Will a ban in Mexico help sales of video game Call of Juarez: The Cartel

Every year, a video game stirs passions to the boiling point because it hits too close to home. This year, that dubious honor goes to Ubisoft’s Call of Juarez: The Cartel, which depicts first-person combat in Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez in the midst of a drug war.

State legislators in the border town, which is in the state of Chihuahua, have asked the Mexican government to ban the video game, saying it could trivialize the all-too-real … Continue Reading

Startup investing network CapLinked raises funding of its own

CapLinked, a Los Angeles company that describes itself as a cross between LinkedIn and Salesforce.com for startups and investors, just announced that it has raised $525,000 in a new round of angel funding.

In the past year, both Profounder and 33needs have offered a new investment model for startups with a crowdsourced approach to funding. CapLinked is a little less radical — it’s not reinventing the deals, just offering a site where investors can find … Continue Reading

Fuse aims to make App Store simpler for game developers

Fuse is launching a game publishing company on the App Store today with an interesting proposal for game developers: deep data-driven marketing and proprietary real-time analytics.

The Toronto company promises its developers real-time analytics that can be easily interpreted with a dashboard full of metrics. That says a lot about what is important when publishing apps on the iPhone. Fuse says the ability to respond to user patterns on an hourly basis is key to … Continue Reading

LOLapps launches a novel expansion for Ravenwood Fair Facebook game

LOLapps has had a big hit with its social game Ravenwood Fair, which has grown to 10 million monthly active users since its launch in October. So the company has done what game publishers always do with a hit: launch an expansion game.

[Update: LOLaps says the launch of Ravenstone Mine has been delayed. We'll keep you posted on when it will debut].

If the expansion Ravenstone Mine takes off, we could see … Continue Reading

MoMinis lets developers make 2D games for any mobile platform

Smartphones are supposed to be easy to develop apps for. But as new versions of mobile operating systems proliferate, fragmentation is wrecking that hope.

That’s why Israeli firm MoMinis is launching a new game development and distribution platform today. The two-dimensional casual games created with the MoMinis Studio can automatically run on virtually all mobile operating systems. It’s a great idea if the company can execute on it, since it could reduce development costs, developer … Continue Reading

Will Apple's subscription plan spark a developer exodus?

For developers, it was Apple’s way or the highway. It seems like that highway seems more appealing every day.

The team behind iPhone app Readability issued a biting public response to Apple after its application was rejected because it did not use Apple’s in-house in-app purchase service. Readability is one of a number of mobile applications on the iPhone operating system that used an external subscription for the app — which lets web surfers strip … Continue Reading

Philo: Star power is the key to social TV

Social TV startup Philo tells me user numbers are “through the roof” right now, thanks in large part to copying a strategy from traditional TV — bring in the stars.

What kind of stars? Well, basketball star Shaquille O’Neal, for one. Philo hosted one of its “virtual viewing parties” for the NBA’s Sprite Slam Dunk Contest this weekend, where O’Neal posted play-by-play comments on the contest while viewers could check-in and interact on the Philo … Continue Reading

Microsoft releasing development kit for Kinect motion controller

Microsoft is releasing a development kit in March that will help third-party developers create applications that use its Kinect motion controller.

That means Microsoft is opening up the Kinect, originally designed to be used with its Xbox 360 game console, to be used for third-party applications with other devices like PCs. Microsoft will release the SDK (software development kit) for non-commercial use this spring, and a commercial license will come out later.

Up until now, … Continue Reading

Apple rumored to launch new Macbook Pros

Apple is reportedly planning to introduce new MacBook Pro laptops this week, based on stories leaking from retailers. The company may also use a new high-speed connection technology.

The latest moves show that, try as it might, Apple can’t really move secretly when it is one of the most watched companies in the world. Every company wants to keep its secrets, but if it’s selling a cool new technology, it also has to work with … Continue Reading

Twitter reinstates two banned UberMedia apps

Twitter said it has reinstated two of several UberMedia apps that it had shut down on Friday because of alleged privacy, monetization and trademark violations.

The incident shows that platform owners have to be diligent about protecting their users from apps that may cause them harm, intentionally or not. And it shows that app makers have to respond very fast when they are hit with platform bans.

UberMedia, headed by investor Bill Gross, had its … Continue Reading

Student tablet maker Kno may drop hardware to focus on software

The developers behind the Kno, a student-focused tablet computer with a pen input, are in talks to sell off their hardware business and focus exclusively on software, according to tech blog BoomTown.

The Kno is designed to replace textbooks. The idea is to use pen input to recreate the same kind of tactile satisfaction that comes with smattering massive math textbooks with notes, something most finger-controlled tablets can’t offer.

So it does make sense that … Continue Reading

CEO of Chinese e-commerce site Alibaba quits after fraud investigation

Alibaba.com said that its chief executive David Wei has resigned after an investigation found evidence that more than 2,000 subscribers engaged in fraudulent sales.

Bloomberg said that Wei (pictured) and chief operating officer Elvis Lee quit to take responsibility for the scandal, although they weren’t involved in the activities that led to the fraud. That’s a big shake-up at a company that is poised to become a huge rival of Amazon.com in the global electronic … Continue Reading

Motorola's Xoom tablet to ship without Adobe Flash

Motorola’s latest entry into the tablet wars won’t have Adobe Flash for the first few weeks after it is released, according to Verizon’s landing page for the device.

The announcement was basically buried at the bottom of a banner ad for the device that indicates Flash will arrive “Spring 2011.” That means Motorola’s Xoom tablet, which is powered by Google’s Android mobile operating system, will ship without a feature that is widely seen as a … Continue Reading

Deal of the day: Gilt Groupe raising $80M to $100M

Gilt Groupe has built a big business from flash sales, where consumers converge on a particular shopping deal for a limited time. And now the company is shopping for its own investment deal.

Silicon Alley Insider reported today that Gilt Groupe is raising $80 – $100 million from private market investors. The deal will value Gilt at around $1 billion. If it goes through, the deal will show that the social shopping market is still … Continue Reading

A $679M deal: CSR and Zoran merge to create consumer chip powerhouse

Wireless chip maker CSR has agreed to merge with consumer chip maker Zoran in a deal valued at $679 million.

The deal creates a new powerhouse in consumer electronics and wireless technologies. CSR is a leader in personal wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, global positioning system (GPS), FM radio, and Wi-Fi. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Zoran makes consumer digital technology chips such as those used in cell phones, digital cameras and home entertainment.

Under the deal, Zoran … Continue Reading

TAT co-founder on how technology turns us all into replicants

Hampus Jakobsson is no Luddite. As a co-founder of interface design firm The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), which was acquired last year by RIM, he has worked on some of the most cutting-edge, mobile interface technology. Yet he says that technology, as it exists now, is turning us into replicants by forcing us to interact according to its rules.

In the film Blade Runner, a replicant was a biorobotic being which was virtually identical to a human but … Continue Reading

Mentez to launch Zynga prepaid cards in Latin America

Latin America isn’t a great place to get social game players to pay for goods with credit cards. But gamers there are avid fans of social games and are willing to pay with prepaid cards.

That’s why social game maker Zynga is partnering with Mentez, a leading social game publisher in Brazil that also has a way to sell prepaid cards at more than a million locations in Brazil and the rest of Latin America. … Continue Reading

Will Spotify's funding from Russia's DST bring its streaming music to the US?

European streaming music startup Spotify is raising a big round of financing from Russia’s DST, the investment company that has backed Facebook, Groupon and Zynga.

If it is raising a big round, then the company may very well join the club of extremely valuable tech startups in an age when big private equity companies such as DST are willing to provide them with lots of money in lieu of an initial public offering. DST is … Continue Reading