Ridiculous: Verizon experiences third data outage this month

Verizon Wireless is currently experiencing its third data outage for the month of December, undermining the company’s sterling reputation for reliability.

Verizon last had a major outage on Dec. 21, and like that time, customers are taking to Twitter and other social networks to vent their frustrations. Subscribers have been complaining about the outage for several hours and directing their anger at the Verizon Wireless support account. Some users are even suggesting that they plan … Continue Reading

Amazon acquires the talented team at shopping startup Quorus

Amazon has bought Quorus, a shopping startup focusing on bringing social interactions and conversations into e-commerce. The deal seems to have been completed in November 2011.

The acquisition, which may be a talent grab, brings Quorus co-founders Michael Dougherty (pictured) and Sameer Rayachoti into the Amazon fold.

Currently, all Quorus employees are now working at Amazon, we’ve learned from an anonymous source with close ties to the deal.

While the team can’t comment on what … Continue Reading

Apple’s iOS App Store had over 5M free app downloads per day in Nov.

Thanks to the iPhone 4S’ huge sales, Apple’s mega-popular iOS App Store reached an all-time high in November for free downloads coming from the Top 200 apps, according to marketing firm Fiksu.

In retrospect, it’s not terribly surprising when you consider that the iPhone 4S had the most successful iPhone launch ever, with more than four million units sold in its first weekend in October. All those first-time iPhone owners, and repeat owners who upgraded … Continue Reading

Influential or not, Klout now fields 7.5B API requests per month

The mine-is-bigger-than-yours need to measure our self-worth against others is alive and well on the web. For proof, look no further than controversial influence-scoring startup Klout, which is now processing 7.5 billion API calls per month.

Klout measures online influence by tracking a person’s reach across social sites and analyzing her Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ relationships to spit out a score between 1 and 100.

Klout scores, said CEO Joe Fernandez in a 2011 … Continue Reading

Call Genie acquires VoodooVox to create smarter mobile ads

Mobile search and advertising company Call Genie announced Wednesday it has begun the process of acquiring VoodooVox, a company that provides demographic information for phone numbers and mobile ads.

The deal, which Canadian Business reports is worth $2.8 million, will allow Call Genie to expand its mobile advertising services. Using information from VoodooVox’s Analytics product, Call Genie plans to pursue pay-per-call advertising. Pay-per-call advertising is similar to pay per click; a unique phone number is … Continue Reading

Groupon may have acquired stealth startup Campfire Labs

Daily deals company Groupon has reportedly snatched up Campfire Labs, a still-in-stealth social-media startup based in San Francisco.

The acquisition is thought to be a talent grab. The Campfire Labs team includes Sakina Arsiwala, Sebastian Heycke, Shruti Challa and Naveen Koorakula.

TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters noticed that Groupon now controls the CampfireLabs.com web domain.

Campfire co-founder and engineer Arsiwala was previously YouTube’s Head of International at Google. Before that, she was a product lead for Google … Continue Reading

Universal’s YouTube snafu still leaves questions unanswered for Megaupload

Are you in the mood for a mystery? Right now, a judge and a couple teams of lawyers are working on a great one — the case of the disappearing, reappearing YouTube video.

Earlier this month, Universal Music Group pulled a wildly popular video by file-hosting service Megaupload off YouTube. While YouTube has reinstated the clip, UMG has not yet said why it requested the video be pulled in the first place. The video only … Continue Reading

UK Prime Minister is getting his own iPad app to help run the country

Leading a nation is a tough gig, but soon there may an app for that, too.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, a huge iPad fan, is having a special iPad app made for his particular country-running needs.

According to a report in The Times, the Prime Minister (and someday soon, anyone else) will be able to use the app to get broad and detailed information about Great Britain’s vital signs.

The Times’ sources say the … Continue Reading

Interview, photos and video reveal how an impressive Left 4 Dead fan film was made (exclusive)

Northern Five Entertainment and Airsoft GI recently released their joint Left 4 Dead short film to the world.

Sporting Hollywood-level production values but produced on a shoestring, the video quickly surpassed half a million views on YouTube, and the teaser trailer alone garnered over 400,000 views.

GamesBeat sat down with Northern Five director and co-founder Adrian Picardi for an exclusive interview to discuss the film’s budget, concept, reception, and why Hollywood is so damn bad … Continue Reading

Holiday shopping season: Kmart loses, Amazon wins (infographic)

This holiday shopping season produced winners and losers for retailers, the entertainment industry and restaurants. Some companies — including Amazon and Walmart — recorded high sales numbers and increased customer satisfaction. Others didn’t fare as well.

With record-high Cyber Monday and Black Friday sales, online retailers came out as winners this year. The music industry, especially because of the sales of holiday music, had a strong season as well. Given that many people flock to … Continue Reading

Apple’s iTV may feature channel customization, says Sterne Agee analyst

A new report from analyst firm Sterne Agee agrees with recent speculation that Apple will eventually produce its own branded television set.

Apple may soon start iTV production with 32- and 37-inch television sets planned for a summer 2012 launch, containing chips coming from Samsung and screens from Sharp, as VentureBeat reported yesterday.

“Frankly, we are not surprised and believe Apple should enter the TV space as this is arguably the only major end market … Continue Reading

10 things you need to know about Anonymous’ Stratfor hack

On Dec. 24th, hacker collective Anonymous stole credit card info and other sensitive data from U.S. security firm Stratfor, but keeping track of who and what are affected by the scandal can be difficult.

We’ve put together a 10-point FAQ for better understanding the major hacking incident, which blew up in the news cycle on Christmas and continues to worry people as more details are released.

1. What is Stratfor?

Stratfor Global Intelligence is an … Continue Reading

Facebook for iPad said to get Timeline update in January

The story of your life, as told through your Facebook updates and photos, will be showing on an iPad near you come late January, according to a source.

The social network is planning to release a new version of Facebook for iPad with Timeline, optimized for the big screen, in early 2012, 9to5Mac reports.

Facebook Timeline is the company’s radical reinterpretation of the Facebook profile. The feature replaces the profile with a two-column, expandable scrapbook … Continue Reading

Tough negotiator: HP wanted $1.2B for webOS and Palm’s assets (exclusive)

$1.2 billion. That’s how much HP paid for Palm last year, and it’s also how much the company was trying to sell its Palm assets for over the latter half of 2011, VentureBeat has learned.

As baffling as it may seem, HP was trying to rid itself of Palm without taking a loss on its purchase, a source with knowledge of the negotiations told us. When asked for confirmation about the pricing, an HP representative … Continue Reading

What recession? Holiday shopping online finishes at a record $35.3B

Online holiday shopping for 2011 finished at an all-time high of $35.3 billion, up 15 percent from last year’s sales figures.

According to comScore, which tracked online consumer spending between November 1 and the week beginning December 25, year-over-year sales figures for online retailers were higher for every single week for the final 56 holiday shopping days of 2011.

“Holiday e-commerce spending has remained strong throughout the season,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni in a … Continue Reading

Amazon rises in customer satisfaction for 2011, Netflix nose dives

Online retail giant Amazon continues to rank among the top companies for customer satisfaction while Netflix took a significant nose dive, according to an annual holiday online retail satisfaction report released today from analytics firm ForeSee.

ForeSee’s report scores the top 40 online retailers in 14 different areas: content, website functionality, merchandise and prices. The report contains top retailers’ scores for the last six years.

In previous years, Amazon faced competition from movie rental and … Continue Reading

Android had a merry Christmas weekend with 3.7M activations

Android devices more than doubled their typical activation rate over the Christmas weekend, with 3.7 million devices activated, according to Google’s Andy Rubin.

The holiday bump, while not surprising, is yet another reminder of Android’s unstoppable growth. Last week, Rubin revealed that Android had reached a new milestone of 700,000 daily activations. At this rate, it seems certain that Android will hit the magical 1 million daily activation milestone at some point this year.

We … Continue Reading

Mu Sigma raises $108M to grow its big data services

Big data startup Mu Sigma has raised a new $108 million round of funding, the company announced today.

Mu Sigma helps big companies across several industries — including many Fortune 500 companies — manage massive amounts of online data by translating it into analytics and digestible observations. The new funding is one of the largest raised by a big data startup. The company claims it’s already profitable — with revenue between 2008 and 2010 growing … Continue Reading