Turkish startup BeFunky has closed its first round of venture funding from Golden Horn Ventures in Istanbul. The amount raised was $550,000. Previously, the company raised $250,000 in seed capital in January, 2007. BeFunky launched at TechCrunch 40 last year. Founded by Tekin Tatar and Kemal Ozisikcilar, BeFunky offers two services: The Cartoonizer and Uvatar. The Cartoonizer lets you upload photos and give them a cartoon effect. Uvatar lets you create a more realistic avatar based on a photo. The startup is releasing a newly designed Website today, and upgrading its Uvatar service to make it more automated. But what I am most excited about is a product in the works called the Video Cartoonizer. It gives the same A Scanner Darkly effect for videos as the Cartoonizer does for photos. We’ve been using a pre-release version here at TechCrunch for an upcoming video project that we are going to launch soon. Here’s a sneak peak at what the effect looks like (from a video I slipped into this post on Kongregate): CrunchBase Information BeFunky Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
We’re live blogging each session, adding to the summary of each company direct from the floor of TechCrunch 40. Click Refresh to view. XRT3D XTR3D develops software that lets users interact with computers and gaming consoles using 3D human motions. Their real-time software analyzes 3D human motions using only one simple web cam. It will allow users to play games and interact in virtual worlds using natural human motions instead of keyboards, mouses and joysticks. They refer to their technology as a “3D Human Machine Interface” mouse movements in the air via a web cam…pretty damn cool. Demo includes moving around Google Earth by hand movements. As can be used for virtual worlds, games. Demo includes boxing, works well. Definitely one of the best product/ presentations of the conference. More at CrunchGear here. BroadClip BroadClip’s MediaCatcher for Facebook offers a way to search and listen to DRM-free music that is optimized to deliver music to portable media players such as iPods and cell phones. All users have to do is “clip” streaming music and they can transfer the recording to their portable media player in a legal way similar to other “time-shifting” technologies like TiVo, VCRs and tape recorders.Bizarre Star Wars demo…WTF? one line was this is very bad…he’s right, a shame thoough, I like the idea, even if the copyright side is a big question mark…they claim it’s legal yet the RIAA was demanding that webcasters put stream rip blocking software into place as part of the royalty negotiations…Broadclip is a easy to use stream ripping service.No one on stage…some sort of streamed presentation, not sure if they are even in the building. Sorry to be negative, but it’s not a good effect. mEgo mEgo lets users create personalized avatars that carry their online network aggregation profiles and can be integrated into users’ blogs, social networks, websites, and IM clients. The online profiles display user-picked content like profile details, videos, photos, feeds, and widgets. A couple of giggling chicks…Jason Calacanis notes that it’s great to have someone on the stage presenting. Tag team with the presentation which works well. Interactive widget, sample is shown in Facebook. Lots of features, provides social aggregation including pulling in RSS, Twitter etc.. can be any size as is vector based. Site will be live as at 4pm Wixi Wixi is a media focused social network where users interact with each other by privately → Read More
