New Apple TV sales nearing 1M, but rival Roku is keeping up

The hype around Apple’s $99 revamped Apple TV seems to have died down, but it looks like sales haven’t, as it’s set to cross one million units sold later this week, according to Apple.

But that’s not slowing down the success of rival set-top box maker Roku, which saw its sales double when the new Apple TV was launched in September, the company’s CEO Anthony Wood revealed in an interview with Business Insider. It expects … Continue Reading

Wi-Fi Alliance fires back at GE endorsement of ZigBee

Earlier this month, GE officially endorsed ZigBee as the wireless standard of choice for smart appliances in a white paper, but the Wi-Fi guys aren’t having any of it.

The Wi-Fi Alliance released a statement yesterday denouncing the white paper as “flawed” and “inaccurate.” Though their response isn’t exactly a surprise, their counterargument merit a look.

First, the Wi-Fi Alliance argues that GE’s test of power consumption used an older protocol of ZigBee (Smart Energy … Continue Reading

On the GreenBeat: Wind turbines could help crops, Trilliant expanding to Asia

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

Australia’s new clean energy projects drop sharply — The country is generally considered progressive in its pursuit of smart grid upgrades and renewable energies. Australia’s electricity output from new wind, hydro and solar power plants dropped almost 80 percent this year due to struggles to raise financing, according to an industry group; the industry added 210 megawatts of capacity in 2010, compared to … Continue Reading

Windows Phone 7 ships 1.5M units in first six weeks

Shedding some light on the mystery of Windows Phone 7 sales, Microsoft today announced that phone manufacturers have sold more than 1.5 million Windows Phone 7 devices to carriers and retailers in the mobile-phone platform’s first six weeks on the market.

The number was revealed in a mock interview with Windows Phone 7 head of marketing Achim Berg. His language is worth paying attention to — Berg was careful to say the number was based … Continue Reading

Cloud Engines raises $15M to turn old hard drives into private cloud servers

Cloud Engines, maker of the Pogoplug set-top appliance that turns external hard drives into private cloud servers, announced today that it has raised $15 million from Softbank Capital and Morgan Stanley.

The Pogoplug (pictured left) connects to any external hard drive to the Internet and allows its owners to access the hard drive from anywhere in the world. It basically turns the hard drives you have sitting around into private cloud servers.

Users access their … Continue Reading

Deals & More: U*tique grabs $3.6M for luxury vending machines, LiquidSpace raises $1.3M for the modern workplace

Today’s funding announcements include innovative ways to shop, work and market a brand:

U*tique brings in $3.6M to offer convenient beauty shopping: The San Francisco-based company has raised a first round of equity funding to sell high-end beauty products through automated machines, according to a filing with the SEC. Before making a purchase, consumers can use a touch screen to get product information and view ingredients. The machines, to be featured at upscale hotels, malls … Continue Reading

Survey: 1 in 5 Americans will own tablets by 2014, and one-third will use them for business

Enterprise applications continue their charge into the mobile market and are set to take over about a third of all tablets in the next few years, according to a new survey conducted by Harris Interactive.

More than 1 in 5 Americans will own a tablet by 2014, and 37 percent of them will own them for business use, according to the survey. About half of all tablet owners plan to use the devices for social … Continue Reading

MeLLmo raises $10M for enterprise analytics on the go

MeLLmo, developer of the mobile enterprise analytics suite Roambi, announced it has raised $10 million in its third round of funding from around 15 angel investors — though the company wouldn’t disclose which.

The application pulls in data from Salesforce, SAP and other enterprise-level analytics suites and translates it into a template user interface for mobile viewing. The application is available on the iPhone and the iPad. Surprisingly, it’s not available on Research in Motion’s … Continue Reading

VCs say they'll invest, hire and sell more in 2011

Venture capitalists say they will invest more in 2011 as hiring in the sector heats up and selling begins to shake off the lingering woes of the financial crisis, according to a study released today by the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and Dow Jones VentureSource.

The survey polled 330 venture capitalists in the U.S. and 180 CEOs of U.S.-based venture-backed companies between Nov. 29 and Dec. 10, 2010, looking for their views on where … Continue Reading

NeoEdge raises $3M for ad platform for games

NeoEdge has raised $3 million in venture funding to expand its product offerings for monetizing social games.

The San Francisco company makes a platform that lets publishers put ads into the social games on their web sites. It can add a 30-second video ad to an online game to help publishers make money from free games. The investment shows that, even though virtual goods has become the most popular new business model for games, the … Continue Reading

Meebo closes $27.5M round to socialize the Web

Online sharing and messaging company Meebo just announced that it has closed its $27.5 million fourth round of funding.

The news isn’t a huge surprise, because Meebo revealed more than a month ago that it was closing the round, though the amount reported at the time was only $25 million. The funding was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from past investors Sequoia Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Time Warner, and JAFCO.

Why the weird announcement … Continue Reading

Autodesk buys Wild Pockets game design platform (exclusive)

Autodesk, the 3D computer-aided design company, has purchased 3D game design platform Wild Pockets, VentureBeat has learned.

Wild Pockets, which launched at DEMO in Fall 2008, was working on technology that allowed ordinary folks to create their own game worlds using simple 3D animation tools. The goal was to democratize game development.

San Francisco-based Wild Pockets offers a free, crowdsourced 3D game platform for browser-based games. Formerly known as Sim Ops Studios, Wild Pockets was … Continue Reading

Flash developer Adobe rakes in $1B in record fourth quarter

Adobe, the developer of popular design applications like Flash and Photoshop, brought in a record $1 billion for the first time in its fourth quarter this year, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Adobe’s revenue was up 33 percent when compared to the $757 million it brought in during its fourth quarter last year. The design software developer brought in a total of $3.8 billion this year, up 29 … Continue Reading

BrainAthlete monitors an athlete's mental state during sports activity

NeuroSky, which makes toys and entertainment products that use its brainwave-scanning technology, is revealing today that its technology is being used in an  “brainwave athletic trainer.” BrainAthlete, which is on the market in Japan and arrives in the U.S. early next year, measures an athlete’s state of mind so he or she can figure out the ideal way to prepare for a big sporting event.

The trainer is meant to track an athlete’s level of … Continue Reading

BlackRock leads $30 million round for biofuels company LS9

Biofuels and biochemicals company LS9 recently got a new CEO, and now it has a fresh pool of cash too.

The money raised will go to products “ready” for commercial production, according to a company statement, which seems like a distinction from actually going into commercial production. LS9 opened a demo plant in Florida earlier this year (pictured). New CEO Ed Dineen told us earlier this month that he’s planning to make a big push … Continue Reading

Our favorite stocking stuffers for phones and tablets

So you’re still looking for gifts. Well fret not — thanks to our increasingly close relationships with our mobile devices, accessories for phones and tablets also make great gifts. Here are a few cool stocking stuffer ideas that will appeal to anyone.

Phone and tablet cases
Our mobile devices these days often feature large slabs of glass. And while that’s great for enabling the proliferation of touchscreen technology, it also makes our phones and tablets … Continue Reading

AOL picks up unified profile provider About.me just four days after launch

Well, that was quick. AOL announced today that it is going to buy About.me, a service that helps people create a profile page, just four days after the site went live.

About.me lets its users create a “splash page” that points to the rest of their content on the Internet. That can include LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, Twitter accounts and Flickr photo streams. The idea is to let users have a landing page they can … Continue Reading