Will Nokia build Windows phones?

(Update: Nokia disagrees with our report. However, we have two additional sources which agree with it).

According to a trusted source, Nokia is now likely to use Windows Phone 7 as an additional platform for its phones. Also, Nokia’s board has given new ex-Microsoft CEO Stephen Elop the green light to change the company’s strategy if needed, a source familiar with these matters said. This new mandate includes decisions on OS strategy or alliances.

Prior … Continue Reading

Apple could sell 21M iPads in 2011, helped by sales to Fortune 100 companies

Apple could sell 21 million units of its iPad tablet next year as half of the largest and most prominent companies in the world begin testing or deploying the iPad for corporate use, according to an analyst with Wall Street firm Piper Jaffray.

About 50 percent of Fortune 100 companies have begun either testing or full-out using the iPad for their corporate needs, though Piper Jaffray senior research analyst Gene Munster wouldn’t specify which companies, … Continue Reading

On the GreenBeat: Coda copies Apple's sales strategy, DuPont beats forecast and hits $1 billion in solar sales

Coda will be selling its $45,000 all-electric sedan in malls, a sales strategy the startup likens to Apple’s. The company plans to put up storefronts within 10 to 12 miles of its target demographic (stores are planned for Los Angeles and California’s Bay Area) and plans to retain control of the stores, servicing cars, proffering a “no-pressure” sales environment and offering the cars for sale without markup. The company made waves when it announced … Continue Reading

Exclusive interview: The teens who took over Twitter

A teenage prank on Twitter turned into the hack heard round the world Tuesday — and VentureBeat now has the story behind it. Through an exclusive interview with the two New Zealand kids whose code spread around the world in minutes, we learned exactly how idle mischief from down under turned the fast-growing microblogging site upside-down.

The incident raised questions about Twitter’s security. The site has swiftly grown to more than 140 million users. It … Continue Reading

The SolSource solar oven wins 500K EU in the Green Challenge

The Postcode Lottery Green Challenge award is a startup competition run by the Dutch Postcode Lottery with 500,000 EU ($666,200) up for grabs for the winner and 200,000 EU ($260,500) for the runner-up. All entries must have the potential to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in a measurable fashion. From an impressive field of young entrepreneurs, the jury chose 25-year old Scot Frank of One Earth Designs as the winner for his company’s SolSource solar oven.

SolSource … Continue Reading

Foundation 9 Entertainment quietly dominates games on Xbox Live Arcade

Microsoft‘s Xbox Live Arcade game-download service has become one of the hit platforms in the age of digital game distribution. And Foundation 9 Entertainment, a big but little-known game developer, has quietly come to dominate games on the platform, VentureBeat has learned.

Irvine, Calif.-based Foundation 9 (abbreviated F9E) has developed 43 of the 300 games on Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA), a downloadable game service that is accessible via the Xbox 360 video game console. … Continue Reading

LinkedIn buys business review site ChoiceVendor

LinkedIn announced its second acquisition today with its purchase of ChoiceVendor, a review site for business services. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

We initially described ChoiceVendor as “Yelp-for-businesses” — a description that goes a long way towards explaining why LinkedIn would be interested in owning it. The site allows businesses to review business service providers and find things like a new accounting or web design firm in a pinch.

Following the announcement … Continue Reading

Shapeways lands $5 million for 3D printing

Dutch startup Shapeways, which lets you design and print your own 3D objects, just raised $5 million. The company will also move its headquarters to New York from its current home base of Eindhoven in The Netherlands. The majority of Shapeways users are currently in the U.S.

Shapeways offers 3D printing in glass, steel, plastic and a high performance composite (a powdery, sand-like substance) that hardens like a cement to produce full-color objects. The company … Continue Reading

MocoSpace raises $3.5M from SoftBank for browser-based mobile games

MocoSpace has made a big bet that browser-based games will take off on mobile phones as the mobile web comes of age. And now SoftBank Capital is making a bet that MocoSpace is right about that. Japan’s SoftBank is investing $3.5 million in MocoSpace in a strategic round.

Boston-based MocoSpace was founded in 2005 and has more than 14 million users for its browser-based games and entertainment on both feature phones and on smartphones, said … Continue Reading

Geodelic raises funding from Verizon and launches GeoGuides beta test

Verizon has invested an undisclosed amount in Geodelic, the company that makes it easy for consumers to discover nearby businesses via their mobile phones. In addition, Geodelic is launching a beta test for a new GeoGuides service, which lets brands target consumers when they pass by certain areas.

Santa Monica, Calif.-based Geodelic closed the second round of financing in the second quarter. The money came from Verizon Communications’ Verizon Ventures group. To date, Geodelic has … Continue Reading

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg now worth more than Steve Jobs

The annual Forbes 400, which attempts to measure and rank the richest Americans in terms of their net-worth, came out today with a big surprise: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who has been the world’s youngest billionaire to date, is now worth more than Apple‘s Steve Jobs.

Zuckerberg, 26, who owns and controls approximately one-fourth of Facebook, is valued at $6.9 billion this year — a whopping rise of $4.9 billion from last year — putting him … Continue Reading

Involver brings in $1.6M to help brands reach users on Facebook

Involver, a startup that helps brands manage their online presence, has raised $1.6 million in a second round of funding, according to filings with the SEC. Based in San Francisco, the company powers apps on social networks for more than 80,000 brands and media companies including Microsoft, Audi and the White House.

Users can take advantage of some apps for free. A news app, for example, allows users to syndicate an RSS feed on their … Continue Reading

Jimdo upgrades its tools for online shopkeepers

I haven’t spent as much time writing about simple website builder Jimdo as I have on San Francisco-based competitors Weebly and Yola. But Jimdo caught up with the competition in one key respect today, with the full launch of its online store builder.

In September 2009, I said it was a strange that even though Jimdo offered a “business edition” of its tools, businesses couldn’t use those tools to create an online store for their … Continue Reading

Twitter loses another potential business model: Plans for free real-time analytics

Twitter is readying a free real-time analytics dashboard to help users make sense of their tweets, according to the company’s business development executive Ross Hoffman.

Speaking to attendees of the Sports Marketing 2.0 Summit yesterday, Hoffman at first said that sports leagues, teams, and players would have access to the analytics tool, the web analytics company WebTrends reports. He later told WebTrends’ Justin Kistner that the tool is expected to start rolling out by the … Continue Reading

Engage121 lets brands spy on their franchise locations

Engage121, a company that has developed a social media monitoring and engagement tool, is attempting to differentiate itself from all the competing social media monitoring companies by launching a service specially designed for national brands with local franchises.

The new social application has been dubbed “Engage121: Enterprise” and is meant to allow national brands to easily keep an eye on their franchise owners social media activity through measuring and analytics, which gets as granular as … Continue Reading

Zuckerberg: Facebook kinda, sorta isn't building a phone

Is Facebook building a mobile phone? Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg says no. Or maybe. It depends on your definition of “build”. And “phone”.

Boy, I’m glad we cleared that up.

Zuckerberg spoke to TechCrunch in the aftermath of this weekend’s cranky back-and-forth between the tech blog and the company’s PR team about whether or not Facebook is building a phone. Echoing Facebook’s earlier denials, Zuckerberg says the company isn’t manufacturing a device:

At the end … Continue Reading

CBS may participate in TV show streaming site Hulu's premium service 'Plus'

CBS, which airs shows like the Big Bang Theory, CSI and Survivor, may make a move to release its TV content through online steaming site Hulu’s premium subscription service, Hulu Plus, according to a report by Bloomberg. NBC, ABC, and Fox all offer their content through Hulu’s free service, but CBS has long been a holdout.

Still, the network isn’t making a firm commitment. CBS CEO Leslie Moonves told Bloomberg the company might consider participating … Continue Reading

Discount shipping goes mobile with uShip

uShip is a transport marketplace for people who need to move large items; from boats to horses, heavy machinery to household items. Users list items they want to move, and transport companies with spare capacity offer quotes at up to 50% discount on the normal shipping rates. Today, uShip launched its first mobile application for iPhone, Android and WebOS smartphones.

Transport is a mobile, real-time business, and this makes a mobile application more important than … Continue Reading

BrightSource Energy quietly moves toward IPO in 2011

Large-scale solar plant developer BrightSource Energy is quietly preparing for an IPO, reports Dow Jones Venture Wire, citing two people familiar with the company’s plans.

According to the article, the company has hired Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to begin preparations for a public offering that is likely to happen in 2011. BrightSource probably won’t chance the choppy cleantech IPO waters this year, the unnamed source says.

A BrightSource IPO has been the source of … Continue Reading