Tucows Archive

Earlier this year popular Valley entrepreneur Joi Ito became CEO of the Creative Commons organization. Today Internet services firm Tucows has announced that Ito has joined their board of directors.

"We are honoured to have one of the most influential leaders in the global Internet community join our Board," said Elliot Noss, President and CEO of Tucows. "Mr. Ito brings to Tucows a unique understanding of the Internet’s impact on business and society. We look forward to his strategic guidance and counsel."

Ito also serves on the board of Technorati and Digital Garage. In addition, Ito is Chairman of Six Apart Japan.

In other Tucows news, last month they launched the Butterscotch Video Network.

Tucows (remember them?!?!) has launched a new video network called Butterscotch this week. The site is Canadian and features six main video shows including tutorials. Former G4TechTV personality Andy Walker is leading the site and Amber MacArthur is one of the lead personalities.

We interviewed Amber last year and I believe she is the most talented female tech reporter on the scene. With that said, it’s disappointing to see that Amber is hosting a show where she recaps the viral videos of the week. This "YouTube-recap" show has become very popular as of late – it’s an easy way to make a show. Here’s hoping Amber will change the format to show off her technology talent.

With Tucows providing strong financial support, a popular set of talent and a library of downloads, Butterscotch could do very well. They suggest that their niche is where, "HGTV meets TechTV". Here’s Amber’s first episode of the A-List:

Yesterday, Elliot from Tucows announced that they were the winning eBay bidders for the Kiko.com domain and application. Some notes from the announcement:

• We needed the functionality, quite desperately, inside of our email platform and it was going to take us a long time to get it. Especially at the level of sophistication Kiko has.
• In a nutshell, this was the kind of deal where we were buying exactly what they were selling. That makes for good business and, by the way, is too infrequently the case with Internet services.
• Nice AJAX Implementation – Kiko is a very nice use of AJAX, especially in a lot of the underlying thinking. To me, that is not about technology, but about making a web app behave more like a desktop app.

The truth is even if Tucows never uses Kiko for anything more than a domain purchase, they have received a great amount of buzz from the purchase. Already 700+ Digg’s and counting. I have used Tucows for years and never thought of them as a Web 2.0 shop. Guess I will have to re-think that. Those cows have been busy!

Technorati Tags: web-20 | web2.0 | tucows | kiko | web 2.0