The rumor mill has Stan James as having recently closed an angel financing round of somewhere around $500k for Boulder startup OutFoxed. I wasn’t able to confirm that with Stan over the course of a few days (13 years in Internet time) so don’t count on that (perhaps Stan will comment).
OutFoxed has been alive since December of 2004 (having a few beers on Pearl Street now and then it seems). The company appears to just now be hitting second gear.
OutFoxed exists to let you “use your network of trusted friends to determine what’s good, bad, and dangerous on the internet.” (more here) For example, when you search on google the results can be annotated with reports from your trusted network (not just your friends, but the people they trust as well).
To me, this is a very interesting approach to trust management because it is driven by your social context. What’s good is what trusted people say is good.
OutFoxed does this not just with web sites, but with “anything that can be uniquely identified” such as files, processes on your machine, etc. Neat idea, if they get enough user participation and reports. This page gives you a sense of what the vision is.
OutFoxed is currently in a closed-beta. If you want to participate, lookie here.
UPDATE: Outfoxed is now Lijit.