Adobe steps into HTML5 design with Edge

Adobe is doubling down on HTML5 today with the public preview release of Edge, a new design tool for HTML5 web motion and interaction.

The company “sees a huge opportunity to help people be successful with HTML5,” Adobe’s Devin Fernandez told me in an interview last week. HTML5 is emerging as a competitor to Adobe’s dominant Flash technology, but the company clearly doesn’t want to be left out as HTML5 becomes more widely used.

Edge … Continue Reading

Wind could supply electrical power to portable data centers off the grid

A few years ago, creating a “data center in a box” was a novel idea. Essentially it meant loading up a big shipping container with servers, which you could then deploy just about anywhere you could get power into it. It’s an even more novel idea to put some wind-powered generators on top of the shipping containers to have them generate their own electricity.

Advanced Micro Devices, Hewlett-Packard, Clarkson University and a New York state … Continue Reading

Best Buy moves into the connected TV business with Tivo’s user interface

Internet-connected TVs are becoming a lot more mainstream. The latest sign: Best Buy is announcing its own house label model, dubbed the Insignia Connected TV.

Best Buy, the nation’s largest gadget retailer, hopes to capture more margin in the increasingly competitive electronics business by selling its own equipment under Best Buy’s house brand, rather than selling more gadgets under a manufacturer brand name such as Sony or Samsung. It’s a strategy that has been working … Continue Reading

Foxconn plans to create a million robots to replace workers within three years

Foxconn plans to replace some of its workers with 1 million robots in the next three years in order to cut rising labor expenses.

The Taiwanese manufacturing company, which makes high-profile products for companies such as Apple and Hewlett-Packard, will use the robots to do simple tasks such as spraying, welding and assembling work. Those jobs are currently done by workers, said Terry Gou, founder and chairman of the company.

He made the announcement at … Continue Reading

Dear Lord. Apple has more money than Uncle Sam

It seems insane, but Apple has more money today than the U.S. government. There’s even crazy talk about how Steve Jobs might have to bail out Uncle Sam, the way that J.P. Morgan did in the mid-1890s.

Even as the Republicans and Democrats try a last-ditch effort to agree to raise the debt ceiling, the U.S. Treasury’s cash balance fell to $74 billion this week, less than the $76 billion that Apple has on its … Continue Reading

5 things Google+ does better than Facebook and Twitter

Google+ has only been active for a month, and tech enthusiasts can’t seem to get enough of it. There are a few concrete reasons why: A handful of new features that Google just does better than other social networks.

While Google is still trying to figure out exactly how to approach social media, the network has built enough buzz to attract a reported 20 million visitors. While this doesn’t compare to Facebook’s staggering 750 million … Continue Reading

Week in review: Steve Perlman’s DIDO tech could fix wireless woes

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

Steve Perlman’s white paper explains “impossible” wireless tech — People have called Steve Perlman’s new wireless technology impossible.

New signs suggest Diablo 3 release date coming soon — World of Warcraft and Diablo developer Blizzard Entertainment added a box-art image for a Diablo 3 beta last weekend — a sign that the company … Continue Reading

Entrepreneur Corner: Spying on employees and evaluating partnerships

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

Where are the lines in employee surveillance? – Hollywood shows companies spying on their employees all the time, but in the real world, it’s something that can land you in a world of trouble. Attorney Curtis Smolar runs down the legal cans and can’ts of keeping tabs on your employees – even when you suspect them of stealing trade secrets.

5 ways to boost your freemium conversion rates… Continue Reading

Airbnb’s roller coaster week of ups and downs

Social bed and breakfast marketplace Airbnb started the week on a high note by confirming that it had raised a large $112 million second round of funding that pushed the startup’s valuation to an estimated $1.3 billion. Just days later, the company’s reputation spiraled down after social link sharing community Hacker News caught wind of an Airbnb user’s emotional account of merciless renters, who ransacked her apartment and turned her entire life upside down.

“Three … Continue Reading

SpaceX readies November launch to International Space Station

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), run by Tesla Motors chief executive and PayPal mafioso Elon Musk, is looking at a November launch for its second private space flight to the International Space Station.

It’s one of the first of several launches for the company as part of a 12-flight cargo mission to supply the International Space Station now that the U.S. space shuttle program has ended. SpaceX secured $1.6 billion in funding to run the mission.… Continue Reading

Open source workspaces? Web Collaboration creates new way to learn

This article is part of a series of posts about DEMO alumni and news of their progress. Network Hippo launched at DEMO in Spring 2010. Check out more at DEMO.

The idea of an open-source website is not new, but how about open source workspaces? The founders of social-contact manager Network Hippo are using Web Collaboration, a virtual office, to find the definition.

Not everyone works from the office these days. Companies leverage external contractors … Continue Reading

Why game developers hate the Facebook-Zynga marriage, and how Google+ can benefit

Facebook game developers were furious when they found out about the tight relationship between Facebook and Zynga.

If Google properly channels that anger, it could find considerable support for the idea of making games that run on its new social framework, Google+. The question is whether that anger is justified – and the answer isn’t crystal clear.

Because Facebook appears to favor Zynga more than other game developer, including through an unusual growth-target agreement, those … Continue Reading

Google gets slick with new tablet search design

Google is rolling out a new user interface for search on tablets.

The design updates will pop up on Android and iOS tablets starting today, and the rollout should be complete “over the course of the next few days,” a Google spokesperson told Venturebeat.

The company said it’s not announcing improved tablet search for other operating systems at this time. Sorry, PlayBook owners.

Search results on tablets will now have a simpler layout, one that’s … Continue Reading

Who will pick up paying customer that Comcast dropped because of high data usage?

Comcast cut off broadband access to Andre Vrignaud for excessive usage. Will anybody else step up and take Vrignaud’s lifetime of monthly fees for internet service at the top of a hill in Seattle?

Comcast stirred a pot of trouble when it decided to cut off Vrignaud, who twice exceeded his monthly data cap of 250 gigabytes on his cable modem. Vrignaud’s story hit news outlets across the nation and raised the question: What do … Continue Reading

Magazine geeks use social media to make old-school print pub

Forget the debates about whether online media is killing print: For the makers of Longshot, the internet makes it possible to publish an issue of a magazine in just two days.

From announcing the issue’s theme (“debt,” according to the announcement that went out today) to collecting submissions to editing them, laying them out on pages, adding art and shipping everything to the printer, the editors have given themselves just 48 hours.

Longshot is one … Continue Reading

Google buys 1,030 IBM patents, girding its loins for Android lawsuit

Google has snapped up more than a thousand IBM patents, a move that likely doubled the number of patents held by the search giant.

Many patent law experts are suggesting the move was intended to give Google a bit more leverage in its ongoing litigation around the Android operating system. Since last summer, Google has been embroiled in a legal tangle with Oracle, a terrifying mammoth in the patent department, and the IBM purchase is … Continue Reading

AT&T welcomes iPhone 5 with new data-throttling policy

In early October, AT&T may implement a new policy of throttling bandwidth for customers who have unlimited data plans, reports 9 to 5 Mac. The policy change would coincide with the the rumored launch date for the iPhone 5.

AT&T claims data throttling is necessary to solve congestion and poor network performance issues caused by its customers who use its data networks the most, according to the report. Yet this particular problem has plagued the … Continue Reading

Game developers hoping to launch Google+ games within weeks

It’s no secret that Google is preparing an applications platform for its Google+ social network. Game developers say they’re looking forward to making games for the platform, which could launch within a matter of weeks.

Google+ has gained tens of millions of users in the past four weeks and has become an attractive platform with a lot of potential for growth in the future. Game developers and publishers want to adapt their games to it … Continue Reading