New York Times to appear on big displays at coffee shops and other venues

The New York Times and RMG Networks are launching a venture where the newspaper’s web site will appear on digital displays in coffee shops and other locations in five major cities.

The NYTimes.com web site will appear on more than 800 screens in business district cafes and eateries in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and San Francisco. That’s a subset of more than 60,000 screens that RMG (formerly known as Danoo) has nationwide.

People … Continue Reading

HP's latest business laptops come with Day Starter fast-start software

Hewlett-Packard‘s newest business laptops come with a cool application that shows your daily calendar within five seconds, even before Windows boots.

All you do is start the computer and then press the F4 key. The screen will show your calendar items for the day in multiple colors. You can also see your laptop’s remaining battery life. The application is aimed at people who are in a rush in the morning and need to find out … Continue Reading

Week in review: Bloom Energy's power plant in a box, Apple's sex ban

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

Bloom Energy: Is its ‘power plant in a box’ worth all the hype’? — Bloom Energy finally emerged from stealth mode, unveiling its “Bloom Box” fuel cell during a 60 Minutes segment. Capable of powering more than 100 homes while producing close to zero emissions, just one of these boxes could radically alter … Continue Reading

EC Roundup: Negotiators, boards of directors and some really dumb sales people

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

Ask the attorney: Should I hire a pro negotiator now that I have a buyout offer? — It’s exciting to get a buyout offer for your company, but is it worth taking the additional step to hire a professional negotiator? Attorney Scott Edward Williams looks at the pros and cons.

5 ways to make your startup attractive to VCs — Even during the good times, it’s not easy … Continue Reading

Go for a virtual run in Yosemite, hear your own footsteps

Have you ever thought how cool it would be if your treadmill could take you on a virtual jog through nature so you could watch something more scenic than the gym wall while you run? Well, your day is coming.

Virtual Active, which lets you access a library of running, hiking, and biking workouts filmed live in beautiful outdoor locations, is releasing a free half hour sample of its virtual exercise experience for download on … Continue Reading

Polaris' Ryan Spoon and Hollrr's David Hegarty on life in incubator Dogpatch Labs (video)

I recently stopped by Dogpatch Labs, the San Francisco incubator space run by Polaris Venture Partners. The venture firm recently exported its self-described “frathouse for geeks” concept to Cambridge, Mass. and New York, but San Francisco is where the idea began in 2008.

Basically, Dogpatch is a cool space (the San Francisco location is on Pier 38) where entrepreneurs can rent desk space with a bunch of other startup folks. There are lunches, talks, and … Continue Reading

OS X share up 29% in past year, slowly chipping away at Microsoft

Web measurement company Quantcast recently began publishing stats on operating system browser share from its sample of quantified publishers. Data shows that in January 2010, Microsoft Windows accounted for 86.8% share of North American web consumption, Apple OS X accounted for 10.9%, and mobile browsers accounted for 1.3%.

Apple’s relative share has grown by 29.4% in the past year, while Windows lost 3.8%. Mobile increased the most in the past year, more than doubling its … Continue Reading

Game media maven Jessica Chobot: We loved her until she said she didn't play FarmVille (video)

Jessica Chobot is an online media celebrity at IGN.com, having become an overnight sensation in 2005 when a photo appeared of her licking a Sony PlayStation Portable. Now she’s hosting a video show and blogging about who she likes having sex with in the Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age Origins video games (yes, in the games, the deed is doable). In games, she goes by The Baroness.

As a gamer, she’s as hardcore as … Continue Reading

Plastiki away! Boat made of recycled bottles ready to launch

Notable eco-warrior and banking heir David de Rothschild today unveiled his newest project: A 60-foot catamaran buoyed entirely by 12,000 recycled plastic bottles. Aptly called the Plastiki, the craft will be making a four-month journey across the Pacific Ocean to call attention to the problem of plastic waste and how it can be reduced in new, innovative ways.

Rothschild, founder of environmental group Adventure Ecology, and his team worked for three years to make the … Continue Reading

Marketers: 'Twitter is your small forward, Facebook is the point guard'

How should marketers approach Twitter and Facebook in relationship to one another now that both networks are emerging as power-players in the world of marketing?

WebTrends, a private equity-owned company providing brand advertising analytics for companies like Coca-Cola, said while Twitter is great for initially exposing new customers to a brand, Facebook is better at helping funnel them down a path of actions toward making a purchase.

The company launched a product this week providing … Continue Reading

Android may outsell iPhone in flyover states, thanks to AT&T

A report published Friday morning by ringtone vendor Myxer claims that among Myxer signups, “the number of registered users on the Android operating system has surpassed iPhone users in eight states, with seven of them coming from West and Midwest states including: Arizona, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.”

Myxer’s analysis is simple: Overlay the map of registered users with a map of AT&T’s 3G wireless network coverage, to which the … Continue Reading

As predicted, Silver Spring preps for IPO

At the start of the year, when everyone was throwing out predictions for the rapidly growing cleantech sector, Tesla Motors and Smart Grid networking provider Silver Spring Networks were pegged as the companies most likely to go public in 2010. Less than a month later, Tesla filed for a $100 million public sale. Now, unsurprisingly, Silver Spring has tapped bankers for its own IPO.

The Redwood City, Calif. company has retained Morgan Stanley and Jeffries … Continue Reading

DEMO: See the big trends (and speakers Dharmaraj, Fenton, Wong and Chien)

We’re shaking things up a bit at the upcoming DEMO conference in Palm Springs, Calif., on March 22-23.

The consumer Internet remains exciting, but we’re seeing more action around the edges of the Internet going forward.

The incoming class of demonstrators next month will show, for example, that there’s a huge migration of innovation to mobile and other device forms (yes, think iPad; yes, we’ll have several early glimpses of new innovation around the iPad … Continue Reading

Ron Conway raising $10M angel fund

Ron Conway, the angel investor known as the “Godfather of Silicon Valley” due to his prolific backing of web startups, is raising a new $10 million fund. This is the first outside capital Conway has brought into his SV Angel fund.

The news was first reported in TechCrunch, and Conway confirmed the story in an email.

Last year, Conway split off the SV Angel fund from his existing investment vehicle, Baseline Ventures. At the time, … Continue Reading

If Condé Nast built FriendFeed, it would be like Flavors.me

Flavors.me is a newly-launched site that gives social-sharing types a single entrance point for their many different feeds and profiles.

The site came out of beta on Tuesday and has already drawn attention for a few of its more photographically striking member pages, such as those for photographer Steph Goralnick and Gawker Media wiseguy Richard Blakeley.

So far, founder Jonathan Marcus told me in a phone interview, the site has signed up 50,000 accounts in … Continue Reading

Adobe dropping Flash Player 10.1 for Windows Mobile 6.5, focusing on Windows Phone 7 Series

Adobe has ambitious plans for Flash Player 10.1 on smartphones. Back in October, the company detailed its effort to get the new Flash Player on as many smartphones as possible in 2010 — except the iPhone, of course. Now according to IntoMobile, it looks like Windows Mobile 6.5 is going to be left out in the cold as well, in favor of the recently announced Windows Phone 7 Series.

According to an Adobe representative, Windows … Continue Reading

MIT building 3D displays from flying pixel-copters (video)

Imagine a large outdoor installation. It could be signage for a casino, large-scale artwork, or a steadily changing set of faces and images from the news.

From 100 feet away, it seems like a 3D movie still. Up close, though, the image proves to be made from hundreds of tiny flying colored LEDs, hovering midair in a three-dimensional formation.

That’s the vision of Flyfire, a project still in the bright-idea stage at the Massachusetts Institute … Continue Reading

UK politicians are latest victims of Twitter phishing attack

A wave of Twitter phishing attacks have hit many users over the past couple of days. While there has been a consistent stream of these attacks throughout the course of  Twitter’s history, two have managed to spread aggressively and seem to be infiltrating some well established political and media circles in the United Kingdom.

The latest victims according to The Gaurdian are several well known individuals and groups, including the UK’s Press Complaints Commission, BBC’s … Continue Reading

Baidu raises $50M to exploit China's online video explosion

The online video business in China is seeing explosive growth, as Chinese consumers learn how to capture and watch video and as Chinese advertisers seek to boost their branding. Several several emerging Chinese companies are scrambling to exploit it — so far, few U.S. companies are there.

Baidu, the leading Chinese search engine company, said today it has raised $50 million from private equity firm Providence Equity Partners to pump into Baidu’s new online video … Continue Reading

Windation catches $76.5K for urban wind turbines

Windation Energy Systems, maker of wind turbines appropriate for commercial buildings in urban areas to generate renewable energy, has brought in $76,500 of a $505,000 round of options, warrants and debt financing, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Menlo Park, Calif., specializes in turbines that generate between 5 kilowatts and 100 kilowatts on people’s rooftops.… Continue Reading