VentureBeat |
- MOG and Samsung team up for streaming on smart TVs and Blu-ray players
- Apple sends out invites for October 4 iPhone 5 event
- Peak Games raises $11.5M for social gaming deals
- Yammer raises $17M from former Facebook VP to improve enterprise social networking
- Over one-third of Android phones sport 4G
- Hulu’s highest bidders? Google and Dish Network
- Raptr unveils new data about Zynga’s social gamers
- How many outsiders does your web business rely on?
- Happy Cloud teams up with AMD for connected TV games
- Disney launches Appmates mobile app toys for the iPad (video)
- Tiny Speck launches zany social game Glitch with giant imagination
- Miso transforms Dexter’s season premiere into a ‘Pop-Up Video’ experience
- Chomp gets a stunning iPhone redesign to help you find more apps
- The $800M question: What’s the difference between trademark and copyright?
- Reppler has a new way to rate your social network image
- CareCloud raises $20M+ to help doctors run their business in the cloud
- A Bit Lucky debuts its Lucky Space social game on Facebook
- Facebook may launch iPad and HTML5 iPhone apps at Apple’s Oct. 4th event
- Mindbloom Life game teaches you how to live better
- Facebook responds to allegations of privacy violations via cookie tracking
- Whopping Google+ traffic growth: 1269% in a week, hits 50M members
- Amazon may debut its ‘Kindle Fire’ tablet Wednesday
- Workout-tracking app Endomondo hits 5 million downloads, gets $2.3M
- Facebook extends tentacles into D.C., forms political action committee
- Samsung introduces Galaxy Tab 8.9, upgraded Galaxy Players
- Stypi founders have a plan to reinvent Google Wave (video)
- Facebook iPad app may never get released despite being complete
- iPhone 5′s killer feature: powerful Assistant voice commands
- Seamless acquires MenuPages to further its online food ordering prowess
- Under pressure, Blizzard Entertainment may unveil Titan in October
| MOG and Samsung team up for streaming on smart TVs and Blu-ray players Posted: 27 Sep 2011 08:31 AM PDT
The move allows MOG to spread its brand further, following rival streaming service Pandora in moving outside of PCs and mobile phones to find new customers. Samsung’s 2010 and 2011 Smart TVs or Blu-ray players will work with the service. Samsung Smart TVs and Blu-ray players offer downloadable apps that add more content and abilities to those connected devices. MOG’s app will be placed in the What’s New and Lifestyle sections of the application store as a free download, but you’ll have to pay for the service to start playing your favorite tunes. Access to MOG using Samsung Smart TVs and Blu-ray players or its desktop app costs $4.99 a month. If you pay $9.99 a month, you can use the service via the iPhone and Android platforms as well. MOG is one of the best streaming music services available today and competes with the likes of Spotify and Rdio for the crown of the best U.S. music service. MOG's biggest asset is that it has best-sounding catalog, with music streaming at an enviable 320 kbps. What do you think of MOG? Filed under: media        
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| Apple sends out invites for October 4 iPhone 5 event Posted: 27 Sep 2011 08:19 AM PDT
Surprisingly, Apple is pretty straightforward in the invite regarding what the event is about: “Let’s talk iPhone.” Typically, Apple tends to be more coy about its events, even when it’s plainly obvious what they will be about. The invite confirms that new Apple CEO Tim Cook will be leading the event, which will begin at 10am PDT. All Things Digital reported last week that Apple was gearing up for an October 4 iPhone 5 event and that Cook would be hosting. At this point, the iPhone 5 is expected to include a larger screen of around four inches, a dual-core A5 chip, and as we reported yesterday, a powerful virtual assistant. As for other devices, Ars Technica notes that Apple may introduce a white iPod Touch. Previous rumors also pointed to Apple releasing a low-cost — and potentially free with contract — iPhone 4 that will be married to its iCloud service. As I wrote last week, it's clear why the iPhone 5 is a big deal, but the event will also mark the first major product announcement for new CEO Cook. While Cook's business savvy has been proven time and again, he will have to prove with his iPhone 5 presentation that he can also fill Steve Jobs' role as an Apple product evangelist. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Peak Games raises $11.5M for social gaming deals Posted: 27 Sep 2011 08:00 AM PDT
The Istanbul-based company has also acquired two small game studios in Turkey and now ranks among the top social gaming companies on Facebook, according to AppData. The company’s growth reflects the rapid growth of Facebook and social gaming in markets such as Turkey, the Middle East, North Africa, South America, and Mexico. Peak Games is expanding by acquiring game studios Umaykut and Erlikhan, which the company described as “talent acquisitions.” It is also going to distribute RockYou’s social games in the Middle East and translate its titles into local languages. To date, the company’s top internally produced games are TrendKiz and Okey. On Facebook alone, Peak Games has 2.4 million daily active users and 8.9 million monthly active users. Overall, the company says it has 4 million daily active users and 16 million monthly active users, if you count its worldwide presence on social networks. That last number is up 60 percent since May. “Our goal is to be the dominant provider of games for emerging markets,” said Rina Onur, chief strategy officer at Peak, in an interview. From Dec. 2010 through June 2011, revenues grew 5,980 percent. During that same time, daily active users and monthly active users tripled. The average session for its games is three hours per user. The company’s most popular game, Okey, based on an old board game, has been played 1.4 billion times to date and has seen 18 million installs. The funding came from Earlybird Venture Capital, Hummingbird Ventures and an unnamed strategic investor. That brings the total amount raised to date to $19 million. Sidar Sahin, chief executive and founder, said the company knows how to get users in specific regions and how to monetize them.
Since Peak Games understands its local markets, it has created a good business localizing popular titles from other publishers. The growth of Facebook has fueled Peak Games’ business. Turkey is the fourth-largest Facebook market, with more than 30 million users, reaching about 87 percent of the local online population. Over the past six months, the number of users in Turkey has grown by 30 percent. It is forecast to hit 250 million users by 2015 in the Middle East region. “The growth has been huge in the last six months,” Onur said. “These regions are growing super fast and they are very hungry for games.”. Peak Games has offices in Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey; Amman, Jordan; Barcelona, Spain; Berlin, Germany; and San Francisco. Peak Games was founded in 2010 and has more than 90 employees. Onur said the company will be on mobile game platforms soon. Filed under: deals, games, social        
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| Yammer raises $17M from former Facebook VP to improve enterprise social networking Posted: 27 Sep 2011 07:40 AM PDT
Since its launch in 2008, Yammer has made incredible gains with enterprise users, with more than 3 million verified corporate users and more than 80 percent of companies on the Fortune 500 list using the network. It has attracted more than 100,000 businesses in 160 countries. The service tailors Facebook and Twitter-like communication strategies to give businesses activity feeds, private messaging, polls, Q&A and more. The new round was led by The Social+Capital Partnership, a new VC fund established by former Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya. The Social+Capital Partnership contributed $15 million, but current investors Charles River Ventures, Emergence Capital and U.S. Venture Partners also participated. Yammer last had a $25 million round last November, and its total funding now sits at $57 million. Yammer CEO David Sacks told Dow Jones he didn’t immediately need more funding because of the major round last year, but he couldn’t resist getting Palihapitiya involved. Palihapitiya has lots of lessons learned from Facebook that he may be able to transfer over to Yammer to make it an even better social networking tool. In the past few months, Yammer has made some big additions to its service that have attracted headlines and made the site even more competitive with Salesforce.com’s free Chatter service and Jive Software. The company unveiled embeddable activity feeds, a more powerful desktop application and an API that enables single-sign-on to third-party websites. Are you a fan of Yammer and its service? Filed under: enterprise, social        
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| Over one-third of Android phones sport 4G Posted: 27 Sep 2011 07:26 AM PDT
That’s an impressive figure, considering that 4G Android phones accounted for just 22.6 percent of all Android devices at the beginning of the year. The number of 4G Android phones has grown more than 50 percent in the last year, and it isn’t showing signs of slowing down anytime soon. Of course, it makes sense that Android would be spearheading 4G adoption, since no other major platform offers the faster cellular technology yet. Apple isn’t expected to include any form of 4G in the iPhone 5, and 4G Windows Phone devices are still on the horizon. For developers and users alike, Android’s dominance in 4G can only be a good thing. Eventually 4G networks will be as prominent in the US as current 3G networks, so the sooner 4G devices get into consumers’ hands, and the sooner developers start creating apps and services to take advantage of 4G, the better. According to Localytics, the HTC Thunderbolt on Verizon’s LTE 4G network is the most popular 4G phone in the country. Behind it is the Evo 4G on Sprint’s WiMax 4G network, and the Samsung Droid Charge on Verizon. Both T-Mobile and AT&T offer 4G networks using the HSPA+ standard, and AT&T just recently launched its LTE network in five cities. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Hulu’s highest bidders? Google and Dish Network Posted: 27 Sep 2011 07:07 AM PDT
The service, which provides ad-supported premium TV and film content to users, has been up for sale since June. Hulu’s owners — News Corp., Walt Disney, Comcast — would rather sell the service than continue to conflict over Hulu’s future business strategy. The initial set of bids, made last month, have not been disclosed, but they apparently fell short of Hulu’s expectations, which were about $2 billion without any other stipulations. VentureBeat previously reported that the Hulu auction might not move forward if the offers aren't high enough. However, two of the new bids are apparently being considered, according to the Business Insider report. Google has the highest bid at a reported $4 billion, but the deal has various stipulation attached to it, like more content for a longer period of time. It’s possible that deal also contains stipulations about Google’s use of Hulu content through its Google TV platform, which would really give Google’s TV aspirations a huge boost. Dish Networks’ bid of $1.9 billion is also getting serious consideration. That offer apparently has fewer (or no) stipulations. According to the report, Dish is willing to pay the price because it’s interested in the technology that powers Hulu. That technology would certainly be of value to Dish, which just started its own streaming video service that will indirectly compete with Netflix. Filed under: deals, media, VentureBeat        
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| Raptr unveils new data about Zynga’s social gamers Posted: 27 Sep 2011 07:00 AM PDT
The data reveals that Zynga’s user base of more than 265 million monthly active users are playing games almost as much as the top hardcore gaming franchises. The pie chart at the right shows that Call of Duty is the top franchise in share of time spent at 43 percent, followed by World of Warcraft at 17 percent and Halo at 14 percent. But Zynga’s Ville games (FarmVille, PetVille, YoVille, FrontierVille and CityVille) games have 13 percent of time spent on games, followed by core gaming franchises at 12 percent. That means that players are spending more games with Zynga’s Ville titles than they are with Assassin’s Creed, Gears of War, Mass Effect, and Grand Theft Auto.
Since the launch of YoVille in 2008, Zynga’s Ville games have almost doubled in average session time length. Average session length is usually around 5 minutes. In getting users to move from one Ville game to another, Zynga is doing great. Even though Zynga’s user size per game is at least five times bigger than hardcore games, it is still able to grab an equal proportion of users from game to game (see graph at right). In total online players since 2008, Zynga’s top titles racked up three times more hours than the rest of the top 10 combined. (This was measured before the resurgence of Electronic Arts with its Sims Social title). Zynga’s share of play time was 75 percent for the top ten social games since 2008, compared to 10 percent for EA PopCap, 5 percent for Digital Chocolate’s Millionaire City, 5 percent for Kabam’s Kingdoms of Camelot, 3 percent for Wooga’s Monster World, and 2 percent for Kixeye’s Backyard Monsters. Raptr also found that Zynga’s user base is loyal. It found that for its last four major games — FrontierVille, Treasure Isle, CityVille, and Empires & Allies), Zynga pulled 9o percent of the players from existing users. As for crossover between hardcore gamers and Zynga fans, about 12 to 20 percent of Zynga’s CityVille players have also played hardcore games such as StarCraft 2, Lord of the Rings Online, and Call of Duty Black Ops. The percentage of Xbox 360 players who have played a Zynga game increased to 30 percent in 2011, up 50 percent from a year before. As Zynga said in its SEC filing, the top 2 percent of loyal players are crucial to its success, as those players are “whales,” or the company’s biggest spenders. They play three times more than the average player. The top 2 percent play Zynga games for 120 minutes per day, compared to 40 minutes for an average player. That means that 5 million paying players are supporting Zynga’s gaming business. The report was based on data collected from Raptr’s player base and it looked at data from Raptr’s launch until August 2011. Filed under: games, social        
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| How many outsiders does your web business rely on? Posted: 27 Sep 2011 07:00 AM PDT
We are no longer isolated. Who could have imagined a tiny country like Greece could threaten the world's economy? A similar interdependence holds true for today’s websites. In the web's early days, you hosted a site and all its applications on your own infrastructure which you fully controlled. Today's web businesses are increasingly comprised of several outside sources that your company must depend on 24/7. Typically these outside sources consist of third-party components that are assembled by the browser. They can include functions like content delivery networks (CDN), advertising networks, video, newsfeeds, shopping carts, web analytics or ratings and review systems. Just one poorly performing service can cause an entire application to slow down. We all remember the Amazon EC2 problems that wreaked havoc with thousands of websites this year. Similar problems have occurred with Microsoft Office 365 and Akamai, leaving many web businesses feeling helpless. If your website was using a service or application delivered by an affected supplier, it likely lost that capability, experienced a performance slowdown, or shut down entirely. Not good if that service was a checkout function directly linked to your revenue. We recently conducted research on the number of third-party components used by the typical website. What we found has direct implications for the traffic and revenue of every website. The chart below tells the story: a typical website on the west coast of the US, for example, depends on as many as 12 individual domains to deliver content to users to complete a transaction. When a visitor opens your web page in their browser, a call goes out to all these domains, many likely from third parties. Think of the Facebook button, or the Bing search box, that email capture function or the YouTube video, even a CDN; they’re all being delivered by an outside service. As most web businesses know, the average website visitor is increasingly impatient, with nearly a third of them abandoning a web page if it takes longer than five seconds to load. While you can optimize the performance of the application components you deliver, do you have a guarantee that five, 10 or more outside web services will do the same? So how do you deal with the dark side of third-party content and services and take back control? We've found that the best-performing companies follow these three core guidelines: 1. Choose third-party components wisely, within your set business goals
2. Create a mitigation strategy 3. Measure outside services from the end-user's perspective under all conditions The interdependency of the web will only accelerate as companies leverage more third-party services to connect with their customers. Making use of these services helps even the smallest web and mobile sites create a unique offering. Being aware of the risks and planning for them, will help you capture the upside and minimize the downside.  Filed under: cloud, media, social, VentureBeat        
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| Happy Cloud teams up with AMD for connected TV games Posted: 27 Sep 2011 06:00 AM PDT
“You can get movies, TV shows, and music on demand straight to your TV,” said Eric Gastfriend, vice president and general manager at Happy Cloud. “Why not video games? It used to be that you needed a gaming console and a trip to the store to get a new game.” Now you can get them via the internet, downloading them not only to a PC, but also to a connected TV. Like streaming firms OnLive and Gaikai, Happy Cloud delivers game to customers almost instantly. But in contrast to those rivals, Cambridge, Mass.-based Happy Cloud doesn’t rely solely on streaming. Rather, Happy Cloud uses progressive downloading. It installs a playable version of a game on your machine (or in this case, a TV) within a couple of minutes of purchasing the game. Then the rest of the game downloads in the background while you play. Instead of waiting hours, you can start enjoying the game much earlier. And by the end of the process, the complete game is downloaded to your machine. That way, there is no need for constant streaming, as with Gaikai or OnLive. There is also no risk of lag, or slowdowns related to bad internet connections, as there is with streaming, Gastfriend said. The solution allows users to access games on demand from the open web, or, in this case, Happy Cloud’s web site. The solution gives TV makers and set-top box makers a new source for game revenues and a new service to offer their customers. Happy Cloud will be part of the set-top box reference design (or standard system) for AMD-based connected-TV platforms, said Buddy Broeker, director of embedded solutions at AMD. Happy Cloud opened its online game store in July, allowing users to quickly play games that could take as much as 15 hours to fully download on digital download sites such as Steam. The company uses a virtualized file system pre-installed and pre-packaged on the network, eliminating download and installation delays normally required by high-end PC games. This tricks the game into thinking that it has been fully installed. Then Happy Cloud uses intelligent branching and caching algorithms to figure out what to download next. Developers don’t need to modify their source code or provide demo builds to be used with Happy Cloud. Publishers can offer the Happy Cloud solution as a white-label service (one that carries the publishers’ own brand name on their own web sites). Happy Cloud has 10 employees in Cambridge, Mass., and Beit Shemesh, Israel. It was founded in 2009 by brothers Jacob and David Guedalia and it has raised money from Jesselson Capital and Miles Guilburne, a former AOL executive. The company has raised $1 million to date. Happy Cloud is the Guedalias’ sixth company. They sold their last startup, iSkoot, to Qualcomm in October. Besides Gaikai and Onlive, rivals include GameTree TV, Playcast, Steam, Spoon, GameStop, GameTap, Exent, Electronic Arts and Walmart. Services such as GameTap and Exent often require that 50 percent of the game be downloaded before playing, whereas Happy Cloud cuts the time until you can play by 90 to 95 percent. Happy Cloud had more than 2,500 visitors to its site in its private beta, before it opened the site to the public in July. For a typical 8.5-gigabyte (DVD-size) game, the download time for Happy Cloud is just two minutes on a 20-megabit-per-second connection. Typically, that would take more than an hour on a normal download, not counting installation time. On a 4-megabit-per-second connection, it takes 10.5 minutes on Happy Cloud and 4.8 hours-plus on a normal download. With Happy Cloud, you can play demos for free. Happy Cloud uses Akamai’s content delivery network in addition to its own proprietary technology for fast delivery of games. If a transmission is interrupted, you can resume the download at the same point at any time. You also use your own hard disk drive space to store games. Happy Cloud doesn’t yet work on Macs. The disadvantage of Happy Cloud is that you can only play it on a machine capable of handling the download. Filed under: games, VentureBeat        
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| Disney launches Appmates mobile app toys for the iPad (video) Posted: 27 Sep 2011 06:00 AM PDT
The entertainment giant will sell Appmates toys based on Cars 2 movie characters, and those toys can be used to control a virtual racing world on an Apple iPad. It is one more example of a gaming app that is a hybrid of the physical and digital worlds. In creating the product, Disney is getting ready for the day when kids come home from school and play with their tablets and smartphones, rather than turn on the TV, said Bart Decrem, head of Disney Mobile, said in an interview. He said that the toy is the first to transform the Apple iPad into a virtual play mat for kids. And the app turns ordinary toys into a part of an immersive game world for kids, full of sounds, narration, and music. That transforms a static and boring toy into an interactive experience. “We are bringing Disney characters to life,” Decrem said. “Our vision was to take the Disney presence and apply it to the AppStore in a way that creates magical moments.” The physical part is a toy, like the Mater character pictured at right. You place the toy on top of the iPad and press down. The iPad recognizes that Mater is on top of it and then you can push down to move around on the virtual environment of the iPad app. You can then race other virtual cars and smash into virtual objects by turning the toy in different directions as it sits on top of the touchscreen of an iPad. It creates a kind of 3D illusion. “The iPad is a new canvas for creativity, and Disney wants to be on that platform,” Decrem said. The products and apps will come out on Oct. 1. The app is a free iTunes download for the iPad and iPad 2, but Disney will charge $20 for sets of two cars. The toys will be available in Disney Stores and on DisneyStore.com. The whole idea is similar to Activision Blizzard’s Skylanders, which combines toys with console video games as well as mobile devices.
The bottom of each car has a unique touch footprint that the touchscreen can recognize, so the app can tell which car is sitting on top of it. If the Mater toy is sitting on top, the app will narrate the experience with Mater’s voice. No cable or wireless connection is necessary when you use the toy to make something happen in the game. Decrem said the concept was around for a year and the company began working on its seriously after Disney bought the mobile gaming firm Tapulous (Decrem’s company) a year ago. Disney Consumer Products, Pixar, Spin Master, and Disney Mobile collaborated on the toy line. If the toys are successful, then you can expect more toys based on other Disney properties in the future. Decrem said the company is already planning to add more Cars 2 content. Kids can explore the full virtual game world of Radiator Springs, discovering landscapes and secrets by moving in any direction. They can drive through mud and up ramps, visit friends at Flo’s V8 cafe, and check out the car’s reflection in a mirror. If they crash into a radio tower, it will change the station to another song. And, as in the Cars movie, Mater can sneak up on cow-tractors and blow a horn, making the tractors fall over. You can perform missions such as towing cars with a tow hook, and then collect hubcaps, the virtual currency of the game. You can use that currency to buy virtual gadgets such as missiles or machine guns. Right now, there everything you purchase inside the game is free. You don’t have to shell out extra cash in addition to buying the toys.
“The great thing is when you see a child take the toy and play with it on their own and then use it to play on the iPad,” Decrem said. Disney has dozens of apps available on the iPad today. It is also launching other merchandise that can be used with iPads, including a Disney Pixar Cars protective case, a Disney Pix Camera, and Disney Spotlight microphone. Decrem (pictured right) also noted that Disney’s latest app, Where’s My Water, has hit No. 1 on the paid apps charts for the AppStore. In that app, you have to use your finger to dig tunnels through the ground to bring water to Swampy, a cute alligator that wants to take a shower. After three days, the app hit No. 1 and it has a rating of five stars out of five after 2,000 user reviews on the AppStore. “We’re taking the Disney brand into the AppStore, and if it goes well, we’ll do more of it,” Decrem said. 
Filed under: games, mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Tiny Speck launches zany social game Glitch with giant imagination Posted: 27 Sep 2011 06:00 AM PDT
“It is super metaphorical,” the greeting for the tutorial says. “Your job is to grow and expand the world, shaping it while developing your own unique character.” Give it a try, as the game is formally launching today.
“This world is built with hand-drawn animation,” Butterfield said. “It is a persistent world, with its own ecology and economy. It’s totally uncharted.” From the very start, Glitch is different. You can water plants, but you can also pet them to make them grow. If you nibble a pig’s ear, it will give you some meat. You can find little “music blocks,” which play snippets of music when you click on them. If you find a butterfly, you can give it a massage. If you squeeze a chicken, you can get a piece of grain.
Tiny Speck’s own press release opens with a quote from James P. Carse, who said, "There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other, infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play." Glitch is a web-based massively multiplayer online game. About 27,000 players have already tested the game. It is non-violent, highly social and is played as a two-dimensional cartoon animated world. Butterfield says the designers of the game and the players create the Glitch universe in tandem, with the designers constantly tweaking and improving the platform while the players cultivate a sophisticated and irreverent civilization. Players can do just about anything, from curating an art installation to hosting a diamond-infused dinner party. Tiny Speck provides the raw materials and a stimulating environment. “The vision is to bring a new level of creativity, beauty and social engagement,” Butterfield (pictured at top) says.
Players can adjust their avatars, or game characters, in many different ways. They can buy outfits and customize as they wish. They can go on missions. In one, they have to get some official papers from a government agency. They have to keep interacting with bureaucrats, who keep saying they have to check with someone to get a proper answer. At some point, the bureaucrat finally delivers the papers. The game invites players to come back a lot by getting them to learn skills. There are about four months worth of skills in the game now.The game also has hundreds of different objects now. You can also come back just to explore the surreal universe. If you want eggs, you can get them from an eggplant. Then you take them to a chicken to incubate them. Dairy products in the game come from butterfly milk. And pigs are born from the eggs. “Everything is super whacky,” Butterfield said. “If you play it for a while, it makes sense. It’s a surreal wrapper around the world.” On the social side, players can go on quest together or play multiplayer sports mini games. They can form conga lines and dance. The world is unified, so friends can interact with anybody in the world.The game is built in Adobe Flash, so it isn’t that demanding, technically. But Tiny Speck tried to push the limit on how many objects can be on the screen at one time. The game has cool lighting effects and faux 3D animations. Some of the sections of the world reflect the influence of some of the giants, but the world isn’t divided into territories. The basic story is that one giant became to powerful at one point and things “glitched apart,” Butterfield said.
Takahashi is busy building zany missions for the game. Butterfield said that Tiny Speck will take advantage of web-based software to release new content on an hourly basis. Butterfield showed me how quickly he could create an object, give it characteristics, and set it loose in the world. Half the development time, he said, was creating tools to quickly create game elements. Players can stay in touch with the game while on the run. The full Glitch site is accessible from a mobile app, Glitch HQ, for the Apple iOS platform. The mobile app lets players keep up with updates and chatter from their game friends. Third party game developers are busy creating web and mobile extensions of the game, since Tiny Speck made its applications programming interface available. “Those developers can create something and have it be in the world in an hour or so,” Butterfield said. The game is free to play, with virtual item sales. But you can subscribe to the game if you wish to get wider access to cool things in the game. You can’t purchase anything in the game that gives you an advantage over other players. If you buy anything, it’s mostly for the sake of decoration or vanity. VentureBeat’s readers can get a “fast pass” access to the world of Glitch by clicking on this link. The company may not be able to add everybody all at once at the very start. # # # Filed under: games, mobile, social, VentureBeat        
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| Miso transforms Dexter’s season premiere into a ‘Pop-Up Video’ experience Posted: 27 Sep 2011 06:00 AM PDT
Basically, when users check in using Miso’s iPhone app, they’ll get push notifications asking them trivia questions, identifying music that’s currently playing and sending interesting facts about the episode — all in real-time. “As you watch TV, the mobile device synchronizes with the TV itself, and we can deliver something interesting at a specific moment by working with the content providers,” said Miso CEO Somrat Niyogi. The first show to get this new layer of social interaction is Showtime’s serial killer drama Dexter, which kicks off its sixth season premiere Oct. 2. Viewers that check in using the iPhone app will have a chance to cast their vote in polls asking "Who is Dexter's next victim?" share snarky dialog from Dexter's mouthy sister Debra, receive alerts when their friends tune in and more. Admittedly, Miso’s new social feature has the potential to add a lot of depth to TV shows with a strong following. Shows like Doctor Who and Chuck, which fans routinely watch new episode multiple times, would definitely benefit from Pop-up Video-style notifications. The first viewing might be uninterrupted, but the second would add a level of value that’s currently not available when watching an episode alone. “We’re sort of testing this out with a big show that people already engage with,” Niyogi said, adding that the new feature presents plenty of new possibilities for content providers to transform what's usually a passive activity (watching TV) into highly social one. Users must be a DirecTV subscriber and use the Miso iPhone app over their home Internet connection for the features to work, but Niyogi said the company is working on partnerships with additional cable providers like Comcast, Dish TV and AT&T’s Uverse. Miso has partnerships with several major television networks, including Fox, Showtime, NBC, TNT, Starz, QVC and Comedy Central. Founded in March 2010, the San Francisco, California-based startup has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Google Ventures, Keith Rabois, YouTube cofounder Jawed Karim, and early Google employees Georges Harik, Richard Chen, Thomas Korte, and Kurt Abrahamson. It faces competition in the marketplace from similar services like GetGlue, SnappyTV and Foursquare. Filed under: media, mobile, social, VentureBeat        
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| Chomp gets a stunning iPhone redesign to help you find more apps Posted: 27 Sep 2011 05:00 AM PDT
The free Chomp app, available today on the iTunes Store, is a prime example of how an attractive interface can help users better take advantage of existing functionality. It’s also the first in Chomp’s lineup (which includes its Android and web apps) to receive the new look. “We tried to build a cleaner and faster design for users, so they can get the maximum power out of our search and discovery engine,” Chomp CEO Ben Keighran told VentureBeat in an interview. The design came about after Chomp spent the last year conducting focus tests and gathering input from users. “Based on their input and what we've learned during our time on the market we decided to take another leap forward,” Keighran said in a statement today. “We didn't limit ourselves to existing best practices or what we'd invested in our previous interface design." Indeed, the new Chomp iPhone app looks nothing like its predecessors. As soon as you launch the app, you’re presented with a new search box that offers suggestions, as well as attractive (and useful) tiles on the home screen, including daily free apps, top 100 apps, new apps, and those on sale. Apps are selected for those particular sections using Chomp’s algorithm, which ranks apps based on their downloads, iTunes rankings, search frequency, as well as blog and Twitter chatter about the apps.
After testing Chomp’s new iPhone app for some time, I’ve found it to be much more dynamic and welcoming than its previous versions. The app’s home screen rarely looks the same when you launch it, and the experience of finding apps simply feels more fun than Apple and Google’s app stores, as well as competitors like GetJar and Quixey. Together with its new iPhone app today, Chomp is also announcing its new search ads product, which will allow developers to bid on keywords and search terms used within its mobile app search. Chomp Search Ads is launching in private beta today, with mobile development startup Milk and local marketplace Zaarly among its first customers. Chomp is based in San Francisco, and has raised about $2.5 million in funding from Ron Conway, Aydin Senkut, David Lee, Auren Hoffman, Brian Pokorny, and BlueRun Ventures. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| The $800M question: What’s the difference between trademark and copyright? Posted: 27 Sep 2011 05:00 AM PDT Confused about the difference between trademark and copyright? Don't be. It's a mad, mad world, and even Oracle is getting it mixed up, in its suit against Google. Sun v. MicrosoftTen years ago, when Sun sued Microsoft over Java, Sun alleged trademark infringement because Microsoft was not implementing Java according to Sun's specification. Microsoft had entered into a license agreement with Sun — promising to follow the specification. When Microsoft deviated from the specification, Sun rightly claimed breach of contract and trademark infringement. Sun sought an injunction against Microsoft to stop using the Java logo and to remove the incompatible Microsoft code from the market. Sun ultimately prevailed, and received a large settlement, in part due to Microsoft's anticompetitive conduct over Java. Attorney David Boies is familiar with the Java issues in the Microsoft antitrust case. According to Boies’s biography, he served as Special Trial Counsel for the United States Department of Justice in its antitrust suit against Microsoft. At the conclusion of that antitrust suit, U.S. District Court Judge Jackson found that Microsoft took actions "with the sole purpose of making it difficult for developers to write Java applications … that would allow them to be ported." Oracle v. GoogleBoies now represents Oracle (which has since acquired Sun, including its rights to Java) in its case against Google for patent and copyright infringement of Java. He surely knows the differences between the issues in the prior lawsuits. Unlike Microsoft, Google never licensed Java from Sun. It never agreed with Sun to implement the Java specification, and it doesn't call its product Java. It calls it Android and Android is not a candidate for an antitrust case. In fact, the Microsoft .NET Framework and Java are the two dominant middleware platforms. In court pleadings, Oracle constantly argues that Google breaks the "write once, run anywhere" promise of Java.
The problem for Oracle is that Google made no license promise, and doesn't need to worry about Oracle's "write once, run anywhere" registered trademark because that trademark has nothing to do with Android, any more than Objective C has anything to do with C#. Moreover, Oracle is suing Google for copyright infringement, not trademark infringement. Oracle never alleged any Java trademark claims, only harm by "fragmentation" of the Java "write once, run anywhere promise" and "creed." But promise, creed and fragmentation are not copyright claims, they relate to trademarks. It's a nice example of the adage that "if you repeat something often enough, people will believe it's true." Accordingly, on September 15, 2011, Judge William Alsup in his order regarding summary judgement says:
Trademarks v. CopyrightsGoogle could have long ago pointed out that Oracle is alleging trademark harm using copyright infringement claims. But why should Google help Oracle plead correctly? Google never agreed to the "write once, run anywhere" promise (in any license) from which Oracle claims to have suffered harm. Google calls its software Android, not Java. While Oracle could have argued that Google has confused the market by making references to Java in Android marketing and documentation, Oracle cannot now amend the complaint with a trademark infringement cause of action. It's too late. Google has already prevailed on the key issue of non-copyrightability of API names. In his partial summary judgement order of September 15, 2011, Judge Alsup held that "the names of the Java language API files, packages, classes, and methods are not protectable as a matter of law.” Oracle has its work cut out, because it will have to explain to a trial jury that even though the names of the Java files, packages, classes and methods are not protectable, Oracle somehow has a substantial copyright claim to snippets of code, declarations, and the arrangement of the specification. Oracle is not giving up however, and the API copyright issue isn't the whole lawsuit. Oracle is also claiming patent infringement, and there are still questions of fact and law about the scope of Google's alleged copying. But those don't relate to the "write-once, run anywhere" promise from which Oracle claims to have suffered harm. Nevertheless, Oracle's latest alleged copyright damages and lost profits estimate is still in the neighborhood of a whopping $800 million. So don't feel bad if you don't understand the difference between trademark and copyright. A lot of fine people get it mixed up too.
Top image via Ioan Sameli/Flickr. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Reppler has a new way to rate your social network image Posted: 27 Sep 2011 05:00 AM PDT More than 90 percent of hiring managers and recruiters use social network sites to screen prospective candidates, according to a new survey released today by Reppler, a Palo Alto-based social network monitoring company. The company’s monitoring service now includes a Reppler Image Score that captures the professionalism and consistency of an online image. This score includes various factors including tone of content, the appropriateness of content and the consistency of profile information across social networks. Reppler launched back in April 2011 with the hope that people will manage their online image across multiple social networks. Reppler started out with Facebook reputation management but is now available for Twitter and LinkedIn. Reppler reports that Facebook gets the most profile reviews with 76 percent followed by Twitter with 56 percent and LinkedIn with 48 percent. So while your LinkedIn profile may be squeaky clean, don’t for get to wash your Face…book. I give it a shot with my Facebook account. Why not? The service is free and it takes about a minute to scan and rate a profile. My Reppler Image Score is 88. I am told the tone of my Facebook Wall posts is “partly positive.” I am mostly disappointed by that. I want to be in the green of the Image Score. What does it take to be totally positive? “You must be a very positive person,” says Reppler founder Vlad Gorelik in an email interview, followed by a :-). “Most posts are on the neutral to partially positive side – there are very few people who are always positive and that’s why the indicators are green for neutral to positive territory.”
Reppler’s scan of my profile suggests I make my publicly available hometown information private because “hometown” is one of the common authentication challenge questions used to reset account passwords. I have never, ever used my hometown as a challenge question because this information is public on my social networks and elsewhere. I decide not to make that private. I ask Gorelik if this privacy suggestion is against the spirit of social sharing. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg would certainly be disappointed by a service that encouraged people to share less. “The amount of social sharing one wants to do is up to them,” replies Gorelik. “However, sharing certain pieces of information publicly – like your hometown, which you might use as a security challenge question on an online account – increases the chances of getting your identity stolen so Reppler brings that to a user’s attention.” I ask Gorelik if a company that sees my profile and doesn’t like my personal life would be the wrong company for me to work for anyway. Maybe wearing life on your sleeve is the best way to find the job that fits you best. Company culture is critical to success and the wrong person in the wrong culture can lead to misery. “We feel that in the current job climate, job seekers should do their best to present themselves in a manner such that they don’t get eliminated from opportunities without knowing it,” says Gorelik. “We believe that keeping one’s online image clean is an important part of the process.” There is certainly room for Reppler to grow into more social networks and sharing sites. Scans are not available for Google+. The survey reports that after the big social networks, hiring managers and recruiters say they may take a look at background checks, online want ad site Craigslist and even blogging platform Tumblr. There’s also room to grow with additional funding. Reppler has raised $675,000 in seed funding and has five employees. It isn’t clear yet how Reppler will make money, but I feel positive they will figure it out. Perhaps someone will be interested in all of the data their widgets are collecting. Filed under: media, VentureBeat        
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| CareCloud raises $20M+ to help doctors run their business in the cloud Posted: 27 Sep 2011 12:11 AM PDT
“They must believe in us if they’re willing to spend money on frequent cross-country flights for meetings,” laughs Albert Santalo, CEO and founder of CareCloud in an interview with VentureBeat. CareCloud creates apps that help medical professionals run their businesses. Those apps include a community collaboration and communication platform to securely share patient information, a medical practice management system for billing and scheduling as well as a revenue cycle management app. Soon CareCloud will provide electronic medical records. With this new funding, CareCloud will focus on producing more technology to serve the needs of healthcare providers.
There are currently 85 employees at CareCloud but Santalo says he plans on having more than 100 by the end of 2011. CareCloud, which launched in 2010, is exceeding $500 million in accounts receivables under management for physicians and healthcare providers. The company's healthcare apps are built on a social foundation that Santalo hopes will help healthcare providers interact on a human level and transact on a business level. “The cloud is the place where all of the people in healthcare are playing a roll,” says Santalo. “We use it to connect all of the different players. Healthcare at is core is a social industry but there’s wasn’t a good infrastructure to connect everyone.” Santalo believes one of the reasons Google Health was shut down this year is that it didn’t strive to be social. “It’s difficult to build a consumer-side platform and swim upstream,” he says. “The platform has to be built by the people providing the care. Also, it’s hard for a company like Google or Microsoft to be so many things. Healthcare requires a company that doesn’t care about anything else that’s going on.” CareCloud has received multiple awards in the last year, including being named a winner at IBM's SmartCamp Silicon Valley and a runner-up at the IBM SmartCamp World Finals in 2010. It was at the SmartCamp competitions that CareCloud connected with Norwest Venture Partners and Intel Capital. “The funding environment is interesting now,” says Santalo. “You read that investment dollars are flowing, but only the best companies and entrepreneurs are the ones getting funding these days.” Filed under: cloud        
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| A Bit Lucky debuts its Lucky Space social game on Facebook Posted: 27 Sep 2011 12:01 AM PDT
A Bit Lucky already has a good track record. Lucky Train was a big hit among young males, boys (who no doubt played on their parents’ Facebook accounts) and hardcore gamers. Lucky Space is a similar title, sort of like StarCraft, blending a lot of complexity with an easy-to-use interface and not so much fighting. Lucky Space is another title aimed at bringing hardcore gamers to Facebook.
Lucky Space is a social game, where you can help your friends build their own colonies and you can visit their creations. The game allows you to build out your planetary colony, but it also prompts you to go on missions in order to advance the larger storyline. The players can uncover the mysteries of extraterrestrial civilizations and develop their colonies into self-sustaining habitats. They can mine for resources, explore new terrain, and defend their colonies from cosmic threats such as meteors. For instance, you can build a missile turret to shoot down meteors.
The game world is hidden at first and you have to explore it little by little. You can check to see how well you are doing compared to your friends by examining details such as how many resources they collect per hour. Some resources are rare, and you have to collect a bunch of items in order to build some of your structures. A Bit Lucky’s games are free-to-play, where users can play for free and pay real money for virtual goods. Like other Facebook game makers, the company focuses on developing communities, learning through iteration, fast development cycles, analytics and feedback. The company has learned from early testing that players play the game for 25 minutes for the very first time they play.
Descamps said he believes there is still room for a lot of different kinds of games on Facebook, just as Facebook game evangelist Sean Ryan has argued. A Bit Lucky is trying to make games that don’t compete head-on with Facebook leaders such as Zynga. Rivals include Kabam and Kixeye. “We see tons of growth ahead, if you focus on innovation, new game play, new genres and better quality,” Descamps said. Filed under: games, VentureBeat        
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| Facebook may launch iPad and HTML5 iPhone apps at Apple’s Oct. 4th event Posted: 26 Sep 2011 10:08 PM PDT
According to Mashable‘s sources, the social network may also introduce its latest iPhone app, potentially revamped in HTML5, at the same event. The app has been long-awaited. In July, iPad-wielding Facebookers were given a taste of what may come when screenshots of the app were leaked. The app has been in development for over a year and just this morning Jeff Verkoeyen, the former iPad app lead engineer, quit out of frustration. Verkoeyen said on his blog that the app was “feature complete,” or the step just prior to release for testing, since May. His frustration stemmed, however, from Facebook’s decision to push the release date back on more than one occasion. He has since removed the information about the app from his post, according to Business Insider. The push back may have stemmed from Apple and Facebook’s shaky relationship, potentially due to a rumored Facebook product code-named “Project Spartan.” The product is supposedly an HTML5 web app aimed at allowing Facebook to circumvent Apple’s app store. But it seems that with all the labor put into this iPad app-baby, it will actually be born. The mobile and social giants may even partner on “Project Spartan,” according to Mashable’s sources, who also note the “Project Spartan” moniker is not used internally. Facebook may also release a new iPhone app built in HTML5 at the event. LinkedIn recently redesigned its own iPhone app using HTML5 and coding language Node.js. The new app was very well received upon release. We have reached out to Facebook and Apple for comment and will update upon hearing back. Filed under: mobile, social        
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| Mindbloom Life game teaches you how to live better Posted: 26 Sep 2011 09:00 PM PDT
Seattle-based Mindbloom got its start in 2008 when Hewett decided he had been working too hard on making video games. He was a former executive producer in the video game industry, having worked on titles such as No One Lives Forever, Tron 2.0 and F.E.A.R. It was a very intense career with no time for breaks. “My life was completely out of balance, Hewett said in a in interview. “It was only after the birth of my first son that I knew something had to change. I got healthy, and got back on track with more balance in my life.” Upon finishing the last game, F.E.A.R., an industry bestseller, he helped take care of his son more and his wife went back to work. He decided to set up a new company built around a game that inspired people to make similar changes in their lives. He teamed up with Brent Poole, an early member of the Amazon team who’d also had to work 60 to 80 hour work weeks in the past. They gathered a team of gaming, tech, and behavioral science experts. Poole became CEO. “I recognized that there are millions of people who wanted to improve the quality of their lives and struggled with it,” Hewett said. But the usual way to make such changes were through antiquated self-help books or videos. These were expensive, time-consuming, and uninspiring. “Coming from the game industry, we thought we could do a lot more,” Hewett said. “We created a game that focuses on your entire life. It’s about discovering your core motivations and taking personal steps to transform your life.” The game helps people decide what matters most by using the metaphor of a “life tree,” pictured at top. That tree is a visual representation of your priorities and progress in matters such as health, lifestyle, career, creativity, relationships, finances and spirituality. The user progresses by interacting with different parts of the tree and its elements such as branches, leaves, a forest, the sun, rain, and even a dragonfly. The app can tell you at a glance if your life is on track.
You keep the tree green and healthy by creating a simple action plan that encourages them to live the life they want. You can choose your own activities from a list of 500 that Mindbloom recommends, such as substituting water for soda, taking the stairs to the office, cleaning one room each day, checking in with your parents, thanking a friend, smiling at a stranger and more. You can choose from a gallery of free inspirational media or create and share your own. You are encouraged to share beautiful photos, inspiring music downloaded from iTunes, and uplifting quotes. User can act alone or in a social group via instant messages, Facebook, Twitter and other social tools. The game offers rewards for offline actions. You complete daily actions to form new habits and can track your progress online or on your mobile phone. You can get achievements such as “seeds” and badges and can level up. You can spend those seeds to expand your image galleries and music playlists and to get Life Area Action Packs, which provide you with additional actions and images in specific life areas. The game maker has tried to make the game compelling by making it emotive. Tommy Laflamme, a research grant manager who has been using the Mindbloom public beta for a year, said he has improved his relationships with family and friends. He speaks with his mother on a weekly basis and has deeper relationships with friends, because Mindbloom prodded him to do so. Hewett anticipates that people will use the application on an ongoing basis. Kyra Bobinet, a medical director at Aetna, a major health insurance company that will offer Mindbloom to a select group of members next month, said that Mindbloom puts the principles of behavioral science behind social gaming to inspire people to achieve better health. She said the interface is easy-to-use and is visually and psychologically appealing.
The company has 11 employees. Rivals include Keas and StickK. Mindbloom is differentiating itself by focusing on the science behind behavior change, integrating technology, game mechanics, art, and human psychology for the sake of personal growth. It tries to focus on intrinsic motivations, such as your own personal drive, and not extrinsic motivations, Poole said. Mindbloom has raised $1.8 million from Seattle-area angel investors. With Aetna, Mindbloom has a co-marketing, multiyear agreement that could be worth multiple millions of dollars to Mindbloom. During the customer beta test, consumers have made 1.3 million personal commitments with a 75 percent success rate on following through on a daily basis. And during the public beta, the company acquired 15,000 members. “We think we’re getting into a period of rapid growth,” Poole said. “We think we’re doing something that nobody else is doing.” Filed under: games        
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| Facebook responds to allegations of privacy violations via cookie tracking Posted: 26 Sep 2011 07:18 PM PDT
Yesterday, VentureBeat reported on tests run by entrepreneur/hacker Nik Cubrilovic, who determined that Facebook merely alters its tracking cookies when a user log out, rather than deleting them. Those cookies still contain account information and other unique identifiable information, which means Facebook can track a person’s visits to any page with a Facebook button or widget. A Facebook spokesperson sent us the following statement:
Regardless of why Facebook is keeping the information stored in those cookies, the information is still there and able to be exploited, according to Catalin Cosoi, head of Online Threat Labs for security software firm BitDefender. “In the past, third-party groups could gain access to a users information regardless of if they were logged in because it revealed their individual token,” Cosoi said, who said he’s not certain that the cookies could be exploited in the same way. “But the fact that Facebook’s cookies retain some information… it’s certainly one more thing to consider given all of (Facebook’s) other changes announced at f8.” BitDefender published a list of major security concerns that Facebook’s new OpenGraph platform presents. For instance, Smart Lists — lists based on a single identifying detail (like location, school, employer) that are automatically collected by Facebook — will make it much easier for data thieves to target users. Facebook’s new Timeline profiles present the same problem — giving scammers a hyper-detailed description of you life. “For an attacker who wants to target a specific group of individuals, it makes his job a lot easier since you already have them clustered,” Cosoi said, adding that someone could pose as a member of a particular social group and gain access to all the other account info. From there, Cosoi said compromised accounts would turn into spam bots that could theoretically pollute Facebook’s new real-time activity ticker. Also, Facebook’s new subscribe feature could increase the number of spambots — giving Facebook a problem that’s similar to what Twitter has to combat with its own subscription-based service. With the increased ability to track a persons activity on a timeline, arguably one could make a case for Facebook’s cookie storing practice — especially if the account data is being used to make sure data thieves don’t gain access to an account and not for ad targeting. But it’s clear that Facebook users are a bit apprehensive about the idea of Facebook storing information that they have little control over. Filed under: security, social, VentureBeat        
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| Whopping Google+ traffic growth: 1269% in a week, hits 50M members Posted: 26 Sep 2011 06:19 PM PDT
Google+ has been seen as one of the fasted growing social networks since it first appeared on the grid. The social network reached 10 million users, two weeks out of the box, which Google+ analyst Paul Allen of Ancestry.com predicted days before the company actually announced the numbers in its second quarter earnings call. Allen also predicted Google+ reaching 25 million members after only a month of existence. It took Twitter about 30 months to hit this high and Facebook about three years. The recent traffic spike was seen between September 17th and September 24th, Google+ opened its doors to everyone on September 20th. It also reportedly saw 15 million total US visits last week. Allen explained his process for finding these figures:
Experian Hitwise states “Early Adopters” still make up a great percentage of Google+ users. Allen now predicts the social network is has crossed the 50 million user threshold and is acquiring around 2 million users a day. [via ReadWriteWeb, Image courtesy of Ahmad Faizal Yahya/Shutterstock] Filed under: social        
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| Amazon may debut its ‘Kindle Fire’ tablet Wednesday Posted: 26 Sep 2011 04:27 PM PDT
The tablet, which is reportedly dubbed the “Kindle Fire” to differentiate itself from the company’s e-ink e-book reader tablet, is rumored to run a heavily modified version of Android and will retail for $250. At that price point, the seven-inch Kindle Fire could be a big competitor against Apple's iPad and various Android tablets already in the market. As for the hardware, the tablet will have a seven-inch backlit display that’s very similar to BlackBerry PlayBook because it was built by the same manufacturer – Quanta, reports Gdgt’s Ryan Block. Although it will apparently make an appearance at the press conference, the Kindle Fire won’t be available to consumers until the second week of November, according to TechCrunch’s report. The timing of Amazon’s announcement might have something to do with competition from Barnes and Nobel, which is also allegedly scheduled to announce a new Nook Color tablet that will also retail for $250. Amazon has made several moves recently that suggest it will announce a Kindle tablet. In August, the company started rolling out a new design for its website that was optimized for tablet viewing. Also, the company launched its 14-day e-book sharing library lending feature. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Workout-tracking app Endomondo hits 5 million downloads, gets $2.3M Posted: 26 Sep 2011 04:09 PM PDT
Today, the company announced on its blog that it has reached 5 million downloads and secured a second round of funding for $2.3 million from Seed Capital. Targeting joggers, cyclists, walkers and just about any other sport that has people moving from point A to point B, Endomondo is available for smartphones running Blackberry, Android and iPhone operating systems. Users launch the app at the beginning of their workout and can track a myriad of statistics, including total distance, speed and calories burned. Other Endomondo users can see your workouts, statistics and even ask to be a friend if you’re looking for a little good-natured competition. Similar workout-tracking applications exist, such as Runmeter and Nike’s GPS+. These other applications allow users to track workouts and share statistics with other users, as well as the individual’s social networks, like Facebook or Twitter. The Copenhagen, Denmark-based company, founded in 2007, previously raised a first round of funding for $800k. Filed under: deals, VentureBeat        
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| Facebook extends tentacles into D.C., forms political action committee Posted: 26 Sep 2011 04:05 PM PDT
According to The Hill, Facebook admitted to creating the PAC after rumors the social network had purchased domains FBPAC.org and FBPAC.us appeared on Fusible yesterday. “FB PAC will give our employees a way to make their voice heard in the political process by supporting candidates who share our goals of promoting the value of innovation to our economy while giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected,” said a Facebook spokesperson. Facebook is not the first pop culture entity to join the political action committee sphere this year. Stephen Colbert, a comedian and pundit, formed a super PAC after much ado with Comedy Central parent company Viacom, which was concerned about Viacom resources being used to promote the PAC. The conflict was quickly settled and in June Colbert’s “Stephen Colbert’s Colbert Super PAC” was voted into existence by the Federal Election Committee. The super PAC has already created advertisements, which were shown in the Iowa’s Straw Poll for fictional write-in candidate Rick Parry (see below for video). In his speech on the steps of the FEC, Colbert said, “I am a super PAC and so can you!” And apparently, so can Facebook. The social network has upped its Washington game, spending $320,000 on lobbying expenses in the second quarter of 2011. That’s almost as much as it spent all of last year, which was a total of $351,390 according to Consumer Watchdog. Last year, Facebook’s spokesman Andrew Noyes said the majority of Facebook’s lobbying was to educate legislators on how to use the social network for political endeavors like campaigning. Now it seems the social network has turned its eyes toward supporting individual candidates whose values align with its own. Google has also stepped up its lobbying presence this year, spending $2.06 million — 54 percent more than it did in 2010′s second quarter. (Sorry, Colbert, I know you would rather this be Megyn Kelly of Fox News writing about your PAC.) [Photo courtesy of zmkstudio/Shutterstock] Filed under: social        
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| Samsung introduces Galaxy Tab 8.9, upgraded Galaxy Players Posted: 26 Sep 2011 03:47 PM PDT Samsung on Monday introduced its Galaxy Tab 8.9 tablet, a smaller sibling to the sleek Tab 10.1, which is currently of the best Android tablets on the market. It also showed off two updated Galaxy Player media devices. The three new devices are not huge releases for Samsung, but they will help the company compete heavily with Apple’s popular iPad 2 and iPod touch devices this holiday season. The company first introduced the tablet to the world back in late August, but used this event at the Samsung Experience in New York City to officially show off the 8.9 (pictured above) and introduce two new products to the U.S. market — this is the first glace we’ve had of the new Galaxy Players. Spec-wise, the Galaxy Tab 8.9 features an 8.9-inch WXGA TFT display, 1.5-GHz dual-core T250S processor and Samsung's TouchWiz user interface running on top of Android Honeycomb. The 16GB model will retail at $469 and the 32GB version will cost $569, with nationwide availability on Oct. 2. Samsung also used the opportunity to show off new editions of its Galaxy Player media device, which is an Android-powered alternative to the iPod touch. The device comes in two versions, one with a 4-inch screen and one with a 5-inch screen. The Galaxy Player hardware runs Android 2.3.5 and has front-facing and rear-facing cameras, 8GB on-board memory, a microSD slot compatible with up to 32GB cards, and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. The 4.0 model will cost $229, while the 5.0 model will have a $269 price tag. Both devices will be available in the U.S. Oct. 16 at major retailers. If we had to guess, we’d say these new devices are going to get dragged into the worldwide patent lawsuit battles brewing between Apple and Samsung. More pictures of the Galaxy Tab 8.9 and Galaxy Player can be viewed below: Filed under: mobile        
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| Stypi founders have a plan to reinvent Google Wave (video) Posted: 26 Sep 2011 02:43 PM PDT Google Wave was a colossal flop. So why are the founders of Stypi trying to revive the idea of Wave-style collaborative software? We caught up with the Stypi team at VentureBeat’s San Francisco office and asked them exactly that. This Y Combinator-backed startup is revisiting the concept of cloud-based, collaborative work. It enables multiple people to work on the same document together in real time by sharing a link amongst themselves. This is familiar ground for those of us keeping a close eye on the tech space. Google Wave launched in mid-2009 as a “communication tool of the future.” While press and users alike were initially ecstatic about the potential of the product, few people could actually figure out how to use it, and Google shuttered Wave just one year later. Late in 2010, Wave was made an open-source Apache project. The Stypi team is starting out a bit differently. Rather than debuting a feature-filled, bells-and-whistles product to a worldwide audience of everybody, the current version of Stypi begins with a simple, pared-down, developer-oriented feature set. In the near future, the team hopes to bring collaborative, web-based features to all kinds of Internet users — normal folks who simply need to work on documents together. Filed under: dev, video        
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| Facebook iPad app may never get released despite being complete Posted: 26 Sep 2011 02:04 PM PDT
Many people have complained about Facebook's lack of iPad support, which has forced them to use the iPhone application on the tablet or a third-party app like Friended or Facely HD. As of today, we can add former lead engineer of Facebook’s iPad Jeff Verkoeyen to the list of frustrated people. In a blog post today, Verkoeyen announced that he was leaving Facebook for a new position on Google’s mobile team after becoming frustrated with Facebook’s decision to hold off publishing its iPad app. The app has been “feature-complete” (which means it is basically finished) since May, but the company kept pushing its release date back, according to Verkoeyen. It’s also worth noting, the Facebook iPad app was discovered by some people nosing around the company’s iPhone app code. Verkoeyen has since removed the information about the app from his post, according to Business Insider. Facebook didn’t make any announcements about its mobile strategy at last week’s f8 developer conference, and we’ve heard nothing official about a time-table for when the company plans to release an iPad app. Filed under: mobile, social        
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| iPhone 5′s killer feature: powerful Assistant voice commands Posted: 26 Sep 2011 01:17 PM PDT
We’ve been hearing for some time that Apple will integrate technology from Siri, a virtual assistant mobile application company it purchased last year, into the next iPhone. But new reports today from 9to5Mac and the Unofficial Apple Weblog make Assistant sound like something more than just a voice command upgrade. It has the potential to fundamentally change the way we interact with the iPhone. A source detailed the Assistant feature to 9to5Mac: It’s said to be accessible by holding down the iPhone’s home button for a few seconds, after which you’re presented with a speech interface that slides up from the bottom of the screen (like iOS 4′s multi-tasking interface). The interface offers up a few example commands, as well as a visual indicator of when your iPhone is ready to take voice commands. Assistant could tap in deeply to all sorts of functions in the iPhone 5, says 9to5Mac:
Just like a real personal assistant, the iPhone 5′s Assistant will also communicate back and forth with you to confirm what it’s doing. For example, if you tell Assistant to email a friend, it may ask which specific email address to use. The phone will both speak questions like that aloud and place them inside of a text conversation. Assistant will only be available on the iPhone 5 because it requires beefier hardware, the sources say. The source confirms previous rumors that the iPhone 5 will run Apple’s dual-core A5 chip and a hefty 1 gigabyte of RAM. Additionally, the source says the iPhone 5 will also include Nuance dictation support, which has been rumored to appear for some time. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Seamless acquires MenuPages to further its online food ordering prowess Posted: 26 Sep 2011 01:12 PM PDT
“There is not a more hyper-local market than the restaurant space,” Seamless CEO Jonathan Zabusky told VentureBeat. “MenuPages is one of the most trusted and accurate services for menus, so it will add a lot to our service.” The online food ordering market market is heating up. Last week smaller-but-still-significant Seamless competitor GrubHub acquired Dotmenu and raised $50 million with funding led by Lightspeed Ventures. The biggest thing Seamless will get from the MenuPages deal will be the service’s database of 35,000 menus and 175,000 user-generated restaurant reviews from more than 50 cities around the world. “We’ve been partnered with MenuPages for two years, so we knew the quality of what we were getting,” Zabusky said. “The companies that MenuPages already has relationships with will definitely be ones we approach in the future about selling orders on Seamless.” Seamless was formerly known as SeamlessWeb and has done $1.5 billion in sales since 2004. The company expects to complete $400 million in sales for 2011. Seamless generates revenue by taking a cut from each food purchase made through its service — the company keeps a 10 percent commission on average. MenuPages was sold off by New York Media, which has owned the company since 2008. New York Media will still offer its popular Grub Street food blogs in partnership with MenuPages. Filed under: deals        
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| Under pressure, Blizzard Entertainment may unveil Titan in October Posted: 26 Sep 2011 12:44 PM PDT Pages: 1 2
Blizzard is the developer behind World of Warcraft and it’s currently the dominant force in online. Its largest gaming event, Blizzcon, is coming up in Anaheim, Calif., in October, and is likely to be the site of major news announcements. That’s because Blizzard is now facing pressure from Electronic Arts, which threw down the gauntlet by announcing it would release its highly-anticipated online game Star Wars: The Old Republic in December this year. “If they are holding any juicy details, it’s going to be announced at Blizzcon,” M2 Research senior analyst Billy Pidgeon told VentureBeat. “The big news is probably going to be a Diablo 3 date and a possible new announcement about one or more new properties.” Titan will likely succeed — and possibly kill — the company’s most successful online game, World of Warcraft. That game is the last of a dying breed, a subscription-based online game with more than 11 million users that pay $15 each month to access the game. Blizzard Entertainment announced World of Warcraft in September 2001. It came out in November 2004 after being in development for more than three years and after several delays. The game was immediately a hit with fans of massively multiplayer online role-playing games — or MMORPGs — and ended up killing several other subscription-based online games, such as Tabula Rasa and Star Wars: Galaxies. The game grew like wildfire, eventually reaching a peak of more than 12 million active subscribers. But World of Warcraft is hemorrhaging subscribers, falling to 11.4 million active subscribers in the first quarter this year and then 11.1 million subscribers in the second quarter. Free-to-play and casual games like those developed by Zynga have emerged as a significant competitor to more traditional online games like World of Warcraft. Blizzard tried to counter its losses with its own free-to-play version of the game. New World of Warcraft players can run through the game’s first 20 levels without paying a dime, but have to start paying the subscription fee to go past that. "It's normal to see some declines," Blizzard Entertainment chief executive Mike Morhaime said. "We have seen an increase in new account creations (thanks to a free trial version), but it’s still too early to tell on conversions to subscribership." In the past, World of Warcraft has successfully taken down a lot of other online games. But it hasn’t faced competition in the MMORPG space from a major video game company like Electronic Arts, THQ Interactive or Take Two. Until now, none of these have tried to show down against World of Warcraft. That will change come December 20 this year, when Electronic Arts releases Star Wars: The Old Republic. BioWare, the team behind smash hits Mass Effect and Dragon Age, is working on this online game, which has been in development for several years. It’s a spiritual successor to the Knights of the Old Republic series, which was very popular with gamers on the original Xbox console. Electronic Arts is betting on the team, which consists of some of the best developers in the industry, delivering another hit capable of bringing down World of Warcraft. Electronic Arts has timed its release perfectly, because most gamers will be on vacation or heading home from college to spend time with their families during the holidays. That puts some pressure on Blizzard to respond, if only to keep the buzz about its own games simmering. Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences board member Zack Karlsson doesn’t think Blizzard will announce Titan at Blizzcon. However, he told VentureBeat, Blizzard might want to move aggressively to counter the launch of The Old Republic. “If I’m them, I park it right on top of some big (The Old Republic) announcement,” Karlsson said. “I’d want (The Old Republic) to spend something big, drop some cash, and then run right over them and trump marketing dollars with PR.” Announcing Titan is not the same as shipping it, however, since Titan won’t be on the market for some time. That means Blizzard will be fighting EA’s shipping game with vaporware of its own. A leaked product schedule that hit the net in December last year (below) indicates that Blizzard could release Titan in the fourth quarter of 2013. So far the schedule has been accurate (outside of Diablo 3′s delay). Financial research firm Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter told VentureBeat Titan news probably wouldn’t see the light of day given that it’s a 2013 release. Blizzard, after all, is known for releasing games when they are ready — not when a release schedule dictates it. But the schedule would give Titan a roughly three-year lead time for the game, which is similar to the lead time for World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty (announced May 2007 and released July 2010) and Diablo 3 (announced June 2008 and originally slated for late 2011). "We commonly use the term ‘soon’ when referring to Blizzard releases, because we know that no matter how hard we're working to reach a target, we're not going to compromise and launch a game before it's ready," Blizzard CEO Morhaime said. Pages: 1 2 Filed under: games        
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