Fridays News

Startup Challenges DSL and Cable
Horizon Wi-com will become the first venture-backed WiMAX carrier to test Verizon in the Northeast.
By Cassimir Medford
Though it's a tough goal, Horizon Wi-com wants to break the stranglehold telephone and cable operators have held over broadband consumers in the northeastern United States. So the Alexandria, Virginia-based company is gearing up. It will begin testing a wireless broadband service in a matter of weeks, and the short list of customers includes two northeastern cities. Horizon also plans to roll out its commercial wireless broadband service as early as October. "We are on schedule to be the first to offer WiMAX services in the Northeast," said Ron Olexa, CEO of Horizon Wi-com. "We want to get there first and begin building a customer base before the two big guns show up in town." Horizon is pinning its hopes on beating much larger rivals Sprint Nextel and Clearwire into densely populated and lucrative cities such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.

YouTube Lining Up Summer Ads
Video-sharing site experiments with pre-roll and post-roll spots.
By Tomio Geron
Beware YouTube watchers, ads are coming—as soon as this summer. The video-sharing site that was acquired by Google in November is experimenting with the precise length, form, and placement of those ads, and will begin rolling them out this summer, Suzie Reider, head of advertising for YouTube, told an audience at the Ad:Tech conference in San Francisco Wednesday. "We're looking at executions like a very quick little intro preceding a video, then the video, then a commercial execution on the backside of the content," Ms. Reider said. The idea is to generate long-promised revenues that Google can share with the more than 1,000 "premium" content creators whose video material is available on YouTube, Ms. Reider said. The ads will also provide marketers and advertisers new opportunities to reach consumers, she said. And they would also help justify YouTube's $1.6-billion price tag.

Microsoft, the Incubator
Licensing chief says culture at software giant has shifted.
By Ken Schachter
Microsoft has abandoned the fortress mentality around its intellectual property and is opening up channels of collaboration, including licensing to startups, the software giant's licensing chief said Wednesday. Speaking at the annual venture conference of the Council for Entrepreneurial Development at North Carolina's Research Triangle Park, Marshall Phelps said that even a $7.5-billion annual research budget fails to deliver all the pieces to Microsoft. "Few, if any, companies can hold all the pieces of R&D in their own hands," he said. "The days of go-it-alone R&D labs are over." This year, Microsoft expects to match the 20 companies it spun off in 2006 through its IP ventures unit. Microsoft generally licenses intellectual property to the new companies, retains an equity stake and pushes them out the door with the help of venture capital.

Wiki Redux
Following a failed experiment, newspapers are stepping back into wikis.
By Alexandra Berzon
Mention wikis around a newspaper person, and you might hear a mouthful about an incident that happened in 2005. The Los Angeles Times had decided to do what newspapers have been criticized for not doing enough: experimenting with technology. Using open-source wiki software, then-editorial page editor Michael Kinsley opened up an Iraq war editorial to anyone who wanted to edit it. The story quickly degenerated into an obscenity-laced fest. The already-cautious industry took note, and wiki experiments were shelved in favor of somewhat less controversial community-building features, such as social networking, blogging, and, most recently, user-generated video. But now, newspaper wikis could be on the rebound, starting with a foray by the San Diego Union-Tribune. That development is being pushed by wiki platform startups offering tools that require community editors to register and allow for management oversight.