The Financial Posts's David George-Cosh sums up the market battle between Vancouver' Destiny Media and Toronto's Yangaroo after both companies issued press releases earlier today.
One of the more interesting developments in the radio business right now is the process by which new music travels from record labels to radio stations.
For the most part, whenever the latest single gets released by a label, the song is transferred digitally and decrypted over a secure Web site. It is then configured to be streamed over the air. Amazingly, the market is cornered by two Canadian companies – Toronto’s Yangaroo Inc. and Vancouver’s Destiny Media Technologies Inc.
Both have been battling for market domination ever since music labels started to sniff around their technology, and lately the race has become a “who-can-patent-their-technology-first” dash to the finish line. In the meanwhile, both have lobbed a pair of multi-million dollar lawsuits over patent infringement and defamation at each other. One thing to keep in mind that these are not big tech companies; Destiny Media and Yangaroo are both trading as penny stocks.
Destiny Media announced that it received a “Notice of Allowance” from the US Patent & Trademark Office over one of its digital music distribution patents while Yangaroo reacted swiftly through a press release. “There will be no impact whatsoever from the recent allowance of Destiny Media Technologies Inc.’s U.S. patent application on our intellectual property rights,” said Yangaroo’s president and CEO. “None of our two granted U.S. and Canadian patents, our pending U.S. patents, or our $15 million infringement and $25 million defamation claims against Destiny will be affected.”
Today's press release exchange has heightened the tensions between the two companies rather than solving the remaining issues. It will be interesting to see how Destiny Media’s patent allowance will ultimately factor in their claims.
Destiny Media Technologies, Inc. is a leader in developing easy-to-use tools for distributing digital media through the Internet. The company's... [more]
YANGAROO's patented Digital Media Distribution System (DMDS) is a leading secure B2B digital delivery solution for the music and advertising... [more]
If you have an existing application built on Amazon Web Services (AWS), then this could be a great opportunity for you: Amazon is offering $100,000 in cash and AWS credits and a potential investment offer from Amazon to the winner of its 2008 AWS Start-Up Challenge.
You can submit your application by October 10th, 2008 at this link. The judging panel will review the applications and select five finalists based on: how AWS services were used, originality of the idea, how well it address a need in the marketplace and its potential long-term success. For the final round, contestants will be flown to Seattle by AWS where they will also get an opportunity to pitch to VCs, network with Amazon executives and finally get featured at the AWS Start-Up event.
All qualified entries get a $25 AWS credit as well. However, the contest is only open to US-based entities.
Contract position. Programming background needed: strong ActionScript, PHP, JavaScript, MySql, maybe Ruby. Experience connecting Flash to databases, plus a sense of design and/or ability to work with supplied design and apply art direction. Please tell us about you and send links to sites you've worked on and details of what you did. Thanks.
Planning and strategy, branding and envisioning, database marketing, visual identity, creative concepting, art, design and writing, environmental... [more]
Vancouver's Sitemasher introduced today the full availability of its SaaS website management platform and announced that they have partnered with PEER 1 for a tailored managed hosting solution. Sitemasher combines and intuitive website builder, content management, analytics, search engine optimization and website hosting all within a single platform.
Sitemasher is built around the four primary roles in advanced Web design and development: the business or site owner, site designer, information technology expert and marketer or content person. Players in these roles often operate in silos causing problems as a site moves from vision through development. Sitemasher is a collaboration platform with an intuitive interface that makes the most cutting-edge website elements simple to implement and update.
Disclosure: Sitemasher and PEER 1 are sponsors of Techvibes.com.
Sitemasher is a SaaS-based platform for building, managing, and optimizing sophisticated websites. By simplifying the website management... [more]
Explore the possibilities of the Internet, without the problems. A full solution web hosting provider, PEER 1 offers North America's most reliable... [more]
We are living in a virtual world. Able to connect with more information and more people on a daily basis than ever before. I can sit in my home office in the early morning, Skype with someone in New Zealand, scan ten twitters, check out my friends' Facebook status, write a blog post, load up my customized iGoogle page with RSS feeds ... all before I've put my shirt on and had my second cup of coffee.
But something is missing in that existence. The physical presence of other humans. As we walk through our increasingly digital days, it's so important to make time for ol' fashioned analog relationships. That's why grassroots events like the Banff Venture Forum are so important.
To be clear, I didn't attend the whole event last week (October 2 and 3) at the Fairmont Banff Springs. We (the guys at CurveDental.com, where I'm CMO) booked a table to hear Terry Matthews, founder of Mitel, Newbridge Networks, and a boatload of other companies, pontificate about being a billionaire on Friday night. Luckily, that's not what he did ... Terry had some great pragmatic advice for being successful (in both his speech and the 15 minutes I spent with him afterwards):
Anyway, the stories of the companies hooking up with the VC's lining up to invest are important, but more fascinating are the people behind them. It was great to see the winners of the Banff Venture Forum awards get so excited as they went up to the stage ... you could tell they were proud of the hard work that brought them there. For the record, here's the companies who won the "Best in Track" awards:
After the main event, I attended the "unwind" after party put on by CTI (Calgary Technologies Inc.) in another room of the Banff Springs. This was a collection of "who's who" and "who's new" of the local entrepreneur community, and it was a great time. This is an important role that CTI plays ... being a community hub ... and everyone appreciated it. Kudos to CTI for "getting it."
I finally met Rob Lewis, editor of Techvibes. Talk about your virtual relationship (and the importance of these grassroots events) ... I've been blogging for Techvibes for almost a year, and we've never seem able to cross paths. Speaking of media types, I also met David Cree of the newly launched Propel Magazine that's a print version (with web accompaniment) of the Alberta scene. That's the three of us standing in the picture at the CTI afterparty (David, me, Rob).
Finally, before the night moved on to the Rose and Crown in Banff (of which there are many stories to tell, but none that will be told), we had a discussion about the nice autumn gourds placed around the room (a nice touch, I might add). Since CTI is a publicly funded organization, I assumed Premier Ed Stelmach payed $3.98 for the 7 gourds. Then, I got a little lesson in how CTI works. I was surprised to learn that ~65% of CTI's funding comes from industry ... for example, the revenue they make from leasing their building. 20% comes from federal funding. Only 15% comes from the Alberta government. Which essentially means that a single gourd cost Premier Stelmach 8.5 cents. Even the smallest conversations can have insightful moments!
Based on the people attending, I know that there were lots of conversations and insightful moments. I'd love if anybody that attended the forum would add some additional comments below.
In just a decade the Internet’s advances have made the world a better place. At Akoha, we want to take that a step further. With six billion... [more]
ASAT Solutions specializes in substation server platforms, automation applications and system integration for electric utilities. We have the... [more]
At TheraCarb, we believe it is our responsibility to pursue technologies that can benefit human disease prevention. TheraCarb is developing a... [more]
Notably this week we have the return of WIN BC's Mobile Monday in it's "new season", and the first Vancouver Internet Marketing Meetup, hosted by Outcome3.
MoMoVan - Mobile Monday Vancouver
Masters of Digital Media Information Session
Vancouver Internet Marketing Meetup
Marketing virally is a slippery slope, and invariably it's those that have no inclination towards creating something viral that experience the success that the "professionals" so strive for. When Microsoft announced they were spending $300,000,000 to create a campaign with a centrepoint series of ads with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld it was obvious there was hope the bloggers would blog, the Twitters would tweet, and perhaps, YouTube would help Microsoft become the next 'Dramatic Chipmunk'. But, somewhere along the way to untold riches, something happened.
The Gates/Seinfeld ads were almost universally panned by experts and amateurs alike. Did you miss them? There were only two, and they didn't last long: The first ad was titled Shoe Circus, the second New Family. Faced with this seemingly universal dislike Microsoft quickly yanked the ads - claiming they were only teasers all along - and launched into a new set of ads titled "I'm a PC", obviously a direct salvo towards the famous Mac ads. However, this AdAge article points out a very interesting statistic regarding the campaign's viral views:
Visible Measures points out that while the Seinfeld/Gates clips came out two weeks earlier than the "I'm a PC" ads, Seinfeld/Gates drew twice as many viewers their first week in market than the PC ads did. After two weeks in market, Visible Measures says, "Seinfeld/Gates was still collecting more than 700,000 views per day, while the 'I'm a PC' clips had tapered off to less than 50,000 views per day."
What are your thoughts on the link between online buzz and viral success? Is it enough for your brand to be talked about, regardless of the good/bad nature of that conversation? Is 'Gates/Seinfeld' a success, against everything we've read and been led to believe? Tell us your thoughts in comments.
At Microsoft, we're motivated and inspired every day by how our customers use our software to find creative solutions to business problems, develop... [more]
TechCrunch reports on a topic close to my heart: blogger pay, specifically a pay restructuring at b5Media. Based out of Toronto, b5Media is Canada's largest blog network, with 200 writers contributing to 300+ blogs. The two core changes seem to be the end of base pay, and the move to a new stats tracking system. Writers were being compensated partly based on traffic, but the stats system was inaccurate and overreporting traffic. TechCrunch kindly prints in full a memo from b5Media CEO Jeremy Wright to the network's writers:
When we designed the current pay system, it was in response to our previous model of doing a type of revenue share. The details of that don’t matter too much. What matters is that the current pay system of base pay + traffic bonus was really designed to encourage bloggers to build a community around their blog and to be a part of the larger community within which their blog sits. We felt that ultimately these things would drive traffic and so while traffic in and of itself wasn’t the goal, we recognized that more comments, links, posts, participation in other blogs, etc all drove traffic … and as a result felt that keeping it simple and rewarding traffic was the easiest way to go.
Sadly, as would have been obvious in hindsight, by only rewarding traffic and length of service what we were in fact encouraging was “traffic for traffic’s sake” as well as pure longevity. While we’d hoped to create a striving for quality, because we weren’t specifically rewarding quality it became harder and harder to push for it in any systematic way.
For your interest, the raw numbers:
1. Tier 1: 30,000+ pageviews/month - $4CPM
2. Tier 2: 10,000 – 29,999 pageviews/month - $100 flat rate ($5-$10 CPM)
3. Tier 3: 5,000 – 9,999 pageviews/month - $50 ($5-$10 CPM)
4. Tier 4: 0 – 4,999 pageviews/month - $25 ($5 -$50 CPM)
Former b5media Accordian Guy Joey Devilla, defends the change and points out that the network's pay still beats going it alone.
Even under the new pay structure, blogging under the b5 umbrella is a pretty sweet deal. A guaranteed minimum CPM of $4? That’s awesome compared to the alternatives out there. Consider my personal blog, The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century, which has been averaging about 200,000 pageviews a month (outperforming most of b5’s blogs) and has had over 2 million pageviews this year according to StatCounter. I do a big happy dance when my CPM makes that rare climb over $1.10. $4? Sign me up!
Blogging has never been a well paying gig, and that clearly isn't changing anytime soon. It's a big blogosphere, and typing text into the internets is easy. Selling ad space isn't. Gaining and retaining readership requires post quality, frequency, luck, and a voice that appeals to readers above others. Hopefully this change ensures the viability of the b5Media network into the future.
b5media is a global new media network featuring more than 255 blogs on a wide variety of subjects ranging from entertainment and news to technology... [more]
Client launches come and go, but every so often, there's free pizza. That's exactly what Boston Pizza is doing, as the first customer on Strutta's new contest and voting platform. A spinning ring of pizza presents their designer selections and entices the user to enter for a chance at free pizza for a year.
Interesting technical note: the "pizza carousel" isn't Flash, it's entirely HTML and Javascript with JQuery. Somewhere underneath it is Drupal. I'm a longtime fan of BP's, but in my opinion, the best pizza in Vancouver has a site with animated GIFs.
More to come... [more]
Calgary's MoboVivo Inc. is a mobile educational, entertainment and lifestyle distribution company using the latest technology to reach the iPod generation. MoboVivo is the first company to offer paid downloads of TV shows in Canada and, according to CEO Trevor Doerksen, is one of the most popular iPhone television content providers in the world.
Since 2005, MoboVivo has been licencing television programming to distribute on mobile devices and is currently working with content partners such as CBC and Rogers. TV programs are distributed through the MoboVivo webstore and the iTunes Video Store and revenue is split with the content provider. Popular titles includes This is Daniel Cook, the Namaste Yoga series and Ed's Up with the Barenaked Ladies' Ed Robertson.
Doerksen has already raised $1 Million of a planned $2.1 Million initial round with proceeds earmarked for licensing of content, continued development of the technology, and expansion of marketing.
MoboVivo is the first company in Canada to licence and distribute television programming online. MoboVivo iPhone TV is one of the most popular... [more]
