ContextWeb CTO John Pavley talks about the technology that sets the ADSDAQ ad exchange apart from the competition.

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That's the question posed by New York band Vampire Weekend in a song of the same name, and posed in turn to a bunch of wordie types by Michael Hogan of Vanity Fair.

The panel included Grant Barrett of Double-Tongued (answer: "a little bit"), V.F.'s own copy editor, Peter Devine ("a modest-size fuck"), and David Rose, a V.F. writer and actual Oxford grad. Perhaps not coincidentally, Rose was vociferous, ardent even, in the comma's defense, professing to also give "a damn and a bean."

Vampire Weekend's lead singer, Ezra Koenig, says "the song is more about not giving a fuck than about Oxford commas." But Ezra, it's just so rare that anyone outside of our tiny world even knows what an Oxford comma is. Yours is almost certainly the first song ever to mention it. Even if you are using it as a metaphor for small-minded failure to see the forest, please, let us have this little moment.

Vampire Weekend is having an extended moment, and their new record is great, laced with Afro-pop and ska beats, twinkling guitar and piano parts, and lyrics that are literate without being all Professor Von Schmartzenpanz about it. The band themselves claim to be "specialists in the following styles: 'Cape Code Kwassa Kwassa', 'Upper West Side Soweto', 'Campus', and 'Oxford Comma Riddim.'"

Fred Wilson, blogging about their record release show last night at the Bowery Ballroom (funny that they're just getting around to releasing a CD), has posted an MP3 of "Who Gives a Fuck About An Oxford Comma." I don't want to hotlink him, but it's worth heading over for a listen.

Last week I visited NY-based KickApps at their headquarters in NYC to discuss the new 3.0 release of the KickApps platform launching today. Their office continues to grow which is evident by the construction work going on and the addition of more desks than the last time I visited. I met with CEO Alex Blum and Senior VP of Marketing Michael Chin -- they shared some stats about the company with me. KickApps employs 35 people in NYC, 30 in Mumbai along with a small office in Los Angeles.

We spoke about site stats which are transferred to the publisher, outside of their enterprise clients, KickApps hosts 14,000 sites and Blum notes that their 14,000 drive more traffic than competitior Ning's 130,000 customer sites. Blum also shared a big difference between Ning and Kickapps; the users on KickApps are yours whereas on Ning they are Ning's. What this means is that if you decide to leave KickApps, you can take the users with you to the next service, whereas with Ning, you would need to start from scratch.

KickApps 3.0 Release

One of the goals of the 3.0 release was to open up the platform. That has been made possible by launching the KickApps API Developer Kit. The Kit offers a variety of features:

• Multiple languages
• Hosted or non-hosted, meaning you can choose to use the API on your own site off the KA hosted option
• Supports Google OpenSocial
• Facebook apps can live inside a KickApps community can put widgets into your site and profile
• Extends existing SOAP single-sign-on (including one-click Drupal, Joomla and WordPress plugins)
• Usage-based pricing model: cost-efficient and advertising-free

The Widget Studio is also a new piece of the KickApps 3.0 release. The studio is interesting as it can be as flexible as a programmer/developer needs but also as simple for a non-techie to use. The tool has an Adobe Flex interface with a WYSIWYG implementation, ability to manage feeds in any format, variety of layout options, and one-click syndication to any site or social network.

Other updates include a simplified signup process, a live editor to make changing pages easier, and a bunch of new reporting options.

The KickApps business model continues the same as previous versions: sharing ad revenue with KickApps or a "buyout" of the ads where the site owner can control all of the inventory but pays KickApps on a cpm basis. Blum says that the larger sites are using the buyout option.

Photos From the KickApps Office

  

Though I haven’t added any new posts for nearly a month, “Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated,” as Marc Twain famously said. What I have been doing is studying the effect of extreme localization by playing Rayman’s Raving Rabbids II on my neighbors Wii. It didn’t get rave reviews, but the reviewers don’t live in my neighborhood (click image to see video trailer).

As the game started up there was the Statue of Liberty and downtown Manhattan… City Hall Park… the Brooklyn Heights Promenade… and DUMBO…  landmarks and neighborhoods I see every day. Momentarily stunned by the familiarity, shooting rabbid rampaging bunnies on home turf soon began to have a hypnotic effect, blurring the line between game play and something much deeper… my life. Why don’t more games go there? And why limit customization to choosing an avatar, why not allow users to swap out the location, landmarks, rules of play, too? There’s magic to such extreme localization that’s ripe to be explored and exploited. After all, what better way to get players into a flow state than letting them play on the streets where they live?

‘Having people produce their own ads? We’re currently doing that,’ said Long Ellis, Google’s head of tv sales Monday evening in a Q&A at Google’s New York HQ.

‘We actually have some relationships with organizations. We’re building a self serve type platform, for clients who do not have the resources. They can produce their own ad at a fairly inexpensive price.’

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The original Internet television show, DadLabs - Taking Back Paternity, produced in conjunction with New York City based online media company For Your Imagination, has secured financial sponsorship deals with a trio of national baby product brands, targeting DadLabs’ key demographic, dads.  

Baby Bjorn, Graco and Sittercity.com have signed on for fully integrated DadLabs advertising campaigns including elements of product promotion and placement as well as brand awareness.  Each company sponsored a full week of the series’ programming, which includes new daily episodes Monday through Thursday.  The sponsored videos are distributed on DadLabs.com with video partner Viddler and syndicated across the top video and social media networks including YouTube, MySpace and Facebook.

“Through a variety of advertising tools, including online banner ads, text links to the sponsor’s website, product giveaways and branding, we’re confident that all parties have truly benefited from this partnership,” said Paul Kontonis, For Your Imagination’s CEO.  “The Dads produce such incredible content and we’re thrilled to see the show get increased exposure to their audience.  Ultimately, the success of these and future campaigns will be based on the number of impressions, time of engagement, e-mail click-through-rates and community interaction.”

“Reaching out and securing these sponsorship deals is important to us because we really want to continue to broaden the conversation about modern fatherhood,” said Clay Nichols, one of the hosts of DadLabs’ Monday and Tuesday installments, “The Lab” and “The Lounge,” respectfully.  “Not to mention that the dads here at the Lab love getting up in the morning and going to work and we know that with the help of our sponsors that we'll be doing that for just a while longer.”

Created by three former teachers and originating from Austin, Texas, DadLabs clearly stands out among other parenting content available online by providing its unique perspective. The show has an obvious male slant, targeting 25-44 year old current and future fathers.

Moving forward, DadLabs and For Your Imagination will continue to explore other sponsorship opportunities, particularly those involving a long-term brand partnership.

UPDATE 1: My friends over at Silicon Alley Insider and Caroline McCarthy of CNET have just reblogged this question.

I’m always shocked by how few people apparently read Chris Sacca’s blog. Yeah, he never writes on it, but he was one of the most influential folks at the Google, and THE most influential in the Google M&A space. Add on top of that the fact that he spearheaded their mobile strategy (yes, the one which did the impossible and opened the wireless industry) and you have to wonder why everyone has some other idiot in their RSS reader and not a guy like Chris.

Anyway, when Chris announced his his departure from Google last month, he told he readers that he would start investing some money in startups (through a reposted interview with John Battelle.

Just last night, he posted that he’s HAS invested in and is working very closely with a New York City-based “content company,” and he put out a personal call for a web developer to join the team. Here’s a brief quote from it:

I am backing an edgy little content company in New York City that needs their first full-time tech lead. This is an opportunity to get in at the ground level of a rapidly growing web property, which already has tons of sweet press, sick and steadily growing traffic, and some very passionate users.

So, my question is:

Who is this “little content company in New York City”? And what rapidly growing NY company needs their FIRST full-time tech lead?

Let the guessing games begin. I’m stumped, but I want to know. Apparently we’re not supposed to find out until the damn thing is relaunched.

Mochila CEO Keith McAllister explains how Mochila is the first and only online marketplace for content. A publisher has the option to either purchase photos, videos, or articles, or acquire the content for free by accepting advertising with it.

AdaptiveBlue Director of Engineering Karen Teng discusses the company's two applications, BlueOrganizer and SmartLinks. These personalization technologies make browsing the Web truly an interactive process. BlueOrganizer is a tagging and search tool while SmartLinks expands the links on your site without having to navigate away.

Earlier this week a new NY-based startup launched called IndieGoGo. The site is an online social marketplace to connect the needed people and tools to make films. You can search ideas that are already in the system and get involved or upload your own movie ideas. I spoke with founder Slava Rubin to learn more about the service. He said most of the ideas come from writers and producers but anyone is encouraged to participate in the movie making process. It's all about engaging the audience was a theme I heard throughout the conversation. Here's their official launch release.

They have three working taglines:

1. Where independent happens
2. Don't just choose the movie to watch, choose the movie to make
3. DIWO - do it with others

Artists post, promote and produce their movies through IndieGoGo and fans discover, support, and get perks from the artists. There are a variety of community features and widgets to bring artists and fans closer together to create movies that the fans want.

The core differentiator of IndieGoGo Slava said is in the fund raising portion of the site. He said this the most difficult part in the logistics but believes this is what will make them succesful. My concern is whether it will draw in a lot of scams, the artists could easily take the money and run. Slava says that they have policies in place to protect from any scams and the process works like this: the filmmaker posts the request for funds, the community sends in the funds via Paypal to IndieGogo, once the funds reach the requested amount, then IndieGogo receives the plan from the filmmaker, and disburses the funds.

The community members who submit funds do not receive any equity stake in the film but will receive VIP perks. If the funding does not reach the amount requested, then all of the money received is refunded back to the community members. This seems like a bit of a logistical nightmare but I guess it can be done.

They currently have over 50 projects submitted and a couple hundred community signups in their first few days since launch. The business model is two-fold. There are targeted ads on the site (I see Google AdSense) and the second piece is based around taking a processing fee when the artist/writer/etc. receives the funding from the community. IndieGoGo takes a 9% fee which includes the Paypal fees for collecting the funding.

The IndieGoGo team is currently six people with three founders and is self-funded. They use ruby on rails for development.