More than three months after we reported that Darren Feher left NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) to head Conviva, the content delivery company is making it official. The former NBCU CTO is president and CEO, while co-founder Dr. Hui Zhang has moved to chief scientist. Zhang will focus on product development and technology while Feher, a former West Point grad (and one-time GE Six Sigma quality leader), tries to better package and sell it. Conviva’s clients include NBC Sports for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games; it will provide real-time streaming usage data and streaming management for NBCU’s online production using Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Silverlight.
Founded in 2006, Conviva has raised $29 million in two rounds from Foundation Capital, NEA and UV Ventures. Feher told paidContent that while Conviva has had some conversations about equity partnerships with “strategic ” partners and is still evaluating the idea, the company is not trying to raise more money: “We’re not in a position where we have to.”
Video game news and reviews site Crispy Gamer has acquired GamerDNA, the social network/automated gameplay notification system and ad network. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Founded in 2006, GamerDNA went through a few iterations before growing into a community that attracts around 10 million monthly unique visits. It changed its name from GuildCafe, and raised $3 million in funding from Flybridge Capital Partners in 2008. It went on to acquire 360Voice, which provided the technology that let members post automatic updates and progress reports from their Xbox LIVE-connected gameplay. That score-tracking and social-sharing technology is likely a big part of what made GamerDNA an attractive buy for Crispy Gamer.
‘Tis the season shop until your brains melt (or skip it all entirely, depending on your interpretation of the term holiday). In that spirit, for the next few weeks we’ll be rounding up a dozen daily deals courtesy our friends at DealNews.com. Each afternoon tune in to TUAW for this handy summary. Keep in mind that while our posts will live on, the deals won’t. Each is lovingly generated by the deal-bot every day, so get ‘em while they’re hot. Enjoy!
iTunes Music Store: [iPhone / iPod Apps] Gameloft iPhone / iPod touch Apps: Real Soccer 2010, Blades of Fury, more for 99 cents each
Apple has begun brodcasting a new holiday ad: 12 Apps of Xmas. Though it’s not nearly as cool as past Christmas ads, it does spotlight some interesting apps, including one app (Schlage LiNK) that can light up a Christmas tree, at least when it’s paired with the appropriate Z-Wave home automation module and the $12.99 monthly service plan [iTunes link].
Here’s the lyrics to the new ad, so you can all sing along to the video below.
Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks there is a social paradox in the location space. A new service, Rally, believes the power of location lies in less rather than more. That is to say, fewer social connections rather than more of them.
It’s an idea that you don’t hear a lot of social networks talking about these days as each tries to build a social graph that’s as sprawling as possible. But the team behind Rally is taking this different approach largely due to their past experience. Much of the team is the same one that built 12seconds, one of the video platforms that rose as Twitter began to become popular. And eventually, 12seconds started relying heavily on Twitter’s large social graph for its own service. But co-founder Sol Lipman isn’t convinced that’s the right way for services going forward.
In a new study conducted by Scott Owens out of the University of Mississippi, the Wii Fit was loaned to eight families and the usage and fitness impact was tracked over time — three months before they got the Wii, and three months after. The verdict? “No significant changes” in family fitness from the Wii. Interestingly, over the period of three months the daily Wii Fit usage declined a staggering 82 percent, from 22 minutes a day for the first half of the time all the way down to an average of four minutes a day for the last six weeks. The biggest winners here were the children, who did display some “significant” increases in the specific area of aerobic fitness, but we get the feeling that with a bit more stick-to-itiveness the whole family might’ve been able to raise its game here. Or maybe Nintendo could invest in making some more motion-controlled games that don’t become repetitive and shallow after two playthroughs.
A few weeks ago, Woot opened up a new section of its site called Woot Deals. This area marked a departure for the service because it is run by Woot users, rather than a Woot employees selecting every deal. Of course, when you open it up to users, they’re going to get what they want.
Today, the most popular items in this deals section include a bunch of video games, some tennis shoes, a monitor, some laser pointers, oh, and a 9mm handgun.
MacUpdate, one of my favorite websites for keeping up on Macintosh software, has taken eleven applications and rolled them up into one convenient package they like to call the Holiday Bundle. This is the third year they are offering such a deal. Total price individually of all these programs is $446.77, but in the bundle you get them all for the low low price of $49.95.
But wait! There’s more!
Gizmoz, the animation company that lets people create lifelike avatars for sharing across social networks and virtual worlds, has merged with DAZ 3D, an animation technology provider, and online artists’ community. Financial terms were not disclosed, but the merger comes with round of funding led by Benchmark Capital, Highway 12 Ventures and Columbia Capital; DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) Capital and Village Ventures also participated.
Tel Aviv-based Gizmoz previously raised around $13 million over two rounds of funding from DoCoMo, Columbia, Benchmark, and others; its last round came in May 2008. Utah-based DAZ 3D raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Highway 12, Village Ventures and the University of Utah Venture Fund early this year.
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Shanghai-based social market researchers Kai Lukoff and Lucas Englehardt from BloggerInsight, a company spun off from