VentureBeat

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is a writer for VentureBeat. Prior to his currrent job, he was the Tech Talk Columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, where he wrote gadget reviews and opinion pieces on technology in Silicon Valley. He also wrote the Dean & Nooch on Gaming and Tech Talk blogs and did a regular video podcast on gaming. He has been a journalist for 20 years, most of it covering technology business news. Before he joined the Mercury News in 2002, he was a senior writer at the Red Herring magazine from 2000 to 2002. Before that, he was a staff writer in the San Francisco office of the Wall Street Journal from 1996 to 2000. His first job at the Mercury News was as a chip industry reporter from 1994 to 1996. Before that, he worked at the Los Angeles Times Orange County Edition, the Orange County Register, and the Dallas Times Herald. He has a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University (1987) and a bachelor's degree in English from UC Berkeley (1986). He is the author of two books, "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked" published in 2006 and "Opening the Xbox" published in 2002. He lives in the suburbs of San Jose and is an avid gamer. His favorite game is Halo.

Posts by Dean Takahashi

Call it Funware. That’s the name for applications with game-like mechanics and game-like behavior that really aren’t traditional video games. And Funware just might steal the thunder from video games, which may no longer have a monopoly on either interactivity or fun.
With new places to play — such as the iPhone, on Facebook, or even [...]

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Dressing up as a person of the opposite sex and casting magic spells in a fantasy world has become a popular American pastime. U.S. online video game subscriptions are generating $1 billion a year in subscription revenue, according to market researcher NPD Group.
Those numbers include revenue from massively multiplayer online games (virtual worlds such [...]

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Intel Capital chief Arvind Sodhani talked with VentureBeat today about why the world’s largest chip maker participated as an investor in the $12 billion Clearwire-Sprint deal. Intel, along with Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks invested a combined $3.2 billion into the new company. Intel’s share of that was $1 billion, which [...]

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It’s a big day in video games.
Take-Two Interactive said worldwide sales of Grand Theft Auto IV have surpassed $500 million in its first week on the market. More than 6 million games have been sold at a retail value of at least $60 a copy. And id Software announced “Doom 4.”
On its opening day, GTA [...]

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Adobe is launching an update to its free Photoshop Express image editing tool today, including support for Yahoo’s Flickr online photo service.
The public beta of the tool now includes changes based on feedback from the community. The company says that it will keep enhancing the web-based tool and that’s a good sign.
[Update: Adobe issued this [...]

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MindTouch is releasing today a new version of its Deki Wiki open-source Wiki tool software which makes it much easier to manage web content in multiple languages.
The MindTouch Deki Wiki v8.05 is a web-based Wiki platform that lets web development teams build web pages that are much easier to create and maintain. One of its [...]

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Mobile entertainment provider PlayPhone is announcing today that it has acquired Pitch Entertainment Group as part of its global expansion. The purchase price wasn’t disclosed.
San Jose, Calif.-based PlayPhone aggregates mobile content and offers it directly to consumers, who can download it onto their mobile phones. Pitch Entertainment Group, based in London, does the same thing [...]

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InnoCentive,  a company that lets businesses post research problems for others to solve, has raised $6.5 million in a second round of venture capital.
Dwayne Spradlin is the CEO of the Waltham, Mass., spin-off from Eli Lilly.
Spradlin calls the site, where companies post problems and outsiders solve them in exchange for prizes, a “global [...]

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Spot Runner, which lets advertisers place to local TV stations via an online service, has raised a whopping $51 million in funding
The move confirms our earlier report that Spot Runner was in the midst of a big raise with a high valuation. The company can do so in a tough economic environment because it has [...]

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updated
Rearden Commerce, a Silicon Valley company that wants to become your personal concierge everywhere, including on your mobile phone, has raised $100 million in funding from some financial powerhouses.
So far, the company has worked for years on a web-based personal assistant service, which lets you do everything from book travel arrangements to manage your calendar. [...]

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Fididel is new kind of auction site that aims to draw in buyers and sellers who aren’t happy with the lack of real-time negotiation on sites such as eBay or Priceline.com. The site gives buyers and sellers the ability to chat in real-time and quickly agree upon a sales price.
The San Jose, Calif.-based company, which VentureBeat uncovered a couple [...]

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Online animations network Aniboom is seeing a real boom in demand for the animations its independent animators are creating. The Israeli company is announcing today that it has five new outlets for its online animations and has added a half-dozen mobile TV partners — all of whom will expose 360 million viewers to Aniboom’s videos.
We wrote [...]

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Microsoft is announcing today that it has created a easy-to-use Popfly Game Creator, a software tool that makes it easy for anyone to create their own arcade-like video games.
The tool is based on Microsoft’s popular mashup tool Popfly, which is based on the Microsoft Silverlight multimedia platform technology that competes with Adobe’s Flash. It isn’t [...]

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Giant Realm said it has raised $2 million from SoftBank Capital to expand its entertainment portal for male entertainment junkies and video gamers.
The investment brings the New York company’s total first round funding to $5.5 million. Last month, the company announced that Comcast Interactive Capital and Edison Venture Fund had invested $3.5 million. The William [...]

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MK Capital has completed its previously announced acquisition of content delivery network Kontiki from Verisign for an undisclosed price. The companies plan to announce the deal this morning.
As announced, Verisign is likely divesting Kontiki for a price lower than the $62 million it paid for it two years ago. MK Capital is one of the [...]

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Crossing Automation has raised $6 million in a first round of capital to expand its wafer-automation equipment business for chip factories.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company makes automated wafer-transfer systems. Backers include Intel Capital and Tallwood Venture Capital.
Crossing Automation was founded in 2003 to build a system that can handle large silicon wafers and move them [...]

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Untangle has raised $8 million in a second round of funding for an overseas expansion of its open-source networking and security business.
Investors include CMEA Ventures and Rustic Canyon Ventures, the same companies that invested $10.5 million Untangle’s first round of funding, according to VentureWire. (Our previous coverage of Untangle is here).
The company has raised about [...]

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Bigfoot Networks has raised $8.75 million in a second round of funding to expand its business of making networking cards for gamer computers. Investors include Palomar Ventures, North Bridge Venture Partners and Venio Capital Partners (a previous investor), according to peHub.
Bigfoot had previously raised a $4 million first round in 2006. Its founder was former [...]

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SchoolNet has raised $12.5 million in financing to expand its efforts to create a community for parents and teachers around K-12 education.
This financing includes a combination of equity and loans from Velocity Financial Group, TriplePoint Capital and the New York City Investment Fund. The company provides a portal for those interested in education; the features [...]

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Iamba Networks has raised $7 million in in funding to expand its business of making chips and software for telecommunications companies.
The Cupertino, Calif., company’s chips are used to enable telecommunications companies to implement gigabit passive optical network, or GPON, access. That’s a standard for enabling an optical fiber to be split into different streams to [...]

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