The top ten video games of the holiday season
1. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (Sony PlayStation 3. Mature) Naughty Dog/Sony. This game could have been a tired sequel in the tired action adventure category, as with ethical treasure hunter Nathan Drake returning and two women contending to be his main sidekick. But Naughty Dog raised the bar with great cinematics, outstanding 3-D art that fully exploited the power of the PlayStation 3, and combat scenes that were executed well. You feel like you’re taking part… Continue Reading
Vator Splash competition for early-stage startups
Editor’s note: This post is sponsored by Vator.tv
Vator, a leading platform for innovators and entrepreneurs to broadcast themselves, is holding its inaugural Vator Splash competition to find up-and-coming, early-stage startups to present at the Vator Splash event on February 4, 2010 at the Cafe du Nord in San Francisco. We’re seeking CEOs and/or founders of 10 companies, chosen by their peers and vetted by judges, will have the opportunity to present onstage and give a… Continue Reading
You’ve been hacked. Now what?
(Editor’s note: Chris Drake is CEO and founder of FireHost, Inc., a secure Web hosting company. He submitted this story to VentureBeat.)
The holiday season is critical to any customer-focused business – this year, more than ever. For start-ups, it can literally be a matter of life and death. Online shopping is expected to grow notably this year – so if you find yourself a victim of hackers, the fate of your company is very much… Continue Reading
Ustream launches viewer app for Android
Interested in seeing a live KISS concert tonight? Ustream, a company that lets people broadcast live interactive video, has embraced the mobile phone even more aggressively: It just launched a mobile viewer feature for Android phones. Dubbed Android Viewer, enables users to watch any Ustream show on Wifi or 3G.
The Android Viewer provides a chat feature, so that people viewing the show can interact with each other. Ustream also recently launched Broadcaster, a way to… Continue Reading
Latest Wire Stories
5 O’Clock Roundup: Microsoft CFO out, new Google ads, an $85 million fraud?
Here’s the latest action:
Canopy Financial is accused of fraud — The health IT company, which raised $85 million in venture capital, allegedly made fraudulent financial statements, even forging some with fake KPMG letterhead. Spectrum Equity Investors may have taken the biggest loss on their recent $62.5 million investment in the company, TechCrunch reports.
Microsoft chief financial officer Chris Liddell to step down – It’s not clear why he is leaving, but he will be replaced by Peter… Continue Reading
Clean energy initiatives get $63M from DOE with wind in the lead
Before the U.S. Department of Energy announced its $620 million in grants for Smart Grid demonstration projects today, it rolled out $63 million for clean energy innovations, with $45 million in stimulus money going exclusively toward the development of new wind turbine designs.
The government has unofficially anointed wind as the most promising of the renewable energy sources — over solar, geothermal, even biomass. Earlier this year, it doled out more than $1 billion in financing… Continue Reading
Clearwire takes on $920M more to build out wireless networks
Clearwire is raising a lot more cash as it attempts to build a national high-speed, 4G wireless network using WiMax technology. Today, it announced $920 million in debt financing.
The company already raised a little less than $2 billion from strategic investors and the sale of bonds, so its funding now totals $2.8 billion. Clearwire says it has the option to raise another $295 million from public shareholders.
The company was born last year from a partnership… Continue Reading
Driving app Waze turns the highway into a Pac-Man game with ‘Road Goodies’
Mobile driving application Waze is adding a little extra inventive for users to help build out its crowdsourced maps. It already offers users points for “munching” up the road — i.e., driving around with Waze and validating the app’s directions. The latest version adds “road goodies,” special spots on the map that you get extra points for driving over.
Those goodies (hammers, cherries, and presents) are placed on Waze maps wherever the company has identified problems…. Continue Reading
Announcing the DiscoveryBeat Apps Contest, sponsored by Flurry
We’re holding a contest in conjunction with our DiscoveryBeat event to be held on Dec. 8 at the Automattic Lounge on Pier 38 in San Francisco. The DiscoveryBeat Apps Contest is being sponsored by Flurry, which recently launched its AppCircle app recommendation engine for the iPhone.
Getting apps discovered is no easy task when there are tens or even hundreds of thousands of competing apps on a social or mobile platform. So the event is all… Continue Reading
Amidio launches Touch DJ with ‘visual mixing’
Mobile music app maker Amidio launched its Touch DJ application for the iPhone today, allowing users to spin and mix music right on their handsets. Since a demo of the app appeared on YouTube on Nov. 17, it has received 35,000 hits. People are excited worldwide.
One of the major hurdles standing in the way of a mobile DJ in the past was that the iPhone and iPod Touch only have one stereo output — so… Continue Reading
Youtego launches more personal approach to social networking
Startup Youtego is bringing a new experience to social networking. It’s all about using images to define yourself, your life, and your interests, and in the little while that I’ve been playing with my account, I’m already having more fun than Facebook ever provided.
Youtego’s main screen is a layout of tiled categories. It starts you off with six: “I love”, “I know”, “I can”, “My work”, “My education” and finally “I”. In each category you… Continue Reading
EVO Media Group raises $1.5M to help you build a moneymaking website
EVO Media Group, which runs the DevHub.com service, says it’s making headway in the website-building market by adding a crucial ingredient — money. And the Seattle startup just raised $1.5 million in new funding itself.
Like Weebly, Yola, and others, DevHub makes it easy to build a web site by just dragging and dropping the elements into place. But the people who use those services tend to be individuals who want personal web sites, or small… Continue Reading
Smart Grid handouts keep rolling: DOE earmarks $620M for demo projects
Less than a month after it handed out $3.4 billion in stimulus grants to utilities working toward a cleaner, more efficient electrical grid, the U.S. Department of Energy says it is doling out another $620 million to projects working on demonstration-scale Smart Grid technologies. Today, it named 32 recipients working on every aspect of the grid, including smart meters, transmission equipment, storage devices and energy monitoring systems.
The idea is to support demonstration projects that have… Continue Reading
Sony’s MAG can stage massive online combat (with video and beta codes)
Sony’s MAG is an experiment in group psychology. In this online game, 256 players can engage in first-person combat in the same online session. The question is whether the games will be organized duels between armies, or a crazy free-for-all where it’s every soldier for him- or herself.
I played the beta of MAG (which originally meant Massive Action Game), a multiplayer-only online game debuting on the PlayStation 3 early next year. If the game works… Continue Reading
How open is open?
Editor’s note: This post is sponsored by GetJar.
Open vs Closed is one of today’s hottest topics in the apps and appstores world. It seems like everybody supports Open; also everybody calls themselves Open, but is it really so?
First, let’s define what Open really means, because everybody understands it differently. Openness is not binary; it has many shades of gray, as it does different dimensions. It starts at the very fundamental property of a mobile platform… Continue Reading
Telegent files for IPO as public market thaws even more
Chip design firm Telegent has filed for a $250 million public offering, capping off an exciting few days of IPO action. Last week, network security provider Fortinet sold 12.5 million shares of common stock for $12.50, raising just over $156.2 million. And web marketer QuinStreet filed for its own $250 million IPO.
Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., Telegent provides designs for semiconductors that allow people to watch live television broadcasts on their computers and phones. It sells… Continue Reading
Toys R Us finds hordes of fans on Facebook
Facebook announced today that Toys R Us has become the fastest growing brand on Facebook, growing between 40,000 to 95,000 fans per day over the past week. Toys R Us recently released a new catalog on their Facebook Fan Page, called the “Big Book” and currently has 396,301 fans.
Unsure of the exact reason for the tremendous growth, Facebook “assumes it’s the result of an ad campaign,” juxtaposed with a number of features on the company’s… Continue Reading
Google Calendar testing an easy event scheduler
Updated
A number of companies offer better ways to schedule meetings than the standard back-and-forth over email — Huddle, TimeBridge, and Presdo are a few that come to mind. Now Google is experimenting with a feature that tackles the same problem, though a bit less ambitiously.
Here’s how it works: When you create an event in Google Calendar, you can add a list of the guests that you’d like to invite. Then, if you have access to… Continue Reading
How to get in on the Mobile boom
[Megan Berry works for mobile analytics and advertising company Mobclix.]
Does your business have a plan for mobile? How’s this for a novel idea: Don’t just go charging in to develop your own iPhone app. Take just a little time to consider what makes the most sense for your company. Mobile advertising can be a great way to get your feet wet, while building up a full mobile presence requires a bigger investment with the possibility… Continue Reading
Facebook establishes dual-class stock structure
Facebook is establishing a dual-class stock structure, a move that could help pave the way to an initial public offering in the future. The company gave no time-line for such an offering and instead said it will help give current shareholders more power to guide the long-term vision of the company.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook is converting all current shareholders to Class B stock, which carries ten times the voting power of Class… Continue Reading