Deal Radar 2008: Entrepreneur Journeys

There was a time when technology venture capitalists would not touch a “content” deal. They only funded pure play technology companies. Gradually, as the Internet industry evolved, the notion of “paid content” brought about a fundamental change, leading to many content deals getting funded. Back in the summer of 2005, as I wrote about the

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Deal Radar 2008: ImageSpan

The world of copyrights and content licensing is a mess on the web. Plagiarism runs amok. People tend to be very cavalier about stealing content. In this installment of the Deal Radar, we will look at a company that attempts to put some structure around the evidently unmanageable content licensing and monetization issue.

Deal Radar 2008: Turbine

Turbine is the largest privately held gaming studio in North America. They have created several popular and massively multiplayer game worlds on the Internet such as The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar, Asheron’s Call, and Dungeons and Dragons: Stormreach. The company has a top-of-the-line technology platform and innovative graphics and has created an active niche in the

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Deal Radar 2008: IVT

Online Video is becoming a powerful business tool, spawning a significant number of innovative companies. My continued interest in the sector stems from the fact that I am very interested in seeing gratuitous business travel disappear. [See my Forbes column, Kill The Business Trip] On this installment of the Deal Radar, I will review IVT,

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Deal Radar 2008: Sportgenic

Sportgenic is a San Francisco-based digital media and technology company that is focused on monetizing sports sites. The company, formerly named Active Athlete Media, was founded in 2005 by Robert Tas. Sportgenic has more than 350 publisher sites in its vertical ad network and 21 million unique users. The company was ranked the #2 sports

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Deal Radar 2008: Akoha

Akoha is an unusual gaming site where players must carry out missions in the real world in order to earn points. Missions may include inviting someone for coffee, giving a favorite book as a gift, or buying someone a meal, all in an attempt to share experiences with people and create a more meaningful world.

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Deal Radar 2008: Mahalo

Mahalo, which means thank you in Hawaiian, is a human-powered search engine founded by former Weblogs co-founder, Jason Calacanis. The site launched in public alpha in mid-2007 and public beta in October 2007. Mahalo focuses on handling requests that are filtered with the help of a team based in Santa Monica, California, to avoid the spam

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Deal Radar 2008: PubMatic

I have watched Ad Networks cropping up everywhere over the last couple of years like mushrooms. How do you manage so many networks, and figure out which ones can make the most money for you if you are a publisher? Enter Pubmatic.