Former FCC Chair Lays Out the Limits on the Agency’s AuthorityWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: GigaOM | Category: Media Big consumer issues such as the availability of internet apps on mobile devices and metered broadband are outside FCC authority said Kevin Martin, the former FCC chairman speaking today in Seattle. He also expressed doubt that adding spectrum alone would solve the mobile bandwidth crunch. Read more |
EA’s John Schappert: Game industry all about big games getting biggerWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology With social and online gaming exploding with hundreds of new startups, developers and titles, it would seem that bold, small-scale innovation is where the game industry is headed. Not so, according to Electronic Arts Chief Operating Officer John Schapper, who — while remaining supportive of social gaming development, particularly in light of his company’s acquisition of PlayFish — sees most of the money flowing to established titles and franchises. He spoke at today’s GamesBeat@GDC conference. [...] Read more |
Continuing Its Cloud Buying Spree, CA Is Acquiring NimsoftWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: GigaOM | Category: Media CA today announced that it is acquiring privately held Nimsoft, which makes performance and availability monitoring software, in an all cash transaction valued at $350 million. According to CA, Nimsoft will help it better serve "emerging enterprises" (read smaller businesses) adopting cloud computing solutions. Read more |
Continuing Its Cloud-buying Spree, CA Is Acquiring NimsoftWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: GigaOM | Category: Media CA today announced that it is acquiring privately held Nimsoft, which makes performance and availability monitoring software, in an all cash transaction valued at $350 million. According to CA, Nimsoft will help it better serve "emerging enterprises" (read smaller businesses) adopting cloud computing solutions. Read more |
Continuing Its Cloud-focused Buying Spree, CA Is Acquiring NimsoftWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: GigaOM | Category: Media CA today announced that it is acquiring privately held Nimsoft, which makes performance and availability monitoring software, in an all cash transaction valued at $350 million. According to CA, Nimsoft will help it better serve "emerging enterprises" (read smaller businesses) adopting cloud computing solutions. Read more |
CA Continues Cloud-focused Buying Spree, Acquires NimsoftWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: GigaOM | Category: Media CA today announced that it is acquiring privately held Nimsoft, which makes performance and availability monitoring software, in an all cash transaction valued at $350 million. According to CA, Nimsoft will help it better serve "emerging enterprises" (read smaller businesses) adopting cloud computing solutions. Read more |
DEMO disrupts on March 21-23 (and latest speakers Buchheit, Chan, Davis, Sternberg, Brown)Wednesday, March 10, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Here’s why I’m excited about the upcoming DEMO conference: Some 62 new companies or products will launch on stage March 21-23, and they look better and more disruptive than in previous years. As executive producer of the event, I’ve been talking closely with Nathan Gold, who is the speaking coach for demonstrators at DEMO. He confirms that the class looks better than he’s seen in past years: Entrepreneurs are more focused, and their ideas more meaningful. If you’re tracking innovation, either as an investor or a corporate development officer, you’ll want to be there in Palm Springs. [...] Read more |
What will it take to make mobile payments mainstream in the US?Wednesday, March 10, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Steven Klebe is senior VP of business development at on-demand billing company Vindicia and writes regularly about mobile payments on his Payment Talk blog. The tech industry’s been talking about mobile payments for years, and I find the whole discussion fascinating. Not just the potential and the rhetoric, but the gap that exists between the two. I even spent a year working at a yet-to-launch mobile payments company, BillToMobile. But to be honest, we’re still at least about five years away from seeing mobile payments go mainstream. [...] Read more |
Should a nine year old have a cellphone?Wednesday, March 10, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Consumer electronics portal Retrevo conducts lots of surveys in hopes of charting out its marketplace. The most recent asked parents to list the age range within which they felt it was appropriate for a child to have his or her first cellphone, TV, or computer. I wish they had split up the 9-12 bracket to separate age nine from age twelve. Retrevo reports that 28 percent of parents said 9-12 years old is OK for a first cellphone. But were those respondents thinking nine, or twelve? It’s a big difference – third grade versus sixth. [...] Read more |
Should a nine-year-old have a cellphone?Wednesday, March 10, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Consumer electronics portal Retrevo conducts lots of surveys in hopes of charting out its marketplace. The most recent asked parents to list the age range within which they felt it was appropriate for a child to have his or her first cellphone, TV, or computer. I wish they had split up the 9-12 bracket to separate age nine from age 12. Retrevo reports that 28 percent of parents said 9-12 years old is OK for a first cellphone. But were those respondents thinking nine, or twelve? It’s a big difference – third grade versus sixth. [...] Read more |
hi5 CEO: Facebook’s game strategy is schizophrenicWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology As social network hi5 refocuses on gaming, chief executive Alex St. John has been happy to criticize his giant competitor, Facebook. He elaborated on that criticism today at our GamesBeat@GDC event, where he shared the stage with Facebook platform manager Gareth Davis. St. John said he’s sympathetic to Davis, whose position St. John compared to his old job as a gaming evangelist at Microsoft — in other words, someone forced to represent games at a company where games aren’t the focus. [...] Read more |
hi5 CTO: Facebook’s game strategy is schizophrenicWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology As social network hi5 refocuses on gaming, president and chief technology officer Alex St. John has been happy to criticize his giant competitor, Facebook. He elaborated on that criticism today at our GamesBeat@GDC event, where he shared the stage with Facebook platform manager Gareth Davis. St. John said he’s sympathetic to Davis, whose position St. John compared to his old job as a gaming evangelist at Microsoft — in other words, someone forced to represent games at a company where games aren’t the focus. [...] Read more |
Venture Capital’s Data Side StoryWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: GigaOM | Category: Media From new data stores to large-scale databases to cloud-based storage services, it seems VC dollars these days are primarily flowing into two important (if somewhat unsexy) technology sectors: storage and big data. Here are some of the recent fundings that bring this trend into focus. Read more |
Otoy says supercomputer will enable revolutionary games-on-demand serviceWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology If you’re wondering which games-on-demand company is the real one, today’s news isn’t going to help you out. While Steve Perlman’s OnLive has revealed concrete plans to launch its service today, another rival, Otoy, is revealing today that its video compression technology will be the foundation of a new kind of supercomputer that will enable the digital distribution of video games. Jules Urbach, chief executive of Otoy (right), is making the announcement today at GamesBeat@GDC, our executive game conference in San Francisco. [...] Read more |
Redbeacon socializes local service listingsWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Redbeacon, a startup that helps you find local service providers, has been pretty quiet since it won the top prize at the TechCrunch50 conference last September. Co-founder Ethan Anderson told me that’s intentional — the San Mateo, Calif. company has been keeping its head down as it works out the early kinks. Now Redbeacon is announcing a wave of new features, most notably integration with Facebook. On Redbeacon, when you need a service (say a repairperson, or a cleaner, or a mover) you post a listing specifying the job and the window of time when it needs to be done. [...] Read more |
Investors look beyond games to the ‘game-ification’ of lifeWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology 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, according to the investor panel at today’s Gamesbeat@GDC conference. By making real-life tasks and experiences more like games — adding levels and point or reward earning potential — almost any business can inspire customer loyalty, launch much more engaging marketing campaigns, even change consumer behavior in radical ways, panelists said. [...] Read more |
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 announces stimulus package for Xbox LiveWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology Activision announced today during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco that “the Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 2 Stimulus Package will strike worldwide on March 30.” The downloadable content package includes the first new multiplayer maps from what has been called the biggest entertainment launch in history, Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2. As VentureBeat games guru Dean Takahashi wrote last week, Modern Warfare 2 has been a huge hit for gamers, but a black eye for the gaming industry. [...] Read more |
Why Apple Should Buy AdobeWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: GigaOM | Category: Media The rumors of Adobe being bought by Apple come up every so often. Apple could easily afford such a purchase and the results would be interesting. I would love to see Adobe restructured by a company like Apple. Adobe has many applications that are the gold [...] Read more |
Bing creeps upward again in search shareWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology February search engine market data released by Experian Hitwise today differs from the counts issued by comScore yesterday. But the topline takeaway is the same: Microsoft’s Bing continues to nibble its way up the charts. Today’s Bing front door photo seems apt: An Antarctic fur seal whose kind of defied forecasts of their extinction, and are now thriving. The question is whether Bing’s success comes at the expense of Google, where Hitwise reports a one-half-of-one percent downturn, or at the expense of Yahoo, which dropped two-tenths of a point in comScore’s February count. [...] Read more |
OnLive sets launch date for June, names subscription price and supporting game publishersWednesday, March 10, 2010Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology After eight years of preparation, games-0n-demand startup OnLive is announcing today its plans to launch its subscription service for online games using its novel cloud-based gaming technology. Speaking at the GamesBeat@GDC conference today, OnLive chief executive Steve Perlman said gamers will be able to subscribe to the PC or Mac games-on-demand service for $14.95 a month, and get access to a wide variety of current titles from major publishers. It is partnering in this launch with publishers including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, 2K Games, THQ and Warner Bros. [...] Read more |
