Archive for March, 2011
Thursday, March 31st, 2011
 BALTIMORE, MD – TidalTV, a video advertising, optimization, and yield management solutions provider, has raised more than $30 million in financing led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from other existing investors Comcast Interactive Capital and Valhalla Partners.
The company says the new funding will support the aggressive expansion of TidalTV’s technology into new global markets throughout 2011 and the deployment of its proprietary ad decisioning solutions into new multi-screen applications for advertisers, media agencies and publishers.
TidalTV launched as a technology platform in late 2007. It was founded by Advertising.com co-founder Scott Ferber.
The investment nearly doubles TidalTV’s last financing, allowing the company to build momentum in the rapidly growing video advertising category and to deliver advanced capabilities in targeting the right ad, to the right person, at the right time, across platforms. eMarketer estimates that by 2015, 76% of internet users, or 195.5 million people will be watching online video each month. In the same period, it predicts online video advertising spending will surge from $1.97 billion to $5.71 billion.
“Our focus on bringing math and science into the branded advertising space has been well received, and truly illustrates the demand for more efficiency and effectiveness in brand marketing,” said Ferber, chairman & CEO of TidalTV.
“I have never experienced such eagerness to invest into the growth of a company by existing investors, so much so that we could not accommodate all the demand. This infusion of capital will advance TidalTV’s position as a leader in video-based advertising solutions for advertisers and publishers through investments in premier human capital, expansion into new global markets and the development of innovative product suites.”
TechJournal South is a TechMedia company. TechMedia presents the annual conferences:
SoutheastVentureConference: www.seventure.org
Internet Summit: www.internetsummit.com
Digital East: www.digitaleast.com
Digital Summit: www.digitalsummit.com
Tags: Advertising.com, Baltimore, Comcast Interactive Capital, financing, MD, New Enterprise Associates, Scott Ferber, TidalTV, Valhalla Partners
Posted in Internet/New Media, Maryland, Money, Potomac | Comments Off
Thursday, March 31st, 2011
 RALEIGH, NC – Computer programs are incorporating more and more safety features to protect users, but those features can also slow the programs down by 1,000 percent or more. Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a software tool that helps these programs run much more efficiently without sacrificing their safety features.
“These safety features – or meta-functions – can slow a program down so much that software developers will often leave them out entirely,” says Dr. James Tuck, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State and leader of the research team that designed the new tool. “Leaving out those features can mean that you don’t identify a problem as soon as you could or should, which can be important – particularly if it’s a problem that puts your system at risk from attack.”
Historically, these safety features have been incorporated directly into a software program’s code, and are run through the same core – the central processing unit that serves as the brain of a computer chip – that the program itself uses. That is what slows the program down.
Researchers at NC State have developed a tool that takes advantage of multi-core computer chips by running the safety features on a separate core in the same chip – most chips currently contain between four and eight cores – allowing the main program to run at close-to-normal operating speed.
“To give you some idea of the problem, we saw the application we were testing being slowed down by approximately 580 percent,” Tuck says.
“Utilizing our software tool, we were able to incorporate safety metafunctions, while only slowing the program down by approximately 25 percent. That’s a huge difference.”
This multi-core approach has been tried before, but previous efforts were unwieldy and involved replicating huge chunks of code – a process that was time-consuming and used a great deal of power. The new tool, Tuck says, “significantly streamlines the safety feature work being done by other cores.”
Tuck stresses that the tool functions automatically, and does not involve manual reprogramming. In fact, Tuck’s team found that the tool is more effective than manual reprogramming for at least some applications, and is far less labor intensive.
The software tool is implemented as a plug-in for the Gnu Compiler Collection of software tools, and Tuck’s team is working to fine-tune and extend the tool to support a wider range of applications and meta-functions. “We plan to release the first version of this tool as open-source software later this spring,” Tuck says.
Tags: Dr. James Tuck, meta-functions, multi-core computer chips, NCSU, software tool boosts efficiency, University Tech
Posted in Carolinas, Internet/New Media, IT, North Carolina, University Tech | Comments Off
Thursday, March 31st, 2011
 By Scott Klososky
Social media/networking and the collection of tools they have spawned have moved solidly into the strategy toolbox for organizations. If you want to be the Zen master of social tools, then first understand the need to implement elements of social that will both drive revenues, and cut back office costs.
Too many people think of social tools as only being for sales and marketing when in reality, there are valuable uses in the back office. With that thought firmly implanted, there are a handful of social tech concepts that are mandatory for every organization today:
1. Building Rivers of Information – One of the least talked about dynamics of social technologies is the massive amount of real time information flying around the Web – on any subject. If you are a CPA, doctor, lawyer, baseball player, or basket weaver for example, there are megabytes of data that could be critical to your performance uploaded each day.
The reality is that you will harness maybe 3 percent of what could be valuable to you. Social tools give us the ability to aggregate and filter this explosion of information so that it can be funneled into your brain. Every organization can institutionalize this process by teaching employees which information sources are valuable, and what tools can be used to aggregate and filter them to a manageable state.
It is a knowledge economy after all, so the smarter teams win. Ergo, use social tools to harness relevant and timely industry information, and you will be smarter.
PS. Don’t use the excuse that you do not have time to digest this information. That is like saying you don’t have time to be relevant.
2. Organizational Voice – Every organization can benefit from building a powerful Web-delivered organizational voice. There are many channels through which this voice can be delivered, Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, podcasts, text messages. The organizational voice gives entities a way to create a conversation with constituents so that they can earn the right to grab their mindshare. The only way to earn that right is by providing a valuable flow of content through the voice. The three biggest mistake companies are making when using tools like blogging, Twitter and Facebook to connect with customers/prospects/clients are these:
1. Lack of a specific and human sounding tone. Every communication through whatever channel you use must sound human, and have a tone that is interesting, intriguing, or unusual. You don’t want to read boring things so why would you think your constituents will?
2. Mistakes with the frequency of delivery. If you deliver content too often, you annoy people and they begin to tune you out.
Even if your content is great, it becomes overwhelming and people just stop paying attention. If you deliver content too infrequently, they lower the perceived value in their minds. What is the perfect frequency? It depends totally on the audience, and the type of content, there are no hard and fast rules.
3. The mix of content is all wrong. As you send content through the organizational voice, you must be mindful of delivering nuggets that are valuable. For example, if you fill 80 percent of your content with sales related information it appears to be spam If you do nothing but deliver your opinions, people might get tired of the editorial.
A valuable stream of content includes a mix of stories, facts and figures, and links to valuable resources, opinions, and product or company information. Get the recipe wrong and it is akin to dumping too much cayenne pepper in the soup.
3. Online Reputation Management (ORM) – Regardless the size, or type of business you are involved in, an online reputation is forming – like it or not. Internet users (which now number nearly two billion) are increasingly sharing their opinions about service providers and retailers through conversations and comments online. Every time they mention your company, or your products names, these comments become searchable. That means that when any prospective customer searches to find information on you, they will find these comments. For this reason, organizations must have today a formal ORM program. The steps are simple, build a listening process, document and engagement policy, and then implement a measuring system.
4. Crowdsourcing – Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to get work done cheaper, faster and with more innovation! That is the promise of crowdsourcing. There are somewhere north of 75 sites on the Web that now assist people with the crowdsourcing process (CrowdSPRING, 99designs, logo tournament, Innocentive, mturk, etc.) Learning to tap into the Internet herd to get work done that traditionally was sourced in house, or by local vendors is a strategic advantage. The quick way to learn how to use this tool is simply to dive in and start experimenting. The risk is low and the rewards are tremendous. The crowdsource market is growing quickly, now is the time to give it a try.
For extra credit, go back and examine these social tech concepts and note that two can directly help the front end revenue generation, and two will help with the back office operation, thus fulfilling the promise mentioned at the beginning of this article. There are too many leaders that still believe that social technologies equal Facebook and Twitter. The reality is that every company can use the four concepts listed above to get a fast return on the investment of their time. You might see them as a luxury right now, but they will soon be mandatory if you want to stay in business.
Scott Klososky, a former CEO and author of the new books, Enterprise Social Technology and The Velocity Manifesto, specializes in having the vision and ability to see trends in emerging technologies, which allow him to be a thought leader who applies his skills to help organizations thrive, leaders prosper, and entire industries move forward. His unique perspectives on technology, business culture, and the future allows him to travel the globe as a speaker and consultant, working with senior executives in organizations ranging from Fortune 500 corporations to universities and nonprofits.
Website: www.EnterpriseSocialTechnology.com, www.TheVelocityManifesto.com, Blog: www.TechnologyStory.com, Twitter: @sklososky
Tags: Business advice, making social technologies relevant to business, Scott Klosoky, Viewpoint
Posted in Business advice, Columns, Internet/New Media, Marketing, social media, Viewpoint | 1 Comment »
Thursday, March 31st, 2011
 NEWPORT NEWS, VA – Dilon Technologies Inc., a medical imaging solutions company, has raised $875,000 from a $1.5 million mixed securities offering, according to a regulatory filing.
According to the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 39 investors purchased securities. The company raised $2.2 million from nearly 200 investors in April 2010.
Dilon Diagnostics designes, makes and sells medical imaging solutions based on cooperative R&D with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator and medical universities. Its Dilon 6800 is a high resolution compact gamma camera that images small body parts: breast, thyroid, spot bone scans.
TechJournal South is a TechMedia company. TechMedia presents the annual conferences:
SoutheastVentureConference: www.seventure.org
Internet Summit: www.internetsummit.com
Digital East: www.digitaleast.com
Digital Summit: www.digitalsummit.com
Tags: Dilon Technologies, financing, imaging solutions, Medical Device, Newport News, SEC filings, VA
Posted in Medical Device, Money, Potomac, Virginia | Comments Off
Thursday, March 31st, 2011
 ORLANDO, FL – How are cyber criminals snaring their victims? A new study from cloud anti-malware firm Panda Security says they’re using videos, installers, “cracks” and social media most often.
According to the research, 25 percent of sites used video and multimedia content as bait; 21.63 percent referred to installers or program updates; 16.53 percent claimed to contain cracks and keygens and 16 percent were social media URLs.
A crack is a small software application that serializes a piece of commercial software and enables users to operate any software application. It also enables hackers to illegally modify software, such as remove protectors like the trial/demo version, serial number, CD checks and any other software protection method.
“Users continue to fall victim to malicious links offering to take them to an exciting video or the new episode of their favorite TV show. This technique has become a weapon of choice for hackers as it requires minimum investment and attracts a large number of victims,” said Luis Corrons, Technical Director of PandaLabs. “Most of these sites download Trojans onto users’ computers without their knowledge. Therefore, a good security solution capable of blocking them proactively is extremely helpful for users who, in most cases, can’t distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘malicious’ websites.”
eBooks are in fifth place on the list comprising 5.25 percent of occurrences, followed by Peer-to-peer (P2P) downloads and adult content. The ranking rounds out with sites offering software programs, operating systems, browsers, videogames and antivirus software (all of them used in less than three percent of cases). For detailed graphical analysis of these ranking, please visit: press.pandasecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/URLTable.jpg and press.pandasecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/URLGraph.jpg
Most Blocked URLs in Q1
The three most blocked sites by Panda Security in Q1 2011 were three Brazilian web pages. The first was a video released by the Japanese consulate showing the rescue of a group of tsunami survivors; the second, a video supposedly showing a short circuit causing the death of 15 people; and the third supposedly contains footage of a police officer being fired because of his Internet activities.
“Attackers exploit hot topics and users’ morbid curiosity,” explained Corrons. “Who isn’t interested in watching the latest footage of such a devastating natural disaster as Japan’s recent earthquake?”
Popularity Ranking
The study shows user preferences in relation to the malware lures used. When taking a look at P2P applications, Panda found that the most popular program is Ares, followed by Torrent and eMule. As for social networks, Facebook tops the list ahead of Messenger, Tuenti and MySpace.
The most searched for operating system is Windows, followed by Mac and Linux. Finally, Explorer still dominates the web browser market, with Firefox and Chrome trailing behind.
“There are no hidden secrets when it comes to finding out if a website is legitimate or not, but it is becoming increasingly complicated for users to differentiate them. Unfortunately, many users don’t know if their security system is good enough to protect their systems, which is where a lot of these problems originate,” said Corrons.
TechJournal South is a TechMedia company. TechMedia presents the annual conferences:
SoutheastVentureConference: www.seventure.org
Internet Summit: www.internetsummit.com
Digital East: www.digitaleast.com
Digital Summit: www.digitalsummit.com
Tags: cracks, FL, hackers, Orlando, Panda Security, social media, video
Posted in Florida, Internet/New Media, IT, Security, social media, Studies, surveys, reports | Comments Off
Thursday, March 31st, 2011
 KANSAS CITY, KN – Google (Nasdaq:GOOG) will build its first high speed broadband network called Google Fiber in Kansas City, Kansas in 2012, the search engine firm says. The company disclosed the choice on its official blog
More than 1,100 cities vied for the much coveted Google Fiber project, which will provide Internet speeds of 1 gigabit a second, more than 100 times faster than most current U.S. broadband connections.
Google said, “In selecting a city, our goal was to find a location where we could build efficiently, make an impact on the community and develop relationships with local government and community organizations. We’ve found this in Kansas City. We’ll be working closely with local organizations including the Kauffman Foundation, KCNext, and the University of Kansas Medical Center, to help develop the gigabit applications of the future.”
Other cities may also get their chance at having Google bring ultra high speed broadband to their municipalities, according to Goggle’s Vice President of Access Services, Milo Medin. Medin wrote in the blog post that “Over the coming months we’ll be talking to interested cities about the possibility of us bringing ultra high speed broadband to their communities.”
Many cities in the Southeast submitted proposals seeking to be Google’s first choice for the Google Fiber project.
TechJournal South is a TechMedia company. TechMedia presents the annual conferences:
SoutheastVentureConference: www.seventure.org
Internet Summit: www.internetsummit.com
Digital East: www.digitaleast.com
Digital Summit: www.digitalsummit.com
Tags: Google blog, Google choses Kansas City for highspeed broadband, Google Fiber, Kauffman Foundation, KCNext, Milo Medin
Posted in Google, Internet/New Media | Comments Off
Thursday, March 31st, 2011
DURHAM, NC –  Appia, which operates the world’s largest open smartphone app store, has received a new $10 million C round invesment from Silicon-Valley-based Venrock. The company, which was listed at number 15 on the Wall Street Journal’s recent list of the top U.S. venture-backed companies, raised $15 million last fall.
According to some reports, Appia’s C round may still be open.
Venrock Vice President Dev Khare, vice president has joined the company’s board of directors.
Appia also has partnered with Opera Software, the top Web browser for smartphones, and will power the Opera Mobile Store for more than 100 million users. It also partners with Telcel, Mexico’s largest operator, on the Ideas Appstore for Telcel’s 64 million subscribers.
“We are extremely impressed with this team’s vision and experience within the Web and mobile ecosystems, as well as Appia’s success powering app stores for mobile operators, device OEMs and mobile software partners around the world,” said Khare. “For established Web and mobile publishers as well as emerging application developers, Appia is fast becoming a key distribution channel to consumers globally.”
“Independent app stores will continue to be a major driver for the global premium mobile content and applications opportunity,” said Vikrant Gandhi of Frost & Sullivan. “An open strategy is important to help support the growth of the smartphone applications industry by providing better choices for consumers, and by giving multiple options to content owners for their distribution strategy.”
Frost & Sullivan predicts that total downloads from smartphone app stores are expected to increase globally from 9.6 billion in 2010 to more than 120 billion by 2015.
TechJournal South is a TechMedia company. TechMedia presents the annual conferences:
SoutheastVentureConference: www.seventure.org
Internet Summit: www.internetsummit.com
Digital East: www.digitaleast.com
Digital Summit: www.digitalsummit.com
Tags: Appia, Dev Khare, Durham, financing, Frost & Sullivan, NC, smartphone stores, Venrock, venture capital, Vikrant Gandhi
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off
Wednesday, March 30th, 2011
 Allison Fabella - SEO & Social Media Manager, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution By Allan Maurer
ATLANTA – Allison Fabella joined the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), the Southeast’s largest daily newspaper, at what she calls in what is certainly an understatement, “An interesting time in the newspaper industry.” Formerly with Prominent Placement, an Atlanta search marketing agency, then at Primedia, where she managed SEO for sites such as AutoGuide and NewHome Guide, she moved to the AJC about three and half years ago.
Fabella directs the strategic and tactical SEO and social media efforts at the AJC, including its Access Atlanta entertainment guide, the AJCHomefinder, Cars, and Jobs sites.
Fabella admits that it was “A real cultural shift” for reporters and editors who had been doing their jobs a certain way for a long time to adapt to someone coming in and telling them how to write with search engine optimization in mind.
“Some have really adopted it because they recognize it gets more people reading their stories on the web,” she says. “Others are still getting used to it.”
It goes somewhat against journalistic principals to repeat things such as proper names and specific locations in both headlines and leads, yet doing so is better for SEO.
Replacing newspaper jargon with terms people actually search for is one suggestion she makes. “Take a look at a headline. Does it have phrases human beings actually search for?” Most people, she says, “Don’t use “slain,’ or ‘precipitate’ or ‘motorist.’ People don’t Google for those terms. They look for ‘rain, murdered, locations.”
On top of everything else, writing that is SEO friendly can be directly contrary to Associated Press Style, the newspaper standard, or the long held basic elements of newspaper story construction.
I remember an editor of an online news site I worked for some years ago telling me to change subheads so they didn’t refer to the following paragraph or repeat its copy. Yet SEO rewards a certain amount of repetition that makes it clear to search engines what is important in the story. It can be difficult to get print-trained journalists to change their ways.
“It’s a big shift for people who went to J-School 40 years ago,” says Fabella.
Mostly, however, she says her efforts are well received and she gets a good deal of support from the papers editors.
Getting social media off the ground
Lately, says Fabella, “We’ve been paying a lot of attention to getting our social media strategies off the ground. Social media and the news work nicely together. There is value in being able to move information out to the community in ways we haven’t before.”
Not only that, social media, she notes, provide a “Two-way avenue,” that allows users to provide breaking news tips and contribute to crowd-sourcing of stories. The AJC has about 35,000 followers on its main Twitter account at this writing.
She says people in the community will tweet a tip such as that they see firetrucks at a given location.
“We’ll tweet that a team is on the way to the scene then link to the story once it’s out. It’s an opportunity to show the community we’re listening.”
No story level commenting
One thing the AJC has eschewed is story-level commenting. “We couldn’t monitor them well enough. When comments are anonymous, people don’t always behave well. We do have commenting on our blogs and the editorial staff is responsible for monitoring those.”
On Facebook, where people are not anonymous, “They generally behave better in comments,” she adds.
Fabella is among the digital industry thought leaders participating in the upcoming Digital Summit at the Atlanta Cobb Galleria May 16-17. She’ll be discussing “Five Mistakes you can make in SEO.”
Common mistakes of SEO
The most common? “Accidentally blocking the entire site, closing it off from search engines.” In the WordPress blogging system, for instance, checking the privacy setting can simply prevent search engine spiders from even crawling a site. We actually experienced that at TechJournal South when we switched to WordPress and discovered it when our traffic was unnaturally low for a short period.
Another: Building sites in Flash. While lots of creative web designers love Flash, search engines can’t read it. So all those clever graphics can be self-defeating.
A third: People make mistakes in their site maps that actually direct search engines to the wrong place.
Tags: Allison Fabella, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Digital Summit, five common mistakes of SEO, headline writing, journalism and SEO, SEO, social media
Posted in Events, Facebook, Georgia, Internet/New Media, social media | Comments Off
Wednesday, March 30th, 2011
 While more than 90 percent of companies that provide mobile services say they want to incorporate mobile analytics into their business analysis, less than 20 percent currently do so, suggesting a potentially huge uptick in business for companies that offer mobile analytics tools, according to the latest report from Heavy Reading Mobile Networks Insider .
“In a recent survey, 92 percent of organizations that use, sell or provide mobile services indicated they wanted to incorporate mobile analytics to improve process efficiencies and eliminate costs,” notes Denise Culver, research analyst with Heavy Reading Mobile Networks Insider and author of the report.
“Increasingly, service providers consider mobile analytics as vital to achieving cost savings and productivity enhancements. Mobile analytics answers various questions, including how many people use particular operating systems, the types of devices they use, how long they spend on sites, and more.”
Key findings of Mobile Analytics: Strong Growth Potential Ahead include:
- More than 80 percent of brands do not use mobile analytic tools, leading to inaccurate data on campaign performance.
- One benefit of mobile analytics is enabling operators to intelligently personalize tiered pricing plans to better meet subscribers’ needs, while increasing ARPU.
- Mobile analytics is being used in several ways, including prioritizing spending across the marketing mix.
- Over the next 18 to 24 months, mobile analytics will grow the most in North America, with Asia/Pacific and Latin American markets picking up speed.
- A major challenge for the industry is the lack of standardization between mobile browsers and operating systems.
To request a free executive summary of the report, or for details on multi-user licensing options, please contact Jeff Claudino at claudino@lightreading.com.
A list of companies included in this report.
Tags: Heavy Reading, IT, Mobile analytics poised for growth, reports, telecom
Posted in Internet/New Media, IT, Mobile, Studies, surveys, reports, Telecommunications | Comments Off
Wednesday, March 30th, 2011
 CARY, NC – Bandwidth.com, which says it is the nation’s fastest growing phone network, and provider of Broadband.com business Internet services, has closed a $22 million private equity financing from Carmichael Partners. Carmichael is a growth equity investment firm that was co-founded in 2010 by former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and veteran private equity investor Brian Bailey.
Martin, a Charlotte native, is a graduate of both UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University. Carmichael has offices in Charlotte and Washington, DC. Bailey was a managing partner at Charlotte-based Carousel Capital, which focused on buyouts.
The funding enables Bandwidth.com to continue the company’s expansion into key strategic areas, such as the recent acquisition of 911 emergency services provider dash Carrier Services, and accelerate the already rapid growth of its small and medium business focused services, such as Phonebooth, Bandwidth.com’s cloud-based phone service, which doubled its customer base in the last quarter alone.
David Morken, CEO of Bandwidth.com, said, “Carmichael is an ideal investment partner for us due to its industry expertise and its ability to help us capitalize on future growth and strategic opportunities.”
The company acquired dash Carrier Services in February and announced a landmark commercial deal with the Verizon wireline companies in January. Bandwidth.com completed a record-setting 2010, as it added thousands of new customers and became the sixth largest provider of phone number based services in the United States. In total, Bandwidth.com revenues will exceed $100 million in 2011.
The company’s business Internet unit, Broadband.com, boasts nationwide coverage in more markets than AT&T, Verizon and Qwest.
TechJournal South is a TechMedia company. TechMedia presents the annual conferences:
SoutheastVentureConference: www.seventure.org
Internet Summit: www.internetsummit.com
Digital East: www.digitaleast.com
Digital Summit: www.digitalsummit.com
Tags: Bandwidth.com, Brian Bailey, broadband, Carmichael Partners, Cary, David Morken, ex-FCC chair, Kevin Martin, mobile, NC, Phonebooth
Posted in Carolinas, Internet/New Media, IT, Mobile, Money, North Carolina, Telecommunications | Comments Off
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