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Posted: 14 Oct 2011 09:02 AM PDT
 Shiny, new MacBook Pros have reportedly appeared in Apple’s inventory system. Refreshed models will be available soon in 13-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch screen sizes. 9to5mac reports that Apple will be shipping two versions of the two smaller sizes and that the new laptops are appearing in internal inventory documents as K90IA, K91A and K92A, in ascending order by size. This information comes to the blog from an anonymous source. However, even though this comes fast on the heels of the last MacBook Pro refresh, we’re not too surprised. We heard last month that the Pro line was due for an upgrade that would feature Intel’s newest Sandy Bridge processors. At that time, Intel had just released its Core i7 Sandy Bridge processors, including quad-core 2.4 gigahertz, 2.5Ghz and 2.7Ghz chips. Currently, the 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro models contain 2Ghz to 2.3 Ghz chips, while the 13-inch MacBook Pro is running at 2.7Ghz. The refresh may or may not also include Bluetooth 4.0 technology, which Apple recently introduced on its iPhone 4S and the latest MacBook Air. The MacBook Pro line last got a facelift back in February, when the current processors and Thunderbolt high-speed data ports were introduced. Another upgrade so soon is a bit surprising; however, we’ve speculated in the past that the new-new processors are needed to keep the line current. The MacBook Air and mini also got upgraded over the summer to feature Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors as well as Thunderbolt ports. Image courtesy of Benjamin Nagel. Filed under: VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 14 Oct 2011 09:00 AM PDT
 Steve Scott, chief technology officer for Tesla products at Nvidia, was feeling pretty good this week after the Oak Ridge National Laboratory announced that it will build the world’s fastest supercomputer using 18,000 high-end graphics chips from Nvidia.The new kind of supercomputer means that graphics chips have finally become as important as the microprocessor in the tackling the world’s most difficult computing problems. That should cause a sea change in revenues for the chip industry. The machine will be built by Cray and it will use 18,000 Advanced Micro Devices microprocessors, or central processing units (CPUs). Once upon a time, it made sense to build supercomputers with CPUs alone. But CPU-only processing is now bound by power constraints. CPUs process data in serial fashion, one after another. That’s fine for smaller problems. But supercomputers have to run thousands of similar operations in parallel. That kind of processing is best suited for graphics chips, which have as many as 512 cores, or processing elements, on a single chip. The graphics chips (GPUs, or graphics processing units) are good for massively parallel computation. Scott said in an interview at Nvidia’s headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., that adding one graphics chip to a supercomputer can eliminate the need for five to eight CPUs. That saves a lot of cost and power at the same time. This kind of sea change in supercomputing is why Scott left Cray, where he was chief technology officer for six years, to join graphics chip maker Nvidia. “Energy is the new constraint, Scott said. “If you pack too many transistors on a chip and run them as fast as possible, the chip will melt. Over time, this problem is getting exponentially worse.” You can bet that more supercomputers will use this kind of solution. Every major government has the goal of doing exascale computing, or executing operations at an exaflop. Scott is one of those people who can tell you what an exaflop is. That’s because he hopes that a supercomputer will one day be able to execute at exaflop speeds. It’s a billion billion floating point operations per second. A flop is the equivalent of taking two 15-digit numbers and multiplying them together. Right now, the Oak Ridge supercomputer is expected to be able to compute at 20 petaflops. A thousand petaflops is equal to one exaflop. Oak Ridge needs this kind of computing power because it will take exascale computing to do climate change simulations right. Scientists believe they need to be able to model climate effects and calculations on a scale of one kilometer in order to simulate the climate for the entire earth accurately. You just can’t do that kind of calculation with today’s supercomputers. Oak Ridge will also need the computing power to study nuclear energy and how to make it safer. It will also need that computing power to do research on new biofuels and more efficient internal combustion engines, Scott said. And putting graphics chips in supercomputers won’t be unusual at some point. “In five to ten years, this will just be the way you build computers,” Scott said. Nvidia’s Tesla graphics chips are now in three of the top five supercomputers. That kind of penetration has to make Intel nervous. Right now, Intel is selling only CPUs to the supercomputer makers. But it is working on massively parallel microprocessor chips that emulate more of the graphics chip functionality. It’s a problem for Intel because Nvidia is cutting into sales of Intel’s highest value chips, which are CPUs for servers and supercomputers. Intel can keep its average selling prices constant, and therefore its profits constant, because it sells high-end CPUs for high prices, making up for the low-end CPUs that it sells at low prices. By selling high-value graphics chips, Nvidia can create the same kind of business as Intel, and steal market share from it. That’s enough to make Intel nervous. Interestingly, gamers are making this all possible. Nvidia can afford to design and sell its $2,000 Tesla GPUs because it can bring the costs for manufacturing these chips down. It does so by selling millions of graphics chips for game machines and ordinary PCs. Over time, the ordinary graphics chips will become capable of processing at speeds that only supercomputers can do today. Hopefully, we’ll all have the equivalent of Titan in our home computers. Check out our video interview with Scott below.  Filed under: VentureBeat, video         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 14 Oct 2011 08:28 AM PDT
 The upcoming and heavily anticipated new Android phone from Motorola is reportedly thinner and faster than the iPhone 4S.It’s also got a larger screen and will run on Verizon’s 4G LTE network. Ladies and gentleman, we may finally have a phone that even the Apple fanboys and girls may grudgingly admit to be an iPhone killer. Let’s take a look at the specs, as handed to Boy Genius Report by an anonymous source:
 The device will be a Motorola/Verizon collaboration and will be called the DROID HD, the DROID RAZR (this particular throwback strikes us as silly, but we’ve seen sillier names for phones) or possibly the Spyder. The two companies are jointly announcing the phone’s launch next week. The Droid HD may not be the top Android contender for long though. Judging from what we’ve seen of the Nexus Prime, Google’s latest flagship device, it will blow all others in specs. Samsung and Google are now planning to announce the Nexus Prime, as well as Android 4.0, on October 18 in Hong Kong. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 14 Oct 2011 08:21 AM PDT
 A U.S. judge has declared that Samsung infringes on Apple’s patents with its Galaxy smartphones and tablets, but also said that Apple has to prove the validity of its patents, Reuters reports.The news is a half-win for Apple. If it can prove its patents valid it will be able block the sale of Samsung’s infringing products in the U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh made the statements during a court hearing on Thursday. Apple filed suit against Samsung in April, saying that the Korean company “slavishly” copied its designs with the Galaxy S smartphones and Galaxy Tab tablets. Apple later asked for an injunction barring the sale of Samsung’s products in the U.S. “We think we’ve clearly raised substantial questions,” Samsung attorney Kathleen Sullivan said, referring to the validity of Apple’s patents. Apple attorney Harold McElhinny argued that Apple’s patents shouldn’t be invalidated by previous designs, since Apple’s product design is a leap beyond previous tablets. According to Reuters, Judge Koh made several references to the design similarities between the tablets. During the hearing, she asked if the Samsung attorney could tell the difference between the two devices at one point, while holding both tablets above her head. “Not at this distance your honor,” Sullivan said, who Reuters noted was standing around ten feet away. Koh asked again if any Samsung lawyer could tell the difference between the devices, and eventually one gave the right answer. Koh also noted that she wouldn’t grant Apple’s injunction based on a single “utility” patent, though she noted that decision is just tentative at the moment. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 14 Oct 2011 08:00 AM PDT
 EDITOR'S NOTE: Each week, I'm writing a column on business and technology called The DeanBeat, while executive editor Dylan Tweney is writing a column on business and technology called Dylan's Desk. They are available to newsletter subscribers a whole day before they appear on the VentureBeat website.Zynga’s announcement of 10 mobile and social game initiatives on Tuesday was a clear attempt to set the stage for the company’s initial public offering. Was it a good enough show to convince investors to buy? The social gaming powerhouse has its detractors and admirers. Detractors say Zynga’s possible valuation at $20 billion is a sure sign of a bubble in social gaming, especially considering its rival, Electronic Arts, has four times as much revenue and is only valued at $7.7 billion. Admirers say Zynga is the clear market leader in the fastest-growing area of gaming: free-to-play Facebook games monetized through virtual goods sales. If Zynga can adequately diversify beyond Facebook, then it should assuage any fears it is too dependent on a volatile social network for its revenues. “Cross-platform initiatives by Zynga will be well received by investors,” said Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. “Even better would be some successful cross-platform games that the company can point to.” Zynga’s event seemed orchestrated to address investor concerns. It was the biggest single announcement of products and services the company has had. It included nine new mobile and social games. It mentioned Zynga’s upcoming social game platform, Project Z, which is part of a larger effort called Zynga Direct, aimed at taking Zynga’s games straight to consumers. The catch is not all of the announced games are shipping right now.  The sheer volume of product activity was impressive. Zynga has more than 2,500 employees, many acquired in developer studio acquisitions over the past year at a pace of one a month. It seemed in the past Zynga was overloaded with employees, considering it might take a crew of 25 people six to nine months to create a social game. Zynga essentially had enough people to build 100 games a year, but it was only trickling out titles once every few months. What are all of those people working on? Well, now we know they have been busy expanding Zynga’s game efforts in all directions.In the meantime, EA has seen a renaissance on Facebook with the launch of The Sims Social, which has 66 million monthly active users after just a couple of months. It is stealing gamers away from Zynga’s top game, CityVille, which has fallen from more than 100 million users to 76 million. Zynga’s most recent quarterly reported showed the company is thinly profitable. To go public, Zynga has to be able to show consistent user, revenue and profit growth. (The company is narrowly profitable, perhaps only because of an accounting change; we’ll have more on that in another story). That’s why it needed to show off the 10 games, and it is why the company now needs to execute on those titles. Zynga also has to make headway in mobile games, which could become the biggest part of the social games market. Zynga announced five new mobile games, but not all of them are shipping. As for mobile, Zynga is making progress but it still has a long way to go to gain market share against rivals like EA. There is room for doubt. Zynga hasn’t hyped unannounced products in the past, partly because it tests games to see if they will take off, and also because it worries competitors could copy pre-announced games in a short time. Now it is talking about a bunch of games that are not yet shipping. If those games are all ready to ship, it would be extremely impressive. But if they trickle out over a long period of time, then it isn’t impressive. In the most recent announcements, Zynga has shipped a game within a couple of weeks of announcing it. “I would say that they nailed the investor concern that relates to growth,” said Peter Relan, chief executive of rival social gaming firm CrowdStar. “Growth depends on titles and they talk about a lot of them. As for their dependency on Facebook, the jury is out.” Relan says Zynga’s titles are “stumble upon” games, meaning you stumble upon them while catching up with your friends on Facebook. They are not destination games, where a user seeks them out because they really want to play them, Relan said. The more Zynga makes higher quality destination games, the more it can move beyond Facebook. (Relan, by the way, competes with Zynga, but he wants them to go public because he thinks it will lift the whole social game industry). Zynga tantalized the crowd with some interesting possibilities in that respect, but it didn’t telegraph exactly what it would do. As mentioned, Pincus said Zynga Direct will be the company’s way to reach consumers directly by giving them one destination where they can seamlessly connect with other players on Zynga’s mobile and social games. Underneath the umbrella of Zynga Direct is “Project Z,” a social game service enabled by Facebook Connect that will bring Zynga players together on Zynga’s own web site. “These were necessary moves. Zynga has to build its own platform and raise the quality bar for its games if Mark Pincus and company truly aspire to become a leading games publisher with valuation close to that implied in the IPO filing,” said Billy Pidgeon, an analyst at M2 Research. “The event and announcements seem targeted to buoy potential investor interest and to counter concerns about recent revenue losses. It’s rather a bold and unsubstantiated claim to say Zynga Direct will be ‘the most connected social gaming site in the world.’” Pidgeon said Zynga lags in mobile social networks behind companies such as DeNA and Gree, which are based in Japan. Pidgeon also noted, “The platform doesn’t give Zynga autonomy from Facebook. Being ‘the deepest integration with Facebook Connect’ strengthens Facebook to a greater extent than it strengthens Zynga. A social network focused on games is a compelling and powerful idea. All publishers should have one as part of their games platform. But the winning plays in this category will not be proprietary publishers and platforms, but rather independents like Steam and Raptr that connect across publishers and platforms.” Becoming independent from Facebook is one thing, but creating a platform — which conceivably competes with Facebook on some levels — is another. If Zynga launches an independent game platform, that would constitute a major move to diversify beyond Facebook and set up a platform Zynga itself can control. It also sets Zynga up to become a publisher of games developed by third parties, but Zynga didn’t go so far as to say it would do that with either Project Z or Zynga Direct. Zynga Direct and Project Z were rumored to be in the works more than a year ago, though Pincus said the company had been working on it for two years. But rumors of such diversification attempts dried up after Zynga patched up its disagreements with Facebook and signed on to use Facebook Credits in the spring of 2010. After that, Zynga stopped pressing so hard to move to other platforms. It has indeed diversified, but at a slower pace, and most of its revenues still come from Facebook. Under the Facebook Credits deal, Zynga has to share 30 percent of the revenue it gets from virtual goods purchased with Facebook. But moving away from Facebook hasn’t yet paid off. When will that happen? It isn’t clear, even after this week’s event. In summary, Zynga showed it hasn’t been sitting still while rivals attack its user base. But it still has a lot to prove in making its new games succeed. It has to expand to new territories, break into mobile, set up its own platform, keep the hits coming and rake in a lot of profits in order to stay ahead of big rivals like EA, Disney and others. Lou Kerner, analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities, summed it up as follows: “While the slate of new game titles and Project Z all sound impressive, investors are more focused on results than announcements. A heavy reliance on Facebook and flat gamer growth will remain risks, until there are data points to prove otherwise. The IPO remains ‘on track,’ unchanged by these announcements, subject to market conditions.” Filed under: games, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 14 Oct 2011 07:33 AM PDT
 Google is planning to open a new MP3 music store, and has entered into negotiations with major record labels, reports the New York Times.The MP3 store, which would work in conjunction to Google’s Music Beta cloud service, would directly compete against Amazon and Apple’s iTunes store. Like both Apple and Amazon, music purchases made through Google’s new store would be accessible through its Music Cloud service, which allows customers to back up songs on Google’s servers so that they can stream them to a variety of devices. Google is likely in a race to get the store up before Apple launches iTunes Match, the $25 a year service that gives people legal access to any songs currently in their iTunes music library. That service is scheduled to roll out later this month. However, both Google and Apple are already late to the game. Amazon was the first to launch a cloud service to compliment its customers’ digital media purchases. The company offers a cloud drive with 5Gb of space, which customers can upload anything they want into. As VentureBeat reported in May, Google’s previous talks with record labels about creating its own “digital locker” service were unsuccessful due to piracy concerns. According to the NYT’s report, the current negotiations would solve this problem by matching up each song to account for what people are listening to — much like iTunes Match. Its earlier negotiations with music companies, for a so-called smart locker service — a Web storage system that lets people link their digital music collections to a vast central database — broke down over financial terms and the music companies' complaints that Google was not doing enough to curb piracy. Google was unavailable for immediate comment about a possible MP3 store. Filed under: cloud, media, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 14 Oct 2011 06:54 AM PDT
 Skype is now officially a part of Microsoft. The software giant announced today that it has completed its $8.5 billion purchase of the video chat company. Now that the deal — Microsoft’s biggest yet — is official, Skype CEO Tony Bates will now become president of the Skype Division at Microsoft, reporting directly to CEO Steve Ballmer. Skype will still have employees located all over the world — including Russia, Sweden, and the UK — but Microsoft will now explore more ways to integrate Skype into its offerings. “Together, we will be able to accelerate Skype's goal to reach 1 billion users daily," Bates said in a statement today. When news of the deal was first announced, Microsoft said it was interested in bringing Skype to its Kinect Xbox 360 accessory (which has a built-in camera), Windows Phone, and Office. The potential integration for Skype is almost limitless, as there are plenty more Microsoft products that it could improve. Microsoft previously said that it would continue to offer Skype software for other platforms. On stage today at the Dell World conference in Austin, Ballmer also expressed interest in having Skype power Microsoft’s Lync business communication tool. The combination of Microsoft and Skype could be a major problem for Cisco, which has been pushing expensive video conferencing solutions to businesses for some time now. If anyone can get access to faster high-definition video chats from their own PCs, there won’t be much of a need to buy a more expensive solution from Cisco. Skype just recently acquired the group messaging startup GroupMe, and earlier this year it snapped up the live video streaming company Qik, both of which could prove useful for Microsoft. As I’ve written previously, while many are already calling this acquisition the end of Skype, there's no doubt that the video chat company has a lot to gain from Microsoft. For one, it won't have to worry much about its revenue problems anymore. Plus, Skype will finally be able to bring on more developers to polish its software — recent updates have added some cool features like group video chat, but the software has also gotten slower and more difficult to use in the process. Microsoft also released the following infographic, which includes a bundle of interesting Skype tidbits. The company claims that Skype now reaches 300 million video chat minutes per day.  Filed under: media, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 14 Oct 2011 06:00 AM PDT
 Cloud-focused startups: Here’s your chance to get the attention of VentureBeat readers and key Silicon Valley influencers. VentureBeat is proud to be partnering with the Under the Radar Conference for “Fast Pitch,” a startup competition taking place November 10th at the Microsoft Conference Center in Mountain View, California. The basic idea: Eight finalists will have two minutes apiece to pitch their companies to the crowd. The judges will select a single winner. Venture Beat’s team, along with 300+ decision makers from some of the biggest and most influential brands, agencies and marketing companies will be there to listen to you make your pitch for your company's game-changing idea. We're opening up applications for Fast Pitch starting today. Before you apply, though, here's more about Fast Pitch: Date: The Fast Pitch contest will take place on November 10th at the Microsoft Conference Center in Mountain View, California. Please don't apply if you can't be there that day, because we need you to pitch your company in person. Format: The format is simple: You get two minutes to wow the audience and our panel of judges with your pitch. Keep it short and and focus on how you solve the big problems facing retailers, brands and media companies. Deadline: Be warned, the deadline is fast approaching: Applications are due by Monday, October 24 at 6:00 p.m. PST. VentureBeat and Dealmaker Media will select eight startups from the application pool. All finalists will receive a single free pass to the Under the Radar conference and the opening night reception. What are you waiting for? Submit your startup for Fast Pitch!  About the Event: Under the Radar is a one-day showcase of hand-selected disruptive companies in a particular sector. Under the Radar takes a comprehensive look at the true innovators fueling the explosion of emerging technology and new business opportunities. Each company presents their offering to a panel of active industry experts, along with an audience of more than 300-early adopter technology insiders. 64 percent of past presenting companies have gone on to close partnerships, raise funding or be acquired after presenting at Under the Radar. Alumni include: LinkedIn, AdMob, Flickr, Loopt, Jive, 3Tera and more.Photo credit: Dmitriy Shironosov/Shutterstock Filed under: VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 14 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT
 Cross-platform video calling startup Tango has seen tremendous growth since its launch in early fall of last year. One of the biggest reasons for its success, according to CTO Eric Setton, may be the company’s crazy strict 2-week development cycle for its iPhone, Android, and PC applications.“We’re working literally 24/7 to improve the app, fix issues and add new device support every two weeks,” Setton said. I spoke with Setton (pictured) during CTIA Enterprise 2011 in San Diego this week to talk about how quickly the service has grown and what we can expect in the future. Setton also delivered a short keynote speech on Thursday, the closing day of CTIA, as well. Tango has grown exceptionally fast since its launch about a year ago. It now has more than 24 million users (half in the U.S.) and works on more than 450 Android and iOS devices. Setton said he was glad the company launched around the time of the iPhone 4 launch because it was about the time most major smartphones starting including a front-facing camera. “I would not want to be a company just getting into mobile video chat now because there is so much work to be done to get all the devices to work right,” Setton said. The quick two-week development cycles, which stay on schedule using a large countdown clock in the main office, are possible because Tango has two offices in different parts of the world. When the company’s 75 Palo Alto employees are winding down their work at headquarters, the small 10-person engineering team in Beijing, China picks up where the Palo Alto team stopped. “We listen to what our customers want and we know how damaging it can be to have a buggy application,” Setton said. “We built the development cycle like this for a reason and we tell potential employees it’s going to be intense when we interview them.” Skype, Tango’s biggest competitor, looks like a tortoise in comparison. Skype has consistently been slow to deliver new builds that work on all Android phones across the board. Interesting factoid: Microsoft asked Tango to be the first video chat app for Windows Phone 7 rather than soon-to-be-Microsoft-owned Skype. Tango will be available in the next few weeks for devices running the new Windows Phone Mango update. Setton took some barbs during a moderated CTIA panel session for Tango not yet offering a way to monetize the service, but he told me and the crowd that the first paid feature with a subscription will arrive before the end of the year. He refused to even hint at what was coming. “I’m not going to talk about it now, but we will have something ready by the holidays,” Setton said. Setton said he expects the company to reach 100 million users by June 2012. Not only will the two-week cycles continue to be key, but the company also recently launched an application for PCs. No Mac application is available yet, but because Windows PC market share is so much higher, it’s somewhat understandable. “We originally didn’t plan to support PCs, but many of our best customers asked us for it, so we launched that,” Setton said. “And that adds a potential 1.5 billion devices worldwide to use Tango.” Thus far, Tango has earned $47 million in funding from two rounds. Its most recent round was in July with $42 million in funding led by Draper Fisher Jurveston. Other Tango investors include Bill Hambrecht, Michael Birch, Bill Tai and Daniel Scheinman. Filed under: dev, media, mobile, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 10:20 PM PDT
 The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has told public companies to disclose cyber attacks that could potentially lead to unexpected losses.The guidelines issued on Thursday follow a rash of cyber attacks that have caused lawmakers to ask for clearer instructions on reporting cyber crimes. The guidance tells companies what they may be required to disclose. Senator John Rockefeller asked the SEC to issue the rules amid fears that companies were failing to mention data breaches in their public filings. The SEC said that if a cyber attack occurs and leads to losses, then companies should disclose the losses, or at least estimates of what is “reasonably possible.” “Intellectual property worth billions of dollars has been stolen by cyber criminals, and investors have been kept completely in the dark. This guidance changes everything,” Rockefeller said in a statement to Reuters. Breaches have occurred at big companies such as Sony, Google, Lockheed Martin, Citigroup, the International Monetary Fund and others. The SEC said it will not require companies to describe how they will further protect themselves, as that may only give ammunition to criminal hackers on how to attack the companies. Companies are on the hook for disclosing costs of fixing compromised networks, increased cyber protection costs that may include changes to personnel, lost revenues from unauthorized access to information, losses related to the failure to retain customers after an attack, litigation costs, and reputation damage after an attack. Filed under: security         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 09:25 PM PDT
 iPhone 4 owners are just as interested in upgrading to Apple’s new iPhone 4S as owners of the older iPhone 3G and 3GS, according to a study by gadget shopping help site Retrevo. 44 percent of iPhone 3G and 3GS users said they would upgrade to the new model, while 42 percent of iPhone 4 owners are also thinking of upgrading, the study found. The news comes as a surprise since iPhone 4 owners will have to deal with added costs to upgrade their phones early. Plus, the fact that the iPhone 4S looks exactly like the iPhone 4 doesn’t make it seem very appealing. The iPhone 4S has typically been thought of as a no-brainer upgrade for owners of the iPhone 3GS and 3G, who are now out of their two-year cellular contracts and are likely looking for a new mobile experience. The study, conducted by an independent panel for Retrevo, relied on a sample size of 1,300 online individuals distributed across age, gender, income, and location in the U.S. Android users were the least interested in getting the iPhone 4S, with just 12 percent saying they would upgrade. 24 percent of BlackBerry users were also interested in upgrading (and after this week’s massive BlackBerry outage, I’m sure that number has risen quite a bit). 53 percent of people surveyed said they didn’t think they would have a problem getting an iPhone 4S. But with pre-orders of the phone already sold out online, I have a feeling it’ll be harder to get than many realized. Most weren’t disappointed by the iPhone 4S, despite initial reports that people expecting Apple to release a revamped iPhone 5 were underwhelmed by the 4S announcement. 71 percent of all smartphone owners weren’t disappointed, and 53 percent of iPhone 4 owners felt the same way. Among the disappointments people actually reported, most found the lack of 4G connectivity the most disconcerting.  Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 07:38 PM PDT
 Mobile payments startup Jumio will soon go live with its service to help retailers easily take credit cards using smartphones, the company said today.Speaking at the final keynote of the CTIA Enterprise and Applications 2011 conference, Jumio CEO Daniel Mattes (pictured) said a major new part of its service will go live in two weeks. The company will allow retailers to take credit cards using the camera on an iPhone, Android or BlackBerry device. The service gained a bit more recognition than it normally would have thanks to its backing by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, who got spotlighted in last year’s popular film The Social Network. Saverin led the company’s $6.5 million in first-round funding. “Eduardo told me he hadn’t seen a service so disruptive since Facebook,” Mattes said. “We know we have something big on our hands.” Jumio currently offers a way for retailers to accept credit cards by waving a credit card in front of a webcam. But in two weeks, the service will let retailers take credit cards by using smartphone software and the camera on the back, which is a much better implementation because it means the point of sale can be anywhere. One very cool element of the service is the way it detects credit cards. Using a “complicated” analysis technology, the phone can detect the material it is scanning. So if you used a high-resolution color photo of a credit card, Jumio will not take it. The card must be plastic to work. Jumio’s biggest competition will undoubtedly be Square, the Jack Dorsey-led mobile payments startup that’s growing rapidly. Square uses a physical dongle that plugs into the smartphone’s headphone jack to let retailers take credit cards. Square recently raised $100 million from an all-star list of investors, so Jumio might want to get hopping. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 05:11 PM PDT
 Playforge made enough money from a single iPhone game, Zombie Farm, to support a 25-person company. Now the developer has launched its next game, Zombie Life, and it has another hit on its hands. Call it the domestication of the zombie, a big trend in pop culture. Zombie games are a dime a dozen these days. But Playforge struck a chord when it launched Zombie Farm with cute zombies about 18 months ago. Since that time, the game has consistently stayed on the top free app charts and generated more than 20 million downloads. That’s a pretty big hit, allowing the company to generate revenues from sales of virtual goods as well as ad revenues.Vince McDonnell, chief executive of Playforge in San Mateo, Calif., said in an interview that the first game was a hit because it resonated with people who were accustomed to zombies as scary characters. As with the PopCap game Plants vs Zombies, turning the zombies into cute and lovable characters was a change of pace. Sometimes that kind of novelty is all it takes to create a big hit. “We’re humanizing the zombies,” McDonnell said. Playforge took those cute characters and mashed it up with a farm game, sort of like Zynga’s FarmVille. Likewise, Zombie Life is a simulation of life, akin to EA’s The Sims game series. The new game was released late Thursday night and has been climbing the charts of the top free games, hitting as low as No. 15 on the top list. The company cross-promoted the game with its Zombie Farm fans, and it advertised the title as well. In the game, you play the role of a young zombie challenged to live life in the real world. The zombies have to put on make-up in order to escape detection from humans in the game world, as the humans freak out when they recognize zombies. McDonnell said the revenues from the first game were enough to build a team of 25 developers. The company plans to hire 10 more by the end of the year. The company’s focus is on making fun games that can be understood by all ages, McDonnell said. So there are no gory scenes or zombie guts that would be too much for little kids to handle. In the Zombie Life game, players have to stay “fresh” by putting on deodorant. The zombies can hang out, bite people, and get a promotion. Zombies have to get real-world jobs, work hard and climb the corporate ladder. Playforge was founded in 2009. Rivals include PopCap Games (now owned by Electronic Arts) and a host of other mobile game companies. McDonnell said the company recently released an Android version of Zombie Farm, but it will focus mostly on iPhone games. Another game is in the works and will come out before year end. With a bigger team, McDonnell said, “We can start pumping out the games.” Filed under: games, mobile         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 05:09 PM PDT
 Owners of streaming video service Hulu have terminated their plans to sell the company, Hulu announced today.The company issued the following joint statement on its website from News Corporation, Providence Equity Partners, The Walt Disney Company and Hulu’s senior management team: "Since Hulu holds a unique and compelling strategic value to each of its owners, we have terminated the sale process and look forward to working together to continue mapping out its path to even greater success. Our focus now rests solely on ensuring that our efforts as owners contribute in a meaningful way to the exciting future that lies ahead for Hulu."The service, which provides ad-supported premium TV and film content to users, was first put up for sale in June. At that time, it was thought that its owners would rather sell the service than continue to butt heads over Hulu's future business strategy. VentureBeat previously reported that the Hulu auction might not move forward because the bidding offers from potential buyers weren’t high enough. The initial set of bids by companies like Google and Dish Network fell short of the Hulu owners’ expectations, which reportedly ranged from about $2 billion to $4 billion. Filed under: deals, media, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 05:00 PM PDT
 Justin.tv announced today that it has secured an exclusive distribution deal with the electronic sports league, ESL, to broadcast electronic sports tournaments on Twitch.tv.Any tournament run by ESL, including the upcoming Intel Extreme Masters tournaments, will be broadcast exclusively on Twitch.tv. That could bring a lot of potential visitors, since ESL is one of the oldest e-sports leagues in the world and has been running tournaments since the days of games like Counter Strike (which came out in 2003). The site has already picked up 80,000 concurrent viewers and expects to have around 100,000 concurrent active viewers on weekends with the new deal, Kan said. “I think it'll reach well over a million unique viewers across the entire weekend,” he said. “We've seen an enormous concurrent growth midweek, which tells us it'll be gigantic.” Electronic sports leagues, or e-sports, are already popular internationally — particularly in countries like South Korea, where players compete for tens of thousands of dollars in prize money in massive tournaments. The league has only grown slowly in the United States because it hasn't achieved the same level of visibility that professional gaming has internationally. But a number of companies, like Justin.tv and game developers, are doing their part to bring more attention to professional gaming. For example, Activision-Blizzard, the developer of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, cut a large chunk of content from that game and made it less graphically demanding to ensure that it would be a better vehicle for professional gamers. The company regularly holds massive tournaments at its annual conference in Anaheim, Calif. There is also a professional gaming league site called Major League Gaming that features clips from professional gaming matches and a forum where gamers can meet and schedule matches. Justin.tv launched Twitch.tv, a video streaming site branded for competitive gaming, at the Electronic Entertainment Expo video game trade show in early June. The site broadcasts live streams from professional gamers and tournaments in competitive gaming leagues called e-sports leagues, where players compete for tens of thousands of dollars in prizes and money. The site currently has around 10 million monthly unique visitors, Justin.tv president Justin Kan told VentureBeat. The company has also signed more than 500 competitive gamers into its revenue-sharing partner program. The program gives gamers that have generated a large number of followers on the site a way to make money off their video streams the same way popular YouTube publishers can make money with their videos. Those competitive gamers usually already have thousands of fans in the gaming community who closely follow their actions. Justin.tv also has partnerships with other electronic sports leagues like the Global Starcraft League and Major League Gaming. The company also signed an exclusive broadcasting deal with Team Dignitas, one of the top electronic sports teams in the world that spans several games — including Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty and World of Warcraft. Filed under: games         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 03:58 PM PDT
 This week, we had Meebo CTO and co-founder Sandy Jen come into the VentureBeat studio to talk about women and tech. We’ve featured a few strong and opinionated women CEOs and CTOs in our videos lately, because we think it’s important to show the female faces and voices in the tech industry. And in this interview, Jen said that’s one of the most important things for encouraging more female entrepreneurship. After we chatted about Jen’s background (not one but both parents were engineers) and the importance of diversity in startup teams, she went on to say that she and many women like her are hesitant to leave companies and step into co-founder roles simply because they don’t see many precedents for that kind of behavior. The young, male entrepreneur/hacker is pretty well glorified by our society, but what Jen wants to see is more visibility for the women who do so. While we talk a lot about the need for role models and tech education for young girls, not enough is said about the need to encourage grown women to pursue new goals in technology. This includes learning a programming language, starting a company and taking on leadership roles within the community. But as Jen noted in our talk, the biggest encouragement can simply be seeing someone like you doing something you’ve always wanted to do but never tried. We’re glad to be engineering a small part of that visibility here at VentureBeat, and we hope you find Jen’s words interesting and inspiring. Filed under: VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 03:52 PM PDT
 U.S. retail video game sales can’t seem to get out of their summer funk. In September, the trend continued as overall retail game sales fell 6 percent from a year ago, according to market researcher NPD Group.That comes after a 23 percent drop in August, a 26 percent drop in July and a 10 percent drop in June, NPD reported. The month was lower than a year ago even though big titles such as Madden NFL, Resistance 3, and Gears of War 3 came out during the month. Of course, the numbers are only retail sales and don’t count other digital sales. Those other sales – including used games, rentals, online games, mobile games and social games — show constant growth. Total video game hardware, software, and accessory sales at retail stores were $1.16 billion million in September, down 6 percent from $1.23 billion a year ago. Overall console video game sales (excluding PC games) were $1.13 billion, down 4 percent from $1.18 billion a year ago. Game hardware sales were $349 million, down 9 percent from $382.9 million a year ago. While that is weak, hardware sales were up from August levels of $249.4 million. Game software sales were $630.2 million, up 3 percent from $612.1 million a year ago. That was much better than game sales during August. Accessory sales, which in earlier months this year were up thanks to strong sales of Microsoft's Kinect motion-sensing system, were $154.8 million, down 14 percent $180.8 million a year ago. If you throw in the sales of PC, console and portable games, the total is $662.1 million, down 1 percent from $653.2 million a year ago. That still means PC sales have been weak. Last year saw continuing strong sales of RockStar Games' Red Dead Redemption, while this year RockStar (which is owned by Take-Two Interactive) released the highly acclaimed LA Noire detective game in May and it didn’t sell so well. The bright spots of the month were some of the big new releases. Madden NFL 12 from Electronic Arts came in at No. 1. The cross-platform title started selling Aug. 30, later than usual, and it eclipsed the No. 2 game, Gears of War 3, which debuted Sept. 20 and was available only on the Xbox 360. The third top-selling game was Dead Island from Square Enix. That was followed by FIFA Soccer 12 from EA, NHL 12 from EA, Deus Ex Human Revolution from Square Enix, Resistance 3 from Sony, Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars from LucasArts, Call of Duty Black Ops from Activision Blizzard, and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine from THQ. In its own announcement, Nintendo said its DS handheld has now sold more than 50 million units in the U.S. since 2004, according to NPD. The company also said it sold more than 260,000 Nintendo 3DS portable gaming units, up 10 percent from the previous month. Nintendo has now sold more than 450,000 units since it cut the price on the 3DS on Aug. 12. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D has sold more than 500,000 units to date. Nintendo sold more than 647,000 hardware units in September, including 240,000 Wii systems and 145,000 other units of the DS family. To date, Nintendo has sold 273 million units for the Nintendo DS family. Microsoft said its Kinect platform now has 75 titles supporting it as an accessory for the Xbox 360 game console. That’s four times more than last holiday season when it launched. Microsoft sold 438,000 Xbox 360 consoles, coming it at No. 1 among the next-generation consoles. That was 42 percent of the overall console market in the U.S. Microsoft said it was the seventh consecutive month with more than 40 percent of the console market. Total U.S. retail spending on the Xbox 360 hardware, software and accesssories reached $534 million. Gears of War 3 has now sold more than 3 million copies worldwide. Overall sales for Gears of War are now above $1 billion. Sony said its software sales grew 52 percent from a year ago and hardware sales grew 20 percent. Filed under: VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 03:23 PM PDT
 “Sorry we ripped you off. Your best bet is to go to Groupon and get your money back. We’re too chicken shit to answer the phone, so you got this message anyway. Sorry for your problems. Better luck next time.”That’s the actual voicemail that greets potential customers looking to make an appointment at Viper Auto Detailing in Eugene, Ore., which ran Groupon and LivingSocial offers in June. (The audio of the message is even more galling in its flip tone. You can listen to it here.) According to statistics available on Groupon’s site, 861 Groupons for Viper Auto Detailing totaling $18,644 were sold in Eugene. The business appears to be shut down, and Groupon and LivingSocial are giving refunds to customers who purchased the offer. This is one of dozens of stories I’ve heard of merchants closing down shortly after running a daily deal. To date, consumers have been offered Groupon credit or full refunds by Groupon when a merchant goes under or refuses to honor a Groupon. LivingSocial also gave refunds, as well as an additional $5 credit. Full refunds are great for consumers, but not for daily deals companies (or their investors). The reasons a merchant closes down after a daily deal are varied and it can’t always be determined, even after the fact. Among the possible reasons:
If I could rate NO STARS I would! I made an appointment. Drove clear across town. My husband drove clear across town so he could pick me up. I missed work time. THEY WERE GONE. I was told they had been missing appointments all WEEK. DON’T do it people!Betty Barton, another Groupon customer, tried to redeem her deal by making an appointment through Viper’s Web site. She didn’t receive the promised confirmation. “I decided to go by VAD's physical address when I was out that day and discovered they have closed up shop and vacated the premises with no forwarding address,” Barton said. “I inquired at a neighboring business and the gentleman there had no idea where VAD had moved to, or if they were still in business.” Viper had also run a deal on LivingSocial. Barton bought that one, too. “I can imagine with the deals they were offering through Groupon, they were blindsided with more business than they could handle.” Both Groupon and LivingSocial quickly refunded Barton’s money. Living Social’s Andrew Weinstein told me, “We are refunding all of the customers who purchased the deal and giving them $5 in additional deal bucks for any inconvenience associated with the cancellation. We proactively reach out and offer refunds in the rare cases when something like this happens.” Groupon is also proactive about notifying consumers when a business fails or otherwise refuses to honor a Groupon. While researching this story, I received a notification that a business I purchased a Groupon for had a change in management and was no longer offering the Groupon. (My money was quickly refunded.) Although that is great news for consumers, it is a worry for investors.  Rocky Agrawal is an analyst focused on the intersection of local, social and mobile. He is a principal analyst at reDesign mobile. Previously, he launched local and mobile products for Microsoft and AOL. He blogs at http://blog.agrawals.org and tweets at @rakeshlobster.Filed under: social, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 03:01 PM PDT
 Storied venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and his firm, Khosla Ventures, have raised a $1.05 billion fund.Khosla said he will invest half of the new fund into clean technology companies, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. The firm will continue to make early-stage investments in technology companies like group-texting service GroupMe. The new fund puts Khosla Ventures among the top five firms in terms of the amount of money venture capitalists have raised this year. Clean technology investing has hit a few hiccups lately, with investments in cleantech companies slowing in the second quarter this year. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel said clean technology was a "disaster" on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 earlier this year. The amount of money invested in clean technology projects fell 10 percent to $1.83 billion compared to $2.03 billion in the second quarter of 2010. Algae-based biofuel maker Solazyme raised $227 million from its initial public offering in June, 2011, while biofuel maker KiOR raised $150 million in its initial public offering in May, 2011. Smart grid developer Silver Spring Networks only plans to raise $150 million in its upcoming initial public offering. Those amounts are low compared to business social network LinkedIn, which raised more than $350 million without flinching. That company also picked up a market cap of nearly $10 billion before the sell-off wiped out more than $3 billion in value. Two other Web 2.0 companies, Groupon and Zynga, already filed to go public. Groupon wants to raise up to $750 million, while Zynga wants to raise up to $1 billion. When Khosla left storied venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2004 to invest in clean technology startups, he swung for the fences. Khosla was known for taking a "portfolio" approach to cleantech investing by dropping money in just about every potential part of the budding sector, from biofuels to smart grid companies. His firm has also invested in some information tech companies like group texting service GroupMe. Khosla himself is an investor in payments service Square, and Khosla Ventures has a partnership with the Designer Fund. But those investments were focused on the team — not the product and not for the sake of making a deal, Khosla said. [Photo credit: Matthew Lynley] Filed under: green         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 02:57 PM PDT
 Google and Samsung announced they will hold their previously canceled mobile event in Hong Kong on October 18th.The duo are expected to unveil Ice Cream Sandwich, Google’s latest iteration of its Android operating system, as well as the first smartphone that will run it, Samsung’s Nexus Prime. Last week, Google essentially confirmed the OS launch by creating a livestream placeholder for it on its “androiddevelopers” YouTube Channel. Originally, the event was scheduled for October 11th at CTIA in San Diego. However, two days after the passing of Steve Jobs, the companies told VentureBeat “Under the current circumstances, both parties have agreed that this is not the appropriate time for the announcement of a new product.” Even with the move, the companies haven’t shied away from creating some buzz around the event. In addition to the livestream placeholder on YouTube, Samsung released a promotional video of what could be the Nexus Prime, which declared, “Something big is coming.” Rumored specs for the phone were also floating around online, indicting a 4.65-inch display with curved glass, a 1.2-gigahertz dual core processor and LTE 4G connectivity through Verizon. The event will take place in Hong Kong, and a livestream of it can be found at youtube.com/android. Filed under: mobile         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 02:39 PM PDT
 Social gaming giant Zynga has decided to list its shares on the tech-heavy NASDAQ stock exchange, according to a recent filing with the securities and exchange commission.The NYSE has dueled with the NASDAQ stock market to attract high-profile tech IPOs, but it's traditionally been a losing battle as the NASDAQ stock market regularly plays host to the largest tech companies in the world like Google and Apple. Zynga is easily the largest IPO planned this year, with the company already profitable. But recent high-profile tech IPOs indicate that the NYSE is getting a foothold with tech companies. The NYSE nabbed Chinese social networking site Renren last month. Pandora, an online radio station and another high-profile tech IPO this year, also said it would list its shares on the NYSE. Business social network LinkedIn also listed on the NYSE and had one of the most successful IPOs this year so far. Zynga’s filing also added new information that shows its top three games on Facebook have traditionally accounted for a majority of its revenue. The top three existing games for the company accounted for 93 percent, 83 percent, 78 percent and 59 percent of the company’s online game revenue in 2008, 2009, 2010 and for the six months ended June 30, 2011, respectively. Right now that’s FarmVille, CityVille and FrontierVille, which bring in $76.6 million, $46.6 million and $70.5 million respectively. Zynga has built its social games business on Facebook, and it currently has more than 250 million monthly active users, according to AppData. The company on Tuesday unveiled 10 new games as well as “Zynga Direct,” an initiative that includes distribution methods for its games outside of Facebook. Project Z, the first part of that initiative, is a separate website that uses Facebook connect to send players directly to Zynga games without having to go through Facebook’s main website. Filed under: games         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 02:09 PM PDT
 Alternative search engine Duck Duck Go closed its first round of funding led by Union Square Ventures, the company’s founder Gabriel Weinberg announced today. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.Duck Duck Go, which has a tiny percentage of the search engine market share in comparison to Google, doesn’t primarily base its results on algorithms. It also differs from other big search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo) by not tracking its visitors the way that Google does. Since launching in 2008, Weinberg has resisted the urge to take on outside investment until there was a compelling reason to do so. “So why now? At the end of last year I noticed that the search engine started to really click with a greater percentage of people in a way that it hadn’t before,” Weinberg said, noting the company’s zero-click info policy, privacy policy and goodies (a page of useful unit conversion and math tools). Weinberg says the startup plans to use the money to hire new employees and expand its infrastructure. Despite Duck Duck Go’s tiny market share of the overall search engine market, Union Square Venture’s Brad Burnham has a positive outlook for the startup. In a blog post about the investment deal, he writes: “Our confidence in Gabriel and DuckDuckGo is informed by having watched the decline of Microsoft’s hegemony in the 90′s. Two things happened that fundamentally changed the game: a shift in venue and a shift in business model. The venue moved from the desktop to the web and the business model shifted from packaged software to open source. It turned out that the way to compete with Microsoft was to not to compete, at least not directly. The way to compete with Microsoft was to change the basis of competition. We invested in DuckDuckGo because we became convinced that it was not only possible to change the basis of competition in search, it was time to do it.”The Paoli, Penn.-based startup will add Burnham to its board of directors. The new funding round also includes investments from Scott Banister, Jim Young, Jeff Miller, Joshua Schachter, Kal Vapuri, Joshua Stylman and Peter Hershberg. Filed under: deals, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 02:08 PM PDT
 Part of Google’s revenue growth can be attributed to the company finally completing its acquisition of flight search data provider ITA.“It really is the year-over-year impact of ITA,” Google’s Nikesh Arora, Google’s senior vice president and chief business officer, said today on the company third quarter earnings call. Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of its AdSense partners, grew 28 percent over the third quarter last year. The average cost-per-click rose around 5 percent over the third quarter of 2010. Google announced its plans to acquire ITA in July, 2010. At the time it announced the deal, Google stated that it wanted to "build new flight search tools" using ITA's data while continuing to serve ITA's existing customers. A number of companies, including travel search company Expedia and Microsoft, which runs search rival Bing, launched the Fair Search Coalition to try to stop the acquisition. But not all travel companies have voiced concerns over the deal. Priceline.com, a major competitor to Expedia, and some others support the deal. Google's acquisition of ITA closed in April after receiving approval from the U.S. Department of Justice. Travel is a huge part of e-commerce — worth around $80 billion a year. ITA's software handles around 65 percent of all e-commerce flight bookings, and travel advertising accounted for about 6 percent of all online advertising revenue. Filed under: mobile         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 01:47 PM PDT
 The total number of Android devices activated worldwide has now reached 190 million, Google CEO Larry Page said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call today.Additionally, the company announced a $2.5 billion mobile revenue run rate — Google’s expected mobile revenue over the next year based on its performance this quarter — up from $1 billion last year. Google pointed to mobile search as its big mobile moneymaker. “Mobile is becoming a must-have,” Google sales head Nikesh Arora said during the call. Even though Google doesn’t make any money when Android manufacturers use its software in their phones, the company is able to reap the advertising benefits of having hundreds of millions of users on its own platform. Page said the company felt comfortable divulging a mobile revenue run rate because there is a confluence of many things growing in mobile. “We thought it was appropriate to round it [mobile revenue] up with a snapshot of where we stand,” he said. The company said in July that it was activating 550,000 Android devices daily. At this point, I would imagine that number is closer to 600,000. Page described Google’s third-quarter earnings as “gangbusters.” The company announced $9.7 billion in revenue and $2.7 billion in profit, well beyond Wall Street expectations. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 01:08 PM PDT
 Search giant Google brought in $9.72 billion in the third quarter this year — or $7.5 billion minus traffic acquisition costs. That amount crushed consensus Wall Street analyst estimates of $7.23 billion, and is a 33 percent increase from the same quarter one year ago.Google brought in $2.73 billion in income off that revenue in the third quarter this year, up from $2.17 billion in net income the same quarter a year earlier. Google’s traffic acquisition costs were $2.21 billion in the third quarter of 2011, compared to $1.81 billion in the third quarter of 2010. The search giant’s newest social network, Google+, now has more than 40 million users, Google chief executive Larry Page said. Google recently purchased Motorola Mobility, which makes phones sporting Google's Android mobile operating system, for $12.5 billion. That acquisition, which regulators have not yet approved, also carries with it a treasure trove of mobile phone patents. Former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said Google did not acquire Motorola Mobility for the patents, but rather for the team, at Salesforce.com’s annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco in August. "We actually believe the Motorola team has amazing products," he said. "We like having at least one area where we can do integrated hardware." Google’s share of overall online ad spending is expected to grow to 40.8 percent this year, up from 38.5 percent in 2010 and 34.9 percent in 2009, according to estimates from market research firm eMarketer. Facebook’s share of the overall US online ad market will reach 6.4 percent in 2011, up from 4.6 percent in 2010. Yahoo’s share of overall US online ad revenues will decline to an 11 percent share this year, down from 13.3 percent in 2010. Google’s share of overall U.S. search ad revenues will grow to 75.9 percent this year, up from a 73.6 percent share in 2010 and a 69.8 percent share in 2009, according to eMarketer. That’s despite a large charge from Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine. Microsoft’s share of overall US search ad revenues is expected to grow to 8 percent this year, when the company will bring in an estimated $1.15 billion in net US search ad revenues, up 38.9 percent from $828 million and a 6.9 percent share of the total market in 2010. Google will pull most of its new ad share from Yahoo, whose share will drop to 7.9 percent this year from 10.7 percent in 2010. Google now has 31,353 full-time employees as of the end of the company’s most recent operating quarter, up from 28,768 employees at the end of the second quarter. Filed under: media, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 12:45 PM PDT
 It looks like the iPhone 4S will be Apple’s best-selling iPhone yet. Pre-orders for the entry-level $199 iPhone 4S have already sold out on U.S. carrier websites — this after Apple received over 3 million pre-orders over the last weekend.But Apple isn’t sitting idly by — the company has apparently upped its iPhone 4S order with equipment manufacturer Pegatron from 10 million units to 15 million, the Taiwanese news site Digitimes reports. Given the strong pre-order numbers, Apple could sell more than 25 million iPhones this quarter (including older models), according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. At the moment, Verizon and Sprint’s sites show no stock available for the 16-gigabyte iPhone 4S. AT&T’s website now sh0ws a potential delivery time of over three weeks for that model. The larger 32GB and 64GB iPhone 4S models are all still available for pre-order. If you had your heart set on the 16GB iPhone 4S, your only recourse is to wait in line at a retail store and hope you can snag one before they sell out. Pegatron has reportedly landed about 15 percent of Apple's total iPhone 5 orders, but its stock may not start shipping until next year, supply chain sources have said. Meanwhile, Foxconn, Apple’s dominant mobile device manufacturer, has been churning out iPhone 4S units for months now. Via Bloomberg Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 12:25 PM PDT
 Following last week’s big agreement to stream AMC’s acclaimed TV shows, Netflix has secured another TV deal, this one with CBS and Warner Bros. to stream previous seasons of CW shows such as The Vampire Diaries and Gossip Girl in the U.S.Netflix is in a precarious position at the moment, as it just canceled its controversial plans to form a separate DVD-by-mail company called Qwikster, keeping Netflix.com for just streaming. Customers balked at needing two websites to do what they already could with one, so the company reversed its decision and will continue on as is. Netflix likely hopes these deals with the CW and AMC will help customers remember why they should continue to use the service. The CW agreement will allow Netflix to stream non-current seasons of CW shows through the 2014-15 season. The Vampire Diaries, One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl will be available starting Oct. 15. In January, Supernatural and the 90210 reboot will begin streaming. New shows like The Secret Circle, Ringer and Hart of Dixie will be available on Netflix in fall, 2012. While the addition of teen-focused shows may not be a huge draw to the average Netflix user, it’s an important get for the service. One of the biggest challenges to Netflix’s business model is continuing to convince major content providers to stream shows online. Premium cable channel Starz chose not to renew its agreement with Netflix back in early September, which was a major blow because the Starz Play channel provided thousands of streaming movies and some Starz-produced TV shows. The only problem for Netflix is that the deal doesn’t allow it to stream shows that have aired the current season. Streaming video competitor Hulu Plus has many TV shows available the day after they air, making it more valuable than only having access to past seasons. What do you think about Netflix’s agreement to stream CW shows? Will you watch? Filed under: deals, media         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 12:07 PM PDT
 This post is sponsored by Dealmaker Media. With the consumerization of IT and the success of Twitter, Facebook and other social platforms, running a business and engaging with customers has become easier and less costly. However, most business owners still don’t know how to maximize the potential of the cloud. The launch of Google and Intuit’s marketplaces, along with a host of other major players following suit, has opened up multiple new channels for cloud startups to reach these business owners. This year’s Under the Radar conference will focus on how industry leaders can leverage the innovation coming from the 29 presenting companies to build out new marketplaces for a competitive advantage and furthermore, create loyalty with the industry leaders customers. Under the Radar — taking place November 9-10 in Mountain View, CA — is Silicon Valley's most effective business development conference. While it is NOT a funding event, in the past three years alone, 67% of presenters have gone on to raise major funding and/or be acquired by companies such as Google, Yahoo!, Cisco, BT, Microsoft, Twitter, Fox Interactive, and others. It's inevitable with so many dealmakers in one room. Register here using the code "VBEAT" and receive $200 off your ticket. HOW UNDER THE RADAR WORKS: A handful of the industry's most compelling startups are selected to present to experts and technology executives who are specifically looking to partner with and acquire new technologies. For the sake of making it fun for all attendees and participants – it's rolled out "American Idol" style. See the presenting companies and judges below. Alumni include LinkedIn, Box.net, Wufoo, Tungle, and hundreds more. http://www.undertheradarblog.com/ Presenting startups include: BetterWorks, BlackLocus, Chatterfly, Expensify, Ginzametrics, GoInstant, GoldRun, Grovo Learning, Movable Ink, myERP, Ordoro, Outright, RewardMe, Rypple, Salespod, Seamless Receipts, Slice, Sprout Social, SteelHouse, Stitch Labs, Tagtile, The Resumator, ThinkNear, ToutApp, TribeHR, uberVU, Vend, VidYard, and Wave Accounting. Judges include: David Berlind, UBM TechWeb Jason Collins, Alcatel-Lucent Liz Gannes, All Things D Dave Gilbertson, Constant Contact Guido Haarmans, NetSuite Russell Hamilton, Visa Anton Hanebrink, Intuit Margita Labhard, Best Buy Christine Lagorio, Inc.com Vy Le, Rudys Barbershop Jay H. Lee, American Express Quinn Li, Qualcomm Ventures Will Lowry, AT&T Scott McMullan , Google Rafe Needleman, CNET Matt Rosoff, Business Insider Roy Rubin, Magento Mark Silva, Anthem Worldwide Richard Wilson, Automatic Data Processing Register here using the code "VBEAT" and receive $200 off your ticket. Filed under: VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 12:00 PM PDT
 OpenFeint, the mobile social network division of Japan’s Gree, is announcing a Game Channel today that will help users discover new game apps on Android mobile devices.Amid the ever-expanding sea of mobile games, it’s getting a lot harder to find the good ones. So discovery platforms are multiplying to give users better advice, social discovery, and more viral ways to find games. Previously, OpenFeint’s Game Channel was available only on iOS (Apple’s iPhone, iPod and iPad devices). Heyzap launched its own discovery-focused game check-in app earlier this year and updated the app yesterday with new platform features. Game Channel features Free Game of the Day, Featured Games, Premier Games, and Curated Game Lists. The channel also highlights games based on common themes, and it will include promotional opportunities for free-to-play game makers. "We learned a lot about discovery on Android with our Spotlight app and with Game Channel on iOS," said Eros Resmini, senior vice president of marketing and developer relations. OpenFeint’s software development kit is used in 7,000 games that reach 128 million users. Its rival, DeNA/Ngmoco, is reportedly struggling with the beta test of its Mobage mobile social network on Android, although Ngmoco says that the beta test results are still preliminary. Gree bought OpenFeint for $104 million earlier this year. OpenFeint founder Jason Citron recently left and was replaced by the head of Gree International, Naoki Aoyagi. Filed under: games, mobile         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 13 Oct 2011 11:57 AM PDT
 Apple representatives have been reportedly taking meetings around Hollywood to put the finishing touches on a new cloud-based movie service.According to sources for the Los Angeles Times, movie studios and Apple reps are close to sealing deals that will let consumers buy movies on iTunes and access them on any Apple device. The Times points out that cloud storage could provide consumers with an easier option than managing and storing digital copies of movies at home or on their own devices, which could help encourage more cloud-based movie purchases. In fact, we’ve been saying for a couple years now that Apple needs a cloud-based service for films and television shows. Former VentureBeat writer MG Siegler points out in the aforelinked post that one season of one TV show took up around 30GB of space and that he had to buy a terabyte of external storage just to keep up with his iTunes habit. The long-time-coming service is said to be launching as soon as late 2011 or early 2012. This offering from Apple competes with Ultraviolet, an alliance of tech companies and major motion picture studios that aims to bring more entertainment properties to the cloud. For purchased Ultraviolet DVDs and Blu-ray discs, buyers will be able to use the hard-copy discs and will also have access to cloud-based copies of the same movies. The cloud-based versions can be viewed from all manner of large- and small-screen gadgets, including smartphones, tablets and web-connected TVs. Ultraviolet will be launching its digital-only purchases starting in 2012. Of course, both of these offerings are competing with the popular and cheap streaming options from companies such as Hulu, Blockbuster and Netflix. Netflix is reporting around 24 million subscribers in Q3 2011 and $789 million in revenue during the second quarter of this year. Hulu, a strong contender in content, is still relatively small in the paying subscribers category, with just more than one million users for Hulu Plus, its premium streaming service. Filed under: cloud, media, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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