Startup Bridges the Gap Between Internet-Connected TVs and Mobile

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: MOVL

Quick Pitch: MOVL has created a proprietary technology platform that connects users on mobile devices and Internet connected TVs to allow for quick deployment of apps.

Genius Idea: Atlanta-based MOVL is a startup dedicated to making social TV apps a reality. Using its homegrown MOVL Connect Platform, the company is focused on building apps for Google TV, Samsung Internet TV and PCs that users can interact with using an iPhone, BlackBerry or Android device.

Lots of startups are looking at creating content for the various connected TV platforms on the market, but MOVL’s approach is interesting in that it actively works with smartphone devices for user input.

At CES 2011, MOVL took home the $200,000 grand prize in Samsung’s Free the TV Challenge for its social TV game, WeDraw. WeDraw is like a TV version of Pictionary or Win, Lose or Draw. Users connect their smartphones to the app and then take turns drawing words on their handsets for others to guess. What the user draws on the iPhone or Android device shows up on the TV.

MOVL has also created an app called WeTeli. Dubbed a “social video jukebox,” WeTeli lets users transmit videos from YouTube to a Google TV or Samsung Internet TV. Users can vote videos up or down, adjust a queue and add comments right on the screen.

MOVL seems to position WeTeli for use in a bar or other public space, but we think the living room component works well too. Yes, most connected platforms can access YouTube natively, but being able to control or create a queue from a smartphone is likely going to be a better user experience than trying to navigate TV remote control. Likewise, the fact that multiple people can contribute content gives this particular app an edge.

One of the problems for would-be TV app developers is the fragmented nature of the connected device space. The lackluster response from consumers to Google TV only underscores how complicated this space is. Platforms need companies like MOVL to create compelling content that can convince consumers to tune into the connected living room, but on the flip side, the app companies need to choose the right platforms for their wares.

We like the promise of what MOVL is offering for social TV. We’d love to see the company look at extending it platform to work on more devices (Boxee, Roku and maybe Sony’s various platforms).

What do you think of social TV apps? Let us know.

Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

View the original article here

Startup Lets Music Fans Request Radio Play via Facebook & Twitter

Remember the old days, when you used to call in to request that the DJs over at KXPY play “Kiss From a Rose” on the “Phat 5 at 9?? Well, you no longer need to dial to request, as startup Spins.FM has made the process super simple via a new web service.

The service, which launches in public beta today, is pretty easy to use. Simply visit the Spins.FM site, search for the song you want, choose your location from a map, and the service is able to find a list of local stations. Choose a station, and either post a request to that station’s Twitter or Facebook Wall — all from within Spins.FM.

According to David Baker, founder of Spins.FM, the service has already enlisted artists like Mike Posner, Bryan J, Mann and Travis Porter to test out the service with customized artist pages. Spins.FM will also soon be working with Jive Records artists –including Britney Spears (the service had received more than 1,400 requests for “Hold It Against Me” before Spears’s page had even gone live).

Baker cites Posner as a particular success story — his page went live back in April, at which time his song “Cooler Than Me” hadn’t been picked up by any stations. Three months later, the page had 14,692 unique visitors, and the song was ranking quite well on the Billboard U.S. pop radio charts.

Baker realizes that Spins.FM was not the sole reason for the song’s success, but he does think that it helped the jam get early spins on the radio.

Starting today, any artist can attempt to mimic Posner’s success by signing onto the service for free — features like custom design and metrics will come with a fee, though. Request pages can also be embedded on websites and featured as a tab on Facebook.

At this juncture, you may be wondering: “Who the hell even listens to the radio? What good does that even do for artists?”

According to Baker, “Despite the popularity of Internet radio among fans, from a business perspective, terrestrial radio is still the driving force behind paid iTunes downloads and demand for nationwide shows and appearances. With Spins.FM artists and labels now have the ability to use social media to drastically increase radio play at a fraction of the cost of traditional radio promotion.”

Adam Farrell, VP of Marketing at Beggars Group, would tend to agree. “In general, I’d say that no matter how much we think all music discovery happens online these days and is what everyone talks about, the silent majority out there still listens to the radio.”

Still, while we can see this service being a boon to established musicians and those on major labels — and we like that any artists can add themselves to the roster — we wonder if it will be of any use to those artists who don’t generally get radio play.

Kip Berman, lead singer of the band The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, says that it’s hard for indie bands like his (which is signed to Slumberland Records) to get on the radio. “It’s actually a really big deal for a band like ours that doesn’t normally get on those kinds of playlists,” he adds, joking that his grandma habitually lobbies for the band to get on the radio. “So if a DJ gets a Comic Sans e-mail from someone named Kaye requesting Pains,” he says, “well, her grandson says ‘Thank you!’”

We wonder what effect Spin.FM will have on the careers of bands not yet in the Britney Spears firmament, or if it will be a more useful marketing tool for established musicians alone.

Photo courtesy of Flickr, João Pedro, uai!

View the original article here

Movie And TV Recommendation Startup Inveni Closes $483K Funding Round

Minnesota-based startup Inveni announced today that it has closed a $483,333 seed funding round led by a group of Silicon Valley investors, who asked to have their identities remain confidential. Be that as it may, the latest round of funding brings Inveni’s total to $1.7 million.

Inveni is a free web service that serves up movie and TV recommendations based on a user’s unique tastes. How does it work? Think of it as technology akin to that which drives Netflix’s personalization and recommendation features. Inveni’s software assists you in creating a customized “Taste Profile” by enabling you to share the preferences you’ve already established on sites like Amazon or Hulu. Speaking of Amazon, Inveni founder Aaron Weber told me that the startup is being advised by former NetPerceptions executives, the makers of the collaborative filtering software that drives Amazon’s recommendation engine.

Though Inveni’s technology draws obvious parallels with Netflix and Amazon, Weber said that the two services essentially rely on an algorithm to aggregate taste preferences and serve recommendations, and Inveni differs from this — sort of. The service has used a bot to crawl other sites on the web that offer user-generated content recommendations (i.e. sites that let users recommend movies and TV shows to each other) and it’s incorporated this data into its own database. Which doesn’t really sound Kosher, but we’ll let it slide. Just this once. And unlike the fully automated algorithms, Inveni users can publish the TV shows and movies they’ve watched, which leads the site to ask their friends and other Inveni members what they should check out next.

Update: Weber says that this crawling is one component of the recommendations and explains that staff, contractors, and the site’s users establish the majority of connections. The crawling is intended to help Inveni staff make recommendations faster.

The startup will initially remain focused on movies and TV, but says plans are in the works to expand beyond Hollywood — potentially to books and music.

Founded in 2008, Inveni debuted its service at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in September 2010. Since then, it has remained in beta, but Weber told me that he hopes to launch officially this spring.

View the original article here

Mobile Health Startup Massive Health Gains $2.25 Million

Massive Health, a Dogpatch Labs startup co-founded by former Firefox Creative lead Aza Raskin and Sutha Kamal, just announced $2.25 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, Felicis VC, Greylock Discovery Fund and Mohr Davidow Ventures as well as unnamed angel investors.

In the same mobile health space as apps like Nike + and Jane McGonigal’s Social Chocolate, Massive Health aims to bring “the kind of innovation we expect from the Internet world to healthcare.” The co-founders write on their blog that they aim to incorporate elements of crowd-sourcing, game mechanics and social networking into helping someone stay healthy, “We are talking about tight feedback loops and deep insight into the interface which is your body.”

Co-founder Raskin says that the company is still in stealth because trying to change people’s behavior is a really hard problem and they don’t want to set expectations too high.

What he does tell us is that they will be focusing on mobile apps as most of what they are doing, “There are many companies out there in the wellness space, what we’re trying to do is take all the knowledge of of big data and data geekery, of social and social gaming, of fantastic consumer products and apply it to health problems, to the 15% of patients that are costing the US health care system 90% of its costs.”

Massive Health will be using the money for new hires and building out product, “Healthcare moves more slowly than most companies in tech do and we want to make sure we have the leeway to build great product.”

The company plans to come out of stealth sometime this year.

View the original article here

As Rummble’s CEO Is Ousted, The Story Of A European Startup Unravels

Rummble, one the UK’s oldest location-based reviews and social network which actually pre-dated Foursquare, has had its CEO removed by the board and now faces a radical shift away from it’s consumer-facing service of four years towards a Business-to-Business future.

What we know on the ground right now is that CEO Andrew Scott has departed the company; the existing staff remain in place and Rummble, while maintaining its web site and smartphone apps, is set to move forward towards a B2B strategy which is not white-label, but based on leveraging its core technology.

Over the past week TechCrunch Europe has been delving into the story of why Rummble ended up in this situation, and where it goes from here. I have been covering Rummble for over 5 years. I had them pitch at startups events even before I joined TechCrunch and I’ve written about 45 posts mentioning them in the last three years. So I guess I feel I know the company quite well.

So – to be blunt – what the hell happened?

Read the rest of this entry »

View the original article here

Congratulations Crunchies Winners! Twitter Takes Best Startup Of 2010

This year’s fourth annual Crunchies Awards have just concluded, and we’re happy to say that it was an overwhelming success. For those who weren’t at the event or watching our livestream, we’ve included the list of nominees and winners below. Our most sincere congratulations to the winners and to all of the nominees as well. It was an incredibly tight race for many of the categories, and it’s safe to say that everyone on this list is at the top of their field.

We’d like to take a moment to point out Twitter’s win for “Best Overall Startup Or Product”, the first time the company has won a Crunchie in this category. Twitter has become an indispensable part of social communication and a key ingredient in the fabric of the web. And congratulations to Groupon’s Andrew Mason, who won for CEO of the Year; Mark Pincus, who took Best Founder of the Year, and Quora, which took Best New Startup in 2010.

Best Internet Application
Chartbeat
Greplin
Pandora (winner)
Rdio (runnerup)
Ujam

Best Social App
Cityville
Dailybooth (winner)
Foursquare
GroupMe
Twitter (runnerup)

Best Social Commerce App
Blippy
Groupon (winner)
Jetsetter
LivingSocial
One Kings Lane
ShopKick (runnerup)

Best Mobile App
Bump
Chomp
Google Mobile Maps for Android (winner)
Hashable
Instagram (runnerup)

Best Location Based Service
Facebook Places (runnerup)
Foursquare (winner)
Gowalla
SimpleGeo
Uber

Best New Device
Boxee Box
Google Chrome Notebook
iPad (winner)
iPhone 4
Kno
Xbox Kinect (runnerup)

Best Technology Achievement
Blekko
Google Self-driving Cars (winner)
Hunch
Palantir
Qwiki (runnerup)
Word Lens

Best Design
1000memories
about.me (runnerup)
Airbnb
Flipboard
Gogobot (winner)
Qwiki

Best Touch Interface
Flipboard (winner)
Fotopedia Heritage iPad app (runnerup)
Osmos
Pulse News Reader
Sencha Touch
Swype

Best Bootstrapped Startup
Addmired (iMob) (winner)
Beluga
Easel
Fast Society
Instapaper (runnerup)
Techmeme

Best Enterprise
37 Signals
Buddy Media (winner)
CloudApp
inDinero
Millennial Media (runnerup)
Salesforce

Best International
Crivo
PCH International
Soluto (runnerup)
ViKi (winner)
VNL
Wonga

Best Clean Tech
Coolerado
Kopernik (runnerup)
MicroGreen
Puralytics
Smith Electric Vehicles
SolarCity (winner)

Best Time Sink Application
Angry Birds (runnerup)
Cityville (winner)
Netflix streaming
Quora
StumbleUpon

Angel of the Year
Jeff Clavier, SoftTech VC
Ron Conway, SV Angel (runnerup)
Michael Dearing, Harrison Metal Capital
Chris Dixon, Founder Collective
Mike Maples, FLOODGATE
Paul Graham, Y Combinator (winner)

VC of the Year (individual)
Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz
Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital
Jim Breyer, Accel Partners
John Doerr, Kleiner Perkins
Yuri Milner, DST (winner)
Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures (runnerup)

Founder of the Year
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks
Dennis Crowley, Foursquare
Jack Dorsey, Square (runnerup)
Kevin and Julia Hartz, Eventbrite
David Karp, Tumblr
Mark Pincus, Zynga (winner)

CEO of the Year
Dick Costolo, Twitter
Reed Hastings, Netflix
Drew Houston, Dropbox
Andrew Mason, Groupon (winner)
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook (runnerup)

Best New Startup or Product of 2010
Flipboard
GroupMe
Instagram
Quora (winner)
Square (runnerup)
Uber

Best Overall Startup or Product of 2010
Facebook
Groupon (runnerup)
Quora
Twitter (winner)
Zynga

And a special thanks to our sponsors, including Tagged, Microsoft, MailChimp, SecondMarket, Red Bull and Ustream.

View the original article here

As Rummble’s CEO Is Ousted, The Story Of A European Startup Unravels

Rummble, one the UK’s oldest location-based reviews and social network which actually pre-dated Foursquare, has had its CEO removed by the board and now faces a radical shift away from it’s consumer-facing service of four years towards a Business-to-Business future.

What we know on the ground right now is that CEO Andrew Scott has departed the company; the existing staff remain in place and Rummble, while maintaining its web site and smartphone apps, is set to move forward towards a B2B strategy which is not white-label, but based on leveraging its core technology.

Over the past week TechCrunch Europe has been delving into the story of why Rummble ended up in this situation, and where it goes from here. I have been covering Rummble for over 5 years. I had them pitch at startups events even before I joined TechCrunch and I’ve written about 45 posts mentioning them in the last three years. So I guess I feel I know the company quite well.

So – to be blunt – what the hell happened?

Read the rest of this entry »

View the original article here