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ExtendMedia Online Video Distributor Gets $10 Million Third Round

This story was written by Robert Andrews.


So it is still possible for online video operators to raise money Video distributor ExtendMedia has raised a $10 million third round from existing backers Atlas, Venrock and TVM Capital, MHT reports. ExtendMedia powers Showtime's download-to-own service, SanDisk's FanFare video downloader and Bell Canada's video store. Based in Boston with production facilities in Toronto, Extend's main product is its OpenCASE distribution system. It raised a $11 million in 2006, then a $12 million second round in 2007. Disclosure: ExtendMedia has previously been a sponsor of paidContent.org events.

-- Social location: Kallasvuo: "Automatically lets you avert traffic jams or crowds. By putting together your location, your contacts, you get mashups. I love this idea. Imagine what can happen when we mash up social networking and your location, when your device knows where you are, where your friends are and what they are doing. Your social location, or SoLo will become your here-and-now-identity."

-- Point & Find: Leveraging the camera, Nokia's "virtual compass" will let users point at landmarks to slurp down location info from the internet, like augmented-reality information in the palm. Vanjoki: "Combining the real world with the virtual world, pointing at a building with a virtual compass and being told everything about that building." The service has been trailed publicly since at least 2007, but Kallasvuo said today it's "already in beta testing and will be launched soon". No explicit word on whether it will come with the N97 and the website still says "coming soon", but hard to believe it wouldn't.

-- Better than Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Maps: Vanjoki: "There's a company that says they can index the world; we are going to go deeper - we are going to coordinate the world, we are going to coordinate everything on a map. Not just a map that is standard like a Google Map, but a map that is dynamic, with vector graphics, driving all the roads of the world, making sure we have coordinates for everything there is, with Navteq." Kallasvuo said the present-day Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Maps has been downloaded six million times so far; as for the coming upgrade: "All of these improvements leverage the power of Navteq", the map maker Nokia bought this year for $8.1 billion.

-- Symbian: A sleight to iPhone's comparatively "closed" developer platform, Kallasvuo said: "Good ideas do not come from our laps alone: that's why, unlike some of our competitors, we are committed to build a truly open system to extend the reach of our services.


By Robert Andrews

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