Video of Arrington-Shukla fight highlights controversy of special offers

TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington and Offerpal Media chief executive Anu Shukla got into a brouhaha over special offers, which are used to monetize social apps on social networks, at the close of the Virtual Goods Summit on Friday.

At the close of a panel where Shukla spoke, Arrington asked how Shukla could defend her business of making offers that were leading the social game industry “into hell.” It just went downhill from there.

Shukla responded … Continue Reading

Week in review: A pop quiz for startups, Google's free GPS navigation

Here’s our rundown of the week’s tech and business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

Start-up studies: A pop quiz — “There’s a classroom exercise that’s a part of the Stanford technology venture program hits its students with each year: If you had five dollars and two hours, what would you do to make as much money as possible?”

Xerox develops a silver ink for wearable or throwaway … Continue Reading

Entrepreneur Corner Roundup: Bootstrapping lessons and how injuries can teach you about investing

Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner:

Sustainability: The ‘must have’ holy grail – While making your product a ‘must have’ to customers is hard, maintaining that status is even harder. Bernard Moon, vice president of Lunsford Group, runs down a few ways to stay on top.

Do you have what it takes to be a founder? – The fortitude of a start-up founder or co-founder is different than that of an early employee or … Continue Reading

Why virtual economies defy the rules of your old college textbooks

Scarcity — it’s the first concept drilled into any beginning economics major. And economics is about the production, distribution and consumption of scarce resources.

But in virtual economies, one could give a farmer unlimited grain and cows. So given that very key difference, if you’re the creator and overlord of a fully-fledged virtual world, how do you go about managing it (economically speaking)?

That was the topic of a talk by Live Gamer chief technology … Continue Reading

IBM tries to make government IT more open, especially for startups

It has become a cliche that government technology tends to be stodgy and out-of-date — President Barack Obama’s chief technology officer has even complained about the software in the White House. IBM said today that it wants to make things better, with a new software platform called the Government Industry Framework.

Specifically, IBM wants to make it easier for technology from different government agencies to work together, and with applications built by outside companies. The … Continue Reading

5 O'Clock Roundup: Sony still failing, Google jumps comparison ad train, Zuckerberg employee wears penguin outfit to work

OK, who dressed as Mark Zuckerberg for Halloween? Click it for full size. That’s the real Zuckerberg at left in this photo being sent around the Internets, taking an important meeting at Facebook with an employee whose passion for Linux led him to dress as Tux the penguin on the day before Halloween.

But no worries about the costume. It’s 100% certain that any lonely male readers will take one look at this photo and … Continue Reading

Bling Nation gets another $20M funding for its pay-by-cellphone system

Bling Nation, a Palo Alto-based company, has created a mobile payment service called Redi Pay that lets phone users pay for things in stores with their phones. I wrote about Bling Nation in July, when the company landed $8M in funding $from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Meck and Camp Ventures.

Today, TechCrunch reports Bling Nation has closed another $20M round from London-based Balderton Capital, bringing the company’s total funding to date to $33 million.

Bling’s payment … Continue Reading

Photo of the day: Google's Android dressed in its Halloween finest (and more)

Standing in its rightful place between a donut and a cupcake on Google’s campus in Mountain View, Google’s Android, dressed as a pirate for Halloween, salutes passersby. I have no idea why it’s holding a shopping bag, but it does have a peg leg!

Google’s not the only company celebrating. If you tweet ONLY ‘#trick’ or ‘#treat’ on the Twitter.com Web site, your dashboard will get a friendly visit from this bird:

For overly enthusiastic … Continue Reading

DEMO's visits to London and Boston show California is great place to launch

I’ve been on the road lately, in a continued effort to find and meet with the best companies around to launch new products at the DEMO conference, and have been developing some cool ideas for DEMO’s next conference in March. I’ll share more about those ideas in future posts.

First, here are a few thoughts, after wrapping up a trip to London this week, and Boston last week.

In each of these places, there are … Continue Reading

MyYearbook deepens push into virtual cash with toolbar, Target cash cards

A little bit of lunch money can go a long way.

Teen social network MyYearbook reached profitability earlier this year on the back of its virtual currency called Lunch Money. So it’s no surprise that the New Hope, Pennsylvania-based company is aggressively pushing it forward, with a new browser toolbar and partnership with Target for redeemable cash cards.

Launched about a year ago, Lunch Money and virtual goods now bring in about one-third of MyYearbook’s … Continue Reading

California anchors Tesla with $28.8M tax break

Tesla Motors, the hyped electric car company, just nabbed another win (in a long line of them since the spring), earning approval for a $28.8 million tax break from California’s Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority (a branch of the Treasurer’s office). The change will save them taxes on $320 million worth of equipment.

It’s hard not to view the break as a big thank you note from the state. Tesla CEO Elon Musk … Continue Reading

Toyota muscles into EV charging business with solar stations

Toyota, used to being top dog in the advanced transportation business with its hybrid Prius, has pushed into a whole new area of the electric vehicle business: charging stations. Watch out, Better Place! Move over, Coulomb Technologies! Getting a major automotive name in the charging business will change the game — or will it?

Toyota isn’t simply unveiling its own iteration of electric car charging boxes (to be anchored to telephone poles and other roadside … Continue Reading

Asian virtual goods market is seven times bigger than U.S.

The virtual goods industry in Asia is generating about $7 billion a year in revenue, about seven times the number in the U.S.

The gulf is so large it is resulting in big valuation differences between Asia and North America. China’s nine largest publicly traded online game companies have a valuation of $52 billion, compared to just $22 billion for the top four North American and European companies, according to Ben Joffe, analyst at +8*, … Continue Reading

Box.net raises another $7.1M for collaboration tools

Collaboration company Box.net has raised another $7.1 million from its previous investors, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and US Venture Partners. PEHub first spotted the regulatory filing, and chief executive Aaron Levie confirmed the news to me.

The new money is an addition to the Palo Alto, Calif. company’s second round and brings its total funding to $17.6 million. Levie said:

So as you know, we’re all about the platform, and building a strong platform takes a … Continue Reading

Billing Revolution adds PayPal to its mobile payment service

Billing Revolution is adding more partners to its platform for single-click mobile payments, with just-announced integration with PayPal’s PayFlow product.

As more and more web activity and commerce takes place on mobile phones, Seattle-based Billing Revolution wants provide the technology powering those transactions. It’s far from the only mobile billing company, of course, so when it first announced its platform last year, Billing Revolution emphasized the ease of use for consumers — once you’ve authenticated … Continue Reading

Salesforce.com's Marc Benioff: 'Many CEOs are afraid to get too personal'

Marc Benioff has been the reliably outspoken chief executive of Salesforce.com for 10 years. Salesforce was one of the pioneers of the software-as-a-service business model, where traditional software is replaced by a web-based application that customers pay for via subscription, and he trumpeted the model with ads declaring that software is dead. Now that SaaS and cloud computing are becoming an increasing part of tech business models, Benioff said this spells big trouble for companies … Continue Reading

Renewable Funding takes $12.2M to urge conversion to solar

Renewable Funding, a company that helps building owners finance the purchase of solar equipment, has raised $12.2 million in a first round of funding. Based in Oakland, Calif., it is backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, NGEN Partners, New Cycle Capital and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati.… Continue Reading

Data Robotics takes $10M for data storage

Data Robotics, maker of data storage equipment for small businesses, has brought in $10 million in a fifth round of funding. The Santa Clara, Calif. company is backed by Focus Ventures, Greylock Partners, New Enterprise Associates, RRE Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures.… Continue Reading

Virtual goods, real money — our video of day one of Virtual Goods Summit

Here’s our video of the first day of the Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco. Virtual goods in games and social apps have taken off and revenues are expected to hit $1 billion in 2009.

Yesterday, speakers at the “university day” talked about the basics of virtual goods and how to best integrate them into games and social networks.

Hundreds of attendees are expected to hit the sold-out event again today. Check out the video … Continue Reading

Start-up studies: A pop quiz

There’s a classroom exercise that the Stanford technology venture program hits its students with each year: If you had five dollars and two hours, what would you do to make as much money as possible? STVP Executive Director Tina Seelig discusses the query and how budding entrepreneurs responded.

What about you, EC readers? How would you answer? Sound off in the comments below.

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/swf/player-ec.swf… Continue Reading