Latest GamesBeat@GDC speakers: Google Android, Crowdstar, Niko Partners

We’re moving right along lining up some cool speakers for our upcoming GamesBeat@GDC executive game conference. The event is set for March 10 in San Francisco at the Game Developers Conference in the Moscone Convention Center. Today’s featured speakers are as follows:

Eric Chu, group manager, Google Android platform. Chu will speak on a panel entitled A Sea of Mobile Devices which will highlight a discussion about the best mobile gaming platforms of the future. … Continue Reading

Intergi lets advertisers target big game audiences on the web

Intergi has quietly grown its network of online game developers and publishers to 60 million unique monthly visitors. And today it is adding another 4.3 million to its reach as it signs up Jagex Game Studio, the publisher of the hit game RuneScape, to represent the company on an exclusive basis to advertisers in North America.

Deerfield, Fla.-based Intergi represents game developers and publishers to advertisers who want to target the lucrative online game players, … Continue Reading

Moonshoot raises $6.6M to uses games to teach kids to learn English

Learning a foreign language doesn’t have to be dull. That’s the idea behind Moonshoot, a startup that is announcing today it has raised $6.6 million in venture funding.

The round was led by Alsop Louie Partners and TL Ventures. The company is also announcing today that it has appointed Tom Kalinske — the former CEO of companies such as Leapfrog, Sega of America, Knowledge Universe and Mattel — as its executive chairman.

Moonshoot, based in … Continue Reading

HeroEngine automates the building of online worlds (video)

Simutronics has been making games since 1987. But in 2004, one of the company’s teams embarked on an ambitious massively multiplayer game. But developers fell in love with the tools they used to create the game. And that’s how the HeroEngine was born.

Neil Harris, president of the HeroEngine division of Simutronics, has been actively licensing the technology to make game developers more productive when it comes to building the vast virtual worlds that are … Continue Reading

Real Networks lets you trim the videos that you share on the web

Let’s face it. We’re all lousy videographers and we have uploaded lots of useless and long home videos to the web that contain only tiny snippets of the stuff people really want to see.

For everyone who has been cursed with watching lousy family videos on YouTube, Real Networks is coming to the rescue. The latest version of the company’s RealPlayer SP software will let you trim your video clips so that they look a … Continue Reading

Twitter traffic up 9% after Google real-time search launch

After the launch of Google’s real-time search, in December, I predicted that Twitter would get a boost in traffic after declining visitor counts since peaking during the summer of 2009.

Looks like I was right.

ComScore data show the number of unique visitors to Twitter increased by 9 percent from December 2009 to January 2010. The 21.79 million unique Twitter visitors in January was an all-time high, just over the 21.25 million visitors that comScore … Continue Reading

Stephen King meets Xbox 360: a hands-on preview of psychological thriller game Alan Wake

How’s this for a psychological thriller? You work on a video game for six years. It’s a brand new story, with a plot that is more like something from a movie or a novel. It has a different kind of game play, where it makes all the difference in the world as to whether your character is in the light or the dark.

As you wait for the video game to come out, you’re in … Continue Reading

Cherry Deals lets you buy real goods to get virtual ones

Virtual goods, whether you’re buying raspberries for your Farmville or any number of equivalent purchases, are a gigantic and growing source of revenue for companies trying to make money on Facebook and other social gaming sites.

Taking full advantage, Peanut Labs Media, a company helping social and massively multiplayer game companies monetize, just launched Cherry Deals, to make buying virtual goods a little easier and a little more rewarding. Peanut Labs combines a few elements … Continue Reading

Liven up your presentations with SlideRocket's live data

SlideRocket, which offers an online tool for creating and sharing presentations, is introducing a new feature on Friday that should help you avoid stale presentation — it’s opening the applications to plug-ins that incorporate real-time data.

Chief executive Chuck Dietrich told me that his goal is to make presentations less static and more responsive to the most up-to-date information. For example, of you’re giving a presentation about a company, you could bring up a slide … Continue Reading

Can Mickey Mouse make great video games? Only by adapting to new audiences

Disney dominates much of entertainment media, but it isn’t the king of video games.

Games are a very big part of Disney’s business. It uses its entertainment properties, from Hannah Montana to Disney characters, to come up with titles that delight Disney fans who are also video game players. In other words, the game division has done a great job milking Disney’s entertainment franchises. But the company is still struggling to be recognized as a … Continue Reading

Safeway looks to shrink its footprint, signs up with carbon manager Hara

Grocery chain Safeway has become the latest major retailer to take greening its supply chain seriously. Following the lead of companies like Wal-Mart, it is making an effort to cut energy use and carbon emissions — and has decided to go with environmental management software maker Hara to help it make substantial, eco-friendly changes to its business.

Hara‘s software will be deployed across 1,800 Safeway locations, and will be used to capture data about consumption … Continue Reading

Privacy group argues Buzz breaks wiretap laws

Updated

Google today said it is willing to hear a privacy group’s concerns about its Google Buzz social media platform, even after the group filed a complaint with the FTC over the controversial service.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed the complaint Tuesday in Washington, arguing that Buzz, which builds a network of friends for Gmail users from the contacts in their e-mail program, violates users’ privacy.

“Our door is always open to organizations … Continue Reading

Calisolar catches $23.5M following 6N Silicon buy

Calisolar, maker of high-efficiency solar cells made out of cheaper, scrap silicon, has brought in $23.5 million in new equity, according to a regulatory filing with the SEC. The new financing is linked to the company’s recent acquisition of 6N Silicon, one of its primary suppliers — both companies’ investors contributed to the round, Calisolar says.

The new financing, part of what the filing says is a targeted $36 million round, will be used to … Continue Reading

NeoStim raises $7.5M to treat nervous system disorders

NeoStim, developer of medical technology used to treat nervous system disorders, has brought in $7.5 million in equity, according to a filing with the SEC. The company is based in Redwood City, Calif.… Continue Reading

Nvidia bounces back with profits as PC market recovers

A strong PC market buoyed by demand for Windows 7 computers helped boost Nvidia’s profits for the fourth fiscal quarter ended Jan. 31.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company is a big player in the graphics chip market, competing with Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. So its strong quarter is a good sign that the PC market is getting stronger. It’s also good for Nvidia, considering the company is months late with its Fermi next-generation graphics … Continue Reading

At long last, Blizzard launches closed beta for Starcraft II game

Finally, the 11 million or so fans of Starcraft have a sign from the heavens. Blizzard Entertainment announced today that it has begun a closed beta test for thousands of players in Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty.

The sequel has been a bit long in the making. The original Starcraft sci-fi game launched in 1998 and became a sensation in places such as South Korea, where the game is still revered in multiplayer tournament play. … Continue Reading

Oorja unveils methanol fuel cell that could triple EV driving ranges

Sequoia Capital-backed Oorja Protonics may be making methanol fuel cells to charge batteries in forklifts — but its new product, the OorjaPac Model 1, could give it a big-time entree into the plug-in vehicle market. Supplying 50 times more power to on-board batteries than competing fuel cells, the Model 1 could extend the range of electric vehicles like General Motors’ Chevy Volt or Nissan’s Leaf by two to three times — a game-changing development that … Continue Reading

Google acquires reMail, founder Cselle joins Gmail team

Google has acquired e-mail startup reMail, and founder Gabor Cselle will join Google’s Gmail team as a product manager. reMail will be removed from the Apple’s app store, but it will continue to work for users who have already downloaded it.

The San Francisco startup was incubated by Y Combinator and raised funding from Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh, who worked on Gmail and co-founded the newly-acquired FriendFeed. Cselle declined to comment further on the … Continue Reading