How Netflix dropped the ball by ignoring customer voices

It’s unclear how much research Netflix did with consumer focus groups prior to going public with its plan to split its DVD rental and streaming video businesses.

However, one thing that is certain is the company’s inability to pay attention to what its customers are saying.

Had Netflix bothered to listen, it might have avoided shattering its credibility, hurting the value of its stock price and losing more than 800,000 subscribers in the last three … Continue Reading

Got hacked? Facebook lets friends help unlock your account

Can’t access your Facebook account, forgot your password or got hacked? Facebook announced today it is testing “Trusted Friends,” a new way to prove who you are when you’re locked out.

Facebook wants your friends to influence and be instrumental in every part of your social life, if not your real one. The company announced a number of new features to this end at its September developer conference F8. These include a new vocabulary to … Continue Reading

Allegations of past and present Internet crime haunt Airbnb co-founder

Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk was one of world’s top spammers when he was a Harvard student, alleges his college roommate, Aaron Greenspan, in a blog post. The angry first-hand account also accuses Airbnb and Facebook of violating federal and state money transfer laws.

Greenspan says, using their dorm room as a base, Blecharczyk designed custom hardware and coded his own software to send out millions of spam emails per week. He was successful enough at … Continue Reading

Motorola is closing the operating cost gap, hits mobile device revenue high

Motorola Mobility announced its third quarter earnings today, with a 20 percent increase in mobile device revenue year over year, but still a loss in operating costs.

“[Mobile device revenue was] driven by continued strong growth in international markets,” said Sanjay Jha, chairman and chief executive officer of Motorola Mobility. “We are also excited about the proposed merger with Google and continue to make progress to close this transaction.”

The company agreed to be acquired … Continue Reading

Sims Social, sports games, and digital sales drive EA’s Q2 earnings

For Electronic Arts, success in its second quarter came from strategies both old and new.

The company reported solid earnings based on strong sales of its major sports games, like FIFA 2012, Madden 2012, and NHL 2012, as well as major progress in its digital earnings thanks to The Sims Social and the finalization of its PopCap acquisition.

Non-GAAP net revenue was $1.03 billion, exceeding guidance estimates of $925 million to $975 million, and up … Continue Reading

Microsoft’s vision of the mobile future is astounding (video)

A new video created by Microsoft shows how the company imagines technology will progress in the future, with mobile devices and interactive touch screens playing an even bigger role in our lives.

The 6-minute video, titled “Productivity Future Vision (2011),” is a sequel to a similarly themed video from 2009 with the same title. Each video shows hows technology adds value and real-time information to help us communicate, pursue projects and do business. Not only … Continue Reading

Livestream updates service with HD video, live rewind and real-time photos

Live video startup Livestream has launched a new beta of its site that adds in lots of new features, including the ability to rewind live video like a DVR, and new HD video streaming options.

Livestream and similar video sites, such as Ustream and Justin.TV, help the online masses watch live event and show coverage, including concerts, conferences and almost any type of event you can think of. We can only imagine this type of … Continue Reading

Apple will need more than Siri to make its TV plans succeed

“Siri, record all new episodes of the Desperate Bridezillas of Jersey Shore.”

That may be how we’ll talk to our Apple television sets in the next few years, the New York Time’s Nick Bilton postulates.

With Steve Jobs’ posthumous claim that he “cracked” the code for an Apple TV interface, everyone’s trying to figure out just what he meant. Bilton assumes the only logical answer is Siri, Apple’s intelligent virtual assistant, currently exclusive to the … Continue Reading

HP is not killing off its PC division

HP will be keeping its PC division after all, according to a press released put out by the company today.

“HP objectively evaluated the strategic, financial and operational impact of spinning off PSG. It’s clear after our analysis that keeping PSG [personal computing group] within HP is right for customers and partners, right for shareholders, and right for employees,” said chief executive Meg Whitman in a statement.

The company has changed its plans repeatedly since … Continue Reading

Google+ features come to Google Apps accounts

Google Apps customers can now access social features on the company’s social network, Google+, the company announced today on its Enterprise blog.

Previously, users of Google Apps — the company’s enterprise suite of web-based applications for documents, email and more — were denied access to Google+ features like Circles, profiles and Hangouts because the service was only ready for use by individual accounts. That meant if businesses and colleges wanted to use Google+, they had … Continue Reading

Google Offers brings on partners, personalizes deals with new quiz

Google Offers is expanding its selection to include a number of new partners, Google announced today in an official blog post.

There are two ways to run a deals business. You can build a dedicated sales force and seek out willing businesses who want to run a deal with you. But it takes a lot of time, effort, and financial dedication to successfully locate and convince business owners their deal will go far. Because deals … Continue Reading

Google+ adds a boatload of new toys for the visually oriented

Google released of a slew of new social features this morning for its Google+ social network that incorporate strong, fun visual elements.

You can now use Google+ to see popular posts, watch crazy visualizations of post analytics and edit your photos.

The company even threw in some fun Halloween-themed photo-editing tricks. It’s (almost) enough to make me want to sign back up.

“We’re always working on making the product better every day,” a Google spokesperson … Continue Reading

Want to get your site on the hot Pulse news app? Now it’s easy

If you’re a publisher dreaming of getting your content on the Pulse news reader app, today’s your lucky day.

Alphonso Labs, the company behind Pulse, is announcing Pulse Connect, a way to submit your site to Pulse’s catalog in three easy steps.

While it appears to be just a simple web form, Pulse Connect also gives you a glimpse of what your site will look like inside the Pulse app. That helps you detect any … Continue Reading

iPad 3′s biggest production challenge: that damn Retina Display

The Apple iPad 3 reportedly has a serious challenge ahead of itself when it comes to production: building that blasted pixel-rich Retina Display.

After the completely inaccurate reports about iPhone 5, it’s hard to trust any rumors about upcoming Apple products. But when it comes to the iPad 3, I find the idea of slightly bumping up the screen resolution and internal hardware completely believable. Plus, we’ve already heard similar rumblings from other sources when … Continue Reading

MoPub’s Marketplace brings real-time trading to mobile ads

Mobile ad startup MoPub aims to put a fresh spin on mobile ads today with the launch of MoPub Marketplace, a real-time bidding service for mobile ads that lets publishers take full control over the ads on their apps.

Founded by former Google and AdMob employees, MoPub launched late last year with the goal of letting mobile app publishers serve ads directly rather than go through an ad network. Now with MoPub Marketplace, the startup … Continue Reading

Pirated Modern Warfare 3 discs are already spreading (exclusive)

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 doesn’t come out until Nov. 8. But pirates have already obtained the video game — one of the most-anticipated of the year — VentureBeat has learned.

The PC version of the game, or at least part of it, has been circulating among pirates in the U.S., who illegally copy and share it without paying Activision Blizzard or its retailers. That’s a big problem, as Activision Blizzard is expected to … Continue Reading

Facebook chooses Swedish town for the site of its first European data center

Social network giant Facebook has chosen the northern Swedish town of Lulea as the site of its first data center outside the U.S., reports Reuters.

The data center, which will cost an initial $121 million to build, will be the largest of its kind in Europe. The facility will consist of three server buildings, each with an area of 300,000 square ft.

Despite its remote location (over 600 miles north of Swedish capital Stockholm), Facebook … Continue Reading

Want to hack on Facebook’s servers? Now you can

Today, Facebook announced it is opening up its fancy, redesigned data centers to help hardware hackers learn from and improve on their designs.

The Open Compute Foundation, announced today, will allow anyone to access the designs and specifications for Facebook’s homebrewed and highly efficient data center hardware and will provide structure for the project.

To join, hardware designers and hackers need to sign an agreement on the Foundation’s site, find an aspect to work on … Continue Reading