This post was originally posted on CenterNetworks.com as part of my blogging on the Israeli startup scene.

A few weeks ago I reviewed Israeli startup 5min.com in a post titled “5min & The $30,000,000 Question“. In it I mentioned that the company’s biggest competition is VideoJug.com which raised staggering $30M.

Doug Kamin, VideoJug’s Chief Marketing Officer, was kind enough to offer CenterNetworks an interview so we can learn about the 800lbs gorilla of the DYI video space.

Roi: can you give us a bit of background on VideoJug?

Doug: The founders are David Tabizel and Dan Thompson. The site launched in September 2006, but we re-launched on June 4th, 2007. There are about 120 employees – split between London and Los Angeles.

Roi: Describe VideoJug in your own words.

Doug: It’s life explained – everything you need to know and things you want to know.

Roi: What was the initial premise?

Doug: The Wisdom Project was the original name. Basically they looked at the internet and thought – this could be more and that we all need a place to get the answers to all of life’s questions but also a place to share our personal wisdom.

Roi: Any noteworthy business development accomplishments?

Doug: We recently inked a syndication deal with MSN. You can read more about it, here. And just our sheer volume, we have 20k professionally produced videos on our site right now and we’re adding thousands more every month.

Roi: Why is your primary focus on production video as opposed to on UGC?

Doug: We do have UGC on our site as well. We encourage our community to submit their own personal wisdom and this will be more of a focus moving forward. But since we’re explaining life and using experts from every field to help convey this knowledge and wisdom, we need to maintain high standards for our videos.

Roi: Is your business model based on ad-revenue only?

Doug: It is an advertising supported model, but we don’t make users watch a commercial before watching our videos. We also have syndication deals with different portals and video sites. There will be many b2b applications that we’ll be rolling out in the near future as well.

Roi: By all accounts, $30M is a phenomenal sum for any startup to raise… What do you need some much money for?

Doug: VideoJug has raised money for the long-term: to develop great content, to create engaging community features, build our commercial operations. We are here for the long haul!

Roi: What should young startups entering this space know before they jump in the water?

Doug: Create something that you’re passionate about. Do it first or do it better.

Marc Andreessen is reporting on his excellent blog that HP has acquired Opsware which he founded in 1999 for $1.6B.

This is yet another one of Marc’s achievements and solidifies him (at least in my book) as one of the studs of the hitech business.

Ning, his current lovechild, recently raised $44M, with a reported post-money evaluation of $214M.

I wonder who’s going to pick it up in a year or two…

Andi Gutmans may not be a “household” name like Linus Torvalds, but his contribution to the Web is no smaller. Andi, along with Zeev Suraski, made PHP what it is today. I know, there’s Rasmus Lerdor, and the PHP community et large, but Andi & Zeev’s contribution cannot be matched–they are PHP.

Andi & Zeev went on to co-found Zend, the PHP Company.

In the video below, ripped off from ZDNet, Andi explains Web 2.0:

For those of you who don’t know, Mahalo is the latest venture of Jason Calacanis, currently “Entrepreneur in Action” over at Sequoia.

Jason is a colorful character in the Internet space and the launch of Mahalo last May did not go unnoticed. The concept is that there are a small number of searches who results will be far more accurate if crafted by humans rather than by machine (aka Google).

I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to Mahalo until today. Yaron Galai (Quigo & Outbrain) writes a very well articulated post about Mahalo. It sure sounds like Mahalo should not be dismissed outright…

BTW, I highly recommend subscribing to Yaron’s blog, Web X.0.

I literally had to reread this a couple of times… Mike Arrington covers a new VOIP phone service called Ooma. He interviews their CEO, as well as their Creative Director, Michael Kelso–otherwise known as actor Ashton Kutcher.

This has to be the most unexpected post I’ll read today and it’s only 9:30.

The interview is also available on TalkCrunch.

My friend Allen Stern who runs CenterNetworks.com, launched a new video ad service called Revlayer.

The beauty of the service is its simplicity. After sign-up, site owners (or bloggers), get a piece of code that is added to the header. The result is an ad that covers the space occupied by the video player.

The business model is ad-revenue based, where Revlayer keeps 25% of the revenue.

You can check-out a demo, here.

Also, go and read Mike Arrington’s review of Revlayer, here.

Nick Gonzales over at TechCrunch is reporting that Answers.com (formerly GuruNet) has purchased the parent company of Dictionary.com for $100M.

This is far from an ordinary Internet acquisition for an Israeli company, even for a company listed on the NASDAQ (ANSW) with a market cap of $101.31M.

Update: Michael Eisenberg writes why “Why Answers.com is Not Completely Crazy“.

IVC is reporting that 19 seed companies received funding in excess of $50M in the past fiscal quarter. This is up from $14M in 2Q06.

Of the the 19 companies, 41% were Communications related, and 22% were from the Internet space.

The IVC press release is available as a PDF, here.

Stefan Kolle spotted YouTube’s experimentation with in-video ads. Looks like it works in a similar manner to Adap.tv’s ads. Check out the video below to see it in action:

TechCrunch is reporting that Gizmoz is doing a joint promotion with MTV and Taco Bell. This is huge coup for the company and one sure to get them mainstream attention.

For those of you unfamiliar with Gizmoz, they have a really nifty platform that creates 3D animated avatars based on your 2D picture. You can then embed the avatar just like any typical web widget. The rendering and facial features engine are really quite impressive.

Last year I remember reading that Gizmoz CEO, Eyal Gever, demo’d the product to some Fox Interactive reps at the Israeli Web Tour. Seeing as FIM purchased kSolo for $20M and change, it would not surprise me if the future holds the same fortune for Gizmoz.