Are you ready for your close-up? In early June, the dynamic, disrupting duo of Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning launched their new video chat and sharing network, called Airtime. As a matter of course, the founders built Airtime on top of Facebook, with a cool $33.5 million in funding to get the operation off the ground — and more.
Today, the startup released a polished new video that aims to… → Read More
Rounds, the social video chat app for Facebook and the web, backed by $5.5 million in funding from Verizon Investments, Rhodium, DFJ’s Tim Draper and other angels, is now expanding to the desktop. This week, the company will debut its Windows and Mac applications which will allow users to send and receive video chat calls to and from their friends without using their web browser or visiting… → Read More
FunMobility, the makers of FunMail, a picture-messaging app that organically pairs your texts with appropriate (and fun) images, FunTones, a large collection of funny ringtones, and FunMe, a suite of tools for consumers to create, share, and post their own user-generated content, is clearly striving for a particular brand message. I think it has something to do with “fun”.
Today, FunMobility… → Read More
TVs with Internet connectivity are nothing new, but this is pretty cool: As the world’s first TV makers, Panasonic and LG are cooperating with Skype to incorporate the software, which will make it possible to video chat in 720p HD quality, into TVs.
According to a Japanese media report [registration required, paid subscription], Americans will be able to buy the Pansasonic TVs first (as early as… → Read More
Google has announced an iPhone version of Google Talk which is simply an iPhone-ized browser-based version of the Google’s text chat application. This means you can’t talk over the Interwebs but you can tap out halting messages to your friends on the iPhone’s screen and, thanks to Safari’s tendency to clear pages randomly, you probably won’t enjoy a sustained… → Read More
Did you hear the awesome news? Facebook Chat launched at the weekend for some folks, myself included. Apparently the rollout is on a network-by-network basis, and one of mine, NYU, was a big winner. You can read how great it is on Facebook itself or any one of the fan sites, but I’ll tell you what about it annoyed me. First, the implementation, on a UI level, bothers me. The app, which… → Read More
[UPDATE - I put the chat room over on the side, just to see what, if anything, will happen if our readers can talk to each other. Lawsuits here we come!] We talked about Meebo quite a while ago. They’re essentially a web-based IM client that supports a number of protocols including AIM and MSN. Well, they’ve just started offering embeddded rooms for websites like the one above. → Read More
A couple years ago, I became a member of a crowdsourcing outfit called Cambrian House just as it was getting started. The premise of the site is basically that you submit an idea for some sort of web-based service and then other members of the site vote on your idea. The best ideas get funded and then you can work on certain projects and gain a percentage of whatever profit the idea makes based on… → Read More
From the “It sounded like a good idea at the time” Dept. Microsoft set up a holiday chatbot (northpole@live.com) on MSN Messenger for kiddies to talk to, play games with, and make holiday requests to. Sounds good, right? Except when you tell the bot to “eat it” one too many times, it replies, “It’s fun to talk about oral sex.“ Way to go, Microsoft. And who… → Read More
We’re following the story of a 48-year old man who was posing online as an 18-year old Marine recruit, and was romancing an 18-year old girl who was really a middle aged woman in real life, and the man was jealous of her online relationship with a 22-year old co-worker who was really 22, so he shot him dead at close range in his pickup in a factory parking lot. The Aristocrats! Man Killed… → Read More
My friends and I have so little to say to each other that this would be perfect. ChikaZune is a collection of graphics files that can be sent back using Zune’s phot sharing system. Each image contains containing snippets of text — “Are you busy later?” “Dude!” “I’m pregnant.” You could feasibly create a very simple conversation and, provided… → Read More
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco, CA
Berlin, Germany
Boston, MA