VentureBeat

Entrepreneur Corner Roundup: Surefire ways to get rejected by an angel investor and clearing up lean startup myths

Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner:

Shoestring marketing for startups – Young companies typically don’t have the budget for a substantial marketing campaign, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. As you search for your niche and your company evolves, serial entrepreneur Scott Olson offers advice… Continue Reading

Chip design firm Stream Processors shuts down after plowing through $26M

Stream Processors, a chip design firm focused on video processing, is shutting its doors after burning through at least $26 million in venture capital and is engaged in an asset sale, VentureBeat has learned.

The closure is a blow to one of the bigger efforts to… Continue Reading

Windows 7 sells 234% more copies than Vista

It looks like all the positive buzz round Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system paid off in sales. Windows 7 sold 234 percent more copies during its first few days on the market than Vista did during the same period of its release, according to… Continue Reading

Announcing DiscoveryBeat: an event on how to get your apps noticed in an age of noise

VentureBeat is throwing a new mini-conference and networking event, DiscoveryBeat.

DiscoveryBeat addresses one of the biggest conundrums for Silicon Valley’s most dynamic startups and developers: How to get your social game or mobile application noticed in an age of noise?

It will be held in the afternoon… Continue Reading

ClickFuel provides internet tools to small businesses

As a web generation, when we’re looking for a dentist, plumber, or other small business, our first instinct is to go online when we need these services. Sure, there’s Yellow Pages that can find a name, number and address, but as consumers we are used… Continue Reading

MSN changes the butterfly

MSN’s new home page, which you can see at preview.msn.com, is the first one that doesn’t look like it was designed by Microsoft. The new page has the same cheery look and feel as the Bing search box that perches at its top, waiting to… Continue Reading

Smart Meter maker Landis+Gyr lands $100M for epic rollout

Last week’s announcement of $3.4 billion in stimulus funds for utilities was big news for smart meter makers. Almost every recipient of the money said they would be using it to add millions of advanced meters to their coverage areas. Now major meter maker Landis+Gyr… Continue Reading

Broadband chip maker MaxLinear files for IPO

Broadband communications chip maker MaxLinear has filed to go public in another indicator that the good times are back for tech stocks and exits.

Carlsbad, Calif.-based MaxLinear makes analog or mixed-signal radio chips that can be manufactured in standard chip factories. The chips enable devices to… Continue Reading

LinkedIn gets a cleaner layout

Professional networking site LinkedIn says it’s experimenting with a new layout. The redesign has only been rolled out for some users, so I’m not seeing it in my own account yet, but the company’s blog post suggests it’s making subtle improvement.

Right now, the site’s navigation… Continue Reading

NXP’s sensors for smart Band-Aids, smart bottles, and pay-per-use cars

Forget about smart phones and smart computers. Cheap and plentiful sensor chips are making possible everything from smart Band-Aids to smart bottles.

NXP Semiconductors, a chip maker that spun out of Philips in 2006, showed off prototypes for these cool applications at its headquarters in San… Continue Reading

Happy Droid Day!

After weeks of speculation, followed by a real announcement, followed by more waiting, Motorola and Verizon have finally released the Droid, the supposed iPhone-killer which is the first device using version 2.0 of Google’s Android operating system.

The reviews have been positive so far, with gadget… Continue Reading

Australian Geodynamics wins $90M to make hot-rock power a reality

Geodynamics, a company that draws emissions-free power from hot fractured rocks beneath the earth’s surface, has just won $90 million from Australia’s Renewable Energy Demonstration Program.

The Hot Fractured Rock (HFR) technique is basically the extraction of the earth’s heat from broken granite over three kilometers… Continue Reading

Sanyo ups solar, battery action as it courts Panasonic

Massive battery-maker Sanyo Electric is looking to be acquired by Panasonic. If the acquisition happens, the result will be an almost invincible force in the energy-storage space. Now, to make itself even more attractive to Panasonic, which has made several bids for the company over… Continue Reading

Skype is finally free — eBay settles with Skype co-founders, clearing way for buyout

EBay has settled with the founders of Skype, clearing up some nasty lawsuits that had stood in the way of a  Skype acquisition. Now the Internet phone company to be sold to a consortium of investors that includes Skype’s co-founders.

Private equity firm Silver Lake Partners… Continue Reading

Ubisoft on the making of James Cameron’s Avatar the Game (video)

Avatar the Game from Ubisoft is one of the major video game releases of the fall. Based on James Cameron’s Avatar movie, a sci-fi action film debuting on Dec. 18, the game has its own story about a battle between the corporate RDA and indigenous… Continue Reading

James Cameron’s Avatar the Game won’t be as good as the film

Few movies are as eagerly anticipated as James Cameron’s Avatar, a sci-fi epic that has been almost 14 years in the making and is hitting theaters on Dec. 18.

Accompanying the film release is a major video game from Ubisoft dubbed James Cameron’s Avatar the Game…. Continue Reading

How investigators tracked down a Modern Warfare 2 cyber pirate

[Updated] The posting last Thursday on Craigslist was alarming. Someone was selling a Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 bundle, with both a console and a game, for $500. The problem was that Modern Warfare 2, one of the most anticipated games of the year, doesn’t… Continue Reading

Brizzly steps up to be the next client supporting Twitter lists

Brizzly, the status update client from the makers of Google Reader, has stepped up to become the second big app to support Twitter lists. (Seesmic was the first earlier this week.)

Lists are what they sound like — groups of Twitter accounts that people can recommend… Continue Reading

Max Levchin on Slide’s big virtual goods bet, scams and — mating

Slide, which started in photo-sharing, moved into Facebook widgets and then raised funding at a reported $550 million valuation last year, shifted gears this year and went aggressively into virtual goods. The company’s looking to become a  mainstream version of Second Life, where there’s a… Continue Reading