Blippy cofounder on credit-card leak: "It's a lot less bad than it looks"

Earlier today, VentureBeat broke the news that some members of Blippy, a social-sharing site for shoppers, had their credit card numbers published to Google by Blippy’s servers.

Blippy cofounder Philip Kaplan, known to Web 1.0 oldsters as Pud from FuckedCompany, sent us the following response, which we quote in full:

“Today someone discovered a Google search that displays the credit card numbers of 4 Blippy users.

“We take security seriously and want to assure Blippy … Continue Reading

Twitter buys SMS service Cloudhopper after months of secret collaboration

Twitter mobile-products-and-partnerships guy Kevin Thau blogged this morning that the company has been working for eight months with Seattle-based Cloudhopper to build a large-scale SMS system for distributing tweets. Now, Twitter has acquired the company, in order “to connect directly to mobile carrier networks in countries all over the planet.”

“Twitter processes close to a billion SMS tweets per month and that number is growing around the world from Indonesia to Australia, the UK, the … Continue Reading

How will credit card leak damage Blippy?

Less than 24 hours after sharing-for-shoppers site Blippy gathered big media attention, Internet wiseguys figured out how to find some of its members’ credit card numbers in Google. How much will this hurt?

A lawyer who talked to VentureBeat on background — that’s reporter-speak for “he doesn’t want us to use his name” — thinks that Blippy needs to prepare for a pile-on of opportunists, government regulators, and just-plain-mad customers.

So far, there are no … Continue Reading

With HTC out, Lenovo now the lead candidate to buy Palm

We can now cross out one potential buyer for Palm. The Taiwanese cellphone manufacturer HTC is apparently not bidding on the company after reviewing its books, according to Reuters. That leaves Lenovo, the Chinese computer-maker, as the lead candidate for a potential Palm purchase.

We reported weeks ago that Palm was up for sale, and that HTC and Lenovo were the most likely buyers. Dell was also looking into the company, but passed on making … Continue Reading

Respawn Entertainment hires seven Modern Warfare veterans

Fired from Activision Blizzard’s Infinity Ward game studo, shooting game gurus Vince Zampella and Jason West have started Respawn Entertainment and are busy hiring their old colleagues.

Activision Blizzard shot itself in the foot in the way it handled the firing of the co-creators of its blockbuster franchise, Modern Warfare. And now a number of leaders on the Modern Warfare team at Infinity Ward have joined Respawn, which is based in Redwood City, Calif., and … Continue Reading

Blippy users' credit card numbers found on Google

[Update: Blippy cofounder Philip Kaplan emailed a response. CNET News is reporting that the cards in question were issued by Fifth Third, not Citibank.]

[Update #2: As of Saturday morning in California, Google told Blippy they've removed all credit card numbers from Blippy in their index. We found one more number just before the purge completed.]

Yesterday was a big day for social-oversharing site Blippy, which lets members automatically post their purchases to the Internet. … Continue Reading

World of Warcraft: Entrepreneur incubator

There are plenty of places for entrepreneurs to hone their skills, but none is quite as unique as “World of Warcraft,” says John Seely Brown, former director of Xerox PARC. In this entrepreneur thought leader lecture given at Stanford University last week, Brown praises the massively multiplayer online game, saying it’s a great way to learn crowdsourcing, how to work with groups and fosters an environment where performance is both measured and critiqued.

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/swf/player-ec.swf… Continue Reading

Fabulis vs. GayCities: A social-networking battle that's totally gay

Oh, girl, it’s on! Jason Goldberg is moving in on Scott Gatz’s turf. And Gatz is not taking it lying down. The two openly gay entrepreneurs are both trying to create the hot place for their brethren to check in with each other online.

Goldberg (left, with Fabulis co-founder Bradford Shellhammer), started his company late last year. Headquartered in New York, Fabulis has been in beta for a couple of months with an online people … Continue Reading

SecondMarket says trade of private company stock reached $124M in Q1

SecondMarket, a firm that handles auctions of illiquid assets, including stock in private companies, says it’s seen $124 million worth of trades (in over 78 transactions) in the first quarter of 2010. Facebook accounted for over 40 percent of all those transactions, up from 21 percent in Q4 of 2009.

Facebook stock has reportedly been trading at $50 per share on SecondMarket — that reflects a $22 billion valuation for the company, although it’s declined … Continue Reading

Blippy cofounder overshares what his "Twitter for credit cards" is worth: $46.2M

Blippy, a social networking site that lets users share information about what they’re buying, has raised $11.2 million in new funding. The Palo Alto, Calif. company now has a post-money valuation of $46.2 million — pretty good for a service that only opened to the public in January.

The news was first reported in TechCrunch. Cofounder Philip Kaplan confirmed to VentureBeat both the funding and the valuation. New investor August Capital led the round, with … Continue Reading

WTF?! A fun little way of tracking news from Scoopler

Scoopler, one of the startups that launched during the real-time search craze of last year, has a new way of tracking news on Twitter.

It’s called @wtf. Twitter users can post a message starting with that Twitter handle with a topic they’re interested in like “Facebook” or “technology.” Scoopler’s @wtf account will receive the message and start referring popular stories about that topic. It looks for stories that are retweeted heavily and alerts users about … Continue Reading

Gucci sues Chanel by accident, in pursuit of online counterfeiters

Here’s a legal whoops: Fashion companies Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga sued what they thought was a vendor of counterfeit goods — only to find out that the site was owned by rival house Chanel.

Earlier in April, the companies filed suit in federal court in New York against MyPurseWorld.com, which sold counterfeit goods once upon a time. A court issued a restraining order to prevent Web hosts and internet service providers … Continue Reading

Microsoft joins with Dell to tackle e-waste on Earth Day

E-waste is becoming a mounting problem all over the world. Landfills are piling up with old computers, cell phones, and other electronics — many of which contain toxic materials that can contaminate groundwater, or never biodegrade. Now two of the most formidable producers of materials that eventually become e-waste — Dell and Microsoft — are banning together to stem the tide.

To do so, they are joining an existing recycling program run by Goodwill Industries … Continue Reading

Microsoft's video game business turns a profit

Microsoft‘s video game division reported a profit as the game industry started to show signs of bouncing back from the recession that has hampered sales in the past year.

The company’s Entertainment & Devices group — which includes Xbox 360, PC game, consumer software, mobile and Zune sales — reported revenue of $1.665 billion in the third fiscal quarter ended March 31, compared with $1.629 billion a year ago. Operating profit was $165 million, compared … Continue Reading

Windows 7 pushes Microsoft to record third quarter revenue

Microsoft’s latest earnings report shows that the software giant is still doing well, thanks to the continued success of Windows 7, which launched last fall.

The company says that in the third quarter (January to March) of this fiscal year, it brought in $14.5 billion in revenue. That’s a 6 percent increase over the same period last year, and also represents the highest third-quarter revenues in Microsoft history. The company’s net profit is up 35 … Continue Reading

With hits scarce, Sega cuts staffers in U.S. and Europe

Sega West, a division of the Japanese video game maker Sega, has just implemented a major restructuring of its business in North America and Europe. Consequently, the company has “made the reluctant decision to reduce headcount by 36 employees in the San Francisco offices and 37 in London.”

This represents a 15 percent workforce cut in North America and 10 percent in Europe (so roughly 12 percent overall for Sega West). Why is this happening? … Continue Reading

Facebook steps up lobbying, deepens ties with intelligence agencies, FTC

Facebook has been gradually boosting its profile in Washington D.C. over the past year and is on the hunt for a second senior lobbyist to add to its office of four. Disclosures released a few days ago show that, on top of lobbying the usual suspects Internet companies reach out to like the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. senators and representatives, the fast-growing social network has also been busy deepening ties to government intelligence … Continue Reading

Apple passes Microsoft on S&P's index

[Update: As a few readers have pointed out, the S&P 500 index is "float-adjusted." That means it measures the value of only the shares that are available to the public for trading, rather than all shares. That takes some of the fun out of AAPL passing MSFT on the S&P. Microsoft's total market capitalization is still bigger.]

The day we fanboys have waited for is here: Apple finally passed Microsoft in this afternoon’s trading to … Continue Reading

Hate ads? Swipe here

Jumptap, a mobile ad network headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., is working on a feature that every ad network should have. The company will host user profiles that let mobile phone customers toggle their own preferred ad settings — basically letting them filter categories they don’t want to see. There’ll even be an Opt Out button for turning off all targeting (you still get ads.)

What’s appealing about Jumptap’s implementation is that the profile interface for … Continue Reading