Gameloft pulls ads from Hero of Sparta 2 mobile game due to complaints

Gameloft said today it was pulling the ads out of its newly launched Hero of Sparta 2 game and returning the title to its paid status. It also apologized to users for providing a poor experience by putting ads into a game,  distracting users from the game play.

The move shows that it’s not always that easy to switch from one form of monetization to another, as fans can react negatively to in-game ads, particularly … Continue Reading

Surprise! BlackBerry 10 OS is already being called a failure

Research in Motion has become the mobile industry’s punching bag lately and today is no exception, with a new report saying its upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS is all-around awful.

A new report from Boy Genius Report asserts that the upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS, which has already been pushed back until late 2012, is basically a failure and won’t be able to compete with other  smartphones operating systems. This is especially true when you consider more … Continue Reading

Paul Graham: SOPA supporters are no longer welcome at Y Combinator events

Paul Graham has put the kibosh on SOPA-supporting companies showing up at Y Combinator events, including the popular and investment-driven Demo Days.

Graham founded Y Combinator, an incubator and accelerator program that attracts some of the brightest minds and most interesting startups around the world. A Graham-imposed ban means the exiled parties might not have the best chance get in on early investment rounds — or acquisition deals when companies (and founders) are young enough … Continue Reading

Google paying nearly $1B for Firefox search deal

The prominent search box atop the popular Firefox browser played the coveted prize jewel in a Christie’s-like bidding war between the web’s wealthiest whales.

Google competed in an aggressive auction with Microsoft and Yahoo to maintain its place as the default search engine on Firefox, according to AllThingsD. It successfully renewed a three-year deal, but the placement came with a massive markup and will now cost the company $300 million a year.

That’s one heck … Continue Reading

Now your robots can post status updates too with MyRobots.com

It’s time for lonely robots to get in on the social media scene. Forget Twitter or Facebook, robots now have their very own social network, called MyRobots.

Launched on December 20th by RobotShop, the social network aims to connect robots and other intelligent electronic devices to the Internet. Instead of posts about how much fun they had with friends last night, robots can post useful updates such as “My battery is low” or “Help me, … Continue Reading

Louis CK’s digital distribution experiment clears $1M in 12 days

Comedian Louis CK’s recent digital distribution experiment to sell his latest standup performance independently has generated over $1 million, he announced in a statement on his website yesterday. Revenue from the special topped $500,000 after its first four days on sale.

CK made his latest performance Live at the Beacon Theater available as a non-copy-protected download for purchase on his website for a meager $5. Purchasing the special allows you to stream it twice in … Continue Reading

MoviePal helps mobile users discover and share film trailers

Startup incubator YouWeb has launched a new iPhone app called MoviePal that lets you identify and find trailers on the web while sitting in a movie theater.

The app is aimed at creating a social experience around watching, capturing, and sharing movie trailers. MoviePal lets you identify a movie trailer, much like the Shazam app helps you recognize songs that are playing.

The app uses your iPhone’s audio recording function to record about 10 seconds … Continue Reading

Motorola Mobility acquires SetJam, beefs up entertainment value

Motorola is still picking up companies while under acquisition review with Google. Today the company purchased SetJam, a television and movie directory.

The acquisition will give Motorola hardware devices more command over the entertainment space.

“Motorola and SetJam share the vision of making content delivery, discovery, and consumption seamless across any screen, and as a world leader in video technology, Motorola will provide us with unprecedented levels of reach and distribution,” said Ryan Janssen, chief … Continue Reading

The best web and mobile typefaces of 2011 are…

In our yearly roundups of what was awesome and what sucked about 2011, we cannot overlook one of our favorite verticals for nerding out: typography.

The past year has brought quite a few interesting developments in web and mobile typography. As a plethora of technologies make typography on the web a lot better year over year, we are able to grow in the typefaces and tools we use.

And as mobile devices, operating systems and … Continue Reading

Year-end stats for smartphones show iPhone is for games, Android is for apps

In 2011, the competition between Google Android devices and Apple iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) became heated. But as new year-end data shows, consumers turned to the iPhone to play games while they enjoyed broader apps on Android.

Clearly, the numbers show that iPhone consumers are using their devices for games, while Android users are using other kinds of apps. Xyologic, a research firm that indexes and search mobile app stores, reported that the number … Continue Reading

Surprise hit Pinterest a top 10 most-trafficked social network

Move over Google+ and Tumblr, there’s a new star in social media town. Pinterest, a Palo Alto-based startup, is quietly becoming one of the most-trafficked social networking sites on the web.

The still-invite-only, one year-old digital pin-board site attracted nearly 11 million visitors in the week ending December 17, according to data intelligence company Hitwise. Hitwise counts Pinterest as one of the top 10 websites in the social networking and forums category.

For those without … Continue Reading

Mega Man X comes to iPhone, fans hate the result

Capcom has launched an iPhone and iPod touch port of the classic Super Nintendo game Mega Man X, but fans are complaining restlessly about the laziness of the re-release.

I fondly remember playing Mega Man X for SNES when I was younger and loved the challenge and attention to detail. The game introduced you to and let you play as Zero, Mega Man’s friend, who uses an energy sword instead of an arm cannon. But … Continue Reading

How Intel researchers found people want Ultrabooks for the “flow experience” (interview)

Intel may be focused exclusively on making and selling chips, but that doesn’t mean it has its eyes closed to the rest of the technology market. The company has to make sure the ecosystem around its chips and the markets for computers and other electronic gadgets stay healthy. The result is some serious market research into what technology consumers want.

Intel’s research delves into ethnography, or the social science of observing people and how they … Continue Reading

Just Kik it: New Kik API lets you share from any app across iOS, Android

Plenty of apps let you share items with friends via Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail, but it’s still difficult to instantly share content within apps — for example, a cool new restaurant on Yelp’s app — across mobile devices.

Kik, maker of a popular mobile messaging app, aims to change that with its new API, which allows developers to quickly implement mobile content sharing within their apps to any of Kik’s 6 million registered users.

The … Continue Reading

GameHouse expands into Canada to focus on social games

GameHouse, the game division of RealNetworks, said today it is expanding its social game studio to a new office in Victoria, British Columbia. The new office will double its staff to at least 45 people by the end of 2012.

Seattle-based GameHouse was one of the big players on the casual web, but it lost its pole position as the audience shifted to social games on Facebook. Now the company is making a run at … Continue Reading

Dragon voice recognition finally lands on Android, thanks to Swype

Nuance’s purchase of Swype, maker of an alternative keyboard for smartphones, is finally beginning to pay off with the introduction of Nuance’s Dragon voice recognition on the latest Swype Android app.

Swype’s software keyboard lets you swipe to type text, instead of hunting and pecking virtual keys. With its latest update, Swype has replaced Google’s built-in voice recognition for Nuance’s Dragon Dictate technology, which currently supports English, Spanish, Italian, German, and French.

Given that Dragon … Continue Reading

Spotify who? Rhapsody hits 1M paying U.S. subscribers

Streaming music service Rhapsody has now hit the 1 million paid subscriber milestone, the company announced today.

Rhapsody has been around for 10 years, but it is now fighting fiercely with newer competitors like Spotify, MOG and Rdio. Spotify in particular has been agressive and recently announced it now has 2.5 million subscribers. However, don’t let that number fool you, as Spotify is actually in 13 countries, while Rhapsody is only available in the U.S.… Continue Reading

Transformer Prime tablet runs afoul of toy trademarks: Hasbro sues Asus

It looks like we weren’t the only ones who heard about Asus’ Tranformer Prime tablet and thought of Optimus Prime and the Autobots.

Toy maker Hasbro is taking gadget maker Asus to court for trademark violation. As far as Hasbro is concerned, Asus’ preferred nomenclature comes too close for comfort to the company’s toy and entertainment franchise — especially its trademark-pending 2010 series, Transformers Prime.

Altogether, Hasbro is claiming the infringement of five trademarks in … Continue Reading

Official list of SOPA supporters includes the X-Men, bible publishers & country music

The U.S. House judiciary committee responsible for the Stop Online Piracy Act (or SOPA) has released a list of companies (PDF) that have publicly expressed their support for the legislation.

SOPA gives both the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against websites associated with infringing, pirating and/or counterfeiting intellectual property. The implication of having the bill pass is that it could drastically change the way the Internet operates. For example, … Continue Reading