Last week was mobile video week at Xconomy, with news of ShowYou’s new iOS video browsing app, plus a video news report from a Stanford entrepreneurship conference produced on the iPad 2 by yours truly. But first, a couple of event notices:
—We hope you can join us tonight for the Xconomy San Francisco Spring Open House, 5:00-8:00 pm at our Potrero Hill office.
—We announced our next big networking event, Beyond Mobile: Computing in 2021. At this May 17 evening forum at SRI International in Menlo Park, CA, I’ll be leading an on-stage chat with Calit2 director Larry Smarr, Microsoft eXtreme Computing Group leader Dan Reed, and Bill Mark, the head of SRI’s computing sciences division. This distinguished group will help us figure out what shape computers and computing interfaces might take, given 10 more years of progress at the pace of Moore’s Law.
—For the last few weeks I’ve been playing with beta versions of ShowYou, a social video browser for the iPad and iPhone that officially debuted on April 13. I praised the app for the simple yet powerful way it lets you explore and watch Internet videos (from places like YouTube, Vimeo, and TED) that your friends are talking about on Facebook and Twitter.
—On Saturday, April 9, I spent the day on the Stanford University campus, interviewing student entrepreneurs at the BASES BT E-Bootcamp. This four-day entrepreneurship competition was organized by the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students and Princeton University’s student-run magazine Business Today. I published a video overview including short pitches from six student teams.
—I took a look at TuneUp Media, a Potrero Hill neighbor of Xconomy San Francisco whose software for cleaning up your iTunes music library is catching on fast. Despite the quick uptake, the company is looking to enhance the software with social features that keep users engaged even after they’ve fixed things like missing track names and album art.
—My Friday column was a digital grab bag, with links to 13 fun websites, essays, and mobile apps that I’ve been storing up in my Evernote files.
—Venture capital investments bounced back in the first quarter of 2010, as my colleague Bruce reported. Investments were up 27 percent over the same quarter of 2010. Northern California venture firms led the way, accounting for more than half (52 percent) of the $7.5 billion invested nationwide in the quarter.
—Flipboard, maker of a groundbreaking “social magazine” app for the iPad, said it had collected $50 million in new financing from Insight Venture Partners and other investors. The company also introduced a section of the app dedicated entirely to content from Oprah Winfrey’s OWN network.
—My Seattle colleague Curt Woodward sent two stories our way, writing up San Francisco-based Postlets’ acquisition by Seattle’s Zillow and the official opening of a Seattle office of Zynga—an if-you-can’t-beat-em-join-em move that apparently reflected the trouble the San Francisco-based social game maker has had recruiting engineers from the Northwest.
—In other deals news, Clover Network raised $5.5 million, Tiny Speck raised $10.7 million, Sugar raised $15 million, VideoSurf raised $16 milion, and Jive Software aquired Proximal Labs.
