BookRenter vies with Chegg for textbook rental action

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, you’ll still find lots of startup news and innovation in our day-to-day coverage.) Today, we continue the series with BookRenter.com, below.

As I detailed yesterday in a story about open-source … Continue Reading

Blizzard says new World of Warcraft game due out in 2010

Today, game maker Blizzard Entertainment (a division of Activision Blizzard) kicked off its Blizzcon conference and announced that it will launch a new expansion pack for World of Warcraft. The game, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, will debut in 2010. There are 20,000 Blizzard fans at Blizzcon in Anaheim, Calif., who are no doubt going wild over this.

World of Warcraft is a billion-dollar franchise, first launched in 2004. It has 11.5 million paying subscribers (though … Continue Reading

Google opens video chat directly from iGoogle homepage

To try and make its personalized homepage, iGoogle, a little stickier, Google is allowing video chat directly from site.

To use it, you have to download a free plug-in. Then you can go on and video chat with anyone like you might with Gtalk. Your friends don’t have to have Gmail accounts to participate. All they need is a generic Google account.

The video chat is part of a push to make iGoogle more social, … Continue Reading

Microsoft taps Wolfram to make Bing geekier than Google

It’s surprising that Microsoft is working to incorporate something as wonky as Wolfram Alpha into its Bing decision engine. Neither Microsoft nor Wolfram will confirm the deal, but a blabbermouth has happily leaked it.

Why Wolfram? Because it’ll let Bing beat Google on its home turf of nerdiness. Both Microsoft and Google have done market research that proved no one expects Microsoft can build a better search engine than Google, so Microsoft has to change … Continue Reading

Apple — not AT&T — holds off on Google Voice for the iPhone

AT&T-bashers should take pause. It was Apple, not the wireless carrier, that held off on approving Google Voice for the iPhone.

Apple “continues to study” the application and hasn’t approved it because it may “alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality,” according to a letter to the Federal Communications Commission.

Google Voice lets you use a single phone number to receive calls on multiple phones and reach your … Continue Reading

News Corp wants allies in paywall wars; and this is legal how?

I’m no legal expert, but my general understanding is that companies aren’t allowed to come together and agree on pricing for their products. In some circles, that’s called price-fixing.

So it struck me as odd that News Corp is reportedly trying to enlist other media organizations in a consortium that would hide content behind a paywall. The Los Angeles times reports today that News Corp’s chief digital officer, Jonathan Miller, is “believed to have met … Continue Reading

Curt Schilling's game company, 38 Studios, loses CEO, names new one

Retired baseball pitcher Curt Schilling’s video game company, 38 Studios, has launched a giant project to create a massively multiplayer online game that challenges the bestselling World of Warcraft.

But today, the company said it lost a major player in its line-up. Brett Close, a former Electronic Arts game design executive, resigned as chief executive of 38 Studios. Jennifer MacLean, previously senior vice president of business development, has been named the new CEO.

On the … Continue Reading

Facebook's differences with Twitter underscored by move to integrate tweets

Facebook will start allowing people to export tweets from pages (not profiles) over the next few days.

The idea is to let organizations consolidate their social media activity to one place. Instead of having to send out a news item from two sites, they can just go to their Facebook Page and reach out to communities on both social networks.

“Public figures, musicians, businesses and organizations of all types who’ve created Facebook Pages often want … Continue Reading

Google launches Listen for Android podcasts, says Android can support Skype

Google continues to expand the ecosystem around its Android operating system for mobile devices, as evidenced by a couple of announcements today.

Google’s research arm has launched Listen, an audio magazine that lets Android phone users subscribe to programs and search terms. That lets users line up podcasts without a lot of hassle.

Google Labs’ Listen lets you keep a couple of hours of audio stored on your cell phone, which is plenty for those … Continue Reading

Lockheed to bolster utilities looking for DOE smart-grid funds

Global defense contractor Lockheed Martin is teaming with Black & Veatch, a major construction and consulting company, to offer utilities a suite of products they can use to improve their smart grid implementations. The idea is that their technology will up efficiency and grid security, making utilities more attractive recipients for grants being doled out by the U.S. Department of Energy.

So far, the DOE has taken a first round of applications for the $4.5 … Continue Reading

Amyris takes $24.7M for renewable biofuels

Amyris Biotechnologies, one of the best-funded companies deriving biofuels from synthetic microorganisms, has raised $24.75 million of a targeted $62 million third round of venture financing, according to a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Emeryville, Calif. company has raised an impressive $120 million before now.

Both Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have invested in Amyris — also setting it apart as one of the companies to watch in … Continue Reading

Solicit feedback, not funding

There’s an old saying: Ask for advice, you get money. Ask for money, you get advice. The team at Cooliris actually found this to be true. Rather than relying on a single pitch meeting, the founding team met regularly with a variety of companies to determine how their tech could enhance the Internet landscape. Product manager Josh Schwarzapel and CEO Soujanya Bhumkar tell their story in a talk given at Stanford University’s Technology Venture Program … Continue Reading

How Airtight Games started a console game studio with just $24,000

In 2004, Microsoft canceled a sequel to its Crimson Skies game, prompting the game’s executive producer, Jim Deal, to leave the company to create a startup. He and his team of four other ex-Microsoft game people had $24,000 of their own money and an idea to create an action-adventure game where you could fly. But that wasn’t nearly enough to launch a new console game, which is a near impossible thing for a startup to … Continue Reading

Game portal Candystand socializes its games with Facebook Connect

Old game portals have to keep up with the times by socializing their games. That’s why Candystand.com is integrating Facebook Connect today to turn its site into a gaming social network.

The game portal has 171 free casual web games with more than 5 million unique monthly visitors. By adding Facebook Connect, players will be able to invite their friends to play and challenge them to beat high scores. There are other big casual web … Continue Reading

Twitter had to smooth things over with P. Diddy

It was not the most comfortable of moments for the young, much-hyped startup.

A month ago, Twitter’s internal strategy documents were leaked by a hacker who had broken into the personal accounts of co-founder Ev Williams, his wife and another employee. Strewn through hundreds of documents were names of people the company had worked with or considered hiring.

And one of them was hip-hop megastar P. Diddy, owner of Twitter account @iamdiddy with more than … Continue Reading

Used-game seller Goozex expands into movie sales

Goozex has bootstrapped a solid business selling used games online. Now, at the urging of its own customers, it is expanding into selling movie disks online.

The idea is to make the chore of selling used goods online a hassle-free process that doesn’t cost as much as it does on other sites such as eBay. Goozex does this by handling transactions for you. Selling games has worked out well, so now the company is using … Continue Reading

Twitter to roll out commercial accounts this year

Yes, Twitter will start earning some income this year.

Co-founder Biz Stone said the company is in the first phase of rolling out commercial accounts that will entice business users to pay for premium services like detailed analytics. After that, the company might move into building business-oriented application programming interfaces (APIs), creating a “commercial layer” over the social network. The commercial APIs would be out “later this year,” he said.

“Twitter will still be free … Continue Reading

Apple TV to get long-anticipated upgrade?

For several years, Apple TV has been a mediocre product from a company that rarely accepts mediocrity. Left in the dust by a number of internet video-to-TV devices like Roku and even Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Apple’s offering has remained the same for a year and a half — and is more expensive to boot — $229 compared to Roku’s $99. But today, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster very publicly predicted that Apple TV will get … Continue Reading

Roundup: DOJ approves Oracle-Sun deal, Gamestop falls short, Twitter's charming memory loss

Here’s the latest action:

The Department of Justice cleared Oracle’s purchase of Sun — Larry Ellison’s $7.4 billion acquisition of the Valley’s rockstar server maker and owner of the rights to Java software, is a transaction on the scale of Yahoo’s ad sales deal with Microsoft. European antitrust regulators are still evaluating whether or not to launch an investigation. The Wall Street Journal reports that an issue about the way Sun licenses rights to Java … Continue Reading

Twitter had been in talks to buy FriendFeed too, co-founder Stone says

Twitter had been in talks to acquire FriendFeed before the start-up of ex-Googlers decided to sell the company to Facebook last week.

“If that’s where they wanted to end up, that’s the right move for them,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in an interview with VentureBeat, acknowledging that the company approached FriendFeed several times and would have considered buying it at its reported sale price of $50 million in cash and equity.

“We know them … Continue Reading