OnLive passes its first test as a cloud-based Deus Ex: Human Revolution shines (review)

[Alert: small spoilers]

Deus Ex: Human Revolution — a sci-fi first-person shooter game from developer Eidos Montreal — is one of the first few high-profile titles to launch simultaneously on OnLive, the PC and gaming consoles Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. There are a lot of questions as to whether OnLive would take off, much less be able to handle a game launch like Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Well, you can put those fears … Continue Reading

Week in review: How Steve Jobs terrorized Apple employees in the elevator

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

Why Apple employees avoid getting in the elevator with Steve Jobs — With all of the supernatural success swirling around legendary Apple CEO Steve Jobs as he steps down from the position, it’s easy to forget that he’s human.

Android could hit HP’s TouchPad thanks to Touchdroid project — You may soon be … Continue Reading

Entrepreneur Corner: Google+ as intranet and fundraising secrets

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

Can Google+ replace your company’s intranet? – Google+ is one of the hottest social networks to hit the scene in a long time, but is it something that can replace how your company communicates internally? Attorney Curtis Smolar looks at the legal risks that accompany this service for businesses.

6 secrets of fundraising success – Finding venture capital in today’s economic environment is hard to do. Jon Olafsson, … Continue Reading

Behold! Samsung’s Galaxy S II phones for AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint

You won’t have to wait until next week to catch a glimpse at Samsung’s US bound Galaxy S II phones.

The above image was leaked today by the mobile site Pocketnow, which gives us our first semi-official look at what Samsung has up its sleeves with the US Galaxy S II devices. Samsung initially planned to announce the phones at a New York City event next Monday, but due to expected fallout from Hurricane Irene, … Continue Reading

Personal Capital offers financial advice online and on the go

Digital financial advising company Personal Capital came out of stealth mode and announced $25 million of combined first and second round funding today.

Personal Capital has a suite of mobile, iPad and web applications that contain helpful financial tools and can connect users to a personal adviser. The apps are still in beta but Personal Capital hopes to release them to the public in September. There are two options: free or a paid subscription. The … Continue Reading

GumGum pushes into auto media with in-image ads

GumGum has pioneered a technology to place advertisements inside photos on web sites. Now it is taking that technology and pushing into the automotive web-site industry.

The company is announcing today it has struck advertising partnerships with three major automotive media publishers: VerticalScope, Internet Brands, and CarDomain Network.

With its ability to insert ads into pictures, GumGum will help the publishers better monetize their properties and add new functions such as the ability for users … Continue Reading

That was fast: Facebook kills off its ‘Deals’ product (updated)

Social network giant Facebook announced that it will shut down its daily online deals product (called Facebook Deals), reports Reuters.

The company launched Facebook Deals about four months ago in five major U.S. cities. The product, which offered online discounts and deals from local and national businesses to its large user-base, was intended as a competitor to group-buying services like Groupon and LivingSocial.

“After testing Deals for four months, we’ve decided to end our Deals … Continue Reading

What’s more trustworthy: DoubleClick’s AdPlanner or comScore?

A handful of articles this morning argued against the validity of a recently released DoubleClick AdPlanner report showing Facebook reached a trillion page views in June. Both CNN and TG Daily cite contrary data obtained by digital measurement firm comScore, which claims Facebook only reached 467 billion page views that month.

The reason for the large discrepancy has to do with the different measurement methods used by comScore and Google-owned DoubleClick.

The DoubleClick AdPlanner measures … Continue Reading

GameStop hands out $50 gift cards after pulling free OnLive game coupons

Game retailer GameStop is handing out $50 gift cards as an apology to gamers who bought PC copies of Deus Ex: Human Revolution after the retailer pulled coupons from the boxes for free versions of the game from cloud gaming service OnLive.

Gamers who bought those copies of Deus Ex: Human Revolution will receive a $50 gift card from GameStop and a two-for-one deal on used games as part of the arrangement. The retailer is … Continue Reading

5 iPhone apps to help you prepare for a hurricane

As you’ve probably heard, Hurricane Irene is set to hit much of the East Coast of the United States starting today and continuing throughout the weekend. National and local authorities are taking the threat seriously and evacuations are happening from the Carolinas all the way up to New York City.

As the authorities prepare, so can you. In addition to grabbing necessary supplies like food and water, you can load up your iPhone with applications … Continue Reading

Apple is working on a television for 2012, sources say

Apple is almost certainly working on a digital television based on its iOS operating system, according to multiple sources in Silicon Valley.

An Apple-based television makes sense in light of Apple’s continued expansion out of the computer industry into the larger consumer electronics market. But is it real?

Multiple reports, as well as sources interviewed by VentureBeat, support the rumor, which is widespread among the gadget industry.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, a longtime Apple

… Continue Reading

That’s so Steve! Our favorite Steve Jobs moments

Steve Jobs shifted the technology landscape countless times as Apple’s CEO. Now that he’s retired from that role, we’ll also miss the many great moments that his singular personality has brought us.

What follows is a collection of our favorite Jobs moments, which may or may not have to do with technology, but offer a glimpse of insight into one of our greatest modern minds.

Steve says Microsoft has no taste

Jobs made it clear … Continue Reading

Google Docs list suffers an outage (and comes back)

The Google Docs List, the main directory of all of your documents, is apparently having some kind of outage today. On the Google apps status dashboard, Google has marked the Google Docs List as having a “service disruption.” It seems individual Google documents can be opened and edited are otherwise working fine, as are other Google applications. The only issues appears to be with the main Docs navigation page that lists your folders and each … Continue Reading

Zynga gives 70 times more voting power to CEO Mark Pincus

Social game maker Zynga is remaking its stock rules to give chief executive Mark Pincus 70 times more voting power than the shares that will be sold in its planned initial public offering, according to Bloomberg.

The move shows that Zynga believes it can command such power even though it is selling shares to the public. That’s another sign of how hot the market for social games is. Zynga dominates social games on Facebook with … Continue Reading

Virtual customer service agents are constantly getting hit on

Charlie is the kind of girl your mom wants you to date. She’s smart, polite, low maintenance, not to mention exotically pretty (can’t quite place her ethnic background). She’s also got a great job. Why not ask her out? Well, there’s one minor problem: She isn’t real.

VirtuOz provides intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) that help respond to customer marketing, sales and support questions with a personalized message. The fact that these IVA’s are virtual hasn’t … Continue Reading

Google+ now lets you ignore noisy and annoying people

Google has added the ability to ignore specific user accounts and strengthened its option to block accounts on its new social network Google+, the company announced in a note Friday.

The new ignore feature should help calm down the often noisy feed of updates some critics have complained about, while the improved blocking option will no doubt provide Google+ members with a better overall experience.

“We want to make sure you can represent your real-life … Continue Reading

Expendables producers drop lawsuit against 23K BitTorrent file-sharers

The makers of action movie The Expendables have dropped an incredible lawsuit they had brought against more than 23,000 BitTorrent users who had allegedly downloaded the film illegally, according to TorrentFreak.

Over the past few years, lawsuits against users of BitTorrent and other file-sharing software have become increasingly common. Since 2010, the United States Copyright Group, a business that has no affiliation with the U.S. government, has sued thousands of file sharers in the hopes … Continue Reading

They’re in! Meet the DEMO Fall 2011 Speakers

The fall DEMO conference is only weeks away, on September 12-14th in Santa Clara, Calif. and we’re excited to reveal our lineup. Aside from the 60-plus companies launching products, we’ve got some amazing speakers and “sages,” who will be providing feedback to the companies launching products.

Our lineup keeps growing, so make sure to check back for updates. Check out the 26 speakers we have ready to go:

Reid Hoffman is best known for co-founding … Continue Reading

Codecademy is web development education for the rest of us

Web development and basic coding skills shouldn’t be the mysterious domain of a handful of overpaid engineers, and if the Codecademy founders have anything to say about it, the boundaries of that domain will soon be rapidly expanding.

This small group of young hackers entered the most recent class of Y Combinator startups and built a company that aims to teach anyone how to code.

Their interface is simple and even fun to use. Their … Continue Reading