Skype founders sue eBay for copyright violations

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

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

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?

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

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 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 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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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