Facebook turns out to be a pretty good friend to FoursquareFriday, 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 |
LG Chem does its part to resuscitate Michigan with new battery factoryFriday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Michigan is taking a lot of hits lately. Not only is its traditional automotive industry winding down, but new electric car companies are being lured elsewhere too, despite state efforts. It’s one ray of hope has been the advanced battery business, with $300 million in tax cuts successfully attracting major companies to the region. Today, that ray just got a bit brighter, with Korea’s LG Chem announcing plans to open a $303 million battery cell factory in Holland, Mich. The location is pretty advantageous for the corporation, which has a deal to supply battery cells to Detroit-based General Motors for its much-hyped plug-in Chevy Volt. [...] Read more |
GamesBeat@GDC: Booyah’s Keith Lee describes rapid growth of real-world location gaming (video)Friday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Location-based gaming in the real world is a hit with gamers and a broader community of mobile app users. Booyah’s Keith Lee has learned that with the rapid growth of his company’s MyTown app on the iPhone. Lee, chief executive of Booyah, was one of the speakers at our GamesBeat@GDC panel on disruptive innovation. He said MyTown has grown to more than 1.3 million players in a short time, making it the most popular game that takes into account your real world location on the iPhone platform. [...] Read more |
GamesBeat@GDC: Keith Booyah describes rapid growth of real-world location gaming (video)Friday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Location-based gaming in the real world is a hit with gamers and a broader community of mobile app users. Booyah’s Keith Lee has learned that with the rapid growth of his company’s MyTown app on the iPhone. Lee, chief executive of Booyah, was one of the speakers at our GamesBeat@GDC panel on disruptive innovation. He said MyTown has grown to more than 1.3 million players in a short time, making it the most popular game that takes into account your real world location on the iPhone platform. [...] Read more |
More Reasons Why Chrome OS Will Be Your Extra Operating SystemFriday, March 12, 2010Source: GigaOM | Category: Media Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking in Abu Dhabi this week, confirmed that the Chrome OS operating system is on track for the second half of this year. There are new reasons why its brightest future may be as an adjunct OS on netbooks and tablets. Read more |
Game guru Sid Meier explains decades of understanding egomaniacal gamersFriday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Sid Meier knows how gamers think. He has been making hit games such as Civilization for decades. Today, he shared his learnings about gamer psychology and how he has had to change his assumptions about how players behave. More often than not, he said, players just don’t act logically. Early on, Meier learned that players are egomaniacs. If you want to create a civilization that rules the world, you’re by definition an egomaniac. That has a lot of implications, such as how you have to always tilt the odds in favor of the player winning, regardless of the true mathematical odds for things such as battles. [...] Read more |
Game guru Sid Meier explains gamer psychologyFriday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Sid Meier knows how gamers think. He has been making hit games such as Civilization for decades. Today, he shared his insights on gamer psychology and how he has had to change his assumptions about how players behave. More often than not, he said, players just don’t act logically. Early on, Meier learned that players are egomaniacs. If you want to create a civilization that rules the world, you’re by definition an egomaniac. That has a lot of implications, such as how you have to always tilt the odds in favor of the player winning, regardless of the true mathematical odds for things such as battles. [...] Read more |
Threadbox launches a slick new real-time collaboration tool (invites)Friday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology About a month ago, email assistant startup Cc:Betty renamed itself Threadbox and said it was rebuilding the product into a more work-focused collaboration tool. At 5pm Pacific today, users will get a chance to try out the new app, as Threadbox enters an invite-only beta testing phase. Previously, Cc:Betty was supposed to help users organize email conversations and find the important content like documents and locations. You sent emails into the system by cc’ing “betty@ccbetty.com.” That was cute, but according to chief executive Michael Cerda, it also confused the people users’ were emailing because they had no idea who “Betty” was. [...] Read more |
Threadbox launches slick new real-time collaboration tool (invites)Friday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology About a month ago, email assistant startup Cc:Betty renamed itself Threadbox and said it was rebuilding the product into a more work-focused collaboration tool. At 5pm Pacific today, users will get a chance to try out the new app, as Threadbox enters an invite-only beta testing phase. Previously, Cc:Betty was supposed to help users organize email conversations and find the important content like documents and locations. You sent emails into the system by cc’ing “betty@ccbetty.com.” That was cute, but according to chief executive Michael Cerda, it also confused the people users’ were emailing because they had no idea who “Betty” was. [...] Read more |
Plastic Logic announces Que eBook reader delay until summerFriday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Plastic Logic announced today that it will have to delay the release of its hotly anticipated Que eBook reader until this summer. The company was originally aiming for a mid-April release. It’s an inopportune time to announce such a big delay, considering that Apple just opened up preorders for the iPad today. Plastic Logic’s CEO Richard Archuleta said that the delay is meant to “fine-tune the features and enhance the overall product experience”, according to the Wall Street Journal. [...] Read more |
Plastic Logic delays Que eBook reader until summerFriday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Plastic Logic announced today that it will have to delay the release of its hotly anticipated Que eBook reader until this summer. The company was originally aiming for a mid-April release. It’s an inopportune time to announce such a big delay, considering that Apple just opened up preorders for the iPad today. Plastic Logic’s CEO Richard Archuleta said that the delay is meant to “fine-tune the features and enhance the overall product experience”, according to the Wall Street Journal. [...] Read more |
Sonos scores $25M round for its wireless home music systemsFriday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Santa-Barbara-based Sonos sells wireless multi-room home music systems. They’re kind of pricey, but they work at least as well as trying to hook all your computers together with iTunes. Plus you don’t have to stop the music to reboot your PC. Sonos, founded in the Wi-Fi-crazy days of 2003, has survived the intervening bad years and emerged with a new round of funding: $25 million led by Index Ventures, which has added VC Mike Volpi to Sonos’ board of directors. As AllThings D reports, Sonos plans to use the funding to expand sales into China and Japan. [...] Read more |
GamesBeat@GDC: Norwest’s Tim Chang wants to invest in the “game-ification” of life (video)Friday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Tim Chang, principal at Norwest Venture Partners, spoke about where he wants to put his firm’s venture money in the game business on a panel at the GamesBeat@GDC conference on Wednesday. Part of the discussion focused on “game-ification,” or using the techniques of game design to get people more interested in non-game applicaitons. Investors aren’t just looking to fund game makers, or even new technologies — they are looking ahead to the application of gaming mechanics in people’s real lives. [...] Read more |
Apple iPad preorders are a go, limit two per customerFriday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Early this morning, Apple finally opened the floodgates for iPad preorders. You can preorder the tablet at the Apple online store for free home delivery on its launch day, April 3. You can also choose to reserve an iPad for pickup at an Apple store on April 3. The iPad starts at $499 for the 16GB model with Wi-Fi, and there’s also a 32GB model available for $599, and a $699 64GB version. If you want 3G included, tack an extra $130 on your model of choice, and be prepared to wait until late April for it to ship. [...] Read more |
FunTweet spices up your Twitter streams with visualsFriday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology The saying a picture is worth a thousand words just got another real-world illustration. FunMobility, a mobile content community, today announced the launch of FunTweet, a website that adds a visual component to tweets that are related to the text. FunTweet is a simple idea, but one that could become popular as people look to spice up their tweets. By visiting the website, a user can type in a key word or their own Twitter username. From there, each tweet is given a background image that relates to keywords and phrases in the text. [...] Read more |
GamesBeat@GDC: Disruption turns video games upside down (video)Friday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Disruption 2.0 was the theme at our GamesBeat@GDC conference about the business of innovation in the video game industry. We had a great crowd and it was standing-room only for many of the presentations. We’re grateful to everybody who came and our speakers as well. By way of thanks, we’re posting the opening video that we played at the conference, where key luminaries of games shared their thoughts on what disruption means for the game business. The speakers in the video include Trip Hawkins, founder of Electronic Arts and chief executive of Digital Chocolate; Sebastien DeHalleux, president of EA’s Playfish; Tom Kalinske, former head of Sega and chairman of Moonshoot; and Peter Relan chairman of incubator YouWeb, Sibblingz, Crowdstar, and Aurora Feint. [...] Read more |
In US, 4.1 Million Signed Up For Broadband In 2009Friday, March 12, 2010Source: GigaOM | Category: Media Nearly 4.1 million new subscribers signed up for broadband from the 19 largest cable and telephone providers in the US. These 19 service providers account for about 93% of the total US market. Annual net broadband additions in 2009 were 75% of the total in 2008. Read more |
In 2009, U.S. Broadband Growth SlowedFriday, March 12, 2010Source: GigaOM | Category: Media Nearly 4.1 million new subscribers signed up for broadband from the 19 largest cable and telephone providers in the US. These 19 service providers account for about 93% of the total US market. Annual net broadband additions in 2009 were 75% of the total in 2008. Read more |
An angel investor’s advice for startupsFriday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Angel investor Ron Conway has put money in over 500 companies, so he knows a few things about what works and what doesn’t. In this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture at Stanford University, Conway and fellow investor Mike Maples Jr. of Maples Investments discuss ways to stay competitive and make your money last. Tip one: Don’t be in a hurry to grow your staff as fast as you might be tempted. Tags: lean and mean, Stanford University Read more |
Onlive to offer game portal with free demos in addition to paid game serviceFriday, March 12, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology OnLive keeps rolling out news for its games on demand service. On Wednesday, the company announced it would launch its server-based game service on June 17. And today the company said it will launch a game portal web site that will offer game demos for free. Steve Perlman, chief executive of OnLive said tonight at his company’s after-party at the Game Developers Conference that OnLive Game Portal will be a free companion to the OnLive Game Service, which will charge gamers $15 a month for social networking and multiplayer game play. [...] Read more |
