The Pirate Party is a political party that has been spreading across Europe.  The party works on reforming laws that revolve around invasion of privacy, intellectual property, copyright, and patent protection.  The Pirate Party leaked documents belonging to the government of Bavaria, Germany which revealed that they were attempting to contract out the development of a trojan in order intercept encrypted Internet communication.  This includes wiretapping Skype.

The Bavarian government was attempting to contract this software to a company called Digitask.  The first document was an inquiry about whether Digitask can put it together and a list of suggested monthly prices to pay them.  The second document that was leaked included an outline of how Digitask would deploy the solution.  The malware that Digitask would build was referred to as the “Skype Capture Unit.” 

The Skype Capture Unit would be in the form of an executable file delivered to a target machine according to Ars Technica.  This file would then transfer unencrypted conversations to a Skype Recording Server.  This server can record 10 Skype conversations at once and then send it to another party. 

Some VoIP software that is available on the market already has wiretapping built-in.  VoIP open source software generally makes it hard to tap conversations.  Currently Skype doesn’t have wiretapping built-in so your conversations on the software are safe for now.

Mendeley is a start-up based in London.  The idea for Mendeley came about when the founders discovered that there isn’t an easy way of sharing their collection of research papers while pursuing their PhDs.  This turned into a business opportunity for them. 

The Mendeley desktop software also complements the research-sharing website.  Mendeley Desktop software is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux.  The software extracts text from PDF files and integrates it into a user’s profile.  Other users will be able to find specific research papers through the form of search and tags. 

“As the database of Mendeley Web grows, you will be able to view statistics about emerging research topics in every academic discipline, and readership statistics for each individual paper” stated Victor Henning, co-founder of Mendeley. “Soon we will also include a recommendation engine. Basically, it’s like a Last.fm for research.”

Stefan Glänzer, a seed investor and executive chairman of Last.fm was intrigued by the concept.  Stefan Glänzer joined Mendeley as executive chairman and then brought in the founding engineers of Skype to help out with building Mendeley.

“There are plenty of websites that want to become ‘the Facebook for researchers’” stated Eileen Broch, an investment director at Ambient Sound Investments (ASI).  “Mendeley, however, is not just another social network. It’s a truly valuable integration of software and web technologies that solves some of researchers’ day-to-day problems – which is why we decided to invest.”

ASI is the investment group that was created by the four founding engineerings at Skype.

Related Links:
1. Mendeley
2. ASI
3. OpenPR

“UDC has a monolithic team that can guarantee fast growth and be successful in putting all pets in the world to the web.”
-Tauno Tats, CEO of ASI

United Dogs and Cats, Ltd. (UDC) made a call to the Skype founders for an investment. And Ambient Sounds Investments (ASI), the company formed by the 4 engineers behind Skype answered the call. Ambient invested about $235,000 into the pet social network company recently. United Dogs and Cats runs UnitedDogs.com and UnitedCats.com, a couple of social networking companies for pet owners.

Between both sites, there are only 40,000 users. This is not a whole lot. The design of the homepage is pretty sloppy too. If I was United Dogs and Cats, I’d hire a user interface expert. UnitedDogs and UnitedCats has profiles, blogs, and photo sharing.

United Dogs and Cats will be opening a new platform and languages over the next few weeks.  UDC also has a Facebook Application and allows users to find each other via Google Maps if interested.

Ragnar Sass is the CEO of Estonian-based UDC.

Competitors include Dogster, Catster, My Dog Space, and My Cat Space, Petster, Pawspot, Fuzzster.

Information Source:
[1] UDC Blog: Pet Owner’s Social Network Secures Additional Funding from ASI by Ragnar Sass
[2] TechCrunch: Skype Co-Founding Engineers Invest In Pet Social Network by Duncan Riley

After Niklas Zennström recently stepped down from his position as Skype’s chief executive to pursue other entrepreneurial ventures, eBay began to question whether their investment was really worth it. “He could have continued to run the company, but he wanted to focus on new opportunities. He’s an entrepreneur at heart,” stated eBay spokesperson, Hani Durzi.

eBay will be shelling out $1.43 billion for Skype-related payments this quarter. About $900 million will be for a write-down of Skype’s valuation and $530 million will be used to settle future obligations. The $900 million is based on impairment, meaning that eBay overvaluated Skype when they acquired the company in 2005 as part of a $2.6 billion agreement.

(more…)

Joost has been a viral hit thus far and many investors want in. Given that YouTube’s model gives a lot of power to users, the company is struggling to conform to the demands made by television networks. Viacom announced recently that they would be suing YouTube for $1 billion because of this.

However, it is in the television networks’ interest to partner with companies that have growing user bases and can host video content for them. This is why it does not shock me that Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, CBS Corporation, Viacom Inc., and Li Ka-Shing (the 9th richest man in the world - $23 billion) have invested a total of $45 million in Joost. Sequoia Capital is also an early investor in Google and YouTube.
“This funding represents a tremendous vote of confidence in Joost’s platform,” stated Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, co-founders of Joost. “We’ve carefully selected these investors from a variety of interested parties” because they can help Joost “accelerate growth and development of the company.”
[Information Source: WSJ]

The same founders of Joost also created Skype and Kazaa. Skype was acquired by eBay Inc. for a few billion dollars and Kazaa faced legal battles with the RIAA over music download abilities. Joost also has a dark side: spyware support.

I still have hundreds of invites so if anyone wants them, comment on this post.

Two of eBay’s most expensive properties, PayPal ($1.5 billion in stock) and Skype ($2.6 billion in cash and stock) are now going to start interconnecting.  This means that Skype users will be able to send money to each other via PayPal.  This was announced by Niklas Zennström yesterday.

Although the announcement was made, as far as when the service would be available is still unknown.  Zennström made the announcement at a technology conference in California.  Skype has millions of global users.  The release dates are expected to be announced within a month.

“You can send money over Skype,” stated Zennström. “This is basically connecting the Skype community over PayPal. All the user needs is a PayPal account.”

Skype has over 171 million registered users over countries all over the world and PayPal is constantly expanding to global markets.  PayPal has 114 million customers as of October 2006 over 103 markets and 17 different currencies [Source: Pulse 2.0].

[Article Source: Red Herring]

San Jose, CA based eBay Inc., the online auction/shopping website created by Pierre Omidyar are getting close to acquiring StubHub for over $300 million. StubHub is one of the largest online ticket-sellers for concerts and sporting events. Last year, StubHub sold over $400 million worth of tickets. StubHub made $10 million EBIT last year.

Although the deal has not been officially confirmed by eBay representatives, people familiar with the matter reported the acquisition possibility to the Wall Street Journal. The acquisition announcement could happen as early as tomorrow.

eBay competes directly with StubHub for ticket-selling. eBay has been acquiring companies left and right for the past few years. eBay acquired Sweden-based online auction company Tradera for $48 million in April 2006. Also last April, eBay acquired social networking website, Meetup for $2 million. Two of eBay’s most well-known acquisitions was Skype for $2.6 billion and PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002.

At the Web 2.0 Summit, Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom mentioned that the next version of Skype will incorporate a live audio chat feature called Skypecasts. The new feature will allow blogs and websites to post a link that directs visitors to a “Skypecasts” moderated audio conference room where they can interact with each other. Social networking sites can also incorporate the feature to let users share content through audio interaction. No timeline of Skypecasts’ release was mentioned but Niklas said to expect it soon.

I am looking forward to this feature. I think direct interaction with others online is definitely a step up from text comments on blogs and forum posts on websites. Thousands of websites can use a feature like Skypecasts. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out.

[Source - CNET]

The founders of Skype are at it again. This time with a vision that aims to converge television programming, user generated content and peer to peer networking within an interactive video site. According to Business Week, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom are preparing to launch the public beta to their latest venture, The Venice Project, this November.

So far, the project’s website does not say much about what’s going on behind closed doors. According to the website, the project “combines the best things about television with the social power of the internet - a project that gives viewers, advertisers and content owners more choice, control and creativity than ever before.”

It’ll be interesting to see the technological innovations of this project. The Skype founders are amazing entrepreneurs that know how to create good projects. So if the Venice Project is anything like Kazaa or Skype, it’ll definitely be a hit.