Nickelodeon and Shutterfly, Inc. announced a licensing agreement to create and distribute a new line of personalized Shutterfly products. The new offerings will feature three of the world’s most popular animated children’s characters: SpongeBob SquarePants, Dora the Explorer and Diego from Go, Diego, Go!. Available only at Shutterfly beginning November 2007, Nickelodeon’s iconic characters will appear on the largest selection ever offered of Shutterfly licensed products including: Photo Books, Adventure Books, Greeting Cards, and Photo Cards. This partnership significantly expands
Shutterfly’s licensed product portfolio, and enables parents to create personally customized, one-of-a-kind digital photo products and gifts that combine favorite home images with their kid’s favorite Nick characters.

ClipBlast! announced the launch of Live Video Indexing, an extension of its patent-pending Video Web Intelligent Index technology. This marks ClipBlast!’s first formal move beyond indexing video clips to encompass live and streaming video content.

ClipBlast!’s “smart search” functionality makes use of proprietary technology to more effectively categorize live streaming content and deliver relevant search results, from more than 100 content providers as diverse as CNN, Sky News, Bloomberg, ShopAtHome TV, Telemadrid and many more.

The ClipBlast! video search platform searches the entire web for available content, continuously providing viewers with up-to-date, personalized video content, no matter what the source. ClipBlast! indexes more content providers than anyone on the web.

CHOW, an interactive media property for food and drink enthusiasts online and property of CNET Networks, is rolling out an innovative recipe feature that allows food fanatics to publish and share their recipes with the CHOW community. With the holiday season already top-of-mind and plans underway, CHOW.com’s new feature and content is perfect for gastronomes looking to spice up their traditions.

CHOW.com’s first-of-its-kind Recipe Hack feature lets members change CHOW recipes to fit their own taste. The modifications are saved as new recipes, called “hacks,” alongside the originals. The groundbreaking Recipe Hack feature is ideal for cooks who find themselves tweaking ingredient portions or who want to share their creative interpretations of familiar recipe standards. Unlike other online food sites, CHOW.com’s relational database allows users to view all hacks made by other members, as well as track new submissions from favorite users and upload photos to present their handiwork in a visually appealing format.

Hearst Magazines Digital Media, a unit of Hearst Magazines, today launched the full-scale format launch of TheDailyGreen.com, a one-stop eco-resource for environmental news, tips and information.

With TheDailyGreen.com, Hearst is the first major magazine company to launch a consumer-oriented news and service web site devoted to assisting consumers interested in a more earth-friendly lifestyle. Originally unveiled in a beta-version on Earth Day 2007, the full-format version of TheDailyGreen.com is a mash-up between a mainstream media site and a grassroots, blog-based, community-centric site. Starting today, the site will feature a more robust community interface as well as tools for localized content, video, flipbooks, promo players, blogs and more. TheDailyGreen.com has worked with leaders in their fields, including Earth911, EarthLab and WeatherBug, to power many of its user-friendly applications. TheDailyGreen.com has also teamed up with MSN to provide content to its recently launched MSN Green channel.

TheDailyGreen.com launched as Hearst Magazines’ first pure-play, non-magazine brand web site and is part of a growing stable of newly launched or acquired web sites at Hearst, including 14 magazine sites, as well as eSPIN.com, MisQuinceMag.com, RealAge.com and Kaboodle.com.

PeopleEnEspanol.com, the official website of People en Español magazine, unveiled its fresh new look featuring original content in Spanish and English. The site, first launched in 2003, has become the premier destination for Hispanics seeking the hottest celebrity news and photos. The site will now have new features including: channels for news, movies, music, TV, video, photos and style; entertainment and fashion blogs and more.

With the latest enhancements on PeopleEnEspanol.com, the website broadens its audience reach to include movie, TV and music channels where users can check out reviews of the latest films, DVDs, albums and telenovelas, along with exclusive celebrity interviews. The site will also partner with movie studios and television networks to feature exclusive trailers and behind-the-scenes interviews from upcoming films and TV programs. And all news stories on the website will now appear in Spanish and English. With just a click of a button, users can determine their language of choice to read about the hottest celebrity scoops.

Building on one of PeopleEnEspanol.com’s most popular sections, the photo channel will now feature more celebrity photo galleries and will also include video clips. To get caught up on the most popular scoops of the day, users can click through a live-time ranking of the top five most-read stories of each day.

Amazon.com announced that third-quarter 2007 diamond sales increased more than 75 percent year-over-year. Each quarter, an increasing number of Amazon.com’s millions of customers are shopping the Amazon.com Jewelry & Watches store.

Selection for Amazon.com’s diamond jewelry collection expanded with 2,269 new styles launching in the third quarter, including an extensive number of styles of the black diamond collection. Every piece of jewelry sold by Amazon.com is inspected by jewelry professionals to verify quality attributes and ensure an excellent product. Customers can read detailed product specifications about each of the piece’s components, including gemstones, settings and metal stamps. The store provides all of the tools and helpful information that Amazon.com customers know and love, such as Customer Reviews, Top Sellers lists, So You’d Like To guides and Listmania lists.

YouMail, Inc. has raised $4.5 million in series A funding from VantagePoint Venture Partners. Additionally, Craig Cooper, venture partner at VantagePoint, will join the YouMail Board of Directors. YouMail will use the proceeds to invest in further product development and marketing initiatives, and expand its management and development teams.

YouMail provides consumers with a free cell phone voicemail service. YouMail users can also access their cell phone voicemail over the web or in their e-mail, easily share special voicemails, and save them for life.

TurnHere, Inc. announced a deal with the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau (HVCB) to distribute GoHawaii videos across the Internet. The videos showcase stories about people who live in Hawaii, and through broad distribution will introduce Hawaii visitors to the unique diversity of activities and culture that awaits them on the islands.

TurnHere has built a YouTube channel for seven GoHawaii videos, a GoHawaii travel blog and is loading the videos into all the major search engines. TurnHere will also be announcing other distribution agreements with travel destination sites in the near future. HVCB looked to TurnHere’s solution to help extend its brand across the Web and expand its audience by tapping into popular video and travel sites. TurnHere’s distribution model also allows HVCB to showcase videos without using traditional ad models, enabling them to engage customers with compelling content early in the decision making process.

Authentify Inc. announced that Beatport has selected Authentify to secure online registrations at its web store and prevent fraud. The Authentify service will verify the identity of certain users attempting to create new accounts using a real-time authentication method that combines an automated phone call with a web service.

With a global presence in the online music community, Beatport provides over 5,500 new tracks each week for DJs and music lovers, keeping it the most relevant online source of electronic music in the world.

Authentify is providing Beatport with a real-time authentication service that can only be completed by legitimate users attempting to create a new account. The Authentify service uses a hybrid out-of-band system that combines an automated phone call with a web service to protect Beatport.com from criminals attempting to perpetrate identity theft and commit fraud. By requiring that selected users answer an automated phone call in real-time and read-back on-screen information, Authentify virtually eliminates counterfeit registrations.

AOL announced the next steps in its ambitious global expansion effort with the launch of new local language versions of the AOL India portal and the launch of Truveo’s popular video search engine serving eight countries, including India.

AOL.in is launching content channels in the Hindi and Tamil languages, improving the breadth of AOL’s offerings at a time when the online audience in India is skyrocketing. The number of Internet users in urban India has grown by 28% in the past year, and about 60% of all active online Indians (30 million) prefer to read in local Indian languages. The Hindi and Tamil language portals will have language sections in News, Cinema and Astrology.

Building on the success of its industry-leading video search engine, Truveo has announced plans to expand its rapidly growing service into several major markets for online video worldwide including France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Spain, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. The Truveo video search engine lets users search and browse through tens of millions of videos from thousands of sources across the web, and reaches more than 40 million users a month in the U.S.

Over the next two months, Truveo will build on this expansion with the launch of video search sites in additional countries including Australia, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Russia and Turkey.