Startup Gizmoz today announced that it secured a $6.3 million Series A investment from Benchmark Capital and Columbia Capital.

Gizmoz offers a free service to convert your photo into a 3D talking head. You can take this head and integrated it on your blog. You can also generate video clips and other forms of original content and send them via email to family or friends, or uploaded to video sites. Digitize your head at the Gizmoz site. I did it, see result above.
My photo was taken at a slight angle, which is not ideal. The 3D generator works pretty quick and you are done in about 1 min. The result is quite nice. It is a neat little "Gizmo". How the company managed to raise $6.3 million with this "nice to have product" is a little miracle in my opinion. I assume though that they are after the Second Life kind of thing and not what they offer today for blogs and video. To have life-like avatars can become huge in the not to distant future.