Stage Two's blog

20 year wireless industry veteran, Jean Tripier, joins WorldMate as CEO today. Jean comes most recently from Good Technology, where he was Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Operating Officer and built the company’s OEM business from the ground up. Before Good, Tripier was Vice President of Corporate Development at international mobile giant Vodafone, overseeing the entire Asia Pacific region. Jean will lead discussions of co-branded deals, with travel brands looking for a quick-to-market mobile app. WorldMate recently signed one such deal with Virgin Blue.

Founding CEO Nadav Gur, remains with WorldMate. He will run business operations as the company’s Chief Commercial Officer.

Amir Kirshenboim, who was the company’s VP of Product Development from 2004-2007, returns now as CEO of  WorldMate Israel, where he will lead product innovation and technical development.  Since 2008, Amir has been Senior Vice President of Products at the video ringtone company, Vringo. He brought the product to leading industry partners such as Marvel Comics, Maxis and Etisalat and helped build a wide user base. Before originally joining WorldMate, Kirshenboim founded two mobile companies, DITIO Software Ltd. and Smart Mobile Applications.

We look forward to working with WorldMate as they continue to innovate and forge new co-branded partnerships that bring their best-in-class service to a wider audience of business and elite travelers.

Coverage so far:

tnooz.com

Simple Mobile Review

VUDU, in the wake of their acquisition by Wal-Mart, is continuing to innovate and improve their streaming movie service.  The company has announced as of this morning a new social feature baked right into their user interface, specifically the ability to share a recently viewed movie (and how much they liked the movie) via a tweet or a Facebook status update.  Friends of the VUDU  customer who follow their updates in a given service will see an update that the viewer watched the movie in VUDU, and see how well they rated it (out of 5 stars).  If you happen to see the tweet or the Facebook update from within VUDU’s own native Facebook or Twitter application (inside VUDU Apps) then with one click you’ll be able to go watch that movie within the movie service app.

This is another gret example of why a streaming user interface offers maximum flexibility and advantage for VUDU.  They can quickly and easily push down new features as often as needed or useful. No software download by the user  or firmware upgrade for the device is necessary. The new feature just loads the next time a user turns on the service.  VUDU has been making feature updates at a rate of 1 ever 1-2 weeks since they launched this streaming UI, including theatrical trailers, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia, and now social features to share recently watched movies on Twitter or Facbeook.

Today, Spot.Us the pioneer of community funded journalism, takes a new form in its on-going evolution with new features that give communities more ways to participate in the journalism that matters to them. The organization also hopes the new ways it uses technology will help lead to the first open API for journalism — allowing developers to innovate new, dynamic tools to engage with stories.

Starting today, community members can:

• Pledge time and talent to actively participate in realizing a story
• Show support and raise awareness of a pitch with an easy Spot.Us widget on their website
• Get updates as an investigation evolves  from each story’s progress blog
• Get the word out through enhanced social sharing features for Facebook and Twitter
• Suggest cities for the next Spot.Us expansion

The ability to give not just money, but talent to an investigation, opens up new possibilities. Teams of interested individuals can collaborate with a lead journalist and be an integral part of the work.

All of these improvements are embedded in a redesign of the site that Spot.Us believes will better serve the communities, journalists and other news organizations that work with the site.

Stage Two has been working with Spot.Us since its inception, when it pioneered community funded journalism right here in San Francisco. We were thrilled to see them expand to L.A. in November and congratulate Spot.Us on this latest step!

Coverage So Far:

Business Insider

Idea Lab

Lost Remote

Nieman Journalism Lab

Poynter

Watching TV is supposed to be a laid-back experience. Just sit on the couch and zone out. The web, on the other hand, is filled with awesome video content, but we spend hour after hour typing, clicking, searching, and sorting through endless seas of boring junk to get to one wondrous clip that makes it worth all the effort. So what happens when people start connecting their TV’s to the internet? Good luck trying to sift through all that content with your remote to find one :30 FAIL video that makes you giggle. Truth is, there’s a real problem with finding and watching the best web content out there in a passive, TV-style way – especially when you’re trying to do it on a TV. Today, two of our favorite clients, Boxee and Redux, have teamed up to change all of that.

This morning, Boxee and Redux announced the release of a new crowd-sourced, personalized entertainment app that allows the more than 1 million Boxee users out there to enjoy the web just the way the Geek Gods intended – just sitting back and watching.

The new Redux app gives Boxee users the ability to create personalized channels and streams that are crowd-sourced in real-time, ensuring that the content you see is only what is interesting to you. We’re all big movie fans here at S2 – with Redux, we can subscribe to a crowd-sourced “Great Movie Scenes” channel and just watch as hours of great quotes and scenes are fed to us by the Redux community. There are hundreds of channels just like that on Redux, personalized with everything from One Hit Wonder music videos to videos of cute cats. It’s your tailored “best of the internet” stream, and it’s internet TV the way it was meant to be – passive and personal. We’ll let Boxee and Redux fill you in more but, after that, be sure to grab Boxee, grab the Redux App, grab a ham sandwich and a drink, and just sit back and enjoy.

Check out what other people are saying about the Boxee/Redux App below (will be updated as coverage comes in):

• CrunchGear
• Pocket-Lint
• eHomeUpgrade

Put bluntly VUDU’s streaming service is impressive – it’s one of those things that even makes us jaded veterans “wow” when we can watch a feature film in 1080p HDTV with 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound.  We like working with clients who have amazing technology – in fact, we generally insist on it.  When we started working with VUDU in June 2009, we learned (and then announced) that they were planning to embed their service inside HDTVs and Blu-ray players from major CE manufacturers like LG and Mitsubishi.  This, we thought, is smart.  This is the right way to move the company forward and bring VUDU in front of millions of people (quickly).

In January, we worked with VUDU to announce 5 new partnerships with major CE partners, including Samsung, SANYO, Sharp, Toshiba and VIZIO.  We also announced  VUDU Apps, a platform for delivery of other Internet services, from VUDU movies to Flickr photos to news from the NYT and beyond.  These new partnerships will put VUDU services onto 7 of the big nine TV manufacturers, and distribute VUDU on millions of devices in 2010.

It’s almost funny to think back about VUDU, since we’ve known them since their early days.  In 2007 we thought “these guys have great technology.”  In July 2009 we figured “these guys are smart, and they know how to distribute.”  In January 2010 we saw that VUDU not only knows how to make plans, they know how to execute as well.

Today we learned we weren’t the only ones impressed by the company, as  Wal-Mart announced that they’ve acquired VUDU – they will become a wholly owned subsidiary of  Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.  This is amazing news and a well-earned success by the amazing team at VUDU. In a word: congratulations!

Recently David Pogue wrote a review for the NYT of the VUDU service through an LG Blu-Ray player – he likes it. By partnering with Wal-Mark VUDU will become ever more available to consumers – we think they’ll like it too.

It’s been amazing to work with VUDU.  They’re smart, they work hard, and the product is fun to pitch.  Our phones haven’t stopped ringing and buzzing with calls, texts and emails all day, and it doesn’t look like that will change any time soon.

The bottom line is that this kind of success comes from having a great product – that’s really the key to their success.  Having the right team, being able to execute partnerships, attracting press and ultimately consumers… all those things are important, but none of them are possible without a great product.  Well done VUDU – you nailed it.

The press, as you might imagine, has been covering this news closely.  Techmeme has it at the top of the news right now (been there virtually all day). Some of the key press items we’ve tracked are below, and we’ll try to keep updating the list.

• NYT
• Wal-Mart’s official announcement
• Barron’s
• Engadget
• Financial Times
• Gizmodo
• PCWorld
• AllThingsD
• CNET
• NewTeeVee
• Mashable
• eHomeUpgrade
• Boy Genius Report
• Consumerist

Congrats again to VUDU and Wal-Mart!