Automatically cut videos down to the best parts: HighlightCam releases API
Y Combinator-backed HighlightCam, a startup that automatically cuts videos down to the most interesting parts, released an application programming interface today to make it easier for parents, pet owners and people with security cameras to edit recordings.
HighlightCam works by assigning two ratings to frames in… Continue Reading
reMail brings better email search to the iPhone
Apple’s Mail application for the iPhone has been getting better, but it’s still less than fantastic. Downloading or searching emails that are on the server (rather than on your phone) can be a pretty painful experience, especially given the continuing spottiness of AT&T’s mobile network…. Continue Reading
Berkeley Ventures kicks off with four new startups
Berkeley Ventures, the new Bay Area incubator for early-stage tech startups, has announced its first four portfolio companies — all set to take up residence in the firm’s 8,400 square-foot office space. The firm says it handpicked each of the recipients based on their disruptive… Continue Reading
Scribd to sell 5,000 e-books from Simon & Schuster
Scribd, the site that lets users upload, share and embed documents, first launched its e-books store back in May as a potential competitor to Amazon. Now it has inched closer to its goal with a deal to sell 5,000 titles from major publishing house Simon… Continue Reading
Y Combinator Demo Day: Simple cloud management, real-time energy monitoring, and more
If anyone’s feeling depressed about the future of Silicon Valley innovation, I’d suggest sneaking into the demo day tomorrow at incubator Y Combinator’s Mountain View, Calif. office. Watching a bunch of smart, ambitious entrepreneurs show off what they’re working on is a good cure for… Continue Reading
Y Combinator gets a $2M shot in the arm from Sequoia, angels
Seed-stage venture firm Y Combinator is branching out in its funding strategy today, raising about $2 million from Sequoia Capital and a handful of angel investors. Previously, the firm was funded solely by founders Paul Graham, Robert Morris, Jessica Livingston and Trevor Blackwell.
The money from… Continue Reading
Live: Y Combinator’s AngelConf on how to invest (in a bad economy)
Seed-stage venture firm Y Combinator is hosting AngelConf, an angel investor conference, today at its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Cofounder Paul Graham and company have brought together would-be investors with Silicon Valley pros in the hopes of getting more people with money to explore… Continue Reading
Cut your legal fees using Y Combinator’s funding documents
Updated
Startup incubator Y Combinator may have just saved your company a big pile of money in legal fees. The firm just published a set of standardized legal documents that startups can use when raising angel rounds of funding.
Y Combinator apparently developed the documents with its… Continue Reading
Rails developers showing love for Heroku
San Francisco startup Heroku has found a fresh approach to helping developers build and deploy applications from the popular Ruby on Rails programming framework. It’s the only company to combine automated deployment — in other words, you just upload the code onto your browser and… Continue Reading
Ten Y Combinator companies that want to revolutionize social networking, search, databases and anything else you can think of
VentureBeat Editor Matt Marshall and I attended the Spring 2008 Y Combinator Demo Day yesterday, where we were both pretty blown away.
Okay, so I’m easy to impress, but Matt’s a tougher nut to crack — just ask some of the start-ups who’ve been on the… Continue Reading
Songkick’s concert recommendation engine: It goes to 11
Behind the online service Songkick is a simple motivation: To make going to a concert as easy as going to a movie.
Some 70 percent of U.S adults did not go to a concert last year, according to Songkick chief executive and co-founder Ian Hogarth, who… Continue Reading
Roundup: Smaller social networks growing, Stage6, Sandvine and more
1. Niche social networks grow, market leaders level off
2. Startup employees headed to big companies?
3. Stage6 had a lot of would-be investors, still has at least one
4. Sprint’s fate unclear
5. Sandvine, a company that helped Comcast block BitTorrent traffic, facing trouble
6. Chatterous: Message all of… Continue Reading
Buxfer is giving Mint, other personal finance sites, a run for their money
A number of well-executed personal finance management web startups have been in the spotlight in recent months, including Mint — which won the Techcrunch 40 startup competition — Wesabe and Geezeo. Buxfer, however, has been flying under the radar, and it shouldn’t be.
Beyond a clean… Continue Reading
Auctomatic launches better tools for eBay powersellers
Auctomatic wants to make it easier for eBay’s most active sellers to manage sales. The San Francisco-based company launched its public beta yesterday.
So-called “powersellers” range from self-employed individuals to large firms like Dell. EBay doesn’t offer all the tools needed to manage the process of… Continue Reading
iJigg, Digg for music, growing despite competition
iJigg is what it sounds like: A social media ranking site like Digg, but for finding great music.
The site’s front page features the most popular tracks and newest tracks from other users, that you can listen to with a click of a button without having… Continue Reading
Disqus to launch new commenting features
Updated
Disqus is going to launch two features to help blog readers track the most interesting comments on a blog or other web site.
Forum and blogging software has been around for many years, but there’s still no easy way to find the best comments within a… Continue Reading
Virtualmin: Better sys-admin for your growing web site
Virtualmin is making it easier for web hosting companies to set up and maintain web sites, a process that can be mind-numbingly mundane and tedious.
The Mountain View, Calif. company offers open-source and commercial software designed to automate many tasks of modern web-based systems administration, like… Continue Reading
Y Combinator continued
Some readers took issue with VentureBeat’s recent assessment that Y Combinator had successfully “nailed” the start-up incubator model. There’s one particular critique we should address.
In return for its advice and money, Y Combinator does take its pound of flesh, in the form of six percent… Continue Reading
Xobni raises $4.26M to let you improve your email habits
Xobni, a San Francisco company that seeks to improve your productivity in email usage, has raised $4.26 million in a first round of funding from Khosla Ventures, according to PE Wire, citing regulatory filings.
Xobni is yet to launch. Its name is “inbox” spelled backwards, referring… Continue Reading