Foursquare won't be outdone, gets its own astronaut

Just a week after competitor Gowalla teamed up with NASA to give users a few new check-in badges to chase, popular mobile game Foursquare has taken the idea to the next level, announcing it too is working with the government agency.

Yesterday, Expedition 25 Commander Douglas H. Wheelock checked in to Foursquare 220 miles above Earth from space (see image). The astronaut checked in from the International Space Station and unlocked the new NASA Explorer … Continue Reading

Entrepreneur Corner: Holiday legal hangovers and where to find a startup internship

Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner.

How to avoid a holly, jolly lawsuit at your company party – Office parties are supposed to be festive occasions – and most are. But they can also be liability landmines. Attorney Curtis Smolar offers advice on how to protect your company.

20 rules of thumb for building a great startup culture – Your company’s culture is what it falls back on in turbulent times. Scott Weiss, co-founder … Continue Reading

Review: Why Medal of Honor didn't do its duty for EA

Electronic Arts chief executive John Riccitiello trumpeted the success of Medal of Honor this week, saying the game generated more revenue than the much-talked-about movie, The Social Network. The Afghanistan war combat game has sold 1.5 million copies and generated $100 million in revenues, he said. Riccitiello made the comments in an interview on Fox Business Network.

But sadly, the game is a failure on both the financial and artistic fronts. Now that I’ve finished … Continue Reading

The sights of Blizzcon 2010, day one

Tickets for Blizzcon 2010 sold out almost immediately after they went online. The choice few (thousand) that managed to snag some tickets and make it out to Anaheim, Calif. for the convention have worn everything from clothes sporting Blizzard’s signature Murloc to some pretty impressive costumes.

Here are a few pictures from the convention in southern California — just to give you a taste, if you couldn’t make it, of what’s happening over in Anaheim.… Continue Reading

HeyStaks grabs $1.4M to let friends collaborate in online search

Social search startup HeyStaks Technologies has raised $1.4 million in a first round of funding from NCB Ventures. The service, which is a browser toolbar and mobile solution, lets users organize online searches into folders by topic and share with friends through email, Facebook or Twitter.

Based in San Francisco, HeyStaks was founded in 2007 by researchers at University College Dublin. The service is currently in beta testing but the company plans to launch it … Continue Reading

Foundrs.com: Find co-founders, don't get screwed

Thanks to The Social Network, the 100-percent accurate movie about the early days of Facebook (pictured), we all know things can turn out badly when friends work together on a startup. Co-founders can get screwed.

On the other hand, it probably doesn’t make sense to hire a lawyer when you don’t even have a working prototype. That’s where a site called Foundrs.com comes in. It allows entrepreneurs to “virtually” incorporate, distributing the ownership of … Continue Reading

WSJ: TechCrunch's MySpace censorship claim 'ridiculous'

The Wall Street Journal is fighting back against an article today by TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington (pictured) that claims the newspaper pulled its punches when examining whether or not online social networks were inappropriately leaking personal information about users to advertisers.

TechCrunch had claimed that in a recent series on how Facebook and other social networks handled privacy breaches, the Journal had left out one notable exception as of Friday afternoon—its sister company, MySpace. (Both are … Continue Reading

A marketplace for custom game maps? Blizzard says it's coming

Blizzard Entertainment, the creator of real-time strategy games like Warcraft III and Starcraft II : Wings of Liberty, is working on a marketplace for custom maps — much like an App Store for its games — to provide some incentive for users that make new game modes and maps, said Chris Sigaty (pictured on the right), Starcraft II’s lead producer at Blizzard.

Players can use the Warcraft III and Starcraft II engines to create their … Continue Reading

GigaOm raises $2.5M, claims 10,000 Pro subscribers

Giga Omni Media, the company that runs GigaOm and related tech blogs, has raised $2.5 million in a fourth round of funding.

That’s kind of remarkable, since GigaOm was already one of the most highly funded blogs around. TechCrunch, which was just acquired by AOL, never raised venture funding. VentureBeat (yes, this very blog) raised less than $1 million from various angel investors. Business Insider has raised more than $6 million. With the new round, … Continue Reading

Offers.com nabs $7M in first-round funding as online coupon sites battle

Discount deal site Offers.com said today it has closed first-round funding of $7 million as it seeks to add more staff and take on an already-crowded online coupon marketplace.

Unlike the spate of online deal site fundings we’ve seen over the last two weeks, Offers.com focuses less on “deal of the day” social or luxury buying, and more on customer-specific coupons for Main Street-type retailers like JCPenney, Kmart and the Home Depot.

Offers.com does this … Continue Reading

Why green investing is at a pivot — come to GreenBeat 2010 (discount ends tomorrow)

After watching the cleantech industry develop for several years, I feel like it’s now at a key transition point.

Finally, utilities across the country are upgrading their technologies and as such the electrical grid is turning into something analogous to the Internet.

Just as the Internet circa 1996 was suffering from congestion and inefficiency, so the nation’s power grid in 2010 is suffering from bottlenecks and blackouts. And while the Internet’s growth spurred the need … Continue Reading

Blizzard classics not coming to App Stores any time soon

Classics made by World of Warcraft creator Blizzard, such as the Lost Vikings or Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, won’t be coming to the Apple App Store or any other app marketplace any time soon, Blizzard Entertainment CEO Mike Morhaime (pictured left) said at the Blizzcon event in Anaheim, Calif. today.

Classic re-releases on the App store have become a bit of a trend lately. Telltale games re-released updated versions of their early 90s classics, Secret … Continue Reading

Dean Takahashi goes Gaga for Microsoft's Kinect (video)

MTV’s Dance Central is expected to be one of the hot titles for the Microsoft Kinect motion-sensing system launching on Nov. 4 for the Xbox 360.

The game makes use of Kinect’s ability to sense your entire body’s movement and translates that into the game. With Dance Central, you pick one of 32 tracks such as Lady Gaga’s Poker Face and then start mimicking what the characters do on screen. As many as three players … Continue Reading

Betfair's IPO soars as investors embrace social gaming

The world’s largest online betting exchange, Betfair Group, soared close to 20 percent in its first day of trading on the London Stock Exchange closing at £15.50 per share and raising $322 million during the session.

That closing price put it in the top three largest IPOs in the United Kingdom since Max Property gained 30 percent during its IPO in 2009.

The British company, which allows bettors to skip going through a bookie to … Continue Reading

Kinect's the video-game controller for people who fear controllers (video interview)

Kudo Tsunoda has been working as the creative director on Microsoft’s motion-sensing Kinect system for three years now. The system is about to ship on Nov. 4 and it will be the biggest upgrade for the Xbox 360 since the video game console shipped in 2005.

The idea was to create a system that appealed to people who would never pick up a video game controller because of the intimidation factor. With Kinect, you use … Continue Reading

World of Warcraft fans: you don't need a DVD for newest expansion

Blizzard Entertainment, the creator of games like Warcraft and Diablo, announced today that its newest expansion pack for the insanely popular World of Warcraft online game would be available for a preliminary download.

This is another of the first large-scale releases of a high-profile game that will take advantage of digital distribution, which has become increasingly popular with platforms like Valve’s Steam game distribution software. Blizzard also released Starcraft 2, the newest iteration of its … Continue Reading

GreenBeat 2010 Innovation Competiton deadline extended until Monday

Monday October 25th is the submission deadline for the GreenBeat 2010 Innovation Competition. We’re looking for the freshest, most promising ideas for making the power grid smarter, more efficient, or more potent.

By grid, we’re not referring merely to utility lines and smart meters. We’re referring to the grid’s “edges” too, and so we’re looking for ideas that transform everything from sourcing more climate-friendly renewables, to the types of cars we drive, to the way … Continue Reading

Is Diablo III coming out soon? Blizzard announces final playable characters

Video game creator Blizzard Entertainment unveiled the newest and final class of playable characters for Diablo III, the “Demon Hunter,” today — a signal that the game might finally be moving toward a final product and have a release date in the near future — today at Blizzcon 2010 in Anaheim, Calif.

Blizzard has been mum on a release date for the newest iteration of its dungeon crawler, but now that the final class has … Continue Reading

Sean Parker: Spotify will finish the job that Napster started

Sean Parker is getting a lot of attention right now thanks to The Social Network, the movie about Facebook where he’s played by musician Justin Timberlake. But today at The Daily Beast’s Reboot America conference, Parker didn’t say much about Facebook or the movie, and he focused instead on his latest project — music startup Spotify.

Parker is a managing partner at the Founders Fund, which invested in Spotify. In a recent Vanity Fair … Continue Reading