VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

The Internet is broken – This is starting to sound like a broken record. Didn’t we just write about the DNS flaw that could cripple the Internet? Now two security researchers demonstrate a new technique to intercept Internet traffic on a scale similar to the abilities of agencies such as the National Security Agency.

Android unveiled? — The Android Guys say a trusted source has given them the detailed specs of the first Google Android phone. We reported already the phone, built by HTC and running the Android operating system, will be released soon, likely in October or November. The latest blueprints of the phone, now dubbed the G1 (Google’s first phone), show it has a touchscreen, a slight tilt to the trackball mouse location, and a five-row QWERTY keyboard, reminiscent of recent Sidekick devices. There’s more here, including notes about its kicktail and arc slider screen. Just make sure you take this with a five-pound bag of salt, because there’s feverish speculation and false information flying around right now.

Technorati buys Blogcritics.org – Technorati shifted into content as it announced it is buying Blogcritics.org, a community of 2,000 bloggers and news sites.

Eye-Fi scores deal with Nikon — The maker of wireless memory cards for digital cameras, announced tonight that it has a deal with Nikon to integrate Eye-Fi’s Wi-Fi-enabled memory cards into Nikon’s newest digital SLR camera, the Nikon D90.

Food service workers protest Nvidia’s chip flaws – At the Nvision 08 conference in San Jose, attendees were asking the people handing out anti-Nvidia flyers who they worked for. Was it Intel or Advanced Micro Devices, trying to stir up trouble for a rival that had an unlucky product bug in notebook computer graphics chips? Nope. It was Unite Here, a labor group in a dispute with Aramark, Nvidia’s food service vendor. But judging from the thousands of folks who lined up to play games all night long, stare at the booth babes in the exhibit hall, and get green T-shirts signed by “Battlestar Galactica” actress Tricia Helfer, Nvidia seemed to be weathering it all just fine.

HP completes $13.9 billion acquistion of EDS — Hewlett-Packard will become a juggernaut in tech services as it finalizes the EDS deal and goes after Big Blue.

YouTube now sending updates to Twitter — This looks to be the first Google product to embrace the Twitter lifestyle.

Spore comes to iPods ahead of regular release – Electronic Arts releases cell version of upcoming Spore game for the iPods ahead of its PC release.


Google’s subsea ambitions expand — Why just take over the world when you can takeover everything under the sea as well? Google is working with a consortium of carriers to build an intra-Asian submarine cable system, dubbed the Southeast Asia Japan Cable (SJC), which would hook up Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore to the previous subsea cable Google already invested in, the Unity trans-Pacific submarine cable, which serves Japan.

Tapulous co-founder booted from company — Mike Lee, co-founder of Tapulous, has been booted from the hot maker of iPhone applications, according to TechCrunch.

Life after the HP spying scandal – George “Jay” Keyworth figured prominently in the spying scandal that brought down HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn. Now he has been appointed chairman of Green Plug, the company that is trying to establish a new standard for low-power electronics plugs and chargers.

Uploading photos to web sharing sites — as fast as you can take pictures — is kind of a new obssession for the digerati. Eye-Fi is riding that wave with memory cards that have built-in Wi-Fi antennae that can upload photos to photo-sharing sites.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company has raised $11 million in a second round of funding. The lead investors include Translink Capital and LMS Capital. Existing investors Opus Capital and Shasta Ventures also participated. To date, Eye-Fi has raised $17.5 million. The VCs note that the service is dead simple; you just take photos and they’re automatically uploaded to a service of your choice.

Jef Holove, chief executive of Eye-Fi, said that customers have uploaded more than three million photos to photo-sharing sites since the company launched its memory cards in October 2007. Holove said the company will use the money for product development as well as international expansion. Translink has expertise in Asian markets, while LMS focuses on Europe. That is why Eye-Fi chose to work with them.

“We were also looking for someone who understood consumer devices and had experience in businesses that combined services and devices,” Holove said.

Holove said that the economic environment isn’t good for raising money now, but he said it isn’t so bad for companies with solid execution. Eye-Fi products have been a success because they can upload to a variety of photo services, such as Flickr or Kodak’s site. Many of the cameras with built-in Wi-Fi services — from companies such as Kodak, Nikon, Sony and Panasonic — can only upload to one site. And while surveys confirm that users want to upload from cameras directly to the Internet, fewer than 1 percent of digital cameras have Wi-Fi capability.

The Eye-Fi card uses a tiny Wi-Fi networking chip from Atheros Communications. Wireless networking chips are so advanced that Atheros can essentially put an entire Wi-Fi 802.11g radio on a single chip.

The Home version of the Eye-Fi card sells for $79. That one can upload pictures wirelessly to a computer. The $99 Share version can upload pictures to web sites from a home Wi-Fi connection, while the $129 Explore version can upload from any Wi-Fi hot spot. The Explore version can also geo-tag the pictures, or put location information into the picture.

Eye-Fi was founded in the summer of 2005. Since the launch, the company has formed partnerships with Nikon, Lexar and more than 20 online photo destinations; and expanded its online and brick-and-mortar retail distribution to include national chains such as Circuit City.

Here’s the (updated) latest action:

Marc Andreessen getting taste of what it’s like to be a blogger – The Netscape co-founder launched a blog last week. The NYT ran a story about one of his earliest posts. Then he did a good piece about how to hire. And now all the attention has him racing out more posts, including a three part series on The truth about venture capitalists, all very good reads (here, here and here). I recommend reading the last of these, to understand why the debate about the bubble will continue. Marc, welcome to the blogger treadmill.

Video-sharing site Revver’s CEO Steven Starr steps down — This is the second shakeup in six months. No more details given about the change, other than the obvious context: Lots of competition. The company has been losing executives. (CNET)

Xing to buy Plaxo? – Unlikely. A rumor at Techcrunch says Xing, the German version of professional networking site LinkedIn is buying Plaxo, the contact updating service. However, we’ve been told that this isn’t happening. There could be big announcement over next week or so from Xing, though.

Eye-Fi raises $5.5M for camera Wifi — We have the story on VentureBeat NewsWire (for our hard-core readers, here’s another reminder to check that left-hand column).

Apple in talks with major Hollywood studios to get more new films for rental service — The WSJ has details: Will be launched in the fall, and cost $2.99 for 30-day rental of movies. Details are still speculative, though, on who will be participating.

Yigg.de, a remarkable rip-off of Digg.com, gets funding — This is German clone, in both name and presentation. The amount raised is undisclosed but comes from angel investor Roland Metzger and Baytech Venture Capital, the German company says on its blog. It reports 1.4 million unique users a monthly.

SplashCast, the multimedia Flash player, raises angel funding from poker celebrity Phil Hellmuth — Its funding is now about $2 million, according to NewTeeVee

Chris Yeh takes CEO job at Ustream — The company is a competitor to Justin.TV, which is the permanent webcam of a guy named Justin. Ustream wants to let anyone do that. We’ve mentioned them before in our story about Justin.TV’s move to try to do the same. (See Yeh’s blog)

Google worst on privacy? – If you read this report by Privacy International, you should also read the response by search expert Danny Sullivan, who tears it to shreds. Obviously, Google has its own issues with the report, quite emotionally so.

What happens when you piss off attorneys? – Well, you get sued. We reported how Avvo, a site that rates lawyers, had launched, and that some lawyers were upset. Now, one of them is close to suing.

Internet radio station companies fight back — The U.S. Copyright Royalty Board ruled to increase royalty rates earlier this year, starting July 15. RealNetworks, Yahoo, Pandora and Live365 say they’ll be paying more than $1 billion per year.

Gamemaker of popular Desktop TD leaves to run company full-time — He’s joined with another guy, Kottke reports. They’re blogging here.

Private equity riches, will you be picking up the tab? — Blackstone Group, the high-profile buyout firm that plans soon to go public, filed more papers with the SEC that show it could be valued as high as $33.62 billion. Also, the filing shows Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman pulled down $398.3 million in 2006 which, according to Dan Primack, would place him only behind Steve Jobs on the Forbes list of highest-paid public company CEOs. So, as Blackstone issues shares to the public at the top of the private equity bubble, will you be the public investor to buy shares?

Yourminis, which are the widgets offered by Goowy Media, are now more easily compatible with desktop — Previously, you had to download Apollo from Adobe and a widget manager from Yourminis to use that company’s widgets on your desktop. Now, they’re compatible with Micrsoft’s Vista sidebar, without that step. Yourminis’s widgets can easily go anywhere, from blogs to social network pages to personalized homepages like iGoogle Pageflakes, Netvibes and now your Vista desktop. The interface for adding widgets, however, is a bit confusing, and could be simplified by reducing the number of necessary clicks. Goowy CEO Alex Bard assures us that improvements, including support for OSX, are in the works. More here.