Game industry's pioneering spokesman gets lifetime award (video)

Doug Lowenstein, who was the voice of the video game industry for more than a dozen years, was given a lifetime achievement award at the game industry’s DICE Summit last night.

Lowenstein helped co-found the game industry’s trade group, the Interactive Digital Software Association, in 1994. At the time, the game industry was under attack from U.S. Senators such as Joe Lieberman, who wanted the government to censor the sale of violent video games to … Continue Reading

Google gets go-ahead to buy, sell energy — just like a utility

Last month, Google announced that it was applying to buy and sell electricity on federally-regulated wholesale energy markets via a new subsidiary called Google Energy. Well, it just got the green light from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — giving it the same rights and abilities as any other utility company, just like PG&E. The question now becomes: how will it exercise its new power?

It still seems unlikely that Google will actually set up … Continue Reading

Mobile barcode breakthrough means we may soon see them everywhere

Mobile barcodes seem to be about to go mainstream, with Nokia and Sony Ericsson pre-installing barcode readers on many of their handsets. Barcodes in mobile are generally used to retrieve web content. For example a barcode on a poster can be scanned and used to retrieve a web page where the user can win a prize. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this week, Virginia-based Neustar announced the first clearinghouse for barcodes, which … Continue Reading

EA's No. 2 exec shares five tips to avoid the game industry's mess

When John Schappert returned to Electronic Arts in the middle of 2009 to become the video game giant’s chief operating officer, he walked into one of the toughest transitions the company had ever had.

Losing money, EA was cutting lots of jobs, shelving game projects, and closing offices even as other companies were growing fast in new parts of the game business. These days, if you don’t have a game in the top 20 titles … Continue Reading

Blazing-fast Facebook pages boost member use, increase ad revenue

Speed up your website if you want to make more money. It’s that simple, yet most site owners only give site speed half their attention.

By contrast, the most successful websites on the planet — Google, Twitter, and Facebook — have staff whose job is to obsess over how long it takes to respond to an Internet request, to load a page, to login, or to process a transaction. When these tasks take too long, … Continue Reading

SK Telecom squeezes Android, CPU, and storage into a SIM card

South Korea’s SK Telecom is looking to innovate what SIM cards can do with its upcoming Android SIM, and Theme SIM package. According to Engadget, SK’s Android SIM shoves the Android OS, a CPU, user data, applications, and a gig of storage onto a slightly-oversized SIM card.

SK sees Android SIM being particularly useful for “dumbphones” — typical cellphones that lack a rich web and e-mail experience. It would allow for cheaper phone hardware, since … Continue Reading

Sprint 4G handset to launch by summer

Sprint has been rolling out its 4G WiMax wireless network in various markets throughout the US since 2008, but thus far the carrier hasn’t released any phones to take advantage of the new technology. Now Forbes has word from Sprint that it is aiming to release 4G phones in the first half of 2010 — in other words, by this summer.

Sprint has released a variety of wireless modems and mobile hotspot-type 4G devices over … Continue Reading

Nexon keeps growing as free-to-play games take off (video)

For the better part of a decade, Korea’s Nexon has been making online games that users can start playing for free. If they want, they can pay real money for virtual goods such as swords or decorations. Now the game industry is shifting in that direction.

Daniel Kim became chief executive of Nexon America a year ago and the company has grown its sales in the past year in spite of the recession. He recalls … Continue Reading

Out-teach the competition

In a startup, you’re never going to be able to outspend a big company – but David Heinemeier Hansson a partner in 37signals and the creator of Ruby on Rails, says you don’t need to. In this recent entrepreneur thought leaders lecture at Stanford University, Hansson explains how 37signals build its audience through blogs, lectures, seminars and other teachable moments.

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/swf/player-ec.swf… Continue Reading

MyEdu lands $5.5M more to help you graduate college while saving money

MyEdu, a developer of education web applications to help students graduate on time and still save money, today announced that it closed a $5.5 million second round of funding to expand its university partner network and launch new services.

MyEdu is a membership service that provides various web applications to help students and parents figure out the best way to stay on track and graduate college within four years without breaking the bank. According to … Continue Reading

Mint.com founder Aaron Patzer on making Intuit more Mint-y (video)

Aaron Patzer, who founded Mint.com and served as its chief executive until it was acquired by Intuit for $170 million, stopped by the VentureBeat office this week to talk about his new job and about his vision for the future of personal finance. Patzer is now Intuit’s vice president and general manager of personal finance, which means he’s in charge of both Quicken and Mint (which is continuing as a separate product).

“The good news … Continue Reading

FarmVille takes home a prize and changes an industry

Cultural change happens slowly. Unless, of course, you’re talking about the pace at which social games are sweeping through the video game industry.

In the course of a couple of years, Facebook games have left their mark on the video game industry. Their presence is now being acknowledged at the hardcore video game industry’s event for honoring its greatest achievements, the Interactive Achievement Awards at the Dice Summit in Las Vegas.

Giving away its first-ever … Continue Reading

Researcher creates 'Facebook for Scientists'

Imagine how much sooner Dr. Jonas Salk could have discovered the polio vaccine if in 1955 if he was on Facebook. Often, researchers work in a vacuum. They can be stuck on a problem blocking progress on their research that someone on the other side of the world has already solved. Yes, there’s a wealth of information online and in scientific journals, but what if there were one central place online where a researcher could … Continue Reading

Gunfire detector recorded sounds of Tesla plane crash in East Palo Alto

On Wednesday morning, a small private plane ran into power lines in heavy fog over East Palo Alto, in Silicon Valley. The plane burst into flames and broke up, scattering fire onto a day care center, a home, and three cars, according to first responder reports. Killed in the crash were three employees of high-profile electric car maker Tesla Motors, based in nearby San Carlos.

Now, investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board — the … Continue Reading

Mobile game maker Moblyng closes $1M round

Moblyng began life as FlipTrack in 2007. The Redwood City, California-based startup began by porting Flash slideshows to mobile platforms, sort of like Slide. Today the company makes the popular games m:poker and m:vampire.

Today, Moblyng filed SEC paperwork for a round of funding totaling $1 million. We don’t know from who or why yet — the company hasn’t responded to requests for details.

Moblyng was previously funded by Mohr Davidow Ventures and Deep Fork … Continue Reading

Facebook critics' profiles restored after press uproar

After an uproar in Latin American media, three Argentines involved in a book that portrays the social network in a cynical and satirical light had their Facebook profiles restored today.

The author of the book Faceboom,  Juan Faerman, had his profile deactivated for nearly an entire month without explanation. Finally today, after inquiries by Latin American journalists and VentureBeat yesterday, the company reactivated the profiles of Faerman and his partners, saying that it made an … Continue Reading

Chinese schools implicated in Google hacker attacks

For over a month now, authorities have been investigating the origins of several online attacks against Google, thought to be launched by hackers seeing personal data on Chinese human rights activists. Today, they announced that two schools in mainland China, including one linked to the military, might be the source — a break in the case first reported by the New York Times.

While the major American search engine only reported the attacks in mid-January, … Continue Reading

Twitter, Digg investor: Be a Thunder Lizard, don't sell to Google

Mike Maples Jr., an early backer of popular web startups like Twitter and Digg, ended today’s Future of Funding event in San Mateo (co-sponsored by VentureBeat) with a passionate keynote urging attendees to either found or fund “Thunder Lizard” companies.

Those are the companies that defy conventional venture wisdom, which says you either make small bets for a small payoff, or big investments for a big payoff, Maples said. Like Godzilla, Thunder Lizards start out … Continue Reading

Zynga's chief designer shares tips learned from social games

Zynga has become the envy of the video game industry because it has so many users for its Facebook games. So Brian Reynolds, chief designer at Zynga and a veteran of the traditional video game industry, got a lot of attention for his talk about designing hit social games.

The talk at the Dice Summit was also an interesting contrast to the morning speech by Jesse Schell about how traditional game developers fear Facebook. Reynolds … Continue Reading