Pixazza crowdsources shopping info, turning pics into ads
Most web users are used to tagging photos on sites like Flickr and Facebook. But now Pixazza Inc., a new venture backed ad company, has released a tool that turns items in web images into clickable and purchasable content. Put simply, it’s like Google’s AdSense — except it sources website images to deliver ads instead of text.
Although the backend is a little complicated, Pixazza’s user interface is intuitive. Once a webmaster integrates the tool … Continue Reading
Inkd opens for business-minded creative content
Kelly Smith, creator of the CafePress-acquired Imagekind, has finally unveiled his most recent graphic arts startup, Inkd. Like Imagekind, Inkd is a marketplace for buying and selling art. Only this time around, Kelly has shifted the focus to creative content for business, like brochures, letterhead, and business cards.
Like a stock photo agency, Inkd lets graphic designers upload and promote their work, while letting users (ideally small businesses) browse and purchase their designs. For simplicity’s … Continue Reading
Have we seen the last generation of game consoles?
While game publishers might want to phase-out retail boxed products, Colin Sebastian from Lazard Capital Management said that we’re going to see a lot of friction with online distribution.
Sebastian was on the analyst panel at our GamesBeat 2009 conference today in San Francisco. At the panel, Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter also said that recently announced technology OnLive will create value for the consumer, and that Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo will lose in the equation.… Continue Reading
Video: Softkinetic's gesture-based video games
Softkinetic, a company that wants to help people play video games using their bodies as controllers, was on stage at our GamesBeat 2009 conference today to give us a preview of its technology, which it’s been working on for six years. We wrote about Softkinetic back in 2006, but the technology is now coming into its own, with VentureBeat writer Dean Takahashi identifying it as one of the big trends at this year’s Consumer Electronics … Continue Reading
GamesBeat start-up competition winner: Exponential Entertainment seeks to combine games and movies on the web
Here’s some breaking news. The winner of the GamesBeat 09 Who’s Got Game? start-up competition is Exponential Entertainment. They won both the judges award and the people’s choice award.
Exponential Entertainment announced today that it’s creating a social game site, Hollywood Player, aimed at movie fans.
The company has figured out a way to “game-ify” movies so that they’re more engaging for consumers. The company plans to launch its beta test in the second quarter … Continue Reading
Zynga's Mark Pincus: Social gaming is not a fad
Social gaming took some hits during the venture capital panel at our GamesBeat 2009 conference in San Francisco — when asked about the future of social games, Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners said that’s not even a real category; at best, it’s a distribution model, and not a very effective one. Predictably, many at the speakers who took the stage later in the day for the social gaming panel disagreed. Mark Pincus of social … Continue Reading
Facebook discusses redesigning its redesign
Today, Facebook is responding to criticism about its recent site redesign with some specific descriptions of tweaks intended to make its latest interface more usable. While the scale of dissatisfaction hasn’t been clear, more than 1 million of its 200 million or so users (including a vocal number of VentureBeat readers) have expressed their opposition.
The announcements today don’t indicate a full roll-back to the previous design — a move we didn’t seriously expect, anyway … Continue Reading
The future of games: Beyond devices, beyond fun
Video games are quickly becoming an art form, agreed the speakers at a panel on the future of gaming at our GamesBeat 2009 conference in San Francisco today. But what does that actually mean? Jenova Chen, founder of thatgamecompany, which created created the PlayStation 3 game Flower, argued that one key step will involve moving beyond a slavish devotion to fun.
“Fun is one of a very small portion of experiences that humans can have,” … Continue Reading
Facebook hires new public policy director from ACLU
Privacy advocates upset at Facebook over its terms of service can perhaps feel a little happier now. The social network has hired Timothy Sparapani — senior attorney with American Civil Liberties Union, an organization that’s not shy about fighting to protect privacy — to be its new director of public policy.
Facebook says it will reveal more about the position when Sparapani starts next month. For now, the company is only saying that he’ll be … Continue Reading
Boxee adds Pandora and makes its browser more Firefox-like for Hulu
Boxee, the streaming content startup, continues to push updates out at a brisk pace. Tonight, at its meetup in New York City, it’s announcing a few new features, one of which should help bring back Hulu support.
The marquee name being added to Boxee is Pandora, the online music streaming and recommendation engine. Fans of Pandora will now be able to listen to their favorite stations and make new ones right from within the application. … Continue Reading
How Curt Schilling started a game company
“It’s been about 28 years since I started gaming,” baseball star Curt Schilling said at GamesBeat 2009. He started with the first Apple computer he ever saw.
“For the last decade, [massively multiplayer online games] have been the focal point of my gaming,” he said. Schilling was interviewed at VentureBeat’s game conference in San Francisco today. He said he was introduced to Ultima Online by a teammate, but didn’t care for the game.
Now, he … Continue Reading
Flat World Knowledge lands $8M for online college textbooks
Flat World Knowledge, a publisher of free, open-source online college textbooks, says it has raised $8 million in a first round of funding, offering technology that some say could fundamentally change the way students acquire and read books for school. The money will be used to add more titles to its offerings.
For a while now, traditional textbook sales have been on the decline due to internet sources, piracy and the growing used-books market — … Continue Reading
Last.fm to charge users outside U.S., U.K., Germany
Social music site Last.fm has announced it’s changing to a subscription based model — at least, for users outside of the U.S., U.K., and Germany. The CBS-backed site says that after a year of solid growth, it will start subsidizing its free music streams by charging a €3.00 monthly subscription for non-U.S., U.K., and Germany-based listeners.
Up until this point, the U.K.-based site has made waves in both the record and internet radio industries by … Continue Reading
Stop counting impressions, and start making them
Not much about the future of advertising looks certain right now. Will newspapers become a niche medium? Will advertisers stop footing the bill for network TV if they don’t get more control over content? Will Google find a way to monetize YouTube before Hulu steals its whole audience? And in the short term, what’s going to happen to those of us who rely on marketing budgets to keep our companies afloat?
Amid the chaos, a … Continue Reading
Report: iPhone and Android taking everyone else's market share
The iPhone’s operating system provided 50 percent of U.S. advertising requests to Admob last month, according to a report the mobile ad network published today.
Meanwhile, the seminal Android-powered G1, built by HTC, has grown to 5 percent only three months after launch, the report says. These numbers don’t provide a comprehensive window into the smartphone web and app market — Admob is just adding up requests that its graphical and text ads receive due … Continue Reading
Gaming platform debate: Is the iPhone the future?
We had representatives from Facebook, MySpace, PlayStation, and Nokia discussing new gaming platforms today at our GamesBeat 2009 conference in San Francisco, but most of the passionate debate revolved around a company that wasn’t there — Apple, with its iPhone and iPod touch.
That shouldn’t be too surprising, since GamesBeat attendees identified the iPhone as the most promising platform in a survey conducted prior to the conference — and indeed, VentureBeat’s games writer, Dean Takahashi, … Continue Reading
Microsoft teams with NASA to challenge Google in the new space race
The new space race is on.
Last month, Google unveiled Google Mars 3D, a way to explore the Martian surface in the new version of Google Earth. Earlier this month, it unveiled a live view, historical map and guided tour of the red planet. Now, Microsoft is striking back with new Mars data and images of its own, thanks to NASA.
And the two companies are battling for virtual space supremacy over more than just … Continue Reading
Sony Online hopes to capture family market with Free Realms
John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment, hasjust delivered a keynote address for GamesBeat 2009 that covers the history of SOE, and its bold new strategy to expand in the market.
He begins by telling the story of his earliest experience playing an online game through early online service GEnie – and getting a bill for $600 at the end of the month.
“As I got excited by online gaming, I was able to get … Continue Reading
Khronos Group launches a lighter version of OpenGL graphics standard
A popular graphics standard is getting an upgrade today as Khronos Group unveils Open GL 3.1 as well as an open standard for 3-D positional audio for mobile devices.
OpenGL, which competes with Microsoft’s 3D graphics software, allows machines, such as Apple computers, to tap the power of graphics chips. OpenGL is used in Linux, mobile devices, and a variety of Windows applications too. There are more than a 100 members of the Khronos Group, … Continue Reading
VC's view of games: 'An infinitely fragmented market'
The economy is soft, admitted the panel of venture capitalists at GamesBeat 2009. But Mitch Lasky, from Benchmark Capital, said, “We’re looking for what we’re always looking for.” And those are companies with defensible positions, companies that can create a niche they can win in. “We’re looking for great companies with great leaders.”
Tim Chang, from Norwest Ventures, added his partners are “Not investors in games, [but] investors in game market disruptions.”
Jeremy Liew, from … Continue Reading
