TV Coverage For Dancejam, Realius and Gizmoz At TechCrunch40

Three TechCrunch40 demo pit startups got local bay area television coverage last week - Dancejam (note: I’m an investor), Realius and Gizmoz. It looks like the reporter did the easy thing - a swing by the demo pit to film the best looking startups. Congrats to all three.

Lulu To Hulu: Cease And Desist

Online self publishing company Lulu has filed suit against the NBC/ News Corp joint venture Hulu for trademark infringement, unfair and deceptive trade practices and for federal cyberpiracy.

Lulu alleges that Hulu have intentionally attempted to create confusion in the marketplace in that the name Hulu represents a definitive encroachment on Lulu’s name. Lulu also claims Hulu’s trademark filing of August 22 identifies various products and services, many of which are related to, and even identical to, the services that Lulu provides under its Lulu marks.

Lulu CEO Bob Young said in a statement that the legal action was about defending Lulu’s brand; for everyone else it’s yet another part of the ongoing trainwreck soap opera that Clown Co (Hulu) has been since pretty much day one. The ultimate irony of course is that Hulu, which translates to cease and desist in Swahili, may never get off the ground due to someone taking the meaning of the name seriously.

Bet On Anything And Everything With BluBet

BluBet lets you and your friends bet on anything, while avoiding the rather controversial use of real money in online gambling. On BluBet, players will be able to place bets on anything from Brittany’s sex life, to Facebook outgrowing MySpace. The site is launching out of a quiet beta and is backed with $225,000 from Jawed Karim (Co-Founder of YouTube), Kevin Hartz (Co-Founder of Xoom), Joe Greenstein (Co-Founder and CEO of Flixster) and Keith Rabois (Former PayPal & LinkedIn Executive and Current Slide Executive).

You start off with 30,000 BluBucks, their fake currency. Bets are based on topics (technology, politics, business), much like a news site. Anyone can post a bet, which consists of a question, a pot, and an ante.

Bets are broken into two types of categories, polls and challenges. Polls base the outcome of the bet on the most popular response. Challenges base the winners on the outcome of some real world event (e.g who wins a football game). Every bet is live for a set period of time, with challenges needing the person initiating the bet to list the final outcome. You get 1,000 extra BluBucks for posting a bet and winners split the pots amongst themselves. Your winnings rank you on a leader board and are tracked in your personal profile. If you go bust, it’s marked on your record and you restart with 10,000 BluBucks.

Fraudulent bets, where users rally to affect the outcome, are naturally a concern. However, they’ve implemented a system where players rate how good a bet was after the bet closes. The rating for the individual bet is added to a users overall rating, hopefully making crooks with low ratings easy to avoid. Otherwise it’s a case of “Caveat Emptor” with spending your virtual dollars.

The founders see it as a simple way of creating a predictive market, although that’s not their goal. Even though free systems don’t motivate users with enough of an upside to be consistently accurate in aggregate, some free systems have discovered very successful individuals. Money-free PicksPal was able to beat the Vegas spread for sports, but probably serves as a proxy for a lot of the real sports gambling happening offline. Social stock picking startups are another category trying to create a predictive market based off of their users. Social Picks, MarketWatch, and the Motley Fool CAPS service are some of the sites taking this on without real money. Covestor is another social stock site that ties investments to your real account.

VideoEgg And Lots Of Others Call B.S. On YouTube

VideoEgg’s overlay advertising system has been in the market for a year and is driving “significant” revenue for the company. it’s so successful, in fact, that they recently launched a Facebook advertising network based on the same technology.

The idea is to use a Flash overlay advertisement with some basic information and graphics that takes up a small part of the viewable video area. Users click the ad and get a more in depth video ad. It’s less intrusive than a pre or post roll ad, and has far better performance than ads placed around a video. It’s likely to become the standard way ads are placed on video, even potentially on normal television as the thirty second ad spot continues to decline.

Given VideoEgg’s success with the unit it’s no surprise that YouTube has adopted the same format with their advertising. But it is surprising that YouTube failed to give even a passing mention to the company that invented the unit. VideoEgg also claims to have a patent application on this - something YouTube will certainly have to deal with down the road.

Nick Carr points out that much of the early press on YouTube was written by people who failed to do their homework. Carr trashes a CNET article that he says was basically an ad for YouTube. CNET subsequently changed the title of their article but there is still no mention of VideoEgg’s invention of the unit

Meanwhile, VideoEgg seems to be handling the situation well and taking advantage of the publicity. They added the graphic above to their home page, and are talking to press about their product. Suddenly, everyone is interested.

VideoEgg And Lots Of Others Call B.S. On YouTube

VideoEgg’s overlay advertising system has been in the market for a year and is driving “significant” revenue for the company. it’s so successful, in fact, that they recently launched a Facebook advertising network based on the same technology.

The idea is to use a Flash overlay advertisement with some basic information and graphics that takes up a small part of the viewable video area. Users click the ad and get a more in depth video ad. It’s less intrusive than a pre or post roll ad, and has far better performance than ads placed around a video. It’s likely to become the standard way ads are placed on video, even potentially on normal television as the thirty second ad spot continues to decline.

Given VideoEgg’s success with the unit it’s no surprise that YouTube has adopted the same format with their advertising. But it is surprising that YouTube failed to give even a passing mention to the company that invented the unit. VideoEgg also claims to have a patent application on this - something YouTube will certainly have to deal with down the road.

Nick Carr points out that much of the early press on YouTube was written by people who failed to do their homework. Carr trashes a CNET article that he says was basically an ad for YouTube. CNET subsequently changed the title of their article but there is still no mention of VideoEgg’s invention of the unit

Meanwhile, VideoEgg seems to be handling the situation well and taking advantage of the publicity. They added the graphic above to their home page, and are talking to press about their product. Suddenly, everyone is interested.

http://www.techcrunch.com/

TwitKu: Single Interface For Twitter And Jaiku

TwitKu is a new site that is sort of a Meebo (web instant messaging) for the Twitter and Jaiku “presence blogging” services.

The site brings your Twitter and Jaiku accounts onto one screen and adds a posting interface that allows you to post just to one of the services, or to both. The benefit for many people that use both services religiously is obvious. Very simple and very useful for some people.

Both Twitter and Jaiku have APIs, making this possible (or at least manageable). Clones/similar products like Pownce and the new Yappd don’t have APIs. When and if those services release them, I’d expect TwitKu to quickly add those services as well. And that would save those of us who want to use all of the services but refuse to choose a lot of time.

And since Twitter and Jaiku are all about presence and status updates of friends, there’s no reason not to add Facebook status right away, too.

Thank You Sponsors: Featuring Real Time Matrix, DOmedia and Profile Builder

It’s time to say a quick “thank you” to the sponsors of our party at August capital last month:

Tune in to learn more about Real Time Matrix’s Vortex, DOmedia’s platform for alternative media buying and Profile Builder’s profile mangement platform. Michael Arrington and Steve Gillmor from Podtech.net and Bad Sinatra interview Jeff Whitehead, Todd Cameron and Boyan Josic. Watch closely for a quick guest appearance from another famous blogger… or was that really Yahoo’s Salim Ismail? Interviews were shot live at the TechCrunch 9 Meet Up at August Capital. Thank you again to all the sponsors who helped make the Meet Up a success.

iJ.am - The Real Time Matrix’s iJ.am lets you create a personalized RSS feed widgets of the news you care about the most. Check out the iJ.am Vortex headlines widget that Real Time Matrix developed for TechCrunch.

Wallhogs - Wallhogs makes semi-adhesive vinyl posters of whatever images you’d like, ranging from your own family photos to cutouts of full-sized football players. If you came to TechCrunch 9, you would have seen WallHogs’ stickers denoting the spots for each of the presenting companies. They have a wide variety of existing posters in different sizes for about $20 to $50.

Template Monster - They have oodles of website templates, flash templates, flash intros, WordPress themes, and corporate designs. As a celebration of Template Monster’s birthday TechCrunch readers get a 15% discount.

Text Link Ads - If you’re looking to monetize your site, or for new advertising opportunities, check out Text Link Ads. TLA helps improve your site’s ranking and target 10,000+ niche communities, all at a flat rate.

Lewis PR - A multinational public relations firm representing clients like Second Life, Citrix Systems, and St. Bernard Software. Check out their blog for a more in depth view of the company.

Ads-Click - One of the most popular features on blogs is a tag cloud, which gives and idea of the main key

Adicate - Time is money and Adicate has applied that to advertising by allowing advertisers to buy time slots on a publisher’s page. They manage all the headache and provide the backend support to sell the ads.

Edgeio - Classified listings have always followed the eyeballs in print. Edgeio takes the same principle to the web, letting you monetize your site by tying in relevant listings. Edgeio Marketplaces currently powers TechCrunch’s job board and have several affiliate programs that publishers can use to boost their revenues.