Time chooses Facebook over WikiLeaks: Names Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year 2010

If you’re sick of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s 26-year-old co-founder and CEO, Time Magazine isn’t doing you any favors. The magazine has named Zuckerberg its 2010 Person of the Year, its annual profile of the most influential (for better or worse) person, couple, group, place or idea of the year.

The young CEO beat out WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who Time lists as a runner-up and topped a Time online poll in which readers were asked … Continue Reading

Video dominates BitTorrent sharing, but ebooks are on the rise

It’s no surprise that video is the most popular type of content shared on the controversial peer-to-peer protocol BitTorrent – according to one report, at the height of its popularity each episode of the TV show Heroes was downloaded five million times over the network – but the number of digital books and magazines that are available as ‘torrents’ is growing fast as well.

The statistics come from the Germany-based website TorrentFreak.com, which tracks data … Continue Reading

VentureBeat's top ten video games of the year (vote for your favorite)

Game publishers aren’t thrilled that video game sales are down 5 percent year to date. But for gamers, it’s been an awesome year because 2010 saw the debut of some of the best games ever made. From skinning cougars in Red Dead Redemption to shooting birds at pigs in Angry Birds, there was never a dull moment. The year’s biggest hits drew huge numbers of gamers much like the opening weekends of blockbuster movies, redefining … Continue Reading

Cloud music service mSpot heads to the iPhone

mSpot, the service that lets you upload music to the web from your computer and listen from Macs, PCs, and Android phones, has finally made its way to the iPhone today.

The company says its Android app has reached nearly 1 million users since it was launched in June. Now iPhone users will be able to join in on the fun and listen to their mSpot music library over 3G and WiFi connections.

The service … Continue Reading

Startup Envolve takes on Meebo with new browser-based chat

Web-based chat client Envolve unveiled plugins today that are said to give it “deep integration” with Drupal, WordPress and other online content management systems. The bootstrapped San Francisco startup hopes the move will help it mount a challenge to Meebo, the leader in the web-based instant messaging space.

The founders of Envolve say they are targeting an area that Meebo is missing. Sequoia-backed Meebo connects people by their social graphs, making sure that those who … Continue Reading

JiWire brings location data to mobile ads with Compass

JiWire, a company that uses Wi-Fi locations to deliver ads to consumers, today announced the launch of Compass, a service that delivers ads that pull in specific data based on the user’s location.

The Compass ads can appear on iPad, smartphones or laptops and appear as normal display ads. Once the consumer clicks on an ad, it expands into a full-screen ad and, depending on the advertiser, may show where a physical store location is … Continue Reading

Aupeo's Internet radio comes to the Nokia Ovi store

German startup Aupeo bills itself as “Pandora for the rest of the world”, providing curated Internet radio channels as well as a personal music channel based on recommendations. It just launched a range of free apps for the Nokia Ovi store. This makes the company the main streaming music provider on Nokia’s app store.

Music is a tricky area for Nokia since it has its own music store and therefore would not be keen to … Continue Reading

In race with Nvidia, AMD launches its fastest new graphics chips

Advanced Micro Devices is introducing its fastest new graphics chips today for enthusiast gamers who want split-second 3D graphics performance on their gaming PCs. The move is part of AMD’s latest efforts to stay in the graphics race with Nvidia and Intel.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chip maker is launching its AMD Radeon 6900 series of graphics cards with its second-generation of graphics for Microsoft’s DirectX 11 architecture. (DirectX 11 enables computers to run the coolest … Continue Reading

Oodle's upgraded marketplace is all about friends

The social shopping industry seems to be heating up, with hordes of somewhat-related startups launching this year. But a slightly older website called Oodle has been bringing social features to its classified listings for a while now, and today it’s unveiling new features that take this approach even further.

Besides running its own site, Oodle has been operating the Facebook Marketplace for the past 18 months. Both services are built around a similar concept — … Continue Reading

Take that, Facebook: MTV signs up for Janrain's social tools

Companies like Facebook and LinkedIn have been extending their reach with website login and sharing tools. But social login startup Janrain said it’s holding its own and has just announced a deal to handle logins across MTV’s network of sites.

That’s a particularly big win, because MTV is actually replacing a direct implementation of Facebook Connect with Janrain Engage, the company’s social sign-on product.

Why go from a big name like Facebook to a relative … Continue Reading

Google makes Android Voice Search smarter by learning how you speak

Google is taking a cue from desktop speech recognition software, like the popular Dragon Naturally Speaking program, by bringing personalized voice profiles to Android’s mobile Voice Search app.

So instead of the general speech models that Google has been relying on since it launched Voice Search two years ago, the app can now learn your voice and ultimately become more accurate.

By opting in to the app’s new “Personalized recognition” feature, Voice Search will begin … Continue Reading

Biggest shopping boom since before the recession continues

There is no such thing as an online Grinch. The biggest holiday spending boom since before the recession continued on Monday, which was known as Green Monday. Physical store retail sales are up as well as e-commerce shopping by consumers.

In the first 43 days of the November-December shopping season, consumers have spent $23.82 billion online in the U.S., according to market researcher comScore. That’s up 12 percent from the same period a year ago. … Continue Reading

WikiLeaks roundup: Assange granted bail but still jailed, 3 hackers arrested, Air Force blocks access to cables

The WikiLeaks news continued today. First, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was ordered released on bail by a judge in England today. But Assange remained in jail as Swedish authorities decided to fight the judge’s decision to grant bail.

Assange is being held on charges that he sexually assaulted two Swedish women. During the hearing, the chief magistrate, Howard Riddle, agreed that reporters could send tweets as long as they did so quietly and did not … Continue Reading

Why Best Buy should double down on mobile and entertainment

Alright, Best Buy, it’s time to get rid of the washing machines. You are a consumer electronics store. You always have been.

Best Buy’s revenue fell 1.1 percent as in-store sales fell 5 percent in its most recent fiscal quarter when compared to the same quarter a year earlier. The declining revenue is largely a result of declines in video game and TV sales.

That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Video game sales … Continue Reading

After big layoffs, can Yahoo find its focus?

Yahoo confirmed today that it has laid off around 600 employees, totaling 4 percent of its global workforce.

The New York Times first reported that layoffs were coming yesterday, and even before the company had made an official announcement, TechCrunch published unhappy accounts from anonymous employees.

Now Yahoo is sending out the following statement:

Today’s personnel changes are part of our ongoing strategy to best position Yahoo! for revenue growth and margin expansion and to … Continue Reading

Comcast to fend off Google TV with … something

Perhaps tired of seeing its customers dump traditional cable service in favor of online video (a process known as cord cutting), telecom giant Comcast is testing a new service that will combine web video content with traditional TV.

The service utilizes a next-generation set-top box that can deliver web video alongside traditional TV programming and digital video recorder (DVR) functionality, sources tell the Wall Street Journal. It’s currently in limited testing in Augusta, GA and … Continue Reading

Legendary network exec Silverman to launch social video-streaming site

Former broadcast-TV titan Fred Silverman is launching some kind of live-video, social-media thing called Blip City, PaidContent reports.

“This site will rock the entertainment world in the areas of mobile, online, TV and celebrity,” according to a job ad quoted by PaidContent.

Silverman isn’t giving details yet, but he promised that publicity for the site will begin by month’s end. Launch is slated for January.

PaidContent’s Andrew Wallenstein writes:

Blip City is something like Stickam.com … Continue Reading

Clustrix picks up $12M from Sequoia to treat database upgrade headaches

Clustrix, a provider of database software for storage nodes, announced today that it has raised $12 million in its second round of funding led by Sequoia Capital.

The core part of the product is the software that is slapped onto third-party storage node appliances. It’s designed to let users install additional nodes without having to rewrite their database software or deal with any other changeover headaches like outages.

The company is also in a good … Continue Reading

Abound Solar to compete on cost after closing on a sunny $510 million

Abound Solar announced today it has closed on a $400 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy and an additional $110 million in equity financing from venture capitalists.

The company makes cadmium telluride thin-film solar modules (pictured) for large solar arrays. Its approach of using cadmium telluride to make thin-film panels is similar to that of industry leader First Solar’s. Abound says it aims to make the cost of solar power competitive with traditional … Continue Reading