EMC and NetApp's battle to buy Data Domain pays off for investors
After an arduous bidding war, electronic storage device maker Data Domain has accepted an offer from network storage and data delivery company NetApp over a nearly identical bid from EMC Corp. It says it prefers NetApp’s lack of a confidentiality agreement and that the terms with EMC were too conditional. But the real winners are Data Domain’s backers, including New Enterprise Associates, Greylock Partners and Sutter Hill Ventures.
Based in Santa Clara, Calif., Data Domain … Continue Reading
Nvidia says 42 Tegra-based web gadgets coming your way soon
Nvidia has touted its Tegra chip for mobile web devices in the past year, but it said today that the chip has more momentum than it previously described.
42 different devices are being designed with the Tegra chip. Customers include 27 different manufacturers as well as 27 different mobile phone carriers around the world. The devices include media players, web pads, and 12 smart phones. Some of them are more like a cross between a … Continue Reading
Opera Unite turns your computer into a server — is that a good thing?
Browser-maker Opera announced a new service today that it says will “reinvent the web” — Opera Unite, which basically turns your computer into a server, meaning that you can directly share content and communicate with your friends on the web, rather than going through a third-party service. It’s a cool idea, but also one that sounds like a very mixed blessing.
The early version of Opera Unite released today includes six services — file sharing, … Continue Reading
Sun Microsystems' code-named Rock chip crumbles due to delays
As Oracle closes in on its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Sun has voluntarily decided to lose some weight by canceling its Rock server chip project.
After five years in development, Sun’s commitment to the Rock chip has crumbled, even though the chip was key to Sun’s turnaround in the high-end server market, according to the New York Times. It’s a little sad in some ways, since the computing industry is going to lose some of … Continue Reading
MySpace confirms layoffs, up to 30 percent cut
Last week, sources told TechCrunch that up to 25 percent of MySpace‘s staff could be laid off. The News Corp.-owned social network has basically confirmed the news today, with new chief executive Owen Van Natta taking a dig at past management in the company press release: “ Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company.”
The cuts will come across the company’s US divisions, … Continue Reading
Mobile payment startup Boku rolls up social rivals, raises funding
Mobillcash, Paymo and Zong have spent the last year or so competing to offer mobile payment services, most prominently for social gaming applications and casual gaming sites. Now, as social gaming continues to grow in users and revenue, the competition is getting fiercer — and that means consolidation. Mobillcash and Paymo have been rolled up into a new, fourth company: Boku.
Founded at the beginning of this year by serial entrepreneur Mark Britto, Boku is … Continue Reading
CalPERS ups PE/VC allocation as other institutional investors cut back
Calpers, the largest public pension fund in the U.S., voted yesterday to increase its asset allocation for private equity and venture capital investments — a move that comes in start contrast with most other institutional investors, who are slashing their target allocations.
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers’ full name), says it will increase its investments in this area by between 4 and 14 percent of the recommended portfolio allocation. The organization says the … Continue Reading
iPhone, iPod touch users hit the Net from their handsets more than a computer
The latest report from AdMob and comScore won’t shock you, but it might make you rethink your priorities. Forty percent of iPhone and iPod touch users access the Internet more from their little best friend than they do from a computer.
Here are the highlights of the report, which AdMob emailed to us on Monday:
- 5 in 10 consumers on both iPhone and iPod touch devices use the mobile Web more frequently than they … Continue Reading
Neustar protects web sites from "poisoning" hijack
Web security company Neustar is launching a product that protects web sites from so-called DNS Cache Poisoning, something hackers have used to hijack web sites.
A year ago, security researcher Dan Kaminsky stunned the world with his disclosure of a fundamental flaw in the security of the Internet. He discovered it was possible to poison the Internet’s address book so that hackers could misdirect traffic from one web site to another. The patch he and … Continue Reading
Metaplace lets you grow your own virtual world
There are 30,000 new virtual worlds on the web today, thanks to Metaplace.
The San Diego-based company has created a platform that lets users create their own characters and virtual worlds. They are all interconnected in one site, which can highlight various worlds through its centralized plaza.
“The vision is to make virtual worlds into a first-class citizen of the web,” said Raph Koster, chief executive of Metaplace. “It has been the province of uber … Continue Reading
DEMO-VentureBeat meetup draws a crowd of entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurs and other cool folks were out in force today at the DEMO-VentureBeat meetup at Nola’s in Palo Alto, Calif. Here are some pictures of the turnout. This meetup was one of a continuing series of gatherings where VentureBeat and DEMO are working to drum up support for upcoming conferences such as DEMOfall. Thanks to everybody for coming! … Continue Reading
Twitter vs Tehran goes into overtime
For non-Twitterati, here’s the 140-character version of today’s news: They’ve finally found a use for Twitter. Iranians protesting last Friday’s suspiciously heavy 66% vote for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been using it to end-run the state media in Tehran’s largest protests since 1979, the year in which militant students captured and held 52 American hostages for over a year.
You can track the current situation by bookmarking a Twitter search for #IranElection. Twitter’s management earlier … Continue Reading
Huffington Post's new CEO says ads growing at 100% per year
Eric Hippeau was the CEO of Ziff-Davis for seven years, from 1993 until 2000 when the company was sold. Now, Hippeau — a managing partner at venture powerhouse Softbank Capital — has moved from an advisory role to CEO of the Huffington Post, one of the most critically successful blog publications to date. Can he make it pay off financially?
Hippeau’s interview with PaidContent is standard CEO talk: We could make the company profitable tomorrow, … Continue Reading
Tour of Facebook's new office building
Facebook gave a tour today of its new office in Palo Alto, which unites a large chunk of its employees at one site. Check out AllThingsD blogger Kara Swisher’s video of it below.
http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/atd/microPlayer.swf… Continue Reading
IBM to bring cloud computing (whatever that means) to big business
IBM just announced that it’s preparing a range of new services that it says will make cloud computing palatable to large corporations that largely remain leery of letting their applications and data reside on someone else’s infrastructure. And like all the other big companies who have moved into this market — Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Sun — IBM seems to have its own specific definition of the cloud and of the kind of cloud services it … Continue Reading
A victory for king coal as green startups still await their stimulus dollars
There’s one thing that most major cleantech startups — from smart meter makers to solar panel designers — have in common: they’re chomping at the bit for their promised stimulus funds. But as they wait to hear whether they make the cut next month (after an arduous application process), the Department of Energy has all but earmarked $1.1 billion — 25 percent of the full amount slated for smart grid — for a single clean … Continue Reading
iPhone app roundup: Myst, Isotope, Email and Walk
We now get so many iPhone app announcements that doing a post on each one would turn VentureBeat into AppBeat. So I’m going to bundle a few of the more interesting ones together into roundup posts. I’m into the business opportunities of iPhone apps, rather than product reviews. When appropriate, I’ll link to 148apps reviews or other thorough product evaluations.
Isotope
Price: $6.99
148Apps rating: 4.5 out of 5
Isotope looks like an old-school arcade … Continue Reading
$10 per gallon gas and other oddities from Tesla CEO Elon Musk
Gasoline should cost $10 a gallon, with a built-in carbon tax, Tesla Motors chief executive Elon Musk told the crowd at the Wired Business Conference today — a move that would be gangbusters for his zero-emissions car company (if the U.S. survived the ensuing protests, of course). But even with that boost, it’s unlikely he could pull off his other claim: that he plans to take over a Detroit factory from a major automaker and … Continue Reading
Live music: Imeem gets better licensing deal from Warner
Music startups have had trouble making money, partly because of high licensing fees they pay to record labels. But Imeem, a popular streaming music service had so many fees to pay that it was having trouble staying in business. Now, though, past investor Warner Music Group has worked out a new licensing deal with the startup, according to MediaMemo.
A source close to Imeem has confirmed the story, and adds that its advertising sales team … Continue Reading
MagnaChip goes bankrupt, lands asset sale for $80M
MagnaChip Semiconductor, maker of processors used in mobile phones, digital television and laptops, has filed for bankruptcy and has already lined up a South Korean private equity fund to buy its assets for $80 million, reports VentureWire.
The Sunnyvale, Calif., company took a dive late last year when the full weight of the economic downturn hit the discretionary television market, slashing sales of expensive liquid crystal displays. It had racked up more than $1 billion … Continue Reading
