While Mike Arrington and Co. was bickering over PayPerPost and Blogola, he failed to cover what I consider huge news for the blogosphere and for the entire new media industry.

SpotRunner has taken 40M dollars in funding from various parties including CBS. I see this as a huge development that companies should take seriously. It’s becoming more and more of a reality for small businesses to place local television ads. Even small web based startups.

Why?

Because of companies like SpotRunner and Google’s Demarc Acquisition

So What is Spotrunner?

However you want to describe what they do — local TV buying platform, small business ad agency, geotargeted video advertising – Spot Runner is on a roll. The company just closed a $40 million round that includes mega-ad/marketing agencies Interpublic (IPG) and WPP, as well as CBS. Also involved were Allen & Company, Tudor Investments, Capital Research and Management, individual investors Lachlan Murdoch and Vivi Nevo, and original Spot Runner investors Index Ventures and Battery Ventures.

SpotRunner, has been developing geotargeting for franchises and national businesses (for local broadcast and cable), as well as selling locally targeted TV campaigns directly to small businesses. Most recently the company announced a partnership with agency JWT (part of new investor WPP).

According to co-founder David Waxman, this investment reflects how complementary Spot Runner’s capabilities are to national branding campaigns run by these major agencies. “This is about helping brands with their local programs.”

According to the press release:

* WPP plans to use Spot Runner’s web-based platform to help clients target ads across all media channels more effectively at the local level, while maintaining a consistent brand message.
* IPG views this relationship as an opportunity to add another dimension to its market-leading local, direct response and hyper-targeted communications solutions.
* For CBS Corporation, which has offerings in the television, radio, Internet, outdoor and publishing segments, Spot Runner’s innovative technology offers a more efficient and consolidated system to sell its diverse ad inventory and an additional channel to bring new local advertisers to its media properties.

Hat Tip: Screenwerk

To read the full Press Release on the investment. check out Business Wire.

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Originally posted on October 31, 2006 @ 3:38 am

Chartreuse’s New Orleans Project is pretty moving if you haven’t see it.
You should check out some of the rest of the New Orleans Bloggers.

Personal Opinion After the Jump
Here’s my small contribution of the day in relation to New Orleans. A song by one of my favorite musicians David Rovics

David Krug covers Online Education at College-Catalog.com

Sponsored By: Mobility Watch : The leading blog about mobile & wireless technology

Originally posted on September 21, 2006 @ 9:03 pm

Every is wondering who gets bought next… Yes by Google. Or by Yahoo. But the truth of the matter there are some marriages out there that just make sense. And its probably money that isn’t making the marriage happen just yet. Maybe I can help some of these companies get bought out by pointing out the obvious.

Marriages that just work

1) Zillow and InterActive Corp.
Zillow is the talk of the town everywhere I turn around. And while Ask.com which was recently acquired by IAC. IAC has been on the move acquiring companies for years. In fact as a matter of disclosure I worked at one during an acquisition as IAC acquired ServiceMagic.com and merged our real estate division with RealEstate.com. This acquisition would just make sense. IAC has a bundle of information on contractors, lots of data on contractors and I know how much they need to stay ahead of Inman. While the purchase price should be in the 100 Million Dollar range by my Zestimate. It’s well worth it. Being able to integrate Zestimates and LendingTree loans into the Real Estate dot com portal just makes a heck of a lot of sense to me. Tie all of the above into the Ask.com search engine and this deal makes sense.

Most recent purchase: CollegeHumor.com

2) NYTimes, Automattic and Sphere
The Times built itself as a leader in publishing as the world changes so must it change. Advertising revenue is down across countless traditional publications. One of its more profitable ventures is About.com who utilizes Sphere’s content serving capablities. Automattic who makes the world’s greatest software WordPress also shares advisors with Sphere and WordPress powers a few NYTimes Blogs. NYTimes in a much needed push into user generated content acquires the WordPress.com system, an up and coming blog search engine to serve up blog search results on its sites, and some leading go getters in Toni Schneider and Matt Mullenweg. This deal makes sense for the future of the Newspaper + New Media World. Although I’m sure to get laffed off the stage with this story. It makes sense really it does.

Last Major Acquisition: About.com

3) Google and Memeorandum
Google News Sucks. You know it. I know it. Everyone in the blogosphere knows it. Gabe has a great system figured out over at Memeorandum. It’s not perfect but it works. Slice it anyway you want but Google wants to improve Google News and the best way to do it is to buy Memeorandum for the community and the kick ass algorithmic system. Who cares what the price its probably worth it.

Last Major Acquisition: YouSpot

4) Yahoo and Scrybe
When Yahoo purchased Oddpost it set out to really upgrade its email services problem was Google and Hotmail were also hell bent on keeping up and passing Yahoo Mail. Only way to keep up now is acts of desperation and high tech wonder. Scrybe would be a great update including some hawt bookmark magic added in using one of Yahoo’s 42 Bookmarking applications and you could even sync your Flickr images offline. Now that would be a smart purchase. Sure beats spending a billion dollars on a social networking site known as Facebook. Who cares about the pricetag this deal makes sense for the users. And that’s who Yahoo needs to keep happy in order to keep above water. It also puts a tool on users desktops that could serve up contextual ads.

5) Yahoo and Blue Lithium
Blue Lithium is leading the way in Audience Centric Advertising and the only way Yahoo can keep pace and maybe innovate ahead of Google is to focus solely on mobile markets or stick to its guns and focus on its users. I recommend sticking to its users. Blue Lithium is huge up and comer and this deal makes sense. Yahoo would get some hawt new technology and Blue Lithium would get a much bigger user base. Looks good all the way around. I estimate this deal wouldn’t cost a lot to wrap up but it would be well worth it.

Last Major Acquisition: Delicious

None of these acquisitions will probably take place. Most notably because big companies simply don’t shell out big bucks for companies unless they can SEE how it’s going to work. Google usually doesn’t buy someone unless they get the people. Yahoo doesn’t companies unless they get a community. And well IAC only buys companies so they can fire Butlers. So none of this makes sense and yet it makes perfect sense because this is Web 2.0.

David Krug covers Online Education at College-Catalog.com

Originally posted on November 3, 2006 @ 5:59 am

I’ve been with Dreamhost for 7 Months. It’s been the worst 7 Months of Hosting I could ever imagine. Prior to that I was with Hosting Matters. That was the best months of hosting I could ever imagine.

Guess what?
Another outage.

I believe its possible I’ve had more downtime this year than uptime. I’m definelty switching as soon as I can have access to my server. Which may be never now that they are set on censoring me and others.

The proof is in the pudding here folks. I had 2 comments removed not via automation but manually by one of the admins for speaking words of frustration for having 2 open support tickets for about a week and now a crashed server.

Server problems have plagued this company for the last 12 Months and its only gotten worse over the last few months. Now to have for the last week customer service/tech support ignore my complaints and server problems, then to delete my comments on their own corporate blog when I bring it up is NO WAY to run a company.

Censoring your unhappy customers is a sure way to end up on the bad end of the business. Just ask any major company. The moment you quit listening to customers is the moment you start losing money.

I can personally no longer recommend Dreamhost to any blog user. That’s my final word.

RIP Dreamhost

From Martha a Dreamhost Customer:
Thanks for letting us know what is going on and keep up the hard work!

However, I am absolutely stunned by the censorship of some of these posts. None of them used swear words. I have four tabs open with the comments on each and posts that are against Dreamhost have been removed!

Very concerned.

BTW Captchas aren’t very friendly either.

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Originally posted on November 10, 2006 @ 11:40 am

I couldn’t come up with any title for this post. The only thing shiny playing in the cd player was this Justin Timberlake CD left over from well nevermind. I swear it wasn’t a dance party.

Valleywag loses uber-talented Blogebrity Nick Douglas to an uber-secretive project. Atleast that’s what I’m hoping. They get a new design. And they claim to be bringing sexy back to the valley. I got my eye on this one. Might have to refresh the feed a bit more often in the days to come.

In the meanwhile Nick Denton has taken the reigns over at Valleywag and its highly entertaining. First up he’s breaking news. Federated Media has been farked, and the Digg Effect could break Digg too. Go check it out.

I must admit its sure interesting to see Nick Denton doing some blogging over there.

Hilarious Update:
Damn it I was wrong. He wants to make the Valley less sexy. hoot I thought it was unsexy to begin with.

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Originally posted on November 13, 2006 @ 7:26 pm