Jilion, the makers of the cloud-based HTML5 video player SublimeVideo, are today making the product more accessible through the introduction of a freemium offering. When the service launched earlier this spring, commercial plans were available, starting at the relatively affordable rate of under $10 per month. But when it comes to user adoption, nothing beats “free.”
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Online video is booming and the are tons of small video companies across production, advertising, distribution, and technology. Yet we have yet to see a serious attempt to roll up the industry. The reasons, I submit, boil down to egos and greed.
What is a Rollup?
Historically, large private equity firms have “rolled up” various small companies in a given market through mergers or acquisitions in order to reach economies of scale. A rollup is different than a simple merger in that it involves multiple parties, oftentimes taking place in a mature industry where growth can’t occur organically, but rather, through financial engineering or cost cutting.
This is partially why we haven’t seen that many rollups of Internet companies, because usually a merger is all it takes to reach considerable market dominance. Sometimes rollups make sense because building a product or business would take too long to build internally and grow organically. Ask Jeeves bought Interactive Search Holdings for $343M in March 2004 to double market share and then sold to IAC a year later for $1.8 billion. → Read More
Washington, D.C.-based video indexing and discovery startup Veenome has raised $500, 000 in seed funding from Ecosystem Ventures (investors in Tube Mogul and Facebook), plus private angel investors from Google, Dingman Center Angels, as well as Chegg founder Aayush Phumhra and the founder of WebMetrics Tim Drees.
The company uses proprietary automated video recognition technology to scan video clips for products, brands and objects which can be tagged and indexed. → Read More
I hate these kind of videos. There’s enough waste in electronics that we don’t need to destroy stuff that is in already perfect condition (hence our refusal to post those ridiculous Will It Blend videos). However, this is for science! → Read More
Venture capital is flowing into video ad networks: Brightroll recently raised $30 million, Yume raised $12 million. Tremor Video’s raised over $100 million.
But not everyone’s buying the hype: “it’s just not a big enough market for all the money invested, there can’t be six or seven category leaders”, argues Will Margiloff, chief executive officer of Ignition One, a unit of Japan’s Dentsu. Some have raised more money than their revenue potential. → Read More
An odd but interesting new photo-and-video sharing iPhone app called Chumkee is officially announcing its public launch today. I know, I know. Another photo-and-video sharing app – just what you need. But Chumkee is doing something a little different here with its concept, user interface and design. This app isn’t about simply “sharing photos with your friends.” It’s about sharing publicly, in an almost Twitter-like format, complete with @usernames and a “reply” feature. In other words, social conversations based around photos and videos.
But that’s not all. The app also ditches the traditional Twitter timeline-esque view for a photo pile design that allows you to move pictures and videos around on the screen or drag them off the side of the screen when you’re done. → Read More
I got to sit down with Steve Hallock, the North American president of MB&F and driving force behind the Swiss watch brand’s western expansion. The watch he brought for us is the LM1 aka the Legacy Machine #1, a new piece we wrote about earlier last month and that is just now shipping to oligarchs and captains of industry around the world. → Read More
It may come as no surprise, but Americans are watching more and more online video. In fact, they’re practically jonesin’ for it. According to comScore’s numbers, 182 million Americans watched online video content in September (for an average of 19.5 hours per viewer), while the U.S. video audience tallied a total of 39.8 billion video views. But what may be a bit more surprising is the extent to which people are now watching their video on tablets.
From Ooyala’s study comes a number of interesting interesting conclusions. First and foremost, tablets are seeing a significantly higher level of engagement in online video viewing, as tablet viewers watch longer than viewers of desktops or mobile devices. For each minute watched on a desktop, tablets recorded “1:17 in played content”, which works out to 28 percent longer than the desktop average. → Read More
As a watch fan, setting your pieces back and forth a few times a year is trivial. But what if you’re dealing with a collection of 8,000 watches? This video shows how the folks at Tourneau Time Machine, New York’s largest watch shop, deal with all of the winding, setting, and checking of their entire stock.
The entire process takes three days, from Friday until Sunday. → Read More
If you’re a fan of the Parrot AR.Drone, you’ll probably get a kick out its earthbound relative, the AirXRacer by AniApp. I got a first hands on with this iPhone- or Android-controlled racecar in Shenzhen and you will be able to pick it up this holiday season.
The car is a standard RC racer that, as you can see, is quite fast. You control it using your phone’s accelerometer or using an onscreen “wheel,” a method that offers a bit more finesse. The creator, Jeff Luo of AniApp Labs, said the cars would be available in Radio Shack and Brookstone this holiday and the apps are available now for download. → Read More
Over a year passed since we covered powerful video editor LoiLoScope, but instead of resting on its laurels, maker LoiLo has kept innovating on the product. Aptly named LoiLoScope 2, the updated software for Windows PCs (system requirements) still has the same key value proposition: combining an easy-to-use UI (geared towards pros and amateurs alike) and a ton of editing functions with a technical “killer feature” (instead of letting the CPU do the heavy lifting, the editor uses the GPU for video processing).
Thanks to the “GPGPU editing engine”, LoiLoScope makes it possible to edit and preview videos in HD in real-time. In other words, users don’t need to wait for the software to process and then reflect the changes they make to the videos but can track them without delay (LoiLoScope supports a long list of input and output video formats). → Read More
Livestream is unveiling a major upgrade to its live video service today. It won’t be fully rolled out until December, but you can see a preview of it here or watch the video below. The new player brings a few firsts to live video: an adaptive bitrate which can adjust dynamically based on the viewers bandwidth up to HD quality (720p); an instant playback DVR feature; a live blogging platform to add text, photos, and video clips underneath the main video; and social networking features.
One of the most noticeable changes is the DVR functionality. “Viewers can rewind while it is live,” says CEO Max Haot. One of the big issues with live video online is that it takes a while for an archive to be viewable. At the very least, you have to wait for the live event to be finished before an archive can be produced. But Livestream’s new platform allows for viewers to jump back to earlier parts of the live video while it is still being streamed. This feature will also allow producers to cut clips and embed them in the feed below the video stream.
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It isn’t everyday that we’re afforded a look at what goes into making our favorite phones, but a new video from Nokia shows us how exactly their gorgeous unibody N9 handsets are made. → Read More
Shelby.tv, the video-sharing startup (and stars of Bloomberg’s TechStars reality show), is today exiting out of its private alpha phase and launching into a public beta. The service, founded by Reece Pacheco, Dan Spinosa, Henry Sztul and Joe Yevoli, aggregates the video links your friends are sharing across social networks in order to offer you personalized video recommendations.
It’s now available in the iTunes app store as a native app for the iPhone or iPad. → Read More
This stuff writes itself. At the grand opening of a new Windows Store in Seattle folks were camping out for most of the night only to stream in, breathlessly ready to partake in the one exciting product Microsoft could offer – a free concert by the Black Keys.
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Five years ago, I was working for a Belgian company that published the only weekly IT magazine in the country, Data News. I was not a reporter, but in charge of its online media products. When it was announced that Microsoft founder Bill Gates would be coming to Brussels to, for the first time, pitch Windows Vista to enterprise customers and partners at the MS Business Innovation Event, I jumped on the opportunity to convince the editor of the magazine to arrange for a camera to be placed in the conference hall so we could record his talk. → Read More
Do you mind if Microsoft drops a little future on you like a ton of bricks? This HoloDesk uses a half-silvered mirror and a Kinect sensor to “see” your hands in 3D space then project visible objects on and around them, allowing you to juggle virtual spheres, play with phones, and generally get all Minority Report up in this piece.
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In this episode of the TechCrunch Gadgets Webcast we assess the value of camera film, decide that Devin is the 6th Decemberist, and express how much we love Asus’ new ultrabook.
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I’ve sadly (??) never been to burning man, but this time-lapse footage of the playa over five weeks is pretty inspiring. First you see a small group of folks begininning to set things up and then, when the gates open, all heck breaks loose, creating a mini-city in the desert.
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