Foursquare familiarizes the unknown, adds nearby locations to business pages

Foursquare is attempting to make the unfamiliar more familiar with the addition of nearby places to hundreds of business pages Friday.

Foursquare, the New York startup attempting to use check-in and tips data to make the real world easier to navigate, gives merchants the ability to operate their own business and brand pages to share tips and connect with customers.

Now, the company is gifting its businesses with a nearby map that collects all of … Continue Reading

Jack Dorsey, Ron Conway to attend The Crunchies Awards

Are you excited for The Crunchies Awards? The final line-up of notable guests has been released, making us all the more excited to host this star-studded event.

Harris Wittels, Parks and Recreation writer and all-around funny guy, will take the stage as the host of the 2011 Crunchies Awards next Tuesday night, January 31. VentureBeat, GigaOm, and TechCrunch are hosting the event, awarding the best tech innovation of 2011.

The even is chock-full of tech … Continue Reading

Former Palm head Jon Rubinstein leaves HP, taking a long-deserved break

Jon Rubinstein, the former Apple executive who spearheaded engineering for the iPod, and then proceeded to revitalize Palm, has officially left Hewlett-Packard, the company confirmed today.

The news isn’t entirely unexpected. Rubinstein was reportedly a no-show at HP since former CEO Leo Apotheker killed off the company’s WebOS devices, and even before that his role at HP was reduced with a change to a vague “SVP of innovation” title.

An HP spokesperson told All Things … Continue Reading

Silicon Valley and Colorado companies — Do you sizzle? (Reminder)

Just a reminder to Silicon Valley- and Colorado-based companies: VentureBeat is joining up with two great venture capital firms to offer feedback on your product.

Yes, there’s something in it for VentureBeat. We’re on the prowl to find the most exciting products to write about (eventually, when your product is ready), and also to invite to launch our upcoming DEMO conference. The next DEMO takes place April 17-19 in Silicon Valley.

And yes, there’s something … Continue Reading

Facebook to file papers for IPO as soon as Wednesday

The Facebook IPO cometh.

The social network could file papers for its initial public offering as soon as Wednesday, according to sources.

The burgeoning business is exploring a valuation between $75 and $100 billion — numbers that match a smattering of previous reports — and will likely select Morgan Stanley as the lead underwriter for the IPO, sources told the Wall Street Journal.

A VentureBeat source said that the filing is imminent, but did not … Continue Reading

Google Music lets you backup your entire library

One of the only disadvantages of Google’s new Google Music service is that, until now, your music has essentially been locked within the cloud — with the exception of any tracks you purchased through the Android Market.

Today, however, Google has rolled out a new version of its Google Music Manager that gives its U.S. users the ability to download a backup of all the songs stored within the service. The feature addition will probably … Continue Reading

Why you should stop trusting online user reviews (if you haven’t already)

When you look at products online at Amazon or another site, it’s instinctual to take a glance at the star ratings by your peers. But with a new expose just posted by the New York Times about user review bribery, this is a good time to remind yourself not to trust those reviews.

The article shows how a small company called VIP Deals (which has no website) offered a full refund on a product in … Continue Reading

VBWeekly: Sh*t startup people say

Watch out! There’s some adults-only vocabulary in Startup Land.

For this week’s video show installment, we decided to deliver a very special VBWeekly addressing the dangers of myopia and jargon.

Also, we decided to slay what’s left of the “Sh*t People Say” meme.

Since we get a lot of press releases, talk to a lot of VCs and entrepreneurs, and live the dream ourselves as startup employees, who better to skewer the startup community than … Continue Reading

Internet economy set to hit $4.2T in 2016, half of world’s population will be online

The Internet economy among G-20 nations is expected to nearly double by 2016, reaching $4.2 trillion (up from $2.3 trillion in 2010), according to a projection released today by the Boston Consulting Group.

The big drive in the web economy over the next few years will be a massive influx of new users — with 3 billion users in 2016, up from 1.9 billion in 2010 — the consulting group reports.

“No company or country … Continue Reading

Google responds to privacy policy criticisms

Google is defending its new privacy policy, stressing that the company isn’t collecting more data, just collecting it in a new way.

“We’re making things simpler and we’re trying to be upfront about it. Period,” said Google’s policy manager Betsy Masiello in a blog post Thursday evening.

The company recently announced big changes to its privacy policy, posting notifications throughout its products that read, “We’re changing our privacy policy and terms. Not the usual yada … Continue Reading

The DeanBeat: Game Dojos accelerator will help foster even more game startups

We’ve seen an explosion in game startups in the past few years. Zynga and Nexon have gone public, an indication that we could be nearing the end of a cycle. Their IPOs raise the question: When will there be enough game companies?

Game Dojos, a brand new San Francisco-based accelerator for game startups, thinks we’re not there yet. The game market will be saturated, not when there are lots of game startups, but when many … Continue Reading

Apple takes back world’s top smartphone maker crown from Samsung

In what will likely be a constant back and forth between Apple and Samsung, the iPhone maker has apparently reclaimed the title of the world’s largest smartphone vendor for the fourth quarter of 2011.

That’s according to research firm Strategy Analytics, which points out that Apple shipped 37 million iPhones during the quarter versus Samsung’s 36.5 million. Samsung still remains king for all of 2011 though, with 97.4 million smartphones shipped compared to Apple’s 93 … Continue Reading

GamesBeat weekly news roundup

You may not have noticed, but we’re now publishing a lot of game stories exclusively on the GamesBeat section of our site these days. These are stories that we feel are less geared to the general readership but will especially appeal to gamers and readers involved in the game industry. If you’ve missed any of those stories, our weekly roundup will point them out for you. And please visit the GamesBeat section to catch up … Continue Reading

New York’s Zelkova Ventures tries an evergreen approach to funding startups

Investing in startups is a funny business. Sometimes venture capitalists find themselves with a company that is growing and profitable. But if there is no opportunity for an IPO or acquisition by a bigger competitor, there may not be an exit on the table that allows the VCs to get a return on the money they invested which satisfies the backers who support their fund.

“It’s a broken system in some ways,” says Jay Levy, … Continue Reading

NFC could be a game changer for Nintendo’s Wii U

Nintendo is a funny old company. Just when you think it is out of ideas, it has a habit of springing innovation on the market that changes things forever. The Wii brought us motion gaming, and the 3DS saw the mass market arrival of glasses-free 3D tech. Now the Wii U may revolutionize digital sales on home consoles, using communication technology that can  link real world items with video games.

In his third quarter financial … Continue Reading

Tim Cook: Reports suggesting Apple doesn’t care about workers are “offensive”

On the heels of a record quarterly profit, Apple was slammed in the press yesterday by a lengthy New York Times article highlighting the poor working conditions in the Chinese factories that make Apple products. Tim Cook, the company’s new chief executive, responded with an email to employees that was picked up by 9to5 Mac.

Nowhere in the email does Cook explicitly acknowledge specific issues in his supply chain. Instead he takes offence at the … Continue Reading

Kabam acquires game studio Fearless Studios led by ex-Star Wars game developers

Kabam, a maker of hardcore social games, has acquired independent game studio Fearless Studios for an undisclosed price.

The deal gives Kabam more development firepower and it is generally part of a wave of acquisitions happening in the game industry as social game makers try to bulk up in order to stay competitive with market leader Zynga. Kabam has raised $125 million — a huge amount of money for a social game publisher — and … Continue Reading

Samsung’s Galaxy S II leads it to record profit of $4.7B

It’s good to be the Android king: Samsung today announced its record fourth quarter earnings, in which it saw operating profits of 5.3 trillion won (around $4.7 billion) on revenues of 47.3 trillion won (around $42 billion).

That’s a decent jump over last year, when it reported earnings of 3 trillion won (about $2.6 billion) on 41.8 trillion won (about $36.5 billion) in revenue.

Samsung performance was in line with its guidance from earlier in … Continue Reading

Facebook is on a new mission: to take down clickjackers

Facebook has teamed up with the Washington state Attorney General to put real resources toward getting rid of spam on the social network — starting with a lawsuit.

“Security is an arms race, and that’s why Facebook is committed to constantly improving our consumer safeguards while pursuing and supporting civil and criminal consequences for bad actors,” Facebook general counsel Ted Ullyot said in a statement.

The two have filed lawsuits against affiliate network Adscend Media, … Continue Reading

The FBI wants to spider social media to prepare for the worst

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is creating a tool that will crawl Facebook, Twitter and more to catch emergencies before they happen.

According to a posting on the Federal Business Opportunities website, the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center (SOIC) is feeling out the IT industry to see if anyone can create a “social media application.” The application should be able to spider through public content posted on social media sites such as Facebook and … Continue Reading