'Net Features : 81209

Zmanda Introduces ZCloud

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 03:18:00 GMT

Open source backup and recovery software Zmanda today announced ZCloud, an open API that should simplify the development of backup-to-cloud applications by providing am interface for storage cloud and backup software vendors.

“Storage clouds represent a radical shift in secondary and tertiary storage. With increasing Internet bandwidth and economies of scale of storage cloud vendors, IT managers will realize dramatic cost and complexity reduction for their off-site backup needs,” said Chander Kant, chief executive officer, Zmanda. “By normalizing the idiosyncrasies of specific clouds, ZCloud enables a vibrant ecosystem needed to serve this growing demand.”

By enabling this API, a storage cloud immediately becomes a potential destination of ever-growing eco-system of backup-to-cloud applications. The storage cloud vendor does not need to worry about specifics of backup and recovery process. Instead they can continue to focus on scalability and robustness of their core offering.

LiveStream API's Make Video Streaming More Accessible

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:54:00 GMT

Livestream has opened up its live video streaming platform by releasing several APIs, enabling Livestream’s free and premium service to be integrated into in-house or third party online video platforms and players.

What this means is that users (customers, programmers, and web) can build their own Livestream powered video players and clip libraries using HTML, Adobe Flash or Adobe Flex development environments. Other Platform API’s released today include the Live Publishing API, Guide API, Account API and Chat API.

The most notable implimentation of the Livestream API is a plug-in LiveStream jointly developed with video platform Brightcove. Brightcove customers can stream live and linear video via Livestream into their existing Brightcove player.

“Livestream is an important partner for us as we look to meet the increased demand for high quality live streaming among our global customer base,” said Chris Johnston, director of technology partnerships at Brightcove. “In partnering with organizations like Livestream, we’re able to provide customers with seamless access to a broad feature set for live publishing, distribution and analytics.”

Bing Paid Click Share Grows (Again)

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:11:00 GMT

Efficient Frontier reported some significant growth in paid click share for Microsoft's Bing. The data shows that as of the first week in August, Bing lifted their click share 44% since the beginning of June.

Bing did particularly well in both the Travel and Finance categories with an 11% and 22% click share lift in these categories respectively.

Efficient Frontier’s VP of Marketing and New Product Development Justin Merickel postulated that Microsoft's new category focused Bing features may have “helped them capture more of the seasonal summer travel searching and the additional query volume related to the stock market recovery.”

Merickel also argued that the announcement of the Yahoo!/Microsoft deal may have promoted additional searches on Bing as users check out for themselves the new service.

Vertster Releases Multivariate Testing Solution For Agencies

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:04:00 GMT

Conversion testing and optimization software provider Vertster released a new white-label partnership model and they are on the lookout for interactive advertising and search engine optimziation agencies.

The Vertster Optimization Suite enables agencies to offer multivariate testing services to gauge the effectiness of messages, images, page structure, pricing, and other factors on online conversion rates.

"Vertster allows us to take the guess work out of landing page design and apply the scientific method to conversion testing. For one client, we have increased lead conversion by over 600%. We recommend them to anyone who wants to dramatically boost ROI from online campaigns.", states Chris Sietsema, Associate Director of Online Marketing of Mighty Interactive.

Users of the white-label platform will be able to customize the backend, adding custom CSS rules to alter design (e.g., color, icons, etc.).