Sony Online Entertainment buys Pox Nora
Sony Online Entertainment, the online games division of Sony, has bought the Pox Nora online collectible strategy game from Tucson-based developer Octopi.
As part of the deal, members of the Octopi development team will form SOE’s new Tuscon game development studio. They will support Pox Nora and work with SOE’s Denver, Colo.-based game studio on new trading card and strategy game products. The deal closed Jan. 16.
Pox Nora is a free-to-play game, but players … Continue Reading
Audium Semiconductor raises $8.5 million for low-power chips
Audium Semiconductor of Bristol, England, has raised $8.5 million in a first round of funding. The company says it has proprietary audio power amplifier technology. The company’s chips for audio devices such as portable music players consume only about a 20th of the power of rival chips, according to EE Times.
The company’s management team has veterans from other chip companies such as PicoChip Designs. Funding came from Advent Venture Partners and Balderton Capital. Clyde … Continue Reading
iTunes gets the new U2 single "Get On Your Boots" first
When Elevation Partners, the Silicon Valley private-equity firm that U2 lead singer Bono is a founder of, recently put $100 million into phone maker Palm (it now owns 39 percent of the company), speculation was that there was a falling out between Bono and Apple chief executive Steve Jobs. Apple, which once made a special U2-branded iPod, of course makes the Palm Pre rival, the iPhone. But U2 launched its new single today “Get On … Continue Reading
Billing startup Zuora's Z-Commerce targets cloud computing
Zuora, one of the startups that provides on-demand software to manage companies’ billing and payments, aims to take advantage of growing interest in cloud computing with a new product dubbed Z-Commerce, which will provide Zuora’s services to developers on cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine.
The Redwood City, Calif. startup has already released three products: Z-Billing, which automates the billing process; Z-Payments, which integrates with PayPal to handle the actual payments; … Continue Reading
Just in time for the Obama inauguration, Ustream's iPhone app launches
True to its word, live streaming video site Ustream, has released its iPhone application into Apple’s App Store in time for people to watch President Obama’s inauguration on their iPhones live tomorrow.
The app, which I’m using right now, works great. I’m watching the famous Shiba Inu Puppy Cam, and the picture quality is very good. Unfortunately, the streaming video will only work over Wi-Fi and not a 3G connection, a limitation also found in … Continue Reading
The Internet's jammed with broken links of a last chance Google Drive
Google Drive, GDrive, “My Stuff,” Platypus — these are all names for Google’s online storage service that has been rumored to be in the works since at least 2005. Blogs are always predicting its impending launch, and even the Wall Street Journal matter-of-factly stated well over a year ago that Google was preparing to unveil the service. But the service is still nowhere to be found.
Well, actually, you can probably find it if you … Continue Reading
Roundup: Obama's White House reboot, SoCal's VC slump and more
Here’s the latest pre-inaugural action:
Will Obama “reboot” the White House? — Wired looks at the president-elect’s efforts to become more transparent and responsive through tech, and at the obstacles facing those efforts. The conclusion is worth quoting: “Instead of turning WhiteHouse.gov into a governmental synthesis of Facebook and Wikipedia, or running a permanent campaign off the White House email list, Obama’s best shot at rebooting the government is to remember how he got there: … Continue Reading
Wii is on track to outsell PlayStation 2, while PS 3 is on par with GameCube sales
Nintendo has gone from worst to first in consecutive console releases, with Sony doing exactly the opposite this generation. A closer look at collective data released by the NPD Group, the official tracker of U.S. video game sales, reveals the stark reversal of roles.
Based on the first 26 months of availability, the Wii is on its way to becoming the best-selling console of all time, a title currently held by the PlayStation 2, which … Continue Reading
Microsoft to take to the "sky" with App Store, MobileMe competitors next month?
Earlier today, I joked that Microsoft may call the third-party application store for its Windows Mobile platform the “Microsoft Live Mobile App Emporium,” since so many obvious names are now taken with Apple controlling “App Store,” Google having its “Marketplace,” Palm laying claim to “App Catalog,” and now BlackBerry getting ready to launch its “Application Storefront.” Well, it looks like Microsoft may go in a slightly different direction for its app store name: SkyMarket, the … Continue Reading
Fliqz turning video-hosting into a business, raises $6M
Fliqz, one of many startups that offers white label video-hosting services for other companies, seems to have found its footing in this competitive market. It has more than 35,000 clients paying between ninety-nine and several thousand dollars a month to reach video viewers on the web. Features let a client and its online users upload, encode, store and organize videos, and stream videos to the web within a customizable player.
Fliqz says it expects to … Continue Reading
GoodGuide raises $3.73M for ethical shopping
GoodGuide, a site that helps shoppers find healthy, sustainable, and ethical products, has raised $3.73 million in a first round of venture funding.
The concept behind GoodGuide is rather obvious, but it was also tough to pull all the necessary data together. That’s why there are plenty of other sites offering information about how products measure up in a specific area — say, environmental friendliness — but none attempting to aggregate as much data from … Continue Reading
MobileMonday nominates 42 for Mobile Peer Awards
MobileMonday, the global community for professionals in the mobile industry, has named 42 nominees for its annual Mobile Peer Awards, due to take place in Barcelona on Feb. 16. All of the acknowledged companies are startups in the mobile space, and each was chosen by a different MobileMonday organization chapter–including eight from different metropolitan chapters in the United States.
This year’s American selections — Soonr, WorldMate, rmbrME, MocoSpace, Keynetik, Cirius Technologies, Crave Mobile, and Big … Continue Reading
Video: The history of the Internet
Almost all of us now use the Internet every single day — some of us for more hours a day than we sleep (me) — but what is it really? How did it come about? No, it wasn’t all former Vice President Al Gore, though he did help its progress. The video below lays out the history of the Internet in an easy to follow manner.
The video was made by PICOL (Pictorial Communication Language), … Continue Reading
Venture fundraising: Going, going, gone?
Venture capital funds raised only $3.4 billion in the last three months of 2008, according to new data from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association. Unsurprisingly, this is a big drop (about 70.9 percent) from the same period in 2007, when venture firms raised $11.7 billion, and also a substantial decline from the $8.4 billion raised in Q3 of 2008.
Now, you’re probably as tired as I am with the barrage of bad … Continue Reading
Agriculture dept. earmarks $80M for Range Fuels, cellulosic ethanol
Cellulosic ethanol producer Range Fuels announced today that it landed an $80 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fund construction of a new wood-chip processing plant in Georgia, slated to open in 2010. The deal, which falls under the biofuel provisions of the much-discussed 2008 Farm Bill, is essentially a promise that the department will cover the loan if Range can’t; it also lowers the cost of the project and interest … Continue Reading
BlackBerry "Application Storefront" opening its doors this spring
Research In Motion (RIM) has had third-party applications available for its BlackBerry phones for a while, but because they aren’t listed in something as sexy as Apple’s App Store, many go largely unnoticed. This makes developers more likely to create apps for the App Store and now Google’s new Marketplace for its Android platform. But coming this spring, RIM hopes to changes that with the launch of its App Store equivalent, which now apparently has … Continue Reading
Skydeck makes your mobile phone an online productivity tool
If you’ve ever wished you could get more out of your data in your mobile phone, you should check out Skydeck. Its new web interface, launching today, shows you your call history, text messages, your phone’s address book, tied together with useful premium features like voicemail-to-text recording and transcription, and the ability to call or text anyone else from your computer, using your mobile number. All of this information is displayed from your phone to … Continue Reading
Syncplicity expands its private beta for Mac synchronization software: We've got passes
Syncplicity has already launched its software for synchronizing Windows computers and is now turning its eye to the Mac. The company is opening its private beta to the first 500 readers from VentureBeat who sign up. Follow this link if you’d like to register for the Mac beta.
The software makes it easy to sync your files across a bunch of computers. But it’s just one of a field of companies that do the same … Continue Reading
Consentry nabs $9.4M for tighter network control
Consentry Networks, a Milpitas, Calif. company that gives network administrators more direct control over computing infrastructure and applications, just raised $9.4 million from DAG Ventures, Invesco Private Capital, Northgate Capital, Translink Capital and Vedanta Capital.
The new money will go toward development of its network management product LANShield, a platform that gives users visibility into and control over all of the various operations and applications active on a system at any given time, the company … Continue Reading
Facebook app Let's Cram gets seeded to connect study buddies
Let’s Cram, a Facebook application designed to help high school and college students do their homework and study for tests, just nabbed $185,000 of an anticipated $400,000 in seed funding, according to regulatory filings. The Santa Barbara, Calif. company could not be reached for comment, but the investment came from local individuals, including the company’s founder, Michael Lewis, and Patrick Dietzen, co-founder of biotech firm Sirigen.
Let’s Cram uses every social-networking trick in the book … Continue Reading
