OpenFeint Connect lets gamers socialize across different smartphones

If your friend has an Android phone and you have an iPhone, it isn’t that easy to play a mobile game together. But with today’s launch of OpenFeint Connect, that could change. The software is like social glue, allowing gamers to play games with friends on any platform and enabling developers to write social games on any platform.

Much like Scoreloop’s announcement last night, OpenFeint‘s new initiative will make it easier for mobile phone users … Continue Reading

IBM’s Watson moves to health care after conquering Jeopardy

There’s no rest for the weary cyberbrain. IBM’s Watson supercomputer, which soundly trounced its human competitors after a three-night Jeopardy competition, will be bringing its talents to the health care industry, thanks to a new research partnership announced today with Nuance Communications.

Best known for its Dragon Natural Speaking speech recognition software, Nuance also focuses heavily on the health care industry. Its Clinical Language Understand technology provides doctors with speech recognition technology that can understand … Continue Reading

SolarCity makes another buy, outlines expansion plans

SolarCity has expanded again.

For the second time this year, the residential solar company has made an acquisition to expand its business on the East Coast. The company said today it purchased the residential solar installation division of GroSolar to move into Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania — raising its nationwide footprint to 10 states and 21 operations centers.

Interestingly, the acquisition isn’t just about reaching more markets — it’s about staying competitive … Continue Reading

Apple’s largest store yet coming to Grand Central Terminal

Apple is set to make New York City’s Grand Central Terminal even more of a chore to walk through. The company will build its next major Apple Store at the station, and the new store will have the honor of being Apple’s largest retail space in the world, several sites are reporting.

Last week, the New York Observer and IFOAppleStore both reported that Apple was eying the space, and today Cult of Mac says it … Continue Reading

Deals & More: Doxo gets $10M for digital file cabinet

Today’s funding announcements include companies that help businesses go green, solve big problems and find workers online:

Doxo raises $10M to cut down on paper documents: The Seattle-based company has raised a second round of funding led by Sigma Partners to help users manage bills and other documents in one place online. Currently available on an invite basis, the service launched in October and claims to help users, by organizing bill payment and other important … Continue Reading

TuneUp adds another $2M to clean up your music

TuneUp Media, the company promising to provide the right information for the mislabeled and untitled songs in your music library, just announced that it has raised another $2 million of funding.

San Francisco-based TuneUp offers a plug-in for iTunes and Windows Media Player that identifies songs based on their “acoustic fingerprint.” The company says it has more than 3 million users who have used TuneUp to clean more than 1.5 billion tracks.

In addition to … Continue Reading

Score one for Microsoft as Scoreloop backs Windows Phone 7

Scoreloop is announcing today that it will support Windows Phone 7 as part of its cross-platform social gaming ecosystem. That means that developers can create social games that allow Windows Phone 7 users to play against Android or iPhone users.

The endorsement from Scoreloop is an important one for Microsoft, since Scoreloop is adding about a million users a week to its platform. With its deal with Nokia last week, Microsoft just might have a … Continue Reading

Spansion aims for a comeback with innovative flash memory

Bankruptcy has a way of making a chief executive focus on what’s important. John Kispert, CEO of the once-bankrupt and now profitable chip maker Spansion, used the legal process to pare back and double down on innovation.

Today, the company is launching a new line of flash memory chips that Kispert says can be used in a wide variety of next-generation consumer electronics devices, automobile electronics, and game devices. If they take off, they can … Continue Reading

Google's One Pass takes on Apple's digital subscriptions

Google has announced a payment service for online digital subscriptions that hopes to be more publisher-friendly –and cheaper– than the one unveiled by rival Apple on Tuesday.

Dubbed Google One Pass,  the new service will allow online publishers to hawk their digital content on the Web and through mobile apps using Google’s existing payment service, Google Checkout.

Readers would then be able to access that content on a variety of devices using only their Google … Continue Reading

It's alive: IBM's Watson supercomputer defeats humans in final Jeopardy match

The machines are taking over! IBM’s Watson supercomputer soundly defeated its human opponents in the final round of man vs. machine on the Jeopardy TV show.

The computer defeated Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, after a three-night tournament that drew lots of chatter about the progress of artificial intelligence. It’s a testament to the talented human engineers at IBM who figured out how to make a machine that could beat a human at … Continue Reading

Why is Visa interested in mobile payment company Square?

Mega credit card company Visa appears to be incredibly impressed with mobile electronic payment startup Square, according to a company blog post.

The post titled “Emerging Payment Types = New Opportunities” starts by spotlighting a recent interview by All Things Digital with Square founder Jack Dorsey and continues by graciously praising the company’s vision as a “big deal.”

Square, founded in 2009, has created a small device which attaches to a mobile device to allow … Continue Reading

Steve Jobs’ cancer clinic sighting sparks new Apple worries

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs is receiving treatment from the Stanford Cancer Center, according to reports in the tabloid National Enquirer and celebrity gossip site Radar Online.

This seems like a real “consider the source” moment, but the Enquirer has apparently published photos of Jobs looking obviously ill. Neither the Enquirer story nor its photos have been posted online, but The Daily Mail has a summary. It says Jobs appears “painfully frail and weak” in … Continue Reading

Palantir's third black eye: i2 lawsuit settled

For a company named after a magical talisman of vision, Palantir didn’t seem to see what was coming these past few weeks.

The secretive data-analysis startup, based in Palo Alto, Calif. and backed by early Facebook investor Peter Thiel, has suffered a number of blows to its public image of late. The most recent is the settlement of a lawsuit filed by rival i2 Group, based in McLean, Va., over accusations that Palantir employees fraudulently … Continue Reading

Campus Dibs raises funding to become the college Groupon

A New York startup called Campus Dibs just raised angel funding for its plans to take the group-buying craze and tailor it to college students.

Those students can already take advantage of the deals on popular sites like Groupon and LivingSocial — in fact, Campus Dibs founder and chief executive Garren Givens said group buying and college students are “a match made in heaven.” But those students have unique product needs. So there are some … Continue Reading

Nvidia earnings focus on the transformation from PCs to mobile chips

Nvidia reported a strong fiscal fourth quarter and said it was upbeat about the potential for its Tegra 2 mobile phone chips to be used in a raft of new smartphones and tablets.

If Nvidia can keep its revenues high as it makes the transition to mobile chips, it may be one of the few technology companies to successfully navigate the PC-to-mobile transition.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said the results show “the larger story of … Continue Reading

McAfee aims to protect connected gadgets

As we connect lots of gadgets to the Internet, they become vulnerable to hacking. That’s why McAfee is teaming up with Wind River Systems to provide built-in security for embedded devices, or appliances with some computer smarts in them.

This is one more sign that, as we head toward that digital nirvana called “the Internet of things,” we are not going to get there unless we can protect users. The McAfee-Wind River combination will protect … Continue Reading

On the GreenBeat: Tessera sells Imperial Valley Solar project, Tesla posts fourth-quarter losses

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

Tesla posts losses for fourth quarter — Electric car company Tesla released its fourth-quarter and 2010 earnings yesterday and said it would be looking to raise another $150 million to develop its all-electric SUV concept the Model X. The company posted $51.4 million in losses last quarter, up from $24.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2009. Revenues increased from $36.3 million for the fourth … Continue Reading

Sony’s S1 PlayStation tablet won’t look like any other

Sony has been oddly quiet about its tablet plans, but now there’s word that it’s working on an intriguingly designed Android tablet that will be able to play games from its PlayStation Suite, Engadget reports.

The tablet, which is going by the codename “S1” within Sony, will feature a 9.4-inch screen and Android 3.0 “Honeycomb.” But perhaps most interestingly, it won’t be a perfectly flat slate-style tablet like the iPad — instead, one side of … Continue Reading

Obituary site 1000memories not dying for cash, with $2.5M from Greylock Partners

1000memories, an online crowd-sourced obituary service, announced that it has raised $2.5 million in its first round of funding from Greylock Partners.

It’s an online site that creates individual landing pages for people who have died. Anyone can jump to a page and write a few words or post a picture or song. The result is a collage of photos, music and thoughts that’s supposed to capture the essence of an obituary. The site is … Continue Reading