Gatcha! - Massive Multiplayer Online distribution platform for games

Netlog launches Gatcha!, a cross-network social game distribution platform

by Robin Wauters on October 29, 2009

http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/10/29/netlog-launches-gatcha-a-cross-network-social-game-distribution-platform/

By launching Gatcha!, the company clearly stresses the social role of gaming in bringing people together. Gatcha! has been developed to build on something new: it is a distribution platform which aims to make games social, distribute them on the web, and entertain and bring people together through a new way of communicating. Gatcha! will thus not only be present on Netlog, but can and will also be perfectly integrated on other platforms (Facebook, MySpace, HI5, etc…).

Gatcha! will be a large MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) game with global rankings and levels and will also include 3rd party games (including branded games). The principle is that you can win from someone in one game, lose in another, and in this way reach a balanced ranking.

$10.9M for wireless multimedia system - Dilithium Inc.

Dilithium lands $10.9M for wireless multimedia systems

Dilithium Networks a PETALUMA, Calif. company, provider of converged video services for wireless internet and mobile applications, has brought in $10.9 million of an $18.1 million round of equity and securities, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Petaluma, Calif., the company is backed by CM Capital Investments, Deutsche Bank,Infocomm Investments, Jafco Ventures, Motorola Ventures and U.S. Venture Partners. The company has now raised close to $44 million in capital to date, including $8 million bagged in June.

http://www.dilithiumnetworks.com/

Small cap start-ups into the hands of longer-term investors

Annie's note: do you think this is a good idea? Offering VC holding (private start-up equity) in the stock market for investors to buy the stock? It seems the VCs want to dump their mistakes into the stock market for small investor like you and I to buy. What do you think?

VCs Look Beyond Wall Street’s Short-Term Mindedness

OCTOBER 8, 2009, 12:57 PM ET

By Scott Austin

When will Wall Street go long?

Getty Images

The venture capital industry, driven batty by Wall Street’sincreasingly short-term mindedness, may not wait for an answer.

Venture firms depend on a vibrant initial public offering market to sell off smaller companies to institutional investors who are willing to take a long-term position in them. That’s hardly happening anymore. While market regulations and consolidation among investment banks are partly to blame for the IPO sadness, VCs have also pointed their fingers at Wall Street for failing to steer small-cap start-ups into the hands of longer-term investors.

To wit: Accounting and consulting firm Grant Thornton this week updated its November report, “Why are IPOs in the ICU,” that cut to the heart of how market changes caused underwritten IPOs to be closed to 80% of companies. While the updated report is mostly similar save for some revised charts, Grant Thornton does offer this nugget after talking to “key market participants”:

“We have interacted with management and portfolio managers of a number of classic, long-term investment firms, including Capital Guardian, Delaware Asset Management, Kaufman Funds, T. Rowe Price and Wasatch Advisors, that invest in small cap companies. These investors confirm that the current stock market model forces Wall Street to cater to high-frequency trading accounts at the expense of long-term investors, and that Wall Street is increasingly out of touch with the interests and needs of long term equity investors.

“Specifically, we have heard that the quality of research on Wall Street has deteriorated dramatically while, in comparison, institutional investors’ quality of in-house research is now “much better.” We also have heard that more investment oriented portfolio managers are more likely to be treated as “C” accounts (Wall Street may rank accounts as “A,” “B” or “C”; most resources are given to the so-called “A” accounts).”

What is the venture capital industry doing about this? The National Venture Capital Association has been encouraging venture capitalists and their portfolio companies to use as underwriters boutique banks instead of bulge-bracket firms they say largely won’t handle IPOs of $50 million or less, which is what most venture-backed companies need to fuel their growth. This also means connecting with investors willing to hold stock for years instead of flipping it for a quick profit.

Others are taking a more hands-on approach. InsideVenture, for example, was started up last year by venture capitalists to play matchmaker between venture-backed companies ready to go public and long-term institutional buyers. It holds conferences in which these investors can meet one-on-one with the companies and perhaps invest in them before a public offering. These investors benefit by getting a better shot at the kinds of companies whose IPOs in recent years have been steered to short-term traders by investment banks.

It’s unclear, however, how well that effort is working. In March, one of the people behind InsideVenture, Chuck Newhall, a veteran VC and co-founder of New Enterprise Associates, said the firm’s debut conference didn’t attract enough of the buysiders like mutual funds to make it a true hit. This week, InsideVenture sold its business to SecondMarket, an operator of a private-company stock exchange that is also seeking to help VCs liquidate their holdings.

Grant Thornton proposes the industry go further. In its report, the accounting firm suggests creating a parallel opt-in public market that would be regulated but open to all investors like the current stock markets. It would be supported by market makers or specialists who would commit capital, and would be priced in quote increments at 10 cents or 20 cents, which “would bring sales support back to stocks and provide economics to support equity research independent of investment banking.” Further, to discourage day trading, investors couldn’t execute direct electronic trades in the market, instead using brokers who would earn commissions and be incented to phone and present stocks to potential investors.

Video editing tool - eyespot

www.eyespot.com

Upload your video to Eyespot and use its tools to edit it and publish it on other sites.

Multi-tiered video solutions model utilizes different styles of video to address the varying needs and budgets of businesses small and not so small. And our innovative video distribution solutions help deliver the right message, to the right audience, in the right way.

On December 19, 2008, video production company called PixelFish announced it has acquired online video editing company called Eyespot.

http://www.eyespot.com/Solutions/

2009 Horizon Report – Cloud Computing

Specialized data centers that host thousands of servers — has created a surplus of computing resources that has come to be called the cloud  (Horizon Report 2009).

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Working Definition of Cloud Computing (2009) states: “Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on- demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”  

Cloud computing has transformed information technology (IT) infrastructures with its capability of solving large-scale problems, hosting client applications and data storage, and billing by consumption. Cloud computing makes it possible for almost anyone to deploy tools that can scale on demand to serve as many users as desired. To the end user, the cloud is invisible. The applications are always available for use and the technology supporting it doesn’t matter, as long as the usera get their work completed.

There are four deployment models in the cloud computing environment: public, private, community, and hybrid (Sun Microsystems, 2009).

There are three different cloud delivery models: Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as Service (IaaS).

The emergence of cloud-based application is causing a shift in IT technology. Educational institutions, government sectors, private and public companies are taking advantage of this shift and aligning their businesses with the new technology.

References:

http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2009/

http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/

Welcome, you will learn something new here!

This is all about Coffee Latte and Venture Funding. I travel all over to drink coffee and collect information on start-up companies receiving funding. The data shows the trend, and where Venture Capitals are spending their money. 

Drinking Latte while I go all over the Internet for data.

Annie will bring you billions of dollars data through her LnVF blog!