VentureBeat

If you’ve heard of the movie Star Wreck, then you’re already familiar with Star Wreck Studio’s operating procedure: Take a community of thousands of online movie-making buffs, and have them collaborate on a feature-length film. Star Wreck, a $20,000 film, is said to be the most popular internet-created feature film of all time, with eight [...]

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Honda’s humanoid robot Asimo has taken another step on its way to become human-like. Actually, make that superhuman-like. Asimo, which resembles a small astronaut, doesn’t only dance, serve coffee and conduct operas, but now can judge rock-paper-scissors contests. The judging is made possible by Asimo’s new ability to understand three voices shouting at once. [...]

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Imagine this: an iPhone with a keyboard you can actually feel, even though there are no physical keys.
That’s the goal that many mobile phone suppliers including Apple would love to reach. Touch and feel screens in mobile phones are already available, at least from Samsung and LG, but it seems to be difficult to create a technology that works [...]

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Can someone build a GPS system that’s not a boring necessity and instead is a fun way to socialize with your friends? That’s what Planet 9 Studios, a San Francisco startup, wants to accomplish with RayGun, a GPS navigation and social networking application. It is already available in 2D and is about to launch a [...]

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This is a tale of two niche advertising companies: One is a young company planning on a bright future, and the other is an older company that once had such a future. Both target the gay and lesbian audience.
Gay Ad Network, a newcomer in gay-focused advertising, is the newby. The Florida-based start-up says it has [...]

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Terry Tamminen is the former top environmental advisor of California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and is also former secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He has a reputation for having “turned Arnie green”.
Tamminen left his post as permanent advisor in 2006 but says he still advises Schwarzenegger as well as the governors of Florida, [...]

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Nokia, the world’s biggest mobile phone supplier, is developing a new kind of navigation instruction system for mobile phones. With landmark-based navigation you won’t even need to know your address or cross streets to get directions. You just take a picture of a nearby landmark, like the Golden Gate Bridge, with the camera in your [...]

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Would you invite friends to an online dating service, to help you in your escapades?
Engage, a San Mateo-based startup, believes you will. Friends are helpful in connecting you with dates in the offline world, so the idea is they’ll vouch for you online as well. In fact, Engage says 262,000 unique visitors [...]

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SiBEAM, a company developing technology to stream high definition video more quickly than any existing technology, has raised $40 million in third round of funding.
The financing was led by New Enterprise Associates. The other firms backing up SiBEAM are Foundation Capital and U.S. Venture Partners.SiBEAM, of Sunnyvale, Calif., is developing a technology called WirelessHD. The [...]

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If Menlo Park-based start-up Willow Garage has its way, in just a few years you’ll be able to hire a robot to come and clean your house once a week.
The company is building open-source robots and giving them away to university research groups in an attempt to fuel quick improvements to the operating system and rapid [...]

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