YouTube's video rental store is open for business

After dabbling with film rentals by offering five Sundance Film Festival titles in January, and expanding its beta testing effort with more content in February, Youtube finally launched its rental store today.

Rentals are available for $0.99 – $3.99, and currently consist primarily of independent, anime, Bollywood, and documentary films, reports Read Write Web. Unsurprisingly, rentals are paid for through Google Checkout.

Many reported on the lackluster sales figures more than a week after YouTube … Continue Reading

Worldlogger aims to improve real-time website stats

There are plenty of website analytics tools that monitor social network traffic. Chartbeat is probably the best known. But a two-man team in Amsterdam that calls itself Ape55 believes it has an attractive alternative in new tool called Worldlogger.

“Chartbeat didn’t provide all the information we wanted to see,” co-founder Jaap van der Meer emailed us, “and also presents a lot of information at once, which makes finding the information we needed not very clear. … Continue Reading

Seattle companies: Join us May 4 for a pitch and drinks at Madrona

If you’re a tech company in the Seattle region, and are considering launching your product over the next year or so, you should join us for a meetup at one of Seattle’s most respected venture capital firms, Madrona Venture Group.

We’re inviting up to 10 companies who are contemplating launching products at DEMO (either at the upcoming DEMO event in September 13-15 in Silicon Valley, or DEMO Spring 2011) to pitch on Tuesday, May 4… Continue Reading

Apple not banning analytics from apps

It was a reasonable rumor: Apple changed the words in the legalese that comes with the software development kit for its upcoming iPhone 4.0 operating system — the OS that will power iPhones and iPads beginning in June or July. To many readers, the wording appeared to ban data collection and reporting from analytics tools such as those offered by Motally, Flurry, Distimo, Localytics and Medialets.

But people at the analytics firms we’ve talked to … Continue Reading

Biofuel maker Codexis IPOs — but for less than hoped

Less than six months after filing to go public, Codexis, one of several makers of microbes and catalysts used to generate green fuels and chemicals, debuted on the Nasdaq this morning under the symbol CDXS. But the news is bittersweet for the cleantech sector. Yes, the company made it to market — but it only fetched $78 million in what it expected to be a $100 million sale.

Based in Redwood City, Calif., Codexis sold … Continue Reading

Time Warner invests in Simulmedia's targeted TV promotions

New York media marketing startup Simulmedia announced it had raised $8 million in a second round of financing. Time Warner Investments led the round while previous investors Union Square Ventures and Avalon Ventures also participated.

Simulmedia analyzes anonymized individual set-top box data from cable and satellite TV providers. The company takes the viewing data and groups viewers based on similar viewing patterns, rather than the traditional age and gender demographics used in Nielsen ratings.

“There … Continue Reading

Copy this: Zynga raises $130K for two charities through social games

Zynga, the biggest social game publisher, has been criticized for copying the games of others. But when it comes to generating donations for nonprofits in a social fashion, it’s a leader.

Today, the company announced that Zynga game players have raised more than $130,000 for two charities through virtual goods purchases.  “I don’t think enough of you have copied it,” joked Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, to an audeince of his peers a couple … Continue Reading

Hulu could bite into users' wallets with freemium "Hulu Plus"

Significant changes may be in the works over at Hulu, a website for watching television shows online owned by media giants News Corp., NBC Universal and the Walt Disney Co., according to a Los Angeles Times blog post. The company may start offering Hulu users a subscription plan of $9.95 a month, dubbed Hulu Plus, as soon as May 24. But many videos will remain free — a key to Hulu’s early success.

This mix … Continue Reading

PopCap's John Vechey: the iPad shines with three-handed gaming (video)

I enjoyed a lovely week off last week without a phone or a computer. But I did have my iPad, and I shared it with the kids. As I watched them, I realized that the 9.7-inch screen, which can detect 11 finger touches at the same time, is great for multiple players using the same iPad to play a game. Call it three-handed gaming. One of the games we played together was PopCap Games‘ iPad … Continue Reading

How Korean tacos will restore our love for Twitter

There’s been quite an uproar about Twitter acquiring and developing in-house some functions once created by third-party app developers. While the microblogging service may be closing some doors for entrepreneurs in the online world, Twitter’s bad buzz means we risk missing untapped opportunities it offers to real-world businesses. If companies can tap into that potential, then all the hubbub over Twitter’s “hole-filling” becomes mere noise.

Think of eBay, which grew into a vast marketplace by … Continue Reading

Appirio: We guarantee cloud computing will save companies $1M

Even though cloud computing is a hot topic right now, not every company is eager to dump their existing hardware and move all of their computing online. But Appirio, a startup backed by well-known venture firm Sequoia Capital, plans to give businesses a little more incentive to make the leap.

Ryan Nichols, Appirio’s vice president of “cloudsourcing” and cloud strategy, said that with the San Mateo, Calif. startup’s help, switching to the cloud should save … Continue Reading

Zenverge lands $30M more for digital media chips

Zenverge, chip maker for digital media products, today announced it has secured a third round of funding for $30 million. The company plans to use the funding to continue production and expand marketing and sales activities.

The company developed the Zenverge Entertainment Nexus (Zen), a media transformation and delivery intergrated circuit for high-definition content, which is used in everyday devices like high-definition televisions, set-top boxes, PCs and video network equipment. In addition to speed, the … Continue Reading

How Mark Zuckerberg handles himself with the press (videos)

Mark Zuckerberg has a reputation as a billionaire boy wonder and is often compared to a young Bill Gates. The chief executive of Facebook attended his own keynote speech in blue jeans and a hoodie at the f8 conference today in San Francisco. In his speech, he stayed on message.

But at a press conference afterward, he showed more of the real Zuckerberg. Most people haven’t met him in person or heard him talk unplugged. … Continue Reading

Dell strikes with Thunder and Lightning — high-end Android and Windows Phone 7 smartphones

You may not consider Dell a serious contender in the high-end mobile marketplace yet, but that could soon change, according to documents obtained by Engadget, a popular gadget blog. The computer maker is developing a pair of high-end smartphones that look on par with products we’ve seen from Palm, HTC, and yes, even Apple. If the phones perform as well as they look, Dell could potentially cement itself as a mobile-device maker to watch out … Continue Reading

Roundup: Startups jumpstart the job market, Android runs on the iPhone

Here’s the latest (non-f8 related) action:

Startups create thousands of new jobs — The startup community generated about 4,400 new jobs a month during the first quarter of 2010, making it one of the fastest growing sectors in the employment market, according to the National Venture Capital Association.

Android on the iPhone — Planetbeing, a member of the iPhone development team said today that he successfully installed the Android operating software on an iPhone. And … Continue Reading

What you missed at Facebook's f8 conference

VentureBeat has been drowning today in posts from f8, Facebook’s developer conference in San Francisco. Obviously, we think there was plenty of news worth covering, but for someone who wasn’t checking the site every few hours, it might be a little overwhelming.

So if you want some help trying to see the big picture, read this post: “Facebook socializes the web with powerful new plugins.” This was our coverage of the social network’s big announcement … Continue Reading

F8 for outsiders: It's pronounced "eff ate" at Facebook

Facebook’s f8 conference, a one-day event in San Francisco for software developers and entrepreneurs looking to make money off the social network’s seemingly unstoppable growth, is in full swing right now. But a bunch of people on the Internet have admitted to each other that none of us knows where the name “f8″ came from. Nor do we know for sure the correct pronunciation — that is, what they call it at Facebook. Is it … Continue Reading

Web pioneer Marc Andreessen: Twitter developers think too small

Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist who also cofounded Netscape and Ning and serves on the board of Facebook, weighed in today on the Twitter platform debate with a position that probably won’t make Twitter developers happy.

The controversy was sparked by Twitter’s purchase of Atebits, the company that created a mobile version of Twitter called Tweetie, with Tweetie becoming the first official Twitter mobile app. Developers who had built their own mobile Twitter apps were … Continue Reading