Onepageartist.com offers a one-stop place for info on music artists
Finding out about a musician or a show has always been a three-, four- or even five-site process for me. First I’ll hit pollstar.com and see what shows are in the area on a given day. Scrolling through lists of venues and artists, I’ll see something like “BattleHooch” and follow the link to their home page. This page may or may not tell me where they are playing, so it’s back to pollstar.com where I… Continue Reading
HP beats earnings guidance but cites pricing pressures in PCs and printers
Hewlett-Packard reported better than expected earnings for its fourth fiscal quarter ended Oct. 31, but its sales were a mixed bag as the company dealt with falling prices for consumer PCs and printers.
The world’s largest tech company is a bellwether for the overall tech economy, and while pricing pressure has been tough, HP’s performance should give the industry hope that a recovery is still in the works in the larger economy.
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company… Continue Reading
EVs surge as Nissan taps China’s market, U.S. gov. lobbied for green car subsidies
In addition to Tesla Motors‘ potential IPO, there’s two more big pieces of news coming out of the electric vehicle world. Nissan is opening talks about electric cars in China, and the Electrification Coalition has started lobbying for tax credits and loan guarantees to get battery-powered cars on the roads soon.
Nissan’s CEO Carlos Ghosn seems to have switched course. His line used to be that he wouldn’t be selling EVs in China until the country… Continue Reading
Spot Runner launches web-based TV ad exchange — finally
TV ad company Spot Runner has launched Project Malibu, their much anticipated web-based platform for buying and selling television advertising. The move comes after nearly two years of development, massive layoffs, a heated lawsuit from investor WPP and a whopping $120 million raised from more than a dozen investors.
Spot Runner originally focused on serving local advertisers, letting them use a web-based service to serve ads on TV. But Project Malibu spotlights a shift in technology to a web-based advertising exchange… Continue Reading
Latest Wire Stories
- Fluidigm raises another $7.5M for stem-cell analysis chips
- Business intelligence company Manthan Systems raises second round
- MyFit raises $1M to help parents with college applications
- Network equipment company IPWireless restarts with $15.5M
- Outright raises $5.5M to help small businesses with their finances
- Teknovus captures $5.6M for optical Ethernet chips
Review: Multiplayer gaming makes Modern Warfare 2 live up to its hype
We’ve come to the day when a game can have a flawed single-player campaign, but it can still be a blockbuster seller because it executes multiplayer gaming in an excellent fashion. That’s the case with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which has become the fastest selling video game of all time.
The single-player version of this first-person shooter game has 18 levels that last maybe eight hours. It’s a gripping and visceral experience that lives… Continue Reading
Twitter’s stalled growth could spell bad news for Twitter ecosystem
October numbers are in, and Comscore, Compete, Google, and Quantcast all agree: US traffic to Twitter.com reached a peak in July or August and has begun to decline slowly.
According to Comscore, October 2009 traffic was down 8% from from September 2009, while Compete shows a more modest decline of 2.1%. Still, on a year-over year basis, US Twitter visitor counts are up 1,271% according to Comscore, and 578% according to Compete.
Twitter’s phenomenal growth over the… Continue Reading
IPO talk revs up for Tesla Motors
Rumors are swirling today that Tesla Motors is seriously considering an initial public offering sometime soon. The talk has been tracked to two anonymous sources, who say the six-year-old company could cash in big on the battery-powered car trend before electric and hybrid models from companies like General Motors, Mitsubishi and Nissan make it to market.
Tesla has officially denied the prediction, calling the IPO chatter “rumor and speculation.” That said, going public in 2010 would… Continue Reading
Next Island to launch sci-fi adventure virtual world — with time travel
Next Island is the latest company to launch an ambitious virtual world. But this sci-fi adventure paradise comes with an interesting twist: time travel. The company is announcing today that it is building a world in MindArk’s massively multiplayer online virtual universe, Entropia Universe.
That means it has licensed virtual world technology from MindArk, whose technology is behind Planet Calypso, which until now has been the only virtual world in the Entropia Universe. Next Island will… Continue Reading
Google gobbles display ad startup Teracent
Google is growing its display advertising business today with the acquisition of Teracent, a startup that provides companies with tools for customizing display ads like web banners and interactive modules. Still making most of its revenue from text ads listed next to search results, the tech giant sees display as the next biggest area of opportunity.
Right now, Google is actually coming in second to Yahoo in display advertising — having only launched its strategy in… Continue Reading
Feedtrace shows who, what is popular on Twitter (+invites)
With all the information available today, wading through everything to find out what you really need to know is hard. But there are also a few options for weeding out the noise in your information stream. Feedtrace is a new one, and one with some promise.
When you visit the Feedtrace site and sign up, you sign in with your Twitter username – Feedtrace doesn’t store your password, or really anything about you. Then, once it… Continue Reading
Zynga crosses 100 million users and expands beyond Facebook games
Zynga said today it has crossed more than 100 million unique monthly users for its social games on Facebook.
Thanks to the popularity of its casual Facebook games such as FarmVille, which has more than 65 million players, the San Francisco company has become the biggest developer on Facebook and the leading company in the emerging social games market.
That’s a pretty good achievement for a startup founded in 2007 and one that is surrounded by multi-billion-dollar… Continue Reading
Silicon Valley Rocks on December 9
Editor’s note: This post is sponsored by Silicon Valley Rocks.
Tech professionals by day, rockers by night – on December 9 at the Great American Music Hall, they’ll pick up their instruments and venture onto the big stage to let their alter egos shine… for a good cause and the love of music.
Silicon Valley Rocks 2009 will bring together the Valley’s tech community – from VCs and entrepreneurs to bloggers and software developers – to raise… Continue Reading
LinkedIn expands platform in attempt to one-up Facebook Connect
LinkedIn aims to be an even more central part of your professional identity, by expanding its platform today with the site developer.linkedin.com.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based professional networking site already offers a platform for third-party developers, allowing them to build widgets and apps that run in LinkedIn itself. What it’s announcing today is another piece of that platform, one that’s arguably more exciting — the site is allowing developers to access your LinkedIn data from their… Continue Reading
Android gobbles up 20 percent share of U.S. smartphone market, says AdMob
AdMob, the mobile ad network that Google plans to acquire for $750 million, today released their October 2009 Metrics Report examining market share for top devices and the operating systems that run on them.
One stat in particular caught our eye. In the US, Android had 20 percent share of smartphone traffic, up from only seven percent six months before. Now that there’s proof that these phones are selling, Android may solidify its spot as a… Continue Reading
Backflip proves indie iPhone developers can create multiple hits — and make money
Backflip Studios has managed to defy the odds on the iPhone by coming up with games that have become big hits over and over.
The Boulder, Colo.-based game studio has just six employees and has been around only seven months, but it has already made more than $1.75 million — by selling game applications in multiple forms, serving ads in them, as well as offering virtual goods. The success shows that with the right games and… Continue Reading
Sacrifice your health for your startup
(Editor’s note: Jason Cohen is an angel investor and the founder of Smart Bear Software. This story originally appeared on his blog.)
The Internet is full of good advice about how to lead a healthy, balanced work/home life.
If you don’t have your health and your family, it generally says, nothing else matters. On your deathbed, will you wish you had worked longer hours or been a better parent? Will you wish you had spent more time… Continue Reading
Intel and Sprout launch a consumer-powered Facebook promotion
Facebook reaches so many people now that big brands are trying to figure out how to reach its audience. Intel is using social media firm Sprout to launch a new kind of marketing campaign today that promises to drop Intel laptop prices if consumers sign up to be fans of Intel’s latest page on Facebook. The more fans sign up, the lower the price of the laptops will be when they go on sale on… Continue Reading
Roku adds 10 new free content channels for its set-top video players
Roku offers a trio of set-top boxes that can download movies and TV shows from the web and show them on your TV. Now the company is adding 10 new free content channels to its service.
You can use a Roku box with a Netflix subscription or the Amazon Video on Demand service to watch movies or TV shows on your TV. You connect a Roku box to both your TV and the web. Then you… Continue Reading
16-yr old launches Vye music-sharing site. Another Napster?
With the help of close friends and family, 16-year-old Charles Allatt, has launched Vye Music, an online meta search app for music files around the Net.
The site pulls search results from other music sites — including Skreemr, MP3Codes, and 4Shared Music, sites which in turn index hundreds of thousands of sites, blogs and artist pages.
Vye collates all of this content for the user and applies a simple, AJAX-based interface to let you build playlists, stream… Continue Reading
5 O’Clock Roundup: Nook sold out, Sony launches online store, Bing gets slammed
We’ve been a little behind with roundup lately. Our apologies. Here’s the latest action:
Barnes & Noble Nook sold out — The bookseller’s entry into the eBook reader market is under way. The B&N Nook is out of stockk on the company’s web site and it is now taking orders for devices that will ship next year. Analysts say that the Nook wasn’t ready for shipment in huge quantities and B&N probably launched it anyway to head… Continue Reading