Shutterfly, Inc. (NASDAQ:SFLY) ^[1] recently acquired Make it About Me!^[2]  The synergy behind the acquisition is that Make It About Me! produces books with custom pictures for about $40  and Shutterfly is one of the biggest picture sharing companies.

Shutterfly had an IPO around September 2006 and is currently valuated at $535.36 million.  Shutterfly’s opening price was at $15 per share and today, SFLY is trading at about $22.30 per share.

“This acquisition increases Shutterfly’s market leadership in the rapidly-expanding category of personalized storybooks and photo books,” stated Jeffrey Housenbold, President and CEO of Shutterfly. “We’re very pleased to offer parents compelling, personalized stories that feature their child together with beloved characters, such as their friends on Sesame Street, and others.”

Some of the custom books that Make It About Me! sells is My Adventure on Sesame Street and My Amazing Alphabet Adventures.  Below is a screen shot of My Adventure on Sesame Street:

“We created Make it About Me! to inspire children to explore their world in an educational and fun way,” stated Michael Anthony and Jim McCreery, co-founders of Make it About Me! “As Shutterfly incorporates our technology and products into its award-winning Photo Book line, we are excited to see these books entertain, motivate and help educate young readers.”

The financial details were not disclosed.  This was Shutterfly’s first 2007 acquisition and through this acquisition, Shutterfly gains Sesame Street licensed content and themed characters. 

[1] Shutterfly.com
[2] makeitaboutme.com (now redirects to Shutterfly) 

References:
[3] thealarmclock

A couple of days ago, TechCrunch’s Duncan Riley wrote a blog post^[1] about Google Docs & Spreadsheets’ new look & feel.  The new look is not only more aeshetic, but now tags have been replaced with folders similar to Microsoft Outlook and Windows Live Mail (formerly known as Hotmail).  One of Riley’s points in the blog post was that GMail should also have folders.  I agree with this statement to an extent.

Just like Windows Live Mail, I say let the users decide how you want your email to look.  Do you want it to look like the original Hotmail or have it look like Microsoft Outlook.  In other words:

Users appreciate it when they have choices.  I want my GMail to have folders, but I want my Hotmail to have e-mail grouping responses.  If there was some sort of GMail/Hotmail hybrid that had grouping and folder features, I’d switch so fast.  Otherwise, users will have to have multiple accounts to truly appreciate each feature. 

Speaking of hybrids, some people have a hard time deciding whether they like the Google search engine or the Yahoo! search engine.  Well check out this hybrid^[2]:

After you search, on GahooYoogle, the website will line up both searches side-by-side.  How cool and simple is that?

Microsoft and Google, give us some extra options to work with here.  GMail, lose the tags and switch to folders.

Around the June 17 weekend, global investment bank brokerage firm, Bear Stearns was in the midst of trying to recover two of its collapsing hedge funds. One of the executives responsible for the hedge funds included Richard Marin who is also a blog enthusiast. Although now his blog is private and for invitees only, I was able to read some of his blog posts by using Google’s cache of the blog.

In Marin’s blog, he writes about his weight loss progress, movie reviews, his business trips, etc. Below is a screen shot of Marin’s famous blog post that the New York Times^[1] quoted:

“This pretty much sums up my last two weeks trying to defend Sparta against the Persian hordes of Wall Street. Nothing like a good dog fight 24X7 for a few weeks to remind you why you chose the life you chose.” Bear Stearns agreed to pledge as much as $3.2 billion to recover one of the funds. The SEC will be looking into what happened exactly.

Both hedge funds were mortgage-related. One of the funds is called High Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leveraged Fund.

Google Gadget Ventures^[1] is a new initiative by Google Inc. to fund and grant developers to Google Gadget developers. This provides an incentive for developers and also provides additions to iGoogle’s widgets. Users will also be recognized by Google.

Users can apply for a $5,000 grant for further development. To be given the investment, Gadgets must have 250,000+ page views per week. Users also have to provide a one-page proposal about how the user will improve the gadget. Google will not take any equity and won’t ask for repayment.

If the Google Gadget has received a $5,000 grant and gains further traction, Google will invest $100,000 in the form of seed capital. This is assuming that the developer wants to make a business out of the Gadget.

For further information refer to the Google Code Blog post:
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2007/06/google-gadget-ventures.html^[2]

[1] Google Gadget Ventures
[2] Google Code: Google Gadget Ventures

Pownce^[1] is the latest venture by Kevin Rose, founder of Revision3 and Digg.com.  Pownce is basically an IM tool that allows users to send messages, files, links, and events to other users on the IM tool.  Right now Pownce is still testing and only sending out invites to selected users.  Pownce’s software runs on Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR)^[2], a software that is similar to Adobe Flash.

Below is a screen shot of the Pownce software:

And here is a screen shot of Kevin Roses’ Pownce profile available at http://pownce.com/kevin/^[3]:

The rest of the Pownce team includes Leah Culver, Daniel Burka, and Shawn Allen.  The four of them created a parent company that designs the software.  The company is called Megatechtronium.  The software can be downloaded at: http://pownce.com/download/.^[4] The software is still in Alpha stage.  Companies will be able to buy advertisement space in the software.

Below is a description of how Pownce is made.  I took this screen shot from Pownce’s About^[5] page:

“Pownce Is Alive!” exclaimed Rose on his blog.^[6]

[1] Pownce.com
[2] Adobe: Adobe Integrated Runtime
[3] Pownce: Kevin Rose’s profile
[4] Pownce: Download
[5] Pownce: About
[6] kevinhasablogg: Pownce Is Alive!

[Image credit: Radio And Internet Newsletter: www.kurthanson.com/dos]

Internet radio listeners, forget about the Apple iPhone releasing on June 29th for one minute and realize the consequences of what will happen on July 15th, 2007.  Royalty rates for Internet radio will be increasing at an alarming rate and was set by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington D.C.  Two days ago, about 21 Internet radio websites shut down their service to make a statement.  It was officially the Internet Radio Day of Silence on June 25th.  I was not aware that this was going on until I read a blog post on Yahoo’s blog, Yodel Anecdotal^[1].

“The new royalty rates are higher than the revenues anyone can hope to make from related advertising. In other words, we all lose money on Internet radio starting July 15th. Yahoo! has no intention of operating LAUNCHcast radio as a loss-leader,” wrote Ian C. Rogers of Yahoo! Music.  Rogers began working for Yahoo! Music three and a half years ago after Yahoo! acquired Mediacode.  Rogers wrote a brief history of the situation with the Copyright Royalty Board on the Yahoo! Music Blog.^[2]

If the bill passes, Internet radio companies will start losing money.  Less than 3% of Yahoo! Music subscribers pay for music and the money made from ads is not sufficient enough for the hike in royalty fees.  So if Yahoo! Music keeps losing money along with the other Internet radio companies, keeping them afloat won’t be easy.  Many companies cannot afford the royalty rates and may even shut down.

Royalties will increase between 300 and 1200 percent.  Internet radio currently pays double of what satellite radio pays and Internet radio listeners jumped from 45 million listeners per month to 72 million listerners since last year.  Yahoo! Music has been providing value to Internet radio listeners for years and for free.  I don’t want to see the service taken away as it is one of my favorite products made by Yahoo!

For more information, visit http://www.savenetradio.org.

[1] Yodel Anecdotal: Yahoo! Music goes radio silent
[2] Yahoo! Music Blog: Yahoo! Music Goes Radio Silent

Kosmix^[1] and RevolutionHealth^[2] just announced today that they will be partnering in allowing users to categorize and quickly pull information about medical conditions and treatments. Kosmix’s core competency is categorization search (i.e. tag search-similar to Quintura). RevolutionHealth will be able to utilize Kosmix’s search to place relevant medical content together.

RevolutionHealth was founded by Steve Case, former CEO and chairman of America Online. Kosmix was founded by Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman. Venky also founded Cambrian Ventures and worked as a GM at Amazon.com.

“RevolutionHealth.com is pioneering a new and better way to bring more health choices closer to consumers,” stated Kosmix co-founder, Anand Rajaraman. “The combination of Kosmix and RevolutionHealth.com is a first step in changing the health care industry as we know it today, transforming it into an entity that will make a profound difference in our lives and the way we manage our health.”

RevolutionHealth integrates content and Web 2.0 tools such as social networking. The company also offers Premium Services that enable users to prepare for doctor visits. For example, when inputting symptoms that one may have, RevolutionHealth will suggest questions to ask one’s doctor. RevolutionHealth also has medical-related videos such as a description of Lasik surgery procedures.

“The search box on RevolutionHealth.com allows people to find the information that is most useful and relevant to them–wherever it might come from,” stated Matt Koll, a senior vice president of RevolutionHealth. “Whether it is information from the trusted medical sources assembled on our site, such as MayoClinic.com and Harvard Health, from people who have similar experiences to share or from the array of sources on the Internet, Kosmix provides impressive breadth of coverage with precise sorting of results.”

According to Harinarayan, the reason why Revolution Health partnered with Kosmix over others is because:
“RevolutionHealth was looking for a technology engine that could provide the best search results in depth and breadth to give their users the best heath content out there.  In Kosmix, they have a partner that can scale to all of the content on the Web and deliver the most relevant results for their users.  The reason we can do this is that we are the first engine to deliver all of our content results through algorithms with no human intervention at all  — the first ‘algo-produced content engine.’  This gives users all of the results they need – particularly in the long tail – and the best user experience for the Web, making the ability to search for any content that is health-related simple, intuitive and graphical.”

[1] Kosmix.com
[2] RevolutionHealth.com
[3] Kosmix Blog: Jon Miller joins Kosmix board

FatFreeCart^[1] makes it easy to set-up shopping carts online. There isn’t any registration necessary to benefit from this service. Essentially FatFreeCart provides the code^[2] needed to enable users to add checkout buttons on their website. The code currently supports PayPal and Google Checkout.

This service is especially beneficial for users that want to make money from their talent. For example, if you’re a musician and you want to make money by selling your music, adding FatFreeCart is a quick and simple solution. An example of a satisfied user of FatFreeCart is blue-echoes.com^[3]. Blue-echoes.com uses the service for people to quickly buy photography prints through Google Checkout connected to FatFreeCart.

The best part of FatFreeCart is that it is free and quick. FatFreeCart was designed by Robin Kohli, also founder of e-junkie.com^[4].

[1] FatFreeCart.com
[2] FatFreeCart.com: Get the code
[3] blue-echoes.com: prints
[4] E-junkie.com