MXP4's Bopler Games targets social music gaming on Facebook

About half of Facebook’s top fan pages are related to music. And games are huge on the social network. So it was only a matter of time before someone attacked the opportunity for social music games on Facebook.

That’s what Paris-based MXP4 is doing with the beta launch today of Bopler Games, a new music hub on Facebook with multiple apps. The app allows users to create an original social music gaming experience by picking … Continue Reading

SV150 shows Silicon Valley recovery is in full swing — for big companies

Silicon Valley’s top 150 public companies saw their most profitable year in history as they put the big recession behind them in 2010, according to the San Jose Mercury News’ annual SV150 report published Sunday.

The Merc’s list showed that the combined stock value of those 150 companies climbed to its highest level since the height of the internet boom in 2000. As noted, a kind of perfect storm has enabled a broad recovery among … Continue Reading

Will Wright says games are headed toward ubiquity, diversity, and art

Will Wright is perhaps the most successful video game designer in history, creating games from SimCity to Spore. His games have sold tens of millions of units and have opened up new genres such as life simulations and “god” games. So there’s nobody better to talk about the future of video games. At a recent talk, Wright predicted games will become ubiquitous and more diverse, and some will be meaningful works of art.

The growth … Continue Reading

Week in review: Valve widens the audience for Portal 2

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

Valve figures out how to widen its audience for Portal 2 — with boots — For Portal 2, Valve’s marketing machine has focused on widening the audience for the physics-based shooting game. And it has hit upon a way to target the female audience — or perhaps just the larger community of boot fans … Continue Reading

Price cut for Wii ($169) takes effect early at Best Buy

Although scheduled for May 15, the Nintendo Wii price cut is already in effect at Best Buy. The retailer is now selling the console for $169.99.

The Japanese game company has ruled this product generation of consoles with a majority market share ever since it launched the innovative motion-sensing Wii controller and its system in 2006. Because of that popularity, Nintendo has been much slower to cut prices on its console in this generation.

Word … Continue Reading

Entrepreneur Corner: Series seed documents and defying traditional models

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

Will the ‘series seed’ documents help you grow? – Series Seed documents might save you a ton on legal fees when you get an initial investment, but the fill-in-the-blank documents come with pros and cons. Attorney Scott Edward Walker tells you how to determine if they’re best for your business.

How to start a business that defies traditional models – Business models are real effective for paths that … Continue Reading

LivingSocial financials leaked: $2.9 billion valuation, $50 million monthly revenue

Financial details of daily deals service LivingSocial were recently leaked — revealing the company’s valuation at $2.9 billion and total revenue of $50 million per month.

The information was revealed during LivingSocial’s negotiations to purchase advertising network Social Media for 545,000 shares of LivingSocial common stock valued at $3 million, according to a report from TechCrunch.

While Social Media’s success has slowed in the past few years, it still had potential as well as $10 … Continue Reading

E-book sales triple in February to surpass paper

Sales of e-books in the U.S. tripled over last year to $90.3 million in February — surpassing paper to be the most popular book format among all major trade categories — the Association of American Publishers announced on Thursday.

That’s an impressive amount of growth for e-books — as a point of comparison, e-book sales totaled roughly the same amount ($91 million) for the entire first quarter of 2010, according to the International Digital … Continue Reading

Photographic evidence of the new tech bubble

Yes, it’s true — there was a masseuse in VentureBeat’s San Francisco office today, giving chair massages to our overworked staff.

There’s been a lot of talk about whether the startup world has entered a new bubble. Judging from the disblieving messages I received this afternoon (publicly and privately) after I tweeted about the massages, it seems like “masseuse in a tech blog’s office” is one of the clearest signs that we’ve returned to the … Continue Reading

Sean Parker joins Napster creator’s stealthy startup Supyo

Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, the pair behind the famous music-sharing service Napster, are working together again, according to reports in TechCrunch and Forbes.

Thanks to some regulatory filings, we already knew that Fanning was working on a new company called Supyo, but those filings didn’t reveal that Parker had joined as an executive as well.

Both men have been involved in a number of other startups since their days at Napster. Most recently, Fanning … Continue Reading

Bamboom Labs raises $4.5M for live TV over the Web

Bamboom Labs announced yesterday that it has raised $4.5 million in seed financing for developing technology that allows consumers watch live TV over the Internet. New York-based FirstMark Capital led the round, also participating were High Line Venture Partners, SV Angel, First Round Capital, and Highland Capital Partners.

Bamboom Labs is headed by Chaitanya “Chet” Kanojia who’s last startup Navic Networks was acquired by Microsoft in 2008.

The company’s technologies allow customers to access free … Continue Reading

Meet the Who's Who in mobile at the VentureBeat Mobile Summit

Just ten more days until the VentureBeat Mobile Summit, where we’ve gathered 180 of the top movers and shakers in mobile we could find.

Every one of the 180 invitees is expected to participate in the debate, which will focus on the biggest challenges in mobile:

1) the future of HTML5 (yep, it’s complicated), and we’ll have Google’s new SVP for Chrome, Sundar Pichai debating the future of open mobile development with Facebook’s VP of … Continue Reading

T. Rowe Price bets on Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon

Mutual-fund company T. Rowe Price just disclosed investments in a number of high-profile, private Web companies, including Facebook.

These aren’t the firm’s first investments in this area — it previously participated in Twitter’s funding round in 2009. But, like Goldman Sachs’ investment in Facebook earlier this year, this news is another sign of the rapidly-growing interest from traditional financial institutions in Web startups.

T. Rowe Price has invested $290.5 million in Facebook, nearly $71.8 million … Continue Reading

Investment banks could be Silicon Valley's new best friend

Could Silicon Valley be the next playground for investment bankers with imagination?

The opportunity that is being created in the secondary markets to involve large investment banks with later stage companies is intriguing and potentially adds an “extra layer of opportunity” for many startups to grow into their full potential, venture capitalist Ryan Swagar, managing partner at Venture51, told VentureBeat today.

Traditionally large-scale, bulge bracket banks stay on the sidelines for tech investments until they … Continue Reading

MeeGo head says LG in its corner for phones (LG: not really)

With Nokia moving to Windows Phone 7 and not looking back, there doesn’t seem to be much hope left for Intel’s MeeGo mobile platform — especially because there still aren’t any phones that use it.

But Valterri Halla, the Intel group member who is spearheading the MeeGo initiative, is convinced that Nokia’s absence will encourage other manufacturers to join in on the MeeGo party.

Speaking at a developer conference on Friday, Halla said that LG … Continue Reading

Valve generates a consumer backlash with end of alternate reality game

Valve concluded its Portal 2 alternate reality game Friday morning with a new message for gamers: You can speed your access to the game by purchasing more games from Valve’s Steam online game distribution service.

Users aren’t too happy about that, given the reaction on Twitter, as many assumed that the Portal 2 game would be unlocked early on Steam at the conclusion of the alternate reality game, which required users to solve puzzles collectively … Continue Reading

Microsoft data center czar to head Apple's expansion in the cloud?

Looking to expand its presence in the cloud, Apple has reportedly hired Kevin Timmons, the former head of Data Center Services at Microsoft, whose departure from the company was confirmed to Data Center Knowledge.

The news comes after recent speculation that Apple is rumored to be working on a cloud-based storage service to help users store music, videos, and other media on the Internet and access it across their various devices. Some time back, the … Continue Reading

RIM CEO defends BlackBerry PlayBook against meanie critics

Research in Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook tablet has (deservedly) faced heat from reviewers for its missing features and over-reliance on BlackBerry phones. But RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie says those complaints are misguided, Bloomberg reports.

While it’s normal for a CEO to defend a fledgling product — especially a product whose success holds an entire company’s future in its hands — Balsillie may end up appearing clueless and out of touch by refusing to acknowledge actual issues … Continue Reading