Flickr launches its first official Android app, plus iPhone “Photo Sessions”

Popular photo-sharing site Flickr is stepping up its mobile efforts with new Android and iOS features.

The site launched its first Android app today, and also introduced a new feature for iPhone and iPad customers called Photo Session.

Photo Session lets you “flip” through a gallery of photos with friends, no matter where they are in the world, using your iPad or iPhone.

“Photo Session is like sitting next to your friend and flipping through … Continue Reading

Signpost’s sales force to rival Groupon by 2012 (exclusive)

Daily deals service Signpost is growing its sales force at a rapid pace that could surpass competitors like Groupon and LivingSocial by the end of the year, the company’s CEO Stuart Wall told VentureBeat.

Signpost employs local contractors, called Deal Scouts, to sign up local businesses for the service. They’re paid based on the number of businesses they sign up. Signpost is adding about a thousand new scouts per week in a growing number of … Continue Reading

Box.net hooks up with Chatter, now pre-loaded on Motorola Xoom

Cloud storage provider Box.net will now work with Salesforce.com’s enterprise social network, Chatter, and its mobile application will now come pre-loaded on the Motorola Xoom tablet, the company announced today.

Box.net is now shipping its content over to Salesforce.com’s enterprise social network Chatter. Users can pull content from Box.net — like shared files and the comments attached to those files — in activity streams in Chatter. Chatter had around 60,000 customers when last reported, although … Continue Reading

VentureBeat takes a “leisure dive” into San Francisco Bay (video)

You’ve heard of planking. You might have heard about owling or hockern (aka extreme sitting). Now get ready for the next weird internet photography craze: leisure diving.

Leisure diving is like planking, only instead of lying face down on random surfaces, you jump horizontally into a body of water while looking as relaxed as possible. The online phenomenon was started by Alex Scott, my cousin, who works at Google when he isn’t being leisurely.

“Get … Continue Reading

Unity Technologies hopes to woo developers with new 3D game tools

Unity Technologies showed off version 3.5 of its 3D game tools today in an effort to widen its reach and help 3D games spread onto all new gaming platforms.

The new update offers more 3D graphics features that will make Unity-based games more realistic when it comes to depicting 3D imagery in browser-based and mobile games. The new features help make Unity more broadly useful to game companies and will help it compete with high-end … Continue Reading

Investing titan Marc Andreessen says there’s no bubble because “stuff just works”

The cloud computing revolution has made the titanic valuations of major Web 2.0 companies like Facebook and Twitter completely justified, storied venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen (pictured right) said today.

Some major companies in the Web 2.0 era have become incredibly popular and have ballooning valuations. Facebook, for example, is valued at more than $80 billion. Social gaming company Zynga recently filed for an initial public offering in order to raise up … Continue Reading

Microsoft and Samsung sign huge cross-licensing patent deal to stop Android lawsuits

Microsoft has signed its largest Android patent deal to date that outlines huge cross-licensing with Samsung, maker of some of the most popular Android phones and tablets, the company announced today.

Under the agreement, Samsung will pay a royalty fee to Microsoft on every Android tablet and smartphone it produces, and the two won’t engage in any legal battles over patents related to Android. The agreement follows several deals Microsoft has made with Android manufacturers, … Continue Reading

Amazon launches ultra-cheap Kindle for $79, new Kindle Touch for $99

Along with showing off its hyped Kindle Fire tablet, Amazon today dropped the price of the original Wi-Fi-enabled Kindle e-reader to a jaw-dropping $79 and launched a new touch-enabled $99 Kindle Touch.

“We’re offering premium products at non-premium prices,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said at a Kindle launch event in New York City. “We’re going to sell many millions of these.”

Along with its cheaper price point, the new $79 Kindle is slightly updated. The … Continue Reading

Kindle Fire uses a new Silk web browser to boost efficiency

Amazon’s new Kindle Fire tablet, unveiled today, runs a customized version of Google’s Android mobile operating system that relies heavily on an Amazon-produced web browser called Silk.

With Silk, Amazon is focusing on speed as a key selling point of the Kindle Fire. The company calls Silk a “split browser,” because half of the browsing work is done by Amazon’s Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) to speed up efficiency when using the web via Kindle Fire.… Continue Reading

Amazon unveils Kindle Fire tablet for $199, coming Nov. 15

Today we finally got our first glimpse at Amazon’s Kindle tablet at a New York City press event, and the company also introduced cheaper Kindle e-readers with touch capabilities.

First, the summary of Amazon’s new Kindles:

Kindle Fire. It’s a 7-inch Android tablet with a dual-core CPU and a color LCD screen. It’ll cost $199, ships November 15, and you can pre-order it today. It has a new browser called Silk that makes use of … Continue Reading

Intergi scores ad deal with online game leader Bigpoint (exclusive)

Intergi Entertainment has nabbed an exclusive ad agreement with online games leader Bigpoint to manage Bigpoint’s online advertising in North America, the company announced today.

Bigpoint has more than 200 million registered users for its 60 online games, which include titles such as Battlestar Galactica Online, DarkOrbit, Seafight, and Farmerama.

Bigpoint has been making a push into the U.S. for the past 18 months and is tapping Intergi to provide online ad services. Heiko Hubertz, … Continue Reading

ClearSlide grabs $11M from Greylock to expand its “quick” sales communication service

Sales communication tools startup ClearSlide has raised $11 million in first-round funding, it announced today. The company helps salespeople quickly share presentations and related content like videos and PDFs with prospective clients.

“We’re bringing new kinds of functionality to sales representatives,” ClearSlide CEO and Evite co-founder Al Lieb told VentureBeat. “After talking with thousands of sales teams, we came up with better tools to help reps with pitching.”

ClearSlide offers sales professionals a browser-based dashboard … Continue Reading

Power Assure helps CIOs manage server power, gets $13.5M

Data center power-saving software company Power Assure has pulled in a $13.5 million funding round led by strategic partner ABB in addition to previous investor Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the company announced yesterday.

“The data center market continues to grow at 8 to 12 percent per year. However, it is becoming constrained by the availability of power, especially in high density areas where space is a limitation,” said Tarak Mehta, Head of ABB’s Low Voltage Products … Continue Reading

Wrapp your head around this: Gift giving is now fun … if you’re Swedish

This just might be the first social gifting service that doesn’t suck. In fact, it’s downright cool. Wrapp is turning Facebook into a frictionless gift giving environment. The company and concept will be put to the test as it prepares to launch in the United States.

The service, which is only up and running in Sweden at the moment, partners with retailers to offer free gift cards to users with the goal of getting those … Continue Reading

Son of MeeGo lives! Intel and Samsung team up on open source Linux software

Intel and Samsung are teaming up to create a new open-source operating system based on Linux software. The software will run on multiple kinds of devices under the name Tizen.

The Tizen software will be an amalgam of Intel’s MeeGo mobile operating system and Samsung’s LiMo software. MeeGo was dead in the water after Nokia bailed on the mobile operating system and shifted to Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 OS instead. Samsung will be the new … Continue Reading

Oh boy, Amazon’s second (and better) Kindle tablet could land early 2012

While we’re all waiting with bated breath for the full details of Amazon’s Kindle tablet tomorrow morning, the company may also be readying its successor tablet for the first quarter of 2012, reports GDGT.

That means early adopters of Amazon’s tablet (now rumored to be called the Kindle Fire) could quickly find their slates obsolete. Worst of all, GDGT’s Ryan Block says this second tablet is the one Amazon really believes in — it was … Continue Reading

Andreessen-Horowitz gives $1.5M to unlaunched recommendation app Wikets

Wikets, a soon-to-be-released iPhone application that recommends places and products to friends, announced a $1.5 million seed round from Andreessen-Horowitz and Battery Ventures today. But will yet another recommendations product survive when reviews and opinions already litter the Internet?

I imagine these recommendation apps to be like little bodies treading water in the Internet ocean. Apps like Where exist in rafts, websites such as Yelp are the ships that float on their own, and companies … Continue Reading

Toshiba to launch new 7-inch Android tablet with high-res screen

Toshiba is moving deeper into tablets. Today it’s announcing a 7-inch Android tablet that features a high-definition touchscreen. The device gives users another choice besides Toshiba’s many models of laptops and its 10-inch Android tablet. Toshiba is also launching a new all-in-one desktop computer with a 23-inch touchscreen.

The launch underscores the trend toward more mobile, more compact computing devices with touchscreens. While Apple has been on the leading edge of this trend, Toshiba’s entry … Continue Reading

Dylan’s Desk: Amazon’s Kindle tablet is ready to take on the iPad

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

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Like a backroom brawler, Apple’s iPad has taken on one tablet challenger after another, and kicked the ass of every single one.

Now comes a new contender: Amazon.com, which we expect … Continue Reading