The fastest and most reliable sites on the web

Compuware Gomez announced the best performing web and mobile sites across different industries today based on benchmarks that measure how fast the sites respond to clicks.

In their respective categories, the winners for web performance (web and mobile combined) are: Branch Banking & Trust for financial services, United Health for health, CBS News for media, Newegg and QVC (a tie) for retail, Delta for airlines, Radisson for hotels, JetBlue for mobile travel sites, and the … Continue Reading

Business analytics provider Profitably raises $1.1M (exclusive)

Profitably, a provider of online business analytics software, has raised a funding round worth $1.1 million led by White Owl Capital. The company is a DEMO Fall 2010 conference alumnus.

Traditional business intelligence and analytics programs, such as the ones offered by Oracle and SAP, are popular with larger corporations but are typically too expensive for smaller businesses. That’s where Profitably steps in by offering accounting and analytics software at a much cheaper rate than … Continue Reading

Google Voice can act as your only number — on Sprint phones

Google Voice, the search giant’s very useful Internet-calling application, has just removed one large reason some people hesitate to use it.

At least, on Sprint phones.

Google and Sprint said they will soon start offering (they didn’t specify a date) an option to let you use your Sprint mobile phone number as your Google Voice number. In other words, Google Voice no longer requires you to sign up for an extra number in order to … Continue Reading

When will T-Mobile get the iPhone? Give it a year

With all the hubbub surrounding AT&T’s T-Mobile acquisition today, one question is certainly on many T-Mobile user’s minds: When will they get the iPhone?

My guess? Don’t expect it until 2012.

T-Mobile’s official answer, in which it reminds us that it will be an independent company for the next year, and that it currently doesn’t offer the iPhone (but does offer “cutting edge” Android devices), is a classic example of how to dodge a question. … Continue Reading

AT&T chief answers questions about T-Mobile acquisition

AT&T President Ralph De La Vega assured AllThingsDigital in an interview that its $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile makes a lot of sense. Of course he’s going to say that.

This deal is likely to face a lot of legal and consumer opposition, so it’s important for AT&T and T-Mobile to sell it well from the outset.

De La Vega said the deal will alleviate one of the problems that both companies faced: the impending … Continue Reading

AT&T's purchase of T-Mobile will test antitrust law

Here’s the first clue that AT&T knows that its going to run into trouble with antitrust regulators over its purchase of T-Mobile: In its press release on the $39 billion deal, AT&T said, “The U.S. wireless industry is one of the most fiercely competitive markets in the world and will remain so after this deal.”

That’s clearly a preemptive effort to address the likely critics of the deal, because it will mean a drop to … Continue Reading

AT&T to acquire T-Mobile for $39B

AT&T just announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Deutsche Telecom’s T-Mobile USA unit.

The deal is worth $39 billion, with $25 billion in cash and the rest in stock. By adding 33.7 million customers, the decision should solidify AT&T’s position as the largest carrier in the United States, a position it recently reclaimed with 95.5 million subscribers.

In the announcement, AT&T emphasizes the network benefits to the deal, saying the acquisition provides … Continue Reading

Facebook acquires Israeli mobile app startup Snaptu

Snaptu confirmed this morning that it has been acquired by Facebook. The social network reportedly paid as much as $70 million for the Israeli startup, which makes apps for feature phones.

The deal shows that Facebook is serious about extending its social network across the entire globe and that most of the world accesses the internet not via smartphones or PCs but through old-fashioned feature phones. To cover the whole market, Facebook needs its app … Continue Reading

Week in review: 4chan founder says Zuckerberg is "wrong"

Here’s our roundup of the week’s top tech business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

4chan founder: Zuckerberg is “totally wrong” about online identity — Christopher Poole, the founder of controversial online image board 4chan, outlined his vision for Web-based community today at the South by Southwest Interactive conference on Sunday — and yes, his ideas are in pretty sharp contrast to those of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.… Continue Reading

Entrepreneur Corner: Board control and talent retention

Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner.

Demystifying the VC term sheet: Board control – The issue of control of a company’s board is a common one after a round of Series A financing. Attorney Scott Edward Walker looks at ways you can retain in charge of your company – or at least be on equal footing with your investor.

The time has come to kill performance reviews – Annual reviews are a pain – … Continue Reading

Gawker peeks into the war room of the hackers at Anonymous

Anonymous, the internet hacker group that has law enforcers chasing after it for various cyber attacks, may not be so anonymous for long.

Web news site Gawker has published a story that describes the inner workings of the internet “hacktivist” group, which has carried out a series of high-profile cyber attacks against establishment organizations. And the chat logs show a big rift within the ranks of the group that may result in the outing of … Continue Reading

Another Reddit employee says goodbye, accepts ‘dream offer’ from Google

Link sharing community Reddit said goodbye to Senior Software Engineer Mike “Raldi” Schiraldi, who announced he was leaving the site after a “dream offer” from Google.

“At this point in my career, I want to work at a place where the programmers go all the way to the top, where the policies coming from HR and IT and everyone else are designed with nerds in mind, not magazine publishers,” Schiraldi said in his last post … Continue Reading

A startup scribe goes native

For 16 years, I’ve written about startups and the people who found them. I’ve even worked at startups for about half of my career as a reporter and editor — for the past year, at this startup called VentureBeat.

But I’ve never actually been part of a founding team.

That’s changed. Yes, I’m leaving VentureBeat. For a startup.

It was with great surprise that I recently found in my email an offer to become the … Continue Reading

XXX sites win web domain approval

The internet’s governing body has approved the new .xxx domain for porn web sites.

After a decade-long review process, the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) decided to grant final approval for the domain proposal for the porn industry. The whole affair shed light on both the politics and technology behind starting new domain names.

At its annual meeting in San Francisco today, ICANN voted 9-3 to approve the domain, … Continue Reading

Does Google’s Larry Page care about social networking?

Updated

We saw the publication of two lengthy articles this week about Larry Page, who is scheduled to take over as Google’s chief executive on April 4. After I read them, one big question lingered: What does his takeover mean for Google’s long-rumored Facebook competitor?

It may not mean anything. Google executives have been hinting at this product for a while now, and there’s presumably a large team working on it. So Page may not … Continue Reading

Kevin Rose resigns from Digg

Kevin Rose has left Digg, the news aggregation site he founded in 2004, after a few months of uncertainty over his role in the company.

Rose has begun working on a separate startup that is already close to completing an initial round of funding, according to TechCrunch. Rose launched Digg in 2004. He always shied away from being a direct leader of Digg, instead hiring Jay Adelson (who later got the boot) and most recently … Continue Reading

Angry Birds maker may go public in the coming years

Rovio just raised $42 million in venture capital funding a week ago. But the developer of the hot Angry Birds mobile game says it will likely go public in two to three years.

The company made the statement to Finnish magazine Talouselama and in a separate interview with Reuters. If it happens, it would be one of those rare instances where a single game enabled a company to stage an IPO. To execute it, Rovio … Continue Reading

Accidental nano-breakthrough may be big for batteries, bioenergy

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill., have found a way to assemble nanoparticles into larger structures, a technique that could accelerate the development of battery and bioenergy-based technologies.

Argonne biophysicist John Bahns said in a press release that the research could be used to build cathodes with large surface areas, which could then be turned into high-energy batteries. His colleague Liaohai Chen said the technology could also be  used … Continue Reading