Breaking free: Yammer announces embeddable activity feeds

Users of Yammer, a social networking service for enterprises, can now embed Yammer feeds and activity streams into just about any business application through the use of embed codes, the company announced today.

The feature functions similar to the way YouTube users embed videos on other websites. It’s a few lines of code that fit snugly into an HTML or JavaScript code. The site then calls out to Yammer to pick up any information about … Continue Reading

Netflix now accounts for 25% of North American Internet traffic

If for some reason you need further convincing that Netflix is taking over our lives, you only need to look at Sandvine’s latest report, which shows that the video streaming company is now the biggest source of North American web traffic, accounting for 24.71 percent of aggregate traffic.

Netflix also accounts for about a third (29.70 percent, up from 21 percent last fall) of all download traffic — not surprising, since high-definition streaming is a … Continue Reading

Zynga's Lady Gaga marketing deal goes live

Zynga‘s GagaVille, a special expansion of FarmVille that pays homage to pop star Lady Gaga, went live today.

GagaVille is a special setting within Zynga’s popular social game where users can get exclusive access to Lady Gaga’s upcoming album, Born This Way. If users buy a $25 Zynga Game Card, which can be used to buy virtual goods in Zynga games, they can get access to the album for free before it is released on … Continue Reading

New York Public Library brings history to your fingertips with Biblion for iPad

The New York Public Library is beginning to embrace tablets in a big way, starting today with the launch of its new iPad app, “Biblion: The Boundless Library.”

Available for free, the first edition of the Biblion app features over 700 items from the library’s 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair collection. The Library is aiming to open up the wealth of its research collections to the public, so we can expect updates to the app … Continue Reading

HP beats estimates but reports weak consumer PC sales

Hewlett-Packard reported weak consumer PC sales today while its enterprise computer business is going strong.

The world’s biggest computer maker reported revenues of $31.6 billion, up 3 percent from a year ago, and non-GAAP earnings of $1.24 a share, up 14 percent from $1.09 a share a year ago, for the second fiscal quarter ended April 30.

On a non-GAAP basis, HP reported earnings per share of $1.24 and sales of $31.6 billion. Analysts were … Continue Reading

Nanosys uses cool quantum dot technology to make displays more colorful

Nanosys, the nanotechnology materials company, is announcing today that it has developed a technology that could make flat-panel displays much brighter and more colorful without increasing their costs, energy consumption or size.

The new liquid crystal display technology uses Quantum Dot Enhancement Film (QDEF), a first-of-its-kind technology that increases the color gamut (or number of colors) in a display by as much as three times without any increase in cost, size or power consumption. The … Continue Reading

CrowdFlower’s crowdsourced workers complete 100M tasks

CrowdFlower, a startup that wants to help companies distribute basic jobs to crowds of remote online workers, says that it hit two big milestones this month — it has now managed its one-millionth worker, and those workers have accomplished more than 100 million tasks.

The San Francisco startup says there are a number of jobs where a large group of people can be more effective than a small team of experts, for example if a … Continue Reading

Deals & More: Boticca gets $2.5M to help shoppers discover indie jewelry

Today’s funding announcements include services for shopping, managing documents and filing legal papers:

Boticca raises $2.5M for upscale jewelry site: The online marketplace for accessories has raised a first round of funding led by ISAI, a fund of French Internet entrepreneurs, to focus on international growth. The London-based site, which launched in October 2010, connects consumers around the world with independent jewelry and accessories designers. Boticca says 60 percent of transactions today are transcontinental, which … Continue Reading

LA Noire lives up to the name "movie-like" video game

A packed crowd of over 200 film fans filled the SVA Theater in New York City during the recent Tribeca Film Festival to watch LAPD Homicide Detectives Cole Phelps and partner Rusty Galloway track down “the red lipstick killer” in LA Noire.

But the action on the big screen, set during 1947 Los Angeles, wasn’t a movie. LA Noire is the latest video game from publisher Rockstar Games. And in contrast to many video games … Continue Reading

T-Mobile makes Wi-Fi calls free — yet another reason to dread the AT&T merger

T-Mobile devotees are in for a treat tonight, as the carrier has confirmed that it will be making its popular Wi-Fi calling feature on supported Android phones completely free — meaning it won’t continue to use up any cellular minutes.

But while it’s certainly great news for T-Mobile customers, free Wi-Fi calling is likely one of many features that will get dropped if AT&T’s $39 billion merger with the carrier goes through.

T-Mobile announced last … Continue Reading

Nokia throws its Ovi brand out of the door, maps are making their way into Bing

Mobile phone giant Nokia will finally kill its Ovi brand. The company’s mobile services portfolio, including apps, maps, and music, will be re-branded as Nokia Services.

This sounds like a smart move in many ways. Nokia’s smartphones will be using Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system next year, so it will be wise to use Nokia’s brand in it’s own services. Ovi would not be very informative, at least for the new Nokia users.

Ovi is … Continue Reading

Datameer snags $9.25M more to analyze massive amounts of data

Datameer, a company that allows users to analyze massive amounts of data without technical know-how, today announced a second round of funding for $9.25 million. The money will be used to hire additional employees for its engineering, sales, and marketing teams.

The company created a user dashboard to easily feed and analyze data into Apache Hadoop, an open-source software that processes large amounts of data sets and spits out analytics as well as reporting. The … Continue Reading

Sony offers free games after bringing PlayStation Network back online

Sony is offering two free games and a host of other goodies to PlayStation Network (PSN) users to compensate for bringing its online gaming network and store down for nearly a month after hackers broke in and stole sensitive information.

The two free games are available for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable owners and span a number of Triple-A titles that are part of the company’s “greatest hits” series. Those games retailed for around $60 … Continue Reading

Activision (finally) starts talking about Modern Warfare 3

After months of speculation and leaks, video game publisher Activision Blizzard has finally released some official information about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the latest installment of the blockbuster combat franchise whose previous two releases were the biggest-selling video games of all time.

Specifically, Activision has launched a Facebook page and YouTube channel for the next game, with short teaser videos. The videos seem to confirm an earlier report in Kotaku that the … Continue Reading

Germany readies $1.4B in aid for electric cars

The German government has allotted an additional €1 billion ($1.4 billion) in research and development aid for electric cars on top of its existing aid in the form of tax credits and dedicated parking spots to meet its goal of having one million electric cars on the road by 2020.

That will put Germany in a neck-and-neck race with the United States to deploy as many electric cars as possible. The U.S. government has promoted … Continue Reading

LinkedIn IPO will test Wall Street's social appetite on Thursday

Shares of professional networking company LinkedIn are expected to start trading on Thursday, according to the Wall Street Journal and others.

LinkedIn’s initial public offering is interesting in and of itself, since it’s a prominent Silicon Valley company with investors (including Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners). And the IPO is being watched particularly closely because it’s the first of the current wave of social networking startups to go public, so it’s seen as a barometer … Continue Reading

Next Skype chapter: Extraordinary enterprise play?

Skype burst onto the scene with considerable buzz in 2003. It was one of the first companies to allow calls over the Internet — and thus forever change the way people make calls. Consumers gobbled it up. However, large businesses were tougher customers to crack.

And thus Skype was very difficult to monetize at first. Consumers liked the free version. And Skype became an embarrassment to eBay, which acquired the company for $2.6 billion in … Continue Reading