Yelp disses daily deals on the road to its IPO

Local business review aggregator Yelp is going back to its roots. The company is scaling back its year-old Yelp Deals service, which was designed to compete with daily deal giant Groupon, and focusing its resources on more on user-based reviews.

Today Bloomberg reported Yelp will reassign half of its Yelp Deals sales staff. Yelp calls the move a “minor realignment” of 15 people within the sales organization. In other words, Yelp isn’t wholly giving up … Continue Reading

Exclusive: Facebook opens up about open-source software

This is the second of a two-part exclusive on Facebook’s involvement with and creation of open source technologies. The first installment focused on hardware. For these articles, we spoke with two of Facebook’s open source gurus, David Recordon and Amir Michael, about how the company is opening its infrastructure to other developers and organizations.

Sitting across from Facebook’s senior open programs manager David Recordon at the company’s Palo Alto headquarters, we asked the young open-source … Continue Reading

Interactive video advertising startup Innovid nabs $9.5M

Video advertising platform Innovid has raised a new $9.5 million round of funding, the company announced Wednesday.

Innovid’s iRoll ad service embeds interactive elements in pre-roll video ads to make them dynamic and engaging to an audience. The company also provides an ad server and analytics service called DYNAMO. Founded in 2007, the New York-based startup’s services are used on campaigns for many popular brands, including Disney and Sony.

The new round was led by … Continue Reading

MobileSpringer can make small business sites look good on mobile devices

Not every company can afford to build a whole new version of their website just for mobile devices. MobileSpringer, a newly launched tool from the interactive agency 3Prime, offers an easier way to get small business websites ready for mobile visitors.

Instead of making a new mobile site, MobileSpringer creates a pop-up on mobile devices, dubbed a “springer”, that offers visitors access to key sections of your site, like a phone number or directions to … Continue Reading

Zynga lines up its next social game: Adventure World

Zynga just revealed a teaser for its next big social game, an Indiana Jones-inspired creation called Adventure World.

The video trailer on the new Adventure World fan page says “you can explore exotic lands, solve ancient puzzles, and bring your friends along for a ride.” Zynga hasn’t described the game in more detail yet, but it appears to be a expansion into a new genre for the company, which is the leading maker of Facebook … Continue Reading

CNN buys Zite, a personalized magazine iPad app, for more than $20M

CNN on Tuesday announced that it has purchased Zite, a personalized magazine app for the iPad, for a reported $20 to $25 million. This confirms last week’s rumors that a deal between CNN and Zite was in the works.

News magazine applications that deliver curated, personalized content have steadily been gaining popularity, with apps like Flipboard, Editions by AOL and Yahoo’s unreleased Livestand crowding the field. CNN and other publishers are trying to dig their … Continue Reading

OnLive to power on-demand game demos at game fan site GameSpot

Video game news site GameSpot will start offering visitors the ability to instantly test games online with live game demos. The free demos will be offered though an on-demand service powered by cloud-gaming firm OnLive.

GameSpot is one of the largest game fan-news and review sites. This new feature will give its readers a real “try-before-you-buy” experience at the moment when they’re reading about a game. They can instantly access demos by clicking a link … Continue Reading

Not quite dead? Stand-alone Hewlett-Packard PC business could resurrect the TouchPad

Fans of Hewlett-Packard’s ill-fated TouchPad tablet might want to hold off on lamenting its death.

HP’s TouchPad, which was shuttered just months after its initial debut, could return if the company spins off its personal computing division into a stand-alone company, an HP executive said Tuesday.

“Tablet computing is a segment of the market that’s relevant, absolutely,” said Executive Vice President of HP’s personal systems group Todd Bradly in an interview with Reuters.

Bradly, who … Continue Reading

Flickr now lets you geofence your pics for improved privacy

Flickr is introducing a new security feature intended to keep creepers away from your most sensitive location information.

The photo sharing service is now letting account holders cordon off custom geographical areas, called geofences, and set specific privacy controls for those locations.

“For example, you might want to create a geofence around the your home or school that only allows Friends and Family to see the location of the photos you geotag in that area … Continue Reading

Social food index Foodily releases Facebook app for a new kind of recipe sharing

Birthday cake in a jar, deep-fried pickles and a perfect vegan lasagna. These are a few of the recipes you can find and share with Foodily, an online recipe index. Today the company released a new Facebook app, establishing it as more of a social tool than just a browser for food.

The Foodily Facebook app helps food lovers tap into recipes from thousands of food blogs and websites without leaving the Facebook platform. A … Continue Reading

Indie darling Minecraft “incompatible” with Steam digital distribution service

Indie darling game Minecraft, which has more than 10 million users, is “incompatible” with wildly popular game digital distribution service Steam because game’s secondary market for virtual goods and maps wouldn’t be supported, Minecraft designer Markus Persson said on his blog Monday.

Minecraft, which Persson sells and markets without a publisher, is one of the most successful independently-developed games in the world. Many indie game developers have turned to digital distribution platforms like Steam as … Continue Reading

If Apple is making a TV, it won’t replace your big screen HDTV

Apple is almost certainly making a TV, but it’s probably not aiming to replace the big screen in your living room. Instead, the company will likely start with a product aimed at being your second (or third) television.

It seems clear that Apple is working on some sort of television product, as we reported last week. But as a longtime denier of Apple television rumors, I still have a hard time swallowing the fact that … Continue Reading

Java creator James Gosling joins ocean robot maker Liquid Robotics

James Gosling, the creator of the Java programming language, has joined Liquid Robotics, a maker of robot vehicles that explore the bottom of the ocean, as its chief software architect.

Gosling is a former Sun Microsystems fellow who is best known as the father of the Java programming language, which has become pervasive as a web-based programming environment since it was first released in 1994. Bill Vass, chief executive of Liquid Robotics, was a former … Continue Reading

Popular Android app Dolphin Browser swims over to iPhone

One of the most popular apps for Android, MoboTap’s Dolphin Browser, landed in Apple’s App Store late last night.

Dolphin first gained recognition as an early alternative to the pre-installed Android browser, and for a long time it was faster and better-featured than the stock browser. While it may not be that much faster now, the Dolphin Browser still has many more features and takes an innovative approach to browsing.

Unlike Android, where the Dolphin … Continue Reading

Google hires source-code snooper who unearthed Google+ secrets (Updated)

Austrian blogger/developer Florian Rohrweck, who discovered unreleased Google+ features by exploring the source code, was hired by the company, Rohrweck announced on his blog Monday.

Rohrweck is credited as discovering many Google products that prior to an official announcement, including Google Social (which became Google+), Google+ Games, Google Photos, Google+’s Shared Circles, Google Questions and many others that still haven’t been officially announced.

Google was no doubt impressed with Rohrweck’s attention to detail. The company … Continue Reading

HP leaves TouchPad Go suppliers in the lurch with parts for 100K tablets

WebOS fans weren’t the only ones let down by HP’s sudden decision to give up on its mobile hardware weeks ago. Component suppliers who were gearing up to build 100,000 units of HP’s TouchPad Go, a 7-inch version of its tablet, were also left high and dry, Digitimes reports.

Sources tell the site that suppliers are in negotiations with HP to figure out some sort of solution for their now useless supply inventory. HP Taiwan … Continue Reading

Woozworld raises $6M to take tween virtual world into mobile

Woozworld, maker of a user-generated virtual world for kids ages 9 to 14, has raised $6 million.

The company will use the money to expand Woozworld to mobile platforms and boost its marketing for the virtual world. It’s one more sign that game companies that get a foothold on the web are scrambling to establish themselves in the fast-growing mobile apps market as well.

Over the last 18 months, Woozworld users have registered more than … Continue Reading

Apple’s iTunes Match will let you stream music after all (update: sort of)

Update: An Apple representative tells All Things Digital that iTunes Match doesn’t technically stream music, instead it’s downloading and playing songs at the same time. This means that unlike an actual streaming solution, your iCloud music and video will still need to be stored on your device somehow. Original post below.
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iTunes Match, Apple’s new service that lets you easily synchronize your music library to iCloud, will indeed let you stream music from … Continue Reading