Delve Networks has sealed a strategic partnership with Akamai Technologies, a deal that allows the Seattle online video startup to offer enhanced video management, delivery and publishing technologies to customers.

Not one to mince words, Delve CEO Alex Castro offers a more direct explanation of the deal in the title of his blog post: "Akamai and Delve team up to provide a better alternative to Brightcove." It’s interesting to see a startup company toss stones at a competitor, but Castro has gone after his heavily-funded competitor before. (Frankly, we like to see entrepreneurs address rivals head on rather than the tired line we hear too often from startups about "not having any competition.")

Utilizing Akamai’s content distribution network, Delve says it will be able to deliver HD-quality video on behalf of customers. Delve, which raised a $1.6 million venture round in May, has 70 customers using its video publishing tool including Standard & Poors, 1800Flowers and the Kansas City Chiefs.

"The collaboration between Delve and Akamai offers our customers a complete video management solution built on top of Akamai’s superior global video delivery network," writes Castro in the blog.

And speaking of Delve, Fierce Online Video this week had an interesting Q&A with Castro where the CEO discloses that the company’s revenue grew 100 percent from the first quarter to the second quarter. He says:

We’re beginning to see folks outside of media and entertainment want to use video as an online marketing effort, and we’re seeing a wide mix of companies showing interest. We’re seeing companies taking video seriously and we’re seeing a tremendous trend of folks weaving video through their business.

Follow John Cook on Twitter @johnhcook.

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and Amazon and Zappos: a good fit?  

Shortly after Amazon.com announced last week that it was acquiring online shoe retailer Zappos, an Amazon employee posted a message on Twitter that captured some of the company’s hopes for the deal.

“Dear Tony: Please teach Amazon about Twitter,” read the message, addressing Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. “And if you could help us get an 800 number on the home page that would be awesome.”

The tweet went to the heart of Amazon’s $900 million-plus gamble on Zappos — the largest acquisition in its history. Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc. is getting not only a category leader in online shoe sales, but an innovative company known for its quirky culture, well-developed customer service, and heavy use of social-networking sites like Twitter and Facebook for marketing and brand development.

Amazon plans to let Zappos continue to operate independently, but it’s also poised to draw some lessons from the Zappos model as it develops its e-commerce strategy going forward.

“They didn’t buy Zappos just because they sell shoes but because of how they do it,” said Patricia Edwards, a retail analyst with Storehouse Partners, a Bellevue-based investment management firm. “You can generate incredible customer loyalty through a good experience.”

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and Want to avoid getting stuck in traffic? There’s an app for that  

Inrix today introduced a new iPhone application that should resonate with Seattle drivers — especially on days like today when the I-90 floating bridge will be closed. The free app predicts traffic conditions on more than 160,000 miles of roadways in North America.

Inrix relies on drivers for the data with the company calling it the "world’s largest crowd-sourced traffic network." The app shows construction zones, road closures and other factors, and attempts to predict what traffic will be like one hour in the future.

Interestingly, at the WTIA Summer Celebration last night I bumped into Eric Burke and Jin Kim of GreenTraffic, who are working on a real time traffic application for other GPS-enabled smartphones.

Inrix is a Microsoft spin out, so the fact that it is developing an app for the iPhone is notable. (Seattle-based Zumobi — also a Microsoft spin out — is another example of a company with Microsoft roots that’s going deep into iPhone app development.)

Microsoft certainly doesn’t like to see developers — especially those with strong ties to the company — building cool stuff on another platform.

That’s why the company is getting more serious about boosting its own mobile app store, but as former Microsoft Mobile manager Kevin Lisota writes in a guest piece today for TechFlash the software giant has a long way to go.

 

 

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Windows 7 Family Pack pricing, and details on ‘Anytime Upgrade’  

The upcoming Windows 7 Family Pack will be priced at $149.99, and it will be available for purchase in stores upon the operating system’s Oct. 22 launch, Microsoft said this morning.

The Family Pack, which will let PC users upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium on up to three existing Windows Vista or XP computers, represents a discount of more than $200 from buying the Windows 7 Home Premium upgrades individually.

It’s one of a series of steps Microsoft is taking to make the new operating system more affordable. The company is trying to pull off a successful Windows 7 launch, reviving its flagship product, in the middle of the turbulent economy.

"Our goal is to make sure customers can easily move up to Windows 7 Home Premium on a bunch of different PCs," said Microsoft’s Michelle Haven, a product manager in the Windows business group.

Microsoft today also announced pricing and details for Windows 7’s implementation of Windows Anytime Upgrade, which lets people with a lower-priced Windows 7 edition shift subsequently to a Windows 7 edition with more features, without having to use an installation disc.

For example, upgrading from Windows 7 Starter Edition to Windows 7 Home Premium adds features including Media Center PC capabilities and advanced Windows graphics. Going from Home Premium to Professional adds business-related features.

In many cases, Microsoft has reduced the price of the Windows Anytime Upgrade for Windows 7 when compared to shifting between similar Windows Vista editions. For example, going from Windows 7 Starter to Windows 7 Ultimate will cost $164.99, about 17 percent less than moving between comparable Windows Vista editions. Moving from Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Ultimate will cost $139.99, about 12 percent less, and going from Windows 7 Professional to Windows 7 Ultimate will cost $129.99, about 6 percent less.

Shifting from Windows 7 Home Premium to Professional will cost $89.99 through Windows Anytime Upgrade, and going from Windows 7 Starter to Windows 7 Home Premium will cost $79.99.

See this earlier post for details on standard retail pricing for the new operating system.

Windows Anytime Upgrade takes advantage of the fact that various editions of the operating system are contained in what’s known as a single "image," creating the ability to unlock more-advanced editions by purchasing a product key online or in a store. The previous iteration of Windows Anytime Upgrade, introduced with Windows Vista, required the use of an upgrade installation disc.

"This is really taking a lot of the feedback we heard with Windows Vista, and improving the process with Windows 7," Haven said. "We’re pretty excited about how simple it will be for any end user to go get it."

In a demonstration this week on Microsoft’s Redmond campus, Haven showed how to upgrade from Windows 7 Starter Edition to Windows 7 Home Premium on an Asus Eee PC netbook computer in less than 10 minutes after purchasing a product code online. In some situations, the process could take slightly more than 10 minutes, she said.

In either case, that’s significantly less than the 60 to 90 minutes that it can take to use Windows Anytime Upgrade to go from one version of Windows Vista to another.

In Windows 7 Starter Edition, the Start menu will contain a shortcut to the Windows 7 Anytime Upgrade service for a limited time after the lower-end version of the operating system is installed. Users of higher-end versions, such as Windows 7 Home Premium, will be able to find Anytime Upgrade by searching from the Start menu. 

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