VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

Scrabulous returns as Wordscraper — The popular Facebook application was redesigned and relaunched less than 48 hours after it was taken down due to a potential legal tussle with Scrabble-maker Hasbro.

Dell tests digital music player — The computer maker stopped selling players in 2006 due to disappointing sales, but it has a new offering that could go on sale as early as September.

Job site Monster acquires search company Trovix for $72.5 million in cash — Monster says the acquisition should help it deliver more relevant search results for employers and job seekers. The Mountain View, Calif., Trovix, had raised $18.25 million in funding from 3i Group, Granite Ventures and U.S. Venture Partners.

Forrester Research buys Jupiter Research for $23M — Forrester plans to incorporate Jupiter’s team into its marketing and strategy division.

FBI warns of new Storm worm — The Storm worm is a dangerous botnet, so if you get an email entitled “FBI vs. Facebook,” don’t click on the link.

Mobile-chip maker ARM’s new licensee likely to be Apple — Apple’s acquisition of PA Semi earlier this year makes the deal seem more likely. As an ARM licensee, Apple would be able to tinker with ARM’s architecture and processor cores.

Intel working on third-generation Classmate PC — The latest version of the low-cost laptop, which is aimed at schoolchildren, could be available next month.

Omidyar Network backs nonprofit Endeavor – The VC firm from eBay founded Pierre Omidyar has committed up to $10 million to Endeavor, an organization that supports entrepreneurs focused on emerging markets

Activision Blizzard lets go of Bourne game license – The newly-merged game company dumped the license just a month after the release of the first game based on the popular film franchise.

Are communication companies the new OPEC? — The answer is yes, argues Columbia Prof. Tim Wu, because bandwidth is becoming a precious commodity.

Facebook chooses Intel servers – The Xeon 5400 processor-based servers will cover the social networking site’s hardware and software needs.

Leading broadband provider offering stake to Western investors — International cable operator Liberty is one of the contenders for a 20 to 25 percent stake in Akado.

Are blogs to blame for Cuil backlash? — The harsh reaction was caused in large part by the tech media’s over-the-top hype of the search engine’s launch, Sarah Lacy says. She makes a strong case, but loses points for not including a Cuil-related pun her headline. (The company’s name is pronounced “cool,” so the comic possibilities are endless.)

China to limit web access during the Olympic games — Apparently, the ability to access an uncensored version of the Internet wasn’t included in China’s promises to allow the foreign news media to “report freely” on the games.

YouTube’s Steve Grove weighs-in on voice-to-text –Grove offers some interesting examples of how metadata has always been important on Youtube, once you get past his explanation of YouTube’s new text-search feature for political videos (which was already announced).

Intel is releasing the first in a series of chips that are aimed at bringing computer smarts and high-speed Internet connectivity to just about every kind of electronic device.

The new foray into low-power portable chips for the “embedded” market will connect the Internet to everything from in-car entertainment systems to handheld mobile Internet devices, said Gadi Singer, vice president of mobility at the world’s biggest chip maker.

Today, Intel is launching its EP80579 family of eight processors which combine a bunch of chips into one. The so-called “system-on-a-chip” (SoC) processors use a Pentium M computing core, based on the highly popular Centrino-branded microprocessors introduced in 2003. Next year, Intel will introduce another family of chips based on the Intel Atom core, a faster processor which is targeted at mobile Internet devices. All told, Singer said that Intel is working on more than 15 SoC processors.

Right now, the “embedded” chips go into ATM machines, airport ticket kiosks and gas station commercial screens. The embedded market, where chips do things such as control industrial equipment, is split into 300 different sub-markets where Intel has roughly 3,500 customers. But Singer said that over time, such devices will become much more like general-purpose computers, with fast computing speeds. They will be flexible and connected to broadband networks such as WiMax, 3G or 4G cell phone systems.

“The major forces that are shaping the design of silicon have to do with the need for connectivity to the Internet, computer power, and the progress of Moore’s Law,” Singer said, referring to the maxim that chip performance can double every two years or so thanks to manufacturing improvements.

Over time, the market will shift from dumb computing devices to smart connected machines which make the Internet ubiquitous, Singer said. Today’s chips will cost anywhere from $40 to $95 and will operate at 11 watts to 21 watts at speeds ranging from 600 megahertz to 1.2 gigahertz. A single one of the new Intel chips can replace four, resulting in a 45-percent smaller area and 34 percent lower power.

Those speeds are competitive compared to other embedded chips, but ARM-based chips are typically in the one or two watt range, allowing them to be used in cell phones and other small gadgets where power consumption is paramount. The race is between the two companies on who can get the right combination, as ARM speeds upward in performance while Intel moves downward in power consumption. ARM chips, often used in cell phones, have typically run in the few hundred megahertz range.

Among those competing with Intel in this market are ARM licensees such as Nvidia, Samsung, Texas Instruments and others. Intel had its own ARM-based chips, the StrongArm (Xscale) family, but it sold that off to Marvell. Now, Singer says, the company is making another run with PC-compatible Intel cores.

In the future, Intel says its chips will be more competitive with chips based on the ARM architecture, which is the primary choice for low-power gadgets and cell phones. Singer said the company believes there will be 1.2 billion mobile Internet users in 2012 and 100 million TV households watching Internet video by the year 2011.

Beyond the embedded market, Intel plans to use its SoC chips — code-named Canmore — in consumer electronics devices this year. Next year, a chip code-named Sodaville will debut. Among the gadgets that could use such chips are Internet-connected TV sets. Singer said that in the next five years, car computers will be common. Those will display rich multimedia and access the Internet at a high speed.

Samsung Electronics has quietly built a $4 billion business providing chips that serve as the brains of consumer electronics gadgets. Among its big wins are the iPods, iPhones, and portable navigation devices such as the Dash Express.

But it’s starting to talk more now. The company says its System LSI division within Samsung Semiconductor is targeting the fast-growing digital photo frame and mobile Internet device markets as well. Those markets are expected to hit tens of millions in the coming years, according to market analysts such as International Data Corp. and TSR.

But this sudden chattiness isn’t a surprise. The competition is heating up in this space. Intel has launched the Atom microprocessor to serve as the brains of MIDs, which are broadband-connected handhelds with sizable screens and general-purpose computing power. Nvidia has also launched a chip, the APX 2500, aimed at delivering superb graphics on a MID or smart phone.

Both Intel and Nvidia want to take the power of their PC chips and bring them down into the mobile space, while Samsung is defending its turf in handhelds and phones with power-efficient processors based on the ARM architecture. It’s a classic collision, where one side is moving from the high end to the low and the other moving up from the low end. Another reason for Samsung to worry is that Apple recently bought PA Semi, a microprocessor maker. It isn’t clear what Apple could do with it. But conceivably it might make its own ARM-based chips and cut Samsung out of the picture. Interestingly, Nvidia bought PortalPlayer just as it was losing the iPod business to Samsung. Now PortalPlayer’s assets are enabling Nvidia to get into the MID/smart phone markets.

South Korea-based Samsung is better known in chips as a memory supplier. Samsung is a little bit at a disadvantage since Apple doesn’t let its suppliers talk about their business with Apple. The company’s application processors have gone through several generations of the ARM architecture since 2002. A next-generation chip based on the ARM Cortex A8 core isn’t that far away, said Richard Yeh, director of marketing for the System LSI division of Samsung. The Cortex cores can run at speeds greater than 667 megahertz, not bad for an extremely low-power chip.

The application processors are families of chips that stuff everything you need into one chip: multimedia, mobile TV, 3-D graphics, communications, imaging, and basic interface controls. Samsung says it has a 60 percent share of the market for application processors in portable navigation devices. Those devices are moving on to 3-D maps and landmarks, requiring a leap in processing power.

In digital photo frames, Samsung has had a later start. But those devices too are being infused with wireless Internet connectivity and video capabilities. As such, they require beefier processors. Intel has been loudly trumpeting the MID market all year, though one of the requirements is ubiquitous wireless broadband. That’s not really happening until new technologies such as WiMax are adopted.

Samsung’s smartphone customers include Hewlett-Packard and Palm. Dash Navigation’s Dash Express car navigation device has a novel two-way communication system that allows Dash to give drivers more accurate real-time traffic data.

It will be interesting to see how the chip competition unfolds. Texas Instruments is also in the race. But here’s a clue from Yeh. He says that companies that offer a one-size-fits-all chip (i.e. Intel) aren’t likely to succeed in markets where customization is king. Moreover, Intel won’t have a cell-phone Atom chip until next year. That gives Samsung plenty of breathing room for now.