Cool Just Got Cooler – Scenecaster quietly rolls out Sceneweaver

After announcing Sceneweaver at Demo 2008, SceneCaster quietly announced to its Facebook audience that Sceneweaver is now running. With Sceneweaver, various scenes can be embedded into a blog or webpage and existing scenes can have items with embedded links. For example, a link in a scene might take you to a a product brand’s web page, another blog, or even another scene. In this way, SceneCaster users will be able to generate and explore various scenes linked together and buy items in the scenes from sites such as Amazon and eBay. As the user base continues to grow and as scenes can now be embedded almost anywhere on the web, we expect SceneCaster will add other attractions to help eventually monetize the user base once critical mass is achieved.

SCWEmbedViewer(173,1,’http://sc.scenecaster.com’);

Web 2.0 Investments & Valuations Up in 2007

As reported on Vatortv, total investment in VC-backed Web 2.0 startups rose to $1.34 billion in 2007 from $716 million in 2006. The top 5 deals included Facebook ($300M), Ning ($44M), Metaweb ($42M), Zillow ($30M), and Metacafe ($30M).

On-line Ad Spending not Recession Proof

eMarketer cut its U.S. online ad spending forecast for 2008, reflecting the impact that a weakening economy will likely have on corporate marketing budgets. The forecast firm now expects $25.8 billion in U.S. on-line ad spending, down from the $27.5 billion projection made in November. This still represents 23% y/y growth. eMarketer expects spending growth of 16% in 2009.

Animoto Rocks!

Combining pictures and music into a semi-professional looking video is made simple by Animoto. 30 second videos are free and no 2 videos ever look the same.

Canadian Tech Stocks – Taken out and Shot

Ever since the post bubble meltdown the Canadian tech market has seen lean times. IPO windows opened up over the last few years, and the market became more accepting of non profitable companies. With the financial markets turmoil over the last 6-9 months, almost nothing has been battered as much as tech stories in Canada over the last 3 months.  Plenty of hurt to go around.

3 months stock performance up to March 10, 2008:

• Absolute Software (ABT) down 40%
• DragonWave (DWI) down 53%
• Evertz (ET) down 63%
• Intermap (IMP) down 54%
• JumpTV (JTV) down 68%
• IPICO (RFD) down 42%
• Kaboose (KAB) down 55%
• March Networks (MN) down 47%
• Miranda (MT) down 40%
• Metrobridge (MEB) down 47%
• Nortel Networks (NT) down 61%
• Q9 Networks (Q) down 38%
• Points International (PTS) down 36%
• Redline Communications (RDL) down 66%
• Sandvine (SVC) down 80%

The one standout – Dalsa (DSA) up 54%

The Z Axis: Unbelievable growth over the last month

Scenecaster growth continues with over 300,000 Facebook users having registered. This has doubled in the last month (giver or take a few days)

One more post and then back to work

Being my first day as a Blogger, I couldn’t resist getting 1 more comment “down on paper” before I get back to work. Check out this super cool new browser plug-in for photo viewing – PicLens. It overlays on existing sites such as Facebook and Flickr. The plug-in works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. It lets you see a moving wall of images where you would otherwise usually only see a static display of pics.

Never too late to start a blog

… or am I just another mouthpiece looking for his soap box to ramble from. This is my official blog. Through my work as a research analyst I continue to be awestruck by the dizzying array of new companies and technologies that are emerging. Whether or not they will ever make money is a different story. While I used to be a “widget” guy getting excited about the latest new cell phone or semiconductor design, I find myself enamored with the plethora of new software, applications and content that has emerged as the Web has matured. The last year has seen me catch up with some of the technologies that many of our “younger generation” have been avidly using for some time. I posted my first Youtube video at Xmas time and have since uploaded many of my photos to Flickr. What is Facebook? Being a Canadian I had to join the crowd and check it out. That has led me to LinkedIn, SceneCaster, and Second Life. More to follow on this in the future. Now back to work.