Media

Attendio helps you avoid that dreaded circular conversation: "What do you want to do tonight?"---"I don't know, what do you want to do?"---and so on.

More specifically, Attendio is a social-events discovery service that continuously feeds events directly to a calendar program based on specified interests and geographic location.

Launching here at Demo 07, Attendio is not shy about how new it is--its tagline is "seriously beta." (Speaking of names here at Demo, can we talk about that? Attendio, Yodio, Vringo ... the names sound to me like a series of … Read more

Like so many mobile trends, GetaBuz has its genesis in the creativity of teenagers.

GetaBuz licenses hit songs from major record labels and allows users to record personalized voice mail greetings and messages over the song, which cost $1 to $3 each.

It's a smoother way of doing what teens had already figured out--they wanted to send clips of songs to their friends from their mobile phones, Buz Interactive Co-founder Steve Ehrlich told me.

I got a quick demo, and the interface is pretty smooth. Just choose a song and record a message--up to 30 seconds--with any microphone. No … Read more

A number of big conglomerates will show extended-length commercials during the heavily watched Super Bowl on Sunday. Some dot-com companies have chosen to take a different approach. Six Web sites have made ads and posted them on YouTube with the aim of starting a viral campaign and challenging the expensive advertising blitz set for the upcoming weekend.

"Hiring a well-known actor or athlete isn't the best use of our marketing dollar," Michael Gersh, vice president of sales and marketing at Multiply.com, said in a statement. "Rather than a true celebrity, we elected instead to rely … Read more

In my opinion, there's been a tad bit of a YouTube backlash recently, as evidenced by the number of video start-ups that have been stressing their commitment to professionally created content. In other words, no cat videos. (Isn't it funny how "cat videos" has become synonymous with "amateur YouTube content?") For example, there's MediaZone, which we wrote up earlier today. But here's another video start-up, Dave.tv, that's trying to help amateurs organize and present their video creations in a slicker way.

No, the CEO is not named Dave; rather, he … Read more

Instead of clogging up a MySpace page with multiple video boxes, Panjea.TV hopes users will opt to build their own channel.

The Panjea people are billing it as a kind of self-produced MTV, where you pick videos from your favorite artists and put them in a single window that you can update whenever and from wherever.

Depending on the awesomeness of your channel, other users could decide to embed your channel on their own site, or create a channel themselves.

It's similar in concept to SplashCast, which also debuted here at Demo 07. Panjea.TV is free and … Read more

Yesterday, I posted about the "Consumer-Generated Media" showcase at AlwaysOn's event in NYC. One of the products featured was ClipSync, which mashes online video with chat features to make it possible for you and your friends to discuss what you're watching in real-time. Another one of yesterday's featured products, part of a "Technology Enablers" series, is working with a similar concept. That company is MediaZone.

Thus far, MediaZone has made a name for itself by hosting pay-to-watch TV content. The company has inked deals with major sporting events like Wimbledon to make coverage … Read more

There's no shortage of video on the Web, but how to separate the grain (feature films) from the chaff (videos of your cat)?

Less than 1 percent of films produced worldwide actually get distributed in the U.S., according to Jaman.com. Hence the new product Jaman, showing at Demo 07 just now.

Jaman cuts out the middleman and lets independent North American filmmakers and South American and South Asian filmmakers get their cinematic works online. For a fee of $1.99 to rent and $4.99 to buy, people can then sift through and watch any of the … Read more

Vringo bills itself as a video ringtone service, but don't let that fool you. My theory is that the company uses the term to convince traditional media types--like those at AlwaysOn's conference this week, where I heard about Vringo--that it's a viable business model for mobile marketing. "Ringtone," after all, is an easily-recognized buzzword, and it's pretty well-known that tech-savvy kids are willing to shell out money to pay for ringtones of the hottest Top 40 tracks. (I might not be a kid, but I admit that I did pay for a vintage Super … Read more

From January 29 to 31, the AlwaysOn OnMedia NYC conference filled up the luxe Mandarin Oriental Hotel in midtown Manhattan with "disruptors," but not the kind that would be running around trashing the penthouse suite (at least that wasn't my impression of the crowd). These were, rather, the companies that "blogazine" AlwaysOn chose as its "AO Media 100," the year's featured start-ups that are shaking things up along the fault line between traditional media and the Internet. Most of the panels and presentation series, as well as the AO Media award winners … Read more