Stephen Colbert shows off an iPad at the Grammy's (video)
Apple always gets an leg up on its competitors with the glamour factor of its products. It’s starting already with the iPad.
At the 52nd annual Grammy Awards tonight, Stephen Colbert whipped an iPad out of his coat pocket (must have been a big pocket!) while on stage giving an award for Song of the Year. He said, “Jay-Z, did you not get one of these in your gift bag? Am I cooler than you?”… Continue Reading
Amazon: "We will have to accept Macmillan's terms" on e-book pricing
We reported on Friday that all Macmillan book titles, minus a few stragglers, had been removed from Amazon.com’s U.S. site and its Kindle e-books store. The books were still listed, but you couldn’t buy them from Amazon, and still can’t on Sunday evening. Only links to third-party sellers are available. If you want to buy the bestselling tell-all about John Edwards, The Politician, a book that’s all over TV and radio talk shows this … Continue Reading
Why iPad will sell despite "missing" features
Since Apple announced its forthcoming iPad tablet device last week, there’s been quite a bit of banter about its shortcomings. The device has no camera, no phone, no Flash support, and doesn’t allow multitasking, just to name a few of the issues.
But before you conclude Apple’s made a terrible mistake here, remember, this is exactly how it launched the iPod Touch.
Remember how the iPod Touch came without a camera or speakerphone? It seemed … Continue Reading
Former Current TV strategist Sloan jumps to Twitter
Robin Sloan, a former strategist and executive at online TV site Current TV, is joining Twitter to handle media partnerships. He says he’ll help “producers, reporters, developers and strategists at media organizations that want to do cool, transformative things with tweets.”
He was recruited by a former colleague, Chloe Sladden, who experimented with one of the earliest uses of Twitter against a live broadcast. During the first presidential debate of the 2008 campaign, Sloan built … Continue Reading
Week in review: All about Apple's iPad, how a tweet brought 911 services to Haiti
Here’s our rundown of the week’s business and tech news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:
McGraw-Hill axed from iPad launch after CEO leaks on TV — The day before announcing its iPad tablet, Apple appeared to have removed McGraw-Hill from the list of publishers who will sell e-books on the device’s iBookStore. The move followed the appearance of the publisher’s 61-year-old leader, Harold McGraw III on CNBC, where … Continue Reading
E-reader comparison chart: 6 readers, 19 features
PaidContent.org has put together a thorough, helpful chart that compares the six most popular e-readers: Amazon.com’s Kindle 2 and Kindle DX, Sony’s Daily Edition, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Plastic Logic’s Que proReader, and of course Apple’s iPad.
The chart compares 19 features ranging from hardware to software to content.
Click here for the full-size version of the chart.… Continue Reading
Apple yanks Flash from iPad demo video
PC World reports that the iPad demo video which showed working Flash components in a New York Times webpage has been replaced. In the new video, the embedded Adoble Flash player generates the little blue Lego that means “I don’t have a working plug-in for this content.”
Why is Apple deliberately breaking Adobe’s Flash content? No one knows for sure. Theories range from “because Flash discourages adoption of Apple’s app model” to “because Steve just … Continue Reading
A pricing dispute caused Macmillan's disappearance from Amazon (report)
On Friday evening, we noticed that books from major publisher Macmillan had disappeared from Amazon.com, but couldn’t explain why. The fact that Macmillan was a partner on Apple’s iPad, which should be a formidable competitor to Amazon’s Kindle, seemed suggestive, but again: We didn’t know.
Now The New York Times has an explanation. Citing an anonymous source “in the industry with knowledge of the dispute,” The Times said the removal was caused by a disagreement … Continue Reading
EC Roundup: The need for speed – and three little words to help you succeed
Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner.
Ask the Attorney: What issues do I need to consider when forming a start-up? – In part two of this column, attorney Scott Edward Walker looks at the things you need to address as you’re ramping up your company, including IP, management and employment issues.
50 Three-word phrases that can make your start-up a success – The best advice is digestible advice – not long rambling statements. Serial … Continue Reading
Favilous joins crowded social bookmarking space
A young UK-based startup called Favilous has joined the crowded social bookmarking space. It hopes to differentiate itself from the legions of existing bookmarking services by building a community behind the bookmarks, so users can share descriptions of sites and help each other discover new online destinations (see a clip from one of their tour slides below).
On the site, users can see other users’ popular bookmarks as well as the most popular bookmarks in … Continue Reading
Ooh.com to create marketplace for activities
The founders of Sofa.com, Pat Reeves and Rohan Blacker, have launched a new startup that should be particularly useful for anyone who has ever had trouble finding things to do in their community, or while on vacation.
With Ooh.com, they’re offering a place for activity providers to sell their services with as little fuss as possible — much like eBay did in the late nineties for used and collector goods, but without the auction aspect.… Continue Reading
Apisphere raises $4.6M for location-based business apps
Apisphere, a company that makes several business applications that use location data, has raised $4.6 million in funding.
As others have noted, the Berkeley, Calif. company’s funding is particularly noteworthy since most of the high-profile location-based startups to-date, such as Loopt and Foursquare, have focused on social capabilities rather than business. Apisphere’s apps, on the other hand, include tools for location-based mobile advertising campaigns and a plugin that delivers alerts to Microsof’s email and calendar … Continue Reading
Tesla Motors files for $100M public offering
Big news for late on a Friday afternoon: Tesla Motors, the darling of the burgeoning electric car market, has filed for an initial public offering worth $100 million. If it pulls it off, electric vehicles will have officially gone mainstream.
Tesla was one of several companies in the cleantech sector named as likely IPO candidates at the start of the year, along with Silver Spring Networks in the Smart Grid space. With solar system maker … Continue Reading
Amazon.com mysteriously removes Macmillan book titles
Updated
Go to Amazon.com. Search for any publication by Macmillan, one of the world’s largest publishing firms. The Prince of Silicon Valley, perhaps, or Sarah’s Key. Or last year’s huge #1 bestseller The Gathering Storm.
Gone, mysteriously gone. We found Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, but his new novel Makers and his popular debut, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, have been removed. Robert Jordan’s entire Wheel of Time series of … Continue Reading
Victory: A ranking system for what makes a social game into a blockbuster
Alok Kejriwal, chief executive of Indian game firm Games2Win, shared a couple of interesting charts with me that describe a way to rank social games by benchmarking how they stack up in a variety of important features such as the quality of the game play, the virality of a game, which makes it spread faster, how original it is, whether it has international appeal, and how addictive or habit forming the game is.
Kejriwal’s own … Continue Reading
Sky Sports Channel to televise 3D sports match in UK
It appears that the blockbuster success of 3D movie Avatar is starting a new trend in 3D entertainment. This Sunday, the UK’s Sky Sports Channel will show a 3D live TV broadcast at nine pubs in the UK. Viewers will have to wear 3D glasses to view the live soccer match between Arsenal and Manchester United.
Sky won’t be disclosing the locations of these pubs in order to avoid overcrowding. According to the channel’s web … Continue Reading
First Round lets funded entrepreneurs exchange equity
First Round Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm, launched an exchange yesterday that allows the entrepreneurs they fund to pool and hold small amounts of equity in each others’ companies.
It’s a pretty unusual move that would allow founders to diversify their holdings earlier on in the life cycle of their companies. It could also provide an extra carrot for prospective investment candidates to approach First Round over other venture firms. The firm has spent … Continue Reading
With 3M users, Yola says it's ready to lead the website building pack
Yola, one of a number of companies offering free, online website building tools, says it has tripled its user base in the last year, from 1 million to 3 million users.
That’s respectable growth, but it suggests Yola (formerly known as SynthaSite) is still trailing competitor Weebly — chief executive David Rusenko told me Weebly passed the 3 million user mark a few months ago, but didn’t announce it because he wasn’t interested in feeding … Continue Reading
How BioWare tries to create realistic human faces in Mass Effect 2 video game (video)
Adrien Cho was the producer in charge of the artists for BioWare’s epic Mass Effect 2 video game, which debuted on Tuesday and has sold more than 2 million copies on the Xbox 360. We interviewed him about the art style of the science fiction game, which features close-up animations of humans and aliens talking. The game tries to render human faces so the look believable, but in a stylistic way. Of course, the company … Continue Reading
Hacked Twitter accounts a delicacy among cybercriminals
News that cybercriminals are seeking out user names and passwords for resale is nothing new — but according to researchers at the anti-virus company Kaspersky Lab (via Computerworld), stolen Twitter accounts are fetching a higher price than other credentials among criminals. One Twitter account with only 320 followers recently sold for $1,000.
Hackers have relied on malware software for some time to gather credit card numbers, bank log-ins, and whatever else they could find from … Continue Reading
