Getting someone to do something on your site—whether it is buying a product, downloading software, or filling out a registration form—can be areal pain. Israeli startup EyeView thinks it’s figured out a better way to convert Website visitors into buyers, downloaders, and whatnot: Show them a short Flash tutorial with a call to action at the end. These tutorials can be screencasts, video guides, or any rich media presentation (they can also use Silverlight and other competing technologies). Anything that requires a call to action is EyeView’s focus.

Today, it is announcing a seed round of funding from Lightspeed Gemini Internet Lab and former Amdocs president Gigi Levi. The exact amount is not being disclosed, but generally LGILab invests in rounds between $500,000 and $1 million. (We have our own disclosure to make here: TechCrunch France editor Ouriel Ohayon is general manager of LGILab, led the investment, and is on EyeView’s board). Source:TechCrunch

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

After having seen the above video you will undoubtedly make direct comparisons to what was seen in Minority Report, and that’s no coincidence. John Underkoffler, one of Oblong’s co-founders, was the science advisor on the film and built much of what we saw in the movie from what he was working on at MIT.

The gesture-based g-speak “spatial operating interface” (SOE) software platform has been in development at MIT’s Media Laboratory since the early 1990s and its intended use isn’t as nerdy as we’d expect. It’s meant to facilitate answers to real-world issues such as:

Video after the jump.

At a recent presentation at Harvard Business School, Adeo Ressi argued that the VC model is broken. That is nothing new for Ressi, who is the founder of the VC-rating site theFunded. He is kind of like the Nick Denton of the VC world, always saying that the sky is falling. It’s just that at this moment he happens to be right.

The slides from his presentation are embedded below, but really all you need to look at is the one above. It shows that the money going into VC funds is now more than the money coming out of VC funds. That line was crossed last June and there is no going back anytime soon. Source:TechCrunch
Once again, Microsoft is jealous of another company’s success in a sector adjacent to their own, and is setting their crosshairs accordingly. Unfortunately this is one company that can’t be bought or properly imitated: Valve and Steam are firebrands in the gaming world, and have achieved over the years a level of trust and legitimacy among gamers that is nigh impossible for perhaps any other company to match. The success of Steam has made it the archetype for digital content distribution, and Microsoft doesn’t really expect to dethrone them there. Instead, they hope to grow a marketplace around things not currently offered by Steam, for example Games for Windows Live branded DLC, which would be made available exclusively by Microsoft. But is this really a sound plan?

I guess you don’t know you’re leading the pack unless you hear the other dogs barking at your heels.

GestureTek is a company that puts out touch- and gesture-based interactive screens in more various forms than the Microsoft Surface project. From what I can tell, it doesn’t track as exactly or as reliably as the seriously stress-tested Surface, but it also has a more attractive form factor in this thing (autoplaying video warning). I can’t tell what it’s using to track movement, but it looks to be sufficient for the basic applications that would be running in, say, a mall kiosk: a map, sales, basic product browsing and so on.Source:TechCrunch
Such shameful conduct! It looks like from 2001 to 2006, LG, Sharp, and Chinese OEM Chunghwa were conspiring to keep the prices of LCD screens high and agreed on pricing floors to guarantee cash flow for everybody involved.

Over five years of first- and second-party sales (Dell and Apple were among the buyers), they must have run up quite a tab, although no one’s done the math yet. The companies have, however, been served with fines totalling $585 million between them ($400m from LG alone) — which amount, large as it appears, they can most certainly afford. Their reputation and business relationships may have been damaged severely by the legal proceedings, and perhaps in the coming OLED revolution, big retailers of LCDs may snub the companies, even though it’s likely every other supplier has similar predatory policies.

I guess you don’t know you’re leading the pack unless you hear the other dogs barking at your heels.

GestureTek is a company that puts out touch- and gesture-based interactive screens in more various forms than the Microsoft Surface project. From what I can tell, it doesn’t track as exactly or as reliably as the seriously stress-tested Surface, but it also has a more attractive form factor in this thing (autoplaying video warning). I can’t tell what it’s using to track movement, but it looks to be sufficient for the basic applications that would be running in, say, a mall kiosk: a map, sales, basic product browsing and so on.

On the bus back from the Cleantech conference in Stockholm last night I spoke to an investor working with AirGlass, a type of glass that is 97% air. This is actually a sort of aerogel and weighs a mere 50Kg/m³. It would be used as a form of transparent wall and has amazing insulating potential. The product has been floating around (ha!) for a while but this is the first time I’ve seen it up close.

Watch out Skype (and Meebo and Tokbox), Google is adding voice and video chat to Gmail today, all in one fell swoop. When you are having an instant message conversation with someone over Gtalk, a video and voice option will appear (after you download this plugin).

Bringing video chat into the Gmail page, just as it does with regular IM, is in step with Google’s efforts to connect its disparate services together in a more seamless fashion. It is also a better experience. If you use Gmail as your primary email, you always have it open. That means you don’t have to open up a separate application just to conduct an impromptu text, voice, or video chat (as you do with other IM clients). These are all just different modes of communication, available to you as appropriate. Life just got a lot harder for startups pushing point solutions around video chat.

From the Google Blog:Source:TechCrunch
I visited Stockholm University’s Mobile Life Centre in Kista, Sweden (pronounced Shista, strangely enough) and got a chance to see a few cool research projects that I’ll be posting today and tomorrow. First up we see the Affective Diary, a little project involving a PC-based application and a body sensor that tests galvanic skin response.

“Electronic devices large and small are powered by the same type of intelligence, the microprocessor,” IBM argued.

While it’s true, you know those dastardly IBM lawyers are going to pick apart every single word of his contract.

The Shotgun has a 4.3-inch LCD and connects wirelessly over a GSM network for real-time traffic updates and OTA upgrades that will include:

• Restaurant Reviews – Quickly identify the top places to go and read what others say.
• Address Sharing – Share addresses or your location to meet up with friends more efficiently.
• Weather – Get up-to-date, detailed weather information.
• Commute Alerts – Get emailed alerts about traffic conditions on your daily commute.

You can search the Net from wherever you are to find all sorts of POIs like cheap gas, Wi-Fi hotspots and restaurants. Check out the video and other details after the jump.

Do you get computer eyestrain? Do you want to look like a bad imitation of Hunter S Thompson? Do you have $200 to spend? Then try the GUNNAR Optiks digital eyewear. These are supposed to reduce eyestrain by decreasing glare and improving overall image quality, but do they work?