Intel settles antitrust case with FTC, agreeing to restrictions without major fines (report)

Intel has reportedly struck a settlement deal with the Federal Trade Commission over charges that the company used aggressive marketing and sales tactics that may have violated antitrust laws.

Under the deal, Intel will have less leeway in marketing its products but won’t have to pay any fines, Reuters reported. The deal will require Intel to extend an agreement it made with Advanced Micro Devices to the graphics chip market, where Nvidia has complained about … Continue Reading

Inside Tesla and Toyota’s deal to co-build the all-electric RAV4

Two months after announcing their informal intention to build an electric vehicle together, Tesla Motors and Toyota have made their relationship official, inking a deal to co-produce an all-electric edition of Toyota’s RAV4 SUV.

According to the companies, two prototypes already exist, and the car could be ready for mass production as soon as 2012 — tying Tesla’s all-electric sedan, the Model S, to market. The new RAV4 will be distributed and sold by Toyota, … Continue Reading

Real-time search engine OneRiot adds data from Google Buzz

Real-time search engine OneRiot is adding the full feed of data from Google’s Buzz social sharing service to its results.

This announcement comes on top of its recent addition of Facebook’s “firehose,” a real-time feed of every publicly shared status update or “like” flooding through the social network every minute.

Since many users of Google’s social sharing product sync it to Twitter — meaning the content they tweet is duplicated and syndicated out to their … Continue Reading

PiCloud promises simple access to the cloud

Even though there are a number of services that help companies take advantage of cloud computing infrastructure, a new startup called PiCloud says it can make things easier still.

Cofounder and chief executive Ken Elkabany said the difference between PiCloud and cloud services from companies like Amazon and RightScale is that existing services may make things easier, but companies still need to get involved in managing and booting up their servers as needed. PiCloud says … Continue Reading

Remember the 2011 Chevrolet Volt's 230-MPG claim? Forget it.

Almost a year ago, General Motors launched a little marketing campaign connecting its 2011 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car to the figure “230 mpg.”

As we pointed out at the time, they were basing that projection on a proposed formula for fuel usage patterns that made a lot of assumptions about the driving cycles that would be used.

Frankly, we think the whole exercise sowed confusion. But it sure got the Volt a lot of … Continue Reading

Virtualization could be small businesses’ road to the (private) cloud

Cloud computing continues to be one of the hot ideas in tech, and it seems like a perfect fit for small businesses. By moving their applications and other computing needs onto someone else’s infrastructure, a small company can essentially outsource its IT to a larger organization.

And for many small companies, especially in the startup world, the cloud has been a boon. For example, Benchmark Capital’s Peter Fenton said last year at a cloud computing … Continue Reading

Taiwanese animation firm creates the best summary yet of Apple's "antennagate" (video)

While Apple would surely love to move beyond the iPhone 4 “antennagate” controversy — especially after hosting a last-minute press conference on Friday in Cupertino, Calif., where it announced that all iPhone 4 customers would receive free bumper cases — the internet isn’t yet ready to quit milking the situation.

Next Media Animation — the Taiwanese firm that’s created Sims-like animations for popular news stories like the Tiger Woods scandal –  has created its own … Continue Reading

5 signs that customer co-creation is a trend to watch

Updated

Editor’s note: This story is part of our Microsoft-sponsored series on cutting-edge innovation. Dave Sloan is CEO of co-creation platform company Treehouse Logic.

“Customer co-creation,” the practice of allowing customers to “build their own” products, is gaining quite a bit of traction among US online retailers. For example, custom messenger-bag maker Rickshaw Bagworks lets each customer design their own bag before it is made to order, and sportswear vendor Shortomatic lets shoppers upload images … Continue Reading

Big Fish Games hits 1 billion downloads of its casual games

Big Fish Games said today its users have downloaded more than 1 billion copies of its casual games from its web portal.

That’s a pretty big achievement, underscoring the growth of the market for simple but fun games which appeal to wider audiences than the traditional gaming business. The category generated an estimated $2.75 billion in worldwide revenue in 2009, according to the Casual Games Association. Seattle-based Big Fish was founded in 2002 and it … Continue Reading

Freelancer.com snaps up Freemarket, rebrands its download marketplace

Freelancer.com, one of the largest services connecting freelance workers and the small businesses who need contractors, has bought an indirect competitor: Freemarket. The smaller company operates an online content marketplace, which Feelancer.com is re-launching under its own brand.

The acquisition should further expand Freelancer.com’s audience, comprised of mostly remote workers in 234 countries and regions around the world and about 1.7 million small to medium-size businesses looking to hire people for web design, writing, data … Continue Reading

Foursquare talking to Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft about search deals

After announcing 2 million users last week, Foursquare is quickly looking to monetize the massive amounts of user data it’s amassing. Now company founder and CEO Dennis Crowley has told The Telegraph that Foursquare is in talks with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft about a data partnership.

This partnership would be similar to the deals made by the three companies last year to license Twitter’s real-time tweet stream. Foursquare believes agreements with the search giants could … Continue Reading

Bubbly, India's 'Twitter for voice', gaining 100,000 subscribers each week

Bubbly, a rising “Twitter for voice” phone service in India, announced today the service has reached 1.2 million paid subscribers in just six months, and gaining 100,000 more each week.

The service, launched in February by the Sequoia Capital-backed Bubble Motion, has soared to 2 million overall users in just a few months, quadrupling their first-month launch of 500,000 in March. Paid subscribers have been on a atmospheric rise, as well – the service had … Continue Reading

MindJolt's DeWolfe explains plans for a rollup in social games

Chris DeWolfe is the man who founded MySpace and made it a social networking sensation, beating out Friendster and becoming the biggest social network with more than 125 million users. He sold the company to News Corp. in 2005 for $580 million and left in April 2009 after the company’s growth had stalled and it had been eclipsed by Facebook.

But in March, DeWolfe resurfaced, acquiring San Francisco-based social game firm MindJolt with backing from … Continue Reading

Sony's alliance with Codename to generate new games for Sony Home virtual world

Sony is announcing a deal with indie video-game label Codename to bring a series of independently developed social video games to the Sony Home virtual world on the PlayStation 3.

Codename will work with indie developers from around the world to create exclusive new titles for Sony’s Home, which has 14 million registered users. It’s part of Sony’s multi-year effort to turn its virtual world for gamers into a social gaming hub.

“With this announcement, … Continue Reading

Nokia Siemens snags Motorola's wireless equipment unit for $1.2B

Motorola announced today that it would be selling its wireless equipment division — which supplies wireless infrastructure to cellular carriers like Verizon and Sprint Nextel –  to Nokia Siemens for $1.2 billion.

The deal would land Nokia Siemens — a joint venture between its Finnish and German parent companies — relationships with more than 50 wireless operators, and “strengthen relationships with others.” The division provides products and services for a variety of wireless networks. According … Continue Reading

Chip industry trade group hires pro lobbyist, will move to DC

Updated with interview below:

The renowned Semiconductor Industry Association trade group is changing the guard at the top, hiring a new president and moving its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Washington, D.C.

Brian Toohey (pictured right), a 42-year-old former lobbyist for the drug industry, will replace George Scalise, a dyed-in-the-wool semiconductor industry veteran who has led the SIA since 1997. The transition is an important one for the industry, which in the past five years … Continue Reading

Pixazza raises $12 million to make images across the Web interactive

Pixazza, a company that can take static images and enrich them with live links to products, has raised $12 million in a second round led by Shasta Ventures. Earlier investors, including Google’s new venture arm, also participated in the round. Todd Francis from Shasta will join Pixazza’s board of directors.

The funding will fuel a new self-serve product that will make easy for smaller publishers to enhance their sites with Pixazza’s technology. The Mountain View-based … Continue Reading

Live Gamer signs up THQ as big game publishers embrace virtual goods

Virtual goods company Live Gamer is announcing today that video game publisher THQ will use its virtual goods and micro-transaction platform for free-to-play online games such as Company of Heroes Online.

The deal by itself isn’t a huge one. But it shows that major American video game publishers are now embracing the virtual goods business model, where games are offered for free and players pay real money for virtual goods such as better weapons. Publicly … Continue Reading

Seagate battles Netgear in home storage servers

Just a week after Netgear introduced a similar product, Seagate is launching its own new family of centralized storage servers for home use.

While this is complex gear, Seagate believes that families need it because they’re storing so much media, from home videos to digital movie collections. And consumers want to access this media from anywhere in the house or while they’re on the road.

Seagate’s GoFlex Home network storage system is bundled with software … Continue Reading