Clearwire's high-speed 4G wireless network to finally hit the big cities: New York, LA, and SF
Clearwire has been methodically building up its 4G wireless networking service around the country, starting with small markets and moving to big ones. Today, the companyannounced that it will launch in the big cities: New York on Nov. 1, Los Angeles on Dec. 1, and San Francisco in late December.
Clearwire will offer dual-mode 4G/3G USB modems in New York City and Los Angeles in advance of commercial service. It isn’t clear just how much … Continue Reading
News Corp. temporarily blocks Fox Hulu access for Cablevision subscribers
Sports fans weren’t the only casualties of News Corp. and Cablevision’s prolonged contract dispute this weekend, as Cablevision customers also briefly lost access to Hulu’s Fox content on Saturday, All Things Digital reports.
Cablevision subscribers who attempted to watch Fox video on Hulu — which is a joint venture between News Corp., NBC Universal, and Disney — on Saturday received a notice that said the content was unavailable to them. News Corp. restored access to … Continue Reading
WSJ reports Facebook apps — including banned LOLapps games — transmitted private user data
The Wall Street Journal reported that its investigation of Facebook apps found that many of the most popular titles have been transmitting identifying user information to dozens of advertising and internet tracking companies.
The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, according to the story that appeared this evening in the lead spot on the Wall Street Journal’s web site (subscription required). The apps are not only transmitting the names of app users … Continue Reading
What you'll hear at DiscoveryBeat 2010: the unexplored territory of finding apps
DiscoveryBeat 2010 is just a day away. The conference at the Mission Bay conference center in San Francisco will have a single-minded focus on the problem of discovery, or finding the content that you want.
Like in the early days of the internet, finding what you want with the fewest steps possible is a problem that is only getting worse as more and more apps are piling into the Apple, Android and other app stores. … Continue Reading
Why did Facebook unplug LOLapps games with 150M users?
Facebook has evidently unplugged all the games from popular social game maker LOLapps after the company violated the social network’s terms of service.
We don’t know exactly what that means, but it’s a mystery with a lot of gravitas. LOLapps users are wondering whether they are losing their accounts for their beloved games permanently, or if this is simply a temporary situation.
A thread on the Quora forum site suggested that LOLapps games were able … Continue Reading
Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook doesn't make real profits, and that’s okay
Speaking at incubator Y Combinator’s Startup School today, Mark Zuckerberg talked about how his attitude toward building a business has changed over the years.
His initial indifference toward revenue is almost legendary at this point, at least in the startup world. Even now, Zuckerberg said he’s not that interested in making money. Facebook is focused on gaining users and improving the experience for existing users, so any extra cash is just reinvested in the product, … Continue Reading
Imeem co-founder explains why music startups are a bad idea
Dalton Caldwell, co-founder and former chief executive of failed social music startup Imeem says you might want to scrap that idea for a music startup of your own.
Caldwell spoke at incubator Y Combinator’s Startup School today about lessons learned in Imeem’s failure. He walked through a number of different music business models, including tools for independent musicians, download stores, subscriptions, and advertising (Imeem’s model) and identified the big problems he saw with each model.… Continue Reading
Apple's App Store crosses 300,000 apps
Apple‘s App Store now has more than 300,000 apps as of the past day.
Mobclix‘s data shows that in the past 24 hours, Apple added the 300,000th app to its App Store. The number includes both free and paid apps available for downloading. That means that in a little more than two years, Apple has created one of the most population application platforms of all time. Apple crossed 250,000 apps on Aug. 28.
More than … Continue Reading
LOLapps games disappear from Facebook for violating terms of service
LOLapps is one of the biggest app makers on Facebook with more than 150 million users playing its games, quizzes, and gift apps every month. But in the past 24 hours, the company’s games have mysteriously disappeared from Facebook.
To those playing its Critter Island game, which has more than 1.5 million users, LOLapps sent a message saying, “We’re sorry that Critter Island et al is not currently available. We’re actively working to resolve these … Continue Reading
Week in review: New Digg CEO apologizes
Here’s our roundup of the week’s big stories in tech business news. First, the most popular posts VentureBeat published in the last seven days:
New Digg CEO apologizes to site’s fans — About six weeks after he was hired to be the new chief executive of news aggregator Digg.com, Matt Williams greeted community members for the first time, apologized for the site’s botched attempt at a redesign, and announced officially that several old features would … Continue Reading
Demand for Angry Birds game inundates GetJar's app store
Demand for mobile game Angry Birds almost sunk GetJar, the app store where the Google Android version of the game first appeared today. GetJar said that the demand for the game, which has sold more than 7 million units on the iPhone in the past 10 months, was so big that it brought down the company’s servers.
Chris Dury, a GetJar executive, wrote on the company’s blog, “Wow! People love Angry Birds! Today we launched … Continue Reading
Evidence builds for smaller 11.6-inch Apple MacBook Air unveiling next week
Following on the heels of a report from last week on a potentially smaller 11.6-inch MacBook Pro, Apple is set to unveil the computer at its “Back to the Mac” event on October 20, multiple sources tell AppleInsider.
The sources say that the first models of the smaller MacBook Air have been coming down Apple’s manufacturing lines in Taiwan for at least a week, which should make them readily available soon after they’re announced next … Continue Reading
DiscoveryBeat 2010: Final agenda at a glance
If you haven’t heard our trumpets blasting over the past few weeks, you may be interested to know that DiscoveryBeat 2010 is coming up on Monday. And it’s about time we posted our final agenda.
DiscoveryBeat 2010 is an event focused on the secret recipes for application discovery and monetization. Our newest speakers represent vital parts of the ecosystem, from investors to app creators and experts who cover the space. Due to its success in … Continue Reading
enLighted gets $1.4M to reduce energy use in commercial buildings
enLighted, a company that develops advanced lighting control systems, has raised $1.4 million of an expected $1.7 million in equity, according to a filing with the SEC.
The startup aims to reduce energy consumption by bringing its lighting systems to the mass market. The systems, which provide dimming control of individual lighting fixtures in a building, can be used by buildings like hotels, universities and offices.
Based in Mountain View, Calif. and founded in 2009, … Continue Reading
UberCab raises $1.25M to end your futile search for taxis
UberCab, an iPhone application that helps you call for a private driver, has raised $1.25 million from well-known backers — including “super angel” Chris Sacca, who previously tweeted about liking the service.
The application is aimed at folks who are tired of waiting for taxis. In San Francisco, at least, it seems that I can never find one when I need one, and when I call a cab company, things don’t go much better. I … Continue Reading
Salesforce investor: Set Chatter free to compete with Yammer
Salesforce.com missed an opportunity when it marketed its collaboration application Chatter, opening the door for collaboration startups like Yammer, a social network for enterprise users, to come in and take over the collaboration sector, said Kevin Spain, a partner with Emergence Capital Partners.
Chatter was marketed more as an add-on to Salesforce’s customer relationship management platform, rather than a new innovation to help its customers with business collaboration, he said. That made it difficult to … Continue Reading
Call of Duty Black Ops expected to outsell Medal of Honor by 4 to 1 (poll)
Few rivalries are as sharply defined as the battle between two big modern combat games of the fall season: Call of Duty Black Ops and Medal of Honor. Electronic Arts launched its reboot of the Medal of Honor franchise on Oct. 12. Activision Blizzard will launch Call of Duty Blacks Ops on Nov. 9.
VGChartz, which tracks worldwide sales of games, said today it believes that Call of Duty Black Ops will outsell Medal of … Continue Reading
Google Analytics gets a visual layout for the numbers-impaired
Google Analytics has become an indispensable service for tracking who’s visiting your site — or at least it’s indispensable to VentureBeat and to every blogger I talk to. But it takes a little while to get used to the service, since it’s all about parsing screen after screen filled with numbers and slightly wonky terminology like “bounce rate” and “landing page”.
Today, Google announced a new feature that should make the service more accessible and … Continue Reading
StudyBlue raises $3.65M for online study platform
StudyBlue, a startup that helps high school and college students study online, announced today it has raised $3.65 million.
The service allows students across the world to make and share lecture notes and flashcards around their courses. Students can even team up with classmates, share material, and have the service transcribe their handwritten class notes. A useful feature on the site helps students assess their readiness for exams by generating quizzes based on their notes.… Continue Reading
Facebook co-founder Saverin: Who cares if The Social Network is true?
Does the move The Social Network offer an accurate depiction of Facebook’s founding? It’s no surprise that chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and other early employees have called it fiction, but you might expect Eduardo Saverin, the Facebook co-founder who is portrayed the most sympathetically in the film, to stand up for its accuracy.
Saverin didn’t comment on The Social Network until today, when he published a short op-ed on the CNBC website. Anyone hoping for … Continue Reading
