Boulder, Colo., February 26, 2007 – Collective Intellect, Inc. (CI), specializing in comprehensively tracking, filtering and ranking new media content for Wall Street investors and the Fortune 500, today announced its participation in the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado (EFCO), a philanthropic program targeted at angel- and venture capital-backed companies based in Colorado, whose mission is to help Colorado entrepreneurs contribute to the long term health and sustainability of Colorado early in the creation of their companies. EFCO will hold grants from Collective Intellect until a liquidity event, when the consideration gets transferred to a Colorado-based Community Foundation.

EFCO designed the program to help young Colorado entrepreneurs begin meaningful philanthropic activities by providing a venue for pre-planned, corporate contributions when their companies achieve liquidity events. Grants are set up during the early stages of capitalization.

As the founders of more than one successful venture-funded Colorado company, Collective Intellect founders Tim Wolters, CTO, and Don Springer, CEO, understand what EFCO wants to achieve by involving entrepreneurs early in their company history. “When a liquidity event happens for your company, there’s a lot going on professionally. It’s not usually a good time to figure out how to manage all the requests to give money,” notes Springer. “Our participation in EFCO helps us prepare in advance to give back to our local community.”
“EFCO offers a tremendous opportunity for local charities as well as to entrepreneurs,” agrees Wolters. “When we’re successful, the community we live and work in shares in our success.”

About Collective Intellect
Collective Intellect, Inc. specializes in comprehensively tracking, filtering and ranking media content for institutional investors and the Fortune 500. Across blogs, discussion boards, social networking websites and other media channels, Collective Intellect uses a combination of advanced artificial intelligence algorithms and old-fashioned human ingenuity to identify emerging New Media and traditional media content. The company’s patent-pending technology helps analysts and portfolio managers in financial services, as well as corporate enterprises, uncover valuable, relevant nuggets of information that reside in the vast amount of unstructured data available today, including blogs, message boards and chat rooms.

Customers include some of the largest trading desks on Wall Street, Fortune 100 consumer goods manufacturers and Fortune 100 pharmaceutical companies. Collective Intellect is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, and is funded by Appian Ventures and other investors.

About Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado
Four companies – Tendril, Rally Software, Collective Intellect and Me.dium – are the founding grantors for the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado. The founding trustees are Brad Feld (Foundry Group), Kyle Lefkoff (Boulder Ventures), Tim Connor (Sequel Venture Partners), Ryan Martens (Rally Software), Bill Roberts (Hogan & Hartson), and Michael Platt (Cooley Godward Kronish). In addition, the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado has formed an alliance with the Entrepreneurs Foundation, an organization formed in 1988 with affiliates in Silicon Valley, Austin, Southern California, New England, Dallas, Portland, Atlanta, Hawaii and Israel.

Tags: Uncategorized by Robin Seidner
No Comments »

With the recent release of Windows Vista, the Blogosphere has been buzzing with opinions and reviews of Microsoft’s latest and much ballyhooed OS. So what are people saying about Vista? Here are some highlights:

CNET reviewed all four versions of Vista (a common complaint is that there are too many versions), and rated them all highly (7.0-7.8 out of 10), but their final conclusion on Vista was nothing to write home about:

The bottom line: Windows Vista is essentially warmed-over Windows XP. If you’re currently happy with Windows XP SP2, we see no compelling reason to upgrade. On the other hand, if you need a new computer right now, Windows Vista is stable enough for everyday use.

And taking a look at CNET’s review of Windows Vista Ultimate (which had the most user ratings of any version) you’ll find an average user rating of 5.6 out of 10: whoop-dee-doo.

The reviews of Vista were not all bad. Paul Thurrott, whose blog is aptly titled Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows, probably wrote the most in-depth review– a two month, eight-part epoch– and was resoundingly positive about Microsoft’s new OS. But even Thurrott admits buying Vista at retail may not be worthwhile:

If you purchased an XP-based PC in 2006, try to get another year out of it. I can think of virtually no Microsoft customers that shouldn’t consider Vista per se, though the cost of upgrading can certainly outweigh any potential benefits of doing so.

To wrap things up I’ll leave it to the World’s Most Popular Blog, Engadget, which put together a nice roundup of Vista reviews:

The overall verdict right now seems quite lacking in enthusiasm. Sure, it won’t bust up your box or anything, hardware support is mostly alright, and improvements to stability and eye candy are commendable, but Vista just doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of must-need features to make it a must-have for most users.

I’ve always wondered what five years and billions of dollars of R&D gets you.

Tags: Uncategorized by Micah Rome
No Comments »

By Damian Boyd-Boffa

We’ve been monitoring developments in Digital Rights Management (DRM) usage for the past six months, with only a few notable events. Since last week’s publication of Steve Jobs’ open letter regarding his dissatisfaction with DRM’s ability to hinder pirating – and his view that it really only hinders music sales – there has been a flurry of activity. The shortcomings of DRM have long been discussed in the blogosphere, but not until a voice as powerful as Jobs’ espoused this view did it become a truly public and commercial debate.

Prior to Jobs’ statement, there were only a few notable DRM stories involving large, influential companies, but mostly a lot of chatter from tech-savvy individuals who essentially discussed what Jobs ultimately penned last week as his views on DRM. Sony BMG previously garnered what little DRM-related attention there was to be had with two contradictory moves by the company. The first was releasing CDs with DRM protection which, unbelievably, installed software that embedded itself in a computer’s operating system and disabled CD drives when removed – essentially a corporate installation of malware. This led to a recent lawsuit requiring Sony to pay every user who had purchased one of these CDs. Sony followed this abusive use of DRM by releasing a DRM-free song through Yahoo Music. Many predicted this to be the beginning of the end for DRM. Perhaps. Still, nothing much happened in this area until Jobs, the most influential purveyor of digital music, attracted widespread and lasting attention.

Jobs’ letter forced awareness on the matter of DRM and prompted responses from other influential players in the digital music arena. The most relevant responses come from music industry executives, who ultimately determine how digital music is released. Warner Music vehemently opposed Jobs’ suggestion of DRM-free digital music, while EMI recognizes issues with DRM and has experimented with a few unrestricted releases (this stance of EMI’s has long been rumored in the blogosphere, but again is only now receiving a widely syndicated official response). Generally there is an ambiguous divide between companies that support DRM (Warner, Sony, the RIAA), those that don’t (EMI, Yahoo Music, SanDisk), and those whose representatives are publicly opposed to its use yet still propagate the technology (MSFT and Bill Gates, AAPL and Steve Jobs). With this much divided opinion it’s hard to predict what will ultimately happen with DRM technology, but it’s clear that a shift is underway.

So what are Jobs’ potential motives? The general criticism is that there is no harm in him taking this strong stance, considering the power he inherently wields and he obtains a favorable image as a critic of burdensome DRM. The substantial motivation to do away with DRM, not surprisingly, is apparent in the benefits it would provide Apple. It could bolster iPod sales because compatibility issues with other music stores will go away. Plus, iTunes sales would rise, as this music becomes usable on any digital music player. Additionally, ditching DRM would effectively end numerous lawsuits Apple is facing over monopolistic practices due to a lack of interoperability between players as a result of DRM.

One has to wonder, if Jobs is this opposed to DRM, why doesn’t he release Disney movies on iTunes free of this protection? As a member of the board and the largest shareholder, he would seem to have the necessary influence, but without a comparable outcry against DRM on digital video, it seems he doesn’t have the impetus.

Tags: Uncategorized by Kevin Yordy
No Comments »