Archive for April 18th, 2008
- In: German | Gimmick | Marketing | Nails | Pre-Launch | Startup
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No one knows much about what German startup Popula is building. But German tech blogs can’t stop writing about their pre-launch video marketing gimmick.
The Popula home page says (in German) only “Popula is an event calendar of all for all. Whether party, concert or children’s birthday. Here you will find what you are interested. Register now and test!” People who’ve email them for more information hear nothing back. All visitors can do is enter their email address and wait for more information. Or, they can read the Popula blog, which has just three entries.
Two of those three are the videos linked above, titled The Early Adopter Song! (Part 1) and The Early Adopter Song! (Part 2), featuring songs about early adopters and beta testers, along with images of bloggers, entrepreneurs and other people in the startup community.
German bloggers can’t stop posting the videos and speculating about what the service might be. And all those links are creating enough buzz and driving enough traffic to the unlaunched site that it’s almost as large as some competitive startups (Alexa thinks it has a larger reach than Socializr, for example). And since the company won’t respond to email inquiries, the speculation grows.
Would the same gimmick work in the U.S.? No – people might think it was entertaining but it likely would be drowned out”
Tools For Your Video Career
Posted on: April 18, 2008
“Very few would argue with the statement that video is hot right now. From the cultural phenomenon of YouTube, through to the rise of live streaming services, money is pouring into startups from content creators through to service providers. Getting into video isn’t as easy as setting up a blog, so here’s some advice of which direction to head in.
The basics
Obviously you’ll need a camera to get started in video; if you’re a Mac user you might have a cam built in, but if not web cam’s are fairly cheap. Alternatively people like Chris Pirillo stream from a professional video camera, but even a second hand older model can also work, for both live and recorded shows to computer. For camera effects, CamTwist for the Mac is free and fully featured with effects such as text, clocks, image overlays, Picture in Picture, and much more. Fix8 (our coverage here) offers cartoon style overlays if animation or funny faces are more your thing.
Recording
You’ll have two ways of recording a video: local or to the web. Local could directly on to a camcorder through to Quicktime or something in-between. Quicktime Pro (between $30-$45) does the recording and it’s a quick and easy solution. To the web means recording your video directly to a website; the advantages are that you don’t have to upload it and it’s available immediately,”
“Rumors about the acquisition of Farecast are accurate – in a very brief blog post CEO Hugh Crean says they’ve been acquired by Microsoft.
SeattlePI, which first broke the rumor last week, says the price tag was $115 million. While the two companies are an understandable fit given their proximity and partnership over MSN Travel, SeattlePI reports that Farecast entertained multiple offers before accepting Microsoft’s.
Farecast is an airfare pricing comparision tool that also uses a predictive algorithm to recommend when you buy your ticket. So the idea is to show the user not just who has the cheapest ticket, but whether or not waiting might make sense as well. The site has also guarantees tickets at its predicted prices for an extra charge. As of this past fall, it also began helping travelers determine the fairness of hotel pricing.
The deal follows the acquisition of competitor SideStep by Kayak in December.
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CrunchBase Information
Farecast
Farecast image
Website: http://www.farecast.com
Location: Seattle, Washington, United States
Founded: January 1, 2003
Acquired: April 17, 2008 by Microsoft for $115M
Farecast offers a unique service by providing its users with intelligent airfare predictions. Founded in 2003, Farecast has since gained very healthy funding from several venture funds totaling $20.6 million. Unlike other travel companies, Farecast… Lea”
- In: 72 | buyer | carat | diamond | for | No | Oddly Enough | Reuters
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“(Reuters) – Global auction house Sotheby’s failed to hammer off a 72.22-carat, ‘D’ flawless white diamond at its Asian sales last week in a possible sign of weakness in the global diamond trade.
The large diamond which had a pre-sale estimate of $10-12 million, attracted a final bid of HK$73 million ($9.24million) that fell short of the reserve price and went unsold, said Sotheby’s press officer Rhonda Yung.
The diamond was later sold to a private buyer for an undisclosed sum, Sotheby’s said. Yung added that several international buyers had bid for the stone but ‘confusion over exchange rates’ had caused the auctioneer to retract some bids and may have dampened buyer enthusiasm.
The Sotheby’s stone was the third largest ‘pear-shaped’ diamond ever auctioned globally, and was of exceptional quality given its size, symmetry and esteemed ‘Type IIA’ rating, given only to the most brilliant of white ‘D’ color diamonds.
Rare polished diamonds achieved all-time highs per carat at sales in Geneva late last year, fuelled by high commodity prices and strong demand in emerging economies like China and the Gulf States.
The poor Hong Kong result however suggests the market for top tier gems may be suffering from global economic weakness.
The stone was auctioned in Hong Kong on the back of”
- In: $1.4 | million | Oddly Enough | Reuters | Robbers | steal | watches | Worth
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“(Reuters) – Armed robbers stole designer watches worth 700,000 pounds in simultaneous daytime raids on two upmarket department stores in Manchester on Wednesday, police said.
Two men carrying claw hammers smashed display cases at Selfridges, while a third filled a bag with watches worth 400,000 pounds.
At the same time, two men wearing motorcycle helmets attacked a security guard at the nearby Harvey Nichols store, broke cabinets with hammers and stole watches worth 300,000 pounds.
Both stores in the city’s Exchange Square shopping district were open at the time, but no customers were injured, police said.
The five men escaped in a stolen red Ford Transit van before switching to an unknown getaway car.
Detective Sergeant Dave Turner, of Greater Manchester Police, said: ‘This incident has left one man with minor injuries and a number of other people extremely distressed.”
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“(Reuters) – The Olympic torch landed amid tight security in the Thai capital of Friday, the latest leg of its world tour, with police saying they were ready to stop any attempt by anti-China activists to put out the flame.
Several groups angry at Beijing’s human rights record and its rule in Tibet are planning demonstrations in Bangkok, but will not face any opposition from police as long as they remain orderly, Thai Olympic chief General Yuthasak Sasiprapa said.
‘If they are peaceful, it’s OK,’ he told Reuters. ‘But we will not tolerate any violent or illegal protests. The torch and runners will be tightly escorted by police patrols and motorcycles all along the route.’
However, security concerns and anger at Beijing’s March crackdown on unrest in Tibet caused an iconic Buddhist temple in central Japan to pull out as the starting point of next week’s torch relay in that country.
Zenkoji temple, in Nagano, said it had received 1,000 letters from across Japan calling for its withdrawal from the April 26 parade after the crackdown in Buddhist Tibet, in which monasteries were raided and monks arrested.
‘We needed to think about security, being a temple with national treasures and many visitors,’ a temple official said.”
- In: driving | Reuters | technology | Texting | Time | unplug | while
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“(Reuters) – Sharon Sarmiento knew it was time to unplug when she realized she was blogging in her dreams and hearing imaginary instant messages.
For Ariel Meadow Stallings, it was the hours lost while surfing the Internet that left her feeling like she had been in a drunken blackout.
Both women are part of a new grass-roots movement in which tech geeks, Internet addicts, BlackBerry thumbers and compulsive IMers are deciding to wrest back control of their lives by daring to switch off — if only for a day.
‘I think there is some common-sense part of us that says, ‘Wait a second. This has gone too far. We are too plugged-in,” said Sarmiento, a 30-something virtual business owner and professional blogger in Alabama.
‘It’s like our mind is going in a million different directions all the time. So taking a day when you are completely cut off from technology forces you to re-engage with the real world,’ she said.”
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“(Reuters) – Teams of university scientists backed by U.S. government funds hope to grow new skin, ears, muscles and other body tissue for troops injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Defense Department said on Thursday.
The $250 million effort aims to address the Pentagon’s unprecedented challenge of caring for troops returning from the war zones with multiple traumatic injuries, many of which would have been fatal years ago.
‘We’ve had just over 900 people, men, some women with amputations of some kind or another since the start of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq,’ said Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. Many have also suffered burns, spinal cord injuries and vision loss.
‘Getting these people up to where they are functioning and reintegrated, employed, able to help their families and be fully participating members of society, this is our task,’ he said.
Under the initiative, the Pentagon launched the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine made up of two teams — the first led by Wake Forest University in North Carolina and the University of Pittsburgh and the second led by Rutgers University in New Jersey and the Cleveland Clinic.”
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Angry Chinese burn French flag outside Carrefour | International | Reuters
Posted on: April 18, 2008
- In: Angry | burn | Carrefour | Chinese | flag | French | International | outside | Reuters
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“(Reuters) – Dozens of young Chinese, angry at disruption of the Olympic torch relay in Paris, protested outside a Carrefour branch in east China on Friday, setting fire to a French flag, waving banners and shouting slogans, local media said.
There have been small protests at the French retail giant’s stores in several Chinese cities, including Beijing, in the past week, but the latest outburst in the eastern coastal city of Qingdao came after state media moved to cool down the nationalistic fervor.
Chinese Internet users are calling on consumers to boycott Carrefour, which they accuse of supporting pro-Tibetan independence groups seeking to disrupt this year’s Beijing Olympics.
The journey of the Olympic torch around the world has been dogged by protests, largely over Chinese rule in Tibet, where a wave of anti-government unrest erupted in March.
In Paris, numerous protests and attempts by activists to snatch the torch prompted Chinese security officials to extinguish the torch several times and put in on a bus.
Local media photos showed the protesters holding up banners that read ‘Boycott France, Support the Olympics’ and ‘Oppose Tibet independence, Love the motherland’.
They waved red Chinese flags and shouted slogans, attracting a big crowd of onlookers. One photo showed a man”
- In: Act | Caught | Caught in the Act | Drew Barrymore | People.com
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“Drew Barrymore, staying under wraps (in a grey coat) while preparing for takeoff at Los Angeles International Airport en route to New York City.
• Justin Timberlake, sharing a late dinner with best pal Trace Ayala and seven others at Nobu inside Las Vegas’s Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. ‘Everyone was laughing and hanging out,’ an onlooker tells us about the group – which feasted on sushi and rock shrimp. After dinner, it was time for more partying – this time at hot spot LAX at the Luxor, though Timberlake didn’t stick around for long at all. After he walked in, the deejay announced his arrival, causing the singer, who wanted a low-key night, to walk right out. But Timberlake still had time for a drink, stopping at the more exclusive Noir Bar before heading home.
• Fergie, modeling her latest purchase – a grey trench coat and handbag – immediately after shopping at a Calvin Klein store in New York City.
• Renée Zellweger, snapping up some toys (including a 100-piece erector set) at FAO Schwarz in New York.”
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