Two weeks until Apple’s WWDC event: Some keynote wild card options
We’re now two weeks away from Apple chief executive Steve Jobs taking the stage at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) to give the keynote address. It’s pretty well accepted that the big announcement at the event will be the launch of the 3G iPhone, but Jobs does love his wild cards — could there be something else in the works as well?
An event with a 3G iPhone and the launch of the 2.0 software… Continue Reading
Google challenge winners give Android thumbs-up
updated
Two weeks ago Google announced the first-round winners of its two-round Android Developer Challenge (ADC). The contest, which is promising a total of $10 million in prize money, is intended to entice developers to come up with exciting new applications for the company’s mobile Internet platform, Android, which is clearly important to Google’s future (chief executive Eric Schmidt says the mobile web will be bigger than the PC Web within a “few years”).
The contest’s first round… Continue Reading
Throw away the Wii — 3D sensing technology due within a year, says SoftKinetic
While we’ve written several times recently about the progress of next-generation, camera-based game control technologies, including the hefty funding received by Prime Sense and an earlier update on several competing companies, there’s one detail we’ve edged around: When you’ll get to use them for yourself.
That’s because most of the companies developing gesture recognition technology aren’t sure, themselves. The firms developing the 3D cameras that make motion-sensing gaming possible have to work through intermediaries to… Continue Reading
World Bank will raise $5.5 billion cleantech funding with the U.S., Britain and Japan
Not content to let VCs and private investors have all the fun, the World Bank, U.S., Britain and Japan have announced they will raise at least $5.5 billion for two climate change funds — a cleantech fund, which will begin with $5 billion, and one for research and development, with $500 million. The cleantech fund, which will be supported by 40 developing and industrialized countries, will help poor countries gain access to clean technologies.
The World… Continue Reading
EnterMedia, a Russian in-game advertising firm, raises first funding
EnterMedia, an in-game advertising firm based in Russia, has raised a round of over $1 million from Mangrove Capital Partners and ABRT Fund, according to coverage of a Moscow press conference posted on the Quintura blog.
The company has a proprietary technology it uses to place dynamic ads in flash-based games. Since the Russian market is fairly tiny, it seems likely the investment was made to help migrate the technology to other language markets.
The exact amount… Continue Reading
ZinkoTek gets $2M for recyclable toys
ZinkoTek, a San Francisco-based startup that makes environmentally friendly toys for children, has taken a first round of funding.
The company’s building blocks, which operate via the same basic concepts as Legos but are much larger, are made from the same recyclable foam that is used for other products like Crocs shoes, according to VentureWire, which first reported the funding.
The $2 million funding was an angel round, provided by private investors.
Chinese local review site Dianping: A lot more than a “Yelp for China”
Dispatch 3 from Beijing
Chinese web companies, like those in Germany and other countries, sometimes get accused of ripping off successful U.S. ones, sometimes rightly so. But there are plenty of inspiring examples that prove the China-copycat stereotype wrong.
Local review site Dianping, for example, which may remind Americans of local review site Yelp, is a lot more than “Yelp for China” — and not only because it started a year and a half before Yelp, in early… Continue Reading