Tickering the Unstructured Universe

FT has profiled Monitor110, an attention data aggregator and filterer focused on hedge funds as its initial vertical.

The company, which is backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, will trawl through more than 40 million internet sources on behalf of its clients.

As Scott Lessing, COO for investment research at Citigroup, points out, “there may be more information value in online trends in the aggregate: 5,000 more web mentions of a product than the week before could be an important signal for an analyst covering the product’s manufacturer”.

Marshall Kirkpatrick has added Monitor110 to his Xmas wishlist.

Finalists for security tech challenge

The finalists have been named in the 2006 Global Security Challenge.

As an advisor I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing these five companies and the competition for ultimate winner is going to be fierce.

This London Business School initiative has been endorsed by US Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist: “The GSC is an example of the innovative thinking we need to stay ahead of the security curve.”

The finalists are:

• Ingenia – laser technology to give passports etc an authenticating fingerprint (London, UK)
• ScanWalk – technology to identify people by their gait (London, UK)
• Secerno – database security (Oxford, UK)
• TIRF – portable biosensors (Pennsylvania, US)
• Vumii – laser-based night surveillance system (Georgia, US).

The winner, who will be announced in London on October 26th, will receive $10,000 in prize money as well as mentorship from Siemens Venture Capital. Good luck guys.

Instant Web 2.0

You too can play in the Web 2.0 space!

All you need is a bit of cash (or scrip) and you can have your very own ready-made blog email marketing company …courtesy of Aussies, Yorke Hindes and Nick McNaughton.

That’s right, they have put their company, Zookoda, on the block.

I’ve got mixed feelings. I’m not sure whether to applaud their entrepreneurial vivre — that’s assuming they intend to get straight back in the saddle and build their next big idea using the sale proceeds… or whether to pound the air in frustration — they quote their reason for the sale as being because they’ve taken the business as far as they can – it now needs to become part of a bigger stable. So does this mean they have been unable to grow sufficiently organically or that they have not sourced high growth funding. Both of these angles could be seen as a sign of ultimate failure.

One thing for sure, they have joined a growing number of folk wanting to cash out early, way early – jux2, digforit and kiko all sold for little more than a good domain would go for, ie sub $300k.

What’s the deal guys?

MySpace to pass YouTube

According to Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corporation, MySpace already has 60% of the videos that YouTube has. He expects that within months MySpace will steal a march on YouTube and have more videos hosted.

Rupert was speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia XV Conference in New York. You can catch his talk and a range of others here.