Week in review: Eighth grader tops Angry Birds in the App Store
Here’s our roundup of the week’s top tech business news. First, the most popular stories published by VentureBeat in the last seven days:
Eighth grader knocks Angry Birds out of the top free spot on the App Store — Angry Birds and its variants have dominated the top ranks of iPhone games for the past year. But a game called Bubble Ball just ousted Angry Birds: Seasons from the No. 1 spot on the App … Continue Reading
Entrepreneur Corner: Boosting collaboration and raising capital
Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner.
What makes a great entrepreneur? – There are a lot of characteristics that go into making a startup a success, but attorney Scott Edward Walker, who has worked with entrepreneurs for 15 years, says he has noticed three variables that are always a part of the equation.
How to raise venture capital in a down market – It’s rough raising money today from a VC firm, but Robert … Continue Reading
Twitter clinches best startup of 2010 at this year's Crunchies awards
Just about every inside joke imaginable popped up at this evening’s Crunchies awards, an event that honored startups that have performed above and beyond in 2010 — from jokes about TechCrunch writer MG Siegler’s obsessions with Apple devices to ambush interviews between TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington and Groupon CEO Andrew Mason. (Did we mention a trending hashtag discussing the event’s fashionistas? Hint: search #crunchiesfashion on Twitter.)
But the real winners tonight were a nice batch up … Continue Reading
Watch live video from the Crunchies
Update: The ceremony is over, and the winners have been announced.
Didn’t manage to snag a ticket to the Crunchies? Not in San Francisco? Or only going to the after-party? Well, you can still follow along here, thanks to live video from Ustream.
The Crunchies are the annual startup awards co-hosted by TechCrunch, GigaOm, and VentureBeat. Readers of all three sites voted first to nominate their favorite companies, and then for the best choice among … Continue Reading
How Latin American startups are tapping into Silicon Valley
Alan Colmenares is the Facilitator for the Founder Institute program in Colombia, South America, a contributor to VentureBeat and writes about Latin American start-ups at TropicalGringo.
When I worked for Intel Capital, Intel’s corporate venture capital (VC) arm, in Mexico and a bit in Brazil ten years back, the big issue in Latin America was finding enough deals from which to select investment opportunities. Today, that is less of an issue in a country such … Continue Reading
TweetUp + PostUp + Echofon + UberTwitter = UberMedia
Earlier today PostUp, a service that claims to aggregates the “world’s best tweeters” announced that it has acquired Twitter iPhone and Blackberry client UberTwitter. In that same announcement, the company changed its name to UberMedia, the company’s third name, as it originally called itself TweetUp.
Chief executive Bill Gross (pictured) mentions that the company is working to become the best “Twitter partner” for the ecosystem with the recent acquisition, but after buying another Twitter company … Continue Reading
Why display ads are cool again
Will Price is CEO of Widgetbox, which offers media-rich ads and widgets to increase online engagement.
Brand marketers spend $20 billion a year on display advertising. The goal? Drive brand recall and purchase intent. The medium? Pictures, text, and call-to-action buttons.
The first banner ad, for AT&T as seen below, hit the web in 1994:
The web has changed a lot since 1994, growing exponentially richer via broadband, APIs, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, but, in … Continue Reading
How Vlingo’s mobile personal assistant makes money
We’ve been promised for a while now that our phones will become our personal assistants. Executives from Cambridge, Mass.-based Vlingo sat down with me this week to talk about how they’ve delivered on that promise — and started turning it into real revenue.
It seems like all the big guys are trying to get into this business. The incentive, as a Googler put it when the company launched a similar service last year, is that … Continue Reading
Gamification gets popular, but it's still finding its feet
Gamification, or using game mechanics in non-game applications, is the new black.
It has become fashionable as game designers turn their talents from creating fun games to creating fun web sites and other cool experiences for major brands.
But it’s definitely not a new idea, said Gabe Zichermann (right), organizer of the first-ever Gamification Summit, which took place yesterday in San Francisco. He said that many of the ideas about loyalty and reward programs have … Continue Reading
Facebook confirms $1.5B funding, leaves $500M on the table
Facebook announced today that its widely-reported deal with Goldman Sachs, which values the company at $50 billion, has closed. The funding included $500 million raised from Goldman and previous investor Digital Sky Technologies in December, as well as another $1 billion raised from Goldman clients outside the United States.
For the most part, this just marks the official acknowledgment of what has been reported already. The company described the deal as “an attractive opportunity to … Continue Reading
Coda bags Chinese car launch pro as new CEO
Electric car startup Coda has hired Phil Murtaugh, a former General Motors executive with a boatload of experience launching cars, as the company’s permanent CEO to oversee the launch of its first domestic electric-powered sedan.
This marks a new and crucial chapter for Coda. The company is preparing to launch its first-ever offering, a five-seat electric car sedan slated to arrive later this year, raise another $125 million pre-IPO ($76 million of that round has … Continue Reading
Duke Nukem Forever finally gets a release date — 14 years and 2 companies later
The rumors of the king’s demise were greatly exaggerated. First-person shooter Duke Nukem Forever, one of the most iconic vaporware titles of all time, finally has a release date and is coming out for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC in early May.
Gearbox has released an official trailer for the game as well to mark the game’s release date — and it looks like it fits the Duke Nukem agenda to the letter, … Continue Reading
Zynga dials Area/Code game studio for an acquisition
Zynga, creator of the hit games FarmVille and CityVille, has acquired the indie game studio Area/Code for an undisclosed price.
The deal is Zynga’s ninth acquisition in eight months, and its second in the past three weeks. The deal gives Zynga a base of operations in New York City, where it can recruit talent from the many game makers in the area. The deal is one more example of how Zynga feels that it’s in … Continue Reading
Yes, folks, there will be a Modern Warfare 3 video game for Christmas
When the flagship Call of Duty game studio Infinity Ward imploded last March, it seemed unlikely that it would be able to get another one of its flagship Modern Warfare games out for the fall of 2011.
But fans need not panic. Activision Blizzard has marshaled its resources to launch Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 in November, according to the Los Angeles Times. Activision hasn’t confirmed the report, which cited sources. But in recent … Continue Reading
AT&T offers free 3G MicroCells to customers with terrible service (we wonder why)
AT&T is set to expand its free 3G MicroCell offer nationwide to the top 7.5 percent of customers likely to receive poor service at home or in small offices, Engadget has learned.
The offer could potentially be targeted at iPhone users in a bid to keep them from jumping over to Verizon.
The carrier wasn’t specific about which areas of the country are likely to receive poor service, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the … Continue Reading
On the GreenBeat: BrightSource to power up Crete, cars made after 2001 cleared for E15
Here’s the latest action we’re following today on the GreenBeat:
BrightSource to power up Crete — The Greek island of Crete will install a 38-megawatt solar project with BrightSource’s solar thermal technology, which uses thousands of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto a boiler filled with water atop a tower, generating steam to turn an electrical turbine.
EPA approves ethanol-blended fuel — Cars and light trucks made between 2001 and 2006 are now permitted to use … Continue Reading
The office desk phone is dead!
Hardwired office desk top phones, some costing several hundred dollars a piece, and a very lucrative business for the likes of Cisco, Avaya and others, are on their last legs.
They will follow the same path as landline phones have in residences, where already 25 percent of consumers in the US (and higher in some other countries) have abandoned them for the convenience of their mobile phones (it’s much higher then 25 percent in the … Continue Reading
With Schmidt out as CEO, Google can stop copying Microsoft
Peter Yared is the vice president of apps at Webtrends, which acquired Transpond, a social-apps developer he founded. He submitted this column to VentureBeat.
There’s much to praise in departing Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s tenure. But if the stagnation of recent years can be pinned on one fault, it’s this: Schmidt’s Microsoft obsession.
Sure, Microsoft gets lots of flack for attempting to knock off Google’s Web search with Bing. But the truth is that under … Continue Reading
iPad 2 appears set for April with iPod Touch cameras
Expect to see Apple’s iPad 2 in April — a year after the original iPad hit store shelves — according to a report by Digitimes, which points out that Apple has also added five new printed circuit board (PCB) suppliers for the tablet.
Additionally, there’s a chance that the iPad 2 will sport the same cameras being used in the most recent iPod Touch, 9to5 Mac reports.
Digitimes says that the new PCB suppliers will … Continue Reading
Deals & More: Five9 raises $8.6M to handle customer calls in the cloud, CWR Mobility grabs $1.5M for mobile CRM
Today’s funding announcements include two companies focused on the customers:
Five9 brings in $8.6M for its virtual call centers: The company has raised funding led by Adams Street Partners for its cloud-based call center software. The Pleasanton, Calif.-based company says it processes more than one billion phone calls per year and has raised more than $37M in funding to date.
CWR Mobility gets $1.5M for cell phone CRM: The provider of mobile solutions to the … Continue Reading
