OS X Snow Leopard going for all the "marbles"?
Ever since it was partially unveiled for the first time at the Worldwide Developers Conference last year, Apple’s new operating system, OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” has been billed as more of a smaller update focused on speed and refining the OS X experience. But new reports suggest it could have an entirely new look as well.
Specifically, Apple may be ditching the user interface design known as “aqua” and replacing it with one codenamed … Continue Reading
Wesabe wants to help users cut back spending
The news is full of stories about consumers cutting back on spending — but if you’re anything like me, you’re rehashing your budget in the most disorganized and piecemeal way possible. Wesabe, a website that lets you manage and seek advice about your finances, just announced a new Cutback Tool to help.
Of course, by helping you understand your spending, any personal finance site is a cutback tool to a certain extent. Why else do … Continue Reading
United Sample brings in $3M to gather market survey samples
United Sample, a firm that offers a web-based service for creating representative sample groups for market research companies, just bagged $3 million in a second round of funding for product and sales development. Based in Encino, Calif., the company recruits millions of panelists who can be grouped very broadly or specifically for demographic and geographic tests, allowing clients to customize their own samples based on what they hope to find out. The service also organizes … Continue Reading
Get closer to "Inbox Zero" with Gmail
Every morning my email inbox is an absolute disaster zone. The problem is that most of my new messages are things I want to read once and then not see again. Thanks to Gmail’s “Archive” button, which moves messages out of your main inbox but doesn’t delete them, I’m able to get everything at least somewhat manageable, but it still takes quite a bit of time. Two Gmail features (one more of a tip) promise … Continue Reading
The merger of the cute apps: Meez and Pulse Entertainment
Meez, which lets users create cute characters to represent themselves in online chats, has agreed to merge with Pulse Entertainment, a maker of virtual characters for mobile phones and web sites. The value of the deal was not disclosed.
San Francisco-based Meez lets you create your own 3-D avatar and decorate a room in a cartoon style. It targets teens. This deal will let the company seamlessly extend its avatars to mobile environments.
Pulse Entertainment … Continue Reading
Nortel files for bankruptcy protection — who's next?
One of the most popular year-end features on the blogosphere were lists of which companies would go out of business in 2009. It’s early, but we already have our first victim.
Nortel, the telecommunications equipment giant, filed for bankruptcy protection today. It could come out of this just fine, but it won’t have an easy road. AOL’s money and finance section saw this one coming way down the road.
Others on the lists (like Chris … Continue Reading
Kleiner Perkins reaches out to new investors: "Unheard of"
Kleiner Perkins, one of the valley’s biggest name venture capital firms, is raising a so-called “annex fund,” or reserve fund it can tap to support companies it has already backed to help ensure they get through the downturn.
Kleiner has also reopened fundraising for funds it initially finished raising last year: its $700 million thirteenth fund, and a $500 million Green Growth fund. Notably, Kleiner has opened the Green Growth fund to limited partners that … Continue Reading
Did you correctly predict Hubdub's round of funding?
Predictions are all the rage right now. Obviously, since it’s the beginning of a new year, everyone wants to forecast the year ahead, but also with a weakened global economy, everyone is looking for answers for when things will turn around. Hubdub, a site that attempts to harness those predictions, and turn them into a game of sorts, has just closed its first round of funding.
The service works by granting users virtual currency to … Continue Reading
South Korea's Nurien raises $10 million for fashion-oriented virtual world
Nurien Software has been making a splash with its demos of virtual characters dressed as fashion models striding down runways in virtual fashion shows. This strategy has helped the company raise $10 million in a second institutional round of funding.
The funding suggests that investors are still excited about virtual worlds. According to market researcher In-stat, virtual worlds are expected to hit 1 billion registered users and $3 billion in revenues by 2012. And since … Continue Reading
CES overview: trends for this year's technology
I’ve talked about the regrettable 3-D TV trend at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in a separate post. But I spotted some other trends among the 2,700 exhibitors at the show as well.
Gesture control and multi-touch screens: Part and parcel of good industrial hardware design is a good user interface to go with it. Now, the mouse, keyboard, and remote control are about to give way to touch-based user interfaces … Continue Reading
SocialVibe raises $8M to turn online profiles into charity money makers
SocialVibe is a Los Angeles-based company that lets social network users raise money for their favorite causes by posting badges that advertise certain brands to their online profiles. It just brought in $8 million in second-round funding to forge more partnerships with advertisers and nonprofits and to continue developing its product.
The concept is pretty simple. Users who register on the site first choose from a list of charitable organizations ranging from PETA to Stand … Continue Reading
Blockbuster claims to open the distribution floodgates — floodgates holding the details remain shut.
On one hand, you want to give Blockbuster credit for at least trying to save itself. But on the other, it’s hard to give credit to a company that perpetually seems a day late and a dollar short.
Yes, Blockbuster has another announcement to make regarding internet movie delivery, and yes, once again it’s something that several of its competitors have been doing for some time. At least, I think.
You see, it’s hard to … Continue Reading
Roundup: Obama's potential Blackberry replacement, internet does not equal "To Catch a Predator" episodes, plus layoffs
Here’s the latest action:
Alternatives to Obama’s favorite Blackberry — One option for the email-addicted President-elect is an NSA-approved secure PDA, the Sectera Edge, which costs $3,350 — but hey, you can drop it four feet onto concrete repeatedly without worry (it’s waterproof and dustproof!), according to CNET.
Graphics chip maker Nvidia forecasts steep revenue drop — The company blames sagging PC sales for a drop as steep as 40 to 50 percent for its … Continue Reading
Solar panels pose an environmental hazard, claims report
Sometime in the late 1970s, toxic chemicals from semiconductor plants in San Jose, Calif. began leeching chemicals into the local water supply. As birth defects soared and families sickened, investigators began a search for the culprits, eventually fingering IBM and Fairchild Semiconductor in 1981.
At the time an extremely high-profile case, the episode helped introduce public safeguards to high-tech manufacturing. It also provided for the birth of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, a group that … Continue Reading
IBM sets new patent record in 2008
IBM just announced that it is the first company ever to earn more than 4,000 U.S. patents in a single year.
VentureBeat writer Dean Takahashi has already written about some of the cool technology being developed at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, including a microscope with 100 times the resolution of magnetic resonance imaging and a computer modeled on the human brain, but IBM’s announcement puts a number on all of that innovation: … Continue Reading
Sell Google Apps through Google's reseller program
Ever wanted to be a salesperson for Google? Well, now you may get your chance through the Google Apps Reseller program, which allows companies to sell their own versions of Google Apps, the business offering that bundles products like Gmail, Google Docs, and more. The program creates a new way for technology service providers to make money from Google’s products — and for Google to grow the size of its salesforce.
Basically, Google will offer … Continue Reading
Huffington Post, in need of laughs, buys comedy site 236.com
23/6, a political comedy site that boasts “the sluttiest news team on the internet,” will soon have a new home — it’s just been bought by progressive news site Huffington Post, which took $25 million in funding last month. The standalone site launched in November 2007 as a joint venture between HuffPo, as it is commonly called, and Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp. Now 23/6, acquired as a “vertical” site, is going to be blended into HuffPo … Continue Reading
BuzzCity's latest stats suggest mobile ad industry health
BuzzCity, one of the largest mobile ad networks in the world, released its fourth quarter traffic numbers last night. The Singapore-based company, which until recently has been most successful in Asia and other parts of the world, is also seeing an uptick in U.S. traffic. It served 382 million mobile banner ads domestically over the course of the quarter, a 47 percent increase over the previous quarter and a 209 percent increase for the year. … Continue Reading
Luxury sample sale sites Gilt Groupe and RueLaLa pick up traffic
Luxury spending may be down, but that doesn’t mean fashionistas aren’t clamoring for deals. Sample sales, which have been around for years, are often a way for designers to get rid of overstocked pieces and clothes that didn’t sell well in stores — at a steep discount. Shoppers in the know can get onto mailing lists to attend boutique and warehouse sales. But now it looks as if that exclusive trend is progressively moving online, … Continue Reading
Shop and play games within Cooliris' 3D wall
Cooliris, which lets you browse media as a three-dimensional wall, announced two additions to its “Discover” feature today: Shopping channels and the ability to play Flash games.
You can use Cooliris to browse a number of websites, including YouTube and Facebook. Through Discover, the company also allows you to surf different channels of media pulled from around the web. The games channel is probably the flashier of the two new ones. Now you can actually … Continue Reading
