Marin Software expands its ad tools into Facebook

Marin Software, which sells tools for managing search advertising campaigns, says it currently handles more than more than $1 billion in annual ad spending. Now it’s looking to expand into a new market — Facebook.

The San Francisco company announced its Facebook advertising product back in May and has been testing it out with a few early partners. But today it’s launching the service to its general customer base. Marin Search Marketer provides a dashboard … Continue Reading

HP to buy software security company Fortify

HP announced Tuesday morning that it’s acquiring Fortify, a company that specializes in software security. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The purchase would allow HP to offer a way for businesses to “reduce business risk, meet compliance regulations and protect against malicious application attacks by integrating security assurance.” It would also give customers the best of both worlds in software security — Fortify specializes in static application security analysis (scanning software for … Continue Reading

The twisted creativity (and potty mouth) of game designer David Jaffe

David Jaffe is one of the stars of the video game industry. Since the 1990s, he has shown his creativity over and over with games such as Twisted Metal, God of War, and the most recent title, Calling All Cars. VentureBeat caught up with him recently for an interview.

Jaffe worked designing games at Sony for 13 years, but he left Sony in 2007 to cofound the game studio Eat Sleep Play. During his career, … Continue Reading

Scoreloop to provide social platform for mobile games on Taiwanese carrier

Scoreloop has scored an interesting deal for its social platform for mobile games. The Munich-based company is announcing today that it will provide a social gaming hub to Taiwanese phone carrier Chunghwa Telecom. That will help Scoreloop’s mobile social game platform reach millions of users in the fast-growing Asian mobile game market.

The deal with Chungwha’s Spring House Entertainment division is the first where Scoreloop is licensing its platform to a mobile carrier, which wants … Continue Reading

Video site Vimeo uses HTML5 to get more iPhone friendly

Video sharing site Vimeo says it’s going to be the latest video company using the new HTML5 format as its path onto mobile devices. The site plans to release a “Universal Player” later today that will detect your smartphone browser and determine what video format it will support. So it might play in HTML5 on an iPhone or iPad, but play in Flash on an Android phone.

Vimeo already offers a mobile-friendly website featuring videos … Continue Reading

Roundup: Droid 2 runs into its own Antenna-gate, Zivity teams with Playboy and more

Here’s the latest action:

Droid 2 hits its own Antennagate – MobileCrunch reports that droves of customers are experiencing reception problems with Motorola’s Droid 2 phone that could rival the iPhone 4’s.

Zivity joins forces with Playboy — The famous magazine will be co-hosting contests with photography site Zivity, allowing winners to be featured on the Playboy.com website, and may even be drafted as models for the magazine itself.

Blizzard wins $88 million in lawsuit … Continue Reading

Clickfree owner raises $15M for automatic storage backup

Storage Appliance, the inventor of Clickfree automated backup hardware, has raised $15 million in a third round of funding to expand its sales and marketing worldwide.

The Toronto, Canada-based company has grown rapidly because its products are simple to use. You can plug a Clickfree backup storage device into a computer via its universal serial bus (USB) connector. Then you confirm that you want it to back up the computer. The rest is automatic.

Bryan … Continue Reading

Microsoft goes free-to-play with Age of Empires Online; announces Microsoft Flight flying game

Microsoft is reviving a couple of its most popular video game franchises today, but with a twist. The PC games include  Age of Empires Online, the latest in the Age of Empires ancient combat real-time strategy game franchise, and Microsoft Flight, the latest entry in the Microsoft Flight Simulator franchise. (Note: the links to the games were not linking when I checked them).

Age of Empires Online is a free-to-play game that is played via … Continue Reading

Fujifilm introduces camera that can shoot HD 3D movies

Fujifilm is introducing a 3D digital camera today that can record high-definition 3D movies.

The Japanese company says the camera is a new addition in its line of FinePix REAL 3D cameras. Known as the FinePix Real 3D W3 digital camera, the device can capture stereoscopic 3D images in high resolutions. It can also capture 3D movies at 720p resolution, which is considered HD video. The camera has a new Real Photo Processor.

The camera … Continue Reading

Microsoft shows off Xbox Live games working on Windows Phone 7

Microsoft has finally shown off a bunch of Xbox Live-enabled games that will be available for its Windows Phone 7 mobile devices this fall.

Engadget saw a number of game demos working on Windows Phone 7 handsets. They include familiar console game properties like Castlevania, Halo: Waypoint, Star Wars, Crackdown and Guitar Hero. There are also newer titles such as Ilomilo, made by Microsoft Game Studios. The company is launching the mobile game platform with … Continue Reading

BlackBerry Torch price cut in half at Amazon after Goldman Sachs deems launch "underwhelming"

Only a few days after the BlackBerry Torch’s August 12 launch, Amazon has slashed the phone’s price in half from $199.99 with a two-year contract, down to $99.99. The news comes after a report from Goldman Sachs today that called the Torch’s launch “underwhelming”, according to the Street Insider.

Goldman’s report noted that most of the stores it called didn’t sell out of the Torch and that most purchases were made by current BlackBerry customers. … Continue Reading

Sales consultant Runa brings in $9.2M to turn browsers into buyers

Conversion marketing startup Runa has closed a $9.2 million round of funding, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Mountain View, Calif., the company helps online retailers convert site traffic into sales by offering shoppers personalized incentives, like discounts, free shipping or no tax, just before they leave a retailer’s site.

Runa claims merchants see an average 37% sales lift for a 10% discount by using such “cart abandonment campaigns,” while retail segments … Continue Reading

Got a question? Swingly aggregates billions of answers (invites)

There’s no shortage of question-and-answer sites, such as the recently-launched Quora. But if you think the answers found in any one place are too limited, a new startup called Swingly has you covered. Swingly says it has gathered more than 100 billion question-and-answer pairs.

In some ways, Swingly would be better compared to Google than to a site like Quora. Like a search engine, Swingly is based on the idea that the answers to most … Continue Reading

The odds are good that Lyric Semiconductor will change computing

Lyric Semiconductor hopes to find a gold mine in checking memory errors. The Cambridge, Mass.-based company has created a new kind of computer circuit that calculates probabilities much faster than traditional computer chips. And its first real application is in error correction chips for flash memory devices, which have become ubiquitous in everything from cameras to servers.

If the technology works properly, Lyric could create processors that are a thousand times more efficient in cost, … Continue Reading

Social network ad spending to hit $1.7 billion in 2010

According to new research released Monday by eMarketer, U.S. advertisers will spend an estimated $1.7 billion in ads on social networks in 2010, accounting for 6.7 percent of all online ad spending.

The dramatic rise — with growth of 20 percent this year, accelerating to 24 percent next year — shows why Google, the biggest player in online advertising, is finally taking the threat from social networks seriously, and Facebook is moving to protect its … Continue Reading

A123 spin-off 24M lands $16M to explore the next frontier of batteries

Last week, advanced battery company A123Systems announced that it was spinning off a new venture called 24M Technologies, which would focus on more unorthodox energy storage innovations, including grid-scale flow batteries. One of the reasons it decided to release the new entity into the wild was so it could raise a substantial amount of funding for its projects. Now it has, banking $10 million in a first round of venture funding and a $6 million … Continue Reading

Arkadium staffs up to make shift into social games

Arkadium is one of many casual game publishers making the shift to social games on Facebook, and it is adding staff to do so.

In the past quarter, the company has added 20 new employees to focus on social games and how to make money from them. The new employees will work on social game launches as well as Arkadium’s Social Connect platform, a new technology that will bring the company’s library of casual web … Continue Reading