Skype on MySpace /:(

By Vivek | October 17th, 2007 at 04:45 am ET     2 Comments »    

Not a surprising deal, but definitely one that does not make sense as of now. Especially when the mover behind the deal is News Corp/MySpace and not Skype, as we might have expected. News Corp./MySpace today announced partnership with Skype that will bring Skype calling and instant-messaging features to MySpace users. According to WSJ, from November, MySpace users will be able to call people through instant message.

Since Skype does not have any web based look alike for the downloadable instant messaging client, it remains to be seen what form the integration takes. Will it be a simple click to call integration or would it be similar to what Jangl and Jaxtr are offering on other social networking platforms? Integration with Skype Instant messaging part seems out of scope for sure.

As always, depth of the integration into the user profiles would impact the uptake. While taking about MySpace, another factor that needs to be considered is spam accounts. Will this deal result in more fake/spam calls to unsuspecting Skype users that has seen an uptick in the past few days? Eitherway, let’s wait for more details to emerge.

I Want Sandy - Todo and more via email; Hmm

By Vivek | October 16th, 2007 at 03:56 am ET     2 Comments »    

Email is getting lots of developer love these days. Clarizen, Xobni and now Stikkit are just few of the startups working on cool emails addons. While we will talk about Clarizen in another post later today, what we want to talk about is new interesting beta launch from Stikkit, branded as I Want Sandy.

For starters this a virtual Sandy, just in case you were expecting to get some human for hire to help you out on you scheduling and calendaring chores. Getting to the product, concept is pretty simple and straightforward. Next time you want to create a todo, set a reminder, save a phone number, just email  and CC Sandy on it. Although there is a bit of a formatting you need to follow while sending these messages(just as in Twitter), on it’s end Sandy makes sense of this unstructured data and indexes the content appropriately.

The keywords that the app can understand are pretty basic yet powerful. You can easily email in details you want to be reminded about, or want the app to remember, or lookup information you have already stored, or update, or forget, and more. Any appointments you create sending via email end up being in your calendar.

While there definitely is easy to use and saving backed by good concept and implementation, I am not sure if I would end using the app. With todo list already being integral part of my personalized page, I am not sure I would be using email to update it. While Sandy does convenience of updating this todo from your BB or iPhone easily, i haven’t found myself really looking to do that often. Still tools like reQall(review) and I Want Sandy are great productivity apps to use if you get hooked to them.

Opera product launch in 2 weeks. What’s coming up?

By Vivek | October 12th, 2007 at 09:27 pm ET         

Got emailed by Opera earlier today about an important product launch the browser company is making in San Francisco, California on October 25, 2007. The email doesn’t give out much details to what is coming up but does talk about 2 indie bands, The 88 and The Binges, performing on that occasion. You can get more information on that by visiting http://rock.opera.com/. As always, us eastcoasters are automatically excused.

Nirvanix SaaS Storage goes beta

By Vivek | October 12th, 2007 at 09:09 pm ET     2 Comments »    

Competing with Amazon, the next generation storage and content delivery platform Nirvanix is looking to play the buzz game right. Just last month the startup had announced it’s coming out of stealth mode and today Nirvanix announced beta availability of its integrated media transcoding, image manipulation, and file search services.

For brief overview of the core features available at the storage platform - Webservices enabled Internet Media File System backed by dynamic load balancing for peak performance; intelligent uploading/downloading to accelerate access; clustered architecture for enhanced data protection; global namespace for unlimited scalability; Media Transcoding and Image Manipulation capabilities.

Nirvanix has also added couple of interesting new features it’s core set, which include - File Search and Sideloading. Using the File Search API, developers can enable their users to search for files based on file system, metadata, or tag information. Since Nirvanix is geared more towards media files including photos and videos, this type of file search might not work out pretty well for developers looking to enable full text search on office documents or even text files.

Another smart feature that we have not written about before is Sideloading. Imagine viewing a Youtube video that you want to download and store it to your online storage system. Right now you first need to get the file to your local machine and then send up to the online storage space. Not a convenient process, to say the least, that also uses bandwidth twice. With Nirvanix’s Sideloading feature, developers can enable file uploads to Nirvanix system directly from a hosted URL.

With this beta launch, Nirvanix is also claiming to have successfully tested at more than 80 beta customer sites. Let’s see which startup becomes biggest in town backed by Nirvanix’s SaaS storage.

Deal making in mobile space - SendMe gets mbuzzy

By Vivek | October 11th, 2007 at 10:51 pm ET         

Although far fewer in number as compared to web, acquisitions and investments keep happening in the mobile space. Earlier it was Google snapping up Zingku and Jaiku, Utterz raising $4 million, Twitter raising $5 million,…and now mobile-entertainment services startup SendMe has acquired mbuzzy, another community-based mobile-entertainment Web site. SendMe delivers casual games, ringtones and text messaging for mobile users while mbuzzy also does similar stuff with few addons.

SendMe is backed by Spark Capital and True Venture. Buzzwire, which had started off as 4thMedia, is another of Spark Capital’s recent investment in mobile space.