Thanks to Google Maps you can zoom onto a satellite image of just about any office building anywhere in the world. But what if you could also get the name of the companies in the building, their financial reports, their executive shuffles and mergers and acquisitions?
El Segundo-based Geosemble Technologies Inc., a 3-year-old spinoff from USC Viterbi School of Engineering, has developed technology that can do just that. It automatically extracts satellite and aerial images of roads, parcels, and structures available through the U.S. Geological Survey and fuses the images with available online information about them.
Ten engineers have nurtured the baby technology since its inception in a USC classroom in 2000. Within a year of incorporating, the company landed a contract with the Department of Homeland Security. In recent months, the company has received grants from the National Science Foundation, Defense Advanced Projects Agency, and the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
Geosemble President Andre Doumitt said the grants total in the millions of dollars, and funding is likely to increase by at least five times in the next five years.
The National Science Foundation, for example, is funding the technology to sell to businesses that manufacture backyard equipment and outdoor leisure furniture. The company’s GeoPrism system can analyze satellite images and automatically identify homes with big backyards. That data can be cross-referenced to a list of homeowners with interests in gardening and golf, or those who may have a home office. All this is based on information already available online.
“It allows for targeted marketing campaigns by linking consumer interests with manufacturing capabilities,” Doumitt said.
Companies that sell solar energy could also benefit from this technology, as Geosemble can identify homes that would benefit from green power based upon their elevation and the amount of sun and wind on site.
Does this evoke privacy concerns of marketers lurking in people’s backyard via satellite spying?
“The amount of satellite imagery available, just on Google, is simply public information,” Doumitt said. “It’s a part of the evolution of technology and open source data. It could bring benefit to people by reducing senseless junk-mail because marketers know exactly who they’re marketing to.”
Toon Time
Uri Shinar, an Israeli media veteran, said he knew when the Simpsons invaded prime time television in the United States that cartoons wouldn’t be just for kids anymore. In 2006, he launched an animation channel with 2,000 animators from 72 countries bypassing television altogether to Internet TV.
“Television is just a tool for leisure and you have to meet your viewers wherever they are,” Shinar said. “The young generation is leaving television and finding themselves on the Web. There’s also been an evolution in the genre of animation. Many of the leading films in 2006 were animations. The genre has truly gained mass appeal.”
Aniboom, based in Tel Aviv, recently set up shop in Los Angeles as its North American headquarters around the same time it landed a contract with Joost, a much-talked-about broadcast-quality Internet television channel based in New York.
The company has also received $4.5 million in venture funding, some of which will be used to establish its presence in LA and across the country. Next month, Aniboom will release “Race for the White House,” a parody of presidential candidates Rudy Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain. It’s written by Burbank-based Gabe Abelson, whose credits include “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and the “Late Show with David Letterman.”
While the network mostly produces professional content, the site also offers downloadable software that allows anyone to create animation and post it on the site.
Found in Translation
Language Weaver, an L.A.-based company that develops software for automated translations of nearly 40 languages, is continuing its expansion in Europe.
Last week, the company hired Emmanuel Tonnelier as the sales director for southern Europe. He will head the operation out of Paris. Last year, Language Weaver opened an office in Belgium to oversee its sales and marketing efforts in northern Europe.
The company spun off from the USC Information Sciences Institute in 2002 and has about 50 pending patents on software that produces automated translations resembling human voices. This month, the company retained David Savignac, a linguistic and statistical translation expert who worked for 30 years at the National Security Agency, where he founded and directed the Center for Applied Machine Translation.
The company is backed by Palisades Ventures, the Tech Coast Angels and the Athenaeum Fund.
Staff reporter Booyeon Lee can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 230, or at [email protected].
