Google Labs ups the ante in image search, provides Google-eyed view of history

Google just announced two cool new applications as part of its experimental Labs area today — an improved Image Search that helps you find similar images, and a new timeline for exploring stories in Google News.

Google hasn’t released much information about how Similar Images works under the hood, but the interface is pretty slick — you just run a normal image search, and then click the “similar images” link underneath. This is particularly useful … Continue Reading

TiVo's still watching you, but by region now

It’s no secret TiVo has been watching its subscribers. But now the DVR company has announced it’s giving advertisers up-to-the-minute info on what users are watching (and fast-forwarding through) based on specific geographic regions.

As a web-enabled DVR/TV guide service, TiVo already collects a wealth of data on its users’ viewing habits on a national level. Today’s announcement is an expansion of those efforts by repackaging this data for advertisers and content providers on a … Continue Reading

Q1 venture investing numbers not as dire as they look

[Editor's Note: Adeo Ressi published a version of this story earlier on TheFunded.com.]

The National Venture Capital Association released abysmal venture investing numbers for Q1 2009 on Friday and Saturday evening, after most media outlets had closed. The rushed articles that appeared over the weekend were either data driven, sensational, or wrong, and the story may not gather any more news cycles, which is a shame. As Founding Member of TheFunded.com, I avoid writing … Continue Reading

Meru snags $30M for virtual wireless service

Meru Networks, provider of a virtual wireless service that departs from typical hub-based service, has raised $30 million in a fifth round of funding. Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., the company says it is able to deliver wireless solutions that are easier for businesses to adopt and scale according to their needs. It says the new funding will be used to meet demand the company is seeing especially from the health care and education sectors.

The … Continue Reading

Popular video site Dailymotion gets new CEO, looks for cash

French video-sharing site Dailymotion, which has long fancied itself as a leading competitor to YouTube outside of the U.S. market, is reportedly seeking more cash even after raising $34 million two years ago. It is still losing money, according to PaidContent and the Stratégies newsletter.

It is also reportedly appointing Ian Brotherston, formerly of BT and AOL, as the company’s new chief executive, a move that may be announced later today. He replaces Mark Zaleski. … Continue Reading

Stock market tanks 2.5 percent. Was recovery a dead-cat bounce?

The stock market fell sharply Monday, as investors sold shares to lock into profits after a significant 24 percent recovery in the Dow Jones since March. The major indexes slid more than 2.5 percent, including the Dow Jones industrial average, which fell 200 points.

Reading the stock market’s direction is a necessity here in Silicon Valley. As much as local entrepreneurs and venture capitalists hate to admit it, their decisions are very much affected by … Continue Reading

Oracle to buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4B — finally, this makes sense

Updated
Oracle Corporation, the large software database company, said Monday it will acquire the server company Sun Microsystems for $9.50 a share, or about $7.4 billion. It brings together two iconic Silicon Valley powerhouse tech companies that have long shared a spiritual alliance, initially to resist dominance by Microsoft during the 1990s.

The marriage comes after speculation increased last week that such a deal might be in the works, because it makes a lot of … Continue Reading

Spansion sees 50-fold better performance with novel use of memory in servers

Spansion is announcing today that its EcoRAM flash memory can speed up the performance of some server applications by 50 to 100 times compared to traditional memory chips. It will be interesting to see if this innovation can help pull Spansion out of bankruptcy proceedings.

EcoRAM, developed by startup Virident and built by Spansion, uses flash memory chips to replace dynamic random access memory and hard disks in data center servers. Server vendors have put … Continue Reading

Adobe unleashes web video, widgets onto TVs

Adobe Flash, a platform for integrating animation and video into web pages, is making the jump to a television near you. Adobe’s newest take on Flash is slated to usher in a new era of enhanced living room gadgets – converting web-enabled TVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes into web video-ready, widget-friendly powerhouses.

To date, Flash has mainly been used to create ‘containers’ (i.e., YouTube’s embeddable video player) for delivering rich internet media to websites. … Continue Reading

Can graphics chip startup Caustic nab itself loyal developers?

Caustic Graphics is launching an effort today to woo software developers to its new ray tracing graphics chip debuting in 2010.

A rare startup in the mature graphics chip industry, the San Francisco company is creating a 3-D graphics chip that can handle ray tracing, a technique that can produce highly realistic graphics. The initial target customers are movie animators, special effects houses, and product engineers.

The company will be interesting to watch because it … Continue Reading

Madison Logic to serve up sales leads automatically

Internet ad veteran Erik Matlick has founded Madison Logic, a company dedicated to helping companies generate leads automatically with an ad serving platform called LeadFocus.

So far, 200 advertisers and 50 publishers have signed up.

In a year-long ramp up to the launch, the company has licensed dozens of media companies including: PC Magazine, iMediaConnection, ClickZ, Sourceforge, DMNews, Security Focus, and others. Matlick, chief executive of Madison Logic, says it’s like “Doubleclick for lead generation.”… Continue Reading

Roundup: US CTO choice gets thumbs up, EPA seeks new powers, Pirate Bay protests erupt

Here’s the latest action:

Tech industry cheers Obama’s CTO choice – He may not have come out of Silicon Valley, but Aneesh Chopra from Virginia is getting positive reaction to his appointment as the nation’s top technology official. The Wall Street Journal has more. Our initial story is here.

EPA to seek new powers over climate regulations — Two years after the Supreme Court said the Clean Air Act gave the EPA the power to … Continue Reading

VCs are turning the screws with financing terms

Deal terms in venture financing transactions have changed as a result of the recent economic downturn. As capital has become scarce for many start-ups and investors are increasingly skittish, terms have shifted markedly toward the investor-favorable end of the spectrum.

The venture fundraising process is now considerably longer, with more due diligence cycles and less urgency for prospective investors to commit capital. And when investors do commit to a funding round, it is often at … Continue Reading

Konami's 2009 games include controversial Fallujah episode of Iraq War

Konami Digital Entertainment recently showcased its slate of 2009 games, included a controversial one based on Fallujah, a battle site in the Iraq war.

Anthony Crouts, vice president of marketing at Konami Digital Entertainment, talks about this and the company’s other new titles.

VB: Can you talk about Six Days in Fallujah and how that came about?

AC: When a handful of Marines from the 3-1 battalion came back from Fallujah, they approached Atomic Games … Continue Reading

WPP sues TV ad company Spot Runner for "pump-and-dump scheme"

Update:  Added the WPP complaint below.

Update II: Added letter from Spot Runner to employees, sent out Friday, below.

Spot Runner, the start-up Web company that lets advertisers places ads on TV, has been sued by one of its investors, WPP Group for securities fraud and breach of contract, AdAge reports.

WPP, one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, said Spot Runner’s executives aggressively promoted WPP’s investment in it to gain new investors and then … Continue Reading

Good luck with that funding: Q1 sees lowest VC investment in more than a decade

There are two new reports about the state of venture capital investing during the first three months of 2009, and they’re even bleaker than I expected. Remember when everyone was hoping that the economic downturn wouldn’t hit the tech industry as badly as after the last bubble? Well, on the VC side, things are actually worse than they were post-bubble — Q1 2009 saw the lowest amount of investing since either 1997 or 1998 (depending … Continue Reading

Chopra named Obama CTO, White House tech plans coming together

It took months for President Barack Obama’s administration to name a chief technology officer, and the winner may not be a Silicon Valley name like so many predicted, but we finally have one: Aneesh Chopra. As the Secretary of Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia, his job has been to “leverage technology in government reform, [promote] Virginia’s innovation agenda, and [foster] technology-related economic development with a special emphasis on entrepreneurship.”

But Chopra’s not a tech … Continue Reading

Aurora Feint signs up developers for its iPhone social apps platform

A gaggle of indie iPhone game developers have rallied around Aurora Feint’s social game platform, dubbed OpenFeint, and they’re excited about how it can be used to cross promote games to iPhone users.

In particular, the developers have embraced a new way to sell and discover games on the iPhone which is being introduced as a new feature on Monday.

The new feature is dubbed One Touch iPromote. Game players will now be able to … Continue Reading

Rumor: Hulu's iPhone app looks sharp, due soon

Hulu has done well as a browser-based video destination. So, it’s not surprising to hear (yet again) that the video site is headed to cell phones. An anonymous mobile industry executive says the video service will soon appear on Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, according to Business Insider.

Oh, and the source also says the forthcoming app is “badass.”

Hulu’s mobile iteration is expected to resemble its browser cousin for streaming prime time content, and … Continue Reading

Best Buy breaking into movie downloads?

Anyone who has stepped into a Best Buy retail store has seen its rows and rows of DVDs. But as the physical media market starts to wane, Best Buy is setting its sights on a new frontier — digital downloads. Sources close to the studios say the electronics retailer is preparing to launch a movie download service as early as this summer, reports Variety.

Details are still sketchy, but Variety’s sources say Best Buy will … Continue Reading