HP's Palm acquisition is about tablets and netbooks, too

During a conference call this afternoon, HP executives emphasized that the deal to acquire smartphone maker Palm is about more than phones. Executive Vice President Todd Bradley described Palm’s WebOS operating system as something that can also power tablet computers (or, as HP prefers to call them, “slates”) and the low-end laptops known as netbooks.

That helps explain HP’s interest in Palm — not only does it want to move into the booming smartphone market, … Continue Reading

HP-Palm deal proves Bono's no boon for Elevation Partners

Elevation Partners, the bicoastal private-equity firm famous for sort-of-rockstar investor Roger McNamee and actual rockstar Bono from the band U2, will probably see only a modest $25 million gain on its $460 million investment in Palm, according to the terms of an acquisition announced by HP on Wednesday afternoon.

PEHub chief Dan Primack estimated the sale price of Elevation’s shares in Palm at $485 million. That’s a 5 percent return, hardly a success in Silicon … Continue Reading

Build a Web shop in 5 minutes with Ecwid

Russian startup Ecwid says it can let you add a shop to your own website, blog, or Facebook page. The company, whose name is short for “e-commerce widgets,” has been making shopping-cart software for some years and, based on that experience, founder Ruslan Fazlyev is convinced that software like Ecwid is the future of shopping software for small-scale sellers. Such “sellsumers” have a growing presence online as the success of sites like Etsy can attest.… Continue Reading

HP's deal with Palm will change mobile computing landscape

Hewlett-Packard‘s purchase of Palm will likely transform the mobile-computing industry, much like HP’s 2001 merger with Compaq Computer changed the world of computing.

The deal shows that HP is serious about becoming a player in smartphones, validating a space that has been pioneered by Apple and others. While the entrenched players have done a fine job stoking interest in smart phones, HP is a much larger company that — while it isn’t nearly as cool … Continue Reading

HP to buy Palm for $1.2 billion

Hewlett-Packard formally announced that it has reached an agreement to sell Palm to HP for $5.70 per share, or around $1.2 billion total. The deal came as a surprise to Silicon Valley gossips who were sure HTC or Lenovo would acquire Palm. (VentureBeat writers suggested that RIM and LG consider Palm, but we didn’t expect either of those deals to happen.)

HP, the world’s largest technology company with over 300,000 employees worldwide, plans to use … Continue Reading

Layar launches a store for special augmented reality layers

Dutch augmented reality startup Layar has launched a store for special layers of information and graphics that you can superimpose on the world around you through your cell phone. Augmented reality is a nascent technology that can make the real world resemble Terminator vision. (Imagine holding up your camera viewfinder and seeing content tags pointing out places to go.)

Publishers can create and sell special augmented reality layers that tag places with information like real … Continue Reading

Reminder: Seattle VentureBeat/DEMO meetup next Tuesday

VentureBeat and DEMO will be in Seattle next Tuesday (May 4) to throw a big cocktail bash at The Crocodile Club.

If you’re an entrepreneur, investor or some other kind of tech startup junkie, you’re invited to join us! We’ll be partying from 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm. Spread the word and let’s get the entire Seattle tech scene there. Just make sure you register here. We’ll be buying drinks for the first 75 people … Continue Reading

Assured Labor, a mobile LinkedIn for the developing world, raises $1M

Assured Labor, a social network for job hunters in developing countries, raised $1 million in funding from angels including former Skype chief executive and chairman Michael Van Swaiij, Kima Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners.

The New York-based startup focuses primarily on Latin America where it enables low- and middle-income workers to find jobs by creating resumes at Internet cafes and web kiosks. What’s interesting about Assured Labor’s model is that it has the power to … Continue Reading

Cloud management startup Cloudkick raises another $2M

Cloudkick, a startup that helps companies and developers run their applications using online infrastructure, has added another $2 million to its first round of funding.

The San Francisco startup promises to make it easier to manage web applications on infrastructure offered by companies like Amazon, Rackspace, and Slicehost. Its services include dashboards, email alerts, and graphs that show how an app is performing. The core product is free, but Cloudkick recently started charging for premium … Continue Reading

Virtual worlds recede, but Second Life keeps growing

Virtual worlds, those fully-formed, three-dimensional renderings of the real world, are waning as apps take off on social networks and mobile phones. But the mother of the virtual-world craze, Second Life, is bucking that trend and growing.

What’s more, Linden Lab‘s Second Life virtual economy is adapting to the new business model of virtual goods. Last year, in the midst of the recession, Second Life’s virtual goods economy in user-to-user transactions was $567 million, up … Continue Reading

What are people searching for? Facebook, Facebook, and Facebook

The term “facebook” by itself is now the top search on Google, Yahoo and Bing, according to a new report from traffic analysis firm Hitwise. Searches for “facebook login” are popular, too. People seem to instinctively type company names into a search bar. They don’t always get the results they expected. Not long ago, nerdy news site ReadWriteWeb was flooded with traffic when a deep-thinking post on Facebook’s strategy became a top Google result for … Continue Reading

Apple buys Siri: iPhone to get a built-in personal assistant?

Apple appears to have acquired Siri, a well-funded and promising startup that built a personal assistant application for the iPhone.

The deal was revealed in a filing with the Federal Trade Commission (to read the filing, download the PDF for April 27), which was then tweeted by blogger Robert Scoble. I’ve emailed Siri, but the company has not confirmed or commented on the news. (Chief executive Dag Kittlaus is pictured above, center, with cofounders Tom … Continue Reading

Attensity picks up Biz360 for enhanced social media monitoring

Attensity, a data analysis company, has agreed to acquire social media monitoring software company Biz360 according to Venturewire. The company has since made an official announcement. Terms of the deal have not been released.

According to Venturewire, Attensity plans to provide deeper analytics through the Biz360 platform, which have already been integrated through a previous co-selling arrangement. Now dubbed Attensity360, the monitoring tool will continue to track social conversations, including sentiment, topic trends and competitive … Continue Reading

Microsoft forms patent agreement with HTC, will receive royalties for all HTC Android phones

In a surprising move this morning, Microsoft announced that it has formed a patent agreement with cellphone manufacturer HTC. The deal gives HTC coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for its Android phones, and Microsoft will receive royalties from the company in exchange.

While the agreement could be seen simply as Microsoft extorting money from HTC to avoid another patent lawsuit (like the one it’s currently dealing with from Apple), HTC is also getting something out … Continue Reading

Activision exec changes titles amid Infinity Ward disaster

In the wake of a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard from 38 Infinity Ward employees, it’s been revealed that Activision Publishing CEO and President Mike Griffith is giving up those titles and will become vice chairman of the company’s board. SEC documents show that this comes about two months before his contract was to expire on June 30.

Griffith will keep his board position and take on the added role of vice chairman on a 12-month … Continue Reading

DST's pursuit of ICQ spurred its $300 million investment from Tencent

The interesting backstory to Russian Internet holding company Digital Sky Technologies’ $187.5 million agreement to buy instant messaging service ICQ announced today is how it led to an investment from Chinese Internet giant Tencent earlier this month.

When instant messaging service ICQ was put up on the block by AOL last year, both DST and South African multinational Naspers bit.

DST, which has collected stakes in Facebook, Groupon and Zynga over the past year, didn’t … Continue Reading

TinierMe launches Japanese-style anime virtual world

Japanese comics known as “anime” have become popular among young Americans. And TinierMe is planning on capitalizing on that with the launch of its anime-focused virtual world.

After six months of beta testing, TinierMe is formally launching its virtual world today. The U.S.-based virtual world is a separate version of a two-million strong virtual world in Japan. Already, thanks to the beta test, the English-language version of TinierMe has 700,000 registered users, said Masaru “Nogi” … Continue Reading

Russian investor DST buys AOL's ICQ for $187.5M

Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies has agreed to buy AOL’s ICQ instant messaging service for $187.5 million.

ICQ is the largest instant messaging service in Russia and a number of other markets, with more than 32 million unique visitors per month. It was started in 1996 by Israeli firm Mirabilis, whose assets AOL acquired in 1998.

Moscow-based DST is on a tear when it comes to acquiring or investing in various internet and entertainment … Continue Reading

Image-tracking co. ImageSpan hires new CEO, raises new round

Imagespan, which offers content publishers a way to track and charge for the use of their pictures and videos online, has hired a new chief executive and raised a round of growth financing.

Kurt Garbe, former CEO of Solution Set and a previous chief operating officer of internet services firm USWeb, replaces Iain Scholnick as CEO. Scholnick will become chief platform officer. The company didn’t say how much money it raised in the recent funding … Continue Reading