Palm’s move to grab high-end 3-D games for its phonesSunday, March 14, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology The strategic value of gamers isn’t lost on Palm, which is struggling to establish itself in the smartphone market. Games are the most popular applications on both the iPhone and Google Android phones, and so now Palm is making its own push to get more games on its smartphones. Last week, Palm showed off its Plug-in Developer Kit for its WebOS operating system that will enable game developers to easily port games that are made for other smartphones such as the iPhone and move them over to the Palm smartphone platform. [...] Read more |
Palm moves to grab high-end 3D games for its phonesSunday, March 14, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology The strategic value of gamers isn’t lost on Palm, which is struggling to establish itself in the smartphone market. Games are the most popular applications on both the iPhone and Google Android phones, and so now Palm is making its own push to get more games on its smartphones. Last week, Palm showed off its Plug-in Developer Kit for its WebOS operating system that will enable game developers to easily port games that are made for other smartphones to the Palm platform. Joe Hayashi, vice president of platform and tools at Palm, said there are lots of games already among the 2,000 or so apps on the Palm Pixi and Pre phones. [...] Read more |
Apple fans estimate 120,000 iPads sold on first daySaturday, March 13, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology A group of stock investors who hang out at the members only AAPL Sanity Board forum got together to guesstimate how many iPad tablet computers Apple had sold on Friday. The group compared their own order numbers from the Apple Store, then extrapolated from the timestamps and confirmation serial numbers for 48 orders of 54 iPads. They calculate that Apple sold 120,000 of the touchscreen machines on Friday. Apple-watching journalist Philip Elmer-DeWitt, who has tracked the company for decades, believes the numbers are close enough to his gut instincts on the iPad’s popularity that he blogged the details from the forum. [...] Read more |
SXSW 2010: All You Need to Know, Courtesy of the GigaOM NetworkSaturday, March 13, 2010Source: GigaOM | Category: Media The GigaOM crew is out in full force at this year’s South by Southwest, reporting on all that is nearest and dearest to our readers’ hearts. Need help figuring out what to do and who or what to see? This 10-point cheat sheet will help you [...] Read more |
Week in review: Modern Warfare 2’s Stimulus Package, OnLive’s launch dateSaturday, March 13, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Here’s our roundup of the week’s business and tech news. First, the most popular stories published in the last seven days: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 announces Stimulus Package for Xbox Live — Activision announced during the Game Developers Conference that “the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Package will strike worldwide on March 30.” The name Stimulus Package is a potentially confusing tie-in to President Obama’s economic plan — sorry, you can’t get paid to play Modern Warfare yet. [...] Read more |
Spawn Labs lets you play your console games on the run (video)Saturday, March 13, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Call it Slingbox for games. Spawn Labs lets you take a console game and play it over the web on a laptop or a computer. As the Slingbox does with video, you can place shift your games and play them in high-definition on any computer, said David Wilson, chief executive at the Austin-based company. While the game is actually running on a console, you can interact with it and view it on a display on a far away laptop, as long as you have a broadband connection. You have to buy a $199 Spawn HD-720 box to make it work. [...] Read more |
EC Roundup: Splitting equity and the entrepreneur retirement trap.Saturday, March 13, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner. Ask the attorney: What’s the best way to split equity? — Working on a new venture, even with friends, doesn’t necessarily mean everyone deserves an equal part in the company. Attorney Scott Edward Walker runs down factors you need to consider when it comes time to split equity. Entrepreneurs and the retirement trap — Too many startup owners actually view their business as their retirement plan. Retirement planner Rick Rodgers points out the danger in that, and offers some alternate ways to save for your golden years. [...] Read more |
Quotes from Sid Meier’s keynote GDC speechSaturday, March 13, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Veteran game designer Sid Meier delivered the keynote speech at the Game Developers Conference today and during his hour-long session on the “Psychology of Game Design: Everything you Know is Wrong,” the creator of the Civilization franchise produced a series of key points, mantras, and worthwhile quotes captured here. Meier is the creative director at Firaxis and director of this fall’s Civilization V. (You can catch the news summary of the story here.) “Gameplay is a psychological experience: I base my games on things like railroads, pirates, and history, and I try to make the games I design true and real. [...] Read more |
Communities on Lunch feature lets you build your own YelpSaturday, March 13, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology When Lunch.com launched a year ago, I was slightly baffled about why it existed — did the world really need another review site? But J.R. Johnson, the Los Angeles, Calif. company’s founder and chief executive, says he didn’t just want to create a place for reviews. He also wanted to use those reviews as a way to connect people with common interests, and to create a “similarity network.” Now he has taken the next step in realizing that vision, with a new feature called Communities on Lunch. [...] Read more |
Communities on Lunch lets you build your own YelpSaturday, March 13, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology When Lunch.com launched a year ago, I was slightly baffled about why it existed — did the world really need another review site? But J.R. Johnson, the Los Angeles, Calif. company’s founder and chief executive, says he didn’t just want to create a place for reviews. He also wanted to use those reviews as a way to connect people with common interests, and to create a “similarity network.” Now he has taken the next step in realizing that vision, with a new feature called Communities on Lunch. [...] Read more |
Geowars…Really?Friday, March 12, 2010Source: GigaOM | Category: Media Over the past few days I’ve watched this meme about the so-called “geowars” ahead of SXSW gather steam, both in the blogosphere and on Twitter. And it’s giving me a headache. For some odd reason, people believe that SXSW is going to be a full-blown coming-out [...] Read more |
Decision engine Hunch raises $10M (report)Friday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Hunch.com, the startup co-founded by Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, has raised $10 million in a second round of funding, according to AllThingsDigital. Citing unidentified sources, the report says the funding was led by Khosla Ventures, with Khosla’s Gideon Yu (who was formerly chief financial officer at Facebook and YouTube) handling the deal. A company spokeswoman declined to comment, except to say that she’ll let us know “if/when we do have a funding-related announcement.” Hunch, based in New York City, helps users make decisions, often decisions involving products. [...] Read more |
What If Metcalfe’s Law Is Wrong?Friday, March 12, 2010Source: GigaOM | Category: Media “Metcalfe’s Law” has long been accepted as characterizing the value — and value growth — of fully connected networks. But there are times when the “law” appears to overstate a network’s value. And if that’s the case, what can service providers do about it? Read more |
Despite advances, LED market probably volatile for two more yearsFriday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Unquestionably, the major obstacle for indoor, or household-friendly light-emitting diodes is price. No matter how long a bulb lasts, nobody wants to spend $30 on one light. Exacerbating the situation, there are too many competing uses for LEDs, according to electronics market research firm iSuppli, slowing their development for home use. Back-lighting for televisions is a huge growth market for LEDs, with 2.5 million LED-lit sets manufactured in 2009, and an estimated 25 million to be built this year. [...] Read more |
Nissan gets 56K pre-orders for Leaf EV, challenges TeslaFriday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Nissan says it has more than 56,000 pre-orders for the Leaf, its fully-electric model set to be released to the mass market in 2012. Just last November, the Nissan-led Electrification Coalition lobbied the U.S. government to fund electric vehicle projects. CEO Carlos Ghosn plans to sell the Leaf to fleet first to operators like taxi companies and governments as well. By 2013, Nissan will build a half million Leaf vehicles globally, he told BusinessWeek. For the first time, it looks like Tesla Motors should be worried. [...] Read more |
Pike Research: Energy managment market still largely unexploredFriday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Despite everything the U.S. Department of Energy, President Barack Obama and common sense dictate, energy efficiency just isn’t very sexy. Energy management systems have fantastic rates of return — saving thousands, if not millions. And Cash upfront for installation yields much lower energy bills in the future. But energy management systems are still only penetrating 14 percent of the potential market, according to a new report from Pike Research. For context, energy management systems do not have to be elaborate. [...] Read more |
Announcing Structure 2010, Our Internet Infrastructure Cloud Computing ConferenceFriday, March 12, 2010Source: GigaOM | Category: Media Structure, our premier conference devoted to Internet infrastructure and cloud computing, has been expanded to two days in order to fully explore both the progress the industry has made and how things are expected to evolve going forward. And discounted tickets are on sale now! Read more |
Facebook turns out to be a pretty good friend to Foursquare, Hitwise data showsFriday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Facebook may not turn out to be so much of a Foursquare killer. In fact, the world’s largest social network drives the largest share of the location-based game’s web traffic, accounting for 33 percent of all upstream visits last week, according to web research firm Hitwise. Google follows closely behind, with a 22 percent share, and then Twitter clocks in at 8 percent. Foursquare, the location game from Dodgeball creator Dennis Crowley, has been on a tear as of late, breaking past 500,000 registered users and logging 275,000 check-ins yesterday alone. [...] Read more |
YouTube’s live sports broadcast deal is watershed moment for online videoFriday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology YouTube is taking a major step today with its first live sports broadcast deal. It will be streaming live the Indian Premier League Championships. Such live broadcast deals have hitherto been the bastion of traditional pay TV operators. The Google-owned site signed an agreement with the organizers back in January and retains rights for two seasons. The IPL is a tournament of a short-form of cricket that has become extremely popular in the last couple of years. The tournament spans 60 matches over the next 45 days. [...] Read more |
Twitter helps spread Formspring.me hoaxFriday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Twitter is abuzz today with a story attributed to popular news wire service The Associated Press. The new trending topic spotlights Formspring.me, a social network that lets users create profiles to post and answer questions anonymously, and its CEO, who was supposedly arrested two days ago for an elaborate scheme to release private customer information to the public on April 1. But the story was just dubbed a hoax by news site The Inquisitr, which points out numerous “mistakes” in the supposed AP story: there’s no record of the story existing on the AP’s web site, there’s no set date for the story and it doesn’t fit AP style guidelines. [...] Read more |
