Bungie and Activision explain their partnership on a new game universe (video)

The following video explains why game studio Bungie and Activision Blizzard’s Activision Publishing division have teamed up to publish a new game that goes beyond the blockbuster Halo franchise developed by Bungie and owned by Microsoft.

Bungie has been working on a new non-Halo game universe since 2007. The video shows Thomas Tippl, chief operating officer for Activision Publishing, and Harold Ryan, president of Bungie, explaining why they did the deal. (Traffic is busy for … Continue Reading

Investors hot on social shopping: First Groupon, now LivingSocial

Social shopping networks, where buyers get discount deals from retailers and wholesalers by buying in collective bulk, have been a work in progress since at least 1998, when Mobshop (get it?) and Mercata were launched.

Twelve years later, investors are once again excited by the topic. Just over a week ago, 18-month-old Groupon was valued at $1 billion in a $135 million funding round led by ubiquitous Russian investment firm DST.

This morning, Washington D.C.-based … Continue Reading

LinkedIn pulls a Twitter, adds Company Follow feature

Business social network LinkedIn is beginning to look a lot more like Twitter. Today it announced a new Company Follow feature that will allow users to keep track of real-time updates from companies they’re interested in.

Specifically, the feature will let users track job openings, and other business developments for all the companies on the site — which currently number near one million. Updates will appear in user’s activity and news stream. There’s the potential … Continue Reading

New mobile browser Skyfire 2.0 supports Flash video for Android

Mobile browsing may have just got a little better for Android users. Skyfire, a mobile browser developer, today announced the release of Skyfire 2.0.

This should also help the company’s efforts to sell its browser to manufacturers and carriers looking to use the Android operating system. A recent sales and marketing hire showed a shift in the Skyfire’s business model, with a new focus on selling to to companies, rather than consumers.

Built off of … Continue Reading

Symantec buys two encryption firms for $370M

Symantec announced today it has paid $370 million to buy encryption firms PGP Corp. and GuardianEdge Technologies.

The move represents a shift into an adjacent market for Symantec, which focuses on antivirus and other security measures for both corporations and consumers.

Under the deals, Symantec is buying PGP for $300 million and GuardianEdge Technologies for $70 million, both in cash. The deals are subject to regulatory approval and are expected to close next quarter.

Encryption … Continue Reading

iPad launch put Chorus users in the mood for games

Envio just released the latest set of numbers from its popular iPhone app Chorus, which helps users find new apps by seeing what their friends are downloading and what they recommend (iTunes link). The big change: In March (the month covered by the new data), four of the top five paid apps were games.

Now, that may seem unsurprising, since games have been dominating popular iPhone app lists for a while. But the Chorus list … Continue Reading

Steve Jobs posts 1,671-word essay on why Apple hates Flash

[Update: Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayan responds.]

“Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.” That’s the conclusion of a long (for the Internet) post by Steve Jobs himself on Apple’s website. Jobs takes on critics who don’t like it that, on iPhone and iPad products, Apple has refused to support Adobe’s widely-used Flash technology for video, games and user interfaces.

In … Continue Reading

Blockbuster game studio Bungie hooks up with Activision Blizzard

In a major shift of alliances for a blockbuster game maker, Bungie has announced a publishing alliance with Activision Blizzard.

Activision Blizzard, the world’s biggest independent game publisher, will be the exclusive publisher of Bungie’s next major game. To date, Microsoft has been the publisher of Bungie’s Halo games. The last of those, Halo: Reach, is scheduled for release on the Xbox 360 this fall. But after that, Activision Blizzard, through its Activision Publishing division,will … Continue Reading

Immersion sees wave of touch-feedback smartphones coming

When Nokia announced its new N8 smartphone this week, it was another step forward for touch feedback. Immersion confirmed that it has provided “haptics” technology that is more accurate than other touch-sensation technologies used in the past.

That is, San Jose, Calif.-based Immersion lets you feel tactile feedback when you touch the screen. If you dial a button, a tiny vibration emanates from the touchscreen to confirm that you hit the right key. This is … Continue Reading

English Attack teaches English via entertainment

French startup English Attack,which just went into beta, is offering free English language lessons tailored specifically to the young adult market. The company is one of the 20 products pitched by (mainly European) startups in TheNextWeb conference startup rally in Amsterdam this week

Input is the key for language learning, and English Attack targets teenagers and young adults with the type of input they love best: entertainment. The majority of English learners are 15-35, and … Continue Reading

MusikPitch to help songwriters compete for contracts

A startup that allows songwriters to compete for custom music licensing contracts is launching today. The Nashville, Tenn., company, MusikPitch, promises to match songwriters with people or companies looking for custom music via “contests.” A “contest holder” wanting to license a particular piece of music specifies what it’s looking for, including requirements such as song length, genre and budget, and songwriters then compete over a 14-day period to meet those requirements.

Songwriters submit their tracks, … Continue Reading

Cape Wind gets the go-ahead after nine years

The federal government has finally approved a 130-turbine wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod, dubbed Cape Wind, that has been in the works for nearly a decade. Renewable energy proponents are celebrating the U.S.’s decision to catch up with the rest of the world in offshore wind, but, as expected, the announcement has spurred all kinds of controversy.

The development would span 24 square miles — the same size as Manhattan, as the … Continue Reading

Maybe HP should lose the "Invent" slogan

Silicon Valley’s most sacred shrine is the tiny garage in Palo Alto where, in 1938, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard began what is now the world’s largest technology company by headcount, with more than 300,000 employees interconnected around the world.

Hewlett-Packard was to a previous generation what Google is today. Hewlett and Packard pioneered an egalitarian culture that offered unusual perks: stipends for education, and a career path for engineers who didn’t want to become … Continue Reading

Surprise! Elevation Partners makes $25M on Palm-HP

Elevation Partners, one of Palm’s largest investors, came out a lot better than most expected when Palm finally sold to outside suitor HP for $1.2 billion.

Elevation, the firm started by Silicon Valley investor Roger McNamee, actually made $25 million, according to people familiar with the matter. Elevation would not speak on the record for this story.

That’s surprising for many outsiders, because most assumed Elevation would completely bomb. After all, Palm’s stock has declined … Continue Reading

First Solar buys solar developer NextLight for $285M

First Solar, the largest solar company in the world, announced today that it will be acquiring its chief rival, NextLight Renewable Power, a developer of solar power projects, for about $285 million. The deal will add 1.1-gigawatts worth of solar panel arrays to the larger company’s 1.4-gigawatt pipeline.

But for First Solar, the move isn’t about capacity, it’s about relationships. Between its Agua Caliente and AV Solar Ranch developments, NextLight has power purchase agreements for … Continue Reading

Meet the mastermind of HP-Palm: Todd Bradley

Silicon Valley is a small world. And for one executive in its inside circle, the Palm deal is a vindication of sorts.

Todd Bradley, the executive vice president for Hewlett-Packard’s Personal Systems Group—which includes everything from PCs to mobile devices, workstations, personal storage solutions and Internet services—came to HP in the summer of 2005 a few months after he left a CEO position at a company then called PalmOne. Bradley was recruited by HP chief … Continue Reading

Afraid the clothes you buy online won't fit? Get help from a robotic mannequin

Clothing is currently the largest single online retail sector, estimated to be worth $26 billion a year in the US alone; yet only 7% of clothing is bought online. The fact that consumers cannot try on clothes before buying also results in a very high rate of returned merchandise (over 40% for some types of fitted clothing) and associated costs for retailers. Fits.me aims to reduce returns and increase sales by allowing buyers to see … Continue Reading

Apple drops Mac apps from design awards

The Apple Design Award is a big deal for software developers. Once a year, Apple hands out perfect cubes of praise to software makers whose wares Apple considers to be the best. The awards are timed to Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference, known as WWDC to coders.

But this year’s awards will only be bestowed upon iPhone OS apps built for the iPhone or iPad. Applications built for the Mac OS X operating system used … Continue Reading