With its technology team in Israel, NY-based Outbrain has raised $5 million in Series A funding. The VC firms participating in the round are: Gemini Israel Funds and Lightspeed Venture Partners. GlenRock Israel, which backed Outbrain since its inception, also participated in the round. The company raised $1 million in seed funding last year.

Outbrain provides a rating and recommendation widget that can be embedded into a blog or Web site. Outbrain has also partnered with several RSS readers to incorporate ratings directly into the reader. The recommendations can be set to only the current site or can be open to a network of sites. We've been testing the Outbrain functionality on CN over the past 10 days and will have some insights and a review after our test concludes later today.

Outbrain notes that following the investment, Daniel Cohen from Gemini, Yoni Cheifetz from Lightspeed and Ziv Kop from GlenRock, will be joining Outbrain's board of directors.

Check out our discussion with Outbrain from last year. Other players in the ratings space include SezWho, Disqus and JS-Kit.

Here is an example of the widget on CN with a story from yesterday:

Matthew Siegel and Dan Zaccagnino, Co-Founders of the online social network and web application Indaba Music, explain how their site not only provides musicians and artists with the ability to locate and communicate with one another, but also to collaborate with fellow artists. Musicians can use Indaba as a tool to finesse already composed tracks, or create brand new material from scratch with their peers.

What we learned about Indaba Music:

• Indaba is a social network and web application that allows artists to find and create music with one another online
• Focused on gaining content creators as well as fans and passionate music listeners
• Monetize by offering a pro account for a monthly fee as well as through advertising

Recently there has been a lot of talk about the New York startup scene (I covered a lot of New York-based metaverse companies in this post ) and how we can improve it.

I proposed a simple litmus test with this scenario on the NY Tech Meetup mailing list: Larry Page and Sergey Brin are in New York and they are not connected yet (and no, they did not conveniently work for an investment bank or a VC before) and they try to start Google in NYC. If they can get to where they are today in NYC, then we have what we are looking for.

This thread was initiated after reading this article about many Silicon Valley networking companies are now organizing their invstor/entrepreneur networking events in Los Angeles and how it’s helping the local economy and the startup scene.

We have many excellent networking events in New York City, probably more than any other place other than Silicon Valley. But we still believe this is not enough. As a community we will work on attracting as many networking companies to NYC as possible so we can have many successful startups in the city.

One part of this will be a non-profit organization, (very similar to Svase, if not a branch of it) that will be a central community of NY entrepreneurs, founders and startup people. The organization will provide a forum for entrepreneurs for learning, solving problems common to all startups, brainstorming, getting access to resources and more with the goal of creating many successful startups.
In the meantime, if you are a newcomer to the NY startup scene, here are some first steps (non-comprehensive) to get acquainted with fellow entrepreneurs:

http://groups.google.com/group/SeedCapital

http://newtech.meetup.com/1/

http://newtech.meetup.com/21/

http://entrepreneur.meetup.com/305/

http://entrepreneur.meetup.com/1124/
There are definitely more events/resources out there, some of them invitation-only like the Founders Club.

And definitely do not even think of missing the upcoming BarCampNYC3!

Great article at the Google Lat Long Blog from Adelia L. Barber about the benefits of using Google Earth in the classroom, along with a fun quiz, that can be solved by GE. This is very similar to the “Unype Game” that Emily Davidow wrote about recently:

Unype Inc. is very interested in making Unype a useful tool and environment in education and we’d love to hear from you about how we can make Unype even more useful to you educators out there. Please let us know at murat at unype dot com.

We are improving our proprietary algorithms to be able to handle up to a million users per server and recently over-achieved our performance goals by 30% and we think there is still room to improve. The Unype server is also horizontally scalable, just by adding more server machines. Here is a screenshot from our recent test:

Given the amount of time it takes to design, develop and go to market, it’s rare for current issues or events to find their way into a game. ICED, a new issue-oriented learning game that takes on the hot-button topic of immigration, is an exception to that rule and also shows how new development tools may make current events games more feasible.

ICED was developed by MFA students Heidi Boisvert (Hunter College) and Natalia Rodriguez (Brooklyn College) with the input of more than 100 New York City high school students, while working with Breakthrough, an international non-governmental organization, with offices in New York and New Delhi, that uses media, education and pop culture to promote human rights, equality and justice, ICED uses Garage Games Torque engine to put a FPS perspective on the immigrant experience.

After a brief assessment before entering the game space, the player chooses the persona of one of five immigrant teens, each of a different ethnicity and immigration status. While navigating the game’s urban landscape, a players actions determine their fate, accurately simulating how immigration laws are unevenly enforced, often denying due process and violating human rights of all immigrant in the process.

Though sure to make CNN’s resident anti-immigrant spokes-pundit Lou Dobbs rant-and-rave, ICED gives teachers and students a powerful and provocative tool to stimulate discussion, learning and understanding of the immigrant experience. ICED may also be a harbinger of a new approach to development for all game genres, serious and otherwise, that dramatically reduces time-to-market, making it possible to build a game that reflects current — or at least recent — issues and events.

Several companies including Making History developer Muzzy Lane are building web-based game-building services that promise to “…bridge the gap between those who want to make games and the ability to create them. With our service…virtually anyone or any company will be able to make or mod their own games ranging, from a casual card game to a sophisticated 3-D video game, on the web, in real time.”

Essentially what this means is that like digital publishing, graphics, photography and video, the tools of game development that once were once rare, remote and difficult to use are rapidly being democratized. In the context of serious games, this has profound implications for empowering curriculum planners and individual teachers to customize games — or even create new ones — to meet the needs of their schools and students. For entertainment games this could be an even more disruptive trend by introducing a social aspect to modding, sharing and playing games, changing the players experience in subtle and dramatic ways.

Courtney Nichols, new host of the online interview series nextNYers and serial entrepeneur, was referenced in a Silicon Alley Insider article entitled "Market Research Is For Suckers" by SAI contributor and New York-based entrepreneur, Hank Williams. Hank seems to be a Courtney fan but he is quite troubled that she asked a new web 2.0 company what sort of market research they did.  Well let's just say, this sparked quite a substantial sparring match of opinions between Hank and Courtney in the comments of the article. This is not to be missed, scroll down on the page and feel free to weigh in. Market research, yes or no? In case you have not seen the show, nextNYers is a weekly web series hosted by Courtney Nichols, which interviews the top executives of the hottest up-and-coming technology, new media and Web 2.0 companies in New York in conjunction with nextNY and CenterNetworks.

Online media company For Your Imagination today announced a strong lineup of upcoming performances for their brand new live web series, LIVE@FYI, a showcase for the best and most promising artists the music industry has to offer.

Australian born and New York City based singer-songwriter Sandrine kicks off the latest round with a performance on February 20th at 5:00 p.m. EST at www.liveatfyi.com. The newcomer will be performing songs from her debut album “Dark Fades Into The Light,” to be released on April 1st through Nettwerk Music Group.

Jenny Owens Young steps in front of the camera the following day with a performance scheduled for 7:00 p.m. EST.  Youngs, a New York based singer-songwriter who has received much critical acclaim, will perform songs from her 2007 release, “Batten The Hatches.”

Finally, jumping ahead to next month, Blue Note recording artist Priscilla Ahn will take the stage on Monday, March 24th at 2:00 p.m. EST, prior to her performance that evening at The Filmore @ Irving Plaza in New York City.

“We’ve featured several artists and record labels representing  various genres and look forward to announcing more LIVE@FYI performances very soon,” said For Your Imagination’s CEO, Paul Kontonis.

Each episode of LIVE@FYI will be streamed live over the Internet using the live online broadcasting platform Mogulus, and consists of both a live performance as well as intimate discussions with the artists and behind the scenes moments. The show is currently hosted by For Your Imagination's own Jon Johnnidis and can be found at www.liveatfyi.com.

This is a question that was brought to mind by the current episode of the NextNYers video series, where every week they interview entrepreneurs who are building companies in the New York area. This episode is about a company with an online video speed dating web service called Camlink.

Indeed it wasn't a bad interview, but the host, Courtney Nichols, asked one question that troubled me. She asked what sort of market research the company had done to determine if there was a market for this kind of product.

This, it seemed to me, was an unfair question, because it implied that market research is a needed and/or valuable way of determining whether a web service will be successful.

I don't generally believe this is the case.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that without actually building a consumer service, it is rarely possible to determine whether it will be successful. This is because with these kinds of products, the devil is in the experience. Who would have thought that Facebook would have been able to come into the market so strongly and to catch up to or beat MySpace? On paper, it would probably not have been compelling.

The only thing you could have perhaps determined from market research is whether people want to connect with each other. But the truth is it's like asking someone if they would prefer Coke with lemon or lime when they have never tried either. You can ask people if they like lemon. You can ask if they like lime. You can even ask if they get thirsty. But the only way to know what they really are going to like is to observe their behavior after trying both.

In this case, I don't think there is much question that there is a demand or need for tools to help people find dates, partners, or spouses. Will their particular approach work? I don't know, but I don't think any market research would tell me.

But this does bring to mind the question of how you determine if there is a market for a web product. I think the best way is by solving a problem that you personally relate to. Of course its never that simple, particularly if you do not have sensibilities that match those of the mainstream. No matter what, some combination of insight, luck, and execution will always be required, and indeed I think finding that sweet spot is more art and iteration than science.

For developers doing consumer web products, doing pre-launch market research surveys, or anything other than testing product usage is a silly exercise. Post launch, real market reaction is the only research you can really trust.