Nintendo's Super Mario Galaxy 2 could mark big turnaround for games

It’s a busy week for video game launches that may turn around the fortunes of the U.S. console game industry. Today, Super Mario Galaxy 2 debuts on Nintendo’s Wii.

April sales of U.S. console games were down 26 percent compared to a year ago, with March titles falling off in sales quickly and new titles such as Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction failing to ignite gamers. That shortfall caused a great deal of angst in … Continue Reading

Google PowerMeter even less dependent on smart meters with new Current Cost partnership

Google has just expanded the reach of its PowerMeter tool — the application that allows consumers to track how much energy they are using and how much they are paying for it in real time. Today, it added Current Cost, the world’s biggest provider of energy monitoring devices, as a strategic partner.

Since its launch last spring, PowerMeter has been gradually growing its audience. Initially, it was only available to customers of its utility partners, … Continue Reading

Twitter cuts third-party ads out of user timelines

Giving another disruptive jolt to its ecosystem, Twitter has banned third-party ad networks from serving sponsored tweets in user feeds.

“We will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API,” wrote the company’s chief operating officer Dick Costolo in a blog post today. That may effectively leave a number of players like Ad.ly, Sponsored Tweets and 140Proof scrambling. Sponsored Tweets, a service that … Continue Reading

Halo: Reach to debut Sept. 14; beta draws 2.7M players

The only question about Bungie‘s upcoming Halo: Reach video game is how big a blockbuster it will be. The game developer announced today that the next installment in the Halo series will debut on Sept. 14.

The series itself has sold more than 34 million units since the first Halo launched in 2001. And Bungie said today that the multiplayer beta for Halo: Reach drew a record 2.7 million players in the past couple of … Continue Reading

Facebook CEO finally speaks — will new privacy controls thwart backlash?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally began speaking publicly about the latest round of privacy troubles the social network has faced in the month after the company’s first big developer conference in two years. He also pledged to launch new tools in the coming weeks that make it easier for users to manage their privacy and to turn off all third-party services.

Instead of just publishing a blog post on Facebook, as has been his past … Continue Reading

Theme park giant Six Flags takes a ride into social games (exclusive)

Six Flags is riding a rollercoaster into the fast-growing social gaming market. The theme park company is announcing today its Six Flags Mascot Park, a social game where players can create mascots and engage in performance in the hopes of becoming the star of a virtual Six Flags theme park.

It is yet another example of a major brand diving into Facebook social games, which can now command audiences of up to 50 million users … Continue Reading

Zuckerberg shows CEOs how to overshare

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s baby-faced founder, is under a lot of criticism for his social network’s personal privacy policies. But you have to give the guy this: You don’t have to guess where he’s coming from. Zuckerberg shares online more than any other high-profile tech CEO. More than anyone else, he’s living up to the Cluetrain Manifesto image of the transparent, accessible corporate chief who talks directly and publicly to his customers.

Ironically, Zuckerberg’s own Facebook … Continue Reading

"Adsense for Twitter" startup TweetUp launches, demos ranked search, analytics

After making itself available to early adopter advertisers for the past month, the Twitter search and advertising startup TweetUp officially launched today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference.

In our previous coverage, we described TweetUp as a sort of AdSense for Twitter. The company has developed an algorithm that ranks quality tweets, and it also allows users to bid on specific tweets so that they remain at the top of search results.

During the demonstration today, … Continue Reading

Pandigital announces eReader with Barnes & Noble

Pandigital announced today a 7-inch color e-book reader in partnership with bookselling chain Barnes & Noble. It’s an example of how Apple and Amazon rivals are coming up with alternative designs to compete with the iPad and Kindle.

The Pandigital Novel eReader is integrated with the Barnes & Noble eBookstore (which has a million books), has a full color touchscreen, Wi-Fi connectivity, and other multimedia features. You can use it to read newspapers, magazines, and … Continue Reading

Gaikai raises $10M as digital distribution hits high tide in video games (exclusive)

This is the year of digital distribution in the video game business.

That helps explain why Gaikai is announcing today it has raised $10 million in a second round of funding. The Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based company, headed by gaming pioneer David Perry (pictured right), has created a game streaming service that feeds games stored in the internet cloud to gamers over broadband connections.

As traditional retail game sales falter, more and more games are being … Continue Reading

Guardian Analytics raises $9M to protect banks from cybertheft

Guardian Analytics, a company that protects banks from cybercrime, has raised $9 million in venture funding.

The company’s Guardian Analytics FraudMAP captures a trove of data about online bank users so that it can predict their behavior and detect anomalies that may be attempts by cybercriminals to hijack bank accounts.

The third round of funding was led by Sutter Hill Ventures and included existing investor Foundation Capital. The money will be used to accelerate product … Continue Reading

Check Point disrupts corporate security market with free firewall software

If you want to disrupt someone’s business, make your software free. That’s a mantra these days as more companies leverage Internet business models to gain an advantage over competitors.

Check Point Software Technologies is using that strategy today as it launches ZoneAlarm Free Firewall. The cloud-based software will provide an extra layer of protection on top of the antivirus software that consumers and corporations already have.

The firewall uses ZoneAlarm’s community of millions of users … Continue Reading

There goes the neighborhood: DeHood builds hyper-local social networks

Did you hear about the burglary down the block? Are you coming to the yard sale next Saturday? Did you see the new SUV in the driveway next door? A new location-based-slash-social-networking app named DeHood is coming to town, which is aimed at hyper-local communities: Neighborhoods. DeHood is a way to make the neighborhood a friendlier place, or perhaps just an easier way to keep up with the Joneses, depending on how you look at … Continue Reading

Seagate shows that hard disks aren't dead yet

Pundits have been writing the epitaph for the hard disk drive in laptops thanks to the arrival of flash memory chips in solid state drives. But Seagate insists that the hard disk isn’t dead yet.

Today, the world’s biggest storage company is announcing its fastest 2.5-inch hard disk drive for laptop computers. The drive is 40 percent faster than traditional notebook drives but is a fraction of the cost of flash memory.

In part, the … Continue Reading

PhoneTell makes your address book smarter

A startup called PhoneTell is releasing an app today that can supposedly give you useful information as you’re making and answering phone calls.

The PhoneTell application, which is launching on Android smartphones, should be useful in two distinct cases. In one, you’re in a meeting, or driving, or can’t answer the phone for some other reason, and someone calls you. Normally, you’d have to wait until you’re free to call back, or maybe type out … Continue Reading

Canesta, YDreams partner to take augmented reality mainstream

Canesta, a startup that makes chips to enable electronic devices to “see” by locating objects in three dimensions, has announced a major partnership today with natural user interface company YDreams to develop augmented reality (AR) offerings.

AR applications are used to superimpose data over real-world objects seen through a camera (such as a cellphone or game console camera). The biggest challenges in AR is that it is still a fringe technology and generally seen as … Continue Reading

Zynga, 7-Eleven to promote Facebook games in stores

Social gaming firm Zynga is moving from the virtual storefront to the real one in a broad partnership deal today with the 7-Eleven convenience store chain.

This summer, 7-Eleven will offer exclusive virtual gift products for Zynga’s FarmVille, Mafia Wars and YoVille social games on Facebook. The deal shows that Zynga is going after the mass market by teaming up with a retailer that is popular among young people. Nearly 7,000 stores will participate in … Continue Reading

Maker Faire's do-it-yourself technological marvels (photo gallery)

The fifth annual Maker Faire drew tens of thousands of people to the county fairgrounds in San Mateo, Calif. Started by Make magazine for the Do-It-Yourself crowd, the event is a blend of wacky Burning Man style creativity, Rube Goldberg inventions, and technological marvels. Organizers estimate 95,000 people will attend by the end of this weekend. The 600 exhibits featured science projects by kids at local schools to well-financed projects by major corporations. All of … Continue Reading

Week in review: Facebook CEO accused of fraud, Tesla building electric vehicles with Toyota

Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

Facebook CEO’s latest woe: accusations of fraud — May has been a bad month for Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who just turned 26 last Friday but spent his birthday wrestling with an uproar over Facebook’s privacy practices. The latest unwelcome gift: accusations of securities fraud from former Harvard schoolmates who say he and … Continue Reading