Ash K. Gilpin

Google Paper is a new feature being promoted on the Gmail home page. You can request a physical copy of any email with the click of a button, and Google will deliver paper printouts to you in 2-4 days via the mail.

Like TiSP, Google Paper is also free and advertising supported. In this case, the “relevant, targeted, unobtrusive advertisements” will appear on the back of printed emails “in red, bold, 36 pt Helvetica.” Nice.

Google also promised that Google Paper is good for the environment. “Gmail Paper is made out of 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment. For every Gmail Paper we produce, the environment gets incrementally healthier.”

Adobe today announced Adobe Device Central CS3, an integrated component across the all-new Adobe Creative Suite® 3 family. Adobe Device Central CS3 is designed to radically boost the efficiency and productivity of creative professionals who develop dynamic and engaging interfaces, mobile assets, applications and video content for mobile phones and hand-held consumer electronic devices. This new software component is integrated in Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design, Web and Production Premium editions, as well as individual products, including flagship franchises such as Adobe Flash CS3 Professional, Adobe Photoshop CS3, and Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 software.

Adobe Device Central CS3 makes it easier to create mobile content by helping creative professionals better deal with a complex mobile-device landscape. Operators, in return, benefit from the creativity of millions of designers who will help deliver new content-rich data services to mobile customers. For the first time, creative professionals are able to preview their work and test mobile content instantly within familiar authoring environments through a periodically updated library of detailed phone and device profiles. With tight integration across the Adobe Creative Suite 3 family, Adobe Device Central CS3 dramatically simplifies the mobile authoring process.

China YouTV Corp. (OTCBB: CYTV), a publicly traded company recently entered into the growing video sharing web site business in China announced that it has signed a Letter of Intent with HuaJu Network, a Chinese Internet Video Sharing Company, to form a Joint Venture in China.

Mr. Gao, the President of China YouTV said, “Through this Joint Venture, we hope the new project could generate more returns to all the shareholders, and also, the new joint venture company could become the Chinese YouTube in China’s video sharing industry.”

YouTube (www.YouTube.com) is the leader in online video, and the premier destination to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience. In November 2006, within a year of its launch, YouTube was purchased by Google Inc. for $1.76 billion.

You can check out the site out at www.chinayoutv.com or visit www.cnboo.com.

Adobe announced at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) show that it will expand its digital imaging product line, offering two editions of Adobe Photoshop CS3. In addition to the highly anticipated Photoshop CS3 software for designers and professional photographers, Adobe will also deliver Photoshop CS3 Extended, a completely new edition of Photoshop which allows cross-media creative professionals to stretch the limits of digital imaging. Photoshop CS3 Extended includes everything in Photoshop CS3 plus a new set of capabilities for integration of 3-D and motion graphics, image measurement and analysis. Photoshop CS3 Extended also simplifies the workflow for professionals in architecture, engineering, medical and science.

Both Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended software will be formally introduced on March 27, 2007 - as part of the company’s launch of Creative Suite 3, where further details will be disclosed. The software is expected to ship in Spring 2007.

In one of the largest private equity financings for an Internet company in recent history, Web publisher GeoSign, located outside of Toronto, has raised US$ 160 million from American Capital. The money will be used primarily for acquisitions, and the founders are taking some money off the table. RBC Capital Markets acted as the private placement agent for the deal.

The company joins Demand Media, which has raised $200 million over two rounds of financing, in the hunt for good content companies.

GeoSign plans to making three to five “sizeable” business acquisitions in the near future, while also continuing to build out their own properties. Their portfolio of sites covers over 20 verticals and reach more than 35 million unique visitors per month.

Geosign was started in 2000 when founder and CEO Tim Nye, frustrated with the results while searching for new home plans, started homeplaninfo.com to capitalize on an underserved niche. Since then Geosign has been building out their publishing network by acquiring/investing in properties and monetizing them through advertising.

The company has 230 employees, with over 100 of them generating content for the sites in the publishing department. Past investments from Geosign include local search engine TrueLocal, mobile search engine go2, outdoors enthusiast site Nomadik, DietNation, ThinkFashion, CosmeticSurguryInsider, and AllSafeTravels. They are also building basic social networks around these sites - see restaurantica for an example.

Last year was a turbulent one for Silicon Valley based Tribe.net. Founding CEO Mark Pincus was ousted, in April 2005 and then returned in August 2006. While Pincus was gone rumors swirled that the company had been acquired by NBC, but the deal was never consummated.

But now the New York Times is reporting that the assets of the eight person company have been acquired by Cisco. This follows their acquisition of Five Across, a social networking infrastructure service, two weeks ago. The hope is to use the two company’s technology to help Cisco’s corporate clients build their own social networks, so it isn’t clear whether or not the Tribe service itself will live on.

The price of the Tribe deal hasn’t been disclosed, but usually these things leak within a few days.

The demand is clearly there, as seen by Reuters’ announcement today that they’re looking to build their own Myspace clone, for financial types. Everyone, it seems, wants their very own social network these days.

Cisco is now a player in the social networking space. That certainly wasn’t in anyone’s predictions for 2007. And there are bound to be a few snickers around the valley as Cisco dips its toes in this new business.

Marc Andreessen, the founder of Ning (which just upgraded its build-it-yourself social network platform), had a great sound bite on this topic in the NYT article. He said “The idea that Cisco is going to be a force in social networking is about as plausible as Ning being a force in optical switches.”

Source: TechCrunch

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This book is clear and concise, and it has lots of great information and resources you can use EVERY DAY.

Amazon has invested $1 million or so in Seattle based Shelfari, beating out at least one venture firm that competed for the deal.

Shelfari is a website where users input all of the books they own, and have an online visual representation of their library to share with others. Users can share their library through the Shelfari website or via a widget, and make money by linking to the books for sale at Amazon. They launched well after competitor LibraryThing, which was itself partially acquired last year by ABEbooks.

The company won’t comment on the financing, so this isn’t officially confirmed.

Source: TechCrunch

Got an idea? Willing to hustle for a summer to see it grow? Y Combinator just announced their summer application drive. Applications are due by April 2nd and by the 10th, a few will be selected to present in Mountain View on April 21-22nd. If selected, your team will relocate to work and learn in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

For those of you unfamiliar with Y Combinator, it’s the seed financing fund guided by Paul Graham’s philosophies that helps young startups launch through mentoring and investing a base $5,000 plus $5,000 per founder. In exchange they take a 1-10% stake in the company. The teams are usually composed of young college grads with some programming skill. It’s not not a program meant for industry veterans. Some have criticized the program for taking too much ownership for such a small investment. Some readers have also called shenanigans on the operation. Here are some of the companies we’ve covered before. Kiko, Reddit, and Loopt are some notable Y Combinator companies. Exits, so far, have been through acquisition. Kiko died, and was then acquired by Elliot Noss. Conde Nast bought Reddit.

Some other programs such as TechStars have adopted the model. TechStars is another well backed program based in Boulder, Colorado also offering experienced mentors and cash to aspiring startups. While not the same ground floor financing as Y Combinator or TechStars, the venerable VC firm Charles River Ventures also adopted a smaller financing program (up to $250K debt) called Quick Start.

Source: TechCrunch

Atomic Moguls has reportedly raised nearly $1 million in first-round funding from VC firm Second Avenue Partners and Amazon.com. Atomic Moguls has launched FantasyMoguls.com, which is essentially a fantasy league for movies. You can draft movies and earn points based on how well they do at the box office, number of weeks in the top 5, per-theater average, and their IMDb review score (IMDb is Amazon.com owned). Traditional fantasy sports leagues allow you to draft players and earn points for how well they perform in games.

Fantasy sports leagues have about 15 million participants and the Fantasy Sports Trade Association predicted more than $1 billion is spent annually on publications, league fees and other services. Many companies are trying to get in on the fantasy league dollars — PicksPal has a fantasy league for sports betting (you use the lines on the games and pick your winners; earn points). FleaFlicker is your traditional fantasy sports league website, but is free and relies on advertising revenues.

Atomic Moguls has spoken of likely expansion into other entertainment areas such as music, television shows, and celebrities. Fafarazzi has already established a fantasy league for celebrities that awards points to users based on how many times a celebrity’s name is used in popular entertainment blogs, websites, and articles. There’s even a fantasy league for fashion.

Source: TechCrunch