Wpisy z January 14th, 2008
Washington, D.C.-based Blackboard said Monday that it has agreed to buy Sherman Oaks-based NTI Group, in a deal that is worth approximately $182M plus an additional $17M in earnout. Blackboard, which develops enterprise software and services for the education market, said it would pay $132M in cash plus $50M in stock, and up to an additional $17M in consideration based on financial targets. NTI Group develops hosted, mass communications systems for communicating with students, including alerts, announcements, and personalized voice messages for students. NTI Group is headed by Robin Richards, the former President of MP3.com, and also includes a number of other ex-MP3.com employees and executives. According to Blackboard, NTI had more than 1,200 contracts for the firm’s notification systems for educational institutions.
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The database maker is planning critical patch updates for a variety of software packages, and ten of the reported threats can be executed without getting a user name or password. Why one analyst thinks Oracle is making it difficult for enterprises to figure out which problems are the most important.
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As advertising sites become more lucrative and fewer domain names are available, companies are getting more aggressive about defending their trademarks. How can you get away with registering Apple.com?
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At a round table event in Toronto, managers from companies such as Tridel and EnWise revealed some of their plans for 2008. Find out how a condo developer is saving $130,000 per year.
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Advanced Micro Devices has announced its 9100E processor, which reportedly uses a third less power than Phenom chips, will ship earlier than expected. But the manufacturer is delying the release of two Phenom processors
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Web surfers could download malicious code from hacked banner ads, even if they are posted to legitimate sites. How the hacking gang uses JavaScript
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Los Angeles-based MySpace and the Attorney Generals of a group of 49 states and the District of Columbia said Monday morning that they are developing a set of rules focused on social networking site safety. The rules include guidance on education and tools for parents, a 24-hour hotline for law enforcement, a number of safety features on MySpace, and the creation of an online safety task force for the industry. Among the safety efforts MySpace said it will implement are automatically making the profiles of 14 and 15 year olds private and protecting them from being contact by adults; defaulting the profiles of 16 and 17-year olds to private; reviewing every image and video uploaded to MySpace before posting; and reviewing the content of Groups. The moves come after a string of high visibility law enforcement cases over the last few years focused on use of MySpace by child predators. The security efforts at MySpace are headed by Hemanshu Nigam, who was previously Director of Consumer Security Outreach & Child Safe Computing at Microsoft, and also served as a Federal prosecutor against Internet child exploitation at the US Department of Justice.
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Los Angeles-based Gorilla Nation (www.gorillanation.com) recently scored $50M in funding from Great Hill for the firm’s online advertising services. The company provides online advertising representation to publishers, and often represents brand advertisers. The company recently hired Christophe Louvion, one of the earliest employees at Shopzilla, as its CTO, and we caught up with Christophe to get some insights into Gorilla Nation. Christophe spoke with Ben Kuo.
For our readers who aren’t familiar with your firm, what is Gorilla Nation?
Christophe Louvion: We bring publishers and advertisers together in the mid-tail section of the market. On one side, you have big sites like Yahoo and MSN. They have a huge audience, but a very loose connection with advertisers. They just get volume, but don’t know what they are buying. On the other side of the spectrum, are very small, very niche sites who don’t have volume. We take the mid-market, and provide a very high volume of page views and ad space, while providing a very targeted audience, and a very good return on advertising.
Online advertising seems to be a crowded space, what’s different about your firm?
Christophe Louvion: I think it’s crowded overall, but it’s not all that crowded in our space. In the mid-tail, the value we bring is connecting advertisers to a very specific demographic. Through multiple web sites, you keep the same concept of a niche.
Can you give us some examples of the demographics you provide?
Christophe Louvion: Say you want to reach a male, 18-20 years old. We work with 600 web sites, representing something like 50 million unique views. Of those, we package and know those websites very well, because we have strong relationships with every one–so we can give you the twelve web sites that really match what you’re looking for…. (more)
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Pasadena-based eHarmony said Monday that it has released a new service which will provide ID verification for its members. According to eHarmony, it has partnered with RelyID to validate age and identity of its members. The online dating and relationships site said the new service will allow members of its services to advertise that their personal information–including first and last name, age, and address–has been verified by the firm. Financial details of the partnership were not disclosed.
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Santa Barbara-based CallWave said today that it has launched a new suite of mobile communications services targeted at professionals, entrepreneurs, and small businesses. According to the firm, its new CallWave Virtual Voicemail service provides voicemail-to-text, mobile call screening, and a messsage portal for users. The firm’s voicemail-to-text service has been available in beta form since June of last year; the release combines that service plus a web-based site for managing voicemails and other features.
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