Microsoft sells 1 million Kinect motion controllers in 10 days

It’s now safe to say that motion-controlled gaming isn’t just a fad.

Microsoft said it has sold 1 million units of its newest motion-control system for the XBox 360, the Kinect, in just under two weeks and is on track to sell 5 million controllers by the end of the year.

The system records a person’s movements and allows them to control games using their bodies. The Kinect controller also features a microphone array that … Continue Reading

E-recruiter RealMatch scores $4.7M in funding and a Monster CEO

E-recruiting company RealMatch scored two major coups Monday, swooping up $4.7 million in second round venture capital funding, and a new CEO who was previously a senior vice president at rival Monster.com.

The Israeli recruitment ad network has made a name for itself by only charging employers if they find candidates they like on the site. Otherwise, employers can list jobs for free across a platform that includes close to 2,000 partners reaching over 40 … Continue Reading

You've got mail — still? How AOL failed to catch Facebook

Oh, AOL. The Internet giant, in mid-turnaround under CEO Tim Armstrong, can’t help but seem a bit bumbly still.

Take, for example, its announcement that it had recently revamped its AOL Mail system as part of an overall makeover of the company’s products. It might have seen like a thunder-stealing move to unveil the new AOL Mail on Sunday, amid heavy buzz about a planned Facebook announcement Monday — had Facebook not revealed a messaging … Continue Reading

Google chief says web-connected TVs will lead to fountain of new revenue sources

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said today that his company’s Google TV initiative will bring the open web to TVs and result in much higher revenues for content owners, not less as some of the content owners fear.

Google has been locked in tough negotiations with a variety of cable and broadcast TV companies about getting the rights to show their TV shows and movies on Google TV devices, which are being made and sold … Continue Reading

CEO Eric Schmidt: There is a talent war, but Google isn't losing

Is Google struggling to keep top employees from migrating to Facebook and other tech companies? Chief executive Eric Schmidt talked about the issue today, focusing specifically on a recent 10 percent raise for all of its 23,000 employees.

“It is a war for talent,” Schmidt acknowledged.

That’s particularly true in tech, he said, where salaries remain competitive and even the highest-paid employees can struggle to afford Bay Area property prices. But that wasn’t the only … Continue Reading

Google chief shows off Nexus S Android phone with near-field communication (updated)

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt gave gadget fans a rush today when he showed off an unannounced Android phone — which definitely looks like the rumored Samsung Nexus S — with a cool new mobile communications technology. Dubbed near-field communications, the technology lets you wave a cell phone over a reader and use your phone to pay for something.

Near-field communications chips are built into Japanese cell phones. But the technology has been very slow … Continue Reading

ZenRobotics robot recyclers go for green in the CleanTech Open

For such an essential part of the green economy, recycling remains a dirty, messy business. Enter ZenRobotics, which adds artificial intelligence to industrial robots to enable them to recycle construction waste. The company recently won Finland’s CleanTech Open competition and will represent the country at this week’s Cleantech Open Global Ideas Final.

Off-the-shelf industrial robots can only operate in very constrained environments where the objects being manipulated are uniform and the movements required can be … Continue Reading

Battle for your texts: Facebook Messages vs. Kik mobile chat

Facebook can’t remind us enough that its new messaging service, announced today, isn’t an email killer. Instead, it’s an all-encompassing messaging system that works across Facebook chat, email, and text messages.

Now that we’ve seen the product, it’s clearly not the threat to email we previously thought. But the new messaging service could pose a problem for the hot mobile chat startup Kik, which we’ve covered extensively.

I’ve fallen head over heels for Kik over … Continue Reading

PC-design guru Rahul Sood takes his leave from HP

Former HP CEO Mark Hurd might have been known for his ruthless cost-cutting, but he had an eye for clever acquisitions. So much so that he approved buying VoodooPC, a niche high-end PC manufacturer, in 2006 to bring the cool factor back to HP’s computer design.

But now that Hurd has left for greener pastures, VoodooPC founder Rahul Sood is taking his leave from HP as its CTO of global gaming to get back to … Continue Reading

Fox News High? Why Rupert Murdoch is bullish on digital education

Rupert Murdoch is media’s ultimate contrarian, with a reputation for plunging into new businesses well before others agree on their promise. So could his newfound enthusiasm for education startups give the sector a boost?

Last week, New York was abuzz with Joel Klein’s move to step down as chancellor of the country’s biggest public-school system to join Murdoch’s News Corp. empire. While some ideologues may grouse about the notion of Fox News High, the move … Continue Reading

How Facebook plans to reinvent email and online messaging

Facebook announced a new version of Facebook Messages today that could put the social networking site at the center of your online communication.

The company describes this as an attempt to consolidate different kinds of online messaging, starting with email, SMS text messages, Facebook messages, and instant messages. Director of Engineering Andrew Bosworth noted that currently, when you want to reach someone, you usually choose different communication methods for each person — you may have … Continue Reading

Motorola's Motopad tablet may be the first Android 3.0 device

Google may have selected Motorola’s upcoming 7-inch “Motopad” tablet as its flagship Android 3.0 device, according to Mobile Review’s Eldar Murtazin.

While still unconfirmed (we’ve dropped a line to Google, but don’t expect to hear back), Murtazin has historically been a reliable source for major mobile news. The news is also believable since rumors of Motorola tablets running Android 3.0 have been swirling about for months. Given how much Motorola helped rocket Android to mainstream … Continue Reading

Ford Focus Electric to zoom into 20 first-launch cities in 2011

In a move that shows how difficult it is to produce and sell electric cars, even for the giants of the auto industry, Ford announced today that 20 U.S. cities will be the first to get the all-electric Focus, which will hit dealerships in late 2011.

It also shows how key utilities will be in advancing the electric-car cause. The launch cities were chosen based on commuting patterns, hybrid purchase trends, local government support for … Continue Reading

Former Digg CEO Jay Adelson finds himself at SimpleGeo

SimpleGeo, a service for adding location-based features to applications, just announced that former Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be its new CEO and join its board of directors.

The company’s former CEO and co-founder Matt Galligan will now act as Chief Strategy Officer, so that he can focus on what he says are ”company strategy, evangelism, and new concepts around the integration of location services.”

In a post on SimpleGeo’s blog, Galligan goes on to … Continue Reading

Facebook's sexy Microsoft affair continues with Office app integration

The catfight between Facebook and Google is nowhere close to being over.

Social networking titan Facebook announced today that it is embedding Microsoft’s online versions of its Office applications into the Facebook messaging service.

Microsoft’s step into Facebook is less of a grab at the collaboration space and more like another jab at Google. Things have been tense between Google and Facebook since the search giant blocked users from importing Google contacts into other applications. … Continue Reading

Mystery solved: FB.com is Facebook's new corporate email address

When news broke on Friday that Facebook has purchased the FB.com Web domain from the American Farm Bureau and is using it “internally“, most of the writers at VentureBeat were scratching our heads. Was this related to the upcoming announcement of Facebook’s “Gmail-killer”?

It turns out the answer is yes. Today, at a press conference announcing the social network’s new messaging service, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said Fb.com is Facebook’s new corporate email domain.

Previously, … Continue Reading

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: "This is not an email killer"

Updated

Facebook just announced the new messaging service that the tech press has been speculating about as a “Gmail killer” — but the company’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said that’s actually the wrong way to think about it.

“This is not an email-killer,” he said of the offering, called Facebook Messages. “This is a messaging system that includes email as one part of it.”

The new Facebook feature allows people to receive SMS text messages, … Continue Reading

Who is Cisco fooling? Launches Umi living room webcam for $600

Would you pay $600 (and an extra $25 a month) to have a video conferencing option for your living room television? Cisco, traditionally a supplier of enterprise video conferencing and networking hardware, is hoping you’ll say yes and pick up its newest toy.

The Umi (pronounced you-me) telepresence is a powerful webcam that sits on top of a television and is connected to the internet to enable video conferencing. It’s Cisco’s first true play to … Continue Reading

Ubisoft's billion-dollar answer to Call of Duty: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

Ubisoft, the French video-game publisher, is playing a high-stakes game against U.S. rival Activision Blizzard, testing gamers’ appetites for two near-simultaneous mega-franchise releases with its highly anticipated Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood due out tomorrow.

It’s another sign of the Hollywoodization of the video-game industry. Instead of jostling for space at the multiplex, big game studios are betting large budgets on capturing living-room screens.

Just as movie studios time film releases to avoid bumping into blockbusters and … Continue Reading