Michigan’s highest-in-the-nation 42 percent tax credit for filmmakers is often called the “film incentive,” but if you ask the folks at PixoFactor Entertainment in Royal Oak, MI, the bigger beneficiaries are those who work on videogame and animation productions. Plus, they argue, those jobs are longer-lasting and more local than movie production.

That’s why Sean Hurwitz, PixoFactor’s president, is in the business. “We feel like the digital side of this incentive has greater potential to create jobs and economy—or, Xconomy [Hurwitz motions over to me, and smiles]—here in Michigan.” A Hollywood film crew comes in for a short time with their own directors and actors, “underpays a lot of interns and a lot of local crews,” he says, shoots the film and then leaves. But it takes nine months to a year to produce a videogame, with local animators and programmers working the entire time.

There are currently about 20 people employed with PixoFactor. But that is about to double with the company’s latest project, one that Hurwitz is visibly excited about. They’re going to produce a new Ben Hogan golf game for the Nintendo Wii. Hurwitz says it will be the first Wii game developed in Michigan. The 42 percent tax refund is sitting on the desk of the Michigan Film Office, awaiting approval. Once that happens, Hurtitz says, PixoFactor’s office on the top floor of a Fourth Street building across the way from the Royal Oak Music Theater is going to be hopping.

The best thing about the project, says Nancy Kelley, PixoFactor’s marketing and business development principal, is that it’s local Michigan money being invested, so that the tax credit comes back to local Michigan people.

The primary local investor in PixoFactor is Envy Capital, based in Farmington Hills, MI. Hurwitz won’t say exactly how much Envy has invested, only that it’s “over a million dollars.”

Hurwitz brought Envy onboard a couple of years ago. He had partnered with the firm back when he was in the commercial real estate business between 2003 and 2007. Prior to that, Hurwitz, 41, a compact but muscular man, had spent 17 years as owner of a landscaping and construction business. PixoFactor … Next Page »

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Redpoint Ventures, the Menlo Park, CA-based early stage venture capital firm, has invested $9 million in a Series B financing round for Los Angeles-based Machinima, according to an announcement today. Machinima’s entertainment portal features original fan-created videos made using the graphics engines from popular video games such as World of Warcraft, Halo, the Sims, and Grand Theft Auto. The company says the site’s audience has tripled over the past year to more than 27 million unique visitors per month.

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The next time you’re trying to pick a place to go out to eat, you might have more information at your fingertips than just reviews, photos, and menus. A Boston-area company called EveryScape has teamed up with Microsoft’s Bing Maps to deliver 3-D panoramic views of restaurants—both interiors and exteriors—on the Web.

EveryScape, based in Waltham, MA, is announcing today a new online app, which it developed using the Bing Maps software development kit. The technology uses high-resolution graphics and animation effects to give consumers a “walk-through” immersive experience as they browse restaurants on the Web. Financial details of the agreement weren’t given, but the map app is being rolled out initially for Boston-area restaurants, with other major cities to follow later this year. As of today, the company says its software shows the insides of 500-plus restaurants around Boston, and exterior 3-D views of more than 1,300.

It’s all part of a trend of increasing competition at the intersection of local search, online maps, and 3-D image-based graphics. Google Maps’ Street View feature, for instance, provides panoramic views of a large (and growing) number of outdoor locations worldwide. Microsoft is known for Photosynth, its technology for creating 3-D virtual environments from collections of photographs. Bing Maps already incorporates some aspects of Photosynth, as well as “streetside” and “bird’s eye” visuals. Meanwhile, little old EveryScape competes with the big boys on the quality of these kinds of visuals, at least in some locations.

Which is why today’s news is particularly important for the small company. EveryScape’s new app, which was developed in a “strategic relationship” with Microsoft, “further validates” its strategy of delivering real-world experiences to consumers and businesses online, says Mok Oh, the founder and chief technology officer of EveryScape, in a statement. Oh adds that the new software brings “the power of Bing location search to EveryScape’s visual guides.”

The relationship also makes sense for Microsoft, which is trying to compete more strongly with Google Maps for market share in search and location-based services. “We are thrilled to work with EveryScape to deliver a map app that brings users inside for a truly immersive experience,” says Chris Pendleton, technical evangelist for Bing Maps, in a company statement.

EveryScape was founded in 2002 (formerly known as Mok3), and is led by CEO Jim Schoonmaker. The company raised $7 million in Series B venture funding in 2008. Its investors include SK Telecom Americas, Dace Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Draper Fisher New England, Draper Atlantic, and Launchpad Venture Group.

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If you’re under 25 or so, you probably don’t need much training on how to share digital photos, make a digital sketch, create an animated cartoon, make a personalized online map, or the like. I wrote the last three installments of my World Wide Wade column for everyone else: The majority of everyday computer users who are vaguely aware of all the amazing tools popping up in the digital media world, and who might even enjoy putting some of them to creative use, but who could use a few handy pointers.

But my “Seven Projects to Stretch Your Digital Wings” series appeared in three episodes over the course of two weeks, which isn’t too handy. So I thought it might be useful to list all seven projects in one place. Here we go:

1. Make a Digital Painting with Brushes. Relive your finger-painting days using the same iPhone app used by artist Jorge Colombo to create the June 1 cover of The New Yorker.

2. Start Lifestreaming with Friendfeed or Posterous. Set up a “lifestream”—2009′s replacement for the old-fashioned blog—as a locus for all your social media activities.

3. Document a Space with Photosynth. Use Microsoft’s amazing experimental software for collating hundreds of digital pictures of a single space or object into an immersive, three-dimensional environment.

4. Become an Amateur Podcaster with AudioBoo. Learn how to use this UK-born iPhone app to make mini-podcasts that all your friends can listen to.

5. Create a Short Animated Film with Xtranormal. Be the first on your block to script your own computer-animated short feature, using a nifty new “text-to-movie” technology.

6. Put Yourself on the Map with Platial. Learn the basics of photo-enhanced storytelling using digital maps.

7. Become a Virtual Architect in Second Life. Try your hand at building 3-D virtual objects inside the world’s most flexible and welcoming social virtual world.

Have fun and let us know what you created!

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Whether the fall is back-to-school season for you or not, there’s always more to learn. In last week’s column I outlined three fun weekend projects involving new technologies for digital self-expression. My suggestions covered art (digital “finger painting” with an iPhone app called Brushes), writing (“lifestreaming” with Posterous and Friendfeed), and photography (building three-dimensional photographic spaces with Photosynth). This week I’ve got two more digital projects in mind for you, this time in the areas of podcasting and computer animation. Next week, I’ll finish up with maps and virtual worlds.

I’m writing this three-part column because I think it’s an exciting time for anyone who’s interested in consumer-level digital media tools. Not only are we seeing a profusion of inexpensive new gadgets for capturing media—witness Apple’s announcement Wednesday that the new iPod Nano will have a built-in digital video camera—but there are also many new Web-based services where creators can edit, enhance, share, and promote their media creations. The only way to keep up with all these new technologies is just to jump in and try them. So let’s get back to it:

4. Become an Amateur Podcaster with AudioBoo

When podcasting first took off four or five years ago, most podcasters tried to emulate radio hosts, kitting out their podcasts with fancy musical intros and outros and other audio goodies. Just to experiment with podcasting, you needed a pricey microphone and recording rig, audio editing software, and a working knowledge of RSS, iTunes, and other distribution methods. But thanks to a bit of good old technological progress, the barriers are now much lower. In fact, producing a podcast these days can be just about as easy as making a phone call. Which means that dictating a few off-the-cuff thoughts on your mobile device and uploading them to the Web is becoming a realistic alternative to blogging and other more familar forms of Web-based communication.

This is precisely the point of AudioBoo, a UK-based service that I profiled in July. If you live in the UK (or if you’re willing to splurge on an international phone call), you can call AudioBoo from any phone and record some thoughts, then publish the the recording straight to AudioBoo.fm, which is basically a giant community audio blog featuring recordings or “boos” from all AudioBoo users.

But if you have an iPhone, you can use the nifty AudioBoo app to do the same thing, without the phone calls or the attendant charges. The app has a voice recording function that lets you talk for up to five minutes. It then uses your wireless data connection to upload the finished boo to the AudioBoo.fm, along with a photograph and a map of your location, if you wish. Fans can listen to your boos at the site, or they can subscribe and get new boos delivered via RSS or iTunes. The AudioBoo site also provides some handy code that you can use to embed your boos in your blog.

In fact, by doing a bit of social media marketing to promote your boos, you could turn AudioBoo into your own personal audio publishing empire. Somewhat to my surprise, I haven’t … Next Page »

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From architecture to kids’ videos to online animated ads, Ksenia Oustiougova’s path to founder of Seattle online ad company Lilipip has been unusual. To start, the company was funded not by investors, but on credit cards. The good news: after shutting down the kids’ video version of Lilipip and retooling to its current incarnation, Oustiougova is now paying down the debt.

Oustiougova said Lilipip’s change of focus in the summer of 2008—from children’s videos to online marketing ads—had a straightforward motivation. “We ran out of money. It was as simple as that,” she said. “Either reinvent or close down. And I’m not a quitter by nature.”

Now, together with more than 150 independent creative contractors around the world and a director of business development, Oustiougova makes one-minute animated videos for small businesses. Her team currently works on about four projects at once, she said, but they hope to get up to their capacity of 20 at a time eventually. Oustiougova and the director of business development are not yet salaried, taking a cut of the proceeds from each project, but Lilipip is bringing on four project managers as Lilipip’s first employees in the next six to 12 months. Now starting to pay off her credit card debt, Oustiougova has no plans to look for outside investment.

Asked why fundraising isn’t part of the plan, Oustiougova gave several reasons, among them: “The entire process takes months, and it takes away focus from sales; second, suddenly you have someone looking over your shoulder telling you what to do—we are breaking a lot of conventional rules, and I want to build a company where people don’t feel like they work, but feel like they play.” She added, “I am not interested in growing huge. I want to build an excellent business, and we won’t be necessarily big. But investors want a certain return at a certain time that might force us to do things faster…Some things just take time to get very good, like good wine—you can’t speed it up.”

Lilipip’s animations are mostly used online, Oustiougova said, on businesses’ websites, Facebook, YouTube, or other social marketing sites. She has also seen them played on TVs at trade shows, or used in presentations to clients or shareholders. Lilipip will encode the videos into any format its clients need for free. Many small businesses like having their ads available on their cell phones to share on the go, she said.

“This is really a tool to tell their story in a uniform way through all the new social media channels,” Oustiougova said.

Oustiougova’s first entrepreneurial steps came when, after leaving a career as an architect, she began making PowerPoint presentations for her son to teach him to read in English and Russian (her native language). Her friends soon started requesting custom videos for their kids, and … Next Page »

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This week’s column comes partly in the form of a digital cartoon. Click on the play button below to watch it. (Or if you’re reading this story via an RSS feed or e-mail newsletter, click this link to view the video—then come back here).

Clever, eh? Of course, it’s just fiction. I still have a job here at Xconomy—as far as I know. But if I ever lose it, maybe I’ll hitchhike to Montreal and apply for a position at Xtranormal, the startup that created the Web-based movie maker I used to create the video.

Xtranormal, which is funded by Cambridge’s Fairhaven Capital, was founded in 2006 and emerged from stealth mode about a year ago at the Demo 08 conference in San Diego. (You can watch vice president Paul Nightingale’s six-minute Demo presentation here). The basic idea—automated synchronization of synthesized speech with animated, 3-D avatars—has been around since the early 2000s. If you don’t remember the green-haired virtual newscaster Ananova, here’s a link to some archival video. But Xtranormal’s innovation has been to put the same technology into the hands of average Web users—letting them produce and direct their own little 3-D movies.

It’s a great idea that strikes the same chord as some other new consumer tools for creating and remixing digital media—Animoto, which assembles high-energy animated slide shows with musical backgrounds from your digital photos, being one of my current favorites. Xtranormal’s easy-to-use toolkit of commands and its endearing cartoon people give it the feel of a big Lego set for adults. I made the clip above in an hour or two just by choosing a backdrop, a couple of characters, and some basic camera angles and gestures from Xtranormal’s large menu of options, then writing some dialogue. The script doubles as an interactive storyboard; Xtranormal has developed a clever drag-and-drop interface for inserting pauses, facial expressions, and camera angle changes.

As Xtranormal puts it, “If you can type, you can make movies.” And there are people using Xtranormal in some pretty entertaining ways—for examples, check out Deadpan Inc., Howard and Leslie, and Rejected Jokes. To quote website Lifehacker, it’s “a seriously addictive sandbox for crafting miniature dramas, comedies, or whatever you can tell your little actors to do.”

Although Nightingale talked in his demo about using the tool to build business presentations or daily Web talk shows, I’m not convinced that the service, at least in its current form, has any serious business, educational, or media applications. Those may be coming down the road, as the company gives users access to tools for building customized avatars and laying in their own voice tracks rather than relying on the software’s speech synthesizer.

For now, Xtranormal is simply a heckuva lot of fun, which is enough for me. Better yet, it’s free, at least for now—though there are indications that this won’t last forever, and that Xtranormal plans eventually to sell credits that users can apply toward publishing movies.

Xtranormal’s About page calls the democratization of movie-making “a massive business opportunity,” and Nightingale talked at Demo about additional revenue possibilities for the company, such as interactive marketing—think exclusive worlds where content owners (say, Pepsi or Honda or Universal Studios) give visitors digitized movie characters or branded props from which to build their own movies.

But apparently, these types of marketing deals aren’t materializing quite fast enough. According to this report in the Vancouver, BC-based blog TechVibes, the company was forced to lay off 36 people, or about half of its staff, back in November. There have also been complaints from users about performance issues, including long waits for Xtranormal’s servers to show their previews and finished movies (though I didn’t experience that problem myself). And the downloadable version of the Xtranormal movie generator promised by Nightingtale last January is, so far, nowhere to be seen.

I hope the company gets through its current rough patch, because it’s developed a fun and intuitive tool that, with a few more features, could provide the palette for a new generation of home movies by creative amateurs. Given the graphics-processing power of today’s home computers, you shouldn’t have to be CGI professional or machinima hacker to produce nice-looking animations.

Of course, I’m not about to put down my writer’s pen. At least, not until an avatar pries it out of my cold, dead fingers.

(Addendum, 1/19/09: Talk about coincidences. Last night somebody from Xtranormal left the following comment over on the YouTube page for my Richard & Simon video: “Great stuff. Did you know that Simon & Richard are the product designers/managers for Xtranormal? Nuts. Nice write-up too. We are going through a rough patch, but we’re going to pull out of it and it’s gonna be FUN.”)

For a full list of my columns, check out the World Wide Wade Archive. You can also subscribe to the column via RSS or e-mail.

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When I got an “ElfYourself” e-greeting from my brother’s family before Christmas 2007, I remember being surprised that the free greeting, though sponsored by OfficeMax, was actually powered by JibJab, the Venice, CA, Web startup that made its name during the 2004 presidential campaign with its irreverent “This Land” video.” The switch from animated parodies to e-cards seemed pretty drastic—yet that’s exactly how Waltham’s Polaris Venture Partners and other investors think the company can make money.

JibJab announced today that it has closed a $7.5 million Series C round, led by Overbrook Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment with Polaris along as a participant. (Polaris was also in on the company’s $6.4 million A round in June 2006 and its $3 million B round in October 2007.) The company says it will use the money to continue its self-declared “war on eCards” with JibJab Sendables, a library of over 1,200 humorous, personalizable electronic greetings like ElfYourself. Most Sendables are free, but some JibJab content is available only to subscribers, who pay $16 a year.

Jon Flint, managing general partner at Polaris, said in a statement that “With its stellar brand, unparalleled track record for creating hits, proven ability to monetize and 6 million strong registered member base, we think JibJab is in an enviable position to reinvent the $8 billion greeting card industry.”

Interestingly, Silicon Alley Insider included Polaris on its recent list of the 20 U.S. venture firms most exposed to risky Web 2.0 investments, partly because of its (now growing) stake in JibJab. But after Bob wrote about the Insider’s list this morning, Flint wrote us a note arguing that, by the Insider’s own definition, JibJab doesn’t count as a Web 2.0 company. “JibJab does not have an advertiser supported business model.  It is an eCommerce company selling electronic greeting cards like ‘ElfYourself’…a recession resistant business,” Flint said.

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On the heels of a big third-quarter loss, Tewksbury, MA-based Avid Technology, which makes professional video and audio editing software, announced yesterday that it planned to lay off 410 employees, roughly 15 percent of its staff. The company also plans to terminate 90 contract workers and sell its Softimage 3-D game animation business. The Boston Globe has a good write up.

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