Web 2.0 comes out at San Francisco LGBT Pride parade (photo gallery)

Googlers hit the street on Sunday to celebrate gay communities in San Francisco, Calif., and across the world in one of San Francisco’s largest celebrations, Pride Weekend.

And they weren’t the only representatives of Web 2.0 companies making their way down Market Street that sunny afternoon. Individuals from Facebook and Zynga also made appearances at the pride parade. Pride weekend is one of San Francisco’s largest celebrations. It’s a two-day event that celebrates the gay, … Continue Reading

Zynga’s Empires & Allies tops FarmVille in just 25 days

Zynga’s Empires & Allies social game has grown to more than 39 million users in 25 days, topping the audience for the company’s huge hit FarmVille, according to market analyst AppData.

That makes Empires & Allies, a combat strategy social game with cute cartoon graphics, one of the fastest-growing games in history. It will also enable Zynga to show that it can produce consistent hits — something that is important considering Zynga is reportedly poised … Continue Reading

LulzSec calls it quits after 50 day hacking spree

Just as suddenly as the hacker collective LulzSec appeared, dominating headlines with its attacks, the group has bid the world farewell.

In a message released tonight, LulzSec says it has completed its 50-day goal of reviving the AntiSec (anti-security) hacker movement, which aimed to disrupt government and corporations by breaking their network security. The group of six says it’s disbanding but hopes that others take up arms for an AntiSec revolution.

“The support we’ve gathered … Continue Reading

DOJ clears Apple and Intel to bid on major Nortel patents

The Department of Justice on Friday gave the go-ahead to Apple and Intel to bid on Nortel’s highly valued patent portfolio. The two high-profile firms follow Google as potential bidders.

Nortel’s patents relate to all manner of technologies, including Wi-Fi, social networking, and 3G and 4G wireless capabilities—all things that could help better position whatever tech firm ends up winning. Patent ownership can also come in handy for fighting back when another firm sues over … Continue Reading

Week in review: LulzSec and Anonymous are bros

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

Psych! LulzSec and Anonymous are “bros,” hacker groups say — Hacker groups LulzSec and Anonymous are launching a carpet-bombing hacking operation on government agencies, marking the first time the two highly publicized hacker groups have cooperated.

Nintendo: Wii U not significantly more powerful than Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 — The new console will … Continue Reading

Entrepreneur Corner: Avoiding jail and improving the boardroom

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

How to launch a startup and avoid ending up in jail – It’s tempting to cut corners in the early days of a startup, but cut the wrong ones and you could face penalties you never expected – even when you thought you were doing the right thing. Attorney Scott Edward Walker showcases four of the most common infractions.

2011 is proving to be a good year for … Continue Reading

Google to take PowerMeter, Health products off life support

Google on Friday announced that it’s pulling the plug on Google Health and Google PowerMeter, two products in its lineup that haven’t been as popular as services such as Gmail, Chrome, or Maps.

The Federal Trade Commission is about to start a large-scale antitrust investigation to examine “fundamental issues relating to Google’s core search advertising business.” The investigation could involve examining the scope of Google’s wide array of products and their relation to its incredible … Continue Reading

Soluto raises $10.5 million for anti-frustration crusade

Soluto, winner of TechCrunch Disrupt New York 2010, has raised $10.5 million in a second round funding from Index Ventures. The company’s software specializes in the tangibly intangible: anti-frustration.

The free software detects the nerve pumping in your forehead by monitoring repeated actions or errors. Once it sees a pattern, it attacks the problem and prevents unnecessary coronaries.

Most interesting is what Soluto is doing with information received from user downloads. Data is collected anonymously … Continue Reading

Why Star Wars Galaxies’ demise will be a tragedy

Star Wars Galaxies, one of the first online Star Wars games run by Sony Online Entertainment, will shut down December 15 — before the release of the highly anticipated online game Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Ever since the release of the incredibly popular World of Warcraft, Star Wars Galaxies has struggled to hold onto its subscribers. But the chief culprit in the death of this game is its own publisher. Sony has released several … Continue Reading

Here are our latest speakers for GamesBeat 2011

Today we’re revealing the fifth set of speakers for our third annual GamesBeat 2011 conference. Our slate of speakers will include Rich Wong, partner with venture capital firm Accel; Chris Bergstresser, executive vice president of online game portal Miniclip; and David Marcus, founder and CEO of mobile payment company Zong.

This GamesBeat 2011 conference takes place July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

David Marcus is the founder and CEO of Zong, a … Continue Reading

Check-in cha-ching: Foursquare raises $50M with a $600M valuation

Location-based social network Foursquare closed a new $50 million round of funding, the company reported today.

Foursquare said it will use the new funding to hire additional engineers, grow its merchant platform and expand internationally.

“The opportunity to build something meaningful in the location space is HUGE, and we feel well-positioned to capitalize on it,” co-founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai wrote on the company’s blog.

TechCrunch is reporting Foursquare’s valuation at $600 million — … Continue Reading

HP launches TouchPad-exclusive magazine to promote webOS

Hewlett-Packard is getting into the magazine business!

Er… sort of.

The hardware giant is preparing to launch Pivot, a monthly digital publication exclusively offered on its forthcoming TouchPad tablet. Rather than running pure advertorial, the hybrid magazine/app guide will offer visually-driven features, reviews, columns and other content written by professional journalists and guest writers.

At first glance, Pivot appears to be yet another digital lifestyle magazine, but there’s actually a lot more going on. HP … Continue Reading

News discovery site TrapIt could be Pandora for news stories

TrapIt, an online service that’s designed to help individuals discover new content on the web, launched pretty quietly on Tuesday and is still cruising in a private beta. VentureBeat had a chance to try the site out for a few days. So far it seems a lot like Pandora for news stories — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Pandora is great for discovering new music because it automatically plays music from artists similar … Continue Reading

Classic Bungie shooter Marathon coming to iPad for free

Retro gamers rejoice! Halo publisher Bungie on Friday said it will re-release its 1994 hit game Marathon for the Apple iPad in the coming weeks. On top of that good news, the game will be free.

Bungie is arguably best-known for creating and publishing the immensely popular Halo series, which has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide. Before Halo, the company was also known for developing the Myth series.

The iPad version of Marathon … Continue Reading

WebEx for iPad aims to support the mobile workplace

WebEx, the Cisco-owned meeting solutions company, is continuing the web conferencing competition with an updated iPad app. The app, WebEx says, is a product of working people becoming more mobile.

“10 years ago, I wasn’t allowed to work from anywhere but the office,” June Bower, WebEx’s vice president of Online Business, told VentureBeat in an interview. According to a study performed by WebEx, 45% of working people do their jobs remotely today. A 1990’s VP … Continue Reading

Sony slapped with lawsuit over PlayStation Network outage

Sony’s troubles just keep mounting. Now it’s the target of a class-action lawsuit claiming that the company’s negligence led to the theft of personal data on more than 100 million of its customers.

The lawsuit follows a massive attack on Sony’s online gaming networks, the PlayStation Network (PSN) and Station.com. Hackers broke into the network and stole sensitive information about more than 100 million PSN and Station.com users — including potentially credit card numbers. The … Continue Reading

Color’s latest innovation: A handwritten note from the CEO

Remember Color? Back in March, the mobile startup caused a stir when it raised $41 million — an awfully big funding for a mobile app. Since then, little has emerged from the company beyond a handwritten note on the company’s Palo Alto headquarters.

The note, signed by Color CEO Bill Nguyen (founder of Lala, the music service acquired in 2009 by Apple), announced: “Color is opening soon!”

Many people who tried Color ended up confused … Continue Reading

Breaking: DAG Ventures raising new $500M fund

Investment firm DAG Ventures is starting a $500 million fund called DAG Ventures V-QP, according to a recent filing with the securities and exchange commission.

DAG Ventures joined the Web 2.0 investment fray around 2006 by backing companies like Podshow, Friendster and Grouper. It has also invested in mobile payments provider Boku and restaurant-discovery site Yelp.

The firm is known for investing in Web 2.0 companies, information technology companies and clean technology companies like Harvest … Continue Reading