Deal Radar 2008: InsideView’s Clever Maneuvering

InsideView — headquartered in San Bruno, California, USA and operations in Cincinnati, Ohio and Hyderabad, India—was founded in 2005 by Umberto Milletti and Richard Horn. The company has been featured here before and you can read my interview with Umberto here.

Deal Radar 2008: Lucidera

LucidEra, the on-demand business intelligence solution provider was founded in 2005 by Ken Rudin, John Sichi and Tai Tran. We had featured Ken Rudin, the CEO of LucidEra last year in an interview.

Deal Radar 2008: Groople, Interesting Use of Context

Groople is an online group travel site, which helps with searching, planning and booking group travel. (Read my Interview with Groople CEO Mike Stacy) Groople is different from Expedia and Kayak in that it serves only group travelers, no individuals, and is thus a great focus on a specific “Context“.

Deal Radar 2008: Adap.tv Trying to Tackle the Video Ad Problem

After the success of shopping.com (now owned by eBay), Amir Ashkenazi, stepped into the hairy world of video advertising through his recently founded Adap.tv in Nov 2006. It claims to provide publishers and advertisers the best tool to make video ads more effective without interrupting the streaming flow. [see interview: Cracking the Online Video Monetization

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Deal Radar 2008: Travel Ad Network Executing Flawlessly

Travel Ad Network (TAN) is the leading vertical ad network focused exclusively on travel. It reaches users across 50 websites including Lonely Planet, Kayak, RandMcNally, Skybus Airlines, Groople, TravelHero, BootsNAll, AreaGuides, HotelsByCity, EuropeForVisitors, AirGorilla, and many others. Top advertisers with TAN include American Express, Vacations to Go, Best Western, Netherlands Tourism, Tourism Australia, etc.

Deal Radar 2008: Kosmix+Adify – Potential Google Challenger

Kosmix is a vertical portal startup. Founded in 2006 by Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan, founders of Junglee, this site aims at creating a ‘Home page for every topic’. Featured Kosmix sites are RightHealth, RightAutos and RightTrips focusing on health, autos and travel verticals. They have also been working on other verticals like politics, finance,

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Deal Radar 2008: PlayFirst Plays Casual Games Well

PlayFirst is a leading publisher of casual computer games. Based out of San Francisco, it is focused on creating shared casual game experiences around “lasting original brands” with emphasis on “rich story and character”. Few of the more popular PlayFirst titles include the Diner Dash series, Wedding Dash, Chocolatier and Dream Chronicles. My interview with

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Deal Radar 2008: Facebook Woes Coming?

Facebook is the most popular social networking site providing an interactive space that helps members communicate with “friends”. The site features like ‘Wall’ and ‘Poke’ have created a vernacular amongst the youth population. It was started in February 2004, by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg. “Are we Facebook friends?” has now become a social phenomenon! Angel

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