

Yahoo buys IntoNow for $20-30M - Timothee
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/25/yahoo-intonow/

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dstein
I can't help but be kind of sad when Yahoo buys a company knowing the
technology/product they have acquired will most likely die on the vine.

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mikeryan
This post is missing a possible reason for this acquisition.

Yahoo has their connected TV platform, right now they're just rolling out
"broadcast interactivity" where you can have an app on your TV and iPad and
mobile device sync'd to the TV broadcast. The way they are doing this is via
audio fingerprinting, exactly what intonow has a bunch of IP in.

This isn't just Yahoo all the major CE players doing Connected TV apps and
widgets are looking to get into these technologies. Think "popup" ads on your
TV because they can recognize the ad that's currently playing on your TV.

Woot!

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aresant
"12-week old company" ?

From their press release the core of their product is "SoundPrint, a patented
technology platform"

Patented means wading through years of patent office shenanigans, and if it
was patent-pending (2 weeks) they would have said as much.

Hard to find any history on the company beyond press release - anybody have
further insight?

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pramanat
Intonow was spun out of Auditude which developed the audio fingerprinting
technology, and Auditude has been around since 2006.

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bfe
It looks like at least the following patents assigned at least at some point
to Autitude are floating around:

7,325,013 Database with efficient fuzzy matching

7,421,376 Comparison of data signals using characteristic electronic
thumbprints

7,516,074 Extraction and matching of characteristic fingerprints from audio
signals

These seem at first glance to date back at earliest to a provisional patent
application filed April 24, 2001, so making some reasonable dot-connecting
(e.g. if intonow has rights to these patents etc.), it looks like even this
"amazing twelve weeks to liquidity event" was actually at least ten years in
the making.

(Obligatory disclaimer, this post doesn't constitute legal advice, talk to
your own attorney if you'd like legal advice on these matters.)

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buymorechuck
The folks at IntoNow are amazingly awesome product folks, congratulations!

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zandorg
I used Shazam to find a tune I had a loop from for years, and didn't know what
song it was from. Very useful!

[Edit]Shazam was mentioned in this article in relation to IntoNow.

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cpeterso
I'm not sure what the (profit-generating) use case is, but the IntoNow iPhone
app passed my tests surprisingly well. Consider me impressed.

