In recession, social gaming comes of age

Like a new mafia clan in the formative Facebook game Mob Wars, the social gaming industry has carved out its territory, flexed its muscles, earned respect and laid out a map of the turf it will conquer.

The second annual Social Gaming Summit in San Francisco showcased the growing maturity and diversity of the social gaming landscape. One of the bright spots of the recession-pounded Silicon Valley economy, social gaming has seen rapid growth in … Continue Reading

Palm Pre gets app store and 150+ apps adapted from old Palm software

Palm’s new Pre smartphone has been slammed by critics for its dearth of apps. But San Mateo, Calif.-based MobiHand and MotionApps say they have a solution: emulated versions of older Palm software.

MotionApps has built software that allows older apps based on the Palm OS to run on the new operating system. It’s called the MotionApps Classic Palm OS emulator, and it can run the older apps on the Pre faster than they originally ran, … Continue Reading

How Apple can improve the iPhone as a game platform

Apple has come a long way with games on the iPhone. There are 12,403 games among the 59,073 apps, according to Mobclix. The iPhone 3.0 software and the iPhone 3G S have a lot of cool features that help games, such as notifications that tell you when it’s your turn in a multiplayer match.

But Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, says there is plenty that Apple can do to make the iPhone better.

Yesterday, … Continue Reading

Zink gets fans to design future versions of its inkless printers

Crowdsourcing is paying off in a variety of ways as companies get their fans to do their work for them.

Zink Imaging is the latest to do so. It’s solicited fans to design future versions of its printers that have no ink cartridges but instead melt ink embedded in paper. One of the challenges Zink faces is that companies have to figure out how to embed its printing technology in gadgets, such as digital cameras.… Continue Reading

Facebook debuts live chat pages, Ustream live video

Facebook’s new Live Stream Box is a cut-and-paste HTML widget that can be added to a website to let Facebook users chat alongside a live event. Updates to the stream post quickly and then wash off the screen, to maximize the live-event feel.

In the example shown below, Mashable founder and poster boy Pete Cashmore has set up a Live Stream Box next to a video window.

At the same time, Facebook and Ustream have … Continue Reading

Wi-Fi Rail brings the wireless web to mass transit

Editor’s note: This is part of VentureBeat’s series “Startup Spotlight.” Every week, we’ll sift through the scores of companies applying to be promoted and profile the best one. Companies can sign up here at the Entrepreneur Corner, which is currently sponsored by Microsoft. (Of course, we’re still interested in covering startup news and innovation in our day-to-day coverage.) Today, we continue the series with Wi-Fi Rail, below.

Wi-Fi Rail, a startup that provides high-speed internet … Continue Reading

Reid Hoffman leaves LinkedIn's CEO spot … again

Business social networking site LinkedIn has announced its third chief executive in less than a year — founder Reid Hoffman–  is stepping down from the CEO role he assumed in December, and President Jeff Weiner is taking his place.

Not surprisingly, the Mountain View, Calif. company’s press release emphasizes the continuity in the decision, quoting Hoffman as saying, “Over the past six months, Jeff has done an exceptional job leading the company and I look … Continue Reading

Facebook to offer better sharing filters

Facebook wants people to share more information, because more sharing means more data to use in targeting ads, and more chances to serve up those ads. So today, it’s making sharing a little bit easier by allowing people to limit the information they want to share to specific groups of friends on the site.

In a beta test it is beginning to roll out, the company will let you use the “Publisher” sharing box at … Continue Reading

Take-Two experimenting with online NBA game in China

Take-Two Interactive announced yesterday that it’s going to launch an online version of its NBA 2K basketball game in Asia. It will do so in partnership with Tencent Holdings, China’s largest online game operator.

The deal shows that Western game publishers continue to experiment with launching online games in Asia, where the free-to-play business model prevails. That is, the basic games are available for free and players can pay to expand the experience via micro … Continue Reading

Facebook looks for more international ad revenue

Facebook Ads, the social network’s advertising system, could start making more money soon. The company is letting people buy ads in 14 more currencies, including major ones like the euro — this is a big expansion from just having people purchase ads in US dollar units.

Independent calculations of Facebook’s revenue suggest — based on the company’s own statements — that it could make up to $500 million in revenue this year. Most of it … Continue Reading

Government dumps funds on electric car biz, including $465M for Tesla

After months of limping along on media hype and limited funds, Ford, Nissan and Tesla Motors have finally had their big electric vehicle pay day — receiving $5.9 billion, $1.6 billion and $465 million in low-interest loans respectively from the U.S. Department of Energy to revamp their factories and push forward ambitious production schedules.

The loans are part of the DOE’s $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan program, which drew more than 100 applications. … Continue Reading

AdMob shuts off ad aggregators

Update: Representatives from AdMob and AdWhirl are continuing the discussion in the comments below this article.

AdMob, the 800-pound gorilla of iPhone ad networks, plans to stop allowing other ad networks to deliver its ads as part of a multi-network service. While the company claims user complaints over broken ads was the major driver, the move will allow AdMob to keep a larger cut of ad revenue — 50 percent is common.

AdMob serves about … Continue Reading

ZeniMax Media buys id Software, legendary maker of Doom

Zenimax Media said today it is buying id Software, the legendary developer of the Doom and Wolfenstein video games. The purchase price wasn’t disclosed.

The deal is a huge development in the game industry, where Mesquite, Texas-based id was the crown jewel among independent game studios.

The company has been around since 1991. With the release of Wolfenstein 3D in 1992 and Doom in 1993, it pioneered first-person shooter games, where you shoot at enemies … Continue Reading

HTC Hero phone will have a Flash player

If you’ve got an iPhone in your pocket, you know what’s most conspicuously missing from it (besides a keyboard): a Flash player.

Adobe’s Flash technology has evolved in the past four years from being hated for the proliferation of “Skip Intro” website home pages, to being loved as the Internet’s default TV-watching technology. Flash made YouTube work reliably in 2005. So why isn’t it on our phones yet?

Well, now it will be, although not … Continue Reading

Google and Virgin's "Day in the Cloud" takes flight with a little turbulence

Google and Virgin America just started their joint “Day in the Cloud,” a daylong event to promote both Google Apps (the company’s suite of web services like Gmail and Google Docs) and Virgin’s fleetwide wireless Internet access. To that end, Virgin is offering passengers an hour of free WiFi to log in to the event site and play the Day in the Cloud game, where they use Google Apps to accomplish different tasks. (Though you … Continue Reading

Glu to launch mobile versions of 5 popular Activision games

Glu Mobile said today it will launch five new mobile titles as part of the company’s expanded partnership with Activision Publishing.

The new titles include a mobile version of Modern Warfare 2, Activision’s flagship game coming this fall. The console version of the game (pictured) is considered to be one of the most anticipated games of the year, so the mobile version will likely be a hot seller.

San Mateo, Calif.-based Glu is essentially contracting … Continue Reading

Roundup: Charles River hires F**kedCompany's Kaplan, NYT to charge for mobile news and more

FuckedCompany.com creator joins Charles River Ventures — Philip Kaplan (right) has joined the firm as entrepreneur in residence to evaluate investment projects in online advertising, consumer-facing internet products and social media. TechCrunch has more.

Google fixes up Chrome — The search company has released a new version of the browser remedying a buffer flow vulnerability that would allow anyone to run arbitrary code with the permission of another user.

Chris Anderson: Plagiarizer? — Wired editor … Continue Reading

PartnerUp lets big companies build social networks for small businesses

PartnerUp, which has built an online social network for entrepreneurs and small businesses, is now aiming for large, enterprise-sized companies with its Customer Community Solution, a platform for building customer social networks.

A social network builder for businesses? Be still my heart. But even though there are many companies doing something that sounds similar, PartnerUp is coming at the problem from a different angle. The idea isn’t to help companies create communities from scratch, but … Continue Reading

Microsoft leaps into home energy management game with Hohm

As we’ve reported, the big boys are jumping into the smart grid space just in time for the stimulus funds to rain from the sky. Google introduced its home energy management system PowerMeter in February; Intel has been hard at work developing a platform for consumers to view energy use on their computers and televisions; IBM is backing a bevy of smart grid startups. Now it’s Microsoft’s turn.

Today, the computing giant introduced Microsoft Hohm, … Continue Reading

TripIt ready to charge for real-time flight data and alerts

TripIt, an online service that consolidates your travel info from various companies and web sites into a single itinerary, is ready to start charging its users for extra services and data. The pro service sounds like something that a big chunk of TripIt’s target audience (i.e., frequent business travelers) would be willing to pay for, and there’s a lot of potential here for more services to come.

A big part of TripIt Pro revolves around … Continue Reading