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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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…. 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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,… 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… 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… Continue Reading