San Diego’s NewBlue Inc. joins EvoNexus to launch Vibop mobile video sharing platform

NewBlue, Inc., a growing provider of integrated video effects technologies, and CommNexus, a nonprofit technology industry association that works to accelerate the success of the technology industry in the region, today announces that NewBlue has been accepted into EvoNexus™, San Diego’s only community-supported, fully pro-bono technology incubator.

Founded by proven, experienced entrepreneurs in digital media, NewBlue was created on the premise that video would become an integral part of popular culture and a critical player in the consumer marketplace. EvoNexus will support NewBlue on expanding market availability of Vibop, its upcoming patent pending, cloud-based technology that enables social networking with video across mobile devices and smartphones. Vibop is based on NewBlue’s extensive and proprietary library of NewBlueFX video filters.

“EvoNexus is the perfect place to take NewBlue to the next level. San Diego boasts some of the finest cellular and mobile back-end technologies in the country,” said Melissa Jordan Grey, co-founder and chief creative officer for NewBlue, Inc.  “With the introduction of Vibop, we leverage this city’s strong mobile foundations with a powerful front-end.”  

EvoNexus and its sponsors will be providing NewBlue with project mentoring and consulting, access to senior executives, help with fundraising, graphic design and printing services and other forms of cost reduction.  Previously operating as a virtual enterprise, NewBlue will now be centralizing its staff and developing in San Diego, having moved into office space provided by EvoNexus at beginning of April 2011.  

“NewBlue has established itself as a premier provider of video special effects and editing software with the success of NewBlueFX,” said Kevin Hell, chairman of EvoNexus. “This excellent foundation serves as a great springboard for its upcoming expansion into the consumer video sharing marketplace via Vibop. At EvoNexus, our goal is to support NewBlue in any way possible, ranging from the use of our sponsor’s facilities and services to mentoring, oversight and events.”  

“Our association with EvoNexus elevates NewBlue’s access to industry leaders. And with their support and infrastructure, we enter an exciting growth stage. This includes the process of finding outstanding local talent in San Diego, which we are proud to say, has already begun,” added Todor Fay, co-founder and chief technology officer for NewBlue, Inc.

Vibop mobile video editing and social sharing technology will be available for mobile devices and smartphones in the second quarter, 2011.  For more information, please visit www.newblueinc.com or shoot me an email - rmanning@myntpr.com 

 

The growing security needs of Smartphones

Guest post by Britney Baker 

Setting the Scene: Why Hackers Might Target Phones

For a long time, viruses and security issues have been limited to traditional computers. Although a number of other types of devices have computer chips and can even run software, they were hard or impossible for a hacker to get into, and there wasn’t much benefit to hacking them. However, as smartphones have gotten more popular recently, and have become more complex, they have begun to offer another platform for hackers to attack. Smartphones have a couple of key features that make them good for hackers to attack. For one thing, the software is complex, and there is an open application platform, so they have the ability to write malware or to exploit a phone. Secondly, the phones are all connected to the internet, so there is an easy way to attack the phones. Lastly, the phones have things of value - they may have personal information, passwords, even banking information. These factors make phones a good medium for malicious hackers to attempt to exploit.

How Viruses Get to Your Phone

There have been some issues related to security and smartphones, but to date few of them have been actual viruses. For instance, Android had a scare with a wallpaper application that got millions of downloads, and was secretly sending personal information to a site in China. RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, has been in the news recently due to conflicts with several countries who wanted access to certain BlackBerrys’ information. The ironic thing about the story is that BlackBerry was so secure that RIM literally didn’t have the private information to hand over to the governments. The compromise that they came to was to have RIM run servers in these countries, so that the governments could spy on encrypted messages.

Protecting Your Phone

The thing we should all remember with smartphones is that they possess a great deal of personal information, and should be treated with the same care or better that we would use with a computer. Beware of unknown applications, don’t go to bad websites, and protect important files. Here’s a list of some security applications that are being developed for smartphones :

·         DroidSecurity Android Antivirus

DroidSecurity has distributed over 2 million copies of their free antivirus software, and they also offer a premium version.

·         McAffe

McAffe is known to currently be working on an antivirus program for the iPhone, but it has not been released to the public yet.

·         Norton Antivirus

Norton, a very popular security company, currently makes a mobile antivirus program for Symbian and Windows Mobile Phones.

When she’s not getting excited about new gadgets, Britney Baker writes about prepaid cell phones for PrepaidCellphones.net. Her latest article took a look at the GoPhone from AT&T.