Broomstick Productions is Archimedes Labs latest portfolio company to launch into the world. Jan Ziff and Allan Davidson have a very special person in their life – Jan’s Mom. Or, because – like myself – Jan is from Yorkshire in the North of England, I should say Jan’s Mum….. Jan’s Mum had the very special privilege of telling stories to the children of Prince Charles, either the future King of England or at the very least the father of the future King of England. During her stint at that very unusual job she developed the character of Heckerty(TM) the
[read more]...I first met Jeanette Cajide early in 2011. She was a founder at Blurtt – a company that was then focused on delivering a web based photo-upload service, permitting users to send printed postcards of said photos to friends via mail. A few things were quickly obvious. 1. Blurtt is a great name, but not for sending postcards. 2. Mobile is the right place to develop what Blurtt could be. 3. Blurtt should let people Blurtt things out….. 4. Combining images with text produces a very powerful means of communicating emotion-rich messages. 5. Jeanette is a force of nature
[read more]...My good pal Mike has a new blog at uncrunched.com. Check it out.
[read more]...Fred Wilson has a response today to Eric Schmidt’s declaration in Edinburgh that Google+ is an “identity service”. He asks and answers his own question. “whom Google built this service for? You or them. And the answer to why you need to use your real name in the service is because they need you to.” Of course Facebook is also an identity service. Facebook Connect is the means of distributing it. And of course Facebook too is built using real names because “they need you to”. At this level FaceBook and Google have much in common, and both are vying
[read more]...Yesterday, Bay Area start-up Quixey announced that Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors fund had invested in the company. I’m pleased to say that along with my partners in Archimedes Ventures we have also joined the roster of investors in the company. All the best to Tomer Kagan and his team as they execute. The technology they have built is state of the art. Their team is fabulous. The world is theirs to grab. Exciting times. Sign up for the beta here TechCrunch story here GigaOm story here.
[read more]...Robert Scoble cornered Ron Conway in the hallway at the Chirp conference yesterday and in the aftermath of Twitter acquiring Tweetie, and announcing their own URL shortening service, asked the big question. Is it still sensible to invest in companies seeking to expand or enhance the use of Twitter in some way? Ron is unequivocal in his answer. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW-bhzX6sxk&w=640&h=385] For what it’s worth I think Ron is right…. as usual 🙂 TechMeme Link here
[read more]...http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=10630568&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1 Mag+ live with Popular Science+ from Bonnier on Vimeo. No comment really. I do think video and audio are missing from this vision, but it is a great first step.
[read more]...Walt Mossberg today reviewed a couple of new technologies that allow you to beam video from a PC to a TV wirelessly. Pretty cool, but IMHO there is not a big demand for this. More interesting is the discussion about whether we are at the tipping point between TV and the internet, where more and more people will get their video from the Internet. In the video below Walt is a sceptic, but his colleague makes the point that the big TV companies have much to lose if we are close to that point, namely subscriber fees from Cable and
[read more]...A nice vision of the near future from BERG. It is focused on Magazines but makes me think about web content more. What is the role of a web site, a web page, a post and a tweet in this world? The UI concepts are nice, but functionally limited. And the discovery of content doesn’t seem to exist, it assumes subscriptions to publications – which I’m sure will only be part of the story, and a small part at that. Take a look yourself: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8217311&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1 Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo. Hat Tip to CrunchGear Discussion at TechMeme
[read more]...Huffington and Mathias D̦pfner (CEO of German media empire Axel Springer) discuss the future of news. The moderator is Christine Ockrent, CEO of France 24, a TV broadcasting company. In the context of Rupert Murdoch declaring his intent to take his content out of Google this is a timely exchange. Clearly there are many sides to this issue, but Рbottom line Рthe cost base of old media is not sustainable, and the news gathering possibilities of the distributed masses together with curation and aggregation present a powerful alternative. I recommend anybody interested in the future of news and
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