Jurassic Park game developers found scoring their own game 10/10 on Metacritic

Investigations by Gamespot have revealed that two members of the Jurassic Park development team at Telltale Games posted perfect review scores for their own title on the popular ratings website Metacritic, earlier this week.

Telltale Games is best known for its point and click adventure games, such as Sam and Max, and Back To The Future. Its most recent title, Jurassic Park, was released on Xbox Live on Wednesday, and has so far received a … Continue Reading

More than 1,600 cheaters banned from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has been out for a little over a week now and already 1,600 cheaters and hackers have been banned, according to Infinity Ward’s Creative Strategist Robert Bowling.

Yesterday, Bowling stated on Twitter, “Any attempt to cheat, hack, or glitch in #MW3 will not be tolerated. 1600+ bans issued. Updates in works. Please cont. to report offenders.”

This is not the first time Infinity Ward has taken action against Modern … Continue Reading

Glam Media launches new GlamSplash advertising platform

Glam Media is launching a new video ad platform called GlamSplash that aims to mimic the effectiveness of 30-second TV spot advertisements, the company announced today.

We’ve got a video that we recently shot in VentureBeat’s headquarters with Glam co-founder and chief executive Samir Arora, above.

The company’s advertisements have a reach of about 200 million unique visitors per month for its collection of over 2,500 publishers. Those publishers, which are primarily focused on appealing … Continue Reading

Report: Macs now have 5% of global market share

Apple’s Mac computers have hit the 5 percent mark in worldwide market share for the first time in 15 years, according to an All Things D report.

The Windows OS has been the most pervasive and popular operating system around the world for two decades, but because Apple is sole manufacturer of Macs and every non-Apple computer manufacturer makes PCs, Macs have seemingly always been slim in complete market share. What’s interesting now is that … Continue Reading

Turn off the faucet: Foreign hackers target a water treatment plant

Foreign hackers may have broken into the computers of a water treatment plant in Illinois last week and damaged a water pump,  according to the Washington Post.

The attack appears to be the first malicious cyber assault against a critical infrastructure computer network in the U.S., according to an expert cited by the newspaper.

The attack was noticed on Nov. 8, when there were problems with the city’s water pump control system. A technician figured … Continue Reading

Wayfair CEO talks Groupon IPO and the e-commerce deals industry

Wayfair.com recently surpassed Crate and Barrel to be the number two home goods website, is expecting $500 million in revenue this year, and closed a $165 million round of funding. We sat down with Niraj Shah, co-founder and chief executive officer of the e-commerce deals site, to get his thoughts on the Groupon IPO and the current e-commerce landscape.

Groupon had its initial public offering earlier this month, peaking at $30 a share, and closing … Continue Reading

Instagrille is a pretty Instagram desktop app for PC users

Instragam may be the most popular mobile photo-sharing app of our time, but it could certainly benefit from an official web or desktop application. Don’t want to wait? PC users can get their Instagram-fix with the desktop application Instagrille.

Instagram landed on the App Store in October of last year and found insta-favor with iPhone users looking to add effects to photos. A little more than one year later, the San Francisco-based startup has more … Continue Reading

Porn bigwigs get their panties in a twist over .XXX domain

Manwin Licensing is going to court to make the world safe for porn peddlers.

Specifically the Luxembourg-based company that operates YouPorn and Playboy.com wants to block the adoption of the .XXX domain and alleges that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN), as well as ICM Registry, the company responsible for managing the domain, have engaged in ”monopolistic conduct, price gouging, and anticompetitive and unfair practices,” according to court documents first obtained by … Continue Reading

League of Legends surpasses 30 million registered players

Riot Games announced today that their hit online game League of Legends has surpassed the 30 million registered-player mark along with 11.4 million monthly active users. They have reason to crow, as even the ubiquitous World of Warcraft only reports 10.3 million subscribers.

Perhaps more significantly, over a million games of League of Legends are played each day, many consisting of two to five players, reports the company. In addition, at peak times, the game … Continue Reading

How HiveMind’s Will Wright plans to crowdsource your happiness (interview)

Will Wright’s games from SimCity to The Sims have sold more than 100 million units. That’s why people are paying attention to his new startup and game idea, HiveMind. The Berkeley, Calif.-based company is focused on “personal gaming,” or a kind of title that can customize itself for the individual player, taking into account aspects of a player’s real-life situation as elements of the game.

We talked to Wright about HiveMind earlier this week in … Continue Reading

This computer-on-a-USB-stick turns any device into an Android terminal

Remember that $25 computer-on-a-stick we showed you a couple months ago?

This gadget might seem familiar: It’s a dual-core computer on a USB drive, and its makers say it’s all about computing from any screen, anytime, anywhere.

The drive, called Cotton Candy, will turn any screen you connect it to into an Android station. You can plug it into a TV, a tablet, a laptop (PC or Mac) — you name it.

The device’s maker, … Continue Reading

Wolfram Alpha lets you spy on the flights overhead

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s … okay so it’s just a plane. But wouldn’t it be cool to know everything about that aircraft overhead, like its altitude and where it’s headed? Computational search engine Wolfram Alpha now has the answers.

Wolfram Alpha is the sophisticated search engine capable of computing answers to factual questions; it’s especially handy for math and science queries. The startup launched with a bang in 2009 but wasn’t the … Continue Reading

Google co-founder Sergey Brin gives $500,000 to help Wikipedia

The Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, has just received a $500,000 grant from the Brin Wojcicki Foundation, an organization started by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his wife, 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki.

The Wikimedia Foundation started its eighth annual fundraising drive this week. It is based in San Francisco and is an audited, 501(c)(3) charity funded primarily through donations and grants.

“This grant is an important endorsement of the Wikimedia Foundation and its work, and … Continue Reading

Women who play online games have more sex (Infographic)

Women who play games have more sex. That’s one of the results of a survey conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of GameHouse polled over 2,000 adults in the US.

They found that 55 percent of online gamers are women. Online games, for the purposes of this survey, included games on their computer, social networking sites and mobile devices. Better yet, they also have more sex and are more social than those who do not … Continue Reading

Slingbox enters Facebook’s walled garden with new Slingplayer app

Streaming media startup Sling Media has launched a Facebook application of its Slingplayer, the company announced today.

The company produces a line of Slingbox set-top boxes ($179 -$349) that connect with your cable or satellite TV service provider to stream that content over the internet, thus making it available across multiple platforms — including Facebook via the new Slingplayer app.

Sling Media has already made the Slingplayer available on Android, iOS, a Windows desktop app, … Continue Reading

VBWeekly: Yelp IPO, Google Music, and the history of the Xbox

VentureBeat’s weekly video show returns with a quick discussion of some of the week’s highlights in tech business.

Your hosts, Christopher Peri and Dylan Tweney, talk about Yelp’s filing for an initial public offering, news of which just dropped 30 minutes before we started filming. You can be sure we will be following up on that.  We also briefly discussed the difference between iTunes Match and Google Music services, and finally a said a few … Continue Reading

Motorola Mobility shareholders vote yes on a buy-out by Google

Motorola Mobility shareholders voted today to allow Google to buy the mobile company.

With approximately 99 percent of shares voting in favor of the deal at today’s special meeting, this acquisition now must pass U.S. government inspection.

Google announced its intention to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion back in August of this year. The proposed deal has seen its share of twists and turns.

One stipulation of the acquisition was that if the deal … Continue Reading

Ultrabooks are the new tablets, 30-50 models expected at CES 2012

Tablets were everywhere during CES 2011, following the success of the iPad, but come next year, thin and light Ultrabooks will likely be hogging the spotlight (yes, following the success of the MacBook Air).

Between 30 and 50 different Ultrabooks will be featured on the CES 2012 show floor in Las Vegas, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) revealed during a press event in London today.

As PC Pro notes, the news comes as a bit … Continue Reading