Power.com lawsuit against Facebook dismissed
Last December, Facebook blocked social network aggregator Power.com and sued the company for what Facebook claimed were copyright and trademark infringements. In July, Power.com counter-sued.
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, who presides over the Northern District of California, dismissed the suit last week. Fogel’s written decision says, basically, that Power.com lacks the level of specific details necessary to justify an anti-trust claim against Facebook. “Power’s affirmative defenses contain no factual allegations,” Fogel wrote.… Continue Reading
PacketMotion raises $5M for network management
PacketMotion, a San Jose, Calif. provider of enterprise network monitoring and compliance technology, has raised $5 million in a third round of funding to build the sales and marketing operations for its PacketSentry Manager and Probe, a program that helps mid to large-sized companies comply with audit requirements.
Reservoir Venture Partners led the recent round of financing, which included Intel Capital, Mohr Davidow Ventures and Onset Ventures.… Continue Reading
Millennial moms taking over the Internet, study says
Millennial Moms are supplanting college students as the most connected and technology-dependent population, concludes a white paper by social marketing agency Mr Youth.
“What may have seemed like two polar opposites a decade ago now bear considerable resemblance as a result of changes in communications spawned by technology,” Mr. Youth’s report says. Women born between 1977 and 1996 are now in their child-rearing years. They’ve become trendsetters, Mr. Youth claims, for four different reasons:
They’re
Android app tidal wave coming, says Flurry
As app developers rush to prepare for the launch of Verizon’s Droid smartphone in November, new applications for Google’s open-source Android mobile platform have spiked 94% between September and October, according to app developer analytics provider Flurry.
“Developers who used to develop only for iPhone are now adding Android applications to their line up in record numbers,” Flurry president and CEO Simon Khalaf said in a prepared statement. “Flurry market data shows that Android continues … Continue Reading
Adobe and Salesforce.com combine their tools for business apps
Adobe and Salesforce.com announced a partnership today that brings together Flash and Force.com, their platforms for building and launching web applications.
Adobe Marketing Dave Gruber and Salesforce Product Marketing Director Eric Stahl say it makes sense to combine the media-rich, interactive features of Adobe’s Flash with the online infrastructure and business focus of Salesforce’s Force.com. Until now, bridging the two platforms required a lot of work from the individual developer — you’d have to build … Continue Reading
Sustainability: The ‘must have’ holy grail
(Editor’s note: Bernard Moon is vice president of the Lunsford Group. He contributed this story to VentureBeat.)
When I was a kid, Atari dominated the gaming scene. Sure, Mattel’s Intellivision and Coleco’s Colecovision had their loyalists, but to the general public, when you mentioned video games, Atari was the name that sprang to mind.
The company maintained that status for years, but as competitors like Nintendo and Sega became part of the industry, Atari quickly … Continue Reading
Sony to get Netflix movies on the PlayStation 3
Sony is finally catching up to Microsoft in getting Netflix movies streamed to a game console. Today, Sony and Netflix are announcing that Netflix’s collection of thousands of movies and TV shows will soon be available on the PlayStation 3, the New York Times reported.
Netflix already streams movies and TV shows to Microsoft’s Xbox 360. Gamers who subscribe to Netflix can use the “watch instantly” function to download and immediately begin watching movies via … Continue Reading
Tilera debuts chip with 100 computing brains for vast data centers
Networking chip maker Tilera is debuting a chip today with 100 computing brains. It believes that this hydra beast will be able to improve the computing power of data centers while reducing their power consumption at the same time.
The Tile-Gx100 processor is targeted at replacing Intel server chips in data centers, running cell phone networking equipment, and consolidating lots of network equipment into smaller devices. The chip has 10 times the performance per watt … Continue Reading
Watercooler raises $5.5M to expand social fantasy sports game business
Drawing attention to a relatively unnoticed segment of social games, Watercooler has raised $5.5 million to expand its business of making sports-related social games and online fan communities.
Watercooler has developed big fan communities on Facebook for sports and entertainment, with 26 million users across Facebook and six other social networks. About 85 percent of the users are members of social networking fan sites, which are monetized through advertising. But social games, monetized through virtual … Continue Reading
Zynga's Mark Pincus: I got kicked out of some of the best companies in America
(I’m live-blogging from Startup School, a daylong program from startup incubator YCombinator held at Berkeley today. Mark Pincus is the CEO of social gaming company Zynga . If these notes are a bit scattered, it’s because it’s paraphrased and Pincus is doing a stream-of-consciousness style talk.)
So Pincus starts his talk by outlining his pretty conventional career right out of college — he went into banking. Then to business school. Then he said he hadn’t … Continue Reading
Zappos CEO Hsieh: How to build a company culture that delivers happiness
(I’m live-blogging from Startup School, a daylong program from startup incubator YCombinator held at Berkeley today. This is paraphrased. Tony Hsieh is the CEO of online shoe company Zappos, which is in the process of being acquired by Amazon.)
Hsieh: Basically in college I was working at a pizza business. Then I started a company called LinkExchange and sold it to Microsoft for $265 million. The reason we sold it was because the company culture … Continue Reading
Mark Zuckerberg on how to build hacker culture inside a company
(I’m live-blogging from Startup School, a daylong program from startup incubator YCombinator held at Berkeley today. Mark Zuckerberg is on-stage for a question-and-answer session and I’ve embedded a short clip from the talk below. This is paraphrased.)
Jessica Livingston: First I want to go way, way back. I know you built a few things in high school. What did you learn from those experiences?
Zuckerberg: I mostly built stuff I liked. I built games and … Continue Reading
Matt Marshall: Overcommunication is good. Do it in person
VentureBeat editor-in-chief Matt Marshall made the attached two-minute video for a UPS series on “seizing opportunities.” The chief is too modest to post it himself, so I’m sticking it up here while he’s at brunch.
Matt’s theme is one I browbeat Web 2.0 utopianists with at cocktail parties: It’s great that we have an Internet so I can stay in touch with my friends who’ve moved to New York, but there are interactions that only … Continue Reading
Startup School: Stone, Williams on how they co-founded Twitter
(I’m live-blogging from Startup School, a daylong program from startup incubator YCombinator held at Berkeley today.)
Twitter’s co-founders Biz Stone and Ev Williams are on-stage for a question-and-answer session. This is paraphrased, but I’ve embedded a video courtesy of Alexa Lee below, if you want to watch the whole segment.)
Jessica Livingston: What were your main motivations in starting Twitter?
Biz Stone: We should start with Odeo, our older podcasting service. We realized we weren’t … Continue Reading
Friendfeed co-founder Buchheit: Most interesting part of Facebook is that it's not Google
(I’m live-blogging from Startup School, a daylong program from startup incubator YCombinator held at Berkeley today. This is paraphrased, but I’ve embedded a video below courtesy of Alexa Lee if you want to watch it in entirety.)
Paul Buchheit, who created Gmail and co-founded FriendFeed before it was acquired by Facebook, is giving a talk entitled “They told me to wing it and that it would be cool.” He has a few slides and is … Continue Reading
Week in review: Droid's iPhone-killing launch, Google's social search
Here’s our rundown of the week’s tech and business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:
Droid, the phone that finally lets me cancel my iPhone — “A new phone called Droid is about to hit the market at the end of October, and it will likely have the glitz and power to bury the iPhone.”
Apple’s Tim Cooks scoffs at iPhone competitors — “I think they’re trying to … Continue Reading
Sequoia Capital: The economy's not so grim after all
(I’m live-blogging from Startup School, a daylong program from startup incubator YCombinator held at Berkeley today. You can watch it here live or update as we go….)
Greg McAdoo, a partner at Sequoia Capital, said the firm has been making more investments in the last 12 months than in the preceding two years. The firm, one of the Silicon Valley’s most storied houses with homeruns like Google, was a whole lot less pessimistic than last … Continue Reading
Android phones give carrier services more muscle
Google’s Android phones have emerged as major competitors to the red-hot iPhone. And now Android seems to have yet one more thing working in its favor: Carriers have figured out that it offers them some very valuable options to help them differentiate their services from their competitors.
Fundamentally, Android is just an operating system that can be customized due to its open source nature (not so the iPhone). The business alliance behind Android, the Open … Continue Reading
Entrepreneur Corner Roundup: Are VCs sexist? And throwing a kick-ass launch party for next to nothing
Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner:
The VC gender gap – Are VCs sexist? – The Venture Capital game is a boy’s club. Jeff Bussgang, general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, would know as he sees it every day – which caused him to wonder: Is the VC world one that actively discourages women?
Are you creating or stealing customers? – Creating customers out of thin air is the holy grail of start-ups, but … Continue Reading
A review of location-based networks — and how they can grow faster
Location based social networking keeps getting tremendous hype, but the question is whether it will live up to its potential.
The buzz continued this week when Loopt, one of the earliest location-based social networks, announced the acquisition of GraffitiGEO. Loopt recommends places to go based on your location, and informs you of friends around you. Several industry observers have raved about the potential of location-based social networks for businesses and advertising. “Context awareness is critical … Continue Reading
