Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Mig33 Moves To The U.S.

We’ve been keeping an eye on the mobile social networking world covering companies such as Zyb, Mocospace, Aka-aki, imity, meetmoi, mobiluck. See our roundup post here. Most of the innovation is occurring outside of the U.S., particularly in Europe. That’s why it’s no surprise to see yet another success story, Mig33, originate outside of the U.S. (the company was founded in Australia). The company has over seven million registered users, nearly all outside of the U.S. Today, however, the company is launching their service in the U.S. They’ve also moved the company here - it’s now based in San Francisco.

Migg33 is a mobile application that lets you chat (AIM, MSN, Yahoo) and send instant messages and emails, make cheaper international phone calls, share photos, connect with friends. The key selling point is that they now offer all of this functionality through the WAP browser (wap.mig33.com) currently available on most mobile phones, which has the added advantage of being accessible on your computer too. However, the WAP interface is rather spartan and chatting on a webpage is time consuming. The downloaded J2ME version makes for a richer experience.

The U.S. launch also includes a new free hosted email feature, allowing U.S. subscribers to send and receive e-mail on their mobile phones. This adds to the photo sharing, chat integration, and cheap calling rates by connecting over VOIP lines of the original application.

It will be interesting to how popular the service in the U.S. considering the differences between European and American cell phone use. Europeans have been more likely than Americans to use cellphones for the internet. Cellphones have continually been more a part of people’s lifestyles outside of the U.S.

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MyQuire Wants Your Collaborative Workplace Business

MyQuire will officially launch their online tool for doing projects at DEMO today. MyQuiore allows users work with “tools they already know,” keep their projects on track, meet with other project members in real time conferences, and connect their projects with their networks.

MyQuires pitch is that instead of forcing people to change their behavior, “MyQuire’s intuitive design and simplified feature set let people work how they want to work.” Users “can spend more of their time achieving their goals and less of it tracking down who’s done what, hunting for the latest version of a document, or finding ways to share files that are too large for email.”

The company has managed a product endorsement from the DEMO organizers; Chris Shipley, executive producer of DEMO said

“I invited MyQuire to launch at DEMO because I’m excited about the breadth of people who could benefit from its technology. MyQuire has a pain killer that will work for everyone: business people, non-profit organizations, MBA students, and more informal groups. It’s a fresh approach to a problem we’ve all lived with for a long time, and I’m delighted to have MyQuire showcasing it at DEMO.”

It’s good to see DEMO participants get personal endorsements on press releases as well for their $18,000 fee time appearing at the conference.

Another busy vertical, but overall it looks like a good product.

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Ouch…mEgo Gets Kicked Out Of DEMO Conference

Well this was inevitable I guess. mEgo has been booted out of the DEMO conference. The reason? They showed their stuff at TechCrunch40 last week. Our coverage of them is here.

That’s a bit rough on the company, since many of the presenting startups at DEMO are already launched and have tons of press out there about them. In this case, mEgo may have simply been the sacrificial lamb in DEMO’s desire to prove a point.

The worst part about the whole ordeal is that mEgo has been told they won’t get the $18,000 back that they paid to participate in DEMO. mEgo says that while DEMO has the right to kick them out of the conference, they don’t have the right to keep the $18k under the contract.

Frankly, this is probably good news for mEgo, who’ll now get far more attention than they would have if they had actually gotten on stage. But it’s also a warning to other startups: Don’t screw with DEMO - they hit back.

Just an aside - mEgo was one of my personal favorites at TechCrunch40. Make sure to check out the service.

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DocuSign Raises $12.4 Million

DocuSign, an eSignature service, has raised a $12.4 million series C led by new investor WestRiver Capital, LLC and their existing investors Ignition Partners, Frazier Technology Ventures and Sigma Partners. It follows a Series B investment of $10 million in April 2006 from Frazier, Ignition, and Sigma. DocuSign, which has been around since 2003, enables companies to get legally binding signatures quickly over the internet instead of over the fax or mail. The whole digital signature business was really opened up during the turn of the century with that passing of the UETA and ESIGN acts, which clarified the legal grounds for electronic signatures nationwide.

docusign_screen.pngDocuSign certifies digital signatures completely over the web, acting as a intermediary who holds the documents and verifies the identity of the signature. To get a document digitally signed, you upload the documents to DocuSign (works with any document you can print), select the parts needing a signature, and create an authentication code for the transaction. DocuSign then sends an email to the recipient with a link to the documents where the signer can log in to their DocuSign account, enter the authentication code, and simply click the signature points to sign the documents. The person’s eSignature (example right) and ID number are then posted in those points of the document, and the signed documents sent back to the sender. There are more details breaking down the transaction on their product page.

Competitors include EchoSign, VeriSign, Entrust and others.

If you have doubts that people are using eSignatures, you should know that, to date, DocuSign has completed over 5 million of them. Their clients currently include Expedia, Land America, RE/MAX, AMICA, Worldspan, Sony, Weyerhaeuser, Yamaha, Tektronix, and Fidelity National

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Exclusive: Podango Juices Podcast Network With Software From GigaVox Media

Podcast network and hosting service Podango is beefing up its service with the purchase of podcast publishing software from GigaVox Media. The content-management system, called GigaVox Audio Lite, allows podcasters to automagically manage the different parts that make up an audio or video podcast, including ads, intros, promotions, and other program material.

Podango, which is based in Bountiful, Utah, hosts 1,300 podcasters across 250 different stations, including Mommycast, Duct Tape Marketing, and the Apple Phone Show (which Podango produces itself). Later this week, it will launch Girls Gone Geek, which CEO Lee Gibbons describes as a “cross between the View and Motorcycle Maintenance.” Something tells me it’s going to do okay. All told, says Gibbons, Podango-hosted shows are downloaded two million times per month, which is up from a mere 20,000 downloads six months ago. He is shooting for 10 million downloads a month by next March. And you thought podcasts were dead.

GigaVox Podcast Management System

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Game On: A Real Alternative To iTunes

It may have taken Amazon a few years, but they got it right: their new music store is DRM free and songs, starting at $0.89/track, are cheaper than at Apple’s iTunes. The top 100 best-selling albums are priced no higher than $8.99.

Songs are delivered in MP3 format, meaning they’ll work on any music player, including the iPod. The store opens with 2 million songs from 80,000 artists represented by 20,000 labels. EMI and Universal are on board. The other major labels have no real choice at this point but to follow, and soon.

A software download is required to actually get songs to your hard drive, but it’s available for both Windows and Mac (with Linux coming). That’s good news - DRM requirements forced Amazon to make their movie download service work only with Windows machines.

Average quality is very high - 256 kbps, which is what iTunes uses for non-DRM songs as well.

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Sugar Publishing Acquires ShopStyle

San Francisco based Sugar Publishing, a social network and group of women-focused blogs that we’ve covered since late 2006, is announcing the acquisition of ShopStyle, an ecommerce site, this evening. The price is not being disclosed.

Sugar says they will integrate shopping into editorial via widgets that allow readers to buy items directly. Combined, the company’s claim 5 million unique monthly visitors.

Sugar Publishing is also changing its name to Sugar Inc. The company is backed by Sequoia Capital and NBC Universal. See our recent coverage of Glam, a competitor.

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RealNetworks to develop socnet around games?

Casual gamers - moms, dads and senior citizens - are the mainstream of the gaming world. So it’s interesting that RealNetworks could be looking to foster community around its RealArcade property, following reports today that it is acquiring NYC-based online casual gaming site Gametrust for somewhere in the region of $50 million. The company, which has already raised nearly $20 million in three rounds, powers some big gaming portals including MiniClip.com and Shockwave.com with its Game Frame platform. The five year-old GameTrust counts TWJ Capital, NJTC Venture Fund, Patriot Capital, CSK Ventures, Topspin Partners, Silicon Alley Venture Partners, Draper Associates and Elon Musk among its investors.

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