Tablets: Hot at CES
The CES brings a deluge of devices for reading and surfing the Web: 2010 is tablet time; http://j.mp/5FnNAX
Updates from January, 2010 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
Gerrit Eicker
Que Launched
Plastic Logic finally launched its Que eReader for business people today at the CES; http://j.mp/5Zx3RJ
Gerrit Eicker
Google: Near Me Now
Google could not buy Yelp, but it can outperform it: Near Me Now brings Place Pages to your eyes; http://j.mp/4LXBxV
Gerrit Eicker
Private Equity: Down 68% in 2009
Private equity fundraising hit a 5-year bottom in 2009, down 68%: $95.8 billion across 331 funds; http://j.mp/8pG5VN
Gerrit Eicker
Metaverse
Augmented reality vs. virtual reality? A Metaverse will depend on both technologies; http://j.mp/8h2iT9
Gerrit Eicker
3D Television
A full-fledged 3D television turf war is brewing in the United States; http://j.mp/6lHkjo
Gerrit Eicker
Kindl DX Goes Global
Amazon starts offering its larger Kindle DX eReader internationally on January 19th; http://j.mp/8E1ISi
Gerrit Eicker
Nozzl Media
Robot Reporters: Nozzl Media builds custom, real-time, and local news streams; http://j.mp/52seiq
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Gerrit Eicker
Nozzl: “We create a massive reservoir of information about your community. Our proprietary and third-party software scours your circulation area for content: your own staff’s stories and blog posts, plus other blogs, Twitter posts, photos, videos, podcasts and other user-generated content. The software also analyzes electronically available public records, such as property sales and licensing databases, detects significant new records and adds those to the reservoir. – We create a separate reservoir of classified, text and display advertising. Our system is best-suited for real-time transactional advertising, such as special offers and coupons, delivered to consumers on the basis of their interests or location. Each ad is tagged with one or more keywords that can be matched to consumers who have the same keywords. In addition, smartphones with GPS capability enable our system to alert consumers to nearby deals. – We open gates from both reservoirs. That allows all the content – news and advertising alike – to flow out in a real-time river of bite-sized headlines, images, links and other short-content forms. That river is technically a microblog, the same basic technology that Twitter uses. – We enable the end user to choose only the information that he or she wants: everything within a mile of home, for instance, or anything having to do with job hunting, green living or new restaurants. That information includes not only news, but also relevant in-stream advertising. A click on an item takes the reader to a landing page.”
RWW: “In the end, human reporters and raw robot feeds sound like a great combination. That appears to be what Nozzl is aiming to create by offering its widgets to established news organizations. The company says that a mobile application could be in its future, too. That’s something I’m very excited about. Be it a widget or a mobile app, Nozzl’s robot reporters need more polish before they are ready to win back the hearts of fast-leaving newspaper readers. As a picture of the future, though – Nozzl is very inspiring.”
Gerrit Eicker
Journalists and Business
Picard: Journalists [are] responsible for the operation and survival of their news enterprises; http://j.mp/54pkOh
Gerrit Eicker
Google Phone
Google sells its own Android powered phone directly. But the Nexus One is not revolutionary; http://j.mp/5LfQdx
VB: “The dip in fund-raising, and resulting modest fund sizes, may have a serious impact on investment decisions for several years. As the Wall Street Journal notes, average deal sizes have shrunk accordingly. This could be good news for early-stage startups looking for morsels of funding to get the ball rolling. But it could be disastrous for late-stage players who, facing a still-thawing IPO market, need larger sums to extend their runways.”