Portfolio Company News
News from Ariadne Capital's companies
The Bizmo
The 'Biz' in a Box
The Bizmo (www.thebizmo.com) is the ultimate marketing tool for the entertainment business. It enables you to create your own free personal store in your social network, on your blog or on your website, turning you, the consumer into the tastemaker and retailer. The application is easily embedded into Facebook, MySpace or blogs to provide content downloads merchandising and e-ticketing giving you the "Biz in a box" and enabling you to make money from your content. (Try it out free at www.thebizmo.com)
Enrich Social Productions
Enrich Social Productions introduces 1Click2Fame - "The next generation Endemol"
Enrich Social Productions is a new multi-channel format and technology company focussed on the convergence of television, online and mobile.
ESP has developed "1Click2Fame", a global multi-channel talent format designed to harness and democratise the public’s passion for fame (as evidenced by the success of Idol, X Factor and similar formats) and the culture of "celebrity me". 1Click2Fame provides an opportunity to leverage the "social web" through a global online talent show, featuring content created by the audience and propelling some of its members into success and celebrity.
The USP lies in the ability to "follow the audience" using Experience and Attention engines which enable ESP to see where popularity is naturally accumulating and thus guide the audience towards it, accelerating the process and maximizing "hit potential".
Independent IP
The next generation in digital music distribution technology
The mission... To connect the music industry in the most efficient and effective way.
The solution... Independent IP's software platform, "FUGATM" as the solution for the creation, management and delivery of digital media catalogues. With FUGATM music companies can manage their entire supply chain and never lose control over their digital assets.
FUGATM connects and empowers the music industry in the most efficient and effective manner, facilitating the creation of a collaborative network with trade partners via a secure B2B platform. Ideal for large and small content owners and record labels to manage everything from promotion, to networking, to finances and sales tracking.
Lickerish
Putting the talent and photographers back in control
A high quality image and video agency that syndicates images for some of the world’s best photographers as well as publishing companies.
By leveraging the burgeoning web and mobile technology, Lickerish is able to change the way content is created and distributed, putting the talent and photographers back in control. Exclusive content is increasingly more difficult and costly to procure, driving the adoption of syndicated services such as Lickerish.
Talent and photographers are already flocking to this model as for the first time, it gives them control and a profit incentive from the joint venture on the content creation. Lickerish finances a photo shoot and gives the photographer and talent a percentage of sales. Lickerish obtains the licensing rights and provides the talent management with the control over image selection.
Lickerish is already operational in the UK and USA and has achieved over £1m in revenues in 2007.
Momail
Free mobile email for everyone - Could it be the next Hotmail?
Unique consumer oriented mobile email solution that works on any email-ready handsets (today over 1,000) without the need for program downloads or smart-phones. Intelligent optimisation technology ensures an optimal user experience and highly reduced data consumption.
The Key benefits of Momail include
- photo optimisation,
- advanced attachment management,
- dynamic sender,
- virus and spam guards and
- data reduction.
Momail is the simplest consumer email solution in the market, it is operator agnostic and has no client downloads, an easy 2 minute installation and is a push compatible service. Momail aggregates email services so users can send and receive emails from their existing web mail or POP3/IMAP services all in one mobile email inbox. Server side services enable Momail to provide more than pure email but also can be a users upload and digital connection centre to social networks and digital platforms, thus unlocking the digital content (photos, music, video etc.) to be shared or published.
Momail in the Press
Click here to read the article on Momail which recently featured in CNBC European Business Magazine.
Click here to read an article from the German publication, Handelsblatt.
Click here to read about Momail - Mobile application of the week by by Andrew Grill Sun 16 Mar '08 .
Monitise
Al Lukies takes Monitise to greater heights
Listed on the London Aim market in June 2007, Monitise (www.monitisegroup.com) provides a mass market mobile banking and payment service. The service leverages the trusted infrastructure of the ATM switch to create a seamless link between consumers' mobile handsets and their bank accounts regardless of their choice of mobile operator or handset. Monitise has also developed the world's first mass-market mobile two-factor authentication service ACCODE, which offers a highly secure, scalable and cost-effective service for enterprises that need to provide remote authentication to users of its Virtual Private Network (VPN). ACCODE will replace the key fob as such that generation of the One Time Passcode (OTP) will occur on the mobile phone instead of the key fob.
Click here to read more
Alastair Lukies, CEO of Monitise, was recently nominated for the European Business Leader Award. Please click here to see his interview on 8th February on Bloomberg.
Otodio
Listen to your favourite newspaper as you drive to work
Otodio is an entirely new mass market digital distribution channel for delivering printed content, so that you can hear it on digital radios, mobile phones, portable audio players and other audio devices. It applies a unique user interface to text-to-speech translation engines to allow users to navigate entire text publications in audio format.
Otodio enables content publishers to earn additional revenue by repurposing their content to a broader audience. It also allows time-shifting - think "audio PDF" - think "eyes-free documents". Otodio is receiving strong interest from media companies and newspaper owners as a new way to distribute media at a quicker pace.
Real Life
"Life’s a game, learn to play."
Real Life is a reality-based virtual world which will give young people an opportunity to test drive their lives. It is a 3D, avatar-driven Massive Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG), positioned at the more casual end of this growing, multi-billion dollar market.
Market research shows us that the top-ranked response by young people to the question "What is important to you in your life?" is: "A Job I Love". Real Life addresses this underlying need by delivering engaging career simulations through the media in which young people are spending an increasing amount of their leisure time. The target age range is 16-24 years and the underlying objective is to broaden the horizons of young people and allow them to realise their ambitions. The business model is based on a free to use approach with monetization through item purchases/micro transactions, in-game advertising, sponsorship by recruiters, product placement and optional premium subscription packages.
ROK Entertainment Group
ROK announces first global advertisers and new patents
It has been a very busy start to the year for ROK Entertainment Group (OTCBB: ROKE):
Firstly, the mobile entertainment group announced the first global advertisers on it’s free mobile TV service, FreeBe TV: Cadbury Creme Egg, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment ‘24’ and Codemasters. FreeBe TV is subscription-free, multi-channel mobile TV streamed over 2.5G, 3G and wi-fi and is available via Nokia Video Center on the N95 and N95 8GB handsets.
It has also continued its global deployment of ROK TV, its streamed mobile TV service, by launching with Vodafone in Turkey - offering a range of live and on-demand TV content on mobiles.
In February, ROK broadcast the Chinese ‘Spring Festival Evening Gala’ live from Beijing in cooperation with China Central Television (CCTV) International Network Company to a worldwide mobile TV audience in the UK, USA, Canada, South Africa, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.
Finally, it has been granted two further patents by the UK Intellectual Property Office (Patent numbers: GB2427785 and GB2427976) that will enhance the provision of content for mobile phones. Both patents pertain to the content functionality of Multimedia Memory Cards. This brings the total number of patents granted to ROK to five, with a further 4 filed and awaiting acceptance.
Click here to read the article on ROK which featured in Converging Media.
Spinvox
Spinvox in the News
Spinvox, the company that converts telephone voice messages into text has struck a deal with Vodaphone Group PLC to provide the service to up to 16 million customers in Spain. It is also mulling a stock-exchange floatation to fund its expansion into Latin America and the US.
The Company, which was founded by Christina Domecq, is pioneering a range of voice-to-text communication applications. In addition to converting voicemail to text messages and emails, Spinvox has launched applications that allow people to update Facebook and other social networking websites over the phone.
To read more, and see other press articles about Spinvox, please click here.
Squarecash
The easy prepaid credit card
Available in £’s and $’s, Squarecash is a MasterCard chip and pin prepaid credit card, it can be used in 24 million retail stores and 1 million ATM machines worldwide. Squarecash enables consumers to access their account via online and mobile SMS, and supported by a 24 hour UK based customer service infrastructure.
The proposition is targeted at migrant workers, the un-banked, teenagers, home managers, anonymous internet spending and gamblers. Squarecash’s suite of offerings also includes: pre-paid cards, pre-paid cheques, travel cards, money share cards, payroll cards, teen cards, gift cards and insurance payout cards.
The Key Revolution
Raising the standard for online authentication, identity and security
Award winning service company with a new, unique solution to provide peace of mind online.
The Key Revolution uniquely uses the Chip and Pin SIM card to bring together online authentication, online data storage and portable working solutions all with secure encryption and is footprint free.
In the same way as Apple created the MP3 market through simplicity, the iPod and iTunes, TKR make online access and remote working safe, simple and plug and play with the Mobiyu product. The Key Revolution were spun out of Vodafone and the technology is protected by global patents.
The Key Revolution have opened their Beta product for pre-order at www.thekeyrevolution.com
WorldFriends
"Meet your neighbours in the Global Village"
WorldFriends is a leading and profitable global social internet service positioned at upscale, internationally minded people with an interest in travel, foreign cultures and languages.
WorldFriends is the first and only multi-lingual, multi-branded social Internet network worldwide. The company has "cracked the foreign-company barrier" in Japan and have signed partnerships with major Japanese portals.
WorldFriends’ ostensible cross-cultural, cross-border, and soon to be cross-lingual positioning is already very successful. Global-oriented users are growing in rapid lock-step with physical world globalization and WorldFriends is their ‘global village’ café.