GamesBeat 2009: Play along at home

The first panel at GamesBeat 2009, our inaugural conference about the business of video games, is underway as I write this. Even though it’s sold out, many of our readers couldn’t make it to today’s event at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, but don’t despair — we’ve created plenty of ways for you to stay abreast of all the discussion.

The core of our coverage will be the GamesBeat 2009 blog, where … Continue Reading

Online ad navigator Linkstorm pulls in $2.8M

Linkstorm, a New York-based company that provides linked cascading menus to online ads (think expanding banners), has raised $2.8 million in a fourth round of capital, adding to its more than 150 investors with names like Rick Braddock, former chief executive of Priceline.com and FreshDirect, and Donn Rappaport, chairman of the Direct Marketing Association for 2008.

Linkstorm will use the round to grow its sales operations and continue product development. It previously raised $9 million, … Continue Reading

Axcient lands $6M to back up data

Axcient, a San Jose, Calif. provider of data backup devices and services, says it brought in $6 million in a first round of funding from Allegis Capital and Peninsula Ventures. Its offerings can also aid in data recovery, both remotely and on-site.

The round remains open, and the company says it may raise more capital to last it through 2011. It plans to add more services to its growing portfolio. For now, it only has … Continue Reading

Fuel-cell maker Bloom stores away $17M

Bloom Energy, the fairly stealthy maker of bio and hydrogen fuel cells, says it has raised $16.8 million of what it hopes will be a $200 million private equity offering, reports VentureWire. This is an ambitious goal in the current economy, but I suppose being Kleiner Perkins’ first green investment has afforded the Sunnyvale, Calif. company a certain amount of swagger.

It announced its intention to raise $150 million back in late February, saying that … Continue Reading

Find untagged photos of your Facebook friends with Face.com's Photo Finder

This one is kinda scary because of how well it works. Face.com‘s new Photo Finder application for Facebook helps you automatically discover public photos that you and your friends may have forgotten to tag — and it also lets you track untagged photos of your friends.

Face-recognition technology is itself not new, but Photo Finder’s twist is how it makes use of Facebook’s interface. The social network only shows you photos of yourself containing tags … Continue Reading

Roundup: Solyndra scores major green, Windows braces for worm, car takes to the skies and more

Department of Energy shines on Solyndra — The solar company landed a $535 million loan to continue developing its technology. The New York Times has more.

A wormy April Fool’s Day — The Conficker computer worm is set to be unleashed on April 1, exploiting Windows weaknesses to create millions of zombie computers. “Joke or apocalypse?” asks the New York Times.

Study says, “Do or do not, there is no try” — A new Harvard … Continue Reading

BillShrink calculates savings at the gas pump

BillShrink, the startup that already helps users save money on cell phone plans and credit cards, has added a tool to find the best station to fill up your gas tank.

Like other features from the Redwood City, Calif. company, the site makes it easy to get gas station recommendations. Afterward, you can drill more deeply into your choices, if you want. The tool is based around your daily commute — you just enter your … Continue Reading

Rhomobile promises: Build once, deploy to any smartphone

If you’re interested in developing a mobile application but find the range of phones out there to be overwhelming, a startup called Rhomobile wants to help. Not only does its Rhodes programing framework allow you to build mobile applications using HTML and Ruby (much easier than, say, using the Objective C normally required for the iPhone), but your application is then available for iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Android smartphones.

In other words, Rhomobile … Continue Reading

IBM to launch new version of business simulation game

IBM isn’t a company you’d expect to see at the Game Developers Conference. But Big Blue has been making games for a while now and is showing off Innov8 v.2, a new version of a business simulation game that helps students and professionals hone their business skills.

The game is a so-called Serious Game, or one that has goals beyond entertainment. The Serious Game Summit at the GDC is highlighting a bunch of these games … Continue Reading

MotionDSP launches vReveal tool to clear up blurry home movies

Everybody has blurry, unfocused, and motion-sickness inspiring home videos. But Silicon Valley company MotionDSP is launching a video restoration software program today that could help fix that.

The company’s vReveal software can automatically fix movies so they look more professional. It uses graphics computation to smooth out movies with shaky motion, lighten dark videos and otherwise reduce noise. And you can run the process with a single click.

The video enhancement technology taps a computer’s … Continue Reading

Limelife acquires Tapatap to expand social apps for women

LimeLife, which makes mobile games and other media for women, said today it has acquired mobile media company Tapatap for an undisclosed price.

Menlo Park, Calif.-based LimeLife targets 18 year-old to 34-year-old women with what it calls lifestyle content. That includes games for women, celebrity style and breaking news, fashion and beauty trend news, entertainment, music and shopping. It is available on the company’s LimeLife.com web site and its m.LimeLife.com mobile browser site. It has … Continue Reading

New OnLive service could turn the video game world upside down

Few startups have a chance to revolutionize an industry. But if entrepreneur Steve Perlman’s OnLive lives up to its goals, the company will disrupt the entire video game industry — to the delight of both game publishers and gamers.

Perlman (right), a serial entrepreneur whose startup credits include WebTV and Mova, says his Palo Alto, Calif.-based company has developed a data compression technology and an accompanying online game service that allows game computation to be … Continue Reading

Tweetie and Twittervision also featured on Twitter, but not for money

Earlier today we reported on what looks to be Twitter’s first real foray into making money: highlighted third-party sites on Twitter’s main web site. This evening, Twitter rolled out the first such deal with ExecTweets, a Twitter business executive site built by Federated Media and sponsored by Microsoft. But alongside that roll-out were two surprises: Twitter was also featuring Tweetie and Twittervision.

Tweetie is a third-party iPhone app; Twittervision is a third-party site that places … Continue Reading

The Facebook iPhone app has been reworked and open-sourced

Joe Hewitt, the Facebook engineer behind the company’s iPhone app, stated several months ago that he intended to open-source the code he used to make that app. Unfortunately, that proved to be more difficult than he anticipated. But five months later, it seems he’s ready to go with what he calls the Three20 Project.

The project, named after the width (in pixels) of the iPhone’s screen, isn’t exactly the Facebook iPhone app open-sourced. Rather, it’s … Continue Reading

Jennifer Aniston's body may be a wonderland, but she's got nothing on Twitter

Earlier today, we had a story about Twitter finally earning some real money through a deal with Federated Media and Microsoft to promote their new Twitter-related site. Now, it’s time for another Twitter story.

Apparently, actress Jennifer Aniston ended her relationship with musician John Mayer because he loved Twitter more than her, a report in The Telegraph claims. Okay, that’s not entirely true. What Aniston is said to be upset about is that Mayer wouldn’t … Continue Reading

Netflix: 'We're not slowing our streams…yet'

There’s been a lot of speculation about whether Netflix has been intentionally slowing its movie streaming service. As a subscriber who has experienced the recent slowdown, I also explored the notion in a post a couple weeks back. But, after weeks of claims, the DVD-by-mail company is finally setting the record straight — it’s not slowing down access to its online movie catalog for anyone.

Neil Hunt, Chief Product Officer for Netflix, attempted to clarify … Continue Reading

Confirmed: Zimbra co-founder Dharmaraj to become a VC at Redpoint

Updated with Dharmaraj’s confirmation

Satish Dharmaraj, the co-founder of Yahoo-acquired email company Zimbra, will become a partner at Redpoint Ventures, according to Kara Swisher at BoomTown.

Dharmaraj joined Yahoo in 2007 after selling Zimbra to the ailing Internet giant for $350 million. He left in January of this year. At the time, we speculated that he would focus on angel investing or start a new company — speculation that can now be classified as “close … Continue Reading

AT&T leaks June iPhone announcement information?

By now, it’s pretty clear that a new iPhone is in the works, and could be here as soon as this summer. While Apple made no mention of any new device during its iPhone 3.0 software announcement last week, there has been no shortage of rumors, which have now intensified thanks to elements in the iPhone 3.0 software code. And now there is more gas to add to the next-generation iPhone rumor, as Boy Genius … Continue Reading

GrubHub raises $2M for restaurant deliveries

GrubHub, a website for finding and ordering from restaurants that deliver, has raised $2 million in a second round of funding.

The Chicago company was founded in 2004, and has slowly expanded from its home city to include other metropolitan areas — New York, San Francisco, Boston, and most recently, Philadelphia. What it lacks in geographic reach it makes up in completeness; the company claims to partner with more than half the restaurants offering to … Continue Reading