DEMO: Closely helps small businesses bring deals to Facebook and Twitter

Closely is one of 65 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Spring 2010 event taking place this week. These companies do pay a fee to present, but our coverage of them remains objective.

If you’re a small business, it can be a challenge to figure out the best way to take advantage of social networking services like Facebook and Twitter. A startup called Closely wants to help.

In this case, the Denver, … Continue Reading

DEMO: Zosh replaces the routine of print/sign/fax with a mobile solution

Zosh is one of 65 products chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Spring 2010 event taking place this week. The companies do pay a fee to present, but our coverage of them remains objective.

Gartner expects the value of  the mobile Internet to surpass the desktop version in three years. But the world of paperwork hasn’t kept up.

I, for one, still need to print out, sign, and then fax in paperwork to … Continue Reading

DEMO: GreenNurture helps you make your company more sustainable (video)

GreenNurture is one of 65 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Spring 2010 event taking place this week. These companies do pay a fee to present, but our coverage of them remains objective.

GreenNurture, maker of an application that helps employees contribute to the sustainability of the companies they work for, is launching at the DEMO conference in Palm Springs, Calif. Using social networking and rewards systems, the platform gives people incentives … Continue Reading

DEMO: VenueGen lets businesses stage quick and easy virtual meetings (video)

VenueGen is one of 65 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Spring 2010 event taking place this week. These companies do pay a fee to present, but our coverage of them remains objective.

Virtual-meeting startup VenueGen is announcing today a virtual meeting platform that is both visually appealing and easy to use. To date, most meeting platforms have been neither.

It’s a lot more than Cisco’s WebEx meeting platform, and a lot … Continue Reading

DEMO: InVisage's QuantumFilm enables gorgeous camera phone pictures

InVisage is one of 65 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Spring 2010 event taking place this week. These companies do pay a fee to present, but our coverage of them remains objective.

QuantumFilm could usher in a new age of high-quality, thin, inexpensive digital cameras and camera films.

Based on a new kind of image sensor technology from chip startup InVisage Technologies, QuantumFilm can deliver mobile phone camera images that are … Continue Reading

Startup Sency takes simplified approach to real-time search

Thanks to services like Twitter that let users publish quick messages nearly as fast as they come to mind, a host of real-time search engines have recently emerged — engines that quickly index these messages and serve up the most current ones related to a particular search keyword. Sency is the latest startup to jump into this market. And so far, it seems to be keeping its head above water despite all the competition. Its … Continue Reading

Week in review: Web pioneer bashes Apple, SXSW attendees slam Twitter keynote

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

Google pays web pioneer to bash Apple — Tim Bray isn’t as well-known as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, but the guy has had a leading role in defining the Internet. When he announced this week that he’s joining Google as an evangelist for the Android platform, he published a blog post that was pretty … Continue Reading

Civilization V preview signals return to good old-fashioned war games

Civilization IV was one of the most immersive strategy games ever made. When it debuted in 2005, it was an elaborate triumph in the strategy game genre, with a combination of action, graphics, and addictive game play. But Civilization V just might top it, even as it returns gamers to the nostalgic days of old war games.

The game is coming out this fall from developer Firaxis Games and publisher Take-Two Interactive. In a preview … Continue Reading

The Movie Tracker joins crowded movie recommendation space

Movie-recommendation startup The Movie Tracker launched recently, adding to a crowded recommendation and social media space that includes TasteKid, The Auteurs, Trusted Opinion, Jinni, Flixster, and of course Netflix, among others. The site is still working out some of its bugs, but here’s how it works: You sign in and select at least 5 movies you’ve watched — the more you select, the more the service’s algorithm will have more to work with — and … Continue Reading

KnowMore tries to find the good stuff from your Twitter, Facebook feeds

New York-based Knowmore is taking a stab at the filter failure problem posed by the overwhelming amount of information flowing through social networks. It’s building a dashboard that surfaces the most widely shared content from the people that you actually follow or are friends with.

When you log on to the site, you can see the 25 most active pieces of content from your social network from the last hour or day, factoring in shares … Continue Reading

EC roundup: Clunkers, mothers-in-law and educational gaps

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

Ask the attorney: The M&A risk (Part one) – If your startup has grown to the point where it’s thinking about acquiring another company, there are a number of legal issues that can turn into significant stumbling blocks. Attorney Scott Edward Walker runs them down in this first of a two-part series.

2010 VC outlook: No cash for clunkers – Last year the watchword among the investing world … Continue Reading

EPA, Energy Dept. sharpen Energy Star's teeth

The Energy Star program has successfully broken into the mainstream consciousness. Most consumers know what the logo looks like, and even make an effort to only buy appliances and other devices that are Energy Star-certified for energy efficiency. But before last year, it seems like the label didn’t mean much.

When the U.S. Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency audited the program in October last year, it turned out that a lot of certified … Continue Reading

SkimLinks' Alicia Navarro on helping publishers make money (video)

SkimLinks is a startup that automates the process of creating affiliate links, allowing a publisher to link to a product on a site like Amazon and receive a commission from any resulting sales. It’s facing increased competition from a Google Ventures-backed startup called VigLink, but SkimLinks has been pushing forward too, with new products and plans to expand its presence in the United States.

The company is based in London, so the South by Southwest … Continue Reading

MySQL's Marten Mickos becomes CEO of hybrid cloud startup Eucalyptus Systems

Updated

Marten Mickos, former chief executive of open source database company MySQL, is moving to cloud computing startup Eucalyptus Systems, where he will serve as CEO.

Mickos built MySQL into what seemed like one of the open source world’s biggest successes, with a $1 billion acquisition by Sun Microsystems in 2008. But he left Sun last year, saying he was unhappy with the company’s bureaucracy. He then joined Benchmark Capital, which backed both MySQL and … Continue Reading

Los Angeles airports get serious about slashing emissions

When it comes to calculating your personal carbon output, nothing expands your footprint like frequent air travel. Planes emit tremendous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every day. To at least partially compensate, three Los Angeles airports have committed to slashing their emissions on the ground.

The news is indicative of how many major companies taking their emissions more seriously in anticipation of tough new EPA regulations that will make stringent monitoring and data … Continue Reading

DEMO: Here are the presenting companies

DEMO, the technology launchpad conference co-produced by VentureBeat, kicks off next week in Palm Springs. Companies will be launching new products in five key areas: Mobile, social media, consumer, cloud, and enterprise.

My boss, VentureBeat Editor Matt Marshall, is about to head down to Palm Springs. For the past two conferences, Matt shared the stage with longtime DEMO executive producer Chris Shipley, but this is his first time leading the conference solo — keeping things … Continue Reading

Mobile analytics firm Motally hires Nielsen exec as CEO

John Forese — pronounced for EE see — has taken over as CEO of mobile analytics firm Motally, whose monthly reports VentureBeat usually writes about. Forese was senior vice president of product management for Nielsen, a position he landed after serving as an SVP at mobile analytics firm Telephia, which Nielsen acquired in 2007.

Motally also recently added former Googler Doug Garland, a vice president of product development for the search company, to Motally’s board … Continue Reading

DEMO: Massive disruption starts Monday

We’ve got a very impressive set of companies launching at DEMO this spring — they’re better than I’ve ever seen in past years.

I’m more excited than ever about the trends of innovation we are seeing in Silicon Valley and beyond right now. And this conference — just next week in Palm Springs — is going to highlight them all in a brand new format. We’re breaking companies in key sector trends: Mobile, social media, … Continue Reading

Questions answered by your location history: Who were you with?

The increasingly popular location-based mobile game Foursquare recently announced a new addition to its service. A history function now shows who you were with in addition to where you were at a particular time. You will have a record of all the friends you were with at the Grizzly Bear concert two months ago–and the friends you didn’t invite can see that, too. The function could prove to be more than just a tool for … Continue Reading

Now you can data mine with Google queries too

Geek comic artist Randall Munroe, better known as XKCD’s creator, revealed a little-known Google Spreadsheets secret yesterday. You can plot out the estimated volume of Google search results against different queries.

How do you do it? Alex Chitu at Google Operating System says:

If you are familiar with Google Spreadsheets, try to create a sheet that lets you enter a query like “My IQ is X”, a variable name and the values for that variable. … Continue Reading