Nivio pulls in $21M to make cloud computing cheaper and more student-friendly

Cloud computing and desktop virtualization are rapidly growing trends in the tech world, and one company has spent a considerable amount of time developing this technology. Nivio, which started as an idea in 2004, announced today it has received $21 million in its first round of venture capital funding.

Nivio lets you store up to 10GB of your documents, music, and movies in the cloud for free with nDrive. Your files sync across all of … Continue Reading

Adobe Creative Cloud will get you CS6, Lightroom 4, 20GB storage for $50/month

Adobe Creative Cloud, a forthcoming service that will let you license Adobe’s highly sought-after Creative Suite and give you a plethora of cloud-based extras, now has a price tag: $50 per month with a required one-year contract.

Creative Cloud was introduced at the annual Adobe Max conference this past October with a promised launch date in “early 2012.” The service promises access to the latest version of Creative Suite software, Lightroom 4, Muse, Edge, touch … Continue Reading

MeetingBurner launches out of beta to seriously undermine WebEx and GoToMeeting

Online meeting service MeetingBurner has launched out of beta with free meetings for up to 15 people, paid meeting options for up to 1,000 people, and mobile support, the company announced this morning.

MeetingBurner faces steep competition in the online meeting space, including competitors like Cisco’s WebEx, Adobe’s Connect, Citrix’s GoToMeeting, and AnyMeeting. So it has done what is natural for an underdog — undercut the competition with strong pricing and features. The company debuted … Continue Reading

Online video player Brightcove prices IPO at $10-12 a share, could raise $60M

Online video startup Brightcove has set the price range for its initial public offering at $10 to $12 a share and could raise up to $60 million, according to its latest S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Brightcove makes it possible for large and small content providers to publish video content to the web completely using HTML5 rather than Adobe Flash. On top of standard video, the company also has live, on-demand, and … Continue Reading

HTML5 versus Adobe Flash (infographic)

One of Steve Jobs’ last major acts before passing was to launch an attack on Adobe Flash. Mobile Apple devices began blocking Flash-powered content, and Apple even went so far as to prevent iOS developers from using Flash — one of the most popular multimedia programming platforms — in their apps. Apple positioned HTML5 not as an alternative, but as a replacement. A few months later that decision was reversed based on “developer feedback” (i.e. … Continue Reading

Adobe Reader updates to support e-signatures inside PDFs

Popular PDF viewing application Adobe Reader just got infinitely more functional for business users, with one of its most significant feature updates in years.

Adobe has released a new version of Reader with native EchoSign integration that enables users to sign PDFs inside documents. The update also includes a “Send for Signature” option so you can send your PDFs off to other people to sign.

Adobe acquired electronic signature startup EchoSign in July 2011. In … Continue Reading

Apple nabs Adobe’s Todd Teresi to head iAd

More than four months after Apple lost iAd boss Andy Miller, the company has finally appointed a replacement.

Todd Teresi, formerly a vice president of Media Solutions at Adobe, is now steering Apple’s mobile ad ship, Bloomberg reports. More specifically, Teresi will serve as vice president of iAd and report to VP of Internet Services Eddy Cue, according to GigaOm.

The news is a glimmer of hope for iAd, which has had trouble finding clients … Continue Reading

The top gaming technologies of 2011

Each year brings a host of new technologies to the table that make the gaming landscape seem significantly different from what came before, and 2011 was no different. Here are some of the most important technological advancements the game industry saw in the past 12 months.

Nintendo 3DS

After Nintendo’s press conference just before E3 2010, it seemed all anybody in the game industry could talk about was the “wow factor” of Nintendo’s newest portable … Continue Reading

Unity Technologies developers will be able to publish 3D games via Adobe Flash

Unity Technologies announced today that its developers will be able to take the games they’ve created and publish them in the Flash 3D format, allowing them to reach much bigger audiences on the web than before.

Unity is beginning the open beta test for its Unity 3.5 game development engine. Since Adobe published its Flash Player 11 in October, Flash games are able to run 3D graphics and take advantage of 3D hardware in a … Continue Reading

Cyber criminals attack U.S. Chamber of Commerce, China footing the blame

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently uncovered an attack on its systems, and fingers are pointing toward China.

The Chamber represents over three million US businesses, 96 percent of which are small businesses with 100 employees or less. The agency, situated in Washington D.C., lobbies for free enterprise, competition between US companies and entrepreneurship. Some of its bigger members include Adobe, Microsoft, Visa, and Google.

According to the Wall Street Journal which first reported on … Continue Reading

Adobe beats the street with surprisingly strong Q4

Adobe Systems has reported stronger-than-expected revenues for the fourth quarter, after several events in the past few months suggested a weakened position.

Adobe has had a tough fourth quarter, with its decision to kill Flash software on mobile platforms and the company laying off 750 full-time employees in early November. But despite those challenges, the company did well in its digital media and digital marketing businesses, according to Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen.

The company posted … Continue Reading

Apple, Microsoft-backed trade group now says “SOPA needs work”

After stirring up controversy with its support of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the Business Software Alliance (BSA) — an industry trade group that counts the likes of Apple, Microsoft, and 27 other tech companies among its members — now says that the controversial bill “needs work” before it can be passed.

“Valid and important questions have been raised about the bill,” wrote BSA president and CEO Robert Holleyman in a blog post today. … Continue Reading

Adobe: Android 4.0 will get Flash by end of 2011, will be last version for Android

Adobe may be giving up on mobile Flash, but it’s going to get one more version out for Google’s upcoming Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” before it gives up the ghost.

The company confirmed today that it will release a version of Flash for Android 4.0 before the end of the year (can you believe that’s little more than a month away?), reports the mobile site Pocket-Lint. But, staying true to its word, Adobe said … Continue Reading

Apple, Microsoft, and 27 other major companies are implicity supporting SOPA

While many tech companies have been vocal about their disdain for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) — a bill that is making the rounds on Capitol Hill and that could lead to unforeseen censorship on the web if passed — others like Microsoft and Apple have been mum on the subject.

Now it’s clear why: Apple, Microsoft, Adobe and 26 other tech giants are members of the Business Software Alliance, which has thrown its … Continue Reading

Sibblingz exploits Adobe’s retreat from mobile Flash with Spaceport 3.0

Sibblingz, the maker of a cross-platform game engine, is exploiting Adobe’s retreat from the mobile Flash plug-in business with the launch of the Spaceport 3.0 platform today.

Adobe created a hole in the market when it admitted finally that it will be unable to create a version of its Flash that can run on mobile devices. Sibblingz is stepping into that hole to provide game developers with a platform that enables them to create web … Continue Reading

Bunchball brings gamification to Adobe’s digital marketing suite

It’s not as sexy as landing Playboy as a customer. But Bunchball is moving further into enterprises with its gamification technology, which makes non-game web sites more interesting by making them game-like. Today, Bunchball is integrating gamification analytics into Adobe’s Digital Marketing Suite.

Gamification is a hot trends, as various businesses seek to benefit from the same kind of engagement from users that gaming apps see. At the Enterprise 2.0 conference, Bunchball announced it has … Continue Reading

Nvidia aims to knock Intel out of supercomputers with ARM CPUs and graphics chips

Nvidia is forging ahead with its plans to revolutionize supercomputers and workstations with a number of announcements today. Among them, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center will be the first in the world to adopt a solution that combines Nvidia’s low-power ARM-based Tegra central processing units (CPUs) with Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs).

That combination could be a powerful way to improve computing power without consuming a lot of electricity. Power consumption and the electricity costs that … Continue Reading

Adobe’s mobile Flash crash could benefit game streaming startup iSwifter

Adobe’s announcement that it is giving up on mobile Flash development is good for one particular startup: iSwifter.

iSwifter was founded last year to enable PC-based Flash games to run on mobile devices. The company runs the game on its servers and then streams video at high speeds to the mobile device. Since it works fast, it can keep up with interactive games where the speed of interaction is important.

In short, it enables gamers … Continue Reading

Adobe confirms mobile Flash is dead, will focus on apps and HTML5

Adobe has confirmed that it will cease development of Flash on mobile devices, saying that it will instead focus on HTML5 and apps for mobile platforms.

News about mobile Flash’s demise hit last night from ZDNet, and Adobe confirmed the report in a blog post this morning.

The announcement comes after Apple boldly chose not to support Flash on the iPhone in 2007, citing concerns about the technology’s performance. Now it seems Steve Jobs was … Continue Reading