Israeli news provider Globes is reporting that Imagine Communications has closed $15 million in a Series B round of expansion financing, bringing its total venture capital funding to a total of $25 million. This round was led by US venture capital firm Court Square Ventures, alongside with existing investors including Columbia Capital and Carmel Ventures. Imagine Communications will use the fund to accelerate the company’s growth and further improve its core technology, namely as PersonalizedTV platform that designed for broadband operators. This platform is mainly used in improving bandwidth efficiency, video quality, in addition to targeted TV ads and personalized audio. However, Imagine Communications is scheduled to commercially launch this platform in the fourth quarter of this year. Meanwhile, it also announced that James B. Murray, Jr., the managing general partner at Court Square Ventures, has been appointed to its board of directors.

Imagine Communications, previously known as QoD, is headquartered in San Diego with research facilities in Netanya, Israel. It was co-founded by current CTO Ron Gutman and VP Engineering Doron Segev in 2005. Both co-founders previously worked at BigBand Networks.

Joost began its Asian expansion by include the content from i-amtv, after serving up the content from Beauty TV recently. i-amtv, stands for Independent Asian Music Television, with offices in Malaysia and Ireland was the first music channel in Asia. A bold move for Joost and the content included from i-amtv will be available in both on-demand service or as a continuous channel for the Joost users. On i-amtv, users can find artists that feature songs from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, China, Singapore and Indonesia. Initially, only pop, rock, punk, grunge and hip-hop are available, but later Joost will include interviews, concerts, documentaries and user-generated content related to Asian indie music from this Asian music broadcast provider.

“We are planning a full suite of interactive features such as gig listings, social networking tools and band info widgets. As the channel evolves, we intend to push the boundaries of what’s possible on Joost,” said Genervie Kam, i-amtv head of music, according to The Star Online from Malaysia.

Joost has received a lot of buzz lately. Joost, which was founded by Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, will include the contents from Beauty TV, a beauty TV network dedicated to the beauty enthusiasts, according to this press release. The contents served to the audience will be focused on beauty tips, hair, skin, nails, cosmetic surgery, spas, health, fitness, insider interviews, beauty news, product reviews and trends. This is an area that might attract some specific demographic segments such as women, or young ladies markets that could well position Joost as the Internet’s killer application for the future. Prior to this, Joost has making headlines around the world by signed deals with some high-profile content providers that include CBS, CNN, Turner Broadcasting, Warner Brothers, Sony and Viacom.

Beauty TV was founded in 2006 but launched recently in January this year. It has teamed up with United Global Media Group for the marketing purposes. There is more information on Beauty TV on their About page.

Veoh TV is a really cool application (app). Just released by Veoh Networks and currently only users that received invitation could play around with it. Basically, it was designed as a web browser, will display both user-generated contents from sites such as YouTube or episodes streamed by major TV networks such as ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and many more to come. Think it as a solution to the TV viewing, as TV viewing often considered as a “passive activity” by most of the people and now Veoh TV allowed users to browse for the episodes or video clips that they want to watch. However, I’ll reserve my judgment on the potential growth of this web browser until I finished my second-look analysis on it.

My sense was this Veoh TV will going to be a pay-service business model in certain stage, albeit that Veoh Networks did not mention whatsoever business model they’re going to apply in the future. A short coming of this type of products is that it will eventually face the challenge of bandwidth hurdle. Will it be the killer app for some of the similar products such as Democracy, or Joost? It’s still very early to conclude on this. In overall, the competition of web TV market is still very intense, but somehow I believed this Veoh TV is a product that has been planned for a long period of time by Veoh Networks, even before they successfully received $26 million in third round financing in June this year.

Apply and enjoy.

PPStream is making headlines around the China’s Internet industry again by raising $10 million in a round B financing, venture capitalists included Ceyuan Ventures and Qiming Venture Partners, according to an economics newspaper in China. PPStream founded in 2005 (brief overview was covered in my another post) secured few million in round A from Ceyuan Ventures when it officially launched in the market. This round B of financing will thus rapidly visualize their product ideas and dreams in China. Industry pundits had questioned whether the funding on this type of P2P companies such as Xunlei and PPStream is the risky investments by Ceyuan Ventures (Note: Ceyuan Ventures and Google jointly invested $20 million on Xunlei; Read my another post: “Google China Invested in Xunlei“) as the return of Investment (ROI) may deter to a few more years. However, few people can doubt the rising popularity of PPStream and Xunlei in becoming the Internet’s “killer applications.” Until now, PPStream had secured the partnerships with SMG, Phoenix TV, Sina TV, Yahoo! China, ESPN China, and etc.

There are few implications of this financing: it mean that China is not an Internet auxiliary market anymore, and it is a testament for PPStream’s success in China as well. On the other hand, local venture capitalists that set up their offices in China have always gain competitive advantage in spotting good ventures. Also, despite the China’s Internet market is fragmented, the offering of P2P services in China is hot; most of the players selling their services like hot cakes. But I wonder with this round of financing, is PPStream preparing itself to go public in the near future?

I just came across an interesting peer-to-peer site that called Raketu.tv that provided by Raketu Communications Inc.. It is an application that combined the popular features of ipTV and social networking. Currently this application is only available in Windows platform, and they did not mentioned when their beta version will be available to run on Mac or Linux. In matter of fact, Raketu Communications that launched in September last year, has so far released a number of applications that all utilized the peer-to-peer technology. My sense is that this company has growing steadily as you can notice that they’ve included the Russian, and Chinese version to their line of products. Besides, they followed the footstep of Skype closely. On the web page, they have released a product that called RakOut and I’ve been quite surprise when they compared their product with Skype face-to-face and published a press release that entitled, “Skype’s out – RakOut with Raketu” that ended with the skype-release.php.

Raketu.tv has so far closed some content partnership deals with several companies, including Media Global Intertainment, (MGI), NamcheTV and KlikVU.com. It seems that the management of Raketu was favorably to further expansion and had consistently pursued a strategy for growth since its first inception. According to this article, “We are extremely pleased to be partnering with MGI and KlikVU.com,” said Greg Parker, President of Raketu. “Through Raketu.tv, users will be able to watch this popular entertainment content, while interacting with their friends from anywhere in the world.”

Positioned as a one-stop provider for peer-to-peer technology in Internet calling and TV, Raketu is no doubt want to capture a bigger market than the leading and famous player in the market, such as Skype and Joost. Suppose the Internet calling and ipTV market is such big that a new firm should not adopt, develop, and market these two lines of products under one roof, I personally feel it is not a good business strategy. Sometimes I made mistake in my blog writing, I always like to compare a new startup with an established player, or a strong player in that particular field. It seems that Internet calling, peer-to-peer, ipTV, video sharing, social networking, some other web 2.0 ideas, every new start-up want to venture into these fields. I do not want to call this company as a copycat of Skype, still, I believe it is not. But I really like to observe a lot of new startups that prepared to do the greenfield market development in order to build a customer base.

Microsoft has just released its Windows Live for TV beta, it is a 3D interface that designed for people that using Windows Live Space, Messenger, and Live Call on the large-screen monitors and TVs. As I visited the official site for this newly released product, it seems that this beta version is temporarily open to a limited number of beta users and included some notable features such as:

- Browse millions of Spaces in rich 3D graphics with new Gallery views and full keyword search
- Find out what your friends have been doing and saying on Windows Live Spaces
- Have real-time text and voice conversations
- Call your friends’ mobile or landline telephones by signing up with Verizon Web Calling to make affordable domestic and international calls
- Easily navigate with your mouse, keyboard or a TV remote (remote navigation requires Microsoft Media Center Remote and IR)
- Make free PC-to-PC calls to other Windows Live Messenger users.

I believed this is a first by-product for the users that upgrading their operating systems to the Windows Vista. What’s important here is not barely the release of this TV beta, but more on the reasons why Microsoft will going to launch a ton of products that must-be install on the Windows Vista platform, and categorized under umbrella of the Windows Live name as well. I believed Microsoft is in the middle of building some products around Windows Live and the Vista platform. In order for Microsoft to build a brand umbrella, they should develop a broader range of products. But to stand out from the crowd, at least one product that carry the name of Windows Live, be it the Live search engine, or this TV beta should well establishing the “Live” brand identity. But it seems that it is not in this manner at this moment.

I just came across a post of the official Joost that entitled,”Joost beta for Mac Intel is here,” this post is discussed the latest development of Joost team. I still very much like to observe the progress of Joost nowadays, maybe my sense is that it will be a big name in Internet this year. I personally feel that Joost did not encountered any serious problems as other new startups would faced in the launching status, they have the ability to get the timely users’ feedbacks. Moreover, they have gained the necessary branding power to attract a huge group of subscribers when they officially launched in the market in the future.

I will report back on this firm when it officially launched, stay tuned.