South Korea’s Nurien raises $10 million for fashion-oriented virtual world
Nurien Software has been making a splash with its demos of virtual characters dressed as fashion models striding down runways in virtual fashion shows. This strategy has helped the company raise $10 million in a second institutional round of funding.
The funding suggests that investors are still excited about virtual worlds. According to market researcher In-stat, virtual worlds are expected to hit 1 billion registered users and $3 billion in revenues by 2012. And since Nurien… Continue Reading
Weblin lets you teleport your avatar from Second Life to the web
What happens in virtual worlds, stays in virtual worlds. That’s the way it’s been when you create an avatar, or virtual character, in places such as Linden Labs’ Second Life.
But now Weblin, a Hamburg, Germany-based startup, has figured out a way for you to teleport your Second Life avatar to any web site. The Weblin Gate being released today lets Second Life Residents (or players) export exact replicas of their avatars and use them on… Continue Reading
Roundup: YouTube HD links, Del Biaggio charges, Korean game support, and more
YouTube gets links to high-definition videos – It already offered HD videos, you just had to use a simple hack to access them. In other YouTube news, the company is offering a new service for adding sound to videos you upload.
Valley investor Del Biaggio nailed with fraud charges — William Del Biaggio, a high-flying investor who forged his way to tens of millions, has been permanently banned from being an investment advisor; now he faces fines and imprisonment.
“Second… Continue Reading
IBM and Linden Lab to create enterprise-safe virtual worlds
Plenty of people are skeptical that enterprises will embrace virtual worlds as a venue for doing serious business. IBM, on the other hand, is a total believer that 3-D worlds such as Second Life augur the future of online commerce.
IBM is announcing a partnership with Second Life producer Linden Lab today to create an enterprise-class version of Second Life behind a corporate firewall. IBM and Linden Lab believe that the move will strengthen the security… Continue Reading
Roundup: Kyte gets more, Microsoft’s ad deal, NetSuite’s golden IPO, more
Here’s the latest (updated) action:
1) Kyte.tv raises $15 million
2) Electric Sheep Company lays off 22
3) FCC receives 700MHz auction applications
4) Microsoft signs $500M ad deal
5) GPS devices fly off the shelves
6) Netsuite sets high price for planned IPO
7) Eric Eldon, celebrity at large?
Kyte.tv raises $15M second round — An online startup that offers a video player allowing near-live communications by video, photo and chat, Kyte has picked up some steam online, attracting a decent-sized audience… Continue Reading
Second Life getting stiff — gambling, various sexual acts banned, new corporate rules…
So much for Second Life, the virtual world, being a place you can escape real-life constraints.
Second Life, the San Francisco company owned by Linden Lab, has banned “broadly offensive” sexual and other acts between avatars. It has also banned gambling.
Now, IBM is posting rules of conduct for its more than 5,000 employees who inhabit Second Life and other virtual worlds where Big Blue hosts meetings with clients and partners. Guidelines including things like “Be a… Continue Reading
Roundup: Virtual sex bed suit, Geni, Gay.com, Netvibes, Helio and more
Here’s the latest (ahem) action:
Second Life avatar sues another avatar, over virtual sex bed — We should have predicted this. Second Life entrepreneur Kevin Alderman has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Second Life resident Volkov Catteneo. This is apparently the first time an avatar has sued another avatar in the virtual world. Alderman, who has made money before in Second Life by selling a virtual island for $50,000 (real money), says his avatar, Stroker Serpentine… Continue Reading
IBM sees big future in 3D, but probably not in Second Life
IBM, one of the nation’s largest companies, sees a big future in 3D worlds — but it probably won’t be with Second Life.
IBM has been eager to try out 3D marketing, for reasons we’ll get to. Like other companies, it created a virtual Business Center in Second Life (you’ll need to have an account at SL to go there), staffed by live sales avatars during business hours. It had more than 2,000 visitors in the… Continue Reading
Roundup: IM mania, VCs in red, Facebook classifieds road-kill, and much more
Here’s the latest action:
Feed Crier gets bought — Feed Crier, the service that lets you subscribe to blogs or other content within your instant messenger (IM), has just been bought by IMified. That company, meanwhile, says it plans to do more on mobile front. It’s just the latest in a crazy-full day of IM stuff.
VCs have produced less profit than they invested, since 1997 — In other words, the industry is negative for the past decade. The… Continue Reading
Roundup: Yu’s wild ride, StumbleUpon, dot-bomb travails and more
Here’s the latest action:
The fast rise of Gideon Yu — Gideon Yu has reportedly become a junior partner at Sequoia Capital, one of Silicon Valley’s most respected venture capital firms. What a ride he’s had: He was a Yahoo treasurer until September of last year, when he was scooped up by YouTube to be their chief financial officer, a month before the acquisition by Google, where he apparently played a major role. When negotiating the sale… Continue Reading
Roundup: Netvibes2Go, Ooma, Wesabe, Second Life voice, Google traffic, more
Here’s the latest action:
Netvibes offers Netvibes2go — Netvibes, the company that has gotten buzz with its cool personalized home page service, is offering a mobile version called Netvibes2Go. It lets you access all your info — contained in useful modules, including email, calendar, to-do list and any RSS feed — while you’re on the go. To get it, you have to configure your Netvibes account on a PC first (creating a new tab, called “mobile” and… Continue Reading
Roundup: Doppelganger targets SecondLife, Draper bankrolls sex toys & more
The latest in Silicon Valley:
Doppelganger raise $5M more for virtual world focused on teens — Doppelganger is the San Francisco start-up taking aim at the teen, or MTV audience (see our earlier coverage). It launched last year with a virtual club featuring the band the Pussycat Dolls, and is signing deals with other bands. Teens can design their avatars, chat with other sexy avatars, including of the band members themselves, and dance. Chief executive Andrew Littlefield… Continue Reading
Google’s virtual world, the blog filter rush & more
(Updated) Round-up in Silicon Valley:
Google working on a Google Earth version of Second Life? — So says venture capitalist Michael Eisenberg, a partner at Benchmark capital, the firm that invested in Second Life, citing a rumor from the “PhD grapevine.” [Update: Google spokesman Daniel Pastor says: "We're continually exploring opportunities to expand our offerings, but we don't have anything to announce at this time."] Google co-founders have always been about having “impact.” This would give… Continue Reading
Moritz’s favorites, Google in SF, nano fears, Flock, Pandora & more
Roundup of Silicon Valley news:
Google’s Larry and Sergey were more interested in technology than Yahoo founders — There’s a revealing 2000 interview with venture capitalist Michael Moritz posted by PodVentureZone, comparing Google’s co-founders and Yahoo’s. He was an investor and on the board of both, and says Larry and Sergey were closer “to the sheet metal, closer to the hardware.” He calls Sergey a “tough, little guy”:
I think Larry and Sergey have a much more pronounced… Continue Reading
Roundup: Cisco sues, Avvenu, Weatherbill, Techdirt, Blue Origin & more
Here’s the latest wrap-up of Silicon Valley tech news:
Cisco sues Apple over iPhone name — Who cares? If Apple loses, it will come up with a different name. Like, ApplePhone, or iPodPhone. Details of suit.
Yahoo signs deal with Akimbo to deliver video to televisions — Just the latest move in a huge number of deals pushing video to your TV. More details here.
Avvenu shares music via link in email — Avvenu, a Palo Alto start-up has been around… Continue Reading
Jobster’s jobs, IBM cools on Second Life, Shotspotter works & more video
Here’s a round-up of the latest tech stuff:
Jobster may cut a significant portion of its 145-person workforce? — Reports of major pending layoffs at Jobster are ironic, not merely because the company helps employers find employees. But because the company appears to doing the cutting to attain profitability, five months after boasting to VentureBeat that it would be profitable were it not hiring so many people so quickly all over the place. This company got very… Continue Reading
Susan Wu, the first virtual venture capitalist, blogs
Susan Wu is an associate at Charles River Ventures, and becomes the latest in the rare group of female venture capitalists writing a blog (you can count them on one hand).
The blog is called Reality, a play on the theme of her interest, which is virtual worlds. She’s one of the three partners at CRV who made waves earlier this month after launching the Quickstart seed program for start-ups.
Her area has gotten a lot of… Continue Reading
Roundup: Second Life, Snap, Zoo, Good’s $500M, exec shuffling & more
Updated
The latest round-up from tech-land:
Second Life hype continues — Sun holds a conference in the virtual world, and pisses off a journalist, who has a point. Why make it so tough for people to get to your message? But that hasn’t deterred others from joining the trend. Dell did something similar. And now Second Life has launched a business plan competition for “resident” entrepreneurs. The prize is a little less than US$2k, but it does include… Continue Reading
Second Life’s “Wild West” — the land of start-ups and no cops, yet
The buzz around the growth of virtual world site, Second Life, is drawing more scrutiny from real-world regulators who fear they’re losing grip with the growing economy.
The site appears to have hit a sort of critical mass — and the attention is fueling even more activity.
A U.S. congressional committee has launched an investigation of the site, to see that people pay taxes properly on income they make at the site. Outsiders are scratching their… Continue Reading
Khosla responds to conflicts-of-interest charge on oil tax
Vinod Khosla, the successful Silicon Valley venture capitalist who is leading the effort to raise a tax on oil extracted in the California, has responded to the oil industry’s charges that he has conflicts.
In an interview the WSJ (sub req), Khosla says his investments in alternative energies aren’t really a conflict with his $1 million support of Prop. 87, which would levy a tax on oil – even though some of the tax proceeds would… Continue Reading