Twitter infiltrates telecom: Kevin Thau to speak at MobileBeat 2010

We just landed another great speaker for VentureBeat’s MobileBeat 2010 conference: Kevin Thau, Twitter’s director of mobile. Thau is leading the charge to integrate Twitter with carriers and handsets at a time when devices are increasingly reliant on software partnerships for differentiation. That gives Twitter, and Thau in particular, serious clout among legacy device makers and carriers.

Thau was behind Twitter’s recent integration with Japan’s fastest-growing cellphone carrier, Softbank—a deal that put Twitter on the … Continue Reading

Offerpal's GamePoints virtual currency draws half a million users in three weeks

Offerpal Media says it has a hit on its hands with GamePoints.com, a new consumer website that lets users earn virtual currency for use in their favorite social games. In its first three weeks, the site has drawn more than half a million users.

Gamers go to the site to perform tasks that will earn them virtual currency in lieu of paying for it with real money. So far the most popular ways to earn … Continue Reading

Three Necessities for Start-up Success

To achieve victory in the corporate world, a start-up needs three things, says serial entrepreneur and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. One of those – a product that’s ten times better than the nearest competitor – has a little wiggle room, but the others need to stand firm. Andreessen describes all three in this entrepreneur thought leader lecture given at Stanford University.

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

As new phones emerge, mobile app development is a moving target

Editor’s note: This story is part of our Microsoft-sponsored series on cutting-edge innovation. Michael Lucaccini is president and founder of digital development studio Archetype.

Working for a digital design firm, I get the chance to see trends across projects and technologies. I also notice trends in client expectations. There was a time when resistance to interactive platforms like Flash and Silverlight was commonplace. What were once barriers, negotiation points and show stoppers have now become … Continue Reading

Grockit banks $3M of its $7M round for social learning

Grockit, a company that combines learning with social networking, has raised $3 million of its planned $7 million round of equity, according to a filing with the SEC. The San Francisco-based company helps students prepare for standardized tests online in a peer-to-peer environment. The educational startup, founded in 2007, previously raised more than $10 million. Past backers include Atlas Venture, Benchmark Capital and Integral Capital Partners.… Continue Reading

Shake-up on Twitter's search team as director leaves

Twitter’s director of search Doug Cook has departed the company after less than a year at the helm of the team. The company has staffed up heavily over the past few months, attracting early Googlers with expertise on scalability issues to search.

The company’s search team may have split into two, squeezing Cook out, according to TechCrunch. Another reason behind Cook’s move may be that, aside from putting popular and sponsored tweets atop results earlier … Continue Reading

Roundup: AdMob is finally Google's, Facebook releases Android SDK, and more

Here’s the latest action:

Google launches its own trading floor — It looks like the search engine has launched a trading floor to keep track of its $26.5 billion in cash and short-term investments, according to BusinessWeek. The move seems to be motivated by the companies desire for higher returns on its money.

Facebook offers Android SDK — Today, in the wake of news that more people are using Android now than the iPhone OS, … Continue Reading

As HP squares off with Android and Apple, Phil McKinney to keynote at MobileBeat

We’re pleased to announce that Phil McKinney, VP and CTO of Hewlett-Packard’s Personal Systems Group, will be keynoting at MobileBeat 2010, a conference held by VentureBeat on July 12 to 13 in San Francisco. As the man in charge of HP’s product lines, McKinney stands smack in the middle of a major power shift in the mobile industry.

The success of new form factors for powerful computers (think iPhone, Droid, iPad) have inspired PC makers … Continue Reading

BlockChalk lands $1M for community-based mobile messaging

BlockChalk, a mobile application that lets people leave messages for other community members, today announced it has secured a $1 million round of funding, the company’s first. The funding will be used to expand the company’s team as it looks for iPhone developers and server-side engineers.

BlockChalk, first covered back in January,  is a location-based mobile service available to iPhone, Palm and Android devices that lets users anonymously leave messages in different areas of a … Continue Reading

Daimler looks beyond Tesla with BYD electric-car partnership

Until Toyota stepped in last week, Daimler was the only major auto manufacturer to take a stake in electric-car startup Tesla Motors — a company that has now become synonymous with next-generation transportation. Now Daimler wants to work the same magic with BYD, the Chinese battery and electric vehicle maker.

Daimler announced today that it is partnering with BYD to build a new brand of electric cars via a joint venture called Shenzhen BYD Daimler … Continue Reading

Tesla's Elon Musk: "I ran out of cash"

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk seems to have it all. The electric-car entrepreneur is the toast of Silicon Valley, Sacramento, and Tokyo after unveiling a plan to revive Toyota’s shuttered NUMMI plant last week. And deal-hungry Wall Street bankers are angling to take his company public. He’s even a Hollywood star, with a cameo in the hit Iron Man 2 movie, said to be based on his life story.

The one thing he doesn’t have, … Continue Reading

Fate of tax on venture capitalists' carried interest still uncertain

A plan to increase taxes on venture capitalists’ earnings is caught up in a larger political battle over a federal jobs bill.

Carried interest, the profit-based quasi-bonus that VC partners earn from their investments, has been taxed at the 15 percent capital gains rate in the past. Congress wants to hike taxes by reclassifying those earnings as regular income. The jobs bill being discussed in the house, H.R. 4213, takes a hybrid approach, with one-fourth … Continue Reading

Extreme video gamers play 48 hours per week

You know who you are. Extreme gamers spend an average of 48.5 hours a week playing video games, according to research by market analyst NPD Group.

This “Extreme Gamers” segment represents 4 percent of the total U.S. gaming population. On average, gamers ages 2 and older spend 13 hours per week playing games, up from 12.3 hours in 2009.

The study provides a detailed look at the behaviors of these extreme gamers, who do more … Continue Reading

BlackBerry Partners Fund goes to China with new $100M

BlackBerry Partners Fund, a joint venture between BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion, JLA Ventures, and other investors, is moving aggressively into China with a new $100 million fund.

You can read the announcement at the new BlackBerry Partners Fund China website. The big message is that China’s mobile market is already the world’s largest, it’s still growing quickly, and the BlackBerry fund wants in on the action. For local expertise, it’s partnering with China Broadband Capital … Continue Reading

OpenSky launches an in-page shopping cart for bloggers

A new easy-to-use tool makes it possible for independent site owners to sell boutique goods off their sites and take a cut, without sending visitors somewhere else to make the purchase.

Affiliate networks, in which a website’s operator gets paid a cut by, say, Amazon.com for posting a link that sends shoppers to buy something at Amazon, are a steady source of income for many people.

But what if you, a blogger, tastemaker, author, celebrity … Continue Reading

Sony's Killzone 3 looks amazing, but its 3D TV version disappoints

Sony showed off the full glory of its upcoming Killzone 3 video game for the PlayStation 3 last night at a press event in San Francisco. The game looks outstanding, with intense and movie-like combat scenes, but I wasn’t impressed with its attempt to tie the game to 3D TV and 3D viewing glasses.

Killzone 3 is one of Sony’s flagship games for the PlayStation 3 and the fast-action sci-fi shooter is quite worthy of … Continue Reading

Full interview with Guerrilla Games' Hermen Hulst on building Killzone 3

We got a chance to talk directly with Hermen Hulst, managing director at Killzone 3 developer Guerrilla Games. The pressure is on for Hulst to deliver another exclusive for Sony that will convince gamers to stick with or buy a PlayStation 3. His job is to make sure that his studio shoots high enough to show off what the PS 3 can do and keep Sony ahead of its rivals in the console war. Here’s … Continue Reading

Palm's hotshot designer jumps to Google

Update: Google has confirmed that Duarte is now working on user experience for Android.

A few weeks after gadget maker Palm announced its sale to HP, the world’s largest technology company, hotshot Palm designer Matias Duarte has left Palm for Google, according to a report by AllThingsD reporter John Paczkowski.

At Palm, Duarte was in charge of human-computer interfaces and the crucial area known as user experience. Paczkowski says Duarte will probably do user experience … Continue Reading

Time Warner, NBC Universal to Apple: Buzz off, we're sticking with Flash

Hollywood execs from several large entertainment media companies have reportedly told Apple that they’re not going to port their existing content from Flash to Apple’s iPad format. The New York Post namechecks Time Warner and NBC Universal, and also implies that there are others.

The names dropped by the Post are critical. Time Warner is second only to Vivendi in size among entertainment conglomerates. NBC Universal, now jointly owned by GE and Comcast, is also … Continue Reading