reading
Roundup: Yahoo’s bad (but not awful) day, Icahn’s wild weekend, shuffle at the top of Etsy and more
Here’s the latest action:
Yahoo has a bad day, but it could have been much worse — The Internet giant announced its earnings today and fell short of expectations, but only by about a penny-a-share. Net income was down 19 percent from the same quarter last year. Still, considering it no longer has a Carl Icahn-led hostile takeover to worry about, the company can — and more importantly, will live with these numbers.
Icahn’s wild weekend — While Yahoo was… Continue Reading
With browser-based viewing and live sports, don’t count Joost out just yet
Much of the buzz for online video has gone to Hulu as of late following its public launch (our coverage). However, a new tidbit that was published in April’s Portfolio magazine suggests it may be too soon to completely write-off the online video site that everyone was buzzing about this time last year, Joost.
You see, buried in the magazine’s profile of the company and its chief executive Mike Volpi are the following two sentences (uncovered… Continue Reading
Roundup: Warner CEO changes online music stance, engineers become scarcer, and more
Here’s the latest action:
1) Warner CEO praises Apple, DRM-free music
2) VMWare is after your engineer blood
3) Berners-Lee warns of walled gardens
4) Microsoft completes $47M acquisition
5) Another VC speaks in favor of taxing himself
6) Joost rolls out new ads
7) Billeo raises $7M for easy payment
Warner Music CEO now supporting DRM-free music, iTunes – “We used to think our music was perfect just the way it was … of course, we were wrong,” said Warner Music CEO Edgar… Continue Reading
Industry group aims to improve peer to peer sharing
The P4P Working Group wants to improve the way peer-to-peer Web sharing works, thus helping the entire internet to grow. The group is composed of major tech industry players including Verizon, Pando and Yale University, in whose labs the idea originated.
P4P (not to be confused with pay-for-placement, an advertising term) refers to a network management technology that will help Internet service providers route P2P traffic. P2P applications work by sharing files directly between user’s computers…. Continue Reading
Roundup: Adobe’s product launches, Joost, eBay-Skype charge, and more
Here’s an (updated) summary of the latest action:
–Adobe launches online-offline media player, and Share. Other applications launch using Adobe’s AIR
–Microsoft launches Office Live WorkSpace
–Joost officially launches its online TV service
–Skype makes earn-out. EBay takes $1.43 billion impairment charge for Skype, and co-founder Zennstrom steps down.
–Facebook to let you group your friends
–Findory shuts down
Adobe launches new online-offline media player, and lots more – Adobe’s new player lets you watch Flash videos whether or not you’re connected to… Continue Reading
Roundup: Joost’s API, Fliqz’s easy video toolbar, NBC-iTunes rift, more
Here’s this morning’s roundup of the latest action:
Joost opens widget API to developers: Joost, the oft-hyped online video site started by the founders of Skype, has soft-launched an application programming interface this week. It is trying to get third-party developers to build widgets on top of its online TV network so Joost users can do more with the site’s data.
The company already has sample widgets available on its test site, including a “What’s Similar” widget… Continue Reading
Veoh launches VeohTV, a high-quality TV for desktop too
Veoh, the video-sharing site that recently raised $26 million, today launches a test of VeohTV, a downloadable application that the company says will kill another new flashy competitor, Joost.
VeohTV’s hook is that unlike Joost, which limits itself to certain formats and the content it licenses, Veoh has opened its doors and essentially created a browser that accesses anything in Yahoo video’s index — an archive that seeks to search the whole world of internet video.
VeohTV… Continue Reading
Roundup: Nextag, ThisNext, Amp’d, Lala, Ask3D and much more
(Updated) Here’s the latest action, catching up for the past two days:
Boring shopping Web sites attract interest — There are so many shopping search engines, we’ve given up trying to count. And yet investors remain interested. Santa Monica, Calif.’s ThisNext, a social shopping Web site, has raised a round of venture debt Western Technology. It lets people share and recommend products with friends. This comes after rumors that private equity firm Providence Equity Partners is buying… Continue Reading
Roundup: Google’s Korean clutter, Real’s player, Panoramio and more
Here’s the latest action:
Google Korea has cluttered page — This is a striking departure from the spartan interface Google is known for. Details here. We checked with Google, and a spokeswoman confirmed the Korean site was developed in response to market research and feedback from Korean users. She called it a “new intuitive and easy-to-use design” that helps discover Google products and services.
AOL serving ads in IM and chat — AOL subsidiary Userplane lets Website publishers… Continue Reading