Flashback: RealVideo lit up the web 15 years ago this week

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It might be hard to believe in this modern era of HTML5, HD streaming video, Netflix and Hulu, but there was a time when the web — or the World Wide Web, as we called it back then — was primarily images, text and links. Audio was cutting edge. In February 1997, fifteen years ago… Read More…

Ex-Microsoft interns sell Summify to Twitter: Popular news service will shut down

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Mircea Paşoi and Cristian Strat, the two Romanian Web developers who founded Summify instead of taking jobs at Facebook and Google, have now decided they’d prefer to work at Twitter. The developers announced today in a blog post that they have sold the company to the social networking powerhouse, a move that comes just 10… Read More…

Kindle Fire will outsell iPad, Windows Phone will rebound, and six other tech predictions

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Facebook will go public in 2012. Apple will lose some of its innovative edge without Steve Jobs. And the majority of Americans will be driving electric vehicles by the year 2022. Those were some of the predictions last night as the Washington Technology Industry Association hosted their annual Predictions Dinner. I had the distinct honor, once… Read More…

Rob Glaser returns to his roots, joins $24 million round for video delivery startup Qwilt

Rob Glaser

Rob Glaser helped pioneer the online video, founding RealNetworks in 1995 a mere 10 years before YouTube came into existence. Maybe he was just a tad too early. But Glaser, who remains chairman of Real, hasn’t lost his interest in the business. He’s among the backers of a high-profile Silicon Valley startup by the name… Read More…

Here are the problems facing Groupon and Living Social: Scale, repeat customers and targeting

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Are Groupon and Living Social the next great things in online advertising? Or, are they just a flash in the pan? That was the fascinating debate which broke out earlier this week at the Mobile Future Forward conference in Seattle where panelists debated the challenges in front of the fast-growing daily deal businesses. RealNetworks chairman Rob… Read More…

Hank Skorny out at RealNetworks

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The executive management upheaval continues at RealNetworks, with the Seattle company announcing today that Hank Skorny plans to resign as chief strategy officer and senior vice president effective September 16th. No reason was given for the departure in a SEC filing and representatives at Real could not immediately be reached for comment. Skorny joined the… Read More…

RealNetworks giving back $136M to shareholders in major overhaul

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RealNetworks today announced a series of moves to “reinvigorate” the business and make the 16-year-old Seattle company more attractive to investors. It plans to return $136 million to investors in a special dividend and execute a one-for-four reverse stock split, an initiative that comes after a four month “top-to-bottom review” of the businesses, said founder… Read More…

Madrona, Rob Glaser and others pump $3.5M into mobile app Zapd

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PressPlane, a Seattle startup which incubated the mobile application Zapd, has raised a little more than $3 million from Madrona Venture Group, RealNetworks chairman Rob Glaser, Second Avenue Partners, PhotoDisc co-founder Tom Hughes and others. Zapd, which allows users to create Web sites in a matter of minutes, has recorded 320,000 downloads of its iPhone app since… Read More…

RealNetworks huddles with (what’s left of) its employees

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RealNetworks has experienced a huge shakeup over the past couple years. Its founder Rob Glaser left the CEO’s office. The company spun off or eliminated many of its traditional businesses, cutting hundreds of jobs in the process of streamlining its strategy. And just recently the company accepted the resignation of CEO Bob Kimball, after little… Read More…

Ex-Microsoft and Google interns launch Summify, with cash from Rob Glaser and others

Rob Glaser

Two Romanian Web developers who recently landed in Vancouver, B.C. have just scored a first round of capital from RealNetworks founder Rob Glaser, Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield, Accel Partners and others. The startup company, Summify, is trying to solve a big problem: information overload. Mircea Paşoi and Cristian Strat, who have been programming together since… Read More…