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Friday, November 20, 2009

Almost Famous: Elemental Technologies’ Sam Blackman

Drake Martinet

elemental_logo

A new feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about.

This week: We caught up with Sam Blackman, CEO of Elemental Technologies at the San Francisco NewTeeVee Live conference. Elemental Technologies hopes to become a major player in the future of online and over-the-air video through its high-performance encoding technology.

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Start-Up Employees Tell All…in 140 or Fewer Characters

Scott Austin

Working for a start-up is hard enough. Trying to wittily describe “the unique entrepreneurial culture that sets their company apart and inspires them to go to work each day”–in 140 characters or less–is equally challenging.

That was the task set by the National Venture Capital Association and job board StartUpHire, which asked for Twitter-esque submissions from start-up employees in celebration of Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Almost Famous Update: Now-Out-of-Beta Brizzly Hires Facebooker and Translates Tweets

Drake Martinet

brizzly-logo

Brizzly, the Web-based Twitter client from Thing Labs, covered in Almost Famous two weeks ago, begins public beta today.

In addition to opening its “expanded” Twitter interface to the world at large, the start-up is offering an on-the-fly translation tool for foreign tweets. And it has hired former FriendFeeder and current Facebooker Ben Darnell.

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Friday, November 13, 2009

Almost Famous: Aviary’s Israel Derdik

Drake Martinet

aviary-eggs

A new feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about.

This week: A Skype visit with, some questions for and a few pertinent stats about Israel Derdik and his high-flying media suite, Aviary, a Web-based media-editing platform that enables users to alter, save and present their multimedia creations, all in the cloud.

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Thursday, November 12, 2009

Start-Up CEOs Gripe About VCs’ Lack of Operating Experience

Scott Austin

Start-up CEOs often spend nearly all of their waking hours building their companies. Their investors, on the other hand, typically appear once a month for board meetings. So it’s not surprising that some entrepreneurs may feel a little resentful toward their venture backers.

That’s somewhat evident from the new survey, “A Seat at the Table,” which canvassed more than 500 VCs and CEOs at venture-backed companies and asked them several questions about their thoughts on boards.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Friday, November 6, 2009

Using Online Tools to Save Time During the Search

Jon Gray

My productivity lapses don’t come from Facebook. My problem is a combination of world news sites and Twitter. Using RescueTime, an online time management tool, I’ve named two productivity goals for myself. One goal sets my unproductive time at less than 90 minutes per day. The other sets my highly productive time at greater than five hours per day.

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Almost Famous: Brizzly’s Chris Wetherell

brizzly1

A new feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about.

This week: A video visit with, some questions for and a few pertinent stats about Chris Wetherell and his creation, Brizzly, a Web-based social media reader.

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Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Peek’s Twitter-Only Device Goes on Sale

Andrew LaVallee

Peek, a New York mobile start-up, has begun selling TwitterPeek, a new device for posting and reading Twitter updates.

TwitterPeek became available on Amazon and Peek’s Web site Tuesday. Its $100 price includes a full keyboard, always-on tweet delivery and nationwide Internet coverage, plus six months of service.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Monday, October 12, 2009

Angel Group Likes Lights, Camera and Action of Indie Films

Tomio Geron

As an experienced tech entrepreneur and angel investor, Rizwan Virk was happy to see a solid return on one of his recent investments after just one year.

But the exit didn’t come from a software start-up or social media company finding a corporate acquirer. Instead, Virk’s quick payoff came from an independent film.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Silicon Alley vs. Silicon Valley

Marisa Taylor

Silicon Valley may be the place to be for Internet startups, but New York is the birthplace of cool, an attribute that comes in handy for launching some tech companies.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Friday, April 10, 2009

Companies That Fight Click Fraud Enjoy the Downturn

Jessica E. Vascellaro

Many things are down during the recession. But there’s a boom in click fraud, the tricks used to make online ads seem more effective than they are. And companies that police the practice are seeing fresh business as Internet concerns seek to hold onto advertisers during the downturn.

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Twitter: Buzz First, Profits Later

Adam Lashinsky

The “Web toy” is hot. Who cares how Twitter will make money?

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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Young Entrepreneurs Bond on the Beach

Caroline McCarthy

They kept their Twitter feeds quiet and their iPhone cameras dormant. Most of them didn’t want their names to be used. There was more than a little bit of paranoia in the air as the guests arrived at last weekend’s Summit Series event, formally the Young World Leaders Summit–not the most modest of names. It was a gathering of about five dozen under-35 entrepreneurs and executives at a beachfront luxury resort outside the glitzy vacation city of Cancun.

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Thursday, April 24, 2008

Public Documents + Shoe Leather Reporting = The Smoking Gun’s Staying Power

Mark Glaser

In a world of social-network widgets, videoblogs and Web 2.0 gewgaws, sometimes it’s the simple things that work best. That’s the lesson of Web 1.0 start-up The Smoking Gun, a simply designed site that relies on public documents and criminal mugshots to bring in boatloads of traffic.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Cash Scarcer for New Technology Firms

Alana Semuels and Michelle Quinn

In recent months, some start-up technology companies have died or gone into comas after running out of money, a possible early sign that the resurgence in venture investment may be coming to an end. File123 is counting its days. Edgeio was edged out. TripUp has fallen. BrightSpot went dark. Firebrand flamed out and Ezmo is no more. Industry analysts say this year will bring a big wave of start-up deaths as the credit crisis gripping the financial markets makes investors cautious in other areas.

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This is a section of the All Things Digital Web site featuring posts from around the Web, from other Dow Jones properties and also original pieces we solicit. The section is now explicitly labeled that it comes "from other Web sites."

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Because the site is wholly owned by Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, we aim to adhere to the journalistic standards of the best of the mainstream media. But, because it is run autonomously as a small online startup, we aim to exhibit the fresh thinking and nimbleness of the best of the new media. We want to be first, and sassy, but also well sourced and accurate. We will offer lots of opinion and analysis, but plenty of fact as well.

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