VentureBeat

YouTube adds Safety Mode to help filter objectionable video

Popular video sharing platform YouTube announced today that it has added a new “Safety Mode” feature to its video watching experience. The new feature is targeted at users who wish to have additional control over the videos that are present during searches and browsing, according to Google’s blog.

Like any other filter, Safety Mode won’t be perfect, but will help to filter objectionable content that might not be subject to deletion based on the Community Guidelines,... Continue Reading

PlaySpan makes virtual goods gains with FooPets game

PlaySpan scored a deal to provide virtual goods and global payment solutions for FooMojo’s FooPets.com virtual pets game.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based PlaySpan will help FooPets.com, which has more than 5 million registered members, process virtual goods on a number of fronts. FooPets will use PlaySpan’s Ultimate Game Card, which is a prepaid game card sold in 45,000 retail stores around the world.

The deal is one more example of how casual online games are switching... Continue Reading

British directory Yell.com partners with Daylife for topical microsites

Yell.com, the British online version of the Yellow Pages, has launched 18 new microsites powered by Daylife SmartSections, which VentureBeat wrote about in December.

In a prepared statement, the two companies called it “a significant expansion of Yell’s plans to integrate consumer advice and information into its local business search experience.”

In plain American English, Yell.com now has subsites like plumbers.yell.com and gardens.yell.com that combine paid listings for local plumbers and gardeners with how-to articles,... Continue Reading

Aspera says it can triple data speed for iPhone

Aspera has made its name transporting big digital files and videos from one professional creator to another since 2004. But now the company is going to do something that may pique the interest of everyday iPhone owners: triple their data transfer speeds.

The new service, fasp-AIR, is being previewed at the Macworld show this week in San Francisco. It enables faster data transfer over wireless data networks including 3G (which the iPhone uses), Wi-Fi, and... Continue Reading

Mogreet and American Greetings partner for video mobile e-cards

E-cards have become an attractive way of sending cards versus traditional print cards. Through customization and animation features, e-cards are a quick and easy way to avoid the the Hallmark aisle and postage, but still let that someone know you care. However, the ability to send a customized animated e-card to someone’s mobile device remains limited.

Until today when American Greetings, the popular online greeting card store, announced a partnership with mobile video marketing platform Mogreet giving users... Continue Reading

Ebay to use crowd sourcing to test new features, starting with streamlined search

It’s always difficult for any big site to test and roll out new features. Many companies just test internally until they determine they have something good enough to roll out. But a growing trend is to let your users do the work for you. Google, for example, uses its Labs to publicly test new ideas — some of which are later implemented in Google services, while others just fall by the wayside.

Now, according to... Continue Reading

IBM launches academic cloud to help students learn technology skills

According to the Department of Labor, the majority of jobs in the near future will have a heavy focus on technology and having technical skills, including technical consulting and computer systems design. To ensure college students graduating have those skills, IBM announced today the launch of what it calls a free “academic cloud,” which is a bundle of web-based IBM software to help professors teach technology skills to students.

The announcement will officially come at a... Continue Reading

Scrapblog launches “Share the Love” Facebook app for scrapbook fans

Scrapblog, a photo sharing site for scrapbook fans, is launching a Facebook app dubbed Share the Love today. The cool thing about it is that is an example of “game-ification,” where a non-game app incorporates game-like features.

Scrapblog was, until recently, a Miami-based company that operated a stand-alone web site dedicated to scrapbook fans. It launched a very interesting virtual goods application. Users could post their photos and incorporate them into online scrapbooks that they... Continue Reading

Micron will acquire memory chip maker Numonyx for $1.27 billion

In a big victory for a new kind of memory chip and the little startup making it, Micron Technology announced today it is buying Numonyx in an all-stock transaction valued at $1.27 billion.

Boise, Idaho,-based Micron is the largest U.S. maker of main memory chips used in PCs and other electronics. Numonyx, meanwhile, is a flash memory chip maker that has been working on a universal memory chip — which combines the best features of... Continue Reading

Real Networks spinning off Rhapsody to focus on RealPlayer

Real Networks is spinning off digital music service Rhapsody by the end of the quarter. While it will still own a significant stake in the new, independent entity, it won’t have more power than the other major interest Viacom. (They didn’t specify their exact share except to say that it was below 50 percent.)

The move is intended to lighten the load on Real Networks while simultaneously freeing up room for more investors in Rhapsody.... Continue Reading

Fisker pulls out of Michigan just before stimulus payday

Fisker Automotive, maker of the luxury hybrid Karma, says it will probably receive its $529 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy by the middle of March, according to Dow Jones VentureWire. This follows the company’s announcement that it will shutter its research and development center in Michigan (PDF) — bad news for a state that needs all of the automotive dollars it can cling to.

Even though the DOE gave the loan guarantee to... Continue Reading

Flickr founder launches Glitch, makes the world a game

Tiny Speck, a company started by Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield, has just opened a massively-multiplayer, browser-based game called Glitch to alpha testers, giving the world a taste of what Glitch might look like.

There are essentially two schools of multiplayer gaming right now. Massively-multiplayer games, most notably World of Warcraft, have been popular for a long time. They typically have huge worlds, tons of players, and a never-ending number of things you can do and... Continue Reading

Hey bloggers, do you wish for Tumblr Pro? Try ZooLoo

When pushbutton-simple free blogging site Tumblr launched in 2007, friends of mine with a lot to say but no interest in tinkering with HTML jumped onto it. Not only did they create their own personal blogs, they spun off temporary joke blogs for topics of the day. A coworker of mine at Valleywag created fakepaulboutin.tumblr.com, where she posted my wisecracks from Valleywag’s private chat room.

But if you want your own personal domain rather than... Continue Reading

Lead411 buffs up with 1.4 million executive profiles, deeper info options

For some types of searches, Google totally sucks. Are you looking for a senior editor at Wired to pitch? Until recently, Google’s built-in directory returned me as a top result, seven years after I’d lost the job. If you’re a salesperson, marketer, recruiter, or competitor researching company executives, Google is full of non-leads, and its website results are often out of date. That’s because one in four Americans changes jobs each year, according to the... Continue Reading

Point, click: a review of gesture control technologies

The first big hit in gesture control technology was the mouse. If you’re too young to have any pre-digital memories, this might seem like an odd claim. My three-year-old is no more mystified by mice and touchpads than she is by building blocks. Once upon a time, though, we needed lessons in how the motion of a peripheral device rolling around on the table related to the motion of something on the screen called... Continue Reading

Google Buzz is no Twitter-killer, but it may solve an intimacy problem

Google tapped its sleeping giant of a social network today with Buzz. The new product lets people follow Gmail contacts for status updates and shared articles, photos and videos.

While Google has fumbled on many of its other social efforts, Buzz holds more promise than earlier products like Orkut or Latitude. According to ComScore, Gmail had about 176 million unique visitors in December so there’s a very low cost of new user acquisition.

But... Continue Reading

Toyota loses green cred, recalls hybrids over faulty brakes

Toyota’s having a bad week. It is already recalling millions of cars to fix floor mats and gas pedals that have led to unintentional acceleration — a snafu costing the company more than $2 billion. Now it has announced that it will recall about 150,000 of its hybrid vehicles due to problems in the software controlling the anti-lock brake systems in its 2010 Prius and 2010 Lexus HS 250h models. The majority of the recalled... Continue Reading

Google takes another stab at location-based services with Buzz

Much of the talk surrounding Google Buzz, the search giant’s new social sharing tool, has focused on new capabilities it will bring to the web through its integration with Gmail. But the new mobile features are also an important part of the announcement, because they add a compelling location-based component to the service.

Google Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra said Google Buzz is being integrated into three of Google’s mobile websites and applications —... Continue Reading