Can LovePalzBook.com be far behind?

The high-tech sex toys first saw the light of day late last year when the LovePalz project was rejected by Kickstarter. The concept is pretty simple: Each partner has one device — Zeus for men, Hera for women — and applies to certain body parts as needed. Then motion-sensing technology in Zeus senses physical action — speed, pressure, and more — and communicates to Hera over the internet, and vice versa, and simulates a real-life connection in real-time.

Which means, for those who are into that sort of thing, a long-distance relationship can get a lot more … personal.

According to Forrester, the top 15 emerging technologies include next-generation sensors and user interfaces, advanced collaboration, smart products, and systems of engagement. I’m not sure this is precisely what they had in mind while compiling the list.

LovePalz says the rechargeable toys will work with any smartphone or desktop computer over WiFi.

The company has taken 5,000 pre-orders already for the $189 devices — $378 for a set of two — and since February 28, when the company opened up payment capability, 1,800 have already pre-paid.

Starting now, the company says, “toys will no longer be for single use by one person but a fun tool you and your lover can use together.”

It’s a brave new world.

Unofficially, the VentureBeat staff files any post related to sex under a nonexistent “PornBeat” category. But this doesn’t mean these aren’t legitimate tech stories. It does, however, mean that we’ve worked harder to legitimize sex-related stories by reaching out to the entrepreneurs or creators responsible — all of whom were very eager to chat.

The stories listed below don’t quite prove the old theory that pornography drives all technological advances, but they do show that wherever innovation thrives, you’ll find a pornographic application or element to it (aka the Internet’s Rule 34).

Bateflix: A Netflix search engine for finding nudity

Billed as Instant Watcher meets Mr. Skin, BateFlix provides you with a way to search for nudity within the films available on Netflix’s streaming video library. I reached out to the creator of the site, who said he was shocked more people weren’t using Netflix’s API to do interesting things like this. You can search for specific sexual acts, nudity of men or women, and more. It even has a rating system to tell you the quality of the movies in regard to the nudity.

PETA buys an .XXX domain, launches unsexy site

Animal-rights activist group the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was among the first crop of organizations to stake its claim on a new .xxx top-level domain last year. The .xxx top-level domain is (in theory, anyway) intended to be popular among adult-focused sites that offer pornographic content, but that’s certainly not a requirement. This year, peta.xxx went live. It really, really was not all that sexy, according to VentureBeat’s Meghan Kelly.

Sex.com & Snatch.ly: Pinterest for pornography

Pinterest’s mega-growth in popularity spawned dozens of copycats and inspired many companies to apply its design principles to their own sites. As VentureBeat’s Sean Ludwig writes, Pinterest is largely popular with a female demographic, so a large opportunity exists to find a way to make it appeal to (more) men. Enter both Snatch.ly and Sex.com. Sean interviewed the founders of both sites about their decisions to become a “Pinterest for pornography.” Will they succeed? We’ll just have to check back in 2013.

3D printers and the future of sexy toys

By my observations, the advent of 3D printing technology (using plastic and other materials to create things from a device similar to how you would print a document) came with a gross overreaction that a flood of fake guns would overwhelm authorities. Fast forward months later and the news cycle has shifted to another touchy but far less violent subject: 3D printers and the sex toy industry. VentureBeat’s Ricardo Bilton interviewed the creator of MakerLove, a website whose operator posts sex toy designs for 3D printer owners to try out. It might seem like a ridiculous concept, but read the story: It’s much more clever than you might think.

Reddit tightens its rules on pornography

In February, community news-sharing site Reddit started to crack down on the underbelly of sexual fetish communities that had set up shop on the site. One of Reddit’s steps included banning anything that was questionably illegal, which was brought to a head by CNN’s Anderson Cooper calling out the JailBait subreddit for implying that it held nude photos of underaged teens. The site’s managers went back and forth on the decision a few times before ultimately deciding that it wasn’t worth ruining their reputation to keep it up.

A full eight months later, Gawker uncovered the identity of one of the unnofficial “police officers” of these seedy subreddits: Michael Brutsch, who went by the username ViolentAcrez on Reddit. In a followup interview, Brutsch proceeded to drag Reddit’s name through the mud, but the site’s previous stance on the issue gave it some protection against claims that Reddit proper was working to keep this questionably indecent sexual content flowing on the site. Reddit dodged a bullet for now, but sexual misconduct on community news sites is an issue we’re likely to encounter again in the future.

Microsoft bans pornography (and nudity) in the cloud

Did you know you’re not allowed to send or share anything with nudity on Microsoft’s cloud service, Skydrive? Well, you can’t, and the company routinely performs scans to ensure you’re not violating the rules, which it insists it does to prevent illegal activity. What’s worse, though, is if you get banned from your Skydrive account for breaking the rules, you also lose access to any other Microsoft service that’s connected to Skydrive (Outlook/Hotmail, Office 365, and so on). VentureBeat’s Sean Ludwig even put together a list of competing cloud services’ stances on sharing pornography and nudity.

Search.xxx: The Google of pornography search engines?

ICM Registry, the company responsible for managing the new .xxx top-level domain addresses, launched the pornography search engine Search.xxx back in September. We spoke to the ICM, and it said it intends to intends to make looking for online adult entertainment safer and easier to access. And if you’re managing a top-level domain targeted at the adult industry, such as .xxx, why not do something to cater to that specific client base? Check out the article for a full explanation.

Honorable Mention: Microsoft apologizes for sexing up the cloud (video)

In a world full of motion-sensing Kinect technology, iPhones, and smart thermostats, it’s hard to make something like a cloud-computing platform exciting. But that didn’t stop a European marketing firm hired by Microsoft from trying to make its cloud-platform Azure seem sexy at the Norwegian Developers Conference in Oslo earlier in the year. The marketing firm hired dancers and played an inappropriate, developer-related rap song that ruffled some feathers and prompted a public apology from Microsoft.

Robot bumping & grinding photo by Tom Cheredar/Flickr

1. This $25 computer (yes computer!) also runs Quake 3. The Raspberry Pi computer (which still hasn’t launched but is coming soon) is no slouch when it comes to running older PC games.

2. Is another Black Ops map pack coming May 3? What can we say? Gamers want to know when their favorite franchise will have another installment of maps.

3. Ocean Marketing: How to self-destruct your company with just a few measly emails. If you didn’t catch this lesson in how not to handle customer service, it’s a doozy. It made the otherwise quiet holidays more amusing. And don’t miss our dramatic re-enactment of Ocean Marketing’s PR flop.

4. Diablo III release date is early 2012, more beta keys going out. As with our No. 2 story, we figured out that a lot of people want to play this next big dungeon-crawling game from Blizzard Entertainment.

5. Tips and tricks: How to get ahead in Skyrim. Our 4,000-word review wasn’t enough, so Sebastian Haley put together all of the tips he could offer from playing Skyrim for an absurdly long period of time. This story was so popular that Sebastian wrote a second guide.

6. New Black Ops map pack is confirmed for May 3. We pulled the trigger fast on this story and gamers came to see. Yes, it is odd that map pack news was more popular than news about any one brand-new game.

7. Sony finally brings PlayStation Network fully online in Japan. For a period of weeks, Sony’s PlayStation Network outage was a debacle that held readers spellbound.

8. Left4Dead short film rivals Hollywood production values. Sebastian Haley got the scoop on this short film built around favorite video game heroes.

9. Women who play online games have more sex. (Infographic). Sex and games. That’s an unbeatable combination.

10. Pirated Modern Warfare 3 discs are already spreading. We got the scoop on how disc piracy preceded the launch of Modern Warfare 3, which still turned out to be the most popular game of 2011.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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They found that 55 percent of online gamers are women. Online games, for the purposes of this survey, included games on their computer, social networking sites, and mobile devices. Better yet, they also have more sex and are more social than those who do not play online games.

The old stereotype of an anti-social male teen in a dark room with the computer monitor being his only source of light doesn’t seem to hold true anymore when you look at the rest of the results. The poll shows that 42 percent of female online gamers actually socialize with friends and family in person at least once a day, while only 31 percent of those who don’t play online games see friends and family at least once a day.

The data also shows that 86 percent of female online gamers use social networking sites such as Facebook, while only 71 percent of women who don’t play online games use social networking sites.

The kicker, for those who may still believe that online gaming is for lonely people: 57 percent of women who play online gamers have sex, vs 52 percent for those who don’t play. It also says that 38 percent are also having sex at least once per week, while 34 percent of those not playing online are.

Furthermore, more than half of female online gamers say they are happy (55 percent) and 50 percent of them say online games make them feel smarter.

And what’s the best playtime for such games? It seems that 61 percent of female online gamers enjoy their hobby from 8 pm to 11:59 pm which makes us wonder when they have time for sex.

Check out the infographic below:

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The issue is an important one, as objections to game content could slow down the growth of the industry, and because the video game industry has a big case on game violence before the U.S. Supreme Court.

We’ve now had a look at the questionnaire — which generates an automatic rating of a game for a developer — and we’ll show below some of the interesting examples that, by our own inferences, could get a game into hot water with the ratings board.

The new ratings apply to games submitted to Microsoft’s Xbox Live online game service as well as the Nintendo Wii Shop and DS Shop and the Sony PlayStation Network store. But it’s quite possible the automated system could eventually extend beyond that.

To get a downloadable console game rated, game makers fill out the questionnaire in a lot of detail. Then a computer program will determine the rating for the game, based on the best intelligence on past ratings for games by the ESRB. Thanks to the automation, it is possible — but not absolutely certain — that the new ratings system wil eventually be applied to all sorts of games, including mobile games, social games, and online web games in addition to the online console content for which it is intended today. Online or mobile game makers who thought they could forever escape the more restrictive ratings system of the consoles might find themselves in hot water one day soon.

Patricia Vance, president of the ESRB, said in an interview there is no guarantee the system as devised will be extended to mobile and online games. But the system has been designed to scale up to a much larger number of ratings requests. Vance said that the ratings board came up with the words and types of scenes mentioned in the questionnaire through 15 years of experience rating games. It basically means the questionnaire is a peek into the minds of parents and others who want to protect our kids.

Here are some interesting things to know about the questionnaire: The big touch points are realism, violence, sex, gambling, drugs, and bodily functions. These are the categories of game play that parents are usually concerned about, Vance said.

When it comes to violent games, the questionnaire gets quite sophisticated. For instance, it takes into account a lot of factors, such whether or not a game is played from a first-person or third-person view, said Vance. A game is more likely to be objectionable based on graphic violence if it uses a more gut-wrenching first-person view.

“Perspective is a huge factor in video game ratings,” Vance said.

The game will also be more controversial if it depicts violence against “humans or human-like characters.” Developers can click on a question mark to get an idea of what sorts of images are covered. A zombie in human form or a realistic depiction of a person counts. An elf, dwarf, Vulcan, or Replicant counts as a human-like character. But images of characters such as Medusas, Harpies, or Halo Elites (pictured right) don’t count as human-like. (Evidently, you can blast away at such characters without getting into an argument with the ESRB).

One of the questions notes some complexity to violent situations, such as whether the player is trying to avoid violence in the game play but may incur violence in a failure scenario. It evidently makes a difference in the ratings if the violence is discussed or overheard, but not visually depicted. Another question asks if the violence is depicted from an omniscient camera angle or far away and whether it is directly or indirectly controlled by the player.

The ESRB asks if the game contains “bodily functions (e.g. belching, flatulence, vomiting) used for humorous purposes.” If you answer yes to that question, the ESRB asks you to check on whether it has “mucus, belching, flatulence sounds.” It also asks in a separate question if there is “flatulence (with depiction of ‘flatulence cloud’), whimsical depictions of feces (‘poo coils’), vomiting. Presumably, since these are different categories, one response will get a more severe rating than the other.

The questionnaire also asks if the game has “urination, urine, realistically depicted feces”. And — this one has to be the worst of all reserved for mature-rated or adults-only games — if there is an act of “human defecation visually depicted.”

Language is a sure hot spot as well. The ESRB separates language into six different categories. One is “minor profanities” such as “damn” or “hell.” Another is epithets such as “bastard,” “bitch” or “jackass.” The word “ass” is evidently a category unto itself. Then there are scatological vulgarities: “shit, piss, asshole, dick (i.e. jerk), jerk, or pussy (i.e. wimp).” Racial obscenities is another category. And then there are the sexual obscenities or vulgarisms: fuck, cunt, cocksucker, dick (i.e. penis) and pussy (i.e. vagina).

As for sexual material, the questionnaire asks if the game depicts “provocative outfits” or, in another category, “human buttocks, nipple-less breasts, breasts with minimal coverage (e.g. pasties, long hair). Then there are separate categories for “human breasts with nipples” and “genitalia.”

The questionnaire also asks if there is any “suggestive dialogue, innuendo, or double entendre.” It asks about “overtly sexual situations,” “references to sex or sexuality without descriptive detail,” references to sex and sexuality with descriptive detail,” and “references to coerced or forced sexual activity.”

Clearly, the ESRB put a lot of thought into the questions. Vance said the group tested the ratings questionnaire for months and tried to pare it back from a very large list of questions to those that focused on cultural flashpoints. She estimates the questionnaire’s accuracy is somewhere around 95 percent in terms of how close it matches that of human game raters.

Developers can fabricate answers to these questions if they want, but they have to pay a $500 fee upon submission and they also have to submit a DVD disk with the images from the game on it. If they are found to have misled the ESRB in order to get a better rating, the ESRB will have their game pulled from the online store and they’ll have to go through a resubmission. That’s a pretty heavy stick to ensure developers and publishers play by the rules, Vance said.

[photo credit: scrapetv]

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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