Nintendo 3DS gaming handheld won't be arriving this year

Nintendo‘s 3DS, the hit of the E3 trade show in Los Angeles last week, won’t be arriving in 2010. Tonight, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime appeared on the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon talk show and said that the 3DS won’t be appearing until next year. Previously, Nintendo had only said that it would ship the portable gaming system before March 31, 2011.

The 3DS can display stereoscopic 3D images on one of its … Continue Reading

Roundup: Pilot Group unloads Zynga shares, iAds change the face of online advertising, and more

Here’s the latest action:

Political donations to reach $4B — Piryx, a website that helps raise funds for causes by tapping people’s social networks, says that political donations will soar as high as $4 billion this year — nearly twice the amount contributed during the lead up to the 2008 election.

Pilot Group unloads Zynga shares — Investor the Pilot Group, which sunk $10 million into the first round of funding for Farmville-maker Zynga, has … Continue Reading

Electronic Arts dominates App Store charts as iPhone 4 launches

The recent release of the iPhone 4 has mobile consumers in a frenzy for the latest in handheld electronics, but developers are also excited about the continued iPhone gaming momentum. Electronic Arts is particularly happy with its results in the ranking charts. The company noted that it claimed 12 of the top 20 spots in the App Store on iPhone 4′s launch day.

“EA is ushering in a new generation of mobile game players who … Continue Reading

Buzz on private share sites bodes well for Tesla IPO

Less than a week before Tesla Motors — the darling of the emerging electric car industry — is scheduled to go public (June 29), reporters and analysts are still divided on whether the sale will soar or not. But activity on secondary market sites, where private shares of the company have been traded for months, suggests that Tesla’s sexy products and perennial buzz may be enough to carry off a lucrative IPO.

Right now, the … Continue Reading

Google's enterprise president is an iPad fan

Google and Apple are increasingly seen as enemies, particularly when it comes to the mobile industry, but that doesn’t mean Google executives can’t appreciate their rival’s shiny new gadgets. Google Enterprise President Dave Girouard spent a good portion of his lunch today with journalists in San Francisco talking about the iPad, and why its success is good for Google.

Specifically, Girouard said he’s going into more meetings with chief information officers who are eager to … Continue Reading

Bully for Foursquare: Andreessen Horowitz reportedly nails investment deal in hot startup

Maybe it’s true: Nice guys do finish last in Silicon Valley.

When the venture capitalists at Andreessen Horowitz publicly scolded founder Dennis Crowley (right) and the others behind the fast-growing location-based check-in service Foursquare in the midst of funding negotiations in April, it seemed like Crowley had worn out the patience of the venture firm. Now, it looks like venture capitalist Ben Horowitz was playing hardball with Foursquare — and may have bluffed the company … Continue Reading

Government sites to track behavior, target content

Taking a page out of the book of online advertisers, the Obama administration announced today that government agencies may begin tracking traffic and behavioral data online in order to better target information and services for the people who need them.

The goal here is two-fold. First, the administration wants to make the government’s web presence easier to navigate, and more useful. And second, it wants to monitor what information has proved most helpful so it … Continue Reading

Vopium raises $16.5M for low-cost international calls and text messages

Danish web voice company Vopium said it has raised $16.5 million from Indian telecom investor Raghuvinder Kataria as it tries to take on Skype.

The company said that its voice-over-internet-protocol international calling and text-message business is expanding rapidly, and the new money will help it expand worldwide. The company’s goal is to hit 10 million users in a few years. But that’s puny compared to Skype, which pioneered the mobile VoIP business. Vopium was aimed … Continue Reading

Plastic Logic delays its Que e-book reader yet again

Plastic Logic‘s long-promised e-book reader made out of plastic is facing yet another delay.

The company’s $49 Que proReader owes its unique design to the company’s ability to make electronic substates out of plastic in its own factory in Dresden, Germany. It’s not clear why the new delay is happening, but the plastic technology is tricky to manufacture.

The company announced the technology at a DEMO conference in the fall of 2008 and then showed … Continue Reading

Watch the Facebook movie's rather apocalyptic trailer

The trailer for Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher’s new movie “The Social Network” is out, and Facebook’s PR headache is about to begin.

The teaser is pretty bare and doesn’t include any scenes from the movie — just dialogue and the incriminating-looking photograph used for the movie’s poster. The movie hits theaters in October.

The film, from Columbia Pictures, is based on Ben Mezrich’s book “The Accidental Billionaires,” a story about the founding of Facebook, … Continue Reading

EA's No. 2 exec says company is back stronger than ever on consoles and new platforms

John Schappert is the chief operating officer at Electronic Arts and is part of the management team that has been focusing on high-quality games. After getting lost in the wilderness for a few years, EA’s games are selling better and getting higher quality ratings.

Schappert believes the big companies with the best brands will win in the long run. He is a game developer himself, having started EA’s Tiburon sports game studio. He rose through … Continue Reading

Advertisers start to use PayPal to pay for Facebook ads

Facebook’s recent partnership with PayPal is starting to take shape now that advertisers can use the online payments service to buy ads on the social network. The option is being rolled out today.

Facebook tapped the eBay-owned service to power payment for advertising and virtual goods on parts of the site in February. Users and marketers can choose PayPal as an option for purchasing ads and Facebook Credits, a system being tested in a small … Continue Reading

World Cup sends shocks through Twitter, Facebook

The World Cup has been driving large numbers of status updates on Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter reached a new record in tweets-per-second (jokingly dubbed ‘TPS’ in a riff on the movie “Office Space”) during the Japan-Denmark game. The company saw 3,283 tweets sent per second, just above the record set earlier this month when the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Boston Celtics to win the NBA championship.

Likewise, Facebook has seen activity peak during games … Continue Reading

Internet regulators approve XXX web domain for porn industry

After a decade-long process, the Internet’s regulator has approved a top-level domain (dot-XXX), a move that will serve to both wall off pornography from the rest of the web and raise further controversy.

Once it becomes official, porn sites will be able to end with the characters .xxx rather than .com. The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) decided to grant the domain proposal for the porn industry.

The body … Continue Reading

Boston Power juices up with $60M for lithium-ion batteries

Boston Power, maker of advanced lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and grid storage applications, has landed $60 million in a fifth round of funding — a big win for a company on the brink of mass commercial scale in the emerging automotive and utility sectors. It says it will use the money to rapidly grow its manufacturing, sales, marketing and R&D operations.

Boston Power is a good example of a traditional battery company that has … Continue Reading

Data analysis company Palantir raises $90M

Palantir Technologies, which offers analysis tools to government agencies and financial firms, has raised $90 million in a fourth round of funding. And the investment came with an impressive valuation — $735 million.

The funding was first reported in TechCrunch, and Palantir has confirmed the news via email.

So what is the company doing to earn such a tremendous valuation? Palantir isn’t revealing whether it’s profitable, but it did say that its revenues have doubled … Continue Reading

Retinal scientist puts iPhone 4's Retina Display under the microscope

University of Utah’s Bryan Jones isn’t the first scientist to weigh in on the iPhone 4′s Retina Display – Raymond Soneira, a Princeton professor, has previously claimed that it’s false marketing, which Discover’s Phil Plait rebutted –  but he’s the first to put the high-resolution screen under a microscope to test Apple’s claims.

In comparison to previous iPhone displays, as well as the iPad’s, Jones finds that the pixels in the iPhone 4 display are … Continue Reading

Miso takes social TV beyond badges

When San Francisco startup Bazaar Labs launched its Miso application in March, the easy shorthand for describing the app was “Foursquare for movies and TV.” In other words, it used the check-in model popularized by location services like Foursquare as a way for people to tell their friends what they’re watching.

To give users more incentive to check-in, Miso also borrowed Foursquare’s badge concept, so that users win different badges based on what shows they … Continue Reading