Sony redesigns PlayStation Home as a social gaming hub

Sony is showing off a major redesign of PlayStation Home. The site originally launched in 2008 as a virtual world and is now becoming a hub for social gaming.

The redesign is aimed at jumping on the big trend in online games: social games with free-to-play business models, where users play for free and pay real money for virtual goods. This is the kind of gamble that Sony needs to make in order to hang … Continue Reading

HTC and Dropbox to give new Android phones 5GB free cloud storage

Device manufacturer HTC has partnered with Dropbox to give 5GB of free cloud storage to new HTC Android phone owners using the new Sense 3.5 interface, according to Pocket-lint.

With Apple soon launching its iCloud storage service and Microsoft pushing its Skydrive, the level at which mobile devices interact with the cloud appears to be intensifying. The HTC-Dropbox partnership will make it possible for users to access and store all kinds of files like music, … Continue Reading

Hulu hits a million paying subscribers; will invest $375M in new content this year

Despite an impending sale from its owners who no longer want it, Hulu continues to grow in popularity and revenues.

The streaming video service has reached a million paying customers, reports Reuters.

In June, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar said he anticipated that the company would reach the milestone number of a million paid subscribers by the end of the year. Now it seems that the service will far exceed those numbers.

Hulu offers a limited … Continue Reading

Real Networks’ GameHouse makes its run at social gaming

It has taken a while to get the engines revving, but the GameHouse division of Real Networks is now making its run at the social game market. The company has 3,000 casual games and 50 million unique users a month, but its traditional business has been disrupted. Now it is poised to start cranking out Facebook games that could be a lot more lucrative, according to an interview with GameHouse senior vice president Matt Hulett … Continue Reading

Verizon CEO defends AT&T/T-Mobile merger, says it’s “like gravity”

Of all the people to defend AT&T’s $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam comes as one of the biggest surprises.

Speaking at a Goldman Sachs investor conference on Wednesday, McAdam said the massive deal has to occur, unless the government can better focus on giving telecoms more wireless spectrum, according to the mobile site Boy Genius Report.

“I have taken the position that the AT&T merger with T-Mobile was kind of like … Continue Reading

YouTube adds Magisto’s ‘magical’ editing, removes 15-minute limit for verified users

That was fast. Only a day after automated video editing service Magisto announced it had received $5.5 million in second-round funding, YouTube has integrated the service into its offerings. YouTube took the opportunity to announce that it has removed the 15-minute limit from verified user videos and added a 2D-to-3D beta tool.

YouTube appears to be adding a lot of new free tools in the hopes that it will improve the general quality of … Continue Reading

Turntable.fm gets a new look, makes it easier to land a DJ spot

Hot social music startup Turntable.fm has updated its main page with a much-needed redesign that will make finding a spot to share your tunes easier than ever.

The new homepage is much slicker than Turntable.fm’s previous entry, which was fairly bare bones. Now, in addition to finding popular rooms, you can easily find rooms that need DJs and mark and access your favorite rooms. The redesigned homepage also lets you easily see if any of … Continue Reading

Why lyrics are the consumer web’s next big thing, again

The next big thing for the consumer web could actually come from one of its oldest content verticals: lyrics. Services like RapGenius and TuneWiki are spearheading a new way of publishing and making money from song lyrics.

Lyrics are a massively underestimated market segment, says Tom Lehman, co-founder of RapGenius, one of the progenitors of this “lyrics 2.0″ movement. “People don’t understand how popular lyrics are, and how much people like to read and … Continue Reading

Fleetly joins the fitness gamification parade with a mobile and web app

Fleetly is launching a new app today that analyzes your fitness goals and motivates you to reach them. The app is part of a larger trend of gamification, where developers use game-like tasks to get people to do things they wouldn’t ordinarily want to do, like exercise.

Rivals such as Basis and Striiv are coming up with devices that monitor your movements and gamify fitness in the process. But Fleetly is one of the companies … Continue Reading

Strange new retail creature Wayfair emerges from 200 domains

You may not have heard of it, but this year a company called Wayfair surpassed Crate & Barrel to become the No. 2 online retailer of home furnishings and housewares in the U.S., based on annual sales. Wayfair carries more than 4.5 million items from 5,000 brands, and it’s still growing.

Wayfair is the friendly, e-commerce version of Leviathan, a movie monster that scared the $#!% out of me back in 1989. In the horror … Continue Reading

Study shows social gamers spend less time and money on console games

Social game players are spending less time and money on traditional console games, according to a survey sponsored by social game firm Kabam and conducted by Information Solutions Group.

The online survey of 1,412 gamers defy the conventional stereotype of social network gamers being middle-aged women. The survey showed that one of the rapidly growing segments on social platforms is the hardcore social gamer, who plays titles such as strategy, role-playing, or other hardcore games. … Continue Reading

What to expect at Facebook’s f8 event

Few tech events can rival the mammoth amount of hype generated by an official Apple event, but Facebook’s f8 developer conference Thursday certainly comes close.

Facebook’s motto for the event is “Read. Watch. Listen,” which hints at new partnerships with media companies that the social network giant is expected to announce. The company is also planning to reveal massive changes to the Facebook platform that will affect how its users share content with each other.… Continue Reading

Vidyo raises $22.5M for high-quality video conferencing

Vidyo has raised $22.5 million in a fourth round of funding for its high-quality video conferencing. The company plans to use the money to expand its sales worldwide and develop better, more immersive and inexpensive “telepresence” technologies.

The company is hopping on the trend for telecommuting and the need to reduce travel expenses at companies, without losing the personal touch of in-person communications. It allows people to have meetings with groups of people who can … Continue Reading

Facebook employee gives away Facebook music detail on Twitter

Ah, Twitter. Thank you for being a forum for slip-ups. A Facebook employee today accidentally tweeted about a new feature in Facebook’s hotly anticipated music service, expected to be announced tomorrow at Facebook’s f8 conference.

The employee, Ji Lee (@PleaseEnjoy) wrote on his Twitter, “The ‘Listen with your friend’ feature in ticker is blowing my mind. Listen to what your friends are listening. LIVE.”

Facebook’s Ticker is a feature in the newly updated news feed, … Continue Reading

Intuit’s payments team says mobile card readers will die

Payments and financial software provider Intuit has its own mobile card swipe reader, but that’s not stopping it from saying card readers’ days are numbered.

For all the development the company has sunk into its reader — two years’ worth, since the company began working on it in February 2009 — Intuit’s payments product manager Christopher Battles told VentureBeat that the card readers will be extinct as soon as a new technology can replace it.… Continue Reading

OnLive launches game streaming in the UK with 150 titles

OnLive launched its games-on-demand streaming service in the United Kingdom today, marking its first major overseas expansion since launching in North America in mid-2010.

The service rolling out in the UK is much more advanced than the original game streaming service that OnLive launched in the U.S. Now it has more than 150 games and is available on web-connected TVs, PCs, Macs and tablets. With OnLive, you can watch others play games, play live demos … Continue Reading

Develop on Twilio, get cash from super angels Dave McClure and Ron Conway

Twilio announced today 500 Startup‘s Dave McClure (pictured left) and SV Angel‘s Ron Conway (pictured below, right) started a second $250,000 seed fund for startups built on top of Twilio.

“We’re giving access to some of the best angels in Silicon Valley,” Twilio chief executive Jeff Lawson told VentureBeat. “Getting a seed investment from Ron Conway and Dave McClure speaks a lot and gets entrepreneurs up and running.”

Finding funding in Silicon Valley can be … Continue Reading

Dylan’s Desk: Facebook approaches a billion customers

EDITOR’S NOTE: Welcome to VentureBeat’s new newsletters. Each week, I’m writing a column on business and technology, while Dean Takahashi is writing a column on videogames called The DeanBeat. They will be available to newsletter subscribers a whole day before they appear here on the website.

VentureBeat will have much more coverage of Facebook F8 2011 starting early Thursday morning, so stay tuned.

With 750 million people using it, Facebook has become one of the … Continue Reading

HomeRun acquired by Rearden, gets nice liquidity for daily deals

HomeRun hit one out of the park with its recent exit. The daily deals company was purchased by e-commerce provider Rearden Commerce today, which also announced a $133 million round of funding.

Rearden Commerce purchased the company for at least $87 million in shares, according to documents filed with the SEC, but it is not yet known whether cash was involved. Rearden says it will use the rest of its funding for other acquisitions and … Continue Reading