93South - Thoughts on New England Web 2.0 » 93South1

Plagiarism story plagiarized – Squared

93South1 — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 11:29:41 +0000

As I surf around the web looking for interesting tid-bits from the New England area, I foud this story on Digg.com from a local Boston.com writer Maura Welch – a blog that I just added recently to my RSS reader.

I think it’s a funny story on how people are caring less-and-less about intellectual property and, ironically again, how the same people don’t get the that the web makes it easy to figure out.

I was also curious to see what the “blog this” link on a Digg story actually did.

Here is the post and the Digg excerpt:

“In what is perfect irony, a story I wrote for the Boston Globe about blog plagiarism was plagiarized by a writer at WebProNews.”

You Could See This One Coming – MySpace Sued for $30M!

93South1 — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 18:38:45 +0000

I know from a few inside sources at another giant in the social networking / teen exhibition scene that lawsuits for both saftey and IP issues are not un-common. However, this may the first big one to make a real news story and an impact if it keeps going.

According to Statesman.com, a mom and her 14 year daughter are claiming that the popular website does not do enough to protect under-age children from online predators and have filed a suit for $30 LARGE!. The daugther claims she was attacked by a man she met through the site.

I suspect the Pols will jump into the game next and try to “protect our children”. This is a tough issue that I will have more on later.

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Enterprise to MicroOptical…Jordi Wants His Visor Back!

93South1 — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 17:55:12 +0000

Not sure how geeky that title really is but Westwood, MA based MicroOptical has just received funding for their new visor technology that creates a large format (about 12 – 14″) virtual video view for use with your iPod. The deal was for $11.53M led by Atlas Venture and including Intel Capital Hillman Company and Turner Broadcasting.

I first read about this in Mass High Tech and was curious how this technology would take hold but for road-hardened business travelers, this is an airplane dream. Imagine being able to zone out other passengers completely with this little gizmo?

The company acutaly produces a wide range of visual technologies from medical through military applications (where I suspect the real money is). This appears to be the first consumer focused offering from the company.

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Acquistions – EMC Buys BPM Comapny Proactivity

93South1 — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 17:08:52 +0000

For an undisclosed amount, Hopkinton based EMC Corporation has agreed to purchase ProActivity Software solutions out of Israel. ProActivity produces a BPM solution that will be plugged into EMC’s Documentum product line.

The apparent buzz for this news peice reported on Boston.com, Alarm Clock and serveral other sources, is that it is the 3rd Isreali BPM company that EMC has acquired.

EMC News Release

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German Linux Firm Moving to Bedford, MA

93South1 — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 15:08:04 +0000

The Boston Business Journal is reporting that German Linux firm, Collax Inc. is moving it’s corporate headquarters to Bedford. The company develops open source business service including an Exchange alternative.

This is a good development for building the Open-Source community here in the Boston Area.

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Sony Music Launches New Music Channel with Brightcove

93South1 — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 13:34:16 +0000

In a move that could signal the next generation of the online video industry, Sony BMG Music Entertainment has launched a new music channel service MusicBox that features full length music videos. The service itself provides a fairly standard online video player provided through a partnership with Cambridge, MA based Brightcove Networks.

However, the real story about this latest announcement is the proposed ability to allow other websites (blogs, myspace, etc.) to syndicate individual videos. This one detail can make this a very viral application once it is released – currently, the site offers a “latest video” RSS feed. This is a important milestone in the microchunking debate (I use the term loosely) that will undoubtedly by all other major content publications paranoid about online piracy.

Currently, Google and Yahoo Video are attempting to monetize music video content by providing a small or clipped version of the video and requiring a payment to download. What will happen once content blogs, other websites and even YouTube start posting full length Jessica Simpson videos? I guess it all depends upon the term and conditions of the deal (I’ll update this post once I find it).

On another related note…anyone having problems with the Sony player? I’ve had a few crashes in Firefox & IE and have read about other users having the same issues.

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ChoiceStream Raises $13.1M in VC

93South1 — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 13:28:51 +0000

Cambridge based ChoiceStream has raised $13.1 Million to further port it's online personalization technology over to mobile devices and set top boxes. The series B round was led by Sutter Hill Ventures along with General Catalyst Partners and Sage Hill Partners.

ChoiceStream's software was designed to provide personalization services to online consumer content sites like Yahoo & AOL including a great online service for downloading movies (a topic I will cover soon) like MovieLink. This new development will help deliver the same back-end service for content providers in the mobile and television markets as well. The service appears to use attributes within media content and the users behavior to predict other relevant content to display to the user. Here is on overview image from their website:

"Create a personalized experience that puts the 'right' content at the top of the deck to drive revenue and differentiate your brand."

Although not a true Web 2.0 concept (in-fact the wording on their site feels very Web 1.0), this is a development in an interesting trend for the Boston area in the mobile technology arena.

Along with local mobile technologies firms like JumpTap and Groove Mobile, ChoiceStream's new service is helping to establish New England technology area as a hub for mobile / wireless content technology companies. A nice development considering that the industry is expecting explosive growth.

What other mobile content technology companies are in the area? Let me know!

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