February 9th, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

Launch Party Vancouver, Episode 1 ‘The Admiral’ (2)

Launch Party Vancouver, Episode 1 ‘The Admiral’ from LAtwiist on Vimeo.

February 8th, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

Flying Stick Camera (1)

Twirl this up by rubbing it between your palms and get that blimp shot you’ve always wanted.  This little beauty is from Yanko Design.

February 8th, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

$3M raised for WooMe (0)

LA based dating/introduction site WooMe has raised $3M in a bridge round from Mangrove Capital, Atomical and a couple of private investors.

February 6th, 2008 by Steph Macadaan

New JibJab “Starring You” Video for Valentine’s Day (0)

Twiistup 2 featured show-off JibJab has created a new “starring you” video just in time for Valentine’s Day. The video “Striptease” features a personalizeable (is that a word?) male or female striptease. Using a body double and your face, you can send a seductive humorous striptease to that special someone. To shy to star in a fake striptease? You can also use well-known faces such as, Steve Jobs, Paris Hilton, Tiger Woods and all the current political figures. The possibilities are endless, so forget Hallmark and get your strip on!

February 1st, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

Mahalo + GoodReads (0)

Mahalo has added GoodReads to the social part of their experience.  You can now compare books that you’ve read and/or that you’re reading with your friends on Mahalo Social.

January 31st, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

Perez Hilton at Twiistup 3 - part 1 (0)

Perez Hilton at Twiistup 3 - Part 1 from mike macadaan on Vimeo.

January 30th, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

Entertainment Startup En2go Raises $1.35M (0)

LA based startup En2go is developing entertainment for TV, computers and mobile devices. They just announced that they raised 1.35M in a private placement of it’s shares. The company’s board includes Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, former EMI head of digital Ted Cohen, music industry veteran Paul Fishkin and developer John Draper. They will use the proceeds to fund it’s tech incubators in LA and Vegas and other general purposes.

January 30th, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

NBC Universal Acquires LX.tv (0)

LX.tv’s original focus was to feature New York and Los Angeles based dining and nightlife through online video. Ex-MTV’ers Morgan Hertzman and Joseph Varet’s vision has been realized since it’s debut in 2006. NBC is looking to expand to other regions as well as other ‘out of home’ experiences.

Word on the street is that NBC is looking grow their business outside of the traditional TV space, increase local content production with a focus on lifestyle and cultural programming.

If you were at Twiistup 3 you may recall seeing our guest host Shira Lazar conducting interviews. Shira also hosts local LA based shows for LX.tv.

January 30th, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

the Rubicon Project featured in LATimes (0)

Twiistup 3 ‘Best Showoff’ winner is featured in this article in the Los Angeles Times. Nice writeup by Alana Semuels on Rubicon, Frank and his crew. You can request a beta invite here.

About Rubicon Project (from rubiconproject.com)

the Rubicon Project is a group of industry-experienced, aggressive and passionate renegades dedicated to bringing a new level of efficiency to the fragmented Internet advertising space. The founders of the Rubicon Project shook up the online advertising industry in 1998 when they created L90/adMonitor, one of the most successful Internet advertising platforms that served over 3,000 of the web’s most recognized sites, reaching 65% of the Internet population before DoubleClick acquired it.

$27 Billion was spent advertising online in 2007, yet it’s still too hard for websites to sell their ad space online. While Internet advertising is an explosive market, it is an incredibly inefficient one with advertisers spending money with 300+ disparate advertising networks worldwide (e.g. Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, Tacoda, HispanoClick and Adtegrity). the Rubicon Project’s web-based, self-serve solution gives any size website the most complete access to the total available advertising market and its smart matching technology does all the work to perfectly match each ad impression with the optimal money-making opportunity. the Rubicon Project is the new online advertising standard that makes it effortless for websites to generate the mad cash they’ve always dreamed of. And, it’s free to join. Websites looking to make more money while doing less work should click here to sign-up.

January 30th, 2008 by Mike Macadaan

5M Series B round for ThisNext (0)

Social shopping site ThisNext raises 5M in a series B round. Their existing investors Clearstone Venture Partners and Anthem Venture Partners provided the additional funding. It’s been reported that their prior rounds were a venture debt round in June 2007 and a series A round in February 2006 for 3.5M. ThisNext was a featured ‘Showoff’ & Sponsor of Twiistup.