Wednesday, August 10, 2011Namesake's Latest Project, Chill, Makes Video SocialLos Angeles-based Namesake, the startup focused on real-time conversations and chats, has embarked on a new project, the firm said Wednesday, focused on social viewing of videos. Namesake said its new project--Chill-allows users to socially view videos in a synchronized way. The app, which requires Facebook to run, allows people to communicate in real time around synchronized, streaming video. Namesake said the project came out of an experience started by the livestream of President Obama, Mark (More info...)
posted on Wednesday, August 10, 2011(Full story)
NASA Boosts Private Space Near-Space Flight FirmsNASA said Wednesday that it has selected seven companies to integrate and fly technology payloads, for its commercial, suborbital reusable platforms, including four firms in Southern California. NASA said that Masten Space Systems, Virgin Galactic, and XCOR--all based in Mojave--plus Whittinghill Aerospace, based in Camarillo, were among the seven companies. The total worth of the two year contracts was $10 million. The awards were made as part of the Flight Opportunities Program, managed out of (More info...)
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Cocodot Adds Free Electronic InvitesAmong other news this week, Los Angeles-based Cocodot, the online invitations site started by former MySpace exec Shawn Gold, opened up a free tier to its invitations service, allowing users to now send out up to 1,000 online cards and invitations to others. Previously, the invitations site required users to pay for electronic invitations, along with its professionally printed invitation cards. The site also looks to be expanding its horizons, after funding and a new CEO, saying on the site that (More info...)
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Hulu Plans Launch In JapanLos Angeles-based Hulu said Wednesday that it is planning to head to Japan, in the first international launch of the video service. According to Hulu's SVP of International, Johannes Larcher, the service plans to launch a subscription offering in Japan later this year. Hulu has not revealed its pricing plans on the new subscription service. Hulu said the new service will include options to view films and television shows on PCs, TVs, mobile phones, and tablets. The company said it has opened up (More info...)
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Solarflare Bundles With Force10Irvine-based Solarflare, the developer of high speed, low latency 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) adapters, has partnered with data center networking switch provider Force10 Networks. Force10 said this week that it is in a joint marketing agreement with Solarflare, which will bundle Solarflare's adapters with its top of rack data center switches. The bundle will be available through Force10's authorized distributors. Financial arrangements between the firms were not announced. Solarflare recently re (More info...)
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SG Biofuels Wins Indian Petroleum FirmSan Diego-based SG Biofuels, the biofuels firm backed by Life Technologies, has inked a deal with a petroleum country in India. According to Bharat Renewable Energy Ltd., a joint venture of Bharat Petroleum, it has initiated a program with SG Biofuels to develop and deploy the firm's Jatropha seed technology. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. The two said that the deal will eventually include the deployment of more than 86,000 acres of Jatropha using SG Biofuel's hybrid seeds. SG (More info...)
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Boingo Names Fandango's Davis To BoardLos Angeles-based Boingo Wireless, the Wi-Fi network operator run by David Hagan, said today that Chuck Davis, the former CEO of Fandango, and EVP at Comcast Interactive Media, has joined the company's board of directors. Boingo said the addition of Davis will help it as its continued to grow the company. Davis was Chairman and CEO of Fandango until its acquisition by Comcast in May of 2007, then served as EVP at Comcast Interactive Media until June of this year. He also served as President and (More info...)
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Interview with Chris Lyman and Corey Brundage, SendLove.toThe last time we spent much time chatting with Chris Lyman and Corey Brundage, they were at Los Angeles telephony software firm Fonality, busy getting their employees set up in a full blown, mixed-martial arts (MMA) "fight club". Since then, the two left to start a brand new startup, SendLove.to (www.sendlove.to), which launched Tuesday, focused on allowing users to rate public figures in news stories, blogs, and elsewhere. To get the story behind how they went from the world of telecom to the (More info...)
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textPlus Adds Free Numbers In CanadaLos Angeles-based GOGII, the text messaging app developer behind textPlus, said Tuesday that it has started offering up free phone numbers for texting in Canada. The firm, which is headed by former JAMDAT Mobile co-founder Scott Lahman, said that the new features will allow users in Canada to have free, unlimited texting with anyone, whether they use textPlus or not. textPlus runs on Android and iOS, and allows users to send and receive text messages, without requiring a text messaging plan on (More info...)
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Steelhouse Signs Cooking.comLos Angeles-based Steelhouse, the behavioral targeting firm backed by Ron Conway and Geocities' founder David Bohnett, said Tuesday that Cooking.com has been using the firm's technology to ramp sales of its online site. SteelHouse claimed that Cooking.com has been seeing increased incremental lift of its sales of up to 500 percent from using its products. Steelhouse develops technology to discern the kinds of shoppers who are visiting e-commerce sites, and using retargeted ads to pull those shop (More info...)
posted on Wednesday, August 10, 2011(Full story)