AT&T preparing for iPhone 5 launch in September

AT&T has begun preparing internally for the launch of the iPhone 5 in early to mid-September, according to the mobile site Boy Genius Report.

A “proven source” tells BGR that AT&T has asked employees, including those at retail stores, to finish employee training soon in preparation for a major influx of foot traffic in September. It doesn’t take a psychic to figure out what that means. We’ve sent a note for comment to AT&T and … Continue Reading

Updated: New signs suggest Diablo 3 release date coming soon

[Updated: We've added additional comments from Billy Pidgeon, a senior analyst at game research firm M2 Research.]

World of Warcraft and Diablo developer Blizzard Entertainment added a box-art image for a Diablo 3 beta over the weekend — a sign that the company might be close to a final release date for the game.

Diablo 3 is one of the most anticipated titles of the year. The last Diablo game came out in 2000 and … Continue Reading

Qualcomm grabs motion-sensing patents in GestureTek deal

Mobile chipset maker Qualcomm has acquired some Kinect-like gesture-recognition technology from pioneer GestureTek, the company said today.

Under the deal, Qualcomm will own intellectual properties related to gesture recognition that are similar to the motion-sensing technologies that Microsoft acquired and created to build its wildly popular Kinect motion-sensing system.

Qualcomm will also hire key engineers from the GestureTek team, while GestureTek will hold on to other assets related to gesture-controlled public displays and digital signs.… Continue Reading

RIM cuts 2,000 jobs, shuffles execs — but will it matter?

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion announced this morning that it is laying off 2,000 employees as part of an earlier announced “cost optimization” program.

Additionally, the company is rearranging the roles for some of its senior management. Co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, who have been criticized for failing to keep the company competitive against fresh mobile upstarts like the iPhone and Android, are holding onto their positions.

“It’s common for companies, once they run … Continue Reading

Venture capitalist Tim Chang describes the white-hot landscape of game investments

The emerging landscape of games is attracting a lot of money, thanks in part to excitement about Zynga’s upcoming initial public offering and some recent acquisitions such as Electronic Arts’ $750 million purchase of PopCap Games. Tim Chang, a partner at Norwest Venture Partners, has kept his finger on the pulse of the game market for years and spoke about the opportunities in games at the recent Casual Connect game conference in Seattle.

Chang has … Continue Reading

Translattice hopes to kill off centralized databases and cut costs 60 percent

Translattice is launching a new platform for enterprise computing today that will distribute data throughout a company’s computer network and save as much as 60 percent on enterprise computing costs.

After four years of redesigning how enterprise databases store and access data, the company is now ready to take on customers. If Translattice succeeds with its plan for putting enterprise applications on its distributed computing platform, the centralized databases of corporate giants such as Oracle … Continue Reading

Facebook study shows Tilera processors are four times more energy efficient

Tilera has been arguing for some time that its chips with 64 processing cores are more energy-efficient than typical Intel processors. But now Facebook is backing it up on that.

Facebook, one of the biggest consumers of computing technology, is announcing today that its study showed Tilera’s TilePro processor has the best performance per watt in the industry. The study says that Tilera-based servers can provide three times the performance for a given amount of … Continue Reading

Real-time traffic firm Inrix raises $37M from Kleiner Perkins

Real-time car traffic startup Inrix has raised $37 million in a fourth round of funding led by high-profile venture firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and August Capital.

Inrix is one of the leaders in crowdsourced real-time traffic information that helps drivers skirt traffic jams and plan their routes in advance. Inrix supplies this information to auto manufacturers, mobile developers, transportation agencies, fleet operators, and internet companies.

Inrix collects information from more than 10 million … Continue Reading

Apartment-sharing startup Airbnb raises $112M at $1.3B valuation

Apartment sharing startup Airbnb has raised $112 million at a $1.3 billion valuation, confirming past rumors about the hot company.

The San Francisco company lets people travel to places more affordably by letting the book apartments from people around the world.

The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz. TechCrunch reported that Andreessen invested $60 million, while $40 million came from DST, $5 million from General Catalyst, and the rest from previous investors and Amazon CEO … Continue Reading

Instagram gets new competition from photo sharing app Streamzoo

Fuzzy, retro-filtered photo sharing is starting to look like a real business. Now Streamzoo is going after the virally popular Instagram with an updated, multi-platform version of its photo-sharing app, released today.

The Streamzoo team stopped by VentureBeat last week to share the product before making it public.

“We understand this space is crowded,” says Manish Vaidya, vice president of products for Streamzoo. He’s the guy in the middle of the picture on the right … Continue Reading

Entrepreneur Corner: Customer tell signs and Reid Hoffman’s rules for success

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

What are the rights of minority stockholders? – State law rights aren’t something many entrepreneurs are familiar with, but for minority stockholders, these non-contractual rights can be their best friend in a pinch. Attorney Scott Edward Walker looks at three significant rights of these shareholders.

What do customers really say when they are going to buy? – Finding people who are excited about your idea isn’t all that … Continue Reading

Will iOS 5 take advantage of Apple’s purchase of Siri virtual assistant?

Apple bought some very cool “virtual assistant” technology  — Siri’s speech-to-text system — back in early 2010. This technology allowed users to ask for places to eat using normal spoken words and receive recommendations within a very short time.

But Apple shelved the technology and fans have had to wait for a long time to find out what Apple will do with it. The 9to5 Mac blog now says it believes the Siri technology will … Continue Reading

Wal-Mart to share game data with market analysts — finally

Wal-Mart Stores is finally going to allow market researchers to use data on the sales of video games at Walmart and Sam’s Club warehouse stores, according to AdAge.

That breaks a 10-year ban on sharing data for Wal-Mart Stores, which previously considered that data to be a company secret. By allowing the data dump for Nielsen and NPD, Wal-Mart will finally be a good citizen in helping analysts gauge the size of the video game … Continue Reading

Despite record IPO week, NASDAQ CEO doesn’t see a bubble

The NASDAQ stock exchange just posted a record week for initial public offerings, with companies including Zillow and Skullcandy pulling in roughly half a billion dollars in three days. Next week, the stock market will see seven separate IPOs.

Taking the weeks of July 18 and July 25 together, the NASDAQ expects these IPOs will raise a cumulative $1.43 billion.

And let’s not even get started about the upcoming Groupon IPO or the expected (but … Continue Reading

Apple’s OS X Lion won’t run indie darling Minecraft

Gamers upgrading to Apple’s next Mac operating system, OS X Lion, won’t be able to play indie sandbox game Minecraft right away.

Apple’s latest operating system does not include Java, which is required to play the game. When I tried to open the game (for research purposes only), I had to download Java for OS X 10.7 to run it. Minecraft is a darling in the indie gaming community, with more than 10 million users. … Continue Reading

Why influence on Google+ is more than a popularity contest

Google+ is a different kind of social network, and trying to calculate whether or not you’re a big deal on Google+ is more complicated than a simple headcount of followers.

VentureBeat tapped Joe Fernandez, CEO and founder of social influence monitoring firm Klout, to talk about how users can measure their influence on Google+. Although Klout isn’t measuring Google+ influence (yet), Fernandez gives some solid advice on how to build a great reputation and “score” … Continue Reading

Google+ business profiles to include analytics & more

If businesses can contain themselves for just a few more months, they’ll have much better Google+ tools than the ones that currently exist.

In fact, Google will be unveiling specially tweaked profiles with analytics and more sophisticated sharing options, all coming during (or shortly after) Q3 2011.

Businesses that don’t have the patience to wait for those features and instead jump into Google+ with a personal account will suffer a rather painful consequence; they won’t … Continue Reading

How to find VentureBeat on Google+

Google+ is great for individuals, but so far Google hasn’t provided any way for companies, websites or publications to play on the fast-growing social network. In fact, some have already been booted off for not being human enough.

VentureBeat, however, doesn’t want to lose any opportunities to +1 you. That’s why we’ve provided you a list of Google+ pages for all of our writers (see below).

Reasons to follow us:

You want to be in

… Continue Reading

Lodsys targets Rovio, EA, Square Enix and more with amended patent lawsuit

Patent licensing company Lodsys fired a shot at some of the biggest game makers in the world with an amended patent lawsuit against Angry Birds maker Rovio and gaming titans like Electronic Arts and Square Enix.

Lodsys declined to comment about the lawsuit.

Lodsys originally filed a lawsuit against seven small iOS developers back on May 31 that center around Lodsys’ patents, but now the complaint includes Rovio, EA, Atari, Square Enix, and Take-Two Interactive.… Continue Reading