Round-up: Wolfram Alpha drops its $50 app price, Hulu profitable, pundits review iPad

Here’s the latest action:

Wolfram Alpha gets the message: The quirky computational search engine dropped the price of its mobile web app to $1.99 from $49.99. They also launched a mobile web page and are promising a refund to buyers who came in at the app’s original unusually high price. Barak Berkowitz, the company’s newly-minted managing director who came from Six Apart, said the move was to “democratize” access to the app.

Distimo launches … Continue Reading

Playdom acquires Three Melons social game company in Argentina

Playdom, the fast-growing social gaming company in Silicon Valley, announced today that it has acquired Buenos Aires-based game development studio Three Melons. The terms were not disclosed.

Playdom’s General Counsel Brad Serwin said in an interview that his company is bullish on social game talent in Argentina. He added, “There seems to be a style there (in game development) different from what is seen in the U.S., which adds a dimension to our game design … Continue Reading

The only thing missing at Kleiner Perkins' iFund event? An iPad

$200 million still won’t buy an iPad that you can show off before Saturday’s launch. At least, that’s one of the messages I took from venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ iFund event this morning, where it announced it’s doubling the size of the iFund from $100 to $200 million.

Kleiner Perkins and its portfolio companies were all full of praise for the iPad, with partner John Doerr declaring that it will “rule the … Continue Reading

Review: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 map pack is just so-so

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has sold well above 15 million copies since November. So you can bet the $15 downloadable multiplayer map pack that arrived yesterday is going to be one of the most popular ever.

The so-called Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Pack debuted yesterday as exclusive downloadable content on Microsoft’s Xbox Live online game service. It’s part of a trend of releasing digital add-on content to keep gamers engaged with a game … Continue Reading

On the Internet, every day is April Fools' Day

My April 1st feature for The New York Times asks The Onion, Facebook, corporate pranksters The Yes Men, and anti-fraud firm Identity Theft 911 to explain how to tell what’s real on the Internet from what’s not.

The problem is that new Internet inventions can read so much like practical jokes. Remember April 1st, 2004, when Google announced a free email service called Gmail? A gigabyte of free personal storage was paired with an ad … Continue Reading

Whoops: YouTube upgrade takes down the site

Google-owned video sharing site YouTube, whose marketers have billed it as the word’s second largest search engine, is currently throwing HTTP error messages at some of the Web surfers trying to check out the site’s new look or, more likely, just wanting to watch some clips.

There’s a lesson for startup founders here. Too often, companies who approach VentureBeat for coverage try to schedule a big launch event in which news about the company is … Continue Reading

Toura helps museums build their mobile apps

Toura, a company that wants to help cultural institutions offer virtual tours in the form of mobile applications, just announced that it has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from unidentified angel investors.

The New York company says that, by using its web-based tools, an attraction like a museum or a zoo could create interactive multimedia tours that can then be distributed on iPhone, Android, Nokia, and BlackBerry devices. These tours are a form of … Continue Reading

Vivaty shuts down site for user-generated virtual scenes

Virtual world company Vivaty announced on its site today that it will shut down its user-generated “virtual scenes” site on April 16, another victim of the malaise around virtual worlds.

Jay Weber, chief technical officer and co-founder, announced on the company’s blog that the site will close because its business of letting users create their own 3D virtual spaces just hasn’t taken off.

“I apologize to our loyal users that this must be so,” Weber … Continue Reading

Record number of cleantech deals in Q1 as green transportation heats up

The cleantech sector continues its strong rebound as the economy gradually comes back to life. The first quarter is notoriously slow for most industries, but the number of cleantech venture deals hit record heights, up 29 percent from fourth quarter and 83 percent from Q1 of last year, according to the quarterly report released by the Cleantech Group.

The other major revelation: Advanced transportation solutions broke out as the number one category for cleantech investing, … Continue Reading

Motorola Droid finally receives Android 2.1 update with multitouch web browser

Verizon has finally begun rolling out the Android 2.1 update to Motorola Droid users, according to Engadget.

As we mentioned in our previous coverage of the update — which was initially supposed to land sometime in early February — it includes pinch-to-zoom multitouch capabilities in the web browser, maps, and gallery applications. It will also include Google Goggles, a visual search app for Android that generates search results from photos.

Other new features include speech-to-text … Continue Reading

YouTube redesign aims to reduce clutter, raise traffic

YouTube is in the process of rolling out a new look and feel. The Google-owned video sharing site will, according to a briefing given to Mashable writer Benn Parr, be less cluttered and more inviting toward longer video-watching sessions.

The company’s goal is to get you to watch more videos. The update is scheduled to be completed by 7 PM Pacific time tonight.

The most interesting part of Parr’s briefing was that YouTube officials told … Continue Reading

Foursquare location game generating real-world rewards as it approaches 1M users

As Foursquare approaches a million users a year after launching its location-based game, the company is making formal alliances with brands and stores that want to exploit its popularity. And that is turning into real money for an app that many people believed was pointless when it started.

Dennis Crowley, chief executive of Foursquare (right), said at the Where 2.0 conference today that more stores, restaurants and brands are joining the company’s new digital coupon … Continue Reading

Google to make big alternative energy announcement?

[Updated: So, as commenters have suggested, this is probably just an elaborate April Fool's joke. TechCrunch has gone as far as to run a story asserting that Google has acquired a company with revolutionary new nuclear technology. When asked about the news, Google spokesman Jamie Yood said the whole thing is a joke and, beyond that, "this has nothing to do with our exploration of marshmallows as an alternative energy source." So, oh well. It … Continue Reading

TokBox adds features for large-scale video meetings

There are plenty of companies that offer online video chat sessions. TinyChat and Dimdim are two of my favorites. But San Francisco-based TokBox has just added some specific features designed to handle meetings of, say, twenty people rather than three.

Tokbox vice president of marketing Micky O’Brien led a small session on Tuesday to demonstrate the new features. TokBox calls it Broadcast Video Chat, but to be clear, it allows up to 12 active participants … Continue Reading

Kleiner Perkins' John Doerr: iPad 'will rule the world'

Most of the focus at venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ iFund event today was on Apple’s upcoming iPad, with five startups (Gogii, Ngmoco, Pinger, Shazam, and Booyah) confirming on-stage that they’re developing iPad applications. Kleiner partner John Doerr sounded especially excited about the device, claiming that it will “rule the world.”

“I hope I can sleep with it Saturday night,” Doerr said. “It feels gorgeous. It is not a big iPod. It is… Continue Reading

Kleiner Perkins doubles iFund to $200M, embraces iPad buzz

Leading venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers announced today that it has raised another $100 million for the iFund, its fund focusing on mobile startups, especially those building applications for Apple’s iPhone.

Partner John Doerr spoke at a press event in Menlo Park, Calif., today, where he said Kleiner has invested in 14 iFund startups (three of them still in stealth mode). The fund was basically depleted, which is why the firm raised another … Continue Reading

Ford joins forces with Microsoft to tackle EV charging challenge

With Nissan and General Motors already hyping their plug-in vehicles due out later this year, Ford seems to have fallen behind. Its all-electric Ford Focus hasn’t commanded as much attention. But today it looks like it’s pursuing a different strategy, teaming up with Microsoft to devise a system for charging electric cars faster and cheaper.

Announced at the New York Auto Show, the system will tell electric vehicle owners when they should charge their cars … Continue Reading

Forget the iPad, Asus readying two tablets for release soon

Computer maker Asus has two tablet computers in the works for release in the coming months. Given that Apple’s iPad tablet is due out in just a few days and will be garnering a ton of attention, you’d think Asus chairman Jonney Shih would be worried right now. But he’s far from it, according to Forbes. Instead, Shih seems confident that his company will be able to compete with Apple.

All we know about the … Continue Reading

Bing Maps adds "mash-ins" for tracking real-time Foursquare check-ins and more

Microsoft has just launched some cool new features for its Bing Maps mapping service. Through partnerships with popular location-based game service Foursquare and classified ad service Oodle, Bing now has features that will you track on a map in real time where Foursquare users are doing check-ins and where available rentals are located.

The new features have currently been rolled out to a limited group of Bing Map users but will eventually be available in … Continue Reading

China online games market to hit $9.2B in revenues by 2014

China’s online games market is set to nearly triple to $9.2 billion in annual revenue by 2014, according to market researcher Niko Partners.

Revenue for China’s online game industry was estimated to be $3.57 billion in 2009. That’s just about all of the measureable game revenues for China, since widespread piracy essentially eliminates any offline game revenue. The online game companies such as Shanda Games and The9 are growing fast, leading to huge stock market … Continue Reading