CoVi Technologies, an Austin-based company focused on creating an integrated, comprehensive video surveillance system, has raised an additional $4.1 million in equity financing.  The company, which has raised nearly $60 million in equity financing since 2003, designs, develops and manufactures high-definition, television-quality systems, as well as offering a systems-based approach to high-definition video surveillance.  Given the size of this round, and the fact that each of the last few rounds have  been around $15 million, [...]

Indy Gill, the CEO of Austin-based UnwiredNation.com was interviewed recently over at PodTech.net. In case you missed it, the video is below.

Innography Inc., an Austin-based startup developing software to police the infringement of patents, has announced that it has raised $750,000 in seed money from Hunt Ventures. The company gathers information  and market intelligence through data which is publicly available, including securities filings, industry reports and patent registrations, aiming to manage, protect, optimize, and ensure compliance with a client’s patents. Specifically, the company hopes to allow its users to identify potential infringers of a single patent [...]

I’m sitting here at Starbucks reading about the launch of RipCode’s product today. Transcoding is huge now, and only getting bigger. Many video websites actually outsource the transcoding. So when you think you’re uploading to YouTube, it’s actually going to a 3rd party who transcodes it (into Flash video usually) and then sends it to YouTube. I wonder what the payback time is on buying a box vs using a service?

Last week I had the chance to meet Josh Tabin, who runs StartupHouston. Josh and I could pretty much complete each other’s sentences regarding our interests in helping to promote the technology communities in our respective cities. There are a lot of cool things going on in Houston. They recently hosted a BarCamp in Houston, and also there’s a Startup Weekend coming to Houston Sept 28-30. Anybody interested in doing a Startup Weekend in Austin? [...]