The conventional wisdom out there on Web video advertising is that most advertisers don’t want to risk being associated with user-generated videos (i.e., the vast bulk of videos on YouTube). It is only the professionally-produced stuff on portions of YouTube and Hulu and Blip.tv where the advertising dollars are going. This is the conventional wisdom because it is mostly true.
But YouTube wants to change advertiser’s minds (because the vast bulk of its videos are audience-produced, did we mention that?). So in a blog post today, YouTube trots out a told-ya-so case study about the “JK Wedding Entrance Video” (embedded below) that has been spreading around like crazy. Since it was posted on July 19, it has been watched more than 12 million times. → Read More
I mailed a birthday card out yesterday to a family member who’s birthday was, in fact, last week. I’m such a bad relation. I had the decency to include a check and a witty comment, but I know it’s going to be too little, too late. If only I could go back in time to yesterday, knowing what I know today. See, I just found out about cake in a jar! Boy howdy, would the lateness of my gift be forgiven and forgotten when they opened up that box to find a delicious, moist cake in a jar waiting for them! → Read More
Online travel services group Expedia has reported its results for Q2 2009, and the financials aren’t looking spectacular, but they are not as bad as expected.
Although the number of booking transactions handled by the company actually saw a small uptick, gross bookings decreased 5%. As a result, revenues went down 3% (from $795 million in 2008 to $770 million) and operating income decreased a staggering 33%.
On the upside, Expedia’s flight and hotel bookings rose 10% in the second quarter compared to the first quarter following some expense-cutting measures and airline fare cuts. The company’s second-quarter profit was $41 million, or 14 cents per share. → Read More
As a reader of CrunchGear, I can only assume that you’re familiar with a recent invention called “television.” It’s truly a remarkable thing: it transports lights and sounds from the four corners of the planet, and brings them right to your living room. It’s like you’re actually at the big game! A recent upgrade, called high-definition television, improves the quality of the picture. Samsung, which is a company based in far-away South Korea, has a new line of high-definition televisions called the 8500 Series. It uses something called light-emitting diodes (“LEDs”) to light up the image—no more replacing tubes! → Read More
Put your iPhone in a lead box and step away from it, people. Someone is going to send you a text message with a square in it and then destroy your life a la that one movie with Will Smith in it when he goes into that warehouse and there’s some dude in there inside a Faraday cage and he asks “Can they really do that?” or some permutation thereof and the guy in the cage says “Yes they can” or whatever and then they take over his bank account and Will Smith has to run around and solve like a mystery or something and it turns out it was the GOVERNMENT. Seriously! → Read More
Hey hey, look at that. Apple finally updated the Time Capsule by doubling the storage capacity of the $500 model to 2TB and dropping 1TB model down to $300. Everything else is the same, but it’s about time that Apple gets with the program here. In case you haven’t noticed, hard drives are cheap now and $500 for only a single terabyte was a little ridiculous – even for Apple. → Read More
JVC knows what’s up. It’s good to see that not every set of headphones outed by A/V companies lately are in-ear models. Over-the-ear cans are not only so much more comfy, but they generally sound better than in-ear ones too. These two new models come to us under the Black Series label – whatever the hell that means. → Read More
The LG Chocolate is now official. (That sound you just heard is the sound of millions of people breathing a sigh of relief.) The specs are, in fact, the same as those found in that leaked promo video from a few days ago. → Read More
The consolidation process in the Japanese home electronics business goes on and on. Today former rivals Sharp and Sony said [JP] they reached a final agreement to launch an LCD panel joint venture in Osaka, after having failed to ink the deal last month. In March already, Sharp said it wants Sony as a partner for its plans to boost the production of LCD TVs. → Read More
Creative made a small splash the other day when the Zii project broke cover. It very well could be the first, real iPod touch competitor thanks to Android and impressive hardware. Here’s two more videos showing off the Zii. The one above is an impressive game demo that demos the accelerometer and the one after the break gets into the nitty-gritty about the hardware. → Read More
At first glance, Redux has a very appropriate name: It looks like it’s just another version of the aggregation and conversation service FriendFeed. But a new feature is fairly awesome. “TV” allows you to easily share video clips, just as you would share links on FriendFeed or Redux’s main Stream area.
Officially, Redux says it’s a “personalized entertainment guide to the web.” But really, that’s what most social sites are these days. We need new features to distinguish them. And solid usability. And that’s what Redux offers in this video area.
The main problem I have with online video is that there’s way too much of it. I visit YouTube, but I have no idea what to watch. If I try to browse random videos, most of it is crap, and really, it’s just a waste of my time to do that. Most of the videos I consume, friends send me, and that’s exactly the idea behind Redux’s video area. But because it’s an actual video player, the sharing and watching of videos is seamless. → Read More
Online TV startup Konbini just raised €3M in its second round of founding from NextStage, one of the most active French venture capital firms (NextStage manages a €220m fund). The startup, which already raised €700k in the occasion of its launch in october 2008, aims at a younger internet generation which likes producing and broadcasting videos. The final objective of the company is to become a big player for video content in the 15-35 years old category, between YouTube, Hulu and HBO Premium. Konbini will open an office in London before the end of the year and hopes to expand to the US too. The French startup is trying to build a product and user-base aimed at advertisers who want to move budget from traditional TV to the web. They’ve developed a proprietary advertisement platform/format for this purpose. “We have decided to capitalize on creativity, this second round of funding confirms our model oriented to production and broadcasting for a large audience of internet users. NextStage’s experience will give us all the means to finish the development and reach profitability in the short term,” says Konbini’s founders Lucie Beudet and David Creuzot. Konbini employs 10 people, reaches 300,000 unique visitors per month and is aiming at a million before the end of the year. → Read More
Google Voice has been making a lot of headlines lately, but not for the reasons you’d hope. The service is already running into frustrating opposition from Apple and possibly AT&T (depending on who you believe). Today, it’s getting opposition of a different kind: 3jam, a company that until now has primarily offered services that revolve around SMS messaging, is expanding to offer telephony services that will be going head to head against Google Voice.
3jam offers many of the same core features offered by Google Voice, including the ability to have one phone number ring multiple phones, as well as an online interface for managing voicemail and text messages, though there are some more advanced features that it lacks (more on that later). But it does have a few features that Google Voice doesn’t, like the ability to receive calls on Skype, AOL, and Yahoo Messenger (why waste minutes when you’re sitting in front your your computer anyway?) → Read More
We’ve all seen the ads and screenshots that pop-up when you hover over keywords on blogs. For the most part, they’re annoying. But what if those pop-ups had actual useful information in them? That’s the idea behind Panels Network.
A key feature of these overlays is that they’re not just about links, they also pop-up over ads. So, for example, when you hover over a 125×125 ad on TechCrunch (see an example on this demo page), you can find out information about the advertiser. Think of them as kind of like an excerpt from Wikipedia about the company. → Read More
Victor JVC Japan announced [JP] a new full HD camcorder from their Everio series today, the Everio GZ-HM400. The device features a 10.3MP CMOS sensor, 10x optical zoom, 32GB of built-in storage, a 2.8-inch flip-out LCD screen, a YouTube and iTunes upload function, a USB port and an HDMI interface. → Read More
Dutch startup Nimbuzz , which bills itself as the “mobile Skype” have just announced an IM application for Android phones which ties together multiple messaging tools (Skype, MSM, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, etc.) via a single interface. The app is now available for download. The Nimbuzz trump card is Skype VOIP. Unfortunately the Android app doesn’t yet include this but it is available in the iPhone app. The Android application also supports many local social networks like Hyves (dominant in the Netherlands) and a nifty time-sensitive user interface which does things like detecting how long a user presses on a contact; a quick click opens the contact’s profile while a long click opens a chat window. → Read More
The creator of iCombat wrote an analysis of his experience making and giving away a free “lite” version of his app alongside his paid, full version. The result? It makes economic sense to create a lite version early on and update it often to goose the users into downloading – and paying attention to – your app. His global conversion rate was 9% which meant that a considerable cohort of lite users bought the full version. He discovered a number of best practices for iPhone devs and allowed us to post them here. His most important takeaway? He should have made a lite app much earlier in the game. The conversion rate once the lite app was made available was quite impressive and meant a lot of lost revenue. → Read More
Dutch startup Nimbuzz , which bills itself as the “mobile Skype” today releases an IM application for Android phones which ties together multiple messaging tools (Skype, MSM, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, etc.) via a single interface. The Nimbuzz trump card is Skype VOIP. Unfortunately the Android app doesn’t yet include this but it is available in the iPhone app. The Android application also supports many local social networks like Hyves (dominant in the Netherlands) and a nifty time-sensitive user interface which does things like detecting how long a user presses on a contact; a quick click opens the contact’s profile while a long click opens a chat window. Nimbuzz has also released to us the results of a survey of 21,000 users which reveals some interesting differences in how people in different parts of the world communicate. → Read More
My Name is E appeared earlier this year with a product which sounded familiar to most. It enables you to collect all your social and contact accounts – on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and any other network – in one spot. However, the twist was that you could share them in real life with people you met over the mobile web or their “Connector”, the USB product they also sell. Today they’ve released an app for the iPhone which lets you share your card with the flick of your iPhone-holding hand. Could this be the final death of the business card? I doubt it, but this is going to be a pretty interesting product to watch.
The Connector is not dissimilar to Poken in some respect, but as well as the wireless USB device it also lets you exchange cards between any mobile via the mobile web. The new iPhone application allows card sharing through a simple flick of the wrist towards another iPhone with the app. E then connect both users and make sure they get automatically connected on the selected social networks as well. → Read More
Getting sound out of an iPhone and online quickly has been pretty easy for a while, and there are a number of startups playing in the space. Trottr works from any phone and is a simple call-in or upload system. The Tweetmic iPhone app has been gathering lots of speed in the U.S. due to its ability to publish on Twitter – but it has no attached social network. But it’s AudioBoo.fm, launched in December last year, which has been making waves with an iPhone-only app which works very well.
However, a new entrant, ipadio, is potentially about to steal AudioBoo’s thunder with a new iPhone app which covers all the bases: live streaming audio into a web page; high quality uploads from the iPhone; live phone-in service; upcoming Android app – plus, crucially, a business model.
Released to the public at the end of April the existing iPadio iPhone app is simple enough. However, not unlike BlogTalkRadio, it was based around making a phone call to get your audio online. But the new version of the existing ipadio iPhone app [iTunes link], poised for approval in the App store, brings a ton more functionality to the platform. → Read More
