Web 2.0: Facebook hands Microsoft its public status updates for Bing
Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg is on-stage at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The big news is that Facebook is giving Microsoft a feed of people’s public updates to be incorporated into search results. Sandberg said no money exchanged hands during the deal and that the company is “not trying to make money on data.”
(Sandberg said there’s nothing to announce with Google, which is her former employer.)
Here are notes from her talk:… Continue Reading
Web 2.0: Testing out Bing's Twitter-juiced search
Bing’s Twitter search just went live this morning. Here’s a side-by-side comparison against some of the more prominent start-ups in the real-time space.
A few notes – Bing’s results seem about two to six minutes behind other search engines. Like Tweetmeme and OneRiot, they put a bit more emphasis on the content being shared rather than the tweets themselves.
1) Trending Topics — Most major Twitter search engines incorporate “trending topics,” showing the top ten … Continue Reading
Web 2.0: Facebook's challenges in scaling to 300 million users
When Facebook’s main site takes an extra fraction of a second to load, it can be hard to appreciate the job the company’s done in building a unique home page for each of its 300 million monthly active users.
Furthermore, it’s not a homepage that’s siloed or separate from the experiences of others. Every time you log-on, Facebook has to pull data and updates from hundreds or thousands of friends and condense them into the … Continue Reading
Getting the most out of a bootstrapped IP budget
(Editor’s note: Cecily O’Regan is a registered patent attorney and member of the Intellectual Property & Technology Group at Greenberg Traurig LLP. She submitted this story to VentureBeat.)
Building an IP portfolio can be expensive. And pursuing international rights can be a daunting expense for a young organization – – especially if it’s self-funded.
But there are ways to keep overall costs down during a company’s early stages – and this frugality (and a well … Continue Reading
Web 2.0: US CTO Aneesh Chopra on using tech to improve health care
As part of ongoing attempts to reform the nation’s health care system, President Barack Obama’s administration is looking at how technology can make things better, said Obama’s chief technology officer, Aneesh Chopra.
Speaking today while onstage at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Chopra outlined the three big areas where Obama wants to use tech in health care:
Data: In the same way that companies can harness centralized market intelligence to make informed decisions, … Continue Reading
Extreme computing opens up unlimited possibilities
Editor’s note: This story is part of our Microsoft-sponsored series on cutting-edge innovation.
Several bedrock assumptions in modern computing are crumbling. Individual processor cores no longer double in speed every two years. Netbook PCs are as inexpensive as smartphones. Scientists and gamers now use the same computing hardware and tools. A single, massive cloud data center or a petascale high-performance computing system contains more computers than the entire Internet did just a few years ago.… Continue Reading
Web 2.0: Microsoft details its new Bing-with-Twitter search engine
Qi Lu, who left Yahoo after a decade to run Microsoft’s Online Services Division, is talking on-stage at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco today about Bing’s just-announced Twitter-search capability.
Here’s the core news:
Microsoft has a non-exclusive deal with Twitter to incorporate all the public information in the Twitter stream into search results in real-time. It’s going live shortly. They’re calling it “Bing Wave 2.” Financial terms are not disclosed.
Microsoft also has
Adchemy raises $31M to increase online ad spending
Adchemy, a marketing firm trying to convince more major brands to advertise online rather than through traditional channels by offering advanced data analysis, has brought in $31 million in venture financing from Accenture, Mayfield Fund and August Capital. Based in Redwood City, the company has now raised $58 million total, from other backers including Hellman & Friedman, Google AdSense co-founder Georges Harik, Half.com founder Josh Kopelman, and other individual investors.… Continue Reading
Google to work with Lala and iLike on music search (report)
Google is planning to launch a music search service with music sites Lala and MySpace-owned iLike, according to multiple reports.
So far, all that’s official is the fact that Lala, iLike, and unspecified “others” are holding an event titled “Discover Music” next week in Los Angeles. But it sounds like Google will be there.
With this new service, you’ll be able to search for a musician, then play songs streamed from partner sites like Lala … Continue Reading
RiseSmart lands $4.6M for online job search services
RiseSmart, a job search site geared toward employees who make over $100,000 a year, has raised $4.6 million in a first round of funding from Storm Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners. It has now raised about $9 million in funding, including the participation of several angel investors. Based in San Jose, Calif., the company touts its Job Concierge and Transition Concierge services, designed to help top-tier job seekers find the right fit for them.… Continue Reading
Stoke clings to dream of seamless WiFi-to-cellular roaming, raises $5M more
A few years ago, companies like Stoke and Bridgeport Networks emerged with a noble vision: Create a super phone network technology that lets you move seamlessly back and forth from your home WiFi connection to the cellular network outside. That way, you’d use the strongest and least expensive network available to you at the time.
While the vision has partly been realized — there are phone plans that let you do this — the sector … Continue Reading
HotSpur launches dialysis technology with new $2.75M
HotSpur Technologies, developer of technology for less invasive dialysis, has brought in $2.75 million to bring its two lead products to market. Based in Mountain View, Calif., the company is backed by Onset Ventures, Bio-Star Private Equity Fund, Finistere Partners, Saratoga Ventures, Three Arch Partners and Versant Ventures. It last raised money in November 2008, bringing in $1.75 million in a first round. Dow Jones VentureWire reports that it will need to raise $5 to … Continue Reading
REvolution Computing takes $9M for statistical software
REvolution Computing, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based developer of software used to support the “R” open-source statistical computing language, has raised $9 million in venture capital from Intel Capital and Northbridge Venture Partners.… Continue Reading
How to throw a kick-ass launch party (on the cheap)
(Editor’s note: David Goldenberg is co-founder of PigSpigot.com, a user-generated greeting card site. He submitted this story to VentureBeat.)
After a year of planning and development, our company recently launched in beta mode. We were thrilled with our product, wanted to celebrate the people who made it work, and were ready to start spreading the word about the site. So we decided to host a launch party. And not just any launch party; we wanted … Continue Reading
EA's Need for Speed racing games cross 100 million sold
Electronic Arts said today it has sold more than 100 million units of its Need for Speed racing video games since 1993. Gamers have raced cars in the game for more than 279 billion virtual miles.
Full told, Need for Speed has generated more than $2.7 billion in revenue for EA. But the racing game has gone through ups and downs through 15 different versions, and EA is still trying to reinvent and refresh the … Continue Reading
Smart phones will get smarter, cheaper and consume less battery with newest ARM chip
ARM is announcing today its newest microprocessor that will be the brains of smart phones and other gadgets that need fast performance and long battery life.
ARM design microprocessors that are licensed by chip makers, who customize them and put them into their gadgets where low power consumption is important. The company’s designs are used in most cell phones and have been used in 15 billion devices in the past few decades.
ARM hopes to … Continue Reading
HP lets you print old books or Wikia pages as your own custom publications
The democratization of book and magazine publishing is well underway. Every person can pretty much operate their own virtual press, thanks to innovations in web-based self-publishing.
Hewlett-Packard and Wikia are delving further into this with Mag Cloud, a service that goes live today. With the service, users can take the free web pages of Wikia — which has more than 3 million pages of user-generated articles online — and print them out as a magazine. … Continue Reading
Biggest laptop maker buys Canesta's vision for full-body gesture controls
The Nintendo Wii started a motion-sensing revolution in video games. Canesta, a startup that is taking motion-sensing a step further with full three-dimensional body movement sensing, is cashing in on the trend. Today, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chip maker is announcing it has raised $16 million in a new round of funding.
The money comes from some prominent new backers, including Quanta Computer, the world’s largest maker of laptops. Quanta says it plans to use Canesta’s … Continue Reading
Web 2.0: Carly Fiorina talks potential Senate run, breast cancer battle, and government tech policy
It was a very different Carly Fiorina who took the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit dinner tonight to discuss her potential run for the U.S. Senate.
Just as it was typical when she was the first female chief executive of Hewlett Packard, part of the conversation with Web 2.0 co-host John Battelle covered her appearance. But in this case it was relevant in the discussion about her political reviews.
Fiorina’s hair was a mix … Continue Reading
Hotspot Shield lets users get around web censorship
Pssst. Want to get around the Internet censors in your country? Use Hotspot Shield. That’s the name of the free, ad-based web-surfing tool that covers your tracks so that no one can cut off your access to sites.
The Hotspot Shield is a creation of AnchorFree, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based startup. The “virtual private network” tool is already used by millions of users in places such as China and Iran, where it’s illegal to get to … Continue Reading
