NFC is way overhyped, says mobile payment leader Sybase

Every day, new headlines hit about how near-field communication (NFC) chip technology is about to shake up the mobile payment industry. The carriers are pushing it. Google and even Mastercard are too, according to reports.

The promise of NFC is seductive: It turns your mobile phone into a wallet. Wave your phone at a store reader and — voila — your mobile payment goes through when your phone communicates wirelessly with it. NFC lets you … Continue Reading

Nintendo: 3DS had most successful handheld debut ever

Nintendo said that its U.S. launch of the new 3DS gaming handheld — which lets players see images in stereoscopic 3D without special glasses — was the best it ever had.

The initial launch figures aren’t available, but getting record numbers at the outset is important because it will help Nintendo grow support for the handheld, which it hopes will last for years to come. And it’s also impressive considering all of the competition from … Continue Reading

Salesforce acquires Radian6 for $326M to boost social offerings

Customer relationship management giant Salesforce announced today that it has acquired social media monitoring company Radian6 for $326 million.

Radian6 was founded on the premise that businesses need to monitor the social web in order to effectively join conversations. Its technology crawls conversations across social websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other online communities, and provides insight and information in real-time. Products at the company include a platform to help businesses connect with individuals … Continue Reading

Cornerstone for Android tablets delivers true multitasking before Honeycomb

Tired of Android tablets that all look the same? Cornerstone, an upcoming Android tablet profile from mobile solutions company Onskreen, aims to fix that by offering tablet makers a unique multi-tasking interface.

With Cornerstone, Android tablet manufacturers won’t need to wait for Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” to deliver an iPad-like tablet experience — it’s compatible with the existing Android 2.3 “Gingerbread” release. Perhaps most importantly, Cornerstone exemplifies the sort of customization that’s available on Android. Apple’s … Continue Reading

Voice blogging gets a boost as Bubble Motion nabs $10M

Voice and text messaging provider Bubble Motion today announced it has pulled in $10 million in a second round of funding, as the company attempts to work on new tools for 800 million available mobile users.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company technology allows users to click, record and send voice-recorded messages to one or several recipients, all without placing an actual call.

Dubbed Bubbly, the system enables any mobile phone user (on one of our … Continue Reading

Handbags at dawn: Tesla sues TopGear for libel

TopGear is a wildly popular motoring show made by the BBC. An episode in 2008 showed the show’s host Jeremy Clarkson test driving electric car maker Tesla‘s roadster.

Telsa is now sueing the BBC for libel and malicious falsehood over this episode, which you can see below. The company claims that Clarkson falsely claimed that the car ran out of charge after 55 miles and the brakes were not functional. The BBC says that it … Continue Reading

Want marketers to measure your emotions? That technology's coming (video)

Measuring emotions isn’t as hard as it sounds.

Researchers have shown they can use technologies to measure your emotional state of mind for market research, educational, and medical purposes. The technology could ultimately become part of a larger set of tracking tools that will help companies tailor products and services more precisely to people they’re targeting.

Rosalind Picard, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Affective Computing Research Group, gave a speech at the … Continue Reading

Apple's WWDC tickets sell out in less than a day — is it another jab at game conferences?

Tickets for Apple’s Worldwide Development Conference (WWDC), its annual conference geared toward developers for its operating systems, sold out in less than a day. And the conference is conveniently taking place during the same week as the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the largest video game conference in the U.S.

This isn’t the first jab Apple has taken at a video game conference, either — it announced the release of the next iteration of its tablet … Continue Reading

India's Games2win raises $6M for casual online games

India is growing fast as a modern entertainment market. That has enabled Games2win to raise $6 million in a second round of funding for its casual online game business.

Since being founded in 2007, the Mumbai-based company has built a library of 400 lightweight games that are played by an audience of more than 20 million consumers a month. The funding show that game investors — always searching for the next Zynga or FarmVille — … Continue Reading

Is Microsoft marching fast into NFC mobile payments?

Microsoft is reportedly working on a version of its Windows Phone software that lets users buy goods by waving a handset over a reader at a checkout counter, Bloomberg Business Week reported.

Citing two unnamed sources, the publication said that mobile payments technology will be included in new versions of Microsoft’s mobile operating system as part of an effort to be more competitive with Google’s Android software and Apple’s iOS (the software for iPhones etc.). … Continue Reading

Another day, another deal for Facebook’s Zuckerberg?

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg dined at a Mexican restaurant in Palo Alto this evening in what may have been a $5 billion deal-making session.

Or not.

A patron of Palo Alto Sol on California Avenue told VentureBeat that Zuckerberg sat at a table in the back of the restaurant with one other man and appeared to be signing papers. At one point, Zuckerberg was overheard saying, “So we’ll do it at $5 billion?”

A request … Continue Reading

Google launches in-app purchases that will make mobile apps more money

Android app developers can rejoice now that Google has launched a new mobile billing system that will help them make a lot more money.

Today, Google launched the Android Market’s in-app billing system –similar to what’s been on Apple’s iPhones for more than a year already. The system lets users buy something from within an app instead of having to leave that app to complete the transaction. That’s a big deal because it enables the … Continue Reading

What's Ev Williams working on that's "bigger and better" than Twitter?

Ev Williams, the cofounder of microblogging service Twitter, who stepped down as CEO last fall to make way for former COO Dick Costolo, said in a blog post today he is barely engaged in running the company and is focusing on a new, unnamed startup venture.

Williams (pictured) said that he has essentially handed over all control of the company to Costolo, who he says he has no doubt will make Twitter “bigger and better.”… Continue Reading

How InDinero ignored investors and started making money

Jessica Mah, co-founder and chief executive of business finance startup InDinero, took the stage at the Web 2.0 Expo this afternoon to explain how she solved a problem that her company faced last year: It wasn’t making any money.

At the time, Mah was trying to court investors, and she said that most of them had a similar message: You can’t worry about making money until you have more users, so focus on user acquisition. … Continue Reading

AngelPad's 13 Demo Day darlings

Startup incubator AngelPad presented its Winter 2011 class of companies to investors and the media today in its AngelPad Demo Day. Thirteen companies total, ranging from cloud computing startups to car insurance search engines, presented.

The most recent class was chosen from a pool of around 800 applicants. The last batch, AngelPad’s first class, was selected from the extended network of AngelPad’s founders.

Here’s a list of the companies that presented:

Astrid is a mobile … Continue Reading

What's Google's economic impact? Google economist says $119B+

Updated

There’s no doubt that Google and Web search have had a huge impact on the economy, but how can you quantify that? Google’s chief economist Hal Varian took a stab at it on-stage today at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

Of course, Varian is probably a little biased, since he gets a paycheck from Google, but he also had an academic career as an economist at UC Berkeley before going to work … Continue Reading

Windows Phone to be No. 2 by 2015

Thanks to a partnership with Nokia, Windows Phone 7 will be the number two smartphone operating system worldwide by 2015, predicts market research company IDC.

“Up until the launch of Windows Phone 7 last year, Microsoft has steadily lost market share while other operating systems have brought forth new and appealing experiences”, said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC’s Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team. “The new alliance brings together Nokia’s hardware capabilities and … Continue Reading

Kevin Kelly's six verbs for the new web

Kevin Kelly, the co-founder of Wired (and now its senior maverick), kicked off the Web 2.0 Expo conference today with a talk about what he called the “six verbs of the web.” In attempt to describe the latest tech trends, he rattled off some descriptions of the prevailing forces shaping modern web culture.

Kelly’s assessment gives us a window into what’s important now and what will happen in technology in the future. Here’s what he … Continue Reading

Box.net CEO: Amazon Cloud Drive needs to share content

Amazon Cloud Drive, the online retailer’s most recent foray into web-based storage and media streaming, has a fatal flaw, according to online storage provider Box.net’s chief executive Aaron Levie — it can’t share content between accounts.

That’s what has made other online storage and collaboration services incredibly popular. Online storage provider Dropbox, for example, is one of Y Combinator’s most successful startups and one of its core features is sharing content with other Dropbox users. … Continue Reading