Adobe (finally) enables 3D games with Flash Player 11 and Adobe Air 3
Adobe is finally enabling 3D games inside its Flash media player and its Adobe Air software with the next release of its technology coming in October. If it works right and becomes popular among game developers, then it could help developers create eye-popping 3D graphics for consumers on smartphone, tablets, and online game platforms. The goal is to get 3D to a billion online players.
Andrew Trice, evangelist at Adobe, said the technology is easy … Continue Reading
Facebook users get a Flipboard-like magazine with NewsMix
NewsMix launched its Facebook app today, which will allow people to follow posts from their fan pages in one, consolidated digital magazine.
You know the saying “fall through the cracks?” Well, Facebook’s news feed is a content chasm. Interesting posts from your liked pages can fall to the bottom and are often ignored, even though the content might be good. NewsMix takes your liked pages, whether they are news-oriented or not, and forms them into … Continue Reading
U.S. virtual goods revenue on Facebook to grow 32 percent to $1.65B in 2012
U.S. virtual goods revenue on Facebook is expected to grow 32 percent in 2012 to $1.65 billion, according to a new report by Inside Network.
That growth rate is lower than the 40 percent growth for 2011, as the market analyst firm predicts that revenue this year is growing from $800 million in to 2010 to $1.25 billion by the end of 2011. While that is rapid growth, it shows that the fast-growing virtual goods … Continue Reading
Glam acquires Ning, boasts that it’s now No. 2 in reach behind Facebook
Glam Media, a content and media company focused on women but with increasing ambition, has acquired Ning, a web service that lets people build their own social networks. The purchase price was undisclosed, but the deal is well below Ning’s $750 million valuation when it was at the peak of its hype a few years ago.
[Update: The deal was worth $150 million, according to Bloomberg.]
Most significantly, the addition of Ning gives … Continue Reading
Google+ Hangouts make sense for collaboration at work or play
Google released a slew of updates for its social network Google+ today. With these new updates, Google+ is turning into the social network of choice for web and mobile collaboration.
Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, described Facebook as the backyard barbecue of social networks, and LinkedIn as the office. To extend the metaphor, Twitter must be the hyperactive, attention-deficit-disordered child of the two, while Google+ is the live/work space. It’s not the free-for-all that is … Continue Reading
Hi5 confirms 28 job cuts as it dumps open source for Windows servers
Social network Hi5 has cut 28 jobs after completing a migration from open source servers to ones based on Microsoft’s .Net software. The move was part of a larger plan to shift the social network toward social gaming and commerce.
Alex St. John, president of San Francisco-based Hi5, confirmed a report that the company had cut the jobs after it moved its site off of what he called a “tremendously burdensome” Linux/Postgres base to a … Continue Reading
Diablo 3 beta begins today
Initial invitations to join the beta testing program for Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo 3 game are finally making the rounds to Battle.net account holders.
The start of a beta for an online game usually indicates that the game will come out relatively soon. Diablo 3, one of the holiday gaming season’s most anticipated titles, was originally slated for release later this year. But the company is still not committing to a 2011 release date for the … Continue Reading
Greenstart will make you wish you had a cleantech startup (photo gallery)
Greenstart, a new clean technology startup incubator based in San Francisco, officially opened its doors today when San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee cut the ribbon for the office space.
Greenstart’s new office space has a slick, green feel to it — compared to the semi-industrial feel that other startup incubator offices like AngelPad have. The whole space came together in the span of about eight weeks with “a startup’s budget,” Greenstart founding parter Mitch Lowe … Continue Reading
How one mobile startup is planning to change health services in Africa (video)
When it comes to thinking big, MedAfrica takes the cake. The founders are aiming to revolutionize how people in developing areas, particularly on the African continent, access and use health information.
The startup presented at the Demo Fall 2011 conference last week, and we got a chance to catch up with some of the company’s founders, including CEO Steve Mutinda and business development guy Mbugua Niijhia. In this video, we discuss how the MedAfrica platform … Continue Reading
This one’s for the ladies: Verizon & HTC unveil a female-targeted, purple Android phone
Every couple years, we womenfolk get a pink or purple gadget made especially for us; this time around, it’s HTC’s new Rhyme.
Announced today by HTC execs, the phone will retail for $199 with a Verizon contract and sport a 3.7-inch screen, a 1GHz processor, and a 5-megapixel rear camera.
In other words, it would be a perfectly standard Android handset, except for the fact that it’s purple, features a stable of feminine wallpaper options, … Continue Reading
The nine Google+ circles of hell, as envisioned by Dante
As I was putting my Google+ circles together, I thought. Hmmm… How would Dante do his circles? Yes I wonder these things.. And here is how his circles would look.
Had to do a bit of Photoshop to get these in order. Then I thought: How would Dante’s Google+ circles map to today’s grouping? Actually, pretty well.
LIMBO — This is where you put the people that you may have met, but really do not
Facebook is set to pass $4B in revenue this year, thanks to Credits
Due in large part to the growth of Facebook Credits, the social network’s internal payment system for virtual goods, Facebook’s revenue is on target to hit $4.27 billion this year.
According to forecasts from market research firm eMarketer, this number is composed of around $3.8 billion in ad revenue and $470 million in Facebook Credits. The combined sum has risen drastically from a reported $2 billion in revenue in 2010 and around $800 million in … Continue Reading
Facebook spiffs up its news feed, adds real-time activity ticker
Facebook today unveiled three new features aimed at making it easier to keep up with your friends’ most important and most recent updates.
The first feature is an adjustment to the site’s news feed (the list of updates from your circle of friends). In the past, this list was displayed in strictly reverse chronological order, with an option to switch between “Top News” and “Most Recent” options. Now, Facebook is merging the two views, so … Continue Reading
The “Mobile Value Exchange” and why it works
[This piece was contributed to VentureBeat by Mihir Shah, CEO of mobile app company Tapjoy.]
We have reached a major tipping point in mobile marketing. And I’m not referring to reach, as massive as it already is in these early days. I’m referring to an advertising model – what I call the Mobile Value Exchange – that relegates traditional cost-per-impression models and display advertising to remnant fill.
Display advertising, especially on mobile platforms, doesn’t work … Continue Reading
Android developers can finally use Card.io’s optical credit card reader
The last time we checked in with Card.io there was a major hole in the company’s software-based credit card payment solution for smartphones: There wasn’t an SDK for Android.
Today Card.io is changing that by making its optical character recognition credit card reader available to Android developers. This is an important step for the company because it’s targeting software developers, not merchants or consumers, with the technology.
The technology lets people snap a picture of … Continue Reading
Windows Phone 7 grabs consumer interest, may threaten Android
News that Google’s Android mobile operating system is dominating the smartphone market is old hat, but a recent report suggests that the Windows Phone 7 OS is gaining considerable ground in terms of consumer awareness.
As unbelievable as it may seem, 44 percent people who currently own or intend to buy a smartphone say that they are considering a Windows Phone 7 device, the market research group NPD reports, based on findings from its Connected … Continue Reading
Klout adds Google+ to its social web influence measurement service
Klout, the startup best known for its tools that measure a person’s online influence, has added integration with the Google+ social network, the company announced today.
Klout works by measuring a person’s activity on a variety of social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. Based on that individual’s interaction within those social networks, Klout calculates the true reach of that person’s communications and issues them a 1 to 100 Klout score.
“We’ve seen people … Continue Reading
Digg delivers automatically curated news content with new Newsrooms
News aggregation site Digg unveiled Newsrooms today, a new section of the site that features automatically curated news content on specific topics like technology or politics.
Here’s how it works: Digg takes content from a number of sites it curates, such as tech news blogs and news sites, and adds it directly to the “Newswire” in each Newsroom. Digg ranks those stories by how new they are and how much of a “signal” they have … Continue Reading
Foursquare celebrates one billion check-ins with updated mobile apps
You know what’s cooler than a million check-ins? A billion. Popular location-based check-in location service Foursquare today announced on its blog that it has reached one billion check-ins, as well as launched updated versions of its popular iPhone and Android apps.
Check-in growth on Foursquare has nearly tripled in a year, going from around 200 million in July 2010 to almost 750 million in June 2011. The company claims the one billionth check-in occurred … Continue Reading
Instagram 2.0 adds full-size images and live filters
Photo-sharing mobile application Instagram released a major update to its iPhone, iPod touch and iPad apps today, finally increasing its image size to the maximum allowed by the various Apple devices.
Instagram is a hugely popular photo-filter app that has more than 9 million users and 250 million shared photos. In addition to the increased image size, this 2.0 update adds four new retro-tastic filters, the ability to see how filters look in real-time, and … Continue Reading
