Driving app waze turns the highway into a Pac-Man-style 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… 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
Latest Wire Stories
- Plato’s Forms raises $545K to correct bad journalism
- 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
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 Energysays 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 the… 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 himself or herself.
I played the beta of MAG (which originally mean 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
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
Small Business Owners Can Engage in Social Media as Customers Too
Editor’s note: This post is sponsored by PartnerUp.
Companies across the globe are hitting the social media scene hard in an effort to better reach their customers and deepen relationships. This kind of activity is visible on sites like Twitter or industry/company-specific online communities.
While many small business owners are acutely aware of this trend and are utilizing social media tools to reach their own customers, they rarely consider the fact that they are in fact customers… 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