VentureBeat |
- Roku Streaming Stick delivers TV apps in a flash drive package
- Inq cancels Facebook-focused Cloud Q phone
- Zynga launches Hidden Chronicles game in an untapped treasure-hunting genre
- Look out Apple: Google’s Android Market surpasses 400K apps
- The iPad is an incredible tool for work — if your IT department will allow it
- iPhone 4S heads to China, 21 more countries on January 13
- Yahoo names PayPal President Scott Thompson as CEO
- Windows Phone’s big bet: Nokia Ace to get massive $100M marketing push
- Gaikai gathers momentum for streaming game demos with Best Buy and others (exclusive)
- Microsoft Flight takes flying games into new skies
- With $2M in funding, social game studio Seismic Games comes out of stealth
- Check Point teams up with Amazon to bolster security in the public cloud
- TransGaming acquires Oberon Media’s TV games division for $7M
- Arkadium signs multi-year game partnership with Microsoft
- Embroiled in the Google sponsored-post debacle, Unruly raises $25M (exclusive)
- HP shows its new CES products early as the tech circus draws near
- MindJolt teams up with Humane Society in Fluff Friends Rescue iPhone game
- Microsoft awarded patent for dynamic walking directions that keep you safe
- Steve Jobs immortalized with unofficial, “super realistic” action figure (pics)
- Wii-controlled robot pets cat in YouTube video; Internet’s head explodes
- Microsoft celebrates the demise of Internet Explorer 6
- Klout confirms “strong round” of funding, won’t talk price or value
- Create a more personal social network with Ourspot
- BioWare explains recent Star Wars: The Old Republic bans
- Is innovation leading to higher unemployment? Meet the new haves & have-nots
- Record-breaking 1.2B iOS and Android apps downloaded during holiday week
- iPad sales slip as Kindle Fire sales surge
- Nokia’s AT&T-bound Ace is the Lumia 900, a potentially killer Windows Phone
- Video game industry voices urge ESA trade association to drop SOPA backing
- Netflix’s original series Lilyhammer streaming in February
| Roku Streaming Stick delivers TV apps in a flash drive package Posted: 04 Jan 2012 08:58 AM PST
The Stick, which is about the size of a USB flash drive, plugs into your TV and gives you access to Roku’s more than 400 apps. It packs in Wi-Fi capabilities, a processor, and storage — you can think of it as a miniaturized version of Roku’s set-top boxes. The device will likely be embraced by consumers who want access to TV apps but don’t want to sully their home entertainment system with yet another box, with its requisite wires and remote. Since it can turn pretty much any HDTV into a Smart TV (with one caveat, listed below), Roku says it will also bundle the Streaming Stick with some televisions, which means TV manufacturers won’t need to worry about bundling their own Smart TV software. The Streaming Stick connects to an HDMI port on your TV — but the rub is that your TV has to support the MHL protocol, which will allow the stick to draw power and be controlled by your TV’s remote. Newer HDTV sets made within the past five years should support MHL, but sets older than five years could be more problematic. You’ll be able to update the Stick’s software, just as you would any Roku device. Roku says the Streaming Stick will cost between $50 and $100 and will be available in the second half of 2012. Given that Roku’s set-top boxes start at $60 and top out at $100, the company would be better off keeping the Streaming Stick as cheap as possible. Filed under: media, VentureBeat        
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| Inq cancels Facebook-focused Cloud Q phone Posted: 04 Jan 2012 08:03 AM PST
Inq says it has scrapped plans for the phone and will instead focus on new hardware for 2012, reports Electric Pig. "After a lot of analysis through the back end of 2011 we made a tough decision to pull the Cloud Q from the INQ roadmap to focus efforts on our future products," an Inq spokesperson told the site. The company announced its Cloud Touch and Cloud Q phones last year. They were initially rumored to be “Facebook phones,” but in truth, they just featured heavy integration with the social network. Both phones were far from hardware titans, but that also made them more affordable for their target audience of teenagers. The Cloud Touch has sold out in the UK and is also on sale in Italy, Australia and Canada, reports Electric Pig. The Q, which features a 2.6-inch touchscreen and a hardware keyboard, was supposed to launch in fall 2011, but that never happened. Cancelling the phone is likely a smart move for Inq, as the Q would have had difficulty competing with newer low-end Android devices. The company has also faced trouble recently, with two of its co-founders jumping ship. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Zynga launches Hidden Chronicles game in an untapped treasure-hunting genre Posted: 04 Jan 2012 08:00 AM PST
Zynga is following behind Playdom, but it can cross-promote the game to its huge user base. Such expansion efforts are vital to San Francisco-based Zynga, which has 223 million monthly active users but still needs a steady stream of new hits to make up for the churn as users grow tired of older games. Zynga recently went public in an $8.9 billion initial public offering. The stock has been trading below the opening price of $10 a share (It’s now at $9.45 a share) in part because investors are concerned that Zynga isn’t diversified enough and is too dependent on a certain kind of game on Facebook at a time when its competition is getting stronger. Zynga hopes to take the genre to new heights by creating a game that is a lot more social than the single-player-focused hidden object games on the web, said Cara Ely (pictured), creative director on the game. She said that social features such as challenges, where users have to spot as many objects as they can in 60 seconds, make the game into something you can play with friends on Facebook. You can hide things in your friends’ estates. Ely said the heritage of hidden object games goes back to puzzles and board games where unlocking mysteries was a big part of the fun. Games like Hidden Chronicles are aimed at helping you relax with your “me time” after a busy day.
You have to solve the mystery of your uncle’s death and what he was trying to protect within the estate. You can unlock new locations by completing quests, mastering scenes, solving puzzles, and restoring different hidden parts of the estate. The latter part relates to CastleVille, where Zynga found that users liked uncovering new territory as part of the game play. Ely said the storyline is meant to keep users occupied for a long time, with the expectation that they will play for a short time each day. The game has 50 levels, much more than the typical hidden object game with 20 to 40 levels. “Every hidden object has a unique character,” Ely said. “The quests get harder as you progress.” Ely is a 12-year-industry veteran who worked on hidden object games for casual web sites for about six years. She has worked on titles such as Dream Day Wedding and was joined on Hidden Chronicles by Jane Jensen, narrative designer and creator of the Gabriel Knight series of PC games. The star cast was rounded out by art director Margaret Foley-Mouvais, former art director on titles such as The Lord of the Rings, and product manager Nancy Hang. The game is free-to-play, where users play for free and pay real money in small amounts for virtual goods. Players earn coins, experience points and unique items that help them customize the look of their estates. The title is available in 15 languages. Filed under: games, social        
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| Look out Apple: Google’s Android Market surpasses 400K apps Posted: 04 Jan 2012 07:57 AM PST Google’s Android Market has topped the 400,000 active application mark worldwide, reports app analytics firm Distimo. The Android Market has grown at a rapid pace, even with fragmentation issues that continue to plague the OS. The Market surpassed the 200,000 and 300,000 app milestones in April and August last year. Distimo said new free and “freemium” applications are the key to the surging numbers in the Market, and now two-thirds of Android apps are free. By comparison, Apple’s iOS App Store currently has more than 540,000 active applications, according to 148Apps.biz. Distimo points out that it took two more months for the Android Market to reach the 400,000 app milestone than it took Apple. Just last week, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 OS hit the 50,000 app milestone, which seems paltry in comparison to iOS and Android’s app battle. But Windows Phone 7 is younger than Android and iOS by a few years, so it hasn’t had as much time to grow. In a final note on Android’s app numbers, Distimo said the Android OS now has nearly 100,000 publishers pushing out apps. Based on this number, each developer publishes 4.1 apps on average, while developers published nearly five apps on average a year ago. This means many more companies have sought to offer their apps on the Android platform, most likely as a second platform after iOS. Filed under: mobile        
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| The iPad is an incredible tool for work — if your IT department will allow it Posted: 04 Jan 2012 07:00 AM PST Apple said in October that 93 percent of Fortune 500 companies have deployed or are testing iPads, an incredible feat considering that big businesses generally take forever to incorporate new technology into their workflows. Enterprises deploy technology slowly because they tend to plan methodically and for the long term. In most situations, the IT departments and managers are the ones calling the shots. They think they know what’s best when it comes to incorporating tech and they want control over how that tech works. But the iPad is different for some reason. Many organizations are seeing employees rebel and bring iPads into the fold without IT approval. It’s often a situation of “it’s easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.” At VentureBeat’s recent CloudBeat 2011 conference, LiveOffice CEO Nick Mehta even said, in many cases, it’s the CEOs who bring in iPads from home and force the IT department to step in line. You could argue, as Forbes contributor Tom Taulli has, that the iPad is “corporate bling for executives.” The execs and their underlings go around IT because the iPad is just so cool. Aaron Freimark, IT director at TekServe, one of the oldest companies providing support for consumers and businesses using Apple products, agreed to walk me through the challenges that IT departments and executives are currently grappling with when it comes to the iPad. I sought out an IT expert to walk me through the challenges that IT departments and executives face regarding the iPad. Aaron Freimark, IT director at TekServe, agreed to help me out. TekServe is one of the oldest companies providing support for consumers and businesses using Apple products, and it’s equipping many businesses in New York City with iPads. Freimark offers a unique perspective, as he is only one of a handful of people certified by Apple with Mobility Technical Competency (MTC), a title conferred to members of the Apple’s Consultants Network who are qualified to deploy iPads and iPhones on enterprise networks. Setup and limitationsThe biggest issue for IT managers when it comes to deploying the iPad, according to Freimark, is ceding control. With Windows and Mac desktops and laptops, the operating system itself provides a wealth of ways to control what employees can do. Modern Windows and Mac OSes and apps that have been created for those OSes can allow IT to wipe the machines, log in remotely, push software patches, and update software while retaining data contained inside that software. But iOS, which runs the iPad and iPad 2, doesn’t work like other OSes. It’s still relatively young, with Apple only releasing the first version of iOS on the iPhone in June 2007. iOS is made to be more simple and it’s designed for multi-touch devices, not for standard desktops and laptops. While it offers some tools for IT control, it’s not as complete as most tech managers want. Whether Apple just hasn’t caught up to what IT managers want or control is given up by design, it’s easy to argue that there are gaping flaws. “The IT people responsible for compliance don’t see it easy to use for their purposes, including security and control,” Freimark said. “IT workers have been trained to want to control systems. There is a limited amount of control you can have on the iPad.” In its current state, an iPad running iOS 5 (the latest version) cannot be issued software patches, cannot prevent users from updating software to the newest releases, cannot provide direct screen-sharing for troubleshooting issues. Maybe most importantly, IT can’t push a pre-set “image” of configured apps with pre-installed data. All of these factors make for a somewhat scary proposition when it comes to deployment. “With this setup, you’re not running an IT department that is updating en masse,” Freimark said. “You’re becoming more of a support organization.” However, when you go into the nitty-gritty of actually setting up an iPad for the enterprise, there is a surprising amount you can do without putting in much effort. For example, when you connect an iPad to a Microsoft Exchange server account and ActiveSync, an IT manager can remotely wipe the device, enforce passcode policies to add security and turn off the camera. Those important basics, which have been available since the iPad’s debut, help managers sleep easier. If a work-issued iPad full of sensitive data goes missing, the IT department can at least completely erase the thing. There are also many companies that specialize in the area of mobile device management that give the iPad more IT options, including Sybase, SOTI, MaaS360, BoxTone, AirWatch, Mformation and Zenprise. These companies can add additional layers of control for the iPad when it comes to things like app management, scalability and data export. Use cases and appsOK, so the iPad is frustrating for the IT department and they have to give up the level of control they normally have. It is worth the caveats? It’s a resounding yes, says Freimark, who uses an iPad to help run intensive parts of his own company. He says the simplified applications and touch display make work fun while also maintaining strong productivity. There are more than 7,300 business-focused applications currently available for the iPad, and many of them are good-to-excellent touch-based versions of their desktop counterparts. High-quality applications for business include: •Dropbox and Box for file management Microsoft is reportedly working on official Microsoft Office applications for iPad for 2012. That said, Quickoffice, Documents to Go and Apple’s own iWork already offer document, spreadsheet and presentation editing functions that vary from mediocre to great. Some companies are also using internally made applications on the iPad. One company making those internal iPad apps secure is Sunnyvale, Calif.-based startup Bitzer Mobile, which offers what it calls a "secure container" to run native and HTML5 apps. Bitzer's software handily allows for the isolation of enterprise apps so parent companies can remote wipe or change data inside the apps without affecting any personal assets on the iPad. Cultural shiftTablets generally have seen explosive growth in the U.S. and around the world, with the iPad as the clear leader. A survey released in October from Good indicates that the iPad and iPad 2 were responsible for a staggering 96 percent of tablet activations in the enterprise in the third quarter of 2011. With just 4 percent of activations being Android-based, Apple has a clear lead with the enterprise crowd at the moment. With its established security and surprising depth of ever-evolving applications, the iPad is enabling a cultural shift in adoption patterns and how employees actually use technology. The concept of “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) is booming at businesses around the world, with employees bringing in myriad smartphones and laptops. The iPad makes the IT guys more wary than these other devices, but slowly they’re coming around. Freimark told me a story of company affected by iPad surprise. He says a major TV broadcast company asked him to provide the broadcaster with an iPad that could be “holiday thank you gifts” for its sales employees last year. Fast forward to six months later, and many of those employees are asking to use their iPads in the office for work purposes because they like them so much. Now Freimark is helping that company’s IT department with mobile device management to support iPads. When it comes to iPad deployment examples, Apple likes to spotlight St. Louis-based RehabCare, a leading provider of hospital-based rehabilitation facilities in the U.S. RehabCare CIO Dick Escue talked at the CloudBeat 2011 conference about his company’s fevered adoption of Apple devices and consumer-focused products, with deployments to its more than 1,200 client hospitals and nursing facilities in 43 states. One major point he stressed was that after supporting Apple devices, the company saw a 92 percent reduction in broken devices. But in perspective, Freimark says RehabCare is an “early adopter” and doesn’t represent the masses of businesses that are still considering the use cases of the iPad. There’s still a ton of pushback, and miles to go before the IT department will get over its fears. What’s nextIf you take a wide view, an enormous amount of businesses haven’t even touched the iPad yet. Not every company is a RehabCare and not every company has a CEO willing to override the IT department. Apple’s claim that 93 percent of Fortune 500 companies are deploying or testing iPads probably skews heavily toward the “testing” phase. “There aren’t a lot of companies replacing laptops and PCs with iPads,” Freimark said. “But they are asking a lot of questions. They’re asking, ‘Will this actually replace desktops or will it remain a secondary device? If I want to use it, how to consume it? If I have to do it, how much investment do I have to make?’” After figuring out use cases, Freimark says many businesses will add the iPad to their lineup of tools during the next few years, as they figure out the best way to use and integrate tablets. Businesses move much more slowly than consumers, but slowly and surely they get there. He spotlighted a recent deployment that he guided as an example of what’s to come. Luxottica, which produces and sells high-end eyewear, contacted his company so it could buy and deploy iPads for employee training at 337 LensCrafters locations across the U.S. The Luxottica HR department got approval for iPad deployment and surprised the IT department with the proposal. Friemark’s team disabled the App Store and camera and locked down the devices as much as possible. Then the team loaded a custom-made iOS app for specific training modules. Freimark believes companies like Luxottica and RehabCare are just the start of a tablet revolution for businesses. I’m inclined to believe him for one final reason: cost. If there’s any gauge that businesses like to use most for making commitments, it’s money. An iPad costs $500 for the cheapest model. With the right iOS applications, an iPad can nearly replace a business laptop that costs $800 or more. The return on investment for tablets, especially once they evolve further, will be much greater than deploying more complicated laptops. Because it’s cheaper to deploy, it’s not hard to imagine that more businesses will attempt to replace laptops with iPads. Only time and balance sheets will tell. iPad photos courtesy of Apple.com Filed under: cloud, enterprise, mobile        
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| iPhone 4S heads to China, 21 more countries on January 13 Posted: 04 Jan 2012 07:00 AM PST
Additionally, the iPhone 4S will be available in 21 more countries on January 13, including Ecuador, Jamaica, Kenya, and other countries in those regions. "Customer response to our products in China has been off the charts," Apple CEO TIm Cook said in a statement today. "With the launch in China next week, iPhone 4S will be available in over 90 countries making this our fastest iPhone rollout ever." Previous rumors pointed to a January 23 launch for the iPhone 4S in China. It’s unclear how well Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant exclusive to the iPhone 4S, will function in the additional countries. Siri has local features that will work in any region, but for others it will have to communicate with Apple’s servers and understand additional spoken languages. I thought Siri was the biggest reason to get the iPhone 4S, and without full support for it, the phone may be less tempting to international consumers.
Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Yahoo names PayPal President Scott Thompson as CEO Posted: 04 Jan 2012 06:55 AM PST
Yahoo fired its long-time CEO Carol Bartz in September after board members decided she wasn’t pushing the company forward. Yahoo CFO Tim Morse has been acting as interim CEO since then while the company boosted its efforts to find a replacement. Along with becoming the company’s new CEO, Thompson will also join Yahoo’s board of directors. Yahoo has suffered from a lack of leadership and stability, which is something Thompson should be able to add. During his time at PayPal, he led the company from an ambitious electronic payments platform to an industry leader. Thompson’s appointment also signals that the company isn’t ready to sell itself off to a competitor, as many people have been speculating due to Yahoo’s poor performance. Last week, Yahoo officially indicated that it was interested in selling off its Asian assets to boost the company’s stock price. We’re pasting more from the official release below. Check back shortly for a more through report.
Filed under: deals, VentureBeat        
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| Windows Phone’s big bet: Nokia Ace to get massive $100M marketing push Posted: 04 Jan 2012 06:31 AM PST
The Ace, which is said to launch exclusively on AT&T in March, is being positioned as a “hero” device by the carrier and Microsoft, reports Betanews. That means AT&T will promote the phone through advertising, in stores, and store associates. It’s the sort of carrier push that no Windows Phone device has had before — and it comes just in time. Former Windows Phone general manager Charlie Kindel recently pointed to a lack of carrier cooperation as one of the biggest issues holding the platform back. Windows Phone certainly has a number of other issues to deal with, in particular the lack of strong developer support (though that’s improving). But the major marketing campaign, plus the Ace’s killer specs (it’s said to be Nokia’s unannounced flagship device, the Lumia 900), should make for a good start to the year for the platform. It’s unclear at this point how the marketing funds will be divided up between Microsoft, AT&T, and Nokia. But news of the marketing effort still demonstrates how much the phone matters to its partners. It’s reminiscent of how Verizon Wireless helped to back the original Motorola Droid years ago, via a massive marketing campaign that helped to spark the widespread popularity of Android. Image via Pocketnow Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Gaikai gathers momentum for streaming game demos with Best Buy and others (exclusive) Posted: 04 Jan 2012 06:00 AM PST
The Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based company also recently hired a chief operating officer, Mark Anderson (pictured below) , former COO of Fox Mobile and chief financial officer of Sony Digital Pictures.
David Perry, chief executive of Gaikai, said that the company’s goal is to get new game demos in front of 100 million “eye balls” by the end of 2012. Assuming everyone has two eyes, that’s 50 million users. Gaikai’s value proposition is to get gamers to instantaneously enjoy a game demo, without having to wait to register, download it or upgrade his or her computer.The company runs its games in servers in the cloud, or web-connected data centers, and then streams them in video form to PCs, allowing a high-end game such as Crysis 2 to be played on Macs or low-end PCs. The game streaming drives traffic to pages, leads to games getting shared more, and inspires more people to click to buy. Gaikai gets paid by game publishers based on the number of users who play a demo. Gaikai doesn’t keep any of the revenue from game sales that result from the Gaikai demos. Rather, Gaikai gets paid for the use of its network. Any company can reserve dedicated capacity on the network, giving that company an instant cloud gaming capability. At the Consumer Electronics Show next week, Gaikai will show how consumer electronics partners have embraced this concept, Perry said. Perry believes that this business model is one of the hottest, since advertisers want audiences to stay engaged with products. Gaikai enables gamers to get engaged by playing the real game without any big hassles or having to pay for it first. Perry said that the measured engagement is about 400 percent better than a simple game trailer or screen shots. “We’ve definitely hit our stride now,” Perry said. Perry said the company’s goal is making games as accessible as movies and music on the web, making every hit game just a click away. Gaikai is aiming to turn on hundreds of affiliate sites in the coming year, so that game demos will be inescapable. Gaikai recently raised $30 million from New Enterprise Associates, Benchmark, Rustic Canyon Ventures, Intel Capital and Qualcomm. Filed under: games        
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| Microsoft Flight takes flying games into new skies Posted: 04 Jan 2012 06:00 AM PST
If this new version of the game works with the new business model — where users can download the initial game and geographic region for free and then pay to unlock other features — then the company could restore a 29-year-old franchise in the modern age of games. And that could mean a lot of new revenue, as Microsoft has sold millions of the previous games. The new game will be far different from Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X, the tenth version of the game that debuted in 2006. “This is a whole new product about the magic of freedom and fun of flying,” said Joshua Howard, executive producer of the game at Microsoft’s new game studio for the Flight franchise. “It’s for new audiences that include any people who look up in the sky and think airplanes are cool.” The game is a surprise in part because Microsoft shut down its Aces flight simulator game studio in January, 2009. The thinking at the time was that flight simulation was a shrinking market, and it was better to put talented game designers to work on games in more popular genres. But in the past year or so, Microsoft pulled together many of the old Aces veterans to create the new free-to-play game, which is consistent with the way that many gamers want to pay for games these days. They want to try it out before plunking down money, and then they want to spend in small increments as they enjoy the game.
“We dropped the world show it is a broader experience,” he said. But underneath the hood, the game still has all of the same realistic fight mechanics that earlier games had. You can turn off the flight assistance and take control of more cockpit instruments if you have mastered the more difficult aspects of flight. “It is wrapped in a more game-like experience,” Howard said. For instance, you don’t need a joystick to play the game. You can fly using a mouse, simply by pointing at a spot in the sky where you want the plane to fly. The aircraft responds to your mouse moves. You can also attach a joystick if you prefer. You can download the game for free over the internet and you don’t have to register when you start playing. The goal is to make the game as accessible as possible.
If you want to upgrade and pay, you can buy the other islands of Hawaii. But the territory of the Big Island is still pretty large and allows for plenty of open free flight. You can see for miles and the trees are fully populated as far as you can see. In past games, the trees were added when they came within a certain range, creating a popping effect that was jarring and completely unrealistic to gamers. Now the visuals are much better. You can modify the weather or the time of day, flying in beautiful blue skies or in a torrential storm at night.
You can also go on missions such as landing your aircraft on a runway. When you do so, you get achievement points. The game has a number of prizes strewn throughout the terrain. These “aerocaches” are hidden rewards that you get if you fly through them. Some of them are hard to get, as you have to fly near treetops or buildings. So it takes some skill to get them all. You can unlock more missions the more you play. The game allows you to crash your plane, but you don’t get to see the explosive consequences of such acts. Crashing, Howard said, is not something that Microsoft chooses to glorify. It’s not at all like the car-crashing game Burnout in the sky. You plane can go into a spin and you can recover from it.
The missions are rated, with added difficulties that include wind, reduced visibility, night flying, and storms. There are some nods to hardcore fans as well. The icons for airports are correct in terms of actual aviation icons. The game comes with a newfangled aircraft that is not in production yet. In real life, the Icon A5 (pictured at top) is a consumer aircraft that is so easy to fly that you reportedly won’t even need a pilot’s license to fly it. Dubbed a “Jetski for the sky,” it will cost about $140,000. Production starts at the end of 2012. You can also fly a Boeing Stearman N2s biplane (pictured right) from the World War II era. In order to get that plane, you have to sign into Games for Windows Live. If you are connected that way, you can also join multiplayer games and fly with other players. More airplanes will be available over time with maybe one or two arriving per month.
“You can decide on how much assistance you want,” Howard said. The game requires a PC with the following minimum hardware requirements: Dual Core Processor 2.0 GHz; 256MB graphics card, DirectX 9.0c compliant; 10GB hard drive space; Windows XP with Service Pack 3 or a newer version of Windows; and 2GB RAM. For better performance, Microsoft recommends Dual Core Processor 3.0 GHz; 1024MB graphics card: ATI Radeon HD 5670 or nVidia GeForce 9800T or equivalent; 30 GB hard drive space; Windows 7 SP1 64-bit; and 6GB Ram. The title will be available as an online downloadable game this spring. The initial download is about 1 gigabyte. That’s a hefty PC, but the requirements are in line with mainstream computers that have been purchased over the last year or two. Overall, the game is a lot more experimental than past Flight Simulator games sold at retail. But doing the game as a free-to-play title opens up new options for experimentation and innovation, Howard said. “This is the right way to deliver an experience that reaches a broader number of people,” Howard said. “It’s a new muscle we are exercising.” Filed under: games, VentureBeat        
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| With $2M in funding, social game studio Seismic Games comes out of stealth Posted: 04 Jan 2012 06:00 AM PST
The company has raised $2 million in funding from DFJ Frontier and venture capitalist Tom Matlack. The rise of such a company shows that investors believe that the social gaming Gold Rush hasn’t ended with the initial public offering of Zynga.
Seismic Games has more than 20 employees. Among the co-founders are Eric Gewirtz (director of Star Wars Battlefront) and Chris Miller (executive producer of F.E.A.R.), who both worked with Borrud at Pandemic. Other employees worked at Activision and Vivendi Universal. Besides DFJ Frontier and Matlack, a dozen other investors from the entertainment industry participated in the funding. "2012 is an incredibly exciting and important time for the games industry,” Borrud, chief executive, said. “Zynga, along with a handful of other developers, have perfected the analytics-based approach to game design. Seismic is focused on bringing the next wave of social games to consumers who are getting tired of 'me too' products.” " said Seismic Games' CEO and co-founder Greg Borrud. "In blending the best of the analytics-based game model with the quality of entertainment in traditional video games, we're developing an entirely new social games experience with a goal of taking this market to the next level." The company’s first game is set to debut in the first quarter. It will be character-focused and customizable, with narrative-based game play. The games will have user-generated and real-time content which will “play a central role in the game play.” It will also have branded and professional entertainment partnerships which connect online and offline marketing opportunities to audiences playing the game. Filed under: games, social        
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| Check Point teams up with Amazon to bolster security in the public cloud Posted: 04 Jan 2012 05:30 AM PST
Amazon Web Services is by far the most popular cloud infrastructure provider, but it only provides for basic security needs for those many companies wanting to use it. But Check Point’s new offering adds an additional security layer to help organizations prevent network attacks and data breaches while also enabling secure connectivity. The company’s new Virtual Appliance for Amazon Web Services provides cloud security with what the company labels as “software blades.” Check Point software blades include Firewall, Virtual Private Network, Data Loss Prevention, URL Filtering and more. By configuring your company with the right blades, you can create the correct level of security your company needs. "We continue to hear that security is the biggest barrier to cloud adoption,” Fred Kost, Check Point’s head of product marketing, told VentureBeat. “As businesses increasingly utilize the cloud for their IT needs, it's important to protect both cloud and on-premise infrastructure to ensure that all corporate assets remain secure. One of the best ways to achieve this is to enforce a consistent security policy across the organization.” Kost said the company plans to target a wide range of companies with its AWS security solutions, including small companies and startups. Like a good product marketing head should, he also mentioned that Check Point’s security solutions for AWS were relatively easy to deploy and that pricing will be variable based on what the company’s needs are and which software blades they plan to implement. Redwood City, Calif.-based Check Point was founded in 1993 and serves “tens of thousands” of customers. As of market open on Wednesday, its stock on the Nasdaq exchange was trading around $53 a share. Locked cloud image via Shutterstock Filed under: cloud, security, VentureBeat        
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| TransGaming acquires Oberon Media’s TV games division for $7M Posted: 04 Jan 2012 04:30 AM PST
Toronto-based TransGaming said that the deal would bring it a recurring multimillion-dollar annual revenue stream generated from Oberon’s distribution agreements with a number of makers of “smart TVs,” or televisions that are connected to the internet and are capable of playing casual games.
The deal adds a catalog of 100 games to TransGaming’s GameTree TV portfolio. The titles include Tetris, World Poker Tour, and Deal or No Deal. Under the GameTree TV brand, TransGaming lets users play simple titles that can be played with a remote control. TransGaming, founded in 2000, is publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol TNG. The transaction, subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange, is expected to close on Jan. 6. Intel invested in TransGaming, but it also recently decided to shut down its smart TV division after Google TV turned out to be a flop. The $7 million includes $3 million payable upon closing, $2 million in earn-outs based on revenue targets, and the issuance of 4 million shares of TransGaming. With the Oberon deal, “TransGaming cements its position as the clear leader in the delivery of video games to the connected living room," said Vikas Gupta, chief executive and president of TransGaming. "We now have the ability to reach the hundreds of millions of set-top boxes currently deployed in living rooms globally.” Bob Hayes, president and chief operating officer of Oberon, said that the deal will make Oberon into a more focused and streamlined company.
Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Arkadium signs multi-year game partnership with Microsoft Posted: 04 Jan 2012 03:00 AM PST
Kenny Rosenblatt, chief executive of the decade-old casual and social game company, said in an interview that Arkadium will devote 40 percent to 50 percent of the company’s 120-person work force to developing games for Microsoft platforms. That’s a huge and surprising commitment, given that other game developers have focused their resources on Apple iOS, Facebook, or Android game platforms. Rosenblatt said that his company will still develop games for non-Microsoft platforms, but titles developed for Microsoft will be exclusive for its platforms. With the pending arrival of Windows 8 and its cross-platform touch-oriented user interface (dubbed), Rosenblatt sees an opportunity to be early in spreading games to what could be one of the biggest platforms for games going forward. “There are already 500,000 apps on the Apple platform and a lot on Android, so it’s a saturated market,” Rosenblatt said. With just 50,000 apps on Windows Phone 7, the competition isn’t as fierce and the opportunity for rapid growth should pick up as Windows 8 computers and tablets take off this year. Now that Arkadium has more resources, it can afford to launch games on new platforms where it can try to grab a larger market share position early on.
Matt Booty, general manager of Microsoft’s Connected Experiences for Microsoft Studios, (which focuses on getting different Microsoft platforms to work together), said that the partnership will help Microsoft entertain millions of new people as it tries to reach broader audiences. “We’ll develop games across all of their touch points for consumers,” Rosenblatt said. “We can focus a large number of people on this platform and make the most of it.” By developing games for all of Microsoft’s platforms, the development will be theoretically easier. But there are always quirks with every platform that require developers to do special coding for it, Rosenblatt said. Rosenblatt said details on the upcoming Arkadium games will be made available later. Since 2001, Arkadium has published hundreds of casual games that can be found on web sits of clients such as MSN, Hearst Magazines Digital Media, ESPN, ABC, Lifetime and Discovery. Every year, the company has grown its revenues. The self-funded company is run by Rosenblatt and his wife Jessica Rovello (both pictured), president. Rivals include PopCap Games, Oberon, Real Networks and Playdom.A history of Arkadium and its games is available in the infographic at right.
Filed under: games, mobile        
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| Embroiled in the Google sponsored-post debacle, Unruly raises $25M (exclusive) Posted: 03 Jan 2012 11:00 PM PST  Happier times: Unruly team poses for company photoA five year-old company that seeks to deliver “awesome social video campaigns” finds itself embroiled in a hairy Internet pickle on a day that would have otherwise been ripe for celebration. Unruly Media, a video promotion company, has announced that its raised $25 million in its first institutional round of funding. The news comes just one day after a fishy Google Chrome sponsored-post campaign, fielded by Unruly, came to the web’s attention and stained the company’s reputation. Founded in 2006, Unruly Media makes a proprietary video platform for branded social video campaign management and distribution. The platform transcodes video content into a variety of formats, pipes out videos to more than 11,000 media partners, and then tracks performance and conversations generated on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social sites. The company has been behind the distribution of some of the web’s most memorable viral video campaigns. Evian’s “Roller Babies” campaign, Old Spice’s “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign and Coca Cola’s “Happiness Factory” series, for instance, all used Unruly for video placement. Unruly has anywhere from 100 to 120 content campaigns live at any one time, and is said to reach 725 million viewers per month. “We don’t need to do a round,” Unruly CEO Scott Button told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview. “We’ve been profitable for three years … but we thought [raising money] would be useful to accelerate international expansion.” Unruly currently has a revenue run-rate of $50 million, and employs 100 people in nine offices around the world, including London, New York, San Francisco and Paris. In 2012, Unruly plans to hire aggressively, open additional offices and double its size by year’s end. As to the scathing allegation (dissected by Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land) that Unruly helped Google buy links to increase the search ranking of Chrome — a practice Google frowns upon and penalizes — Button said that it all comes down to a misunderstanding of the company’s business. “We’re about increasing brand awareness,” he said. “We don’t ask bloggers ever to link to advertisers … [brands] don’t come to use to improve search engine rankings.” Unruly, he explained, has relationships with niche and influential bloggers. These bloggers get paid to embed videos and deliver views against a campaign, but they’re not told to write about the content (if they do, that’s of their own volition, Button said). And, he insisted, that the company has clear policies on sponsorship disclosures, and works to ensure that the sponsored posts do not (intentionally) distort search engine rankings. “It’s very, very virtuous,” he said. In the Chrome instance, however, Google has said that it did not condone or request the sponsored-post campaign. “Google never agreed to anything more than online ads,” a spokesperson said Tuesday. “We have consistently avoided paid sponsorships, including paying bloggers to promote our products, because these kind of promotions are not transparent or in the best interests of users.” Unruly, Button said, worked directly with digital media agency Essence Digital on the Chrome social video campaign. In a statement posted to Google+ Tuesday, Essence avoided taking full responsibility for the bungled sponsored-post campaign, but made it clear that Google was not to blame. “Google were subjected to this activity through media that encouraged bloggers to create what appeared to be paid posts, were often of poor quality and out of line with Google standards. We apologize to Google who clearly didn't authorize this,” the company said. But the question of who’s to blame may not matter (Button admitted partial responsibility for “crossed wires” and miscommunication between the three parties). The incident has unquestionably put a damper on Unruly’s sizable funding announcement. Unruly’s $25 million round was led by Amadeus Capital Partners and Van den Ende & Deitmers, and included participation from Business Growth Fund. Additional terms of the deal were not disclosed. Filed under: deals, media, VentureBeat        
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| HP shows its new CES products early as the tech circus draws near Posted: 03 Jan 2012 09:01 PM PST
The new products include a 27-inch All-in-One PC, a big monitor with a computer built into it that has the biggest screen yet in this series of computers for consumers. The non-touch HP Omni27 PC (pictured above) features HP’s touch-oriented Magic Canvas software that offers an app-like experience for opening and closing files or viewing photos and videos. With the Magic Canvas user interface, you can use a mouse to click on arrows to shift from one application to another, rotating the apps as if they were on a carousel. The Omni27 PC has an edge-to-edge glass design and it tilts up 25 degrees, allowing users to adjust the high-definition screen to a comfortable viewing level. You can use HP LinkUp to display and edit content from a laptop on the large display, without having to transfer files. The machine has unannounced multicore processors, HD graphics, and two terabytes of storage. It has Beats Audio, HDMI-in, and options for a Blu-ray drive or TV Tuner. The Omni27 will be available Jan. 8 in the United States at a starting price of $1,199.99. HP is also announcing a mid-range PC for gamers and video editing enthusiasts. The HP Pavilion HPE h9 Phoenix PC (pictured right) is HP’s most powerful mid-range desktop to date and it will ship with unannounced Intel microprocessors.
The HP Pavilion HPE Phoenix h9 PCs are expected to be available on Jan. 8 in the United States at a starting price of $1,149.99. HP is also showing off its 23-inch HP Compaq L2311c Notebook Docking Monitor (pictured left). The monitor can connect with a laptop via its universal serial bus port, creating a more efficient way to work for mobile professionals. It has a built-in 720p HD webcam and comes with webcam software. It will be available in February for $319. And HP is introducing two more monitors for business users, the 18.5-inch HP LV1911 and 20-inch LV2011 LED Backlit LCD Monitors. Those monitors will be available in March and February respectively for $125 and $135. The displays have 3 million to 1 contrast ratios and fast 5-millisecond response times. Filed under: games, VentureBeat        
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| MindJolt teams up with Humane Society in Fluff Friends Rescue iPhone game Posted: 03 Jan 2012 09:00 PM PST
The iOS game lets users grasp the real-world challenges of rescuing pets by having them set up a rescue operation, nursing animals back to health and running an animal shelter. The game is the first created by the former SGN game studio in Argentina under the full direction of the Los Angeles-based MindJolt management team. MindJolt, which published and distributed games on Facebook, bought the company last year and has been using it as a springboard into the mobile market. Now the Fluff Friends Rescue game is the company’s first stab at its own original mobile content, said Colin Digiaro, chief operating officer at MindJolt SGN, in an interview. Digiaro said the idea for the game came from studying all of the pet games in the App Store. Almost uniformly, the games required players to purchase pets from a pet store, which are often criticized for getting their animals from “puppy mills.” The game highlights the fact that there are more humane ways to adopt pets, such as through rescue operations. “We created a positive game with a more appropriate message for gamers,” Digiaro said. The Humane Society of the United States liked the socially aware idea enough to become a partner on the game, which features cute and cuddly animals. The name comes from SGN’s older Fluff Friends game, which carries some brand recognition since it once had a large number of users. The user spends time rescuing strays and nurses them back to health, helping them increase their happiness with veterinarian, food, grooming, and play-time activities. “Fluff Friends Rescue goes above and beyond the message that adopting shelter pets is important,” said Betsy McFarland, vice president, companion animals for The Humane Society of the United States. “It makes the point that in addition to a loving home, pets need proper nourishment, regular grooming, play time and quality medical care; these vital messages about pet care are what elevates Fluff Friends Rescue from other pet games and why we're excited to be involved.” The game is available now for the iPhone, iPod and iPad, and other versions for Facebook and Android could come out later. The game allows users to purchase Humane Society-branded items, and the proceeds of these particular items will be donated to the Human Society of the United States’ Animal Rescue Team.MindJolt SGN has more than 35 million monthly active users, 45 million mobile downloads, and 80 million installs on social platforms. The company is led by Chris DeWolfe, founder of MySpace, and is funded by Austin Ventures.
Filed under: games, mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Microsoft awarded patent for dynamic walking directions that keep you safe Posted: 03 Jan 2012 06:06 PM PST
In the “Pedestrian route production” patent, discovered by GeekWire, Microsoft envisions an intelligent maps application that adjusts walking directions to reflect a user’s surroundings, schedule, preferences and the time day. Perhaps best of all, the patent covers technologies capable of routing walkers around neighborhoods with high crime rates. “As a pedestrian travels, various difficulties can be encountered, such as traveling through an unsafe neighborhood or being in an open area that is subject to harsh temperatures,” the patent, first filed in 2007, reads. “A route can be developed for a person taking into account factors that specifically affect a pedestrian. Moreover, the route can alter as a situation of a user changes; for instance, if a user wants to add a stop along a route.” The document details a scenario in which the maps application quickly extracts user data around a number of factors, including history and available paths, to “construct a direction set that allows the user to take paths that take him to his home in a quickest amount of time while keeping the user relatively safe (e.g., taking the user through neighborhoods with violent crime statistics below a certain threshold).” While the promise of technology that helps us avoid the wrong side of town is inviting, it’s unclear whether Microsoft is currently using (or planning to use) its newly-patented technology in Bing Maps or other products. We’ve reached out to the company and will update this post should we get clarification on the matter. [Image via Sci-Fi. Art/Flickr] Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Steve Jobs immortalized with unofficial, “super realistic” action figure (pics) Posted: 03 Jan 2012 04:29 PM PST Attention Apple zealots: An eerily lifelike, unofficial Steve Jobs action figure set is slated for late February release, and can be yours for just $99.99 plus shipping. That is, of course, if Apple doesn’t issue a cease-and-desist order first. The “Super Realistic Steve Jobs 12″ Collectible Figure,” as it’s called, was unveiled by toy companies In Icons and Dragon in Dream Corporation on New Year’s Day, and is the almost-perfect (some might say, freaky) reincarnation of the late Jobs in doll form — wrinkles, pores, veins and all. The set features the deceased icon’s preferred uniform of black turtleneck, blue jeans and sneakers, along with two pairs of glasses, three pairs of hands, one black leather belt, a pair of black socks, two apples and a “One More Thing” backdrop. The figurine is pictured with (adorable) mini Mac, iPad and iPhone accessories, but those are not included in the set. Want one? In Icons is currently accepting a “limited quantity” of orders via PayPal (the site is experiencing slow load times due to the onslaught of media attention). Be advised, though, that Apple will likely do everything in its power to prevent the doll’s production and distribution. The company previously quashed the sale of an unsanctioned Steve Jobs doll made by Chinese manufacturer MIC Gadget. [via CourierMail] Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Wii-controlled robot pets cat in YouTube video; Internet’s head explodes Posted: 03 Jan 2012 03:45 PM PST And now for something completely different: Here’s a video of a robot brushing a cat. The bot, a Nao model hacked by clever software developer Taylor Veltrop, is controlled with a Nintendo Wiimote, a Microsoft Kinect, a head-mounted display and a treadmill. The setup is perfect for that special someone in your life who loves animals but is constantly stymied by crippling pet dander allergies. Veltrop’s video shows three views: his, the view from the Kinect and the view of a third party watching the cat/bot exchange. We’ve had a Nao bot in our offices before, and these guys are adorable and quite hackable, too. In the recent past, Veltrop has hacked his non-Nao “Veltrobot” + Kinect setup to do pushups and wield a knife. Nao robots were designed by Aldebaran Robotics, a French company. Each Nao unit costs around $15,000 and is just shy of two feet tall at 57 centimeters. The bots walk upright and have toddler-like ranges of motion. But being outfitted with an array of sensors, the Nao-bot can navigate a room, track objects and respond to people and faces. The Nao robots can be loaded with applications, programmed to send status updates or hacked to do any number of tricks, such as pet-brushing. Filed under: games, offBeat        
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| Microsoft celebrates the demise of Internet Explorer 6 Posted: 03 Jan 2012 03:34 PM PST
“IE6 has been the punch line of browser jokes for a while, and we've been as eager as anyone to see it go away,” wrote Roger Capriotti, Director of Internet Explorer Marketing, in a company blog post. “Less than a year later, I'm thrilled to say that the United States has joined the ranks of Austria, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway in dropping below 1% usage of IE6.” Last March, Microsoft launched the IE6 Countdown website to track the slow and painful death of the outdated browser. Microsoft even partnered with many tech companies and websites like Kayak, Meebo and CNET to advertise a banner to IE6 users encouraging them to upgrade. The most stubborn country to update is China with 25.5 percent of that country’s share allocated for IE6, according to IE6 Countdown. Other update offenders include South Korea, which has 7.2% IE6 share, and Japan at 5.9% IE6 share. Facebook, one of the most trafficked sites in the world, has even gone a step further to help get the world’s browsers upgraded. Last week, it was reported that Facebook’s new Timeline feature would not function for Internet Explorer 7 users, forcing them to update to IE8 or IE9. Of course, in the complete scope of things, Microsoft might not want to drink too much of that champagne because Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox browsers are munching away at Internet Explorer’s market share. A December report by StatCounter said Chrome has 25.7 percent share of the global browser market while Firefox has a 25.2 percent share. While Internet Explorer is still the big dog, it’s losing ground fast to its peers. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Klout confirms “strong round” of funding, won’t talk price or value Posted: 03 Jan 2012 02:56 PM PST
Klout CEO Joe Fernandez confirmed the funding with All Things D, and said that the round was led by Kleiner Perkins. In October, the company was said to be raising around $30 million at a massive $200 million valuation with Kleiner at the head. As VentureBeat’s Tom Cheredar described it when word first hit about the funding, Klout works by measuring a person's activity on a variety of social networks such as Twitter, Facebook LinkedIn Google+ and others. Based on that individual's interaction within those social networks, Klout calculates the true reach of that person's communications and issues them a 1 to 100 Klout score. The funding is a good sign for Klout’s long-term viability, especially since the service has caught flack from the tech community over its seeming frivolity. It has been criticized as a mere popularity contest for the web, and the value of a Klout score is still unclear. It seems the company is ready to tackle these common criticisms head on with the funding: “We've already made significant investments in both engineering and infrastructure, and with this funding we'll invest further in these areas so we can continue to provide the most accurate and transparent measurement of influence,” Fernandez wrote in a blog post today. “We'll also help our community become better users of social media, expand Klout Perks so that all influencers are rewarded for their influence, and make it clear why it pays to have Klout.” Fernandez also said that the service is now handling 10 billion API requests per month, up from just 100 million last January. There must have been a big jump in December for Klout, as the company announced it had hit 7.5 billion monthly API requests just last week. In addition to this latest funding round, San Francisco, Calif.-based Klout has raised $11 million in funding over two previous rounds. http://corp.klout.com/blog/2012/01/getting-ready-for-a-big-2012/ Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Create a more personal social network with Ourspot Posted: 03 Jan 2012 02:38 PM PST Want to share memories with your significant other without sharing to your entire social network? Or maybe show videos and photos to your best friend and no one else? Meet Ourspot, a new website that creates a space to share videos, links, notes and memories between you and one other person. “Most sites on the Internet are egocentric. With Ourspot, we want to make everything relationship centric, focusing on the relationship between two people,” Ourspot founder Sam Yam told VentureBeat in an interview. ”Originally the site was designed for romantic couples to be entirely private and share personal intimate details. As we kept building on it, we decided to open it up to everyone.” Ourspot was originally meant for couples to record their relationship as it grew. In the same way that some people (this writer included) keep boxes of ticket stubs and love notes, Ourspot collects and stores memories, photos, videos and links that have meaning in a relationship. Beyond the romantic aspect, it can be used to share and gather information between any two people: best friends, siblings or colleagues. Facebook and Google+ give you control over what you share with your friends and followers, but neither are designed to share information with just one other person. Ourspot aims to create a space where memories and relationship details can be shared without the worry of others seeing, perfect for intimate romantic details or secrets between friends. The website launched Tuesday and is open to anyone. You can connect with your Facebook account and Ourspot will create spots for you and your significant other, as well as your closest Facebook friends. In the coming months Ourspot plans to release an iOS app for sharing pictures and other details on-the-go. Filed under: social        
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| BioWare explains recent Star Wars: The Old Republic bans Posted: 03 Jan 2012 02:09 PM PST
The action suggests that BioWare, a division of Electronic Arts, wants to stay ahead of the gold farmers who have plagued other online games such as World of Warcraft. BioWare Senior Online Community Manager Stephen Reid says in a post on the game’s official forums that a number of players were exploiting the game in a variety of ways to maximize their credits and their accounts have since been removed permanently by the Terms of Service team. Reid also says a smaller number of accounts were warned or temporarily suspended for exploiting loot containers on the planet Ilum. “To be completely clear, while players may choose to travel to Ilum earlier than the recommended level (40+) and may loot containers if they can get to them, in the cases of those customers that were warned or temporarily suspended, they were systematically and repeatedly looting containers in very high numbers resulting in the game economy becoming unbalanced,” he said. The number of accounts warned or temporarily suspended was considerably lower than the number of accounts banned for “credit farming,” Reid says. He also says no one has been banned for traveling to Ilum while still being relatively low level, and the planet is still open to any player who wishes to go there. BioWare is currently working to make adjustments to Ilum to discourage the use of future exploits. Filed under: games        
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| Is innovation leading to higher unemployment? Meet the new haves & have-nots Posted: 03 Jan 2012 01:19 PM PST
By definition, disruptive innovations are characterized by a streamlining of process or product that is more efficient. Typically, the inefficiencies removed from the incumbent system result in less required labor. Less labor means fewer jobs. Consider Amazon. For all the jobs created by Amazon's online sales model, I suspect there were significantly more jobs lost at Borders, Barnes and Noble, and the countless smaller bookstores that closed their doors across the nation. Of course, disruption has always been a part of business, but I believe the exponential increase in computing power along with the rise of the Internet have brought us to a unique turning point. Instead of the normal evolutionary rise and fall of industries, our economy is now at something analogous to the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event (the end of the dinosaurs). Going forward, those who will prosper will be characterized by their ability to leverage technology, while everyone else will find themselves relegated to obsolescence by exponentially more powerful machines. What is different now is the power and scale of technology at our disposal. One hundred years ago, "leveraging technology" meant using a better plow to plant more land than your neighbor. Eventually he would go out of business and you would take over his farm. Today, it means a handful of people at Instagram and Flickr can bankrupt Kodak and put hundreds or thousands of people out of work. Unlike previous periods such as the Industrial Revolution, which largely replaced manual labor, the exponential growth curve of computing power makes possible rapid innovation that is replacing skilled labor across the entire spectrum of employment. Additionally, disruptions of scale are no longer geographically limited. For example, the opening of a Wal-Mart would have only affected retailers within its local proximity. Now, a strong online merchant can destroy entire industries without regard to geographical limitations. Because of the increased leverage of technology, the divide between those harnessing it and those rendered obsolete by it is growing faster and wider everyday. Consider the conflicting images of today's 20-somethings: On one hand, entrepreneurs such as Mark Zuckerberg, Kevin Systrom (Instagram), Drew Houston (Dropbox) and others who have leveraged technology are being courted by venture capitalists and raising millions of dollars for their companies. Even for non-entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, job growth is nearly triple the national rate. For them, it's a fantastic time to be young. On the other hand, national employment rates for new college grads and median starting salaries have both fallen sharply over the last two years while recent surveys show 85 percent of college seniors planned to move back home with their parents. For the vast majority of young people, the future looks increasingly bleak. As Charles Dickens said in describing the French revolution, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…" but the words are equally apt for the revolution in technology we currently face. I'm not suggesting that innovation be halted in the name of job retention, and I understand the economics of creating higher-value jobs and increasing overall productivity. But it's important to consider that we may be at an inflection point with technology eliminating jobs at a much faster pace than it's creating them. Instead of a technological utopia where computers have made everyone's life better, the future increasingly looks like a world divided into haves and have-nots based on who has mastered the machines.
Filed under: Entrepreneur Corner        
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| Record-breaking 1.2B iOS and Android apps downloaded during holiday week Posted: 03 Jan 2012 01:19 PM PST
The staggering number of apps downloaded, courtesy of analytics firm Flurry, goes hand-in-hand with the report that 6.8 million iOS and Android devices were activated on Christmas Day. Naturally, many new owners of these smartphones downloaded all kinds of games and apps to make their smartphone experience more useful and entertaining, with 242 million apps downloaded on Christmas. With those two reports together, the week from Dec 25th through the 31st set new records for number of smartphone activations and total number of apps downloaded. Flurry specifically estimates 20 million iOS and Android devices were activated. The company believes 1.2 billion apps were downloaded, which is a 60 percent increase from the first full week of December. Most apps were downloaded in the United States, with 509 million downloads, or 42.3%. In second place was China with 99 million app downloads. Rounding out the top three was the United Kingdom with 81 million app downloads. Flurry appropriately notes that Christmas is widely celebrated in the U.S. and U.K., but not in China. But with the 1-billion-strong Chinese population hungrily buying smartphones, it appears they didn’t need a holiday to download a lot of apps. Looking ahead to 2012, Flurry estimates that surpassing 1 billion app downloads per week will become a regular occurrence. The company rightly points out that iOS and Android adoption is “still by all measures relatively nascent” and with more phones sold around the world, many more apps will be consumed. Filed under: mobile        
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| iPad sales slip as Kindle Fire sales surge Posted: 03 Jan 2012 12:56 PM PST
Morgan Keegan analyst Tavis McCourt estimates that Apple may have sold as few as 13 million iPads during the recent holiday shopping season — that’s about 2 million less than previously forecast, give or take. Meanwhile, Amazon claimed to be selling up to one million Kindle units each week throughout the holiday season. Additionally, the Kindle Fire was Amazon’s top best seller, its most popular gift and the product that appeared on the most wishlists for all of Amazon.com for the holiday season. "Kindle Fire is the most successful product we've ever launched -– it's the bestselling product across all of Amazon for 11 straight weeks, we've already sold millions of units, and we're building millions more to meet the high demand," Dave Limp, Amazon's Kindle-focused vice president, told reporters in mid-December. Due to the Fire’s popularity, McCourt said in a research note that he thinks Kindle sales (which he pegs at four to five million units) definitely cannibalized iPad sales in the latter months of the year. "Clearly, a lot of folks who buy Kindle Fires simply are not in the market for a $500 tablet," McCourt said to AllThingsD‘s John Paczkowski. "These are customers that either would have purchased a $100 Kindle or no tablet at all,” the analyst continued. “There are some customers who clearly wanted to gift a tablet this year, and it's cheaper to gift a Fire than and iPad. That's where the impact comes in.” The Kindle Fire was announced in late September, and pre-sales for the tablet-ereader hybrid started then. In addition to serving up books and magazines, the Kindle Fire can also surf the web, run apps, deliver and send email, display video content and more. While its graphics capabilities will leave something to be desires for those with visually intense games and programs to run, the average consumer would find the Fire to be a serviceable iPad substitute. Some sources in Apple’s supply chain have even been hinting that the company is considering building smaller versions of the iPad to compete with the Fire, the Nook Tablet and others among the iPad’s 7-inch, downmarket cousins. Filed under: mobile        
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| Nokia’s AT&T-bound Ace is the Lumia 900, a potentially killer Windows Phone Posted: 03 Jan 2012 12:47 PM PST  A mockup comparing the Lumia 900 to the Lumia 800We heard last week that Nokia was preparing an LTE-powered Windows Phone for AT&T, dubbed the Ace, and it now appears to be much more than just a 4G version of the Lumia 800. The Ace is actually AT&T’s name for the Lumia 900, an unannounced Nokia Windows Phone with other notable upgrades over the Lumia 800, reports PocketNow. We expect Nokia to announce the device next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which should give AT&T a nifty exclusive device for its fledgling LTE network. This report is also more than a mere rumor, since it pretty much confirms details first reported by the mobile site Boy Genius Report last month. While it may seem confusing for Nokia to launch yet another high-end Windows Phone only a few months after it debuted the Lumia 800 (and its inexpensive sibling the Lumia 710), I don’t think anyone will complain about the Lumia 900′s specs, as it seems to fix all of the issues I had with the Lumia 800. In addition to LTE 4G capabilities, the Lumia 900 will also sport a larger 4.3-inch display (the 800 has a 3.7-inch screen), and a front-facing camera, according to leaked images. Under the hood, it’ll run the same 1.4-giaghertz processor as the 800. While I thought the Lumia 800 was going to be a very important phone for Microsoft this year, you can pretty much transplant everything I said about that phone onto the Lumia 900. Its better specs will make it more competitive against the iPhone 4S and Android superphones. Now it makes sense why Nokia has been so coy about announcing the Lumia 800 for the US market: It’ll likely never get here, but it looks like we’ll have something much better to look forward to. Filed under: media, mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Video game industry voices urge ESA trade association to drop SOPA backing Posted: 03 Jan 2012 12:43 PM PST
Voices in the video game industry have spoken out about the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and its backing for the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The proposed SOPA legislation gives the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against websites associated with infringing, pirating or counterfeiting intellectual property. Critics of the bill say that it creates the building blocks for a great American firewall that will curb creativity, cost jobs and curb free speech. Major game companies Nintendo, Sony and EA reportedly removed their individual support for SOPA in the past week, but in an update, EA said that story was incorrect, because it had never expressed support for the Senate version of SOPA, but rather for something similar to it. However, these companies are all still members of the ESA trade association, which is listed as a supporter of the bill. Indie game developer Nathan Fouts, behind the games Serious Sam Double D and Weapon of Choice, has urged gamers and developers to lobby the organization to drop support for SOPA. He states that "as long as the ESA is still listed [as a supporter], the game industry as a whole is supporting SOPA." In July 2011, the ESA won a landmark court case, which ruled that "video games are entitled to the same constitutional protections as books, movies, music and other forms of artistic expression", under the First Amendment. The ESA also sponsors the Video Game Voters Network, an organization that unites gamers who support freedom of speech in games. Now it seems, at least to some industry figures, that the ESA is going against one of its guiding principles. In a statement, the ESA said:
Jim Sterling, reviews editor at Destructoid.com has sent an open letter to the ESA, in which he describes its continued support for SOPA as “hypocrisy on a most despicable level,” given its previous actions to protect freedom of speech. Sterling requests that "as other companies dissolve their allegiance with this poorly written, glaringly broken bill, I ask you to do the same." Fouts has also written to the trade association, saying that "The ESA represents the video game industry, including companies such as Sony Entertainment and Nintendo which have dropped support for SOPA. This bill is bad for the internet and bad for the video game industry. Please show the world that the game industry does not support SOPA, and please have the ESA withdraw support." The letter appears in full on Fouts' blog, and he is encouraging gamers to send similar messages to the ESA, as a show of strength by the gaming community. As he puts it, "I’ve put together a simple post pleading with developers and gamers to focus their internet super powers on getting the ESA to drop SOPA support. If they can get the Ocean Marketing guy fired forever, I’m sure they can blow this up as well." The ESA has 34 industry members listed on its website, including Sony Computer Entertainment, Microsoft, Nintendo, Ubisoft, Capcom, Namco Bandai and SEGA. Fouts has appealed to developers working at these companies to "talk to your higher ups about contacting the ESA, to have them withdraw SOPA support". He says that “there are over 30 really great companies that have made amazing games that are effectively supporting the SOPA bill." Fouts is adamant that SOPA is not a viable solution in the fight against software piracy. He admits that "my company lost plenty of potential sales of our recent game Serious Sam Double D to online piracy." But despite this, "SOPA is not the answer to fixing piracy problems." Voting on the SOPA bill has currently been delayed, but the issue is certainly not going to die down, and it will be interesting to see whether other organizations drop their support for the bill, amidst widespread protests by members of the tech community. You can keep on top of the SOPA story by following VentureBeat’s ongoing SOPA coverage. Filed under: games, VentureBeat        
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| Netflix’s original series Lilyhammer streaming in February Posted: 03 Jan 2012 12:40 PM PST Netflix is fulfilling its original series dream this February with a new show called Lilyhammer, to stream in the United States, Canada and Latin America. The company has talked about bringing original content to its streaming service for awhile now. Reed Hastings, Netflix’s chief executive officer has said that the company may bring back retired or canceled series as a part of its original content strategy. This recently came true when Netflix announced it will be streaming new shows from Arrested Development, an early 2000′s show originally aired on Fox, which quickly gained a cult following. The company usually operates by making partnerships with content creators to distribute their shows and movies. This is a time consuming and often expensive process as there is no blanket agreement for these types of deals. Each content producer may ask for various specifications in their contracts and a lot of negotiating takes place. Producing your own content cuts out the middle man, however, it introduces a new need for artistic minds, actors, producers and the rest of Hollywood’s cogs and gears. Lilyhammer, which will be released in eight available episodes, details the life of Frank Tagliano, a New York city mobster. He enters the witness protect program and is shipped off to Norway. The show stars Steven Van Zandt, whose career outside of music took him to HBO’s popular series The Sopranos, where he played mobster Silvio Dante. Van Zandt is also the show’s executive producer. “We’re proud to introduce this terrific Original Series exclusively to our members,” said Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos in a statement. “If you love the first episode, there is no need to wait until next week, or to set a DVR, to catch the next one.” The series will be available on February 6, 2012. Check out the trailer below: Filed under: media        
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