Meeting facilitator TimeBridge launches pro version

TimeBridge, the company devoted to making business meetings easier by connecting your calendar with others’ regardless of what software they’re using, today launched TimeBridge Business Plus, a premium version of of the service that adds a number of new features for businesses large and small.

TimeBridge’s new offering is all about making your meetings better. In addition to the initial product, which coordinates schedules of employees whether they use Outlook, Google Calendar, iCal or something … Continue Reading

Hong Kong's 6 Waves raises $17.5M for Facebook games

6 Waves has shown that new entrants can still break into the Facebook apps market. And because of that, the Hong Kong company has been able to raise $17.5 million in a round of funding from Insight Venture Partners.

The company has more than 141 applications that have attracted 44 million monthly active users on Facebook, according to AppData. A year ago, it had 60 apps and 22 million users, says Inside Facebook. The company … Continue Reading

Seesmic goes after mainstream consumers, tablets with Look

The typical Twitter client, which is used to read tweets, might resemble rocket science to grandma. With two, three, or four columns of tweets and sometimes embedded photos and videos streaming down an interface continuously, it’s understandably bewildering to a mainstream audience.

With that in mind, Seesmic, which is behind several mobile, desktop and web-based social media clients for keeping track of tweets and Facebook updates, is going after regular consumers with a new product … Continue Reading

Box.net improves sharing with an online document viewer

Document-sharing startup Box.net is getting a major upgrade today. It has always been a site where you can share all kinds of files and documents — but if a co-worker or colleague wanted to actually use those files, they’d have to download them and open them with the right software. Starting today, however, users can view those files online in Box.net, with the company’s new document viewer.

Now, if they don’t want to bother with … Continue Reading

Chinese authorities embrace game censorship and protectionism

China seems to be heading down the wrong road in video games. It is evidently embracing both censorship and protectionism and seems bent on limiting Western involvement in the local Chinese online game industry.

This isn’t news to longtime followers of China’s game industry, but interest in the hurdles for Western companies in China has heightened since Google publicized its own problems there.

And it was reinforced in a talk this week by Sun Shou … Continue Reading

AdMob: Apple may break its tie with Nokia for world domination

It’s almost like Apple and Nokia are locked in a neck-and-neck game of Risk. The former, with its iPhone OS, is the dominant force in North America, Western Europe, Latin America and Oceania, while the latter, running the Symbian OS, still leads in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, according to December 2009 survey data published by mobile advertising network AdMob. But data shows that Apple may finally be making inroads on a global level.

It’s … Continue Reading

Amazon lets developers create apps for the Kindle book reader

Responding to the popularity of apps, Amazon announced today that developers will be able to make content for the Kindle eBook reader.

The new development kit has everything that software developers need to self-publish their own “active content,” or apps, on Amazon’s Kindle Store. The apps will go live later this year.

In the past two years, authors and publishers have been able to directly upload and sell content in the Kindle Store using the … Continue Reading

YouTube launches an experiment in music discovery

YouTube has a ton of music videos. But today, an alert reader, Ron Ilan, spotted something new: the YouTube Music Discovery Project.

It was launched quietly today via TestTube, the test labs at Google’s YouTube division. You type in the name of an artist or group in a search box. Then you hit the “Disco” button to find music. A playlist will appear as the search result.

I typed in “Plain White T’s” and the … Continue Reading

Social networks and smartphones fuel "mobile charity"

By the time you read this, over $24 million in donations will have been collected via premium text messaging for the Red Cross’ relief efforts to aid those impacted by the horrific tragedy of the earthquakes in Haiti. To be sure, this is a credit to the generosity of the American people and to the need, which remains great. It also marks a watershed moment for mobile giving. There were milestones, however, along the way. … Continue Reading

The Founder Institute goes global

The Founder Institute, the entrepreneur training program that grew out from venture capitalist review site TheFunded, is taking its first steps outside the United States with the launch of four new locations.

The institute started in Silicon Valley, and has since added classes in San Diego, Washington, DC, Seattle, and New York. And now it’s announcing classes in Singapore, Paris, Los Angeles, and Denver. That brings the total up to nine cities, and that’s less … Continue Reading

FloDesign adapts jet engines to power up wind turbines

Since 1990, FloDesign has been making aerospace and jet propulsion equipment. It is now bringing this experience to the design and manufacture of wind turbines under the banner of FloDesign Wind Turbine, and has raised $34.5 million (PDF) to do make its novel idea a reality.

The news is significant for two reasons. First, it has recruited a top-tier crop of investors, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (going in for a second round), Goldman … Continue Reading

Google ramps up HTML5 support with YouTube videos

Companies like Google and Mozilla have been talking up HTML5, the latest version of basic markup language for websites, for a while now. HTML5 is supposed to enable more powerful web applications that don’t require users to download any software, but it’s still in the very early stages of adoption (in part because it’s still being finalized).

Today, Google-owned YouTube made the first step in what could be a very significant move for HTML5, by … Continue Reading

Google promises fewer baffling ads in Gmail

I don’t spend much time looking at the advertising in Gmail, but when I do, it’s usually for laughs. For example, I just sent myself a test email about my trip to New York City next month, which Google used as an excuse to show me ads about NYC cruises (no thanks, but I can see why I’m getting that ad), NYC restaurant week (now we’re talking), and … ROR/LAMP enthusiasts. Um,what?

Now, I’m not … Continue Reading

Astrium seeks partner for space based solar arrays

The idea of orbiting solar arrays beaming power to Earth has been around since 1968. In 1971, Peter Glaser patented a microwave-based power transmission technology. Since then, most of the research has centered around that same problem of wireless transmission. Initial costs associated with launching solar arrays into orbit have also been problematic, to say the least.

Now, in early 2010, the European space company Astrium is looking for a partner to get a demonstration … Continue Reading

MIT project lets you author code with screenshots, pictures

Programming Luddites may have less to fear in the future.

A new MIT project called Sikuli allows people to program using screenshots in lieu of written code. Basically, it lets you reference user interface elements like a Microsoft Word icon, Trash Can or search bar with pictures of the button or icon instead of script. (If you look at the picture to the right, you’ll see functions referencing icons and screenshots of buttons instead of … Continue Reading

Tetris reaches 100M units sold on mobile phones

Though it was created more than 25 years ago, Tetris just keeps breaking records in the game industry. Today, the owners of the game announced that Tetris has sold more than 100 million units on mobile phones since 2005.

The games have sold for anywhere from $4.99 to $9.99 on everything from simple feature phones to the iPhone. That means it has generated anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion in retail revenues for Electronic … Continue Reading

OKCupid shows how to optimize dating photos with eye contact, cleavage

OKCupid, the dating site run by Harvard alums who love statistical analysis, has just released another data-driven study of its users. The topic? Profile pics and how to optimize them to attract more interest from prospective dates. (We covered an earlier study that  looked at how race affected response rates on the dating site.)

For this survey, OKCupid looked at 7,140 people randomly chosen from all users in big cities between ages 18 and 32 … Continue Reading

Will The New York Times meter kill traffic from social media?

The New York Times just announced that it will begin charging frequent visitors a flat fee for full access to the site in early 2011. Non-paying visitors will be allowed to view a certain number of articles per month.

The New York Times is the leading print newspaper website according to Experian Hitwise, and accounted for nearly 15% of visits to all newspaper sites for the week ending January 16, 2010. But visits have been … Continue Reading