Google buys New York office building for $1.9B

Google isn’t just a big spender when it comes to acquiring startups. The company has purchased the building holding its main New York City office for a reported $1.9 billion.

A post on the official company blog announced the purchase this morning, describing it as “a great real estate investment in a thriving neighborhood and a fantastic city.” Google isn’t revealing the price, but The New York Post reports that it’s a $1.77 billion cash … Continue Reading

Motorola buys into mobile media syncing with Zecter

Motorola Mobility seems to be snapping up startups in advance of its planned spin-off from parent company Motorola early next year. Today, it announced that it’s acquiring Zecter, which develops applications for storing your media online and streaming it to other devices.

The deal was first reported last night by TechCrunch, which said Motorola was “close to acquiring” the Mountain View, Calif.-based company. Today, Zecter published a blog post claiming the two companies share a … Continue Reading

Dell acquires medical archiving company InSite One

Dell said it will acquire Insite One, a developer of medical archiving cloud applications, for an undisclosed price.

The technology allows doctors to share medical images in the cloud. That means physicians can share medical images and make quick diagnoses by collaborating with other doctors online. Dell will combine Insite’s archive product with Dell’s own Unified Clinical Archive and DX Object Storage Platform. The platform simplifies storage of images through virtualization technology.

It may seem … Continue Reading

Foursquare launches new Android app earlier than expected

Foursquare may have just released a new iPhone application on Monday, but the company isn’t done with the upgrades just yet. Cofounder and chief executive Dennis Crowley just tweeted that the Android version of the new app is now available, complete with the new comments and photos features.

Though the company noted the Android version wouldn’t be out till sometime “later next week,” Android users are getting an early Christmas present. The reason may be a crowdsourced … Continue Reading

To save your phone from hackers, Lookout raises $19.5M

There’s a gold rush going on in security investments, and Lookout Mobile Security is cashing in on it. The smartphone security company is announced today it has raised $19.5 million in a third round of funding led by Index Ventures.

Security investments have been hot for a while since it’s clear that, with the daily reports of malware attacks, users still need a lot more protection when it comes to cruising the internet. Lookout is … Continue Reading

Facebook's Zuckerberg meets with China's tech leaders

This would have been an awesome sight to see. Facebook’s baby-faced billionaire chief executive met with some of China’s top technology executives on a trip this week that was officially a vacation.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Mark Zuckerberg met with Charles Chao, CEO of Sina, one of the leading portals; mobile carrier China Mobile chairman Wang Jianzhou; and Robin Li, CEO of search firm Baidu.

The encounter is intriguing, considering that China has … Continue Reading

Classified interruptus: Craigslist shuts down adult services worldwide

Craigslist has closed down its adult services ads on a worldwide basis, just four months after shutting down the listings in the U.S. due to prostitution complaints.

The classifieds web site, started by entrepreneur Craig Newmark (pictured), came under intense pressure because many of the ads were thinly veiled prostitution solicitations. In September, Craiglist took down the adult services listings in the U.S. In doing so, it replaced the listings with the word, “censored.”

Opponents … Continue Reading

Skype outage affects tens of millions

Skype suffered a widespread and lengthy outage today with its Internet calling service.

The company said in a post that problems with the Skype network’s “supernodes” are responsible and could take hours more to fix. Skype apologized to users. But the lesson is clear, as GigaOm noted. If you rely as a business on cloud-based communications tools, it pays to have a backup.

Skype spokesman Peter Parkes said, “Skype isn’t a network like a conventional … Continue Reading

Sony launches its music-streaming service

Sony has launched a new streaming-music service in the U.K. and Ireland, showing that the company is forging ahead with a plan to create a media ecosystem around its products akin to Apple’s, despite a long history of failed efforts in this arena.

The streaming service, Music Unlimited, will be available in the U.S. and other countries next year. Sony joins Rhapsody, Spotify, Napster, MOG and other music streamers in offering a service that relatively … Continue Reading

Missed out on Crunchies tickets? Here's your second chance

We’re releasing the second wave of tickets right now for the fourth annual Crunchies, the startup awards co-hosted by TechCrunch, GigaOm, and VentureBeat.

The first set of tickets sold out in 90 minutes, so if you want one, you should move fast. Again, the ceremony will be held on the evening of January 21 at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater in San Francisco. Tickets cost $75 and include both the ceremony (which is always … Continue Reading

TV app Tunerfish checks in to Android

The team behind Tunerfish, the social TV application launched by cable TV giant Comcast earlier this year, just announced that it’s releasing an application for Android smartphones.

Like a number of other applications, Tunerfish takes the “check in” idea (popularized by location services like Foursquare) into the TV world. Users can tell their friends what they’re watching, see what’s trending among other users, and earn rewards. Tunerfish has already launched an iPhone application and a … Continue Reading

Cognito Comics launches its first graphic novel for the iPad

A few months ago, Cognito Comics and gaming company Tall Chair demonstrated one of the coolest media experiences that I’ve seen on the iPad — Operation Ajax, a graphic novel created specifically for the device. At the time, the idea was still very much in development, but today the Operation Ajax application has gone live in Apple’s App Store.

The major startups in digital comics, ComiXology and Graphic.ly, have focused their energies on making … Continue Reading

On the GreenBeat: Abegnoa finalizes $1.45 billion DOE backing, oil refiners refuse to sell E15

Here’s some of the latest action we’re following on the GreenBeat today:

Abengoa finalizes $1.45 billion loan guarantee for solar thermal — The Department of Energy has finalized the deal, which is its largest renewable energy loan guarantee ever, Reuters reports. The plant (pictured) will be located in Arizona and have a capacity of 250 megawatts, enough to power up to 75,000 homes.

Oil refiners are refusing to sell E15 – The EPA recently greenlit … Continue Reading

The best and worst in mobile 2010: It's all about Apple and Android

It’s been a big year for mobile news. Android continued its strong growth in the smartphone market, Apple shook things up with the iPhone 4 and completely rejuvenated the tablet market with the iPad, and former mobile titans like RIM, Palm and Nokia struggled to maintain their relevancy.

I may be a little biased as VentureBeat’s lead mobile writer, but this year made it clear to me why mobile is one of the most exciting … Continue Reading

Most augmented reality companies not doing augmented reality?

Forrester Research just released a new report on mobile augmented reality (AR) that says few companies are delivering “real” augmented reality (AR) today.

Augmented reality overlays digital information over your view of the physical world in a mobile device’s camera view, as pictured left. It currently works by using a combination of the mobile phone’s camera, compass, GPS data and other sensors to identify objects in the field of view, retrieve relevant data and overlay … Continue Reading

Game companies raise record $1.05B in 2010, up 58 percent

Game fundings broke a record this year as 91 companies raised more than $1.05 billion in 2010. That number is up 58 percent from a year ago, based on VentureBeat’s own research.

We found that 115 game companies raised a total of $663.1 million in 2009. And in 2008, 112 game companies raised $936.8 million. That means that venture capital funding for games has never been bigger.

That’s a big change from years ago, when … Continue Reading

Fancy "iOne" camera chips will enable Android photo-sharing devices

You probably haven’t heard of Ambarella. But the quality of your hybrid digital camera and video camcorder is far better than it used to be because of the company’s chips.

Today, the company is announcing a new generation of iOne camera chips that will become the brains of next year’s batch of cool cameras and video recorders. And thanks to the triple-core processors that Ambarella is cooking up for Android devices, those new gadgets will … Continue Reading

Ex-Voodoo PC chief Rahul Sood joins Microsoft to design cool stuff

Rahul Sood, a product wunderkind at Hewlett-Packard, left his job last month and has reappeared as the general manager of “system experience” within the interactive entertainment business at Microsoft. He announced the new gig on his blog today.

His hire is sure to set off speculation. Is he working on a new game console to replace the five-year-old Xbox 360? Will he replace product design wizard J Allard, who left Microsoft this year? It’s a … Continue Reading

Facebook testing new filters for News Feed

Over the weekend, Facebook began testing new filters that allow users to sort their News Feed (friends’ status updates, photos, links, and wall posts) in various new ways.

Users may have noticed the new filters in the top bar amongst “Top News” and “Most Recent”. While Facebook has previously offered individual sorting options in past iterations, the new set of filters seek to give you an unprecedented control over your News Feed. Included are filters … Continue Reading