Webware

Blazing a new video trail at Under the Radar

YouTube has become synonymous with online video but a score of companies still believe there's plenty of opportunities to win big in the burgeoning marketing. This includes media heavyweights focusing on long-form content. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and NBC Universal have jointly launched a video service scheduled to go live later this year. Joost, which operates on a peer-to-peer technology developed by the creators of Skype, is offering material from a score of top TV networks and media conglomerates, including Viacom.

UStream.tv plans to differentiate itself by turning Internet users into live-video broadcasters. This is not a … Read more

Virtual worlds at UTR: social networks, or experiments?

Wrapping up the group presentations at Under the Radar's Entertainment & Media conference is the virtual worlds group. Only two of these companies (Doppleganger and Kaneva) offer what most would consider "virtual worlds" or a replacement for real life interaction with others. The other two consist of user avatars, and a video gaming platform.

Doppleganger is a 3-D world similar to Second Life. It survives through a mix of micropayments, and partnerships with various companies who want branded areas and appearances for celebrities, movies, and music. We checked it out a few weeks ago and came away … Read more

UNDER THE RADAR: Crunching video data and hawking goods in Second Life

Companies that help videographers track the popularity of their clips and another startup that wants to cash in on virtual world economies led the afternoon session at the Under the Radar conference on Thursday.

Cruxy offers to help musicians, break-dance instructors, authors, videographers and other artists sell their work online. In addition, Cofounder Nathan Frietas said the company can track sales data and customer behavior in Second Life as well as other virtual worlds.

Vidmetrix touts itself as a way for professional videographers and marketing execs to determine how their videos are faring on sites, such as YouTube. Vidmetrix, tells … Read more

Under the Radar: gaming in your browser

About a decade ago playing visually rich and enthralling games on your computer required an installation, a reboot, and some considerable horsepower. These days, between lean browsers and speedy broadband connections, people are now able to play something for a few minutes without installing anything. The latest movement in online games is playing them with others, and building platforms and content delivery systems that let fledgling developers share their work with others.

Bunchball is a social gaming service. They integrate multiplayer games into Web sites, as well as branding them to match the look and feel. Bunchball was one of … Read more

Under the Radar: Music 2.0

This morning's presenters on music at today's Under the Radar conference are probably one of the most interesting groups. A few months ago, it would have been just another pitch session, but in light of radio silence day just a few days ago, music on the internet is a big deal--especially what happens to it when RIAA royalty rate increases go into effect next month.

iLike is a social network mixed up with online music. This morning they talked about their Facebook app, along with their integration with Apple's iTunes. iLike's CEO Ali Partovi considers Facebook'… Read more

Webware Live! from Under the Radar [updated]

Update: We're no longer streaming live, but you can catch the recorded video from our earlier session after the jump. To see it, just click the "Read More" link below.

We're broadcasting live from Under the Radar's Media and Entertainment conference this morning. There are two tracks, and we've got our Web cam live broadcasting one of them. For all other posts, just use this link and check back throughout the day for continuing coverage. … Read more

Under the Radar: Adding social networking element to e-commerce

Guiding consumers to products that they actually buy is supposed to be the Web's specialty. Then how come e-commerce growth is slowing down?

In the morning session at Under the Radar on Thursday, four companies explained why their technology would appeal to e-tailers.

The big crowd pleaser was PowerReviews.com, headquartered in Millbrae, Calif. The company aggregates and manages customer reviews. What makes the 26-employee company different, according to CEO Andy Chen, is that it's concentrating on products not typically reviewed on the Web, such as sporting goods, shoes, and backpacks.

"Online stores that want reviews can … Read more

Under the Radar: Video ads are here, now what?

Advertising is an important part of the Internet, but how are content creators and advertisers going to come together to start making money off videos? At Under the Radar this morning four new Web 2.0 advertising companies that specialize in video are trying to figure that out.

Adap.tv is an online video advertising platform that looks at the context of a video to place advertisements. Almost like Google's contextual AdSense program, Adapt.tv reads a video's metadata to figure out what the video is about before serving up an ad that (hopefully) is related. Ads pop … Read more

SlideAware makes PowerPoint a Web 2.0 app

We're big fans of Web-based productivity apps here at Webware, but we also like tools that bring Web 2.0 features, such as easy collaboration and access from anywhere, to the apps we know and use already. Xcellery (see Xcellery review) does that for Excel, and a new app, SlideAware, does a similar thing for PowerPoint.

SlideAware has two components. First, there's a plug-in you add to your PowerPoint toolbar (it doesn't work for Office 2007 yet, so I couldn't test this component). The plug-in lets you zap your PowerPoint presentations directly to the SlideAware service. … Read more