Want to know what Ron Conway got up to in 2011? Here’s his full list of investments
Someone close to SV Angel, the investment firm headed by Silicon Valley living legend Ron Conway, has leaked the firm’s entire list of investments to date.
Altogether, according to the SV Angel spreadsheet, the firm placed 75 bets on various startups during the first 10 months of 2011 and counts a total of 290 startups in its portfolio.
The leaked documents also include a list of liquidity events, numbering 71 to date. For you non-math … Continue Reading
Slingplayer adds Boxee Box app ahead of Google TV
Sling Media launched a new Slingplayer application for streaming media set-top box Boxee, the company revealed today.
The Slingplayer is an extension of the company’s Slingbox set-top box, which allows owners to stream content from their cable or satellite television service providers to a variety of platforms. The Slingplayer is currently available via the web, Android devices, iOS devices and Facebook.
Essentially, pairing your Slingbox with Boxee gives you the ability to watch cable through … Continue Reading
Updated: Xoom, the money transfer company, gets a little money of its own: $25M from Sequoia
[Editor's note: Updated with quotes from Xoom's chief executive John Kunze.]
Money transfer company Xoom received a $25 million round of funding today, according to a Form D filed with the SEC. The round comes from existing investors, including Sequoia Capital and Keith Rabois, chief operating officer of payments service Square.
The company allows people from 30 different countries to transfer money to one another without needing a bank account. In lieu of a bank … Continue Reading
Rocky’s travel secrets for your holiday travel
With the start of the holiday travel season this Wednesday, planes will be fuller, patience shorter and the weather more worrisome. Traveling around the holidays can be a trying experience.
I’ve spent much of my life on airplanes. I’ve flown more than a million miles and earned more than 4 million frequent flier miles. “Up in the Air” felt strangely biographical. Over the years, I’ve developed strategies for coping with the hassles of air travel. … Continue Reading
Xbox 360 dashboard update coming December 6
Microsoft has announced that a significant service update for the Xbox 360 will arrive on Dec. 6, bringing with it a newly designed user interface, cloud storage, expanded voice control with Kinect, and more.
Microsoft first revealed that changes were coming to the console during E3 2011. The company’s goal, it said, was to make the Xbox experience even more open, inviting and intuitive to navigate. To that end, 360 owners will now have the … Continue Reading
We know diversity in tech is a problem, but what’s the solution?
Women and minorities are fighting for a place in fast-growth science and engineering-driven industries, and the struggle is stoking a heated dialogue, especially at its epicenters in Silicon Valley and the emerging New York City tech hub.
VentureBeat recently debunked the myths about women at the helm of technology companies and conducted a roundtable about the issue.
A new generation of chief executives of giant technology companies illustrates the point amply: Virginia Rometty at IBM, … Continue Reading
What most of us will be doing on holidays: Checking our work email
The holidays are a time for good food, gathering with loved ones, frantic trips to overcrowded malls and paid time-off from work — well almost. A majority of the U.S. workforce will be checking their work email over holidays this year, according to a new study.
More than two-thirds (68 percent) of employed adults in the U.S. check their work email on traditional holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, and 27 percent of those who … Continue Reading
U.S. military building robotic ostrich for recon, search and rescue
While the long-necked flightless ostrich is a puzzling and often humorous creature, the Department of Defense’s thinks it’s the perfect design for a robotic “terror bird” that will help protect human soldiers in combat when it is completed, according to The Register.
Dubbed “FastRunner,” the prototype is being developed by two teams of scientists at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) and MIT. The project statement from DARPA (the research and special … Continue Reading
Penguin Group yanks e-books from library lending services
Major book publishing company Penguin Group has pulled all of its ebooks from Amazon’s Kindle Library Lending program today, reports The Digital Shift.
Amazon forged a partnership with e-book distributor Overdrive’s system for its digital book lending program, which allows people to borrow books for a limited time. The Overdrive system is also used for several other e-book lending programs.
Penguin, however, claims Overdrive’s system isn’t secure enough and fears that it would enable piracy … Continue Reading
Celebrate DEMO Enterprise: a blowout evening with Woz and more
We are thrilled to announce that VentureBeat will be kicking off 2012 by co-hosting a special event in San Francisco on January 5, focused ostensibly on disruption in the enterprise. But one of the real reasons we’re doing this is to throw a massive holiday party.
Among other things, we’ll feature an on-stage demonstration by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple and currently chief scientist at Fusion-io, which is helping underwrite this event. We’ll follow that … Continue Reading
Facebook’s phone project started with Slayer, a marriage of hardware & social software
We’ve told you already about Buffy, the phone Facebook is reportedly releasing sometime in 2012 or 2013.
We’ve learned this morning that Buffy started out as Slayer, a highly controversial project within Facebook’s walls that led to more than one Facebooker leaving the company entirely.
All Things D reports that the original code name for Facebook’s ambitious mobile project was Slayer — a portmanteau of the phrase “social layer.”
The project, which D says started … Continue Reading
PaaS: It’s about innovation – not technology
John Dillon is CEO of cloud platform company Engine Yard.
It seems like every week there is a new Platform as a Service (PaaS) or beta cloud offering hitting the market. Some vendors tout the benefits of social applications, others emphasize mobile; others talk about how the cloud can save you money or speed up development time. While these are important benefits of cloud services, there’s a much more key benefit that tends to get … Continue Reading
Why you’re only 4 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon — on Facebook
What happens when more than 800 million people across the world join the same social network and start friending each other? People become more connected. “Sure,” you say with a long eye roll, “that’s the de facto mantra of every social network.” But Facebook has actually proved it.
The world’s largest social network teamed up with researchers at Università degli Studi di Milano to study the social graph. Together, they analyzed 721 million active Facebook … Continue Reading
Free-to-play transition brings seven-fold revenue increase for DC Universe Online
The potentially risky move of taking DC Universe Online , the massively multiplayer online (MMO) game from Sony Online Entertainment, to a free-to-play model, seems to have paid off, with large increases in revenue being reported .
Earlier this month, we revealed that DC Universe Online had seen one million new players sign up following its transition to a free-to-play business model. What wasn’t clear was whether these new players would stick around, and whether … Continue Reading
Top 10 iOS games of 2011
What makes a great mobile game? Eye popping visuals? Solid gameplay and controls? Ease of entry, pick up and play features? Are casual games the best suited for Apple’s disruptive gaming device? What about core gaming, is it yet possible on these magical devices? What about social games, shooters, platformers?
The answer: Yes. All of these make great games, and the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad will play them.
Apple’s iOS devices and operating system … Continue Reading
RIM drops struggling BlackBerry Playbook to $199
Research in Motion has decided to cut the price of its problematic BlackBerry Playbook tablet to $199, at least for the holidays.
RIM has generally struggled to keep up with its mobile device peers, especially Apple and Google’s Android manufacturing partners. The company has said repeatedly that its PlayBook tablet and a new smartphone OS, called BBX, would help lead the company to a new phase of innovation, but it looks tired and its latest … Continue Reading
Microsoft acquires video search startup VideoSurf for $70M
Microsoft has acquired video search startup VideoSurf for an undisclosed amount, reports Israeli business news site Globes.
A handful of publications have indicated that Microsoft paid an estimated $70 million for the company, according to a report from TechCrunch Europe.
VideoSurf specializes in video search technology that scans several video related sites for results, such as DailyMotion, YouTube, Metacafe, Hulu and others. The site’s results focus on specific episodes of web shows, notable individuals and … Continue Reading
The top 10 Thanksgiving mobile games
Heyzap has put together a list of the top 10 Thanksgiving-themed mobile games in case you want to get into the holiday spirit and download the games for your phone.
The list includes both Google Android and Apple (iOS) games for smartphones and tablets. It starts with Pretty Pet Tycoon from Animoca, a free game for both platforms that allows you to build up a farming empire. You can become the world’s top fruit-seller in … Continue Reading
Call of Duty Elite hits more than a million paid subscribers in six days
Activision Blizzard said today that its gamer social network Call of Duty Elite hit more than a million paid subscribers in its first six days. Since the launch of the service on Nov. 8 with the debut of the best-selling Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, more than 4 million paid and free gamers have registered.
Still, the launch hasn’t gone as well as it could have because the company was overwhelmed by a huge … Continue Reading
NYC companies: Get feedback from VentureBeat and RRE Ventures
If you’re based in New York and looking to launch your next big tech product, join us for a private feedback session on December 13 with one of the city’s most respected venture capital groups, RRE Ventures.
VentureBeat is on a world tour, going country-to-country looking for exciting products to be launched at the upcoming DEMO conference, held on April 17-19 in Silicon Valley. I’ve just been to London, and am currently in Istanbul, Turkey. … Continue Reading
