Points.com makes rewards programs easy for small businesses

Small businesses need an easy way to deploy rewards programs for their customers, and Points.com is trying to achieve that with its new Magento storefront application.

Loyalty programs are a way to bring in repeat customers by making purchases feel like a two-for-one deal. For instance, buying a pair of shoes may result in extra points on your US Airways account. Small businesses have a harder time accessing these types of partnerships and can’t provide … Continue Reading

Square Enix to open new Montreal studio, set to work on unannounced Hitman title

Square Enix has today announced plans for expansion in Montreal, Canada. New jobs will be created at Eidos Montreal, alongside the opening of a second studio, to be named Square Enix Montreal.

The new house will open next year, and is to start work on a currently unannounced Hitman game. Lee Singleton, current general manager of Square Enix London, is to head the new initiative. 150 jobs are expected to be created upon  opening, as … Continue Reading

Spotify promises to announce “new direction” at Nov. 30 event

Spotify is sending out press invitations for a November 30 event in New York, where it will announce a new direction for the streaming music startup, the company has indicated.

The streaming music company is obviously staying vague about what it’s planning to say at the event and have given us very few details. What we do know is that it’ll have global implications and feature Spotify CEO Daniel Ek along with some “special guests”.… Continue Reading

Xunlei, despite canceling IPO, is still raising U.S. copyright concerns

Xunlei, the Chinese Internet company whose IPO was scheduled, then postponed indefinitely this summer, is now catching U.S. legislators’ attention.

VentureBeat guest contributor and Shanghai-based lawyer Greg Pilarowski wrote a column in July comparing Xunlei’s media download business to the peer-to-peer file sharing technologies used by Napster and Grokster, both now defunct thanks to their facilitation of rampant copyright violation. He points out that 234 copyright-infringement cases were brought against Xunlei in China in 2009 … Continue Reading

Disney poaches OnLive exec to head social games

Disney has hired away OnLive executive John Spinale to be the new head of the Disney Interactive Media Group’s social games business.

Spinale will run the social game business, which includes Disney’s Playdom division, and report to John Pleasants, co-president of Disney’s game division. Spinale will be based in Disney’s Palo Alto, Calif. office.

Spinale will assume strategic and day-to-day management responsibilities at Playdom that were previously handled by Pleasants, who was chief executive of … Continue Reading

Zynga’s CastleVille is off to fast start with 5M daily users

Zynga’s CastleVille social game, the newest title in a series that has entertained more than 100 million Facebook players, is off to a fast start since its launch six days ago. The game is the latest title aimed at making sure Zynga’s initial public offering, expected after Thanksgiving, stays on track.

Last night, according to internal data from Zynga, CastleVille crossed five million daily active users. By comparison, CityVille, the most successful Zynga game to … Continue Reading

Android devices are prime target as mobile malware jumps 37 percent in Q3

Android malware has jumped 37 percent in the third quarter of 2011, according to a new quarterly report released by security provider McAfee. Where our phones go, so too go viruses, especially on the Android platform.

“Nearly all new mobile malware was targeted at Android,” according to a summary of the The McAfee Threats Report Q3 2011, which says that Android is the primary mobile operating system for malware developers. Nearly 75 million samples of … Continue Reading

Google celebrates holidays with Chromebook price drop, OS update

Google’s ”Chrome team elves” have been busy prepping for the holidays and will be celebrating with an update to the Chrome OS and a price drop on Acer and Samsung Chromebooks to $299, the company announced.

Google’s foray into “Chromebooks” — basically Chrome OS-based netbooks with some additional functionality — hasn’t been as smooth as its move into smartphones with Android, which has spread like wildfire through the mobile world — Android is now the … Continue Reading

When it rains … WD has to pay $525M to Seagate in trade-secret theft settlement

When it rains, it pours for hard disk maker WD. Already hit by floods in Thailand that have hobbled production of hard drives, WD has now been hit with an arbitration court decision ordering it to pay $525 million to Seagate.

WD will no doubt appeal the decision, made by an arbitrator in a case in Minnesota. The suit alleges misuse of confidential information including trade secrets involving a former Seagate employee.

WD CEO John … Continue Reading

Shopkick partners with Visa to give customers more incentive to shop at a physical store

Mobile rewards startup Shopkick has partnered with credit giant Visa to incentivize purchases made within a brick and mortar retail store, the companies announced today.

Customers who shop at a handful of partnering stores now have the ability to accumulate “Kicks” (reward points) when they use their Visa card. To participate, users need to download the Shopkick Android or iPhone app and link it to their Visa accounts. Participating stores include Toys “R” Us, American … Continue Reading

Gree files suit against DeNA citing antitrust law violation

Japanese social games company Gree and telecommunications firm KDDI have filed a joint lawsuit against DeNA, claiming that the social game developer and operator of the Mobage mobile social network is in violation of Japanese antitrust law.

The lawsuit alleges that DeNA failed to list links for games featured on its Japanese social network Mobage Town if the developers behind the games also appeared on Gree’s network. According to Gree, the company filed a cease … Continue Reading

HP’s earnings this afternoon will determine if Whitman is on right course

Hewlett-Packard will report earnings today for the first quarter since Meg Whitman took over as chief executive of the technology industry giant in September.

Whitman wasn’t CEO for the entire quarter ended Oct. 31, so she won’t be entirely responsible for the company’s earnings performance. Leo Apotheker preceded Whitman in the top job but he was fired in September as the board lost confidence in his ability to communicate HP’s strategy. Analysts expect HP to … Continue Reading

Raise Cache: New Yorkers strut for Silicon Alley, raise over $100K for HackNY

On Thursday November 17th, 1,300 plus New York techies descended upon the Lexington Ave Armory to raise over $100,000 for HackNY, a nonprofit organization run out of Columbia and NYU that keeps young engineers off of the “street” (i.e. Wall Street) and in Silicon Alley, the burgeoning New York startup scene.

A combination fashion show and cocktail party, Raise Cache (get it?) showcased the hottest young things in New York tech, from venture capitalists and … Continue Reading

Gap pilots in-store DJ system, lets customers pick and play music

Hey shopper: If you’ve got a problem with that Lady Gaga track playing overhead, why don’t you just whip out your iPhone or Android device and change it? That’s an option one Bay Area Gap store is giving its customers this holiday season.

The Gap has partnered with Berkeley-based startup Roqbot to pilot a new in-store music service at its Chestnut Street location in San Francisco. The store is now streaming music from the upstart’s … Continue Reading

Indie game Minecraft receiving over 240 million logins every month

The indie video game sensation Minecraft is going from strength to strength, as demonstrated by figures unveiled at this weekend’s Minecon convention in Las Vegas.

Minecraft has been around since 2009, but only received a formal release last Friday, with the Minecraft 1.0 iteration. Despite this, the game has more than 16 million registered users and has already sold over 4 million copies. Following the release of Minecraft 1.0, Gamefront have reported that logins to … Continue Reading

Lawsuit filed against Electronic Arts for failing to keep Battlefield 3 promise

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Electronic Arts by disgruntled Playstation 3 owners, unhappy that the company failed to provide the extra content with Battlefield 3 that had been promised. Battlefield 1943, the best-selling Playstation Network title, was supposed to have been included with PS3 copies of Battlefield 3, but it failed to materialize, leaving many gamers frustrated and disappointed.

Many publishers are now bundling copies of earlier games with their most recent … Continue Reading

65% of tablet buyers want the iPad, 22% want Kindle Fire, says survey

Amazon’s cheap Kindle Fire is indeed chipping away at the iPad’s dominance among potential tablet buyers — at least, according to one survey.

65 percent of people who said they’re interested in buying a tablet are planning to get Apple’s $499 iPad, while 22 percent are looking forward to the $199 Kindle Fire, according to the latest report from ChangeWave Research.

The company surveyed 3,043 consumers in North America, 14 percent of whom said they … Continue Reading

Nintendo 3DS bundles featuring Zelda and Mario land Nov. 24

Nintendo will launch its first 3DS bundles featuring some of its best-known characters in just a few days, the company announced Monday.

The 3DS handheld has been plagued with troubles since its debut in March 2011 because consumers haven’t shown as much interest in the console as Nintendo and its investors had hoped. Demand for the 3DS has improved since the company dropped the price from $250 to $170 in August. And now that the … Continue Reading

Bigger Kindle Fires may be coming in 2012

Amazon may be launching at least one larger version of the Kindle Fire in the first half of 2012.

According to DigiTimes, the Taiwanese blog with deep connections in manufacturer supply chains, Amazon is preparing to release the device in new 8.9-inch and 10.1-inch screen sizes. The 8.9-inch size is said to be prepping for launch first.

Currently, the Kindle Fire ships with a 7-inch color touchscreen.

Earlier this month, DigiTimes said the 8.9 inch … Continue Reading

RunKeeper scores $10M round to expand its fitness platform

RunKeeper, a small startup that makes a run- and workout-tracking platform, has raised an impressive $10 million second round of funding.

The money will give the company a shot at its greatest ambition: Becoming a widely-used platform for measuring, tracking and reporting a variety of health and fitness data, including exercise, nutrition, sleep and other factors.

The company started out making an iPhone app that tracks runs, using the GPS built into the phone to … Continue Reading