Showing results 1 - 20 of 307 for the search term: perspective.
GreenBeat: Cisco has a blank check for Smart Grid, but what will it do with it?
Cisco Systems put no limit on its budget for Smart Grid development, the company’s grid guru Laura Ipsen told the audience at GreenBeat 2009 — albeit quoting her boss John Chambers.
The question now is what Cisco (a GreenBeat 2009 sponsor) will use that money for — currently, it looks like the company is racing to get in on every nook and cranny of the Smart Grid business, from hardware to IP networks to cybersecurity measures….
Go to Story Permalink »Microsoft’s Xbox Live chief on banning modders and browsing Facebook photos on TV
Microsoft launched Xbox Live as an online gaming service in 2002 amid great skepticism. It didn’t really take off until Halo 2 launched in 2004, but now the service is huge.
There are now more than 20 million active Xbox Live subscribers (both free users and those who pay $50 a year for multiplayer gaming). That means that more than two out of three Xbox 360 owners use the service. The company has added popular new…
Go to Story Permalink »GreenBeat: New startup Locust could crush traditional data storage
Emerging from stealth mode today at GreenBeat 2009, Locust Storage, has developed 90 to 95 percent efficiency in data center energy consumption. CEO Seth Georgion, hailing from the oil and gas industry, says that, like so many game changing ideas, this one was drafted on a cocktail napkin. That was eight months ago.
As a data center manager for an oil and gas concern, Georgion was working in a field where a single survey could contain…
Go to Story Permalink »Updated: Modern Warfare 2 banned in Russia due to civilian massacre scene
Russia has banned sales of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, the hottest-selling video game of all time, because it contains a scene in which civilians are massacred at a Russian airport.
[Update: Activision Blizzard released this statement today: Reports that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been banned in Russia are erroneous. Activision only released a PC version of the game in Russia which went on sale on Tuesday, Nov. 10. Other countries have...
Go to Story Permalink »Week in review: Droid vs Eris, Google acquires Admob
Here’s our rundown of the week’s business and tech news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:
Which phone should you buy: Droid or Eris? Go with the Droid! — “Like many phone buying Americans, my budget is tighter than the average consumer’s pants after Thanksgiving dinner. With two Droids to choose from, I had a bit of a mental tug-of-war as to which one to buy.”
YouTube to support 1080p high-definition…
Go to Story Permalink »Google’s Dave Girouard: Google Docs could be an Office killer next year
Google Docs seems to get a lot of flack — not surprising, since it’s pretty bare bones, as word processors go. But that will change next year, Google Enterprise President Dave Girouard told ZDNet Asia.
Specifically, Girouard said Google plans to make 30 to 50 improvements to Docs’ features, performance, and more — it might not match Microsoft Word (which Girouard described as “an overkill tool”) feature-for-feature, but it will make be capable of serving “the…
Go to Story Permalink »Why Droid was worth the wait
The dirty secret in the smartphone business is that it’s not marketing, but patience that makes a top-selling phone — the patience not to jump in until you’ve managed to couple great software with great hardware.
Consider Apple, which made the insane figure of $1.67 billion last quarter. At a high level, to the uninformed, it would seem like Apple is nothing more than a design house that can order components. It rarely uses hardware that…
Go to Story Permalink »4 MORE ways to get automatically rejected by an angel investor
(Editor’s note: Jason Cohen is an angel investor and the founder of Smart Bear Software. He contributed this column to VentureBeat.)
As someone who has both sought venture capital and distributed it, I’m lucky to have a pretty unique perspective on what works and doesn’t work.
As I mentioned in the first part of this list, the mistakes don’t seem to change over time. And people who make them often walk away not only empty handed, but…
Go to Story Permalink »Lawsuit alleges Offerpal co-founder was cheated out of ownership
Offerpal Media founder Anu Shukla was hit with a lawsuit this summer over alleged shenanigans over the company’s founding, VentureBeat has learned.
In August, Kevin Halpern filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Shukla. He alleges that he helped start the company in 2006 with Shukla but was cut out of promised stock ownership after a third founder, Michael Liu, joined the startup, according to the suit filed in Superior Court in Alameda County.
Offerpal declined comment….
Go to Story Permalink »Hey VCs, it’s not your company!
(Editor’s note: Brad Feld is an early stage investor and co-founder of Foundry Group. This post originally appeared on his blog.)
VCs say a lot of stupid things. I’m guilty of it plenty and whenever someone calls me on it I try to acknowledge and change. One that I try really hard not to do is say “my company” when referring to companies I’ve invested in – I think it’s one of the most annoying…
Go to Story Permalink »Interview with Offerpal Media CEO Anu Shukla on the offer “scandal”
We interviewed Anu Shukla, chief executive of Offerpal about her views on the advertising offers that fuel the social gaming industry, which have been hit by controversy.
Here’s the context: Online social games are one of the hottest areas of our economy. Millions of users are logging in to play games like Mob Wars, but while these games are free in their basic form, they do charge users that want to buy things like swords or…
Go to Story Permalink »Shoestring marketing for start-ups
(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Scott Olson is president of MindLink Marketing. He contributed this column to VentureBeat.)
In a startup, there is no more precious commodity than capital. It’s hard to come by and easily burned – and marketing budgets can quickly become one of the biggest line items.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though.
There are more cost effective and free marketing tools than ever, letting companies get a lot more marketing bang for their…
Go to Story Permalink »Billing Revolution adds PayPal to its mobile payment service
Billing Revolution is adding more partners to its platform for single-click mobile payments, with just-announced integration with PayPal’s PayFlow product.
As more and more web activity and commerce takes place on mobile phones, Seattle-based Billing Revolution wants provide the technology powering those transactions. It’s far from the only mobile billing company, of course, so when it first announced its platform last year, Billing Revolution emphasized the ease of use for consumers — once you’ve authenticated your…
Go to Story Permalink »Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff: ‘Many CEOs are afraid to get too personal’
Marc Benioff has been the reliably outspoken chief executive of Salesforce.com for 10 years. Salesforce was one of the pioneers of the software-as-a-service business model, where traditional software is replaced by a web-based application that customers pay for via subscription, and he trumpeted the model with ads declaring that software is dead. Now that SaaS and cloud computing are becoming an increasing part of tech business models, Benioff said this spells big trouble for companies like…
Go to Story Permalink »Big changes: Facebook does a top-down overhaul of all communication channels
I’m here at Facebook’s Developer Garage in Palo Alto, where the company is unveiling a roadmap for the platform and potentially some significant changes that could alter the way apps are spread through the social network. I’m live-blogging as we go, so all of this is paraphrased. You can watch a live-stream I’ve embedded below.
As we reported earlier, Facebook is removing notifications and moving requests to the inbox. It’s also pushing developers to get users’…
Go to Story Permalink »Runic launches fantasy role-playing game Torchlight
Max Schaefer and his brother Erich have been toiling away in the fantasy role-playing video game business for 15 years. After a spate of bad luck, the Schaefers have managed to hang on to a seasoned team and now, with their startup Runic Games, they’re releasing their first game, Torchlight, on Wednesday.
The self-published fast-action downloadable game is a major release in the fantasy role-playing genre that has been dominated in the past by the Diablo…
Go to Story Permalink »Norwest’s Tim Chang explains why virtual goods are so hot in social games
Tim Chang, principal at Norwest Venture Partners, has immersed himself in the online games sector for some time and he says that the hottest business model for game startups in 2009 is virtual goods. With the virtual goods business model, game companies let users play online games for free. But they charge them when they want to upgrade to new capabilities such as cool clothing or better weapons. This model was pioneered in Asian online…
Go to Story Permalink »Startup School: Stone, Williams on how they co-founded Twitter
(I’m live-blogging from Startup School, a daylong program from startup incubator YCombinator held at Berkeley today.)
Twitter’s co-founders Biz Stone and Ev Williams are on-stage for a question-and-answer session. This is paraphrased, but I’ve embedded a video courtesy of Alexa Lee below, if you want to watch the whole segment.)
Jessica Livingston: What were your main motivations in starting Twitter?
Biz Stone: We should start with Odeo, our older podcasting service. We realized we weren’t passionate about it. We were…
Go to Story Permalink »5 O’Clock roundup: Net neutrality wins, Windows 7 sorta wins, New York Times still futzing around with the comments
100-word review: Windows 7 is a perfectly fine bootstrap program for Chrome – I’ve been running Microsoft’s new operating system for a couple of weeks now. With VentureBeat doing all its production work on either WordPress or Google Apps, I have to admit: Windows 7 is a powerful, sophisticated operating system that I basically use to run a browser these days. Am I ready to switch to a Linux operating system on my editor’s old Fujitsu…
Go to Story Permalink »Auto racing and start-ups aren’t that different, really
(Editor’s note: Will Herman is an entrepreneur who has founded or held senior roles at several tech companies. This column originally appeared on his blog.)
When beginners attend auto racing or high performance driving school, they learn that drivers tend to go where they’re looking – and where they look is usually only 10-15 feet in front of their vehicle.
I see this all the time as I’m riding my bike. While cycling on the right…
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