The established players in web conferencing better look out — scheduling startup TimeBridge is launching a new conferencing service that it says can save companies around 80 percent compared to established products like Cisco’s WebEx and Citrix’s GoToMeeting.
The Berkeley, Calif. startup already has 300,000 users for its service, one that’s particularly useful because it integrates [...]
The Berkeley, Calif. startup already has 300,000 users for its service, one that’s particularly useful because it integrates with existing calendar products like Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, and Apple iCal. Chief executive Yori Nelkin says many TimeBridge users are using the service to schedule web meetings already, so it makes sense to add conferencing to flesh out the product (and to create a revenue stream among the pay services). Almost 60 percent of TimeBridge users employ some kind of conferencing service, and of those, 21 percent use GoToMeeting and 14 percent use WebEx (an interesting inversion of the general perception of who’s the big fish and who’s the underdog).
TimeBridge’s web meeting service costs $8.95 per month — less than WebEx and GoToMeeting, though more than the free offerings from Dimdim. Nelkin says he can charge so little because the customer acquisition cost is so low. In other words, he doesn’t have to spend any money marketing the service, since it’s an obvious switch for existing TimeBridge users. I wasn’t able to try the service myself (oddly, Nelkin briefed me over a TimeBridge conference call line, but we didn’t use the web meeting tool at all), but TimeBridge says it offers all the basic features you’d expect from a web conferencing service — screensharing, a white board, and so on.
Nelkin adds that this is the next step in building TimeBridge into a full collaborations service, rather than just a scheduling tool. In that vein, the company also launched a scheduling feature last month.
Nvidia is trying to stoke its own product ecosystem today as it launches the GPU Ventures Program to identify, support and in invest in early stage companies.
The investments will focus on GPU (graphics processing unit) applications such as video programs that tap the computing power of the graphics chip. Through Nvidia’s CUDA programming environment, the [...]
The investments will focus on GPU (graphics processing unit) applications such as video programs that tap the computing power of the graphics chip. Through Nvidia’s CUDA programming environment, the GPUs can now be used to handle non-graphics computing tasks and software companies are only just beginning to exploit that, said Jeff Herbst, vice president of business development at Nvidia.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based graphics chip maker is extending a program it kicked off last year with its Nvision visual computing conference, which featured an investment conference that drew 60 startups. Now the company has formalized its plans to invest in startups and to publicize them through a portal site, dubbed GPU Venture Zone. Nvidia offers more than just dollars. It lets some startups such as Elemental Technologies, whose Badaboom program converts video from one format to another, sell their wares on the Nvidia’s own web site or partner web sites.
Herbst said the company will invest anywhere from $500,000 to $5 million in startups. Last year, the company invested $5 million in five startups. This year, he said the company will try to expand its investments, which mostly go into seed or first venture capital round investments.
Besides Elemental, Nvidia has invested in Keyhole, which was acquired by Google to create Google Earth. It also invested in Mental Images (and later acquired it) as well as MotionDSP and Right Hemisphere. Nvidia plans to do another Emerging Companies Summit in the fall of this year. Herbst is targeting companies developing CUDA software applications, as well as other sectors such as those making middleware tools for game companies.
While it’s not a great year to start something because of the economic turmoil, Herbst said that companies need Nvidia’s help more. He wants VCs to know that Nvidia is willing to co-invest, or sometimes be the only one to invest in a new company. Herbst said he continues to see more and more good startups. He acknowledged that the bad economy and Nvidia’s own losses are affecting his program some, in terms of the dollars available to invest, but he said the impact isn’t huge because the program is strategic to Nvidia’s future.
“This is about ecosystem development, and so we have decided to double down,” Herbst said.
Please check out our GamesBeat 09 game conference on March 24.
Jive Software is announcing the latest release of its collaborative “social” software for businesses. The Portland, Ore. company says version 3.0 of its application package, now called Social Business Software, marks the first time someone can combine internal and external collaboration (i.e., collaboration with the rest of the company and collaboration with partners and customers) [...]
A year or two ago, there seemed to be a glut of companies offering social networking for businesses. With the downturn, you might assume that Jive was part of a fad that has passed, especially since it was one of the first companies to follow its investor Sequoia Capital’s advice by eliminating 36 jobs, including executives. But after talking to Chief Marketing Officer Lawrence, it sounds like that would be a mistake — Jive added 200 customers last year, bringing its total to more than 2,500, and many of those newer customers are paying for more expensive tools, so its revenue actually grew 70 percent. In fact, Lawrence says Jive is hiring. And a recent report from Forrester identified Jive and Telligent as the leaders in the “community platforms” market.
In addition to rolling out new features, Jive has gotten rid of the confusing Clearspace and Clearspace Community names for its products; now it’s all just Social Business Software. The services that were included in Clearspace — such as shared documents, blogs, project management, and customers comments — are now part of Foundation, the core SBS product. SBS also allows companies to create “centers” for centralized collaboration around the product’s four main uses: employee engagement, marketing and sales, innovation, and support. Then companies can buy modules to enhance the basic offerings.
One of those modules promises increased productivity by letting you view your department, partner, and customer communities within a single workspace. That may sound like a relatively small improvement at first, but Lawrence says it’s significant because a user will often want or need to work in multiple Jive communities. Without the bridging modules, those communities exist as isolated silos.
Other modules include video, social bookmarking, and analytics and “insights,” which measure discussions and sentiments surrounding specific topics in your Jive communities.
Although Jive is announcing SBS 3.0 now, it won’t actually be available for another week. Lawrence also previewed the product during the Productivity 2.0 panel that I moderated at last week’s DEMO conference. You can see the video of that panel below; the Jive demo starts at around seven minutes in.
Nearly everyone seems to be on Twitter these days. And one of its fastest growing uses has to be in the political sphere, where we find members of Congress tweeting live from President Obama’s speeches. So it should be no surprise that the mayor of the city in which Twitter (the company) resides, San Francisco, [...]
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is heading to Twitter’s headquarters tomorrow to meet with their team. How do I know? He tweeted about it. And so did Twitter chief executive Evan Williams.
From what I can gather, it’s just a general meeting to determine how San Francisco’s government can best use technology like Twitter. Both Newsom and Williams are asking for feedback from their Twitter followers (Newsom has 39,701 and Williams has 239,128 — but who’s counting? Yes, sadly, everyone.) to use in the meeting.
I sent a message over to Twitter to see if this meeting was anything more, and I’ll update when I hear back. Perhaps Newsom is getting some tips on how best to use the service to run an effective campaign for governor of California in 2010? It seemed to work pretty well for Barack Obama, Twitter’s most popular user (with over 400,000 followers), who has neglected the service since taking office.
Last week, Obama invited a group of entrepreneurs, including Twitter’s Williams, to the White House to discuss the economic crisis. Williams tweeted it out beforehand and was bombarded by suggestions to tell the President.
Newsom is actually a fairly prolific, if not redundant, Twitter user. He signed up in late December and has so far sent out nearly 200 tweets. Of course the majority of those seem to be “thank you,” (first for praise of a recent op-ed piece, then more recently in response to congratulations about his wife’s pregnancy). But he’s also been using it for the same reason a lot of good Twitter users do: for self promotion and to post mundane observations such as, “Just finished running through the Presidio down to Golden Gate Bridge– hard not to love this city!”
He seems to prefer updating Twitter through text message, the web and the iPhone app TwitterFon.
The mayor also does seem to do a good job of responding to questions sent to him. And he’s fairly likely to follow you back if you follow him — he follows over 13,000 people.
Twitter secured a new $35 million round of funding last month. And while it’s working towards a viable business plan, it claims that gaining users is more important right now.
You can find me on Twitter here along with fellow VentureBeatniks Eric Eldon, Dean Takahashi, Anthony Ha, Chris Morrison, Tam Vo, Camille Ricketts, Dan Kaplan and Matt Marshall. We have a VentureBeat account (for our posts) as well.
A lot of people use Wikipedia, but until now there’s been no way to see what topics are the most popular.
Wikirank solves that problem, with a new tool that shows how each Wikipedia topic ranks in popularity.
Users familiar with Google Analytics will recognize the setup. Users can search for statistics on each topic (for example, [...]
Wikirank solves that problem, with a new tool that shows how each Wikipedia topic ranks in popularity.
Users familiar with Google Analytics will recognize the setup. Users can search for statistics on each topic (for example, page views on “Barack Obama” during the last 30 days, etc.). In addition, there’s a list of top Wikipedia topics and a list of the most dramatic traffic shift in popularity in the last 24 hours. So, for example, if you want to compare searches for your own name with Barack Obama, a nice little Google Analytics-looking graph reveals your performance. You can share the information with friends.
Wikirank is the first product from San Francisco-based Small Batch, run by Jeffrey Veen, previously a co-founder at Visible Path, and project lead for Measure Map, a company later sold to Google. The inspiration for Wikirank came from how Twitter users employ Twitter search. That service can be used to track how often people reference certain words or hashtags, and allows you to see if certain topics are gaining or losing popularity in real time.
Wikirank took one month to develop and will be launching late this month, and financed by advertising. However, Veen suggested Wikirank may just be the beginning steps of a business. “Wikirank, as a project, is just a way to explore new technologies for other products that we think may be more commercial,” says Veen.
Veen said Small Batch hasn’t raised any financing.
Well, that didn’t last long. This morning, Boxee brought back Hulu content to its users , by way of a workaround, using public RSS feeds. Hulu has already struck back, blocking Boxee’s access to those feeds. Game on, says Boxee in a post on this latest move.
While it was pretty ridiculous before that [...]
While it was pretty ridiculous before that the big media companies behind Hulu forced the company to pulls its content off of Boxee , now it’s entirely ridiculous. These are public RSS feeds, which any browser should be able to access — yes, even a browser optimized for a 10-foot viewing experience.
Again, it’s not like Boxee is blocking the advertisements that Hulu serves up so the content companies can make money. The only reasons I can imagine that those companies are so against this is either a) they don’t understand it or b) they want to create their own set-top box for Hulu and don’t want any other company to offer such an option.
As I noted earlier today, Boxee representatives did meet with Hulu and the content providers, but were unable to come to an agreement.
As Boxee’s Avner Ronen writes in the blog post:
to our users: if you choose to use boxee as your media browser to view legal and publicly available content on the internet, we will do everything we can to ensure that you can access it, no matter what the source.
As I said, game on.
