VentureBeat

Go Daddy loses over 37,000 domains due to SOPA stance
Bare bones $25 ‘Raspberry’ computer should be available in January
2011 was a great year for gamers
Why women have a hard time raising money for startups, part 2 (video)

Go Daddy loses over 37,000 domains due to SOPA stance

Posted: 24 Dec 2011 05:36 PM PST

Hosting and domain registrar company Go Daddy has lost more than 37,000 domains in the past two days due to the company’s wishy-washy stance on the Stop Online Piracy Act.

The fleeing domains comes as a result of the intense backlash from customers and Internet critics after Go Daddy appeared on an official list of companies supporting SOPA. The internet responded by staging a wide-spread boycott where people would switch their domains to another registrar, which Go Daddy initially dismissed as having little impact on their business. Now it seems that assessment wasn’t entirely accurate.

Although Go Daddy reversed their stance on SOPA, it wasn’t before 37,000 domains were transfer off of its service, according to information reported by The Domains. The report indicates that over 15,000 domains were transferred off Thursday and another 21,054 domains on Friday. If you factor in the $6.99 to $10.99 fees associated with each of those domain registrations, Go Daddy is losing a significant amount of money.

Many on community link sharing site Reddit, which is where the boycotts were first organized, are skeptical that Go Daddy is really against SOPA. Citing reports from TechCrunch and Gizmodo, Reddit users point out that Go Daddy CEO Warren Adelman is neither for or against SOPA — a convenient position to take considering his company’s customer base is fleeing. While Adelman admits the bill needs work, he said the company isn’t beyond throwing support to another SOPA-like piece of legislation in the future.

For anyone who's still in the dark about the proposed legislation, SOPA gives both the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against websites associated with infringing, pirating and/or counterfeiting intellectual property. The implication of having the act pass is that it could drastically change the way the Internet operates. For more information about the bill, check out this nifty infographic about what SOPA means for business and innovation.

[Via TheNextWeb]

Filed under: media, VentureBeat

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Bare bones $25 ‘Raspberry’ computer should be available in January

Posted: 24 Dec 2011 02:20 PM PST

You might want to hold back on that $600 Mac Mini purchase for just a little bit longer. The Raspberry Pi, the little $25 computer that can run Quake 3 Arena and play HD videos, is scheduled to go into volume production in January. If you want to splurge, you can also pay a $10 premium for the fancy Model B that comes with an ethernet port and 256 – instead of 128 – MByte RAM.

In a new blog post, the developers report that the first finished circuit boards have arrived. “They're undergoing electrical testing alongside hardware and software testing at the moment, and if all goes well, the Raspberry Pi you'll be buying in January (or by auction later this month if they all work as they should) will be exactly like one of these.”, says Raspberry Pi blog editor Liz Upton.

The Raspberry Pi has grown in size since the last time we reported on it. An early prototype resembled a USB flash drive, but the new board is about as wide as two credit cards side by side. The Linux operating system runs from a SD card The computer also has a USB-out port that lets owners plug in a keyboard, and an HDMI-out port that can connect to an HDMI-enabled television or monitor.

The $25 computer looks as bare bones as it gets, but its ARM11 CPU operating at 700 MHz seems quite capable of playing 1080p HD video.

The Raspberry Pi is the brainchild of engineer Eben Upton and British programmer David Braben, who co-created the pioneering 3D open-world game Elite. Their goal is to manufacture a computer that is so inexpensive that every student can be given one. Braben himself got started on computers as a student. His Elite game was created on Acorn’s BBC Micro, the most common computer at British schools in the mid-1980s. Braben is also the founder of Frontier Developments, the studio that created the virtual animal simulation Kinectimals for Microsoft.

Filed under: VentureBeat

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2011 was a great year for gamers

Posted: 24 Dec 2011 02:19 PM PST

Gamers had plenty of great titles to play this year. As a quick look at Metacritic's 2011 results will show. The website collects review scores from across the internet and averages out a total score, making for a good way to see what the general consensus is on any given title. In other words, a game needs to receive consistently high scores to maintain a top spot.

This year's top game? Batman: Arkham City, which pulled in an average score of 96 out of 100 based on the scores of 41 critics. Just behind it (by mere decimal points) was The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which GamesBeat's Sebastian Haley can't seem to get enough of.

With all the major releases of 2011 already available, there are 23 console games that Metacritic considers "Great." That is games with an average score of 90 or higher, making it the highest total in the last five years, according to the website. If you factor PC games and handhelds into the mix (though they note specifically that this does not include iOS games) there are 32 games ranked at 90 or higher. Many more than last year's total of 22 games.

Image: Metacritic

Meanwhile, bad games were far less abundant than the good ones, according to scores. For instance, only eight percent of the games released on PlayStation 3 in 2011 scored 49 or lower.

That means one of two things: 1) reviewers are becoming real wimps, or 2) There are a lot of great games out there. With games like Portal 2, Uncharted 3, Gears of War 3 and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, we're willing to bet it's choice number two.

[Via Metacritic]

Filed under: games

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Why women have a hard time raising money for startups, part 2 (video)

Posted: 24 Dec 2011 12:32 PM PST

Every now and then, we hear from a female startup founder who says she's having a hard time raising money. She can't quite figure out if it's her idea or her slide deck or — and no one wants to think this — if it's simply the fact that she's a woman pitching an idea to a roomful of male investors.

We recently invited Comcast Ventures‘ Amy Banse into the VentureBeat studio to discuss the phenomenon of subtle sexism in the world of venture capital. After all, who better to ask for advice about female founders fundraising than a female VC?

Banse also talks about trends in startups — especially technology-focused startups — and gender. We got to discuss the controversial topic of women doing startups in “girly” categories such as beauty sites or dating sites and whether that’s reinforcing negative norms about what women can and cannot do or understand.

Stay tuned for all nine minutes of a fascinating conversation with a wildly intelligent, experienced lady… and a cornball reporter, too.

Filed under: Entrepreneur Corner, VentureBeat, video