Justin.tv: Live webcast of Kiko co-founder's life

The first I heard about justin.tv was last summer when PG blogged that, "Y Combinator funded [the Kiko founders'] new idea yesterday... It's probably the most outrageous startup idea I've ever heard."

Most outrageous ever? I'm intrigued.

Then, two days ago, PG busts out this gem in response to a post about YC companies that didn't last: "The Kikos are the only startup so far that has died of causes not of their own making. As everyone will soon realize when they launch justin.tv, they did not fail because of lack of balls."

I noticed a photo of Justin Kan, co-founder of Kiko (which was recently sold on eBay), taken at a YC WFP 2007 dinner. In the picture, he's got a webcam strapped to his ear. Hmmmm. Justin.tv? "Just in" TV. He's doing some sort of live video streaming. YouTube -- but happening right now. Maybe.

A Google search turns up this blog which claims that "[Justin’s] creating a 24/7 reality show in SF where he’s going to live cast his life to the web."

Do the Kikos have your interest now? Yeah, mine too.

YC Company Thinkature Launches

Thanks to a reader tip, I found that Thinkature Corporation launched late last night. With Thinkature, users can create collaborative whiteboards or "workspaces" which support sketches, text, diagrams, and chat.

One cool feature I noticed right away is their "hand tool." Click the hand on any piece of your whiteboard and a shrinking box zooms in right where you clicked, letting your collaborators know what your chatting about. It's like a laser pointer, except useful and cool, instead of totally annoying.

Y Combinator doesn't let interviewees use Powerpoints. I wonder if Thinkatures will be fair game.

Reddit Acquired

Yesterday the internet was abuzz with the news that Reddit has been acquired by Conde Nast/Wired. Reddit, one of the original batch of Y Combinator founders, took less than $100,000 in funding. Acquisition talks began when the team worked with Conde Nast to create a version of Reddit dedicated to celebrity news, called lipstick.com.

After the announcement, two of the founders, Steve and Alexis, were interviewed on TalkCrunch.

How big was the deal? The Reddits won't (can't) say, despite the fact that people really want them to know. Founder Aaron Swartz did post a blog entry in which he says, "I logged into my bank account this morning and saw more digits in my balance than I've ever seen before."

Kiko For Sale on eBay

The online calendaring company Kiko put their site up for sale on eBay today, presumably signifying the end of their company. This will be the second Y company to fold (the first was Simmery). According to the eBay description, "We are selling Kiko because we want to have time to work on other projects as a development team. We had a project in mind we just didn't want to wait on :)."

Things didn't look good for Kiko when Google entered the market, but co-creator Justin said he wasn't scared. According to one Reddit poster, Kiko has been down for the last few days.

Currently there are no bidders for the site, which has a starting price of $49,999.99.

Update: There is now one bidder! After 111 bids, Kiko was sold for $258,100.