VentureBeat

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

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

Facebook co-founder’s Asana raises $9M from Benchmark, Andreessen-Horowitz

Asana, the productivity management startup from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and lead engineer Justin Rosenstein, has raked in $9 million from Benchmark Capital and Andreessen-Horowitz.

Asana is probably one of the more anticipated startups in Silicon Valley right now. Moskovitz, Mark Zuckerberg and Chris Hughes founded Facebook together during college at Harvard University. Rosenstein was another early Facebook employee. The pair are trying to re-imagine productivity management in a way that’s completely native to the web… Continue Reading

Siri raises $15.5M more for virtual personal assistant

For those of you awaiting the next generation of personal assistants, San Jose startup Siri, who’s product aims to be a virtual personal assistant (VPA), has just raised $15.5 million in round two funding from Menlo Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures says VentureWire.

Siri leverages speech-to-text technology and artificial intelligence to allow users to “just say what they want to do.” The VPA then takes over and does the rest. Siri explains: “You can discover things to do over the… Continue Reading

How do you rid your iPhone of the malicious “Duh” worm?

[updated]

A new, malicious worm, dubbed the “Duh” worm, has hit jailbroken phones, grabbing personal information, including banking codes. But there are apparently a couple of ways to protect yourself.

U.K.–based security firm Sophos, which confirmed Duh’s existence says you’re likely to know when you’ve been hacked. Chester Wisniewski, a senior security advisory with Sophos, notes that “Duh’s” accessing information rapidly drains the iPhone’s battery. “And anyone playing by Apple’s rules is, of course, safe.” He recommends… Continue Reading

HootSuite lets you schedule status updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter

HootSuite, which started as a way to navigate your Twitter stream, is broadening its grasp on the social web — it’s adding LinkedIn updates and letting you schedule status updates on the social networks it tracks.

The idea is to become a social media dashboard, so you can update your Facebook, LinkedIn, Ping.fm and Twitter status and track what friends are doing on each network directly from HootSuite instead of visiting each web destination. After LinkedIn… Continue Reading

Adconion Media Group buys Joost assets, ending a long saga

Content network firm Adconion Media Group said today that it has acquired the assets of Joost, the online video service founded by Skype founders and the subject of a lawsuit drama this fall.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The company was founded by Skype and Kazaa founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. Adconion, which has 300 million monthly unique users, said it will pursue Joost’s new strategy, announced in June, of focusing on… Continue Reading

Roboni-I: The wandering robot that lets you play video games

South African firm Robonica hopes to conquer the hearts of gift givers this holiday season with hybrid entertainment that combines the interactivity of video games and the physical fun of toy robots.

The company’s first product, Roboni-I, is a robot with two wheels that wanders around on its own. Since you can play games with it and engage in robot activities on the web, Tom Dusenberry, head of North America for Robonica, refers to the launch… Continue Reading

Pixable lets you print out customized calendars from Facebook content

Online photo service Pixable, which lets you print albums from your Facebook content, is launching its Calendar Creator feature today. The new feature will let you print out calendars to remember important dates from your information stored on Facebook, which is where many of us now have all of our photos (Facebook claims more than 2 billion photos are uploaded to the site each month).

Facebook’s birthday reminders have turned all of us into those great… Continue Reading

Gravity Sling shows how virtual goods sales work on the iPhone

Riptide Games has revealed how well virtual goods sales work on the iPhone with its new game Gravity Sling. It’s yet another case study in how to get ahead in the iPhone economy.

There’s a lot of hope that virtual goods sales — known as in-app purchases on the iPhone — will help make Apple’s AppStore much more profitable for app developers. Virtual goods have generated huge revenue growth for Facebook apps this year, but the… Continue Reading

Milo.com gets big-name investors to help you find local deals

A company called Milo.com wants to stand out from the hordes of e-commerce sites out there by providing users with information about what’s on the shelves of local stores, and investors just backed that mission with a $4 million first round.

That’s a respectably-sized round, but more impressive than the amount of cash is who’s providing it. True Ventures led the round, while a number of high-profile angel investors also participated, including Jeff Clavier of SoftTechVC,… Continue Reading

BookRenter raises $6M to challenge Chegg in textbook rentals

Textbook rental site Chegg.com may be raising tremendous amounts of funding, but competitor BookRenter isn’t sitting still — it just announced a $6 million first round.

That number is dwarfed by the $84.2 million Chegg has raised (not counting debt), but BookRenter chief executive Mehdi Maghsoodnia says his Campbell, Calif., company is building a much more capital efficient business. Both services allow students to check out books at the beginning of the semester, then return them… Continue Reading

Vidly adds video comments to your blog … and Chamillionaire’s

Video startup Vidly is holding true to its promise to expand beyond Twitter with a new tool called Vidly Express, an easy way to add video comments to any blog.

The San Francisco company says publishers just add some code to their site, and the code creates a button for video replies next to every post. Vidly Express also integrates with commenting system Disqus (used by VentureBeat, among many others).

You can see the feature live on… Continue Reading

PlayMesh brings farming to the iPhone with iFarm

PlayMesh became famous on the iPhone when it launched its iMafia game in January. Now it has scored big again with iFarm, currently the No. 1 free app on the iPhone.

In less than 24 hours, iFarm has jumped into the top 25 ranks on the iPhone AppStore, claiming the position as the No. 1 farm game. This game is probably worth watching closely, since farming has become such a huge money maker on Facebook.

Zynga’s FarmVille… Continue Reading

Gridwise, IEC make pact to make utilities smarter

The Gridwise Alliance, a nonprofit coalition of stakeholders developing the Smart Grid, signed a memorandum of understanding today with the International Engineering Consortium, to team up to make utilities more intelligent.

Presumably, the Alliance will integrate its intelligent utilities curriculum integrated into the continuing education classes already offered by the IEC. The IEC, a nonprofit that tries to introduce new research to university professors and connect them with industry experts, has also agreed to work with… Continue Reading