Disney Dreams Come True Parade - Review in Pictures

July 13, 2008 Category: Disney News Today No Comments »

Recently, the Disney Dreams Come True Parade replaced the Share a Dream Come True parade at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. This is the daily parade at the Magic Kingdom that is typically held at about 3:00 p.m. The new parade is extremely similar to the old parade. It appears that most of the floats are the same with the “snow globes” removed, new dances and a few other small changes. You can see the Disney Dreams Come True Parade by checking out the pictures below! First up, Aladdin!

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Grisly snowglobe scenes: Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz’s Travelers

June 21, 2008 Category: Uncategorized No Comments »

Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz's Travelers series features limited edition prints of grisly, Charles-Addams-esque scenes in snowglobes and on landscapes. Link (via Gizmodo)

Tags: Boing Boing

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EveryScape Goes Global with Video Outsourcing, Competes with Google Streetviews

May 13, 2008 Category: Uncategorized No Comments »

EveryScape is a local video tour site that debuted at Where 2.0 last year, and is returning again for another demo this year. A lot has changed in a year, as EveryScape has grown from a site that featured just one video tour of San Francisco’s Union Square region to an expansive site that offers videos (and a multitude of sharing and community options) across the world.

Global Ambassador…For Virtual Video Tours

The global aspect of EveryScape is rather new, and is being enhanced by a new program being put forth by EveryScape, called EveryScape Ambassador. This will allow EveryScape to expand at a faster rate, by using trained individuals to create both public and private content. The program will in fact target destination sites as well as local businesses for tour creations, becoming more niche and purpose-driven than Google Streetview Maps.

EveryScape has always followed this train of thought for its expansion progress, but the Ambassador program enables EveryScape to make a more formal and systematic method for spanning the world with its increasingly useful virtual tours. It’s a method that many more startups are beginning to take on for similar growth projections. GlobeShooter is one such company, and TurnHere is another.

EveryScape Ambassador Brings More People More “Jobs”

The good thing about such programs is that it provides an economical subset of “outsourced contractors” who are enabled by this web-based business, which is currently still sustainable and will likely become even more so as established enterprises begin to adopt such methods for advertising and other localized reasons.

More Community, More Targeted Demographics

One of the reasons EveryScape has become so useful is because of the many sharing and integrated search features that flank each tour available on EveryScape. Now, in an effort to build even more of a community around its tours, EveryScape allows users to create Scape Memos. These are privately shared scapes that act as bookmarks for individually selected locations, which remain amongst a group of family and friends via email, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Tie this new feature in with some of EveryScape’s other meta-search features (which span Yelp, YouTube, etc.), and these privately shared items create self-selecting groups within the larger EveryScape community. I’ve always felt that EveryScape would be ideal for deep integration with a travel planning site, and perhaps the new Scape Memos bring EveryScape a step closer towards such integration, or native travel planning features.mashable109:http://mashable.com/2008/05/13/everyscape-ambassador/

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Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

EveryScape Gets $7M More for Local Video Tour
EveryScape Looking for Votes on Next City to Video Tour
Everyscape Setting out to Video the World
EveryScape Takes Virtual City Tours to the Next Level
Trivop Closes Large Round of Funding from Angel Investors
Zurfer Brings Photos of Your Surroundings with Mobile Flickr Access
Chokti Has User-Generated Travel Tours

Tags: Mashable!

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Spot Runner Hauls Down $51 Million

May 7, 2008 Category: Uncategorized No Comments »

Spot Runner, a company which provides television ad spots for small-to medium-sized businesses with stock video footage and other custom options, has raised another mountain of cash. They’re announcing tonight that they’ve raise $51 million more. This time the funding comes from Daily Mail and General Trust, Grupo Televisa, Legg Mason Capital and Groupe Arnault.

A little more than a month ago, we covered the story of Spot Runner’s launch of political based advertising services - a story that was rolled up with the predictions that they were raising the money that they’re now announcing to the public:

We’ve been following the adventures of Spot Runner here at Mashable through a number of recent events, such as when they were the target of acquisition, then subsequently targeted others for acquisition, quickly followed by the acquisition of several high profile executives like Joann Bradford from Microsoft. It is likely this flurry of activity which has caused the interest in investors at such a high valuation.

The investment partnerships might just be as strategic as they are about an influx of cash. Grupo Televisa is the largest media organization in the Spanish speaking world, and is an attractive target for running these advertisments. Daily Mail and General Trust is a media organization based in the UK, and while they’re not particularly heavy in the realm of television, their media holdings and growth could lend them to be an interesting partner down the line.

Groupe Arnault is another interesting strategic partner, and a leading provider luxury products (including brands like Louis Vuitton, TAG Heuer, Hennesy and others). Granted, they wouldn’t probably employ the services of spotrunner for their high end brands, but given the scope of their operations, it’s likely they came into contact with Spotrunner on a business level to begin with, and rather than giving them all their money for advertisements, they figured they’d rather get a piece of the company while they were at it.

Spot Runner’s previous investment rounds have come from Allen & Company, Battery Ventures, Capital Research and Management, CBS, Index Ventures, The Interpublic Group, Tudor Investment Corporation
and WPP.

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