Barnes & Noble's Nook outsold Amazon Kindle in March: analyst

Things may be looking up for Barnes & Noble’s Nook ebook reader, at least according to analysis by Digitimes Research. Its numbers from hardware suppliers show that the Nook outsold Amazon.com’s competing Kindle for the month of March, and accounted for 53 percent of all ereader device purchases.

Amazon has historically refused to divulge specific numbers for its Kindle sales, which leaves tea-leaf-reading analysts as one of the few ways to determine its success against … Continue Reading

BYD looks beyond EVs to home energy management

BYD Auto, one of China’s most ambitious electric-vehicle makers, just stretched its reach a bit further. Backed with $250 million from none other than Warren Buffett, the company was already prepping its all-electric E6 sedan for the U.S. market by the end of 2010. Now it’s looking to carve out a niche for itself in the growing home energy management market, according to CNET.

BYD will be stepping away from its automotive focus to offer … Continue Reading

GE, Nissan join forces to ready the grid for electric cars

Nissan continues to beat the electric car drum. Last week, it started taking reservations for its all-electric Leaf, and beat its own expectations with more than 6,600 immediate orders. Now today, it announced that it is teaming up with General Electric to research the impact electric vehicles are likely to have on U.S. electrical grids — one of the biggest questions in the industry.

The proliferation of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles predicted to take … Continue Reading

Police seize Gizmodo editor's computers in lost iPhone case

Gawker Media’s Gizmodo site is in for a legal fight with police about whether it has the same legal protections as other mainstream journalists.

In connection with a criminal probe in the case of the lost iPhone prototype, San Mateo police searched the home of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen and seized six of his computers on Friday night, Gizmodo reported.

Gaby Darbyshire, chief operating officer of Gawker Media in New York, wrote a letter to … Continue Reading

Playdom buys game developer Merscom to cash in on brand-based games

Playdom continued its buying spree as it announced today it is acquiring social game developer Merscom for an undisclosed price.

Merscom is based in Chapel Hill, N.C., and it makes games for big brands such as Sea World, Purina, National Geographic and NBC Universal. Playdom, a big player in social games on both MySpace and Facebook, plans to leverage Merscom’s expertise in working with brand owners. And it will try to recruit more game veterans … Continue Reading

FreeWheel lands $16.8M for online video ads from Disney and others

FreeWheel, a startup that focuses on online video advertisements, announced today that it has raised $16.8 million in strategic institutional funding.

The company’s Monetization Rights Management product lets content owners and distributors manage, distribute, forecast, and analyze ads across a variety of video platforms. Given the increasingly fractured online video market — which will only be further fractured by TV Everywhere initiatives like Comcast and Time Warner’s, not to mention the rise of video on … Continue Reading

Mint founder Aaron Patzer makes a jab at Blippy's privacy woes

Aaron Patzer, the founder of personal finance startup Mint, made a slight jab at beleaguered Blippy today. Blippy is a startup that lets people share details of purchases they’ve made with their friends, and it recently came under fire after credit card numbers of a few users showed up in Google searches.

“I don’t get enough value out of something like Blippy,” Patzer said at the Future of Money conference in San Francisco. “I also … Continue Reading

Yahoo to be pre-loaded onto "tens of millions" of Samsung phones

[Update: A Yahoo spokesperson helpfully provided details of their AT&T partnership, in response to my claim that Yahoo lacks strong carrier relationships: "We power mobile search on their portal, distribute Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger and other mobile Web services with them. We also provide some of the advertising. Most recent example is that AT&T implemented Y! Search on their first Android device," the Motorola Backflip.

Moreover, they reminded me, AT&T removed Google search from the … Continue Reading

U.S. Supreme Court to review California's video game violence law

The U.S. Supreme Court said today it would review a California law that prohibited sales of violent video games to minors. An appeals court previously struck down the law, saying it is an unconstitutional infringement of free speech.

The high court agreed to hear an appeal by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown about a law that was supposed to take effect in 2006. They argue that violent games are akin to … Continue Reading

Executives show off Trion's next-generation games (3 videos)

Trion Worlds has unveiled three very interesting games that have been in the works for years and are scheduled to debut starting in 2011.

The games and the platform they run on have been in development for more than four years. Now the company is showing what the new games will look like in action for the first time.

We had a chance to attend Trion’s unveiling event last Thursday. Check out the three videos … Continue Reading

Trion Worlds aims to disrupt video-game business with new online titles

After more than four years of toil, Trion Worlds is raising the curtain today on three major online games that collectively represent one of the most daring bets in video game history.

Many established game companies struggle to make just one massively multiplayer online game at a time. But this startup has raised more than $100 million and hired a team of 250 people across three studios so that it can produce big games in … Continue Reading

Google hints at no Nexus One for Verizon

Verizon users been waiting patiently for Google’s Nexus One smartphone since it announced the device in January. At the time, it said the phone would be headed to Verizon stores sometime in spring. But now it looks like Verizon may be the only provider not to get the device, according to a recent blog post by Google (via GearLog).

The post, which details some recent Nexus One partnerships, recommends that Verizon users check out the … Continue Reading

Intel launches new version of its Classmate PC for kids

Intel has launched a new version of its Classmate PC, a learning laptop for kids. The new design is more flexible and durable than past Intel computers that promote electronic learning.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel unveiled the design at the Central Park Zoo in New York City. With the Classmate PC, Intel designs the hardware, software and chips for the system and provides a reference design for local computer makers in a variety of countries. … Continue Reading

WISeKey raises $20M for security services

WISeKey said today it has raised $20 million in funding at a $200 million valuation from a group of undisclosed investors.

The Geneva, Switzerland-based company plans to expand its information security and identity management software in Brazil, Russia, India and China. WISeKey also said it plans to go public and will file to do so as soon as the stock market is more stable. That very fact suggests a new confidence in the stock market, … Continue Reading

Razorfish 2.0: Jeff Dachis returns, with a "buildup" buy of Xplane

Remember Jeff Dachis? The brash Internet-consulting mogul made a name for himself in the ’90s at his then-hot Web shop, Razorfish, by declaring that “everything that can be digital will be.” He’s got a new line: Everything that can be social will be.

And he’s putting $50 million from Austin Ventures to work trying to prove it at his Texas-based Dachis Group — starting with the acquisition, announced Monday, of Portland, Ore.-based Xplane, an information-design … Continue Reading

NComputing launches low-cost thin client that acts like a full Windows PC

NComputing is unveiling today a computer which costs just $200 but acts like a full-fledged Windows PC for the enterprise.

The L300 — the latest in a series of models — is a little box that connects to a standard Windows computer and uses that PC as a server, allowing a bunch of users to share one computer through NComputing’s distributed computing software. The box, in turn, is connected to a keyboard, mouse and monitor.… Continue Reading

Rhapsody plays offense: iPhone app allows downloaded playlists

One of the original pioneers in streaming music is still making waves.

Rhapsody released a new version of its iPhone app that allows people to wirelessly download playlists to their iPhones, iPods or iPads and listening to them whenever — even if they don’t have an Internet connection.

The move comes just weeks after the company, which was revolutionary at the beginning of the decade for offering an all-you-can-eat subscription model, began life as an … Continue Reading

OpenSky, the social-commerce-for-bloggers startup, raises $6M

OpenSky, an e-commerce startup from veteran New York entrepreneurs, raised $6 million in a second round led by Highland Capital Partners and Canaan Partners. The round brings the company’s total funding to about $11 million.

The company helps bloggers monetize their businesses by making it easy for them to sell products directly to readers and earn a cut of the resulting sales. Bloggers choose what and when to sell; for example, it makes sense for … Continue Reading

I didn't spend my money on Apple stock, and all I got was this lousy PowerBook

Here’s a spreadsheet of infinite regret.

After Apple shares hit an all-time high of $272.18 on Friday, a few fanboys started reconsidering their purchases from long ago. Jason L. Baptiste wrote on Y Combinator’s Hacker News website, “If you spent the money on an original iPod in 2001 on Apple stock ($499), you would have $14,513.78 today.”

Thus, a meme was born, as the comment was widely shared and retweeted.

UC Berkeley junior Kyle Conroy … Continue Reading