VentureBeat

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 routes, text chat, share photos and video, and even talk to each your friends over VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).

By combining these social networking features with GPS, the company calls RayGun the first social navigation application. The application runs on cell phones, personal navigation devices, in-car navigation systems, and PCs. There’s also a 2D version that runs on Google Earth and on Google Maps. RayGun runs in 3D on Windows Mobile, Symbian and Linux based phones. Support for more platforms is coming, says Planet 9 chief executive David J. Colleen.

With RayGun, Planet 9 Studios is entering the growing market for location-based mobile services. There are plenty of competing mobile navigation systems: Besides first generation navigation systems such as TomTom and  Magellan, Web 2.0 navigation systems, like Dash, are entering the market. In addition, Nokia is developing it’s own navigation system based on image recognition.

RayGun’s strength is the quality of its 3D graphics, which turns navigation into an almost game-like experience. But 3D graphics can be also a weakness: Do users want advanced graphics on the small screen of cellphone or other navigating device?

The big question for Raygun is whether social networking features are a useful addition to a navigation system. When you’re using GPS, you’re often in a rush, so I’m not sure how often you’ll have time to send extra messages. And if you want to socialize with your cell phone, you can already do it with companies like Loopt, a social mapping service where users can share locations with their friends.

Planet 9 Studios won’t be selling directly to consumers; instead it’s negotiating with mobile phone suppliers and network carriers about delivering RayGun in their products, Colleen says. Colleen adds that RayGun will have the only server, GeoFeeder, that can stream 3D data to cellphones; although that’s only needed with less advanced cell phones that don’t have enough storage for rich 3D-data.

So far, RayGun has been available in testing mode, and it’s used by the U.S. Army, Boeing, AT&T and Sprint in tracking people in emergency situations. Last month, Planet 9 Studios was named as a finalist in TeleAtlas LBS Innovators Series Event, and was picked by Dow Jones to the top 10 startups developing wireless products.

Founded in 1991, Planet 9 Studios is already well-known as a supplier of high-quality 3D city models and data which are used in games, movies, GPS devices and cell phones. For example, Planet 9 data is used in Magellan’s Maestro Elite 5340-navigation system, and its models were used as backdrops for the movie Zodiac.

In the 1990’s Planet 9 Studios had clients such as Microsoft and Apple, but the company lost its big customers after the dot-com bubble burst and had a low profile for a while. Now it’s trying to make a comeback by bringing 3D products to mobile platforms. So far the company has been privately funded but now it wants to raise $8 million within the second quarter of 2008.

The holiday break felt especially long this time, so here’s a longer roundup than usual — of everything you may have missed over the last few days:

Ebay’s Kijiji tries to tar Craiglist’s reputation — The NYT has a story about Kijiji, a competitor to online classifieds company Craigslist. The remarkable thing about the story is that it lets Kijiji executives associate Craigslist with offers of “sadomasochistic encounters and prostitutes,” without some sort of response from Craiglist. Kijiji, meanwhile, is positioned as family friendly.

Nokia has agreed to acquire Apertio, a UK mobile data network management provider for about €140 million — Details here.

IBM has acquired Israel’s data storage technology company, XIV for a rumored $350 million — Details here.

Venture firm Sevin Rosen splitting apart — All four of the venture capital firm’s Silicon Valley firm are leaving the Texas-based firm, including Nick Sturiale, the investor in Xensource, the virtualization company recently acquired by Citrix for $500 million. Sturiale will be a managing director at Carlyle Venture Partners, we’ve confirmed. The split was first reported by PEInsider.com. It’s part of a longer process of decline at the firm, and of general hardship in the venture industry right now.

Blekko is the umpteenth start-up to go after Google — Never mind that Google has won the search engine wars, or that Microsoft and Yahoo have poured tens, if not hundreds of millions, into trying to keep up, or that scores of other companies have launched to fulfill every conceivable search engine niche. Start-ups trying to take on Google keep coming. The latest is Blekko, a secretive company to be launched by Rich Skrenta, who co-founded the Open Directory Project and news site Topix. Skrenta says Google doesn’t have any competition, but we’re wondering where he was when a tsunami of search engines that hit in 2006, not to mention new ones like Mahalo last year and now Wikia Search to emerge in a few days. Anyway, it’s always great to see people think big, and we wish him well. He’s raised $2 million in seed funding from Ron Conway’s Baseline Ventures and two early Google employees, David DesJardins and Jeremy Wenokur. [Image is from the placeholder on Blekko's site]

Peter Thiel says venture industry need to be shaken up — The WSJ has a notable story about Peter Thiel’s view on the weaknesses of the traditional venture industry. However, the piece also says the value of his seed investment in Facebook has increased more than 50 times, which seems understated based on Facebook’s reported valuation of $15 billion now. You’d think the a seed investment would have been made at far less than $100 million, and that the value of his investment may have increased 1000-fold or so. We’ll do some checking on that…

Google’s corporate blogging outshines most others — Here’s a piece about how well Google’s corporate blogging effort is doing, and how few others are manging to do the same.

Marc Canter gets $400,000 for his PeopleAggregator.com — Canter has been working his platform, which is supposed to encourage more open social networks, for some time now. Here he writes his latest thoughts, and discloses his funding. See our previous coverage.

Dash Express, the Internet-connected GPS navigation device for your car, to sell for a whopping $600 — The Silicon Valley company, Dash, has raised closed to $42 million in backing from big-name venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital. But who is going to buy this device at such a price, when you can get mobile phones or devices that offer much the same thing — more phones are GPS enabled and they’re sporting services like Google which provide increasingly accurate local search? And the Internet connection on Dash is unlikely to reliable while driving around. Dash lets you do things like find a Chinese restaurant while driving somewhere, but you can do that easily on a phone. In addition to the $600, Dash charges fees of between $10 and $13 a month, GigaOM reports. (Our previous coverage ).

The Google investing Mafia — The New York Times has the story about all of the former Googlers who left to start investing in companies, including Chris Sacca, Aydin Senkut, Paul Buchheit, Georges Harik, Satya Patel, Salman Ullah, Sean Dempsey, and Andrea Zurek. Only PayPal has rivals Google in spawning so many eager investors and entrepreneurs in the Internet industry. Particularly noteworthy is the example of Meraki Networks, the WiFi router company, which is both co-founded and backed by ex-Googlers.

Edgeio’s asset sold — Looksmart acquired most of the assets of Edgeio, the online classifieds company that shut down a couple of weeks ago.

Google Android smartphones phones could launch in February, according to rumors by APC — Although, while Google’s Android is stumbling on deadlines, phone standards around Linux are being rolled out by a consortium including Orange, France Telecom, MontaVista, and Access. The group has included an APIs for telephony, messaging, calendar, instant messaging, and presence functions, as well as new user interface components.

Netcape dies, while co-founder Jim Clark stumbles in real estate pursuit — Netscape, once a leading Web browser, has finally shut down. This comes, coincidentally, as one of its co-founders, Jim Clark, who left Silicon Valley a few years ago saying the tech industry boom was over, stumbles on his subsequent endeavor: real estate. The founder of Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and WebMD went to build condos in Florida, starting a company called Hyperion. The New York Times reports about problems the company is having repaying a $110 million loan and with customer complaints.

Google about to sign deal with Japan phone giant NTT DoCoMo — This will give Google a potential 48 million in a market where Yahoo has traditionally dominated. Details here.