The company's technology allows any Web page to go live in real-time

Obviously, the main advantage of new media companies that utilize the Web—like Groupon, Yelp, or even our own VatorNews—over old media companies that stick to paper and phones is the speed at which they can operate.  In the time it takes your local newspaper to report on an event that happened at 5 pm the previous day, your friendly neighborhood blog has already turned the situation inside-out with up-to-the-minute updates.

The power of “now” on the Web can’t be overestimated, which is why anything happening in real-time is an eye-catcher.  One real-time technology provider, aptly named Realtime, relaunched Tuesday with $100 million in funding from BRZTech, a São Paulo-based investment vehicle backed by a number of private investors in Europe and South America.

Founded in 1997 as Internet Business Technologies, the company has rebranded as Realtime and claims to have developed a technology that will pave the way to the new “live Web.”

To break it down, Realtime has created a platform that allows users—whether they’re businesses, advertisers, or developers—to add a single line of code to a Web page to push data to a single user or multiple users without requiring them to refresh the page.  The technology is powered by Realtime’s extensive Realtime multiplatform language (xRTML), which can be implemented for both Web and mobile apps, including NODE.JS, Javascript, ASP.net, PHP, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.
But the lynchpin is its versatility.  Realtime Web is multi-browser, multi-device, multi-protocol and multiplatform, so businesses and developers can get it up and running simply by adding the code, rather than opening up a can of programming worms.

And its uses are equally versatile.  Realtime Web can be utilized to allow Web users to change website content as it comes out, vote and see other users votes in real-time, or simply get customer service help as they need it.  The technology can also fundamentally change display advertising by allowing ads to be replaced while they’re being displayed depending on exposure time and a user’s information.

Realtime’s own website shows you how it works, with a box of statistics that is being continually updated to show how many developers are using it (1,114), how many user connections it’s seeing (123 million every 24 hours), and even how many visitors are checking out the site right now.

“Many people have talked about the coming ‘real-time Web’ in very abstract terms, and Realtime is the first company building a tangible framework that will make that abstraction a reality. We did not create a product. We created an industry,” said CEO and founder André Parreira, in a statement. “We are committing the resources to make Realtime the fluid, next-generation, truly conversational standard for the Web across the world.”

With offices in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, London, Madrid, Lisbon, and now Santa Monica and New York, Realtime is securing partnerships in the U.S. and already has over 2,000 partnerships around the world.
Realtime was recently classified as a “Cool Vendor” by Gartner (as IBT).

“[Realtime] has the potential to set a new industry standard for real-time Web experiences that feel more like you’re in a giant chat room than the static, often frustrating quest for information we are often subjected to today,” Gartner reported.

Probox file-sharing tool to rival Dropbox launches by Proact

Storage integrator Proact has launched a new online file storage service, Probox, to compete in the fast growing cloud storage market against the likes of DropBox, SkyDrive, iCloud and Google Drive.

Probox will allow employees to share and sync all their work files with their colleagues, and to their mobile devices automatically.

Proact commercial director Mark Butcher told V3 that unlike other file-sharing services in the market, Probox had been designed with business users in mind.

Butcher said Proact aims to give Probox users the flexibility they want, while ensuring enterprise-grade security. "Many of our customers deny how many of their staff use Dropbox-type services. Staff use the services to store company critical information, but this leaves the IT department with no guarantee of security, knowledge of data location or control," he said. "All users want is simplicity, but with the storage services on offer at the moment, many IT departments can't give them this. Current enterprise storage services are clunky and need a secure VPN service, hence why Dropbox has been so successful in businesses. "The new cloud service provides each employee with 20GB of personal storage space, and can sync data across a range of platforms including Mac, PC, iOS and Android. When a user accesses Probox, all the data they transmit will be encrypted, said Butcher.

"All enterprises in the UK market will also be given the guarantee that all data will be stored in a tier three UK datacentre," added Butcher.

"There are storage enterprise cloud services out there but the security isn't up to scratch."

The release of Probox follows a series of hacking attacks on consumer storage provider Dropbox. Following the attacks, security engineers and analysts have warned UK businesses need to stop trusting free consumer services with their data.

Probox is priced at £6 per user, per month, for the 20GB of storage. Although Proact has just released the new service today in the UK and Europe, Probox has undergone beta testing for a number of months by

Proact partner, NetApp.
Probox will face competition from a number of cloud storage firms that are specifically targeted at the
enterprise and meet requirements when it comes to security, such as Ignite and Intronis and US firm Box.

Announcing Windows Azure Media Services

Windows Azure Media Services is a cloud-based PaaS solution that enables you to efficiently build and deliver media solutions to customers. It offers a bunch of ready-to-use services that enable the fast ingestion, encoding, format-conversion, storage, content protection, and streaming (both live and on-demand) of video. It also integrates and exposes services provided by industry leading partners – enabling an incredibly deep media stack of functionality that you can leverage.

You can use Windows Azure Media Services to deliver solutions to any device or client - including HTML5, Silverlight, Flash, Windows 8, iPads, iPhones, Android, Xbox, and Windows Phone devices. Windows Azure Media Services supports a wide variety of streaming formats - including Smooth Streaming, HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), and Flash Media Streaming.

One of the unique aspects of Windows Azure Media Services is that all of its features are exposed using a consistent HTTP REST API. This is true both for the media services we've built, as well as the partner delivered media services that are enabled through it. This makes it incredibly easy to automate media workflows and integrate the combined set of services within your applications and media solutions. Like the rest of Windows Azure, you only pay for what you use with Windows Azure Media Services – making it a very cost effective way to deliver great solutions.