Watch out, Skype. Tango’s video chat is gaining on you.

Tango announced today that it has surpassed 100 million registered users. To celebrate, the company is launching a revamped version of its mobile apps, which finally bring full iPad support for iOS and an updated design. The iPhone version has also added photo editing capabilities, powered by New York City’s Aviary.

“It’s a little bit like boiling water, you see it coming for a while,” said Tango chief technology officer Eric Setton in an interview with VentureBeat, referring to the company’s approach to 100 million users. “It’s also a great way to get more engineers into the company,” he added.

Tango isn’t discussing specifics about active users, but the company told me last July that around 40 percent of its users were active. Setton noted that figure has pretty much held steady.

The company started out with a cross-platform video chat app for iPhone and Android but it has since added more platforms, like Windows Phone and Windows PCs, as well as just about every messaging media you can imagine. Back in November Tango added Instagram-like photo filters and cute animal avatars.

The new app finally offers an iPad-optimized experience, which means Tango can finally take full advantage of the tablet’s bigger screen. Setton noted that iPad users with sufficient Internet speeds will have a higher level of video chat quality than other users. When it comes to Android apps, he said that Tango already scales well to most of them, though the company is considering a fully optimized Android slate version if there’s enough demand.

Setton has long dreamed of simply displaying the video during a call, without any other on-screen distractions, something that the new app finally makes possible. Tango has also added hundreds of new filters, animations, and avatars, as well as a complete version of Othello within the app. The iPhone photo editing suite offers just about every editing tool you’d need, and it’ll eventually make its way to Android.

The company isn’t slowing down with its crazy two-week development cycle, Setton said:

We’ve kind of managed to work this into the brain of every engineer working here; they’re used to the cycle, even at 120 people. The company keeps delivering on a number of things in a short time frame — it’s part of our culture, part of the DNA, and I don’t see that going away any time soon.

Tango now has almost 20 engineers working across two development teams in China, and around a dozen dev teams all over the world. The company just recently opened up a small office in Austin, Texas focusing on game-related content. Tango also recently moved to a larger main office in Mountain View, Calif.

“I can probably not count all the lessons,” Setton said, when I asked what the company had learned on its journey to 100 million users. “One of the things that echoes is it’s so much easier when you work on a service that you yourself are using every day…. It’s changed the way we interact with our close circle, that makes us even more proud.”

Tango was founded in 2009 and has raised a total of $87 million from investors including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Qualcomm Ventures, Access Venture Partners, Bill Tai, Len Blavatnik, and Alex Zubillaga.

Skype’s long-awaited video voicemail feature is finally here.

Skype will begin rolling out video messaging today to its iOS, Android, and Mac apps in the United States, United Kingdom, and a few other countries, a company representative confirmed to VentureBeat this morning. Changes to the chat service’s terms of service in December hinted that video messaging was coming soon.

Skype users will be able to send video messages up to three minutes long. Unfortunately, there’s no word on when video messaging will hit Windows.

A representative of the Microsoft-owned company said: “We’re pleased that there’s interest for Video Messaging to come to Skype for Windows and Skype for Windows 8. We’ll let you know when we expand the service to the platform.”

Video messaging is an important addition for Skype, since it allows for asynchronous video calling. Even if someone isn’t available to pick up a video chat, you can still leave a video message. It’s somewhat shocking that it’s taken Skype so long to roll out the feature, especially given that the company was founded a decade ago. The widespread availability of cloud storage and faster Internet speeds likely made video messaging easier to implement today.

Tango, a competing video chat app that started off on mobile devices, offered video messaging over a year ago.

Additionally, Skype has revealed it will begin transitioning Windows Live Messenger users over to its service beginning April 8 (the move was originally slated for March). Microsoft announced in November that it would be joining the two chat services.

Given Skype’s more than 280 million users and purchase price of $8.5 billion, it’s no surprise that Microsoft is focusing on the service as its core messaging platform going forward.

It’s almost midnight, and you’re stuck on a math problem that is due first thing in the morning.

In stressful situations like these, online tutoring startup Instaedu can help. The Silicon Valley company specializes in finding stumped students a tutor or homework assistants at any time of day or night.

When the company launched, its core innovation was the pay-by-the-minute model, and the on-demand access to tutors. But with its new features, the startup is moving into the realm of personalized learning.

The Instaedu team is honing its abilities to better match its students with tutors based on their academic needs and interests, so they’ll be tempted to set up regular sessions.

Currently, there are 1,500 tutors signed up from top colleges like Harvard and MIT, but the founders aren’t disclosing the number of registered students. Tutors are paid a fixed rate of $20 an hour (Instaedu keeps the rest), and working hours are flexible.

The tutors connect with students using video chat, text chat and document editing — it’s all online, so there are no travel costs. Alternatives include Edoboard, which provides tutors with online tools, and TutorCentral.net.

“The goal is for our students to get to know tutors better before even having that first lesson,” said Alison Johnston, Instaedu’s 25-year-old cofounder (pictured above). So the new features also make it a bit easier to schedule a regular time to meet with the best possible tutor. They include:

• Real-time messaging so a student can chat with a tutor before scheduling a lesson (this makes it easy to connect with a tutor who is currently online);
• “Smart messages” for students who need to be matched with a tutor that can help with an advanced or niche subject;
• Tutor reviews which are displayed publicly so students can browse tutor profiles.

Instaedu has raised just over $1 million in seed funding from the SocialxCapital Partnership.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

AT&T has finally opened the gates so iPhone 4S users and owners of other non-LTE smartphones can video chat using cellular data, the company announced today in a blog post.

While AT&T has slowly been loosening restrictions to let more people use FaceTime over its network, the company still did not let people with non-LTE devices do video chat over data. Now the company will let the many iPhone 4S owners out there use it as long as they have a tiered data plan. Anyone with a grandfathered unlimited data plan is still out of luck when it comes to using FaceTime over cellular.

AT&T Mobility VP Mark Collins writes:

When FaceTime over Cellular launched in September 2012, we explained that we wanted to roll it out gradually to ensure the service had minimal impact on the mobile experience for all of our customers.

As a result of ongoing testing, we’re announcing AT&T will enable FaceTime over Cellular at no extra charge for customers with any tiered data plan using a compatible iOS device.

This means iPhone 4S customers with tiered plans will be able to make FaceTime calls over the AT&T cellular network. AT&T previously made FaceTime over Cellular available to customers with a Mobile Share plan and those with an LTE device on tiered plans.

Of course, FaceTime over Wi-Fi remains available for all customers who have a compatible iPhone or iPad.

The update to let non-LTE phone owners use data for video chat will roll out over the next few weeks. AT&T says the update will be applied automatically, so no need to do anything but sit back and wait.

iPhone 4S screencap via Apple/YouTube

Video chat has become very useful in the age of the Internet, but it is still pretty clunky. With that in mind, the team at Rabbit took a step back to figure out how to reimagine video chat with your friends as if you were having isolated conversations with a few of them at a larger party. The result is a very interesting video chat app that lets you share anything — movies, music, photos, and more — with your friends.

I got to see a prototype of the service this week in a demo from Stephanie Morgan (pictured right), one of the four co-founders who hails from the video game and music industries. The app, which is in closed beta testing now and is scheduled to go live in early 2013, is aimed at shifting video chat from a utility to something fun, according to Morgan.

“We wanted to take a huge step away from how video chat has been approached,” she told VentureBeat. “We want to have a meaningful connection with people by doing things together with them. And we want to make this a fun and exciting space.”

Rabbit has a very different feel to it than Google Hangouts or Skype. When you log in, you’ll have a choice of entering a variety of different conversations, which could be organized around any label. If you click on one, you will hear a mishmash of voices as if you just walking into a party at somebody’s house. You’ll see circles with the faces of people attending the online gathering. You can people-watch before you go in.

You’ll see them talking and moving their faces in real time. If you hover your mouse cursor over an image, you’ll get more details about the person. If someone is attached to several other circles, that means he is engaged in a conversation with them. You can click to join that conversation as long as it isn’t roped off as private. You’ll find that the sound changes to match the voices in the room. No longer will you hear the murmur of other people in the larger party. Then, you can chat.

The team has paid close attention to the user interface design. Morgan says that the people are in circles instead of squares so that you don’t see the wall or room behind them. The focus is on the face of the person and what they’re talking about. The person doing the talking is positioned at the top of the screen, right near the webcam on your laptop, so that you can look at the camera at eye level. The other people in the conversation will see your face, and not your chin.

“When we looked at video chat, we found that it just wasn’t a social app,” said Greg Fischbach, co-founder of Rabbit and the former chief executive of video game pioneer Acclaim Entertainment, told VentureBeat.

Video isn’t easy to get right, particularly when people try to do it over low-quality wireless connections. Morgan said Rabbit’s technology will scale properly, and it has reduced bandwidth needs in part because it is peer-to-peer. Some of that technology comes from a good understanding of how massively multiplayer online games operate.

“We have no upper end on the number of rooms or the number of people in them,” said Morgan.

So you can talk with an unlimited number of people in your circle. But it’s ideal for a group of around six or seven people. Right now, it’s not easy to do simultaneous listening and talking in such groups in other applications.

By studying people, Morgan found that young folks like to stay connected on chat services such as Skype for hours at a time, leaving the line to a friend open while they multitask. It’s about spending time together, not just communicating a message and then leaving.

Once you’re in the room with others, you can share anything with them. You can watch a movie together. This turns out to be very tough to do right. At the moment, Morgan says that the company’s research shows that friends are going to great lengths to watch a video on Netflix together. They do so by getting online and then synchronizing the moment when they both hit the “start” button on a movie.

With Rabbit, all you have to do is drag a YouTube or Hulu video into a room. And then everybody can enjoy and comment on it live, in real time. I’d like to see that part work because it sounds very cool. You can share your screen or just a section of it. And you can share links, music, photos, are more. If you are sharing something, you can make the images of your friends into an overlay so that you can still see them while you are moving files around on your computer.

“We make it effortless,” said Morgan.

Now, you don’t want to share unsolicited nude pictures of yourself. Rabbit hopes to get around the Chatroulette problem, where people anonymously engage in lewd behavior in one-on-one video chats. You have to log in via Facebook or something else that authenticates your real identity. If you do find yourself in a room that you want to leave, you can do it fast and fluidly.

Rabbit has an interesting look, and it’s no surprise given the video game pedigree of the founders. Morgan was formerly studio director at Hands-On Mobile and producer at mobile game firm Ngmoco. She spent 10 years in game and app development. The company is based in San Francisco.

Philippe Clavel is the former chief technology officer of a game startup and the former technical director at Sony Online Entertainment and Hands-On Mobile. Fischbach is now an entrepreneur and early-stage investor. And Nicholas Reichenbach is chairman of Guestdriven and was executive vice president of publishing at Magmic Games.

When you create a room in Rabbit, you can give it a name like “the loneliest moment” or “thoughtful disaster.” You can set the rooms to public or private. You can set up a room to watch your favorite TV show together at a particular time every week.

Over time, the company plans to add other features. It is intrigued at the popularity of livestream sessions of video games in progress on sites such as Twitch, said Fischbach.

“The principles we’ve learned in video games definitely apply in this space,” he said.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

We’re now getting the first taste of a world where our computing devices fetch us relevant information without our asking. Google Now is the most notable example; it’s Google’s Siri-esque competitor that can learn from your daily routine and parse information in your e-mail.

In that same vein there’s Expect Labs, a small startup that’s been working on an “Anticipatory Computing Engine” that can understand conversations in real time and deliver relevant information to you. Today the company announced that its technology is getting a big accuracy boost with the addition of Nuance’s voice recognition technology, which also powers Siri, Google Now, and most other voice-recognition implementations.

“I really think, in the next 10 to 20 years, that the huge changes that we’re going to be seeing in software are really around becoming more intelligent,” said Tim Tuttle, the chief executive officer of Expect Labs, in an interview with VentureBeat. “It’s inevitable, and the way we’re going to use computers then will be fundamentally different.”

In that futuristic world, Tuttle predicts, we’ll be interacting with some sort of computing device every waking minute, and those devices will need a way to determine what you actually need. So Tuttle, who has a background in Artificial Intelligence, spent the past two years in stealth working on building that platform for the future with Expect Labs.

To show off its new tech, the company developed MindMeld, a group video chat app for the iPad that listens to your conversations and pushes useful information to the participants. One portion of the app is your typical video chat window, but you can hit a button to tell it to start listening to the conversation and collect useful information. So if you’re chatting with friends about seeing a movie or going to a restaurant, the app will pull up movie listings and restaurant reviews for all of you to see. (Check out Tuttle’s demonstration of the app below.)

It’s like searching without actually searching.

With the Nuance partnership, Expect Labs will integrate the Dragon Mobile SDK into MindMeld, which should make it even better at voice recognition. It expects to release MindMeld to the public early next year.

It’s not hard to imagine the far-reaching uses for Expect Labs’ technology. It could eventually power an evolved form of Twitter that keeps track of all of the topics we interact with daily. So if a friend recommends an article to you, it’ll automatically get logged for you to revisit later. Now imagine that functionality combined with Google’s Project Glass — it could be infoporn heaven.

After emerging from stealth mode in September, San Francisco-based Expect Labs was chosen as a finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield. It also raised $2.3 million in funding from KPG Ventures, Google  Ventures, Greylock Ventures, and others.

Check out a demo of MindMeld below:

It seems that Skype is inching closer to offering video messages, a long-rumored feature that would serve as the equivalent of Skype voicemail.

A recent change to Skype’s Terms of Use (TOS), the legal language that companies use to specifically detail what they offer customers, references the upcoming video messaging feature, ComputerWorld reports.

By the time of this post, the TOS text was fixed, but initially it read: “If you are a Skype Premium subscriber you can … send and receive an unlimited number of Video Messages and any Video Messages you send and/or receive shall have no expiry date.”

Skype Premium is an $8.99 a month feature that gives extra features, like group video calls and unlimited calls to the country of your choice. Nonpremium users will be able to send a limited amount of video messages, and they’ll expire after 90 days, the TOS said.

Not surprisingly, Skype hasn’t admitted whether the feature is upcoming, but given that the TOS was quickly fixed, I wouldn’t be surprised if it announced this soon.

I’ve honestly been surprised Skype didn’t offer video messaging sooner, especially since the mobile video sharing service Qik, which is owned by Skype, has offered it for some time. Tango, another video chat service, also offers video voicemails.

It’s particularly surprising that it’s taken this long since Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion last year. But I suppose since it took forever for Skype to offer mobile video chat, we shouldn’t be too shocked that video messaging isn’t here yet.

Today, Google gave its Hangouts video chat app an updated look and feel, including a new sidebar, a new tool for app interaction, and new notifications.

The biggest part of today’s announcement is the sidebar, which shows up on the left side of the screen next to your Hangout.

“The most important part of a hangout is the people in the room, so we’ve consolidated important items (like invites, chat, and apps) into a sidebar that’s there when you need it and tucked away when you don’t,” wrote Googler Amit Fulay today in a Google+ post on the news.

The sidebar also contains a list of frequently used apps and apps currently in use in the hangout. You can remove apps from your sidebar list at any time.

Finally, Google has rolled out new notifications for you to read and respond to from inside a hangout. Alerts show up in red, actions are blue, and announcements are grey.

Here’s a sneak peek:

Google will be rolling out the changes to all Google+ users within the next of couple days, Fulay wrote.

Just a few weeks ago, the social network reached a big membership milestone: 100 million monthly active users, as well as 400 million registered users.

Google also recently introduced a new Studio Mode option for Hangouts on Air, both special features designed with Google+-using musicians in mind.

Microsoft has brought video-calling king Skype to the new Windows 8 OS, which hits stores Friday, and it sure looks pretty.

Skype on Windows 8 offers all the trappings you’d expect from the well-known app but folds them into a modern design. The full-screen app opens up and shows you people you can connect with and recent chat messages. Ideally, this makes the experience simple.

Like previous incarnations, the app will run in the background so you can receive voice and video calls even if you’re inside another app. The app also has a “live tile” on the Windows 8 Start screen that can tell you about missed calls and new messages.

Skype will also be integrated with the Windows 8 People app. The People app is a “cloud-connected address book,” and if you login to Skype with a Microsoft account, all your Skype contacts appear in the People app. Once you do this, you can pin important people to your Windows 8 Start screen and call them via Skype in a click or two.

“The team at Skype has been building on the Windows platform since the first release of Skype,” Skype chief development officer Mark Gillett wrote in a blog post. “With Skype for Windows 8 we’ve focused on how people are using Skype today and re-imagined Skype for everyday communications across our global community.”

Skype for Windows 8 will be available on Windows 8 launch day, Oct. 26. Check out these screenshots and video below to see more views of the new app.

Social video-chat company ooVoo has added 7 million subscribers in the past 100 days, an impressive increase of 1 million users every two weeks, the company announced today.

New York City-based ooVoo offers people 12-way video chat across Facebook, web, desktop, iOS, and Android applications. The company saw substantial growth this summer, a sign that its 12-way video chat app for Facebook and iPad has found a receptive audience.

And a young audience at that. Notably, ooVoo claims that 65 percent of its 58 million users worldwide are under 25 years old, while 55 percent of its U.S. subscribers are under that age.

“With over 58 million subscribers, and adding millions more every month, ooVoo is the social video chat service of choice for a new digital generation of youth who live their life through mobile,” ooVoo president Jay Samit said in a statement. “ooVoo is growing exponentially, and our strong momentum is another proof point that users find ooVoo a powerful and must-have way to stay connected on mobile, Facebook, PC, and tablet.”

Check out a recent celebrity ooVoo chat with pop singer Kat Deluna below.

Having trouble finding a quality date online with services like Match, OkCupid, or eHarmony? How about going on some video speed dates with new startup Seekly?

Seekly wants to get rid of the “overwhelming” and “misleading” nature of online dating sites and make dating online efficient, less stressful, and more economical. Users can sign up to participate in five-minute-long video speed dates with people who also use Seekly. Users are paired with people within 100 miles, and it does not pair you with people who don’t meet certain criteria. Right now “deal-breakers” include smokers/non-smokers, location, and age. If a video chat goes well for both users, then users’ information is exchanged.

On stage at DEMO conference in Santa Clara, Calif., the cofounders showed the audience how their service will help love-seekers “break the ice.” They also offered a discount to DEMO attendees who needed to get a date.

Unlike competitors, Seekly has ditched the compatibility tests and questionnaires, so you can “get to know the person, not the profile.” To help you get through those awkward silences, “while you’re on a date, you’re prompted with information that your date has already provided,” they explained.

“Online dating can be improved,” Seekly co-founder Susie Steiner told VentureBeat. “The way people see other people can be improved. With Seekly, you cannot prejudge, you cannot choose who or what type you would like to date. You can only eliminate users based on items that are deal breakers for you.”

For pricing, the service will be free in beta, but it will transition to a paid usage early next year. In the near future, Seekly will offer daily ($3.99), weekly ($7.99), or monthly ($29.99) subscriptions. These subscriptions get you unlimited usage.

Seekly almost sounds like a useful version of Airtime, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning’s social video startup that hasn’t really done much since its celeb-filled launch. Instead of video chatting with random strangers or Facebook friends you already know, Seekly is pairing you with people who have the same reason as you to be there.

Tampa, Fla.-based Seekly was founded in January 2012. The company received about $12,000 in “Developer Dollars” in January from Abbeton, a Tampa-focused accelerator. The company hopes to get more funding in the near term.

In the DEMO Sage panel after the presentation, Tracey  Isacke, director of investments and business development at Telefonica Digital, said that she liked the concept of doing speed dating remotely. If you don’t like someone, you don’t have to stay for an extra couple of minutes, she said, “and it’s a great way to meet people.”

Seekly is one of 75 companies and 6 student “alpha” startups chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2012 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After we make our selections, the chosen companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

Photo credit: Seekly

The brand, celebrity, retailer, or media company that wants to connect with and capitalize on its millions of fans can turn to OnCam, a new video publishing platform that enables web, mobile, and TV broadcasts to audiences of up to 10 million people.

OnCam, which formally launched a beta version of its product today at DEMO Fall 2012, is designed to host massive video events that can be live streamed, recorded, distributed to multiple mediums, and published pretty much anywhere on the web. The startup has already attracted notable partners such as Untitled Entertainment and Bunim-Murray Productions.

The service allows up to 12 people to participate in a live-streamed video chat event while millions tune in to watch, comment, and even shop. The offering, which is intended to be as rudimentary to use as Twitter, can be likened to a professional-grade version of video chat services like Google Hangouts, Airtime, and Tinychat.

“Google hangouts leaves you unsatisfied like you wanted more,” said founder Joe Shapiro on stage at DEMO. Shapiro said that the technology is a three-year work in progress, and boasts features like a facial analytics engine (“it gives you the power to know if your audience is happy or sad”) and instant video publishing in the cloud.

The company’s clientele can fully brand their channels and monetize their video events in a number of ways such as pay-per-view, subscription, commerce, or sponsorship options. They also get to keep their audience data, which includes viewers’ Facebook IDs, names, ages, and locations. OnCam, which employs a facial analytics engine, can also help its customers assess the mood of its aggregated viewing audience.

The startup makes a Facebook application and HTML widget, enabling users to plug their video events into Facebook Pages and websites.

“OnCam will create the most effective, fun, and consumer-friendly way for studios and networks to market to the key demo in a seamless, simple and sharing way. My daughters can now chat with many of their friends at once, discussing school work to television and film shows to ‘One Direction,’” Jason Newman, founding partner of Untitled Entertainment, said in a statement to VentureBeat.

Two-year-old OnCam is based in Huntington Beach and has 25 employees. The startup has raised an undisclosed sum of funding.

OnCam is one of 75 companies and 6 student “alpha” startups chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2012 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After we make our selections, the chosen companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

Photo credit: Attila con la cámara/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

AT&T may be playing hardball with Apple’s FaceTime video chat feature on its network, but Verizon Wireless is opening up all of its data plans to the feature for free, a Verizon spokesperson tells the Wall Street Journal.

This includes customers grandfathered into Verizon’s unlimited data plans (which are no longer available to new subscribers). In comparison, AT&T is bending net neutrality rules to force its subscribers into data share plans to use FaceTime over cellular.

The FaceTime over cellular capability is one of the many new features in iOS 6, which is available on September 19 for recent iPhone and iPad models. Sprint has also said that it won’t place any restrictions on FaceTime over cellular.

Ever since launching the FaceTime video chat feature with the iPhone 4, Apple has restricted FaceTime capabilities to Wi-Fi in the U.S. That wasn’t a huge inconvenience, since 3G networks aren’t really fast enough to support video chat. But with the inclusion of 4G LTE on the iPhone 5, there’s no excuse not to offer FaceTime over cellular.

I just hope AT&T and Verizon are prepared for the onslaught of data that’s going to hit their LTE networks. As AT&T can attest, you should never underestimate the data demand from iPhone owners.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple’s decision to make its FaceTime video chat app compatible with cellular networks has been a big headache for AT&T.

And the carrier’s solution has been just as problematic: Rather than offer unrestricted access to the app, AT&T is forcing its subscribers to sign up for its Mobile Share data plans in order to use it on the AT&T cellular network. Regulators and consumers alike have been unhappy with the move, which limits the amount of control AT&T’s subscribers have over their devices.

And how does AT&T defend the decision? By playing games with the Federal Communication Commission’s net neutrality rules.

“AT&T does not have a similar preloaded video chat app that competes with FaceTime or any other preloaded video chat application,” AT&T senior vice president of regulatory affairs Bob Quinn wrote today, in an effort to convince the public that AT&T actually isn’t unfairly competing with FaceTime.

Of course, AT&T doesn’t have a video chat app — but its cellular service is effectively one big voice chat app. Quinn’s defense completely sidesteps the largest concerns that groups like Public Knowledge have had from the beginning: FaceTime is a direct competitor to AT&T’s voice services, and AT&T’s new rules cut into subscribers’ ability to use the app.

And that’s a big no-no for the FCC.

Quinn also defended the move by arguing that the FCC rules do not regulate whether cellular network operators can control apps that come pre-installed on phones they offer. The problem? The FCC rules say nothing about preloaded apps.

“There is simply nothing in the rules that distinguishes ‘preloaded’ applications from ‘downloaded’ applications,” Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner said in a statement today.

While the company has valid concerns that FaceTime could negatively impact network performance, the far more pressing reality is that if its customers are using FaceTime, they’re not chatting over AT&T’s voice network.

If network performance was truly a concern, AT&T would just ban FaceTime outright (not that this is something it would be legally able to do anyway). Instead, it’s splitting its subscriber base between those who have Mobile Share data plans and those that don’t. And it’s that division that’s drawing the attention of those who want to keep cellular networks as neutral as possible.

After remaining fairly quiet since its celebrity-laden launch in early June, the Napster cofounders’ social video chat app Airtime is finally getting some new features: now you can make videos of yourself to share with your friends, and they can reply back with their own videos.

Think of it like a streamlined version of what many YouTube attention hogs already do.

Additionally, Airtime has refreshed its buddy lists to take advantage of the new video post mechanism. Now when you log in to the site, you’ll see your friends’ video posts, and you can easily record your own response to their conversations. You’ll also be able to easily find your Airtime conversation history, video messages, and text chats with friends when hovering over their names in the buddy list.

Founded by Napster cofounders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, Airtime was their attempt to change the way we communicate on the web. But the company’s seemingly abysmal traffic numbers after two months isn’t inspiring much hope — especially for its investors, who poured $33.3 million into the company.

It’s taken some time, but Airtime is finally beginning to look like a potentially useful service and not just a safer clone of Chatroulette, the random video chat sensation that quickly became filled with phalli. The addition of video posts (however basic it may be) makes Airtime more practical, since you won’t have to wait for your friends to be available for video calls.  You can also start video conversations by posting a YouTube video.

Airtime’s most direct competitor, the Facebook video chat app Rounds, doesn’t yet have a video messaging feature. Other video chat services like Tango have offered video messaging for some time now, but Airtime’s deep connection with Facebook could make the feature more enticing.

Initially, I thought Airtime had a lot of potential, but that it’s taken two months to do something as simple as reorganizing your buddy list definitely has me worried. Hopefully, it won’t take several more months until we see the next new Airtime feature.

Remember that time Napster founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning launched a chat app in a glitz- and glitch-studded press conference?

With $33.3 million in funding, Airtime seemed sure to make a big splash. And it did, with a launch event in June that included high-profile celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, Jimmy Fallon, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Unfortunately, Parker and Fanning’s latest venture has done almost nothing since then.

Actually, that’s not strictly true. The company put up a blog post on June 6 (its most recent), and in July it released a promo video featuring MC Hammer.

How’s that for return on investment?

Airtime was billed as a way to meet new people through serendipitous video chats. It’s sort of a better-designed, better-funded, and ostensibly less icky version of Chatroulette, the briefly-popular website for chatting with completely random strangers and occasionally viewing their private parts. (Historical side note: Fanning was helping out Chatroulette founder Andrey Ternovskiy in 2010, a year before founding Airtime.)

Airtime keyed in to the addictive zaniness of Chatroulette and positioned itself as a super-fast, browser-based video chat tool.

But as of yesterday, only 101,969 people were using Airtime’s Facebook app, according to the information that Facebook publishes (see screenshot). Since it’s only available through Facebook, that means this is the entire user population for Airtime. It also means investors have poured $330 into the startup for every user it’s managed to acquire in its first two months.

The user total reported by Facebook lines up nicely with numbers from app usage tracker AppData, which estimates that Airtime has 100,000 monthly active users now, down from 190,000 monthly active users on July 7. (AppData’s figures were reported by the New York Times and Inc.)

I asked Airtime to clarify the user numbers, and a company spokesman told me, “We’re not commenting on anything right now.”

Despite the bad news, or perhaps because of it, people on private-market trading tool SecondMarket seem quite interested in Airtime. It had the largest quarterly increase in total “watchers” on SecondMarket, which means rapid growth in people who are following the company, possibly with an eye towards buying shares on the private market.

To be fair, Airtime as a company is only about a year old, and it’s only been two months since the launch. The user experience, when it worked, was pretty good: VentureBeat’s Devindra Hardawar praised Airtime for helping him make “a legitimately good connection that I wouldn’t have made otherwise.” So it has potential as a tool for finding new friends, in addition to chatting with your existing friends.

And it was clear from the string of errors during the launch event that Airtime wasn’t a fully-cooked product. The team is probably busy fixing holes in the code, nailing down the security, and making sure that it’s a more reliable experience. You shouldn’t expect them to spend money on marketing or user acquisition until the product itself is ready.

But if it wasn’t ready, you might ask why the team even bothered to launch.

If there’s one silver lining to Airtime’s slow start, it’s that the company doesn’t have millions of disgruntled users, so if it needs to pivot, it can do so without worrying much about an existing customer base.

The company needs to get on the ball, and soon. And when it does, may we suggest spending your money on engineers instead of comedians?

Photo: Sean Parker’s Facebook profile photo, with D.A. Wallach and Daniel Ek.

In its latest move, the company is adding  Google+ Hangouts to Gmail, continuing its efforts to bring the services closer together. Hangouts allows up to 10 people to video chat together, collaborate on documents, share their screens, and broadcast their conversations to the Internet.

With the new feature, Gmail users will be able to video chat with not only other Gmail users, but friends on Google + and the Google+ iOS and Android apps as well.

Google says the functionality also will make for more reliable connections, as the new system is built on Google’s network and not peer-to-peer technology like the old video chat. Rollout for the new functionality begins today and will continue over the coming weeks.

Google has been intent on extending its Google+ features to as many other services as it can. In June, it introduced YouTube parties, a feature that allows Google+ users to watch YouTube videos together online. We found the idea to be, well, silly, and it’s fair to assume that Google’s latest move will get a similarly icy reception.

Photo: Shutterstock

Adding video chat features to mobile apps just got a little bit easier with a new release from startup TokBox.

Here’s the deal: Developers can now use TokBox’s open chat tools to add FaceTime-like capabilities to iOS apps using web languages you already know — HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The magic is accomplished via new plugins for Titanium (from Appcelerator) and PhoneGap. The Titanium plugin is available now in the Appcelerator marketplace.

TokBox has been a champion for live video chat as a feature rather than a standalone app. Earlier this year, the TokBox team rolled out its OpenTok iOS SDK. With the new plugins, the startup is trying to bring the same functionality to a wider audience of developers, including web devs who are looking for workarounds to get into mobile development.

The plugins will let users build features for mobile-to-mobile video chat as well as mobile-to-web video chat.

“In an increasingly mobile world, platforms such as Titanium and PhoneGap are critical for the rapid development of mobile apps,” said TokBox CEO Ian Small.

“Tools such as video chat, which are becoming the norm online, have been slower to deploy on mobile because of the programming language barrier. Now, if you are a developer with web skills, you can build video chat into a native app without needing to learn Objective-C.”

TokBox was founded in 2007 and in based in San Francisco, Calif. The startup has taken a total of $26 million in venture capital in three rounds since 2008; investors include Sequoia Capital and Bain Capital Ventures.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

After gaining notoriety for its popular cross-platform video chat apps, Tango has decided to tackle a decidedly lower-tech challenge: text messages.

With the latest Tango update, users will be able to send and receive free text messages in a streamlined interface that also includes Tango’s video messages.

By adding text messages, Tango hopes to be the one app that you’ll use to stay in touch with friends and loved ones, CTO and co-founder Eric Setton told VentureBeat in an interview last week. Text messages also puts Tango in company with the likes of Facebook Messenger and Apple’s iMessage, though Facebook doesn’t have video chat capabilities, and iMessage doesn’t work outside of iOS.

Setton tells me Tango now has 55 million registered users, with 40 percent of them being active in the past month. The company has apps available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Windows PCs. Cross-platform functionality is one of Tango’s greatest strengths: Setton demonstrated how a text and video message from an iPhone instantly appeared on an Android.

As part of the update, Tango will also be making video messages entirely free (previously the company had a complicated method of charging users for video messaging). And to spice things up a bit, you can also send Tango’s Surprises (short and fun animations) within the messaging interface as well.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Tango has raised around $87 million in funding, most recently from a $40 million third round in April. Investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Michael Birch, Andy Bechtolsheim, and Bill Hambrecht.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Up until now, Apple’s FaceTime video chat feature on iOS devices has been restricted to Wi-Fi only. That’s changing with iOS 6, which finally offers the ability to use FaceTime over cellular.

But, almost inevitably, it looks like AT&T isn’t prepared to give its users FaceTime over cellular for free. Instead, the carrier appears to be planning to control and charge extra for the feature, similar to how it charges extra to use the iPhone’s personal hotspot feature, 9to5Mac reports.

When trying to enable FaceTime over cellular in the latest version of the iOS 6 beta, the site received an error asking it to contact AT&T to enable the feature. Specifically, the error appears for developers who restore their network settings in iOS 6 beta 3, or restore their phone from that beta. (I’ve talked to several developers who have enabled the feature without an issue, but they simply upgraded from the previous iOS 6 beta without restoring any settings.)

In a statement, AT&T told 9to5Mac, “We’re working closely with Apple on the new developer build of iOS 6 and we’ll share more information with our customers as it becomes available.”

If the report ends up being accurate, it would be disappointing for users who were expecting to use FaceTime over AT&T’s LTE 4G network with the next iPhone or the new iPad. AT&T users on 3G likely won’t be missing much, since that network is generally too slow to support high-quality video chat, but LTE 4G users may feel cheated after already paying more for faster network speeds.

It’s currently unclear how other carriers plan to handle the FaceTime-over-cellular feature, but I wouldn’t be surprised if others follow AT&T’s plan. (Sprint will likely keep the feature free, but as is typical of Sprint’s consumer-friendly initiatives, nobody will care.)

Airtime must be in a gang because it continues to receive a beat down ever since it launched. While some of the criticism was warranted, there was a large point missed by the masses: Social Discovery Platforms — such as Airtime, Pinterest, The Fancy, Youtube and others — represent a huge opportunity for marketers looking to drive ROI in the social space.

There is strong evidence of just how much time these platforms can consume of a user’s day (4 billion videos viewed every day on YouTube) and the linkage to other people which it can foster (80% of pins on Pinterest are re-pins).  Based on the recent Glimpse conference in San Francisco, it’s apparent that there are already some brands that are seeing real results. For example, Zappos stated that its users are 13 times more likely to “pin this” than tweet after a purchase.

Youtube clearly sees the opportunity for its brand clients to take advantage of “discoverability.” In an interview with the Economist last week, Alex Carloss, YouTube’s global head of entertainment, explained why Youtube did a complete re-design of the Website in December. “The reason we switched was to help drive discoverability, to help people get to the videos they were looking for…. It’s terribly important for our channels and partners to use all of the smart tools that exist in the Facebook social graph and elsewhere to help drive consumers to discover what’s on their channel.”

Marketers can effectively put social discovery platforms to work for them, but it’s a new medium with new rules of the road. Here’s how brands are going to succeed in these environments:

1) Surprise them with the unexpected

Sometimes the unexpected can have a big impact.  If you have a celebrity endorsement (Danny Davis for Mountain Dew) or even a likable mascot (Pillsbury Dough Boy anyone?) make them available for a specific day or set of days where people who have an interest in your brand can chat with said person/mascot for a reasonable period of time.

Airtime, specifically, could be a good way of kicking off a contest while hiding clues within the video frame experience.  There are myriad ways of executing this strategy but the ultimate goal would be to involve the audience in a story to get them scouring the Web for clues in order to win fame and glory.

Now, it may not get as many views as Lonelygirl15 or a Diesel underwear stunt, but you could still spark activity that could translate into eventual sales. Moreover, engaging in these types of fun campaigns will get more people ‘Liking’ your brand page on Facebook. This is important because Airtime uses the Facebook platform to determine the relevance of a particular person to a brand.

2) Think badges on steroids

While many of the rules are different online, when it comes to being appreciated and greeted, the rules for engagement online have a lot in common with those employed by your favorite restaurant. Rarely are customers “thanked” for the patronage online. So, you might want to consider something as simple as having a brand representative on the service and available to greet potential customers when they visit you via Airtime. When it comes to Social Discovery, being remembered and recognized will lead to increased loyalty.

3) Embrace timely events

For those people who have expressed an interest in your brand or vertical industry, throw a time-based event with, say, an upcoming band/artist and promote it through social discovery.  The users will then spread the word for you (if your choice of talent is enough of a draw) and you can then work with Airtime (or another similar platform) to assist users in easily finding you on the day and time of the event.  So, call around and see if Right Said Fred is free and get the planning started!

4) Give back & show you care

I’ve seen the research.  The kids these days care about things like the planet and other people’s well being.  All those episodes of Barney back in their early days are now paying off.  Why not capitalize on this desire to improve humanity by furthering your brand’s philanthropic activities?  Hold group discussions on topics, enable people to help a stranger (tutoring for example), or even contribute an idea to solve meaty problems (like Nokia’s IdeasProject: http://www.ideasproject.com). If you aren’t already doing something along these lines, don’t fake it.  But if you are, make sure that this audience knows about it.

The Future of Social Discovery

The big opportunity that social discovery represents to marketers lies in one simple, eternal truth: consumers are always on the lookout for fresh content. This axiom has held true both for “lean back” experiences such as TV (think: incessant channel surfing) as well as for “lean forward” environments like the PC, where we actively conduct searches for new videos, articles, products and the like.

And, while Youtube and Pinterest have proven that we have an insatiable need to discover and consume new content online, they are sure to be only the first of many such platforms. Moreover, the recent explosion of the iPad and other tablets are providing yet another lean-back environment for consumers who want to passively discover new content. Whether one’s goals are branding or lead generation, the challenge for brands will be to integrate themselves into this need for discovery in ways that aren’t deemed as obtrusive but rather are a welcome addition to the experience.

Rick Corteville joined Luxus Inc as the CEO in January 2012. As the U.S. lead and 15-year digital veteran, Rick is focused on building on Luxus’s strength as an international digital agency that’s known for creating beautiful work with a laser focus on delivering ROI. 

My first Airtime video chat lasted all of two seconds. My second featured some dude listening to music way too loud, looking stoned out of his mind (I clicked next). Several calls later, I was finally able to have a decent conversation with a human being (more on that below).

It’s tough to look at Airtime with clear eyes at the moment, and it’s easy to write it off completely. The social video chat service, founded by the Napster team Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, launched this morning amid a torrent of hype, celebrities, and glitches.

The company has big dreams, big funding ($33 million worth), and some big egos at the helm, so it’s not too surprising to see that many can’t wait for it to fail miserably. But despite the issues at the launch event today (which were mostly related to technical glitches at the venue, Airtime CTO Joey Liaw told me), Airtime manages to be a surprisingly compelling service that builds heavily upon predecessors like Chatroulette and Google Hangouts.

Sean Parker stressed this morning that Airtime was a “frictionless experience,” and he wasn’t kidding. Using the service simply involves heading to the Airtime website, clicking “Launch Airtime,” authorizing your Facebook account (this only needs to happen once per computer), and then giving Adobe Flash permission to use your webcam. There’s no app to install, and since it’s tied into Facebook, you don’t have to deal with signing up for an entirely new service.

Once logged in, you’re presented with a simple interface showing your video feed on the left, along with your name and interests. You can choose which interests to display to people you call, and you can also add new interests to your profile by clicking the “Edit” button next to your name. The center portion of the screen is reserved for the person you’re chatting with, while the right side contains all of your friends currently logged into Facebook.

You can quickly start a video chat with one of your friends by clicking on their names, but the real meat of the service is using the giant “Talk to Someone” button to start searching for a random chat buddy. You can choose to focus on people nearby, those with common interests, and friends of friends (or any combination of those three).

The video and audio quality don’t compare to what I’ve seen from Google Hangouts, but it’s good enough for now to have a decent conversation. What’s most important is that the basics of the service — finding people to talk to, making successful calls — works well.

Back to my first successful Airtime chat: Eventually, I was paired up Juan Perez, an entrepreneur who founded his own consulting businesses and is also working on a collaborative invoicing product called AllocateIt. Initially, Airtime paired us up because we liked some of the same music and movies, but I also noticed that he liked VentureBeat on Facebook. When I mentioned that, he pitched me on his product (the tech reporter’s work is never done), and we shared our personal information on the service, which allowed both us to see each others’ names and locations.

We ended up having a great chat about the changes in Brooklyn (where he was born and I now live), and his earlier work at Microsoft (a cool project that languished in Windows Vista). We exchanged contact information, and we’ll likely meet up the next time he’s in town.

Despite all the hype behind Airtime, this was a legitimately good connection that I wouldn’t have made otherwise. Chatroulette was all about making completely random connections with strangers, and while I love Google+ Hangouts, it’s still clunky to chat with people there who haven’t signed up for (or have trouble navigating) Google+. Airtime is a definite refinement of the social video chat formula, the only question now is if it will see the sort of viral growth that propelled Chatroulette into Internet infamy.

The service still has some issues to work through before we can truly consider it a success. For one, I haven’t run into many women using Airtime (aside from one Buzzfeed reporter who was looking to write a story about just that topic). There also seems to be a fairly limited amount of people using Airtime today — one of the people I chatted with also ran into that same reporter.

But as the Airtime community expands, and it gets more features to truly make the Internet social again, I have a feeling that it will become an essential tool for many. And given that it solves a major problem for Facebook (by offering a fun way to meet new people), I wouldn’t be surprised if Zuckerberg was already considering a buyout (we know he’s been testing it out, as one lucky Airtime user discovered).

Airtime, the social video chat startup created by Napster founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, unveiled itself today after a long period of poorly-kept secrets and barely-muted hype.

Think of it as a less-icky Chatroulette with a $33 million wind at its back. And today, we finally got to see it in action.

Parker calls Airtime the “best and fastest way to video chat with your friends on any platform.” It’s web-based, so you don’t have to download a separate applications; frictionless, since you can get started immediately without much setup; and perhaps most importantly, it relies on Facebook’s social graph, so it’s connected to identities people are already using online.

At Milk Studios in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood this morning, Airtime gathered press and notable NYC personalities to officially unveil Airtime.

Late night star Jimmy Fallon first hit the stage to introduce Parker and Fanning, calling them the “Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren of the Internet.” (If you don’t get that reference, watch some 80′s action movies, kids.) Parker told the tale of how they first met online in a chat room and bonded over their interest in hacking and computers.

“We understood the potential,” Fanning said when Fallon asked if they realized how important Napster was at the beginning. But he went on to say that the pair were mostly just having fun by developing the music sharing service.

What the heck is Airtime?

“We’re actually building a network service,” Parker said as he began a presentation explaining Airtime. “This is different from a consumer hardware product or a consumer software product… We’re actually opening up to the world and beginning the process of constructing that network.”

Parker went on to say that despite the massive rise in social media popularity, he can’t help but feel we’ve taken a step back. Many online services have us spending more time processing information than interacting with information, he said.

With rise of both broadband and webcams, Parker says now is the perfect time to pursue true social video chat.

He railed against social games from companies like Zynga that aren’t exactly real-time, but are instead all about taking turns. “There’s all kinds of things people could be doing if there was a platform for synchronous interactions,” Parker said. This seems to be the crux of what Airtime is all about.

Security is a big part of Airtime’s core principles (Parker listed it four times on his slide for emphasis). The service avoids the problems of Chatroulette (inappropriate behavior, indecent exposure) since it’s tied to your Facebook identity. If you’re a bad actor, Airtime can easily kick you off the service. The company also has people monitoring the service for bad behavior.

As for utility, Parker stresses that Airtime is all about making new friends.

“Facebook isn’t helping you make new connections, Facebook doesn’t build new relationships,” he said. “Facebook is just trying to be the most accurate model of your real life social graph.”

When your demo fails, call the celebrities

To demonstrate how Airtime works, Parker called actress Olivia Munn using the service. The call connected quickly, but it may have helped that she was just sitting backstage. Airtime’s interface is fairly simple: your video video is on the left side, the person you’re calling is in the center, and your list of friends is on the right. When the call first connected, Airtime displayed a few related interests (which slowly faded away) and then Parker seamlessly shared a few web videos with her.

Munn came on stage and tried to surprise the audience by calling rapper Snoop Dogg. Her first few tries failed (I think because she was trying to call a Facebook user pretending to be Snoop Dogg), but eventually Snoop himself called. Munn showed off her Snoop impressions, the crowd politely laughed, and we moved on.

Munn then called comedian and actor Joel McHale, who ended up coming onstage instead of chatting over Airtime. Unfortunately, his appearance set off a string of technical errors that halted the demo for several minutes.

“Sean Parker is literally a genius and I love it that he has to pull wires out of the back of the computer to make it work,” McHale quipped as several event staff members tried to get the demo going again. Once things started working, he called actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who then came on stage to ring up fellow actor and comedian Ed Helms. (We get it Sean Parker, you have many very important friends.)

Helms called singer Alicia Keys over Airtime, and they were able to successfully chat for several minutes. (Unlike most of the other celebrities, she wasn’t hiding behind the stage.) Helms then tried to call Parker’s Airtime offices, but unfortunately nobody picked up. Eventually, a disheveled Jim Carrey wearing a gas mask successfully called Helms.

“So where do I click to download music… to destroy the music industry,” Carrey quipped while chatting with Parker.

Throughout all of the demos, there were occasional connection and network issues. It’s hard to blame Airtime for all of the trouble, since relying on venue Wi-Fi for demos is often a disaster.

Wrapping Up

Parker capped off the demo with an obligatory video featuring a catchy indie song, which shows the potential for Airtime much better than the on-stage demos.

In the end, it was probably a good thing Parker had a bunch of comedic geniuses to help distract from the buggy demos.

“I can’t actually thank you guys enough,” Parker said to his celebrity crew, the Huffington Post reported, “because you took a completely fucked-up situation where everything was going to shit and actually salvaged it.”

Despite the trouble with the service today, it’s clear to me that Airtime has a lot of potential. Perhaps it’s because there’s a big idea driving Airtime: Technology is here to help us, not to flood us with information. Airtime is the logical evolution of social media technology — it’s something that actually brings us closer together, even with complete strangers thousands of miles away.

Microsoft still doesn’t have much to show for its $8.5 billion Skype acquisition — except for a lackluster Windows Phone app — but Tony Bates, the former Skype CEO and now president of Microsoft’s Skype division, has at least managed to keep his ship independent of the software giant.

“We’ve kept our identity and our autonomy,” Bates told the New York Times in an interview.

How so? He’s based out of Silicon Valley (Skype also has offices all over the world); he demanded Skype-specific ID cards for his employees, instead of Microsoft cards; and perhaps most daring, he uses a MacBook Air in his office.

Skype now has nearly 250 million users, a 26 percent jump over the past seven months, the NYT reports.

Bates’ demand for freedom is understandable — Microsoft has been known to kill innovation as it absorbs interesting products into its Borg-like corporate culture. But it’s also dangerous, since Skype’s true value to Microsoft is the promise of deep integration across all of its many services. Skype is still working on bringing its service to the Xbox 360 (though that likely won’t happen this year), and Microsoft’s business-oriented Lync product, among other Microsoft services.

It may be tough to see now, but once Microsoft and Skype figure out a way to work together, the video chat service could end up being an even more powerful and ubiquitous force in our homes. Integration in the Xbox 360 will bring Skype to the living room, and it’s already available on most smartphones and tablets. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft pushes Skype as a standalone service as well, perhaps with more Skype handsets (which could potentially be powered by Windows Phone).

Sean Parker’s mystery video startup AirTime is set to debut on June 5th, but that’s not stopping the company from making news today.

AirTime has received $25 million in second round funding led by Kleiner Perkins, and it has acquired the social experience company Erly, TechCrunch reported last night. The company later acknowledged the news on its blog (but didn’t reveal the funding amount). Other investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Accel Partners, Google Ventures, and Social + Capital.

Erly was founded by former Hulu CTO Eric Feng, who could potentially bring much to the heavily hyped AirTime. Beta testers have reported that Airtime is like Chatroulette with a layer of interest mapping, and with his experience building Hulu Feng could help the company to scale and build a robust community.

“Erly brings demonstrated consumer products expertise, video experience, and technical leadership to Airtime, and we couldn’t be more proud to welcome the newest members of our family,” Airtime wrote on its company blog.

Parker joined up with his Napster co-founder Shawn Fanning to create Airtime, which previously raised $8.3 million in funding.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

It’s said that with all of our technological advancements, the world is getting smaller and smaller, but it sure doesn’t feel like that when you have to travel for business frequently. It’s difficult to be away from home for long periods of time, but fortunately those aforementioned technological advancements are pretty helpful for staying in touch with your loved ones, even when you’re hundreds of miles and many time zones away.

Frequent business travelers probably already know the classic tips, like using a calling card to save cash or getting an international SIM card to cut down on the wireless bill, but there are several other things you can do to keep in touch while far from home.

Calling: In addition to a calling card or international SIM card there are other options that make calling home a bit easier on the wallet. Consider setting up a Google Voice number which will ring right through to your phone and is generally significantly cheaper than a standard long-distance call on your cell.

Video Chat: While most smartphones these days have a video chat feature, the calls themselves could set you back a pretty penny unless they run over Wi-Fi. Consider using Skype instead; it comes as a mobile or desktop app so it can be used on either your computer (only requiring internet access) or your phone. If you use the mobile app, keep your phone in airplane mode to avoid international roaming charges, even while on the ground.

Blog: Many people already have a social networking profile or personal blog set up; indeed, there are a variety of options including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tumblr as well as more traditional platforms like WordPress and Blogger. Share your trip with your loved ones by posting photos to Instagram or Tumblr, videos to YouTube, or blogging about the experience on your own blog. Friends and family can follow your trip as you blog it, making them feel like they’re right there with you.

Games: If you’ve got your laptop or tablet, you can also keep in touch in a fun ways like playing games with friends and family while far away. Sure, you may be on the other side of the country, but as long as you have access to WiFi you can still play Words with Friends with your spouse, coworkers, or kids. Likewise, if you’re a dedicated gamer, consider using a service like Steam that can connect you to other players.

Fun for Kids: There are many creative ways to keep in touch with your kids while you’re traveling, such as making an audio or video recording of you reading a favorite bedtime story with a good night message that can be played back for kids as they go to sleep. Or, take a favorite toy or stuffed animal with you on your travels (“Flat Stanley” is a popular example). Pose for photos with Stanley at notable landmarks during your trip and post them online so that your kids can see where you and Stanley have been. Another option is having kids send faxes to the hotel, and sending some back, so that you can exchange messages and artwork. They might get a kick out of the antiquated technology.

Airport image via ShutterStock

Evernote may be grabbing $100M

File that in your Evernote notebooks, with the tag “that’s a lot of cash.” The popular note taking/organization service is apparently raising a new round of $100M at a $1 billion valuation. Meritech Capital partners is said to be leading the round. Evernote has already raised $95.5 million in funding, so this new round would double its total funding.

Get social and chatty with Tango — it just raised $40M

Th video chat app that could rival Apple’s Facetime, Tango, just raised $40 million from Qualcomm Ventures and Access Ventures. The cross-platform app has snatched up 45 million users in the 18 months it’s been available.

Lifecrowd parties with a new $5M investment

Social events startup Lifecrowd has raised $5 million in its first round of funding from Lightbank, Bullpen Capital, Baroda Ventures, and Prism VentureWorks. Lifecrowd lets anyone create a social event, but curates its social calendar so only the best ones show up — no more lame meetups in someone’s parent’s basement.

BranchOut grabs $25M for a better LinkedIn

If you hate LinkedIn but like Facebook, BranchOut has you covered. The service has the same functionality as LinkedIn but operates on Facebook, so you can share business contact information and find jobs. BranchOut raised $25 million from Mayfield Fund, with participation by Accel, Norwest Venture Partners, and Redpoint Ventures.

Robot vacuum producer Neato Robotics gets funding

Neato Robotics has just snagged $12.2 million in fourth-round funding for its robot vacuum cleaner. Vorwerk Ventures and Noventi Ventures led this fourth round, which will be used to grow the company’s business and launch a new vacuum model.

Insieme gets a $100M investment from Cisco

Cisco has invested $100 million in a networking startup called Insieme that was started by three Cisco employees. The company also has the option to pay $750 million more to buy Insieme, should Cisco choose. Insieme tackles issues in software-defined networking (SDN), a somewhat easier and less expensive way to deploy cloud computing systems.

NComputing raises $21.8M for desktop virtualization

Desktop virtualization and thin-client computing firm NComputing has raised $20 million in a new round of funding. QuestMark Partners led the round with existing investors Menlo Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, and Daehong Technew. The company has raised a total of $57.8 million to date.

Greenlight Planet raises funds for solar lights

Greenlight Planet has raised $4 million. The company provides solar lights for rural villages in Africa and India, hoping to replace the kerosene lanterns most off-the-grid villages use. ZA Associates led the round.

Treehouse snags $4.75M to teach you how to code

Codecademy competitor Treehouse has raised $4.75 million for its online coding school. The company offers classes on how to do web design, write JavaScript, and build iOS apps. The Social + Capital Partnership led the round, with Reid Hoffman and David Sze from Greylock Discovery Fund participating.

If you’ve got funding new for us, send it to tips@venturebeat.com

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple, you’ve got some splainin’ to do. The new iPad, which will be released tomorrow, does not allow FaceTime video chat using 4G LTE networks, according to a report by The Verge.

Former CEO Steve Jobs said that FaceTime would be Wi-Fi only in 2010 when it was introduced at WWDC 2010. “We need to work a little bit with the cellular providers to get ready for the future, so we’re Wi-Fi only in 2010,” he said at the time. In theory, the company was waiting for better network connections to support video chat before allowing it over more than just Wi-Fi. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, even with powerful 4G LTE speeds.

Verizon Wireless and AT&T’s 4G LTE speeds are significantly faster than anything their respective 3G networks can cook up, so video chat should work fine in those markets that have LTE. Verizon expects to cover 260 million Americans with LTE by the end of the year. AT&T, on the other hand, plans to cover 150 million Americans by the end of 2012.

What’s especially frustrating is that the new iPad allows you to create a Wi-Fi hotspot for other devices, such as an iPhone 4S. Using an iPhone 4S over an iPad-created hotspot would allow you to run FaceTime using a 4G connection all the same.

Apple did not immediately respond with a comment. (And in this case, we don’t expect them to.)

One of the great advantages of telecommuting is that you don’t having to worry about dressing for success. You can attend meetings in pajamas, sport some Don Johnson stubble or the latest ironic mustache, and type while reclined on a sofa with a cat warming your feet.

But now video conferencing is having a moment, and like it or not, how you present yourself on video is just as important as how you do it in person. Here are a few tips to make sure you come across like the professional you are in video meetings. And if you crop it right, they’ll never know you’re not wearing pants.

Have good lighting: Most built-in computer cameras and third-party web cams are low-resolution with small sensors. They’re not optimized for low-light or other tricky lighting situations, so you have to be conscious of where your light is coming from. Make sure you have front lighting and never stand directly in front of a source of light. If the light is only behind you, the camera will expose for that and you will appear as a mysterious silhouette like Hitchcock.

If you really want to go for gold, bounce a direct light (like a desk lamp) off of a nearby white surface and make sure it hits your face at a slight angle.

Back lighting is bad (left), front lighting at a slight angle is good (right).

Sound like you look: There are a multiple problems with depending on your computer’s built-in microphone. If you are working while you meet, the mic will pic up the sound of you banging away on your keyboard. You might also find yourself leaning in to be heard, getting entirely too close to the camera and looking a tad silly and distorted. Your best bet is an external microphone — ideally a collar mic that can be discreetly clipped to your shirt.

Don’t wear loud clothes: You don’t necessarily have to wear corporate clothing, but dress just as you would if you were going to meet people in an office: clean, crisp, and conservative. But looking good on video is more than just wearing nice clothes, you also need to stick to simple solids and muted colors. Garish Cosby sweaters or loud patterns (pictured left) will confuse the camera’s color balance and distract the viewer.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

After a surprisingly long delay, Windows Phone owners may soon be able to get their hands on a Skype app of their very own.

Microsoft is currently testing a near-final version of Skype for Windows Phone 7, and the company may be planning to launch the app at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month, reports Tom Warren at the Verge.

Microsoft has been promising a Skype app for Windows Phone for some time. The app was originally targeted for a late 2011 launch, but it obviously missed that timeline. During CES, a Skype representative hinted that a Windows Phone app was “coming soon.”

According to Warren, the Skype app won’t offer any big surprises design-wise. But it’s expected to be heavily integrated in Windows Phone 8′s People Hub, which should make it easy to Skype your phone’s contacts.

If Microsoft handles the integration right, Skype on Windows Phone 8 could be even more useful and elegant than Apple’s FaceTime on the iPhone. And given that Microsoft spent $8.5 billion to acquire Skype, I’d imagine that the company would want to make the most of its investment.

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