Push-notification platform Xtify picks up $2.8M, ramps up development

Working in the mobile advertising business, New York City-based Xtify has been building its platform for brands and other app developers, allowing for geo-targeted notifications — most often, ads — that are pushed to consumers when they are within a predefined area, say a one-mile radius from a department store. The company has announced it has raised $2.8 million in a first round of institutional funding, which it is using to beef up its product... Continue Reading

Workers easily tricked into revealing corporate secrets

Social engineering is the (morally vague) art of tricking someone out of their company’s technical secrets just by talking to them. It often involves deceit and relies on the fact that the weakest link in any computer security system is a human.

At the annual Defcon event, held in Las Vegas this week, attendees, mostly professionals in the computer-security business, engage in several contests. A new this one year involves launching social engineering “attacks,” where contestants... Continue Reading

Security researcher explains how he hacked ATMs (videos)

Earlier this week, I reported about security research Barnaby Jack showing how to hack two different automated teller machines in front of a crowd of hackers and security professionals at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. Now you can see video footage of Jack responding to questions following his demonstration.

The two videos below show the Q&A session that took place immediately after he hacked two different Windows CE-based ATMs. During the Q&A,... Continue Reading

PlacePop joins mobile loyalty program frenzy, gets funding boost

PlacePop,  a company that allows any company to create and maintain virtual loyalty cards, launched its iPhone app today. It also announced fresh funding of $1.4 million from a number of angel investors.

PlacePop wants to replace the clumsy, physical loyalty program cards people carry around in their wallets or forget in their desk drawers. So it’s joining  a lot of companies doing the same thing — helping people go virtual with their loyalty cards. It’s... Continue Reading

Shmoop to bring its sassy textbook approach to Bio.com

Shmoop, the online study guide publisher founded by husband-and-wife entrepreneurs Ellen and David Siminoff, has announced the first of what it says will be a number of deals with major media companies. The Mountain View, Calif. startup says it has signed on to write content for Bio.com, the website of the A&E television show Biography.

Shmoop’s website offers study guides in areas including literature, US history, and economics, aiming for an entertaining, funny style. For... Continue Reading

Hacker tries to read a radio identification tag from 29 floors up (video)

Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are becoming pervasive as the barcodes of the 21st century. They are being used in everything from Wal-Mart merchandise to U.S. passport cards.

But the problem, as demonstrated by hacker Chris Paget at the Defcon security conference today, is that they have no security and can be read from a great distance. Paget has already shown he can read a tag from 217 feet.

Paget tried to break the world... Continue Reading

DiscoveryBeat 2010: How to get your apps noticed

So how do you get attention?

If you’re a developer of a web application and trying to compete with hundreds of thousands of applications already out there, it isn’t easy. An ever-expanding recipe of tricks is needed to stay in front of competitors, who themselves become even more aggressive with their techniques.

DiscoveryBeat 2010 is a one-day event designed to explore that magic recipe in detail. The recipe includes everything from new ways to track... Continue Reading

New Twitter feature suggests who you might want to follow

Twitter is starting to give personalized recommendations for people to follow, as it pushes to increase retention of new users.

The company will suggest accounts based on who you currently follow and who those accounts follow, according to a blog post today. Users will also see recommendations for people to follow when they look at other Twitter users’ profiles.

It’s like a “PeopleRank” of sorts — a social play on Google’s original PageRank algorithm, but... Continue Reading

Social game maker Zynga hires a new CFO; are more acquisitions coming?

In a move that will spur talk about a much-anticipated initial public offering, social game publisher Zynga hired a new chief financial officer today.

Dave Wehner, former managing director at Allen & Co., will be the new CFO. Wehner has worked at Allen & Co., the media and technology investment bank headed by Herb Allen, since 2001. He replaces Mark Vranesh, who becomes Zynga’s chief accounting officer, reporting to Wehner. A source familiar with matter... Continue Reading

Can real-time search make a buck? OneRiot restructures

The biggest of the independent real-time search engines, OneRiot, restructured its management today and laid off an unknown number of employees, including company co-founder Robert Reich.

Kimbal Musk, a serial entrepreneur who served as chief executive, is stepping aside to serve as chairman and making way for longtime president Tobias Peggs to take the lead.

The Boulder, Colo. company, which raised $27 million in venture capital, has pioneered real-time search, a way of looking for... Continue Reading

Dave McClure raises fund, says traditional VCs should ‘die already’

Dave McClure is a well-known investor through the Founders Fund’s angel program and its joint Facebook fund with Accel, as well as his own investments. Now it looks like McClure about to ramp up his activity by raising a new $30 million fund under the name 500 Startups.

The fund was revealed through a regulatory filing spotted by the Form Ds website. The filing lists McClure as the firm’s executive officer.

The just-gone-live 500 Startups... Continue Reading

Evo 4G users to get Android 2.2 “Froyo” update starting August 3

Google’s Android 2.2 “Froyo” update is finally hitting more phones than just the Nexus One. Sprint announced today that it will start rolling out the update to Evo 4G users starting next Tuesday, August 3, Engadget reports.

Android 2.2 comes with a wealth of upgrades over 2.1, including OS-wide speed increases, a more polished user-interface, a faster web browser, support for Adobe Flash 10.1, built-in tethering capabilities, and improved camera options. Google has been saying... Continue Reading

Hackers show how to build and beat a lie detector

Hackers at the Defcon security conference in Las Vegas showed they could build a lie detector and beat it.

In the presentation, hackers who went by the handles Rain (above) and Urban Monkey (below) said they built a lie detector based on a pre-existing design that cost about $50.

The talk is typical of the somewhat alarming sessions at the Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas. Black Hat and Defcon are sister conferences. While... Continue Reading

Playdom commits to using Facebook Credits exclusively for five years

Playdom, the largest social gaming company on MySpace and the third-largest on Facebook, has signed a five-year contract to exclusively use Facebook’s Credits as in-game currency across all of its titles, reports Inside Social Games.

The news was confirmed by a Facebook spokesperson, and comes only a few days after Disney announced it was purchasing Playdom for to up $763.2 million.

Facebook has been working to lock down similar agreements with other social game developers:... Continue Reading

Facebook’s former top security officer says military and commercial cyberdefense should be united

Max Kelly, the former chief security officer at Facebook, said in a speech today at the Defcon conference that the military and commercial defense against cyber attacks should be unified.

Right now, there isn’t a common doctrine in the military on how to fight a cyber war. As far as Kelly can tell, there are dozens of potential military strategies. Under the Obama administration, a newly created Cyber Command is working on a common doctrine... Continue Reading

Electric vehicles incentives guide: Country by country

Green conscience and new technology are both laudable, but getting extra money in your back pocket is nice too.

Now, after all those years of paying taxes on your hard work, you can finally get some of it back. Consider it a tax refund for buying an electric car.

Now that we know the purchase and lease prices of two of the biggest-hitters–the 2011 Chevrolet Volt and the 2011 Nissan Leaf–many buyers will want to... Continue Reading

Tesla founder Eberhard leading VW efforts in Silicon Valley

Many global automakers have research outposts in Silicon Valley.

BMW’s is one floor of an unremarkable office building in downtown Palo Alto, while Volkswagen’s much larger Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) occupies a whole building in an office park nestled in the foothills above Stanford University.

It turns out that more than a year ago, Volkswagen added a “name” to its largely unknown staff of researchers, scientists, and engineers.

Analysts skeptical

It’s Martin Eberhard, founder of... Continue Reading

In Russia, startups need angels, not bodyguards — and now they may get them

Several proven Russian entrepreneurs have formed what looks to be the first promising seed-stage venture capital firm in Russia, called Runa Capital.

This is a significant development for the country, even if the sums involved are relatively small: The firm announced this week it has already raised $30 million and plans to raise more. The news is encouraging because the fund will provide the advice traditional angel investors in Silicon Valley have provided over the... Continue Reading

You will be billed $90,000 for this hacked cell phone call

Among the scary talks at the Black Hat security conference yesterday was one entitled “You will be billed $90,000 for this call.” That title was an exaggeration, but it certainly highlighted the risks facing users with unprotected mobile phones.

The talk by security expert Mikko Hypponen of security firm F-Secure showed how a compromised cell phone could make surreptitious long-distance calls that could cost you lots of money. It was one of a number... Continue Reading

Game maker Richard Garriott spent $30M going into space, wins $28M jury award after being fired

Richard Garriott made lots of money creating the hit Ultima series of fantasy role-playing games. He’s made some more from a flop — almost enough to cover the cost of a recent ride into space.

In 2007, following in the footsteps of his father, Garriott became an astronaut, spending $30 million to get a ride into space on a commercial Space Adventures rocket.

In the meantime, the online game that he spent six years... Continue Reading