VentureBeat |
- Five Jedi mind tricks for managers in the new year
- Contactually surfaces the most important relationships in your inbox
- Live tonight: Steve Wozniak, Leonard Nimoy highlight an evening of disruptive tech
- Sony’s PlayStation Vita gaming handheld sees weekly sales declining in Japan
- Battery-saving chip startup SuVolta raises $17.6M
- Lenovo goes laptop crazy: Announces new ThinkPad Edge models, ultrabook, and hybrid
- The Atari iPhone game copycat battle zone heats up (exclusive)
- Zynga launches Scramble With Friends for iPhone
- Barnes & Noble explores spinning off Nook business
- 5 things that should be on new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s “To Do” list
- Will Google make a Kindle Fire competitor below $199? Unlikely
- With $53.4M more funding, Lithium says social will change marketing as we know it
- Aeria Games buys game portal Ijji Games and raises money
- Marvell supplies the brains for the second-generation Google TV box
- Skiing down a mountain? Put a smartphone-controlled wireless camcorder on your head
- Moontoast nabs $6M to grow its social commerce service (exclusive)
- For blazing fast wireless internet, Broadcom announces its first 5G WiFi chips
- Qualcomm to launch Snapdragon Game Command for managing Android games
- Logitech unveils its reimagined mouse: the Cube
- NumberFire grabs $650K to heat up sports stats
- Do-it-yourself legal site Rocket Lawyer raises $10.8M
- Comcast & Disney reach content deal for “TV Everywhere”
- Leonard Nimoy to join Woz at our DEMO Enterprise tomorrow
- Scientists have figured out how to make entire events disappear
- Tumblr releases Fan Mail for private messaging
- Thompson: Yahoo isn’t for sale; will focus on data to improve services
- Verizon sold 4.2M iPhones during the holidays
- Playerize secures $1M to find more players for your online game
- Why the Internet was wrong about Ron Paul
- Apple nabs Adobe’s Todd Teresi to head iAd
| Five Jedi mind tricks for managers in the new year Posted: 05 Jan 2012 09:00 AM PST
But this doesn't have to be the case. Here are five simple management hacks that can be used to stave off the New Year's slump and jumpstart projects while keeping spirits high. 1. Make a map. It's standard practice for managers to create team roadmaps at the start of every year: plans that set goals, break projects into steps, and diagram out important events, announcements and the like. That way they have something to show their own managers, so that — at least theoretically — everyone across divisions starts off on the same page. Unfortunately, the motivational potential of roadmaps is too often squandered. Many are created as an empty exercise, out of habit or as a vague jumping-off point. Few are implemented. Even fewer address what could be done rather than just what should be done. Having a roadmap isn't nearly as important as the process of making one. Managers have a real opportunity with this tool in particular to engage employees, freestyle brainstorm, promote autonomy and effectively prioritize. To take full advantage of map making, managers should combine big-group feedback with ideas gleaned from one-on-one sit downs. Processes associated with design thinking and innovation iteration capitalize on these methods to foster even more inspired ideas and strategies. All team members should be invited to contribute ideas to the roadmap. Vibrant organizations all depend on healthy experimentation — and employees should be encouraged to put even their most outlandish ideas on the table. Once all of these needs, wants, concepts and goals are out there, the group can work together to determine which items are most important or require the most attention. From there it becomes easier to map out in more granular detail how much time and preparation should be devoted to projects, events, launches, etc. On top of that, the resulting plan is reflection of the team as a whole, allowing each employee to feel like he or she has a stake in things running like clockwork. 2. Ditch perfection. As the holiday fog clears, it can be difficult for people to pick up right where they left off. Projects are stale. Momentum is lost. A good manager needs to take this into account — not simply clap their hands and tell everyone to hit the ground running. When it comes to revving back up, there's no greater buzzkill than needing everything to be outstanding or perfect the first time. Q1 is a time for drafts, for iterations, for collaborative thinking. This slow start affects employees differently. For example, strong copy writers and content managers might have a hard time orienting themselves in everything that needs to be expressed. At the same time, engineers, product managers an executive team members might be stymied trying to find the right words for a blog post, product update or landing page. Now is a good time for crutches, for creatively matching skill sets, for overtly and vocally abandoning the notion that employees need to stick every single dismount to do a good job. Instead, a manager should survey who is grappling with what and group people accordingly. Instead of waiting for an engineer to hammer out the exact right language to describe what they are doing, it would be better to have her sketch out some bullet points just to get the thoughts on paper. Then one of the more skilled writers can smooth out the language. People get intimidated by projects they think they have to nail perfectly. Breaking things down into more digestible pieces saves time and results in a higher-quality product most of the time. 3. Be the utility. Generally speaking, good managers don't have big egos. But it's important to take that one step further by not only working side by side with employees, but also picking up the slack and tasks that aren't so desirable too. It's one thing to also be working hard and burning the midnight oil, but it says more when a manager is willing to clean up a conference room before a meeting, or proofread a white paper, or review some basic code. Being a utility — flexible and willing to pitch in wherever — not only motivates employees, it also fosters loyalty, which goes a much longer way than fear or pressure when it comes to getting things done. As a byproduct, managers who are utilities become more familiar with every tier of their team or project. They can speak knowledgeably and contribute meaningfully up and down the ladder, rather than occasionally micromanaging tasks or trying to oversee things they don't necessarily understand. 4. Keep it simple. Project management and collaboration software seems to be everywhere these days. Startups have popped up to help usher projects involving dozens of people along a seemingly more streamlined path. But sometimes these systems can be more of a hindrance than a help, and protocol can get in the way of productivity. Internal communication is always a good thing, but when people have to pay attention to recording even incremental progress on a project, or making sure they CC absolutely everyone who might tangentially be involved with something, time isn't used effectively. Productivity applications and services used to be all the rage with the rise of the "Getting Things Done" philosophy, but recently there's been a backlash — people saying they spend hours every day managing their productivity software. A good manager implements sparing, low-maintenance tools to keep projects on track and doesn't enforce strict guidelines on who or how to do simple tasks like send email. 5. Scatter milestones. The first quarter of every year is tough because there are few things to look forward to. There aren't any major holidays approaching, few major events to prepare for, and sales tend to slow down. It's easy to lose momentum when there's nothing to pull together and work toward. It can take even longer to do the simplest of tasks. To keep energy high and pacing quick, a good manager creates milestones for their teams to anticipate. This could be a company or team-wide event, a standing monthly meeting where people present their findings or creations, a trip relevant to the work at hand — anything that expedites the work that actually needs to be done and builds in a sufficient reward. If it's something exciting, competitive or validating to look forward to, employees will stay engaged with what needs to be done in the present to achieve short-term success. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Contactually surfaces the most important relationships in your inbox Posted: 05 Jan 2012 09:00 AM PST
Contactually launches Thursday to help email senders better prioritize their action items and manage relationships. The company has created a dashboard that connects to multiple IMAP email accounts such as Gmail, Google Apps and Yahoo, as well as customer relationship management products Salesforce or Highrise, to dissect and track communications. Its goal is to help you connect with the right people at the right time. “The big benefit to our users is this concept of a system that prompts you to take action with really important people,” Contactually co-founder Tony Cappaert told VentureBeat. The tool, a type of new-age personal contact relationship management system, is best suited for job seekers, consummate networkers and professionals whose livelihoods depend on their ability to foster and maintain relationships. Cappaert describes it as both a powerful prioritization engine and a slick but lightweight CRM system. After processing your inbox, Contactually creates and maintains profiles for each of your email contacts and attempts to determine the most important folks in your life. It considers explicit signals buried in your email history — whether you’re responding to a contact quickly, for instance — to categorize folks and determine priority levels. You can place contacts into buckets such as coworkers, clients or family to manually categorize your relationships. The web application will then track your daily email activity, schedule action items and send you two daily email reminders to follow up with key people in your network. The product has its shortcomings, so don’t expect it be the panacea for your email ague. For starters, the tool simply provides an overview of communication with contacts, and the experience takes place outside your inbox, making it separate destination. Contactually also lacks the depth of automatic social awareness of email-enhancing Rapportive, Xobni amd Gmail’s people widget products, and the message integration of LinkedIn-owned Connected. As such, the fledging company may find it difficult to convert free users over to paid accounts — premium plans start at $10 per month, but Contactually will always support a basic free plan for consumer users. In the months ahead, the startup will release support for POP3 and Exchange email accounts, as well integrate with additional CRM systems. Contactually is also working to help fill-in-the-blanks for the followup notices it sends and soon will suggest topics for conversation, Cappaert said. The startup’s website remains invite-only, but the product is open to all users via the Google Apps Marketplace or Google Chrome Store. Alternatively, VentureBeat users can enter the code “venturebeat” for access to the beta. Contactually is part of the Fall 2011 500 Startups accelerator batch. The Washington D.C.-based startup has raised $200,000 in Angel funding. [Image via CarbonNYC/Flickr] Filed under: social, VentureBeat        
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| Live tonight: Steve Wozniak, Leonard Nimoy highlight an evening of disruptive tech Posted: 05 Jan 2012 09:00 AM PST
The VentureBeat team, being the huge geeks that we are, are delighted to be co-hosting Enterprise Disruption: An Evening of Change and Innovation tonight in San Francisco. The event, produced by our partners at DEMO and underwritten by Fusion-io, will showcase some truly bright student-led startups. While the event is at capacity, you can still register to get on the waitlist — or follow along with our live video stream, which will start tonight at 6:15pm Pacific, right here in this post.  Click to see full agenda.Tonight’s event features a panel of people on the enterprise front lines. This includes DEMO sages Peter Wagner of Accel Partners, Chris Shaepe of Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Dr. Forest Baskett of New Enterprise Associates. The Fusion-io team — comprised of Steve Wozniak, David Flynn and Rick White — will also do a question and answer session. We’ll look at innovations happening right now through student-led company demonstrations. The evening finishes with a session led by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Star Trek star Leonard Nimoy, and is followed by a night of celebration for the new year. The event kicks off at 5:30, so if you can’t make it to the Temple Nightclub tonight, watch our live stream below!
 Top photo courtesy Fusion-io. Filed under: DEMO        
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| Sony’s PlayStation Vita gaming handheld sees weekly sales declining in Japan Posted: 05 Jan 2012 08:59 AM PST Sony's PlayStation Vita handheld games console has only been out for three weeks in Japan, but its sales figures are already giving cause for concern. Following an initially strong opening week, in which 324,859 units were sold, the console shifted only 72,479 units in second week, and has followed that up with third week sales of just 42,648 units. The PS Vita is seen by many industry figures as a risk for Sony, given the strong competition from smart phones, tablet devices and associated casual gaming. Sony has stood by its device however, with Andrew House, President of Sony Computer Entertainment saying it offers a "truly unique gaming experience" that will attract both hardcore and more casual gamers. To put those sales figures into context, the PS Vita is currently being outperformed by the PSP, the device it is meant to be succeeding. Sony has not commented on speculation that the Vita may receive a price cut, a tactic which Nintendo used to good effect last year, to boost disappointing sales of its 3DS console. When the Vita arrives in the U.S. on February 22, it will cost $249 for the Wi-Fi only model, and $299 for the combined 3G/WiFi model. The 3DS originally cost $249 at launch, but this was slashed to $169 in August last year. The post-price cut 3DS now finds itself sitting pretty on top of the Japanese hardware charts, outselling all the Sony consoles combined. The full weekly Japanese hardware sales figures, for December 26 through January 1, read as follows (with last week's figures in brackets):
It will be interesting to see whether Sony addresses these disappointing sales figures, or the pricing structure for US and EU launch of the Vita, at the Consumer Electronics Show next week. Dean and Sebastian will be on hand to report back if they do. In the meantime, will the 28 Japanese gamers who bought a DS Lite last week please raise a hand? Filed under: games        
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| Battery-saving chip startup SuVolta raises $17.6M Posted: 05 Jan 2012 08:48 AM PST
The company’s technology is a fundamental breakthrough, and a rare one, since most venture investments go into applications these days, not core technology. The funding came from new investor Bright Capital as well as existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, New Enterprise Associates, August Capital, NEA, Northgate Capital, DAG Ventures and others. The Los Gatos, Calif.-based company, which came out of stealth mode in June, recently disclosed the first details of how its low-power transistor technology, dubbed Deeply Depleted Channel (DDC), works. The technology will allow for better low-power chips for at least the next couple of generations through sub-20-nanometer production. (A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.) "SuVolta’s revolutionary PowerShrink transistor is a stunning and disruptive innovation, a true game-changer," said John Doerr, partner at Kleiner Perkins, in a statement. "It solves the semiconductor industry’s greatest challenge – power – without requiring billions of dollars investment in new fab facilities and chip designs. So partners and investors are racing to exploit this enormous opportunity." Chip fundings are rare these days. The Global Semiconductor Alliance said that funding for chip industry suppliers was $272.2 million in 2010, down from $717.5 million in 2007, with 2011 tracking at half the rate of last year.
If it works across all sorts of chips, it could extend battery life on one end of the computing spectrum and reduce the spiraling electrical costs for servers and supercomputers. The DDC has different regions that allow for different levels of flow of electrical current. The design lowers the operating voltage by 30 percent and results in less "leakage," or the unintended loss of electrical energy. Overall, the result is that the transistor allows for multiple voltage settings, which is essential for today's low-power products, said Scott Thompson, chief technology officer, in an interview. Techniques like this are needed because the manufacturing gains of shrinking chips — where, per Moore's Law, the observation that the number of transistors on a chip doubles with each generation every couple of years — isn't reducing costs or providing performance gains like it once did. Thompson said he believes that the transition between chip manufacturing generations will slow down, so chip makers will need a solution like SuVolta's to make continued advances. Bruce McWilliams, president and chief executive at SuVolta, said the technology, which is available for license, has drawn a huge amount of interest from chip makers and designers. "Power is now the biggest design constraint for electronic products,” he said. “This funding demonstrates the excitement surrounding our technology which dramatically reduces power consumption in ICs.” SuVolta believes it can offer foundries — such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. — an alternative to a rival revolutionary Intel technology known as Tri-Gate. The alternative is an important one because other chip makers want to keep up with Intel. To do so, they would ordinarily have to invest billions of dollars in chip manufacturing technology and build a new factory. But SuVolta's technology can be used in existing factories with existing equipment and existing chip designs, SuVolta chief technology officer Scott Thompson told us earlier. Were it not for this kind of technology, Thompson said, "the foundries would be five years behind Intel." Intel announced Tri-Gate earlier this year and said it will use 3D structures to pack more (FinFET) transistors into a given space, cutting power consumption by 50 percent and improving performance by 37 percent. SuVolta attacks a problem called transistor variation. It minimizes the electrical variation in each of the millions of transistors on a chip, allowing for efficiency improvements. On the manufacturing level, SuVolta merely tweaks the "recipe" for making a chip. PowerShrink will be in production with Fujitsu in 2012, but others are looking at the technology as well. SuVolta was founded in 2006 under the name DSM Solutions and has 45 employees. To date, the company has raised $58.6 million. SuVolta originally pursued a technology called JFETs to reduce power in digital products. But the company concluded that wouldn't work because it required customers to invest in new infrastructure. The company brought in McWilliams and then Thompson, who then crafted a product strategy that was more realistic. That led to the May 2010 funding of $22 million from KPCB, August Capital and NEA. Broadcom, Cypress Semiconductor and ARM have publicly endorsed SuVolta's technology. Filed under: deals, VentureBeat        
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| Lenovo goes laptop crazy: Announces new ThinkPad Edge models, ultrabook, and hybrid Posted: 05 Jan 2012 08:05 AM PST Lenovo seems to have its work cut out for it at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show. The Chinese computer maker, after already announcing its new low-end ThinkPad models, revealed a slew of new machines today, including a new ThinkPad ultrabook, updated ThinkPad Edge models, and an intriguing hybrid laptop that packs in two separate processors and operating systems. While it’s nice to see a completely revamped lineup of products from Lenovo, having so many models to choose from may ultimately work against the company. Lenovo, as well as other PC makers, may want to take a queue from Apple in the coming years by reducing their available models and avoiding overly niche machines (which I fear Lenovo’s hybrid X1 laptop will end up being). First up is Lenovo’s ThinkPad T430u ultrabook (the new buzzword for thin and light laptops that resemble Apple’s MacBook Air). At $849, the ultrabook is among the cheapest in its category, though we expect it won’t be the only one in 2012. The T430u is .8-inches thin, will weigh under 4 pounds, and you’ll have the choice of integrated Intel graphics or more powerful Nvidia graphics. Lenovo is holding out for Intel’s upcoming third-generation Core processors, dubbed Ivy Bridge, so the T430u won’t be available until the third quarter of 2012. The company also announced several new ThinkPad Edge models, its more stylish lineup of laptops. The $749 S430 features the same .8-inch thickness as Lenovo’s ultrabook, and it will also be one of the first PC laptops we’ve seen to include an ultra-fast Thunderbolt port. Lenovo is also planning to include Ivy Bridge chips in the S430 as well, so you won’t be seeing it until June. Other ThinkPad Edge models include the 14-inch E430 and 15-inch E530, which will start at $549 and be available in April. The company also has a B series of budget laptops starting a $399 on the horizon, but there aren’t many additional details available yet on those. Finally, there’s the ThinkPad Hybrid X1, which sports both an Intel Core i5/i7 CPU and a 1.2 gigahertz Qualcomm chip, commonly found in tablets and smartphones. The Qualcomm chip, which is also paired with one gigabyte of RAM and 16GB, powers Lenovo’s Linux-based “Instant Media Mode.” Strangely, you’ll have to boot into Windows first before accessing the Linux mode, which is a bit counterintuitive, since it seems primed to be something you boot into almost instantly. Other laptop makers offer similar modes that don’t require booting into Windows. Without an instant boot option, it’s unclear how useful the Instant Media Mode is to consumers. The X1 will start at $1,599 and will be available in the second quarter of the year. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| The Atari iPhone game copycat battle zone heats up (exclusive) Posted: 05 Jan 2012 08:00 AM PST Apple has offered many copycat games on its iTunes App Store for years, but decided to pull a number of apps in December due to copyright infringement complaints by Atari. The heavy-handed approach surprised many in an industry where new products traditionally draw from design features and concepts of previous games. The creator of Vector Tanks, the iOS action game removed from Apple’s App Store on request by Battlezone intellectual property owner Atari, spoke to VentureBeat about this in an exclusive interview. Peter Hirschberg, the creator of Vector Tanks, is an industry veteran who collects arcade machines and has contributed to several game emulators. In the mid-1990s he came up with a translucent vector effect algorithm that replicates the glow effect of vector graphics arcade machine screens on computer monitors.  Peter HirschbergIn 2009 Hirschberg created Vector Tanks for the iPhone in the hope of catching Atari’s attention, as he phrased it: “I ran up on stage before the big huge popular band starts playing, grabbed the guitar and did a really awesome lick and I was hoping they’d go: Dude, you’re totally in the band now. And instead they kicked me out of the show.” Hirschberg said that he wanted Vector Tanks to be evocative of the 1980 Battlezone arcade game, but deliberately avoided making it a straight clone: “I used to say: They can’t come after me for a game of tanks drawn of lines, because that was the only similarity that I saw. That’s why I put jeeps in there, helicopters and power-ups – it was not supposed to be Battlezone. Every time I found myself steering into Battlezone territory I would purposely turn the other way.” Asked by VentureBeat about the situation, Atari issued this statement: “Working with the independent developer community is at the heart of Atari’s mobile business model. Both Asteroids: Gunner and Breakout: Boost are the first of several products from that strategy. Unfortunately not all games that are brought to us meet the innovation standards that our consumers expect. In the case of Vector Tanks, we spoke with the team on a number of occasions over a period of several months and ultimately determined that it was not a good solution for our Battlezone franchise.” Atari, in fact, is much smaller than it used to be and, after a number of asset sales and restructurings, has about 50 employees and a relatively small legal department. It’s not necessarily one of the giant companies that can throw its legal muscle around, and, because of its smaller size, it actually needs to tap outside developers to do a lot of work. But nobody ever spoke to Hirschberg when he originally reached out to Atari in 2009. The talks only happened in late 2011 after Black Powder Media had acquired the Vector Tanks rights from Hirschberg, who is now working as a programmer for Electronic Arts. Black Powder Media’s Scott Barrett recalls the communication, which even included Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell at one point: “On Oct. 26, 2011, Apple contacted us to let us know Atari claims infringement. We responded to Apple, denying any infringement and told them we’d be in touch with Atari. We then called Nolan Bushnell who suggested we make Vector Tanks an official Battlezone title and then put us in touch with Atari.” The conversation continued for almost two months and Atari initially seemed to be open to the idea of working with Black Powder Media on the project. But a second notice was sent to Apple from Atari, stating that no agreement had been reached. Two days after that Apple pulled the Vector Tanks apps. “We have sent emails to both Atari and Apple but have heard nothing from either since.”, concludes Barrett.
Gameloft, one of the leading game publishers for iOS and Android devices, has been releasing a string of hits that take a cue or two from other IPs (for example, NOVA smells of Halo and Starfront: Collision shares certain similarities with StarCraft). 6waves Lolapps recently released its Yeti Town mobile game and drew askance looks from those who thought it resembled Spryfox’s Triple Town on Facebook. “With graphic design, a large element of videogames, the line of homage/theft/borrow/ steal/share/evolution is as blurry as they come.”, notes Black Powder Media’s Scott Barrett. He also suggests that the playing field is uneven, with small indie developers being more prone to legal challenges than larger game publishers: “Both Atari and Apple know the cost for us to legally fight would overshadow any income the title could generate. I rather doubt if a little publisher drafted an infringement claim to Apple about one of Atari’s games that Apple would pull the title without the indie dev providing an official legal ruling.”
Hirschberg said he continues to be an admirer of Atari’s classic games, but is doubtful whether the company’s current strategy is doing the retro games market a great service: “If they [Atari] are gauging success by their current offerings (Breakout: Boost and Asteroid: Gunner, et al), I think they are both going to continue to sully these treasured classic games and alienate the inherently niche market for any future offerings.” Vector Tanks Extreme sits at an aggregated Metacritic review score of 81 (out of 100), compared to 69 for Atari’s recent release Asteroids: Gunner. Vector Tanks also received a 5 star review by none other than Ed Rotberg, the programmer of the 1980 Battlezone arcade machine. We have asked Apple to clarify the reasons for the removal of Vector Tanks from the App Store but have not yet received an answer. Filed under: games, VentureBeat        
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| Zynga launches Scramble With Friends for iPhone Posted: 05 Jan 2012 08:00 AM PST
The game is part of Zynga’s strategic expansion into mobile games, a market where its social chops can be an advantage. But Zynga faces stiff competition in the mobile market and has far less market share in that segment than it does as a dominant player on Facebook. Zynga launched seven mobile games last quarter. The game is a fast and fun social word puzzle game that is the latest installment in Zynga’s “With Friends” mobile social apps. In the game, you look at a four by four grid of letters and use your finger to unscramble as many words as you can see in the grid. The fun part of the game is challenging a friend to a match and taking turns to find as many words as you can within 2 minutes. The challenges last for three rounds and the one with the most points wins. You can take your turn at your own leisure, as the play is asynchronous, where one player moves at a time.
You can use Power-Ups before each round that give you special abilities. With the “freeze,” you can stop the clock and get more time. With “inspiration,” you get some hints for three words you haven’t found yet. And with “scramble,” you can get a new view of the game board. You can send in-game chat messages and view a variety of “With Friends” apps at the bottom of the screen so you can see which games have pending turns. You start each match with tokens that are replenished over 20 minutes, but you can buy tokens and use them to get additional power-ups. In the free-to-play version of the game, you get seven tokens and view ads in between rounds. If you pay $2.99, you get more goodies and don’t have to view the ads. Chu says the game has immersive audio and visuals and good tactile feedback.
But this game was made by the San Francisco With Friends mobile game studio, in consultation with the team at the Newtoy studio. The game was based on an earlier Zynga title called Scramble, which had a kind of cult following. One fan, Manoj Saranathan, drafted a petition beseeching Zynga and Facebook to keep it going. But Zynga zapped the game on Sept. 30 on Facebook and now it’s available on mobile. The Scramble With Friends game will be out on Android and the iPad later. Overall, Zynga is on an accelerated pace for introducing new games not only on mobile devices but also on Facebook. It introduced Hidden Chronicles on Facebook this week. Filed under: games, mobile, social, VentureBeat        
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| Barnes & Noble explores spinning off Nook business Posted: 05 Jan 2012 07:33 AM PST
Barnes & Noble is in the precarious position of having its losing physical bookstore business dragging down its growing e-reader/tablet and e-book business. Because of that setup, the company’s financial picture is ugly. The company just cut its sales forecast for fiscal 2012, which ends April 30, to between $7 billion and $7.2 billion. It also expects losses of between $1.10 to $1.40 per share for the year. But when you look at the Nook specifically, the picture is rosier. The Nook family of e-readers/tablets, including the Nook Simple Touch, Nook Color and Nook Tablet, set records over the holidays, with overall sales up 70 percent from 2010. In regards to content, B&N expects to sell $450 million worth of content in 2012, which would make the entire business worth around $700 million by the end of the fiscal year. "We see substantial value in what we've built with our Nook business in only two years, and we believe it's the right time to investigate our options to unlock that value," said B&N CEO William Lynch in a statement. "We have a large and growing installed base of millions of satisfied customers buying digital content from us, and we have a Nook business that's growing rapidly year-over-year and should be approximately $1.5 billion in comparable sales this fiscal year.” Barnes & Noble will report its third quarter earnings around Feb. 21. We would expect a final decision concerning the Nook business by this time. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| 5 things that should be on new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s “To Do” list Posted: 05 Jan 2012 06:58 AM PST After several years of floundering and a four-month search for a permanent leader, Yahoo has appointed former PayPal president Scott Thompson as its new CEO. While Thompson doesn’t officially start until next week, we’ve compiled a handful of tasks worthy of appearing on a hypothetical “To Do” list of things to bring Yahoo back to the level of titanic power it enjoyed a decade earlier. Yahoo has been in turmoil since it fired former CEO Carol Bartz, who was punished for not increasing revenues and losing advertising share from Facebook and Google. While the company has made a smart move to partner with Bing on search and advertising results, it has been stagnant with dull-looking products. Next to Google, Yahoo looks like an old maid. Here’s how Thompson can revive the company: 1. Bring Yahoo email up to par (and kill Yahoo Mail Plus)In terms of legitimate, active accounts, Yahoo email is more popular competitor Gmail — with 302 million users globally, according to Yahoo’s statistics. But we’ve not had an update on usage numbers from Google in at least a year, and I’m assuming Gmail will eventually win this battle. (If you disagree, ask any overly active web user with both accounts which one they prefer.) Both of them are far behind Microsoft’s Hotmail client, which reported 360 million unique users in July. Yahoo mail still doesn’t allow people to use their accounts as an all-purpose e-mail utility for work, enterprise and recreational unless they pay for a premium subscription — meaning if you want to hide ads, gain offline access via POP, use more than 100 filters/labels or forward your mail to other accounts — you have to pay $19.99 annually. Yes, Yahoo Mail Plus gives you access to some helpful things like live customer support and disposable email addresses, but these features hardly give the service an advantage over competitors. I don’t know how much revenue Yahoo generates from its premium mail subscriptions, but eventually Gmail and Hotmail will edge the company out entirely. Customers aren’t going to want to pay for something your competitors (namely, Gmail) are giving them for free. What Yahoo needs to do is seriously deconstruct its email service and rebuild it with a long-term strategy. 2. Restore Flickr to greatnessFlickr rose in popularity because it amplified the ability of photographers to store, catalog and share their hobby. Eventually, Yahoo saw its potential and purchased the company. And many critics have argued that’s pretty much where the service went wrong. Fast forward to 2012, and we see that the iPhone is now the most used camera for uploading pictures to Flickr. We also see that Instagr.am, a startup that gives users filters for pictures they take with mobile phones, has pulled in 13 million users and been named Apple’s number one iOS app of 2011. The obvious pattern is that Flickr isn’t mobile enough. Sure, Yahoo managed to push out an Android app, as well as a decent mobile site overhaul for Flickr, but the bottom line is that people aren’t patiently waiting for the service to adapt to their needs. Eventually this is going to eat away at Flickr. The company needs a happy medium between Flickr and Instagr.am — and it needs it fast. 3. Consolidate & trim the fatYahoo desperately needs another consolidation plan — something that combines all of its social products into one nice, neat package the way Google is attempting to do with Google+. It’s not enough for Yahoo to provide integration of these services. The company needs to take (another) hard look at what products and areas its successful in, and concentrate on them entirely. This also means the company will inevitably have to trim the fat. While I absolutely love services like Yahoo’s IntoNow, a social check-in service for people watching TV frequently, I don’t see the product going anywhere in the future. Yahoo has a history of building great services and not knowing quite what to do with them, leading the company to do nothing more often than not. Consolidate Into_now into Yahoo’s other social services. Kill things like Yahoo Deals and 4cast. 4. Organize (then organize again)Many times I’ve started writing a short article about Yahoo and wrestled with myself over calling it a tech company or media company. It’s both, but Yahoo sure doesn’t make it easy to distinguish the two portions. The company has several very popular media channels for sports and lifestyle/culture that aren’t being utilized to their fullest potential. Also, partnerships between Yahoo and other services (Monster.com, Match.com, etc.) are mixed in with all the other Yahoo channels, which probably earns the company lots of money for placement, but isn’t very desirable for the overall user experience. I can’t imagine it would be very difficult to reorganize these channels, affiliate services and products into something more manageable. In doing so, it brings me to my next and final item on the hypothetical “To Do” list… 5. Clean up the homepageYahoo’s homepage is extremely busy. Until now, I’m quite positive that this strategy was intentional. It has a somewhat complete list of apps/services in a left sidebar, tabs along the top, trending topics on the right along with must see trending videos, a collection of recent and interesting news down the middle. If Yahoo’s homepage was a road, pedestrians would be strictly prohibited. I’m not suggesting that Yahoo needs to turn itself into Google by stripping everything off the homepage except for a prominent logo and a search box. Yet, the company can certainly do a better job of streamlining its services into something more appealing than the current offering. Yahoo’s new CEO has his work cut out for him. The company has plenty of decisions to make regarding its premium subscriptions verses ad-supported freemium business models. It also needs a drastic reorganization and a new purpose (like Google CEO Larry Page’s social initiative). Thompson previously said the company was going to use its vast collection of data to enhance its suite of services. But to do so effectively, Yahoo will need to do some heavy lifting for people to notice. [To Do List photo via ShutterStock] Filed under: media, social, VentureBeat        
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| Will Google make a Kindle Fire competitor below $199? Unlikely Posted: 05 Jan 2012 06:32 AM PST
The source of this latest rumor is reason enough to be suspicious: Digitimes is reporting that Amazon is working on a 7-inch sub-$199 Android tablet with a potential release around March or April. While the Taiwanese news site can sometimes be right, it’s typically off when it comes to early reports about flagship hardware. Then consider the fact that Schmidt is hinting that Google’s Nexus tablet is far from a budget release. "In the next six months, we plan to market a tablet of the highest quality," he said in an interview before the holidays. That doesn’t sound like Google is trying to take on the already cheap Kindle Fire, which notably cut many corners in hardware and software design to achieve that price. Instead, I suspect that Google would aim somewhere between $250 and $300 for its flagship tablet — significantly cheaper than the $499 iPad (which would be in its third generation by then), but pricy enough to feature better hardware than the Kindle Fire. There are already boatloads of super cheap Android tablets, not including the tablet/e-reader hybrids like the Nook Color and Kindle Fire, so it doesn’t make much sense for Google to compete against them. Instead, the Nexus tablet will likely serve the same role as Google’s Nexus smartphone lineup: setting the stage for what’s possible in high-end design, and serving as a benchmark for other Android device makers. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| With $53.4M more funding, Lithium says social will change marketing as we know it Posted: 05 Jan 2012 06:01 AM PST
For Rob Tarkoff, chief executive officer of Lithium, social is the next frontier for marketers. Lithium uses social media — beyond Facebook, as Tarkoff stresses — to connect with a brand’s customers and decipher who the bull horns are. It’s well understood that people are more willing to buy a product if the recommendation comes from a friend, as opposed to coming from the company itself. We are taught the sellers are inherently untrustworthy. Company statements are easily written off because of this, but if a peer’s has something to say, we’re persuaded to listen. “Marketers are starting to recognize peer-to-peer and there are going to be big changes over the next three years,” said Tarkoff in an interview with VentureBeat. “CMOs are saying they’re going to double or triple their spend on social.” Social media is effectively free marketing for a company who knows its customer base. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and other users all drive huge amounts of content every day and deliver it straight to your customers’ inbox. In order to get your product into social mouths, however, Lithium must identify the big influencers and convince them to start talking about your product on the Internet. They accomplish this convincing process by appealing to the high schooler in all of us: feeling popular. Lithium calls this the, “underlying science of behavioral motivation.” “In the online world reputation is everything, it’s the content you produce,” said Tarkoff. Lithium’s “engagement” products make you feel like a “thought leader,” an industry expert on a certain subject. It makes you feel like people are listening. That sense of self righteousness is your ticket to social media buzz. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg sees this sharing as the way people will ultimately engage with anything. That is, he believes when you share socially, you influence your peers to listen to a certain kind of music, read news articles, watch similar movies and more. At the company’s developer conference in September 2011, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook likes would evolve to have its own vocabulary. People sharing would then be able to do more than like, they could “play,” “buy,” or any other number of verbs. “I absolutely think [what Zuckerberg says] is right and is at the core of our business,” said Tarkoff. “Facebook is totally aligned with us.” Lithium plans to use the funding, led by new investors New Enterprise Associates and SAP Ventures, to acquire complementary technologies. Tarkoff, who joined the company in September, says Lithium has been on “cash flow positive” for the last few quarters and hopes the money will help it become a “consolidator” in 2012. Filed under: deals, social, VentureBeat        
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| Aeria Games buys game portal Ijji Games and raises money Posted: 05 Jan 2012 06:00 AM PST
“NHN grants Aeria Games the first right to review and obtain, with preferential treatment, all MMO games that NHN has obtained licenses to, whether through its wholly-owned or partially-owned studios or third-party studios. The transaction also includes two licenses from NHN's lineup,” said Aeria chief executive Lan Hoang (pictured below). The press release lists the two games as shooters Alliance of Valiant Arms (A.V.A.) and Soldier Front. Hoang said that Aeria has been profitable to date and that the investment is the first fundraising the company has done from an outside investor. “The key for us is the acquisition of Ijji and the content agreement. The additional resources will be used to acquire Triple-A titles and aggressively expand our platform to the mobile gaming market, with a focus on our core audience of mid- and hardcore gamers, aka our power players. We will be launching through our platform a number of multi-player games for the smartphones and the tablets in the very near future,” he said.
“The shooters community, which Ijji is really known for, is probably one of the most hardcore and loyal gaming communities,” Hoang said. “Our audiences are very complementary, so it's a good fit and one that will help to further foster an even more active community amongst Aeria Games users.” Aeria Games, founded in 2006, has offices in the US, Germany and Brazil, publishing in nine languages across 30 countries. NHN Corporation, established in 1999, is a multinational Korean internet company, operating a Korean search portal with more than 17 million unique daily visitors as well as a game portal, Hangame, which reports $422 million in revenue last year, from over 30 million registered users. Filed under: games, VentureBeat        
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| Marvell supplies the brains for the second-generation Google TV box Posted: 05 Jan 2012 05:00 AM PST
The new box, which was announced in October and will be on display next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. More versions of the Google TV service, coupled with boxes from new hardware makers, are expected to debut in 2012. If it succeeds, then Marvell will have a nice new market for its Armada chips, which already used by the tens of millions in smartphones and other devices. Weili Dai (pictured), co-founder of Marvell, said in an interview that Marvell’s Armada 1500 Foresight platform will enable Google TV set-top boxes to display high-definition video, 3D graphics, and other rich multimedia entertainment. While the first version of Google TV didn’t do so well last year, Dai is confident that the second generation is more appealing. “It starts with an open platform and it uses a smaller box without a need for a fan anymore,” Dai said. “This time, we are doing it right, transforming static TV into two-way interactive television.” Dai said that Marvell’s chips provide the foundation for a Google TV box, “like the dough in a pizza.” Google’s Android operating system is the tomato sauce for the pizza and the toppings are the apps that run on the device. The apps will be inexpensive programs that do everything from “This time, we have the makings for a great pizza,” she said. Google TV services can be included in a variety of devices, including connected TVs, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players, and more. Dai said that a number of those partners will come forward with products during 2012. One of the big questions is whether content owners — who fear the access to pirated content that can happen with the open web — will come on board with Google TV. Google chose to use Marvell’s Qdeo video processing technology in the Foresight platform to deliver 3D graphics, rich audio, and TV-friendly web content. Google’s grand plan is to disrupt entertainment by bringing the full searchable web into the living room, along with a cornucopia of programming choices for consumers, on an open platform. Its rivals include Microsoft with its Xbox Live online entertainment service as well as an expected Apple TV. The hope of these big companies is to help apps on the TV take off in the same way that they have on smartphones and tablets. Dai thinks that is going to happen and that this is just the beginning of a big advance in entertainment with a breakthrough in power consumption and cost. The Connected TV Marketing Association estimates that 123 million connected TVs will be sold worldwide in 2014. Consumers using those TVs will access services like Netflix, Pandora, YouTube, Skype, Picasa and others. Dai said the video technology will be able to run a variety of content formats, from Flash to HTML5. Marvell has been working on the technology for the platform for more than a year. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Skiing down a mountain? Put a smartphone-controlled wireless camcorder on your head Posted: 05 Jan 2012 05:00 AM PST
Santa Clara, Calif.-based has helped usher in the revolution in high-definition video and still cameras that use very little power and so can fit into smaller packages than older digital cameras and camcorders. And by adding wireless capability from Qualcomm Atheros, Ambarella makes it easy to create mini cameras that can fit on your head and pass images to a smartphone, which can then be used to either control the direction of the camera or stream the images over the air to your friends. This kind of technology shows that a smartphone can work as a complement to a camera, rather than eliminate the need for a camera. Ambarella will display the A7L Android-based technology next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
“The solution in these cases is to move the controls to the smartphone,” said Chris Day (pictured), vice president of marketing and business development at Ambarella, in an interview. “The camera is no longer going to be a stand-alone device.” While Ambarella makes the chips for such devices, camera makers such as Contour create the actual video and still cameras for targeted consumers. With the new Ambarella technology, users will be able to get much better control of their cameras using a touchscreen on a smartphone or tablet. Ambarella focused on the imaging technology while Qualcomm Atheros provided wireless expertise. Today’s popular sports cameras have to perform in rugged outdoor conditions and require a camera to be mounted where it’s impractical to view a preview screen. In an improvement upon that, Ambarella enables cameras that can stream the video from the camera to the smartphone, where the display shows the view from the camera. The user can adjust the direction. In addition, for still cameras, users can use a smartphone to adjust a camera for a family portrait, while remaining in the shot. Or they can use a camera and a wireless remote smartphone to do stealth wildlife photography, without scaring away animals. The smartphone can also be used to playback the recorded video, stream live video action to popular Internet broadcast websites, such as Qik and Ustream, or upload photos or video files to Facebook and YouTube. The SDK is available for Ambarella’s A7L SoC chip family, providing full 1080p HD video at 60 frames per second and very low power consumption. “You could say to your friends, watch me at this address,” said Didier LeGall, executive vice president at Ambarella, in an interview. Ambarella filed to go public in June 2011 but hasn’t taken any action on that filing. The company has more than 400 employees now, including 200 in Taiwan. It was recently voted the most-respected private semiconductor company of 2011 in a vote by the peers. Aside from camcorders and digital cameras, Ambarella’s chips are used in broadcast infrastructure, video networking, and surveillance. Since 2006, the company has delivered five generations of its imaging chips. The latest A7L chips run Android and support a variety of features, from cloud services to full HD playback. They use there ARM microprocessor cores in a single chip. Multiple products using these chips and the wireless technology are expected to debut in 2012, Day said. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Moontoast nabs $6M to grow its social commerce service (exclusive) Posted: 05 Jan 2012 05:00 AM PST
Moontoast gives musicians, celebrities, companies and brands a way to generate money from the often large following of people on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The company primarily does this with its “distributed store” feature, which essentially gives its clients a store that can be embedded into a social network status update or third-party website (Walmart, Target or an affiliate blog). Users can make the purchase seamlessly without having to navigate away from the site — thus enhancing impulse purchases and/or removing hassle that would prevent an online sale of things like merchandise, special deal coupons, digital music files and more. The process has proved very successful — netting early clients (such as country artists Reba McEntire and Taylor Swift) upwards of $10,000 an hour after posting via Facebook, according to the company. “We believe the social commerce is a very new market with a lot of untapped potential,” Moontoast CEO Blair Heavey told VentureBeat in a recent interview.”The new funding will allow us to enhance the distributed store and analytics suites as well as grow new aspects of the services like game commerce.” The new funding will allow Moontoast to grow two other aspects of its service: a set of analytical tools designed to identify and maximize sales and a new “gamification” feature that will maximize sales by engaging a client’s social media following through games, puzzles, quizzes and more. The funding will also be used to expand the number of clients working with Moontoast, Heavey said. The new funding round was led by Nashville-based venture capital firm The Martin Companies, with participation from prior investors. Moontoast has raised a total of $9 million to date. Founded in 2008, Moontoast originally began as a social knowledge base that allowed "experts" within their specialized field to turn a profit by performing various services. The company, which has offices in Nashville, Tenn. and Boston, Mass., pivoted in 2010 and brought on interim CEO Stephen Collins, formerly of DoubleClick. Its early investors include country music artists such as co-founder Bucky Baxter, Wynona Judd, Vince Gill, Amy Grant and Kip Winger. Filed under: deals, social, VentureBeat        
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| For blazing fast wireless internet, Broadcom announces its first 5G WiFi chips Posted: 05 Jan 2012 05:00 AM PST
Broadcom and a number of other chip and wireless product companies are supporting the new technology, which will be on display at the Consumer Electronic Show next week in Las Vegas. This kind of faster networking is needed because consumers are watching videos and playing streamed games on a variety of devices and screens in the home these days. It could also be great for activities such as multiplayer gaming. The name 5G WiFi is a clever bit of marketing, but accurate enough, said Michael Hurlston, senior vice president of the mobile and wireless group at Broadcom, a chip giant based in Irvine, Calif. The technology uses the 802.11ac engineering protocol, or the fifth generation of WiFi standards. In that sense, Broadcom can position WiFi as faster than 4G, which the cellular phone companies are rolling out as the fastest mobile phone data networks. Hurlston said that WiFi has always been faster than cellular data networks, so the naming of 5G WiFi versus 4G cellular is apt. But it may lead to consumer confusion down the road as 5G mobile networks debut at some point in the future. “We made sure WiFi was part of the name so that consumers recognize what it is when we say 5G,” Hurlston said. Still, since WiFi is faster than mobile networking such as 4G LTE, WiFi is expected to be part a big part of gadgetry in the future. More than 3 billion wireless-enabled WiFi devices are expected to be in use by 2015, according to Mark Hung, research director at Gartner Research. This generation of wireless could thus be the most influential wireless technology in the years to come, he said. 802.11ac is the next generation of WiFi that operates in the same 5 gigahertz band of the radio spectrum as its predecessors, 802.11a and n. (802.11b operated in the 2.4 gigahertz band, but 802.11ac is compatible with all past versions of WiFi). The technology is faster because it uses a wider channel for delivering data, at 80 megahertz instead of 40. It uses 256-QAM, a modulation scheme that is four times more efficient than the prior 64-QAM scheme. And it taps multiple antennae using the MIMO spatial stream technology, using twice as many streams as were available before. With the faster technology, users can sling video from a central hub to a screen in a distant bedroom. They can synch a lot of music or video files wirelessly, and surf the internet without killing the battery life of the device they’re using. Broadcom’s first family of chips designed for 802.11ac will be three times faster and six times more power efficient than previous 802.11n chips. The power efficiency stems from the faster speeds, as you can power down a wireless access point more quickly if the data moves more quickly through it. Video is expected to reach 90 percent of global consumer traffic, according to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index Forecast. The chips include the BCM4360, BCM4352, BCM43526 and BCM43516. The fastest chip, the BCM 4360, supports three simultaneous streams. But the other chips will support just one or two streams and will be more appropriate for smartphones and tablets. Filed under: games, VentureBeat        
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| Qualcomm to launch Snapdragon Game Command for managing Android games Posted: 05 Jan 2012 04:30 AM PST
The app is an organizer for Android games on tablets and smartphones, and its purpose is to highlight the titles that run best on a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor in a mobile device. In that respect, it’s a counter to Nvidia’s Tegra Zone app launched last year to highlight games that run on Nvidia chips. The app shows that chip makers have to fuel an ecosystem not only around their chips, but the devices that use the chips and the apps that run on top of them. That theoretically creates market demand for more Snapdragon chips, which serve as the brains of a mobile device. The Snapdragon GameCommand gives mobile users a way to quickly discover, organize and access the latest mobile games. For developers, it gives them a chance to have their games featured in a spotlight and become more popular. The phones include more gaming news and easy access to more than 100 Snapdragon GamePack featured games. The pack includes several titles running for a short time on an exclusive basis, including Fight Game Heroes from Khaeon Gamestudio; Bunny Maze 3D from Eyelead Software and Desert Winds from Southend Interactive. Qualcomm worked with those companies to make sure their games take advantage of the graphics capabilities of the Snapdragon chips. The app allows users to access their favorite games in one spot with one group icon, accessible via a finger swipe on a smartphone or tablet. Snapdragon GameCommand also provides gamers with a source for the latest game news. More than 60 percent of smartphone users regularly play games on their mobile devices. Filed under: games, mobile        
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| Logitech unveils its reimagined mouse: the Cube Posted: 05 Jan 2012 01:00 AM PST
It’s a replacement for the computer mouse, and is not shaped like a cube despite its name. Seriously, though, this seems cool. The Cube is a new kind of mouse that doubles as a presentation tool when you need it. As a mouse, the Cube scrolls when you swipe your finger along the main panel’s tiny ridges. To use it as a presenter, you lift it in the air and it moves into presenter mode. You can click on top of it to advance a slide. If you need to go back, you turn the mouse over in your hand and click again. The Cube fits easily in a pocket and is easy to take with you. The Logitech Cube will be on display at the Consumer Electronics Show next week in Las Vegas.
Todd Walker, brand manager at Logitech, said, “It doesn't stop with distinctive design. The Cube has just the right set of features, whether you're working through an international flight or making a critical presentation – all in a beautiful tiny package." The Logitech Cube also has a tiny Logitech Unifying receiver, letting you connect to your computer using the 2.4-gigahertz band of the radio spectrum. So it stays connected to your computer when you move around. You can connect up to six compatible devices to your computer — a keyboard or number pad — through the Cube, without the need to plug in multiple universal serial bus (USB) receivers. The Cube costs $69.99 and will be available in the U.S. and Europe this month.
The camera has Carl Zeiss optics and autofocus. It costs $99.99 and will be available in the U.S. and Europe. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| NumberFire grabs $650K to heat up sports stats Posted: 04 Jan 2012 07:39 PM PST
As we wrote previously, New York-based NumberFire focuses on sports analytics and can even help you win your fantasy football league. Other sports for fantasy tracking are coming in the future. The company is a recent graduate of the ER Accelaerator program. Despite only being around since Sept. 2010 and only having four employees, the company already has partnerships in place with ESPN, Sports Illustrated and SB Nation for content and statistics. NumberFire CEO Nik Bonaddio told us the seed round amounted to $650,000, but it will eventually total $750,000. Bonaddio said he and his team decided to close the round early because they wanted to get the ball rolling now. The team will get the paperwork sorted out for the additional cash in the near future. RRE Ventures led the seed round, with participation by TechStars’ David Tisch and Pennyblack's Eliot Durbin. “We’re thrilled to be working alongside such great investors and mentors,” Bonaddio told VentureBeat. “This round will give us the runway to build on our great momentum by developing products across multiple sports and partners. But enough about the company — let’s go Steelers!” Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Do-it-yourself legal site Rocket Lawyer raises $10.8M Posted: 04 Jan 2012 05:19 PM PST
“This is a combined Series D financing of $18.5M from August Capital, Google Ventures and Investor Growth Capital plus the $10.7 M investment from the new investor, Industry Ventures, for a total of $29.2M,” a company representative told VentureBeat in an email statement. Founded in August 2008, San Francisco-based Rocket Lawyer aims to make legal services accessible and affordable for all. The site supports common do-it-yourself small business and consumer legal needs such as wills, property titles and business contracts, and also offers legal advice from local attorneys for a fee. The three year-old startup, according to a new Form D filed Tuesday by CEO Daniel Nye, closed $10.79 million in December 2011 from a single investor (Industry Ventures) in a $10.84 million equity round. The new money brings Rocket Lawyer’s total funding to roughly $40 million. The fast-growing legal site doubled-up in terms of visitors between September 2010 and September 2011, and is said to be used by more than 15 million people and several thousand businesses each year. It competes with Legal Zoom and USLegalForms. This post was updated with a statement from Rocket Lawyer confirming the additional funding. [Image courtesy of Julia Manzerova/Flickr] Filed under: deals, VentureBeat        
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| Comcast & Disney reach content deal for “TV Everywhere” Posted: 04 Jan 2012 05:10 PM PST Today was a big day for media companies. Disney and major cable provider Comcast teamed up on what it calls an “unprecedented distribution deal” today, bringing more content to Comcast’s digital media strategy. The deal, gives Comcast Xfinity a edge in the digital media space with its iPad app and online offerings. The companies will further work together for 10 more years, giving Comcast access to 70 different Disney’s television channels, owned properties, local broadcast stations, and more. The access isn’t just granted for those flipping the tube, but also in Comcast’s On-Demand channels, as well as Xfinity online and mobile applications. “For the first time ever, Comcast’s Xfinity TV customers will be able to watch ESPN, ABC or Disney shows live or on demand and across multiple screens, in and out of the home,” said Marcien Jenckes, senior vice president and general manager of Comcast Video Services, in a blog post. Some of the 70 Disney media properties include ABC, ABC Family, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN Deportes, ESPNEWS, ESPN Classic, ESPN Goal Line, ESPN Buzzer Beater, ESPN 3D, ESPN GamePlan, ESPN FullCourt and ESPN3. The company’s goal is to bring TV to customers across different devices, wherever they are, or “TV Everywhere.” The idea is that any customer should have access to entertainment whether they’re on a bus, at their computer, or on the couch. In order to deliver on this Comcast will look to Disney to help it develop new ways for to deliver content to its users. Disney and Comcast weren’t the only media partnerships bringing TV Everywhere today. According to Cnet, Metro PCS also signed a deal to bring local television to the smartphone. The company joined up with Mobile Content Venture to bring mobile television to its customers via Dyle TV. The smartphone will be created by Samsung, and will receive content from Fox, NBC, Telemundo and 13 others. via New York Times, Cnet
Filed under: media        
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| Leonard Nimoy to join Woz at our DEMO Enterprise tomorrow Posted: 04 Jan 2012 04:40 PM PST
The event, “DEMO Enterprise Disruption: An Evening of Change & Innovation,” which takes place in San Francisco, is already full, and so we can’t take anymore registrants. However, we’ll be running a live feed of the event on our home page. So tune in to VentureBeat starting at 6:15 pm PST to watch the evening's events, including student demos of the latest cool enterprise technology, a VC Sage panel and a special demonstration by Fusion-io Chief Scientist and co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak. I’m especially excited about Nimoy joining us. He’s famous for playing Dr. Spock in the original Star Trek series, his role in other films such as Mission:Impossible, but also his legendary creativity overall. He’ll be joining Wozniak on stage for a discussion about innovation. I’ll be moderating that session. And afterward, we’ll be throwing a massive holiday party. See many of you there tomorrow. Filed under: cloud, DEMO, dev, enterprise, VentureBeat        
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| Scientists have figured out how to make entire events disappear Posted: 04 Jan 2012 03:58 PM PST
Scientists at the Pentagon have just published some fascinating (understatement) research on “temporal cloaking”. As the team noted in Nature,
Translated into lay-nerd terms, these scientists figured that light allows us to see objects, so to make an object or event invisible, all you have to do is keep the light from hitting it (a key component of other existing invisibility technology). And to keep it invisible for a period of time, you have to speed up the front end of a beam of light while slowing down the back end, creating a gap. And these blessed souls have found a way to do precisely that. Here’s a look at how the experiments went down: Don’t expect to see invisibility “time holes” in your corner Army Navy surplus store any time soon, though. The experiments occurred inside a fiber-optic cable over the course of a few picoseconds. Still, the team noted in its conclusions, “These results are a significant step towards the development of full spatio-temporal cloaking.” Stay tuned for Star Trekian cloaking devices, invisibility cloaks and other optical camo coming soon-ish to a top-secret military lab near you. Filed under: offBeat        
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| Tumblr releases Fan Mail for private messaging Posted: 04 Jan 2012 03:52 PM PST
The new feature is called Fan Mail and it enables Tumblr members to send stylish messages to the blog owners they follow. “I’m very pleased to introduce Fan Mail, a beautiful new way to share those sweet, inspiring, or otherwise thoughtful notes with your favorite bloggers,” Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp jotted in his own Fan Mail-themed note. Fan Mail will be rolled out to all users in the next few days, Karp added in an update on the release. Members can send the cutesy messages via the Tumblr inbox, avatar drop-down menus and the top corner of the blogs they follow. Private messaging is a staple of most social media sites, and it should make for natural addition to Tumblr’s blog platform and already thriving community. Tumblr currently boasts more than 39 million blogs with a combined total of 15 billion posts. The New York-based startup closed an $85 million round of funding in September. Filed under: social, VentureBeat        
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| Thompson: Yahoo isn’t for sale; will focus on data to improve services Posted: 04 Jan 2012 03:44 PM PST
Previously, critics questioned Yahoo’s ability to challenge its rivals and regain market share that was lost over the last few years — leading to lots of speculation about the company’s future. Some reports indicated that Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang was plotting to take the company private. Other reports speculated that Yahoo investors would be pleased with selling off portions of the company, such as its Asian business and valuable patent library. While a sale of the Asian assets will go forward, Yahoo is buckling down to turn the rest of its business around. During the call Thompson said the company’s strategy is to have both excellent technology as well as excellent content — “not one or the other.” He also pointed out that Yahoo is still a strong brand, and that its properties are visited by over 700 million people around the world. The goal, he said, will be to use Yahoo’s vast data to enhance these visits. "I feel that this data will be exploitable," Thompson said, while adding that he’s still got a lot to learn. "My instinct says that down in that data we will find ways to compete and innovate that the world hasn't seen yet." Thompson, who has a background in Information Technology, definitely understands the importance of data, as VentureBeat’s Jolie O’Dell points out in a recent profile post. Filed under: media, VentureBeat        
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| Verizon sold 4.2M iPhones during the holidays Posted: 04 Jan 2012 03:21 PM PST
Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said during an investor chat that the company had sold 4.2 million iPhones during Q4 2011. This was the company’s first year-end season of iPhone sales; the iconic device was not available on the network in 2010. While consumers around the world held off on iPhone purchases during Q3 in anticipation of the iPhone 4S, they apparently unleashed their dollars on Verizon as soon as the 4S became available. Overall, 17 million iPhones were sold by Apple during the fourth quarter. Verizon has grown its iPhone sales over the first year it’s offered the device. The company sold 2.2 million iPhones in Q1 2011 and 2.3 million in the second quarter, and dipped to 2 million units sold during the third quarter, as noted. Verizon’s only iPhone-carrying network competitor, AT&T, activated 3.6 million units in the second quarter of 2011 and 3.7 million in the third quarter. We don’t yet know the company’s fourth-quarter sales statistics for the iPhone. Verizon has been selling iPhones since February 2011; first-day sales of the famous mobile broke previous records for the company. The current year, 2012, will be Verizon’s first calendar year selling the iPhone. It will be interesting to see how year-over-year figures stack up for the network — and how events such as product launches and holidays impact sales figures over a longer period of time. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Playerize secures $1M to find more players for your online game Posted: 04 Jan 2012 02:45 PM PST Playerize, a company that helps game studios find more players for their online and mobile games, raised $1 million in its first round of funding. "Playerize uses display advertising through blog networks to help find new players for mobile and social games. For example, if a game studio creates a puppy themed game, we would place a display ad on a puppy related website to drive players to the game," Playerize co-founder Lyal Avery told VentureBeat. Avery noted that Playerize's main competitors, Nanigans and Ad Parlor, only focus on Facebook ads. Self-described as the "Google AdWords of game advertising", Playerize helps game studios increase revenue from online game play and find new players for their games. The company uses direct advertising and search networks to increase player acquisition as well. Game studios that use Playerize get a real-time dashboard to manage ad campaigns and track how well ads are doing based on conversions and click through rates. The company will also create ads for game studios that don't have in-house advertising departments. Playerize plans to use the $1 million to serve more game studios, expand its sales and development teams and secure more traffic sources for ad distribution. It also plans to develop its beta email service, which focuses on player reengagement. Playerize was founded in 2011 with the help of Founderfuel, a Montreal-based accelerator. Founderfuel launched its first 12-week program in August of 2011 to help teams launch their companies with mentorship and venture capital funding. Playerize graduated from the program with seed funding and closed its series A round about one month later. Playerize is backed by Real Ventures, Rho Ventures, Mike Edwards of Initio Group, David Chamandy of Machkor, Martin-Luc Archambault, Dan Robichaud, and Jason Bailey. Filed under: deals, games        
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| Why the Internet was wrong about Ron Paul Posted: 04 Jan 2012 02:27 PM PST
Yet the actual results in Iowa today show Paul trailing Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, of all people. In the caucus, Romney won by a hair with 30,015 votes to Santorum’s 30,007. Both had around 25 percent of the vote, while Paul took 21 percent, or 26,219 votes. However, entities such as social metrics shop Sociagility and analytics firm Socialbakers had Paul in the lead by a wide margin. And the analysts said the social metrics were not just arbitrary opinions; they were supposedly linked to votes, as well. “There was a very strong correlation (0.83 out of a possible 1.0 maximum) between overall social media performance as measured by our PRINT Index and voting intention amongst Iowans,” said Sociagility co-founder (and WPP advertising veteran) Niall Cook in an interview with VentureBeat. Both Socialbakers and Sociagility predicted that, based on activity from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, Ron Paul was the favored contender in the Republican race by a significant margin. Even Google’s elections hub showed Ron Paul trending higher than other candidates in search and garnering more YouTube views than most of his competitors, as well. So what happened between the Internet and Iowa? Could social media actually not be the magical election predictor that we hoped it would be in 2012? First, let’s take a look at the stats presented by social media analysts leading up to the Iowa caucus: Clearly, Paul appeared to be a front-runner. Even traditional political polls conducted during the same period yielded similar results. Why the Internet was wrongHow, then, did the Iowa caucus end the way it did? Here are the full results of last night’s voting: “Paul dominates positive tweets in an atmosphere that is incredibly negative,” said David Rothschild, a Yahoo researcher focusing on event prediction and individual behavior. “But,” he continued, “tweets originate from an unrepresentative segment of the electorate who can ‘vote’ many, many times… These are not representative samples of the relevant electorate.” “Ron Paul’s supporters are young and Internet saavy,” said David Pennock, another Yahoo researcher who is an expert in prediction markets. “The libertarian-leaning digerati that have heavy influence in online and social media support Paul and his ideals. He has passionate supporters who know how to wield online tools. “But that does not always translate into votes,” Pennock warned. Cook noted in an email thread with VentureBeat that while he still thinks Facebook metrics can have a strong, positive link to voting intention, other networks might not. “There was a significant negative correlation between effective use of Twitter and voting intention,” he said. “That negative correlation is still present when we compare our data with the final results.” Can Ron Paul still win?As a staunch libertarian with widely ranging views across the political spectrum, Paul’s chances of winning the Republican nomination seem slim, especially when you filter his campaign through mainstream media channels. But Pennock said there’s little chance Paul will run as an independent candidate — and, thus, a likely election spoiler for the right — if he does not receive the Republican nomination. “There’s less than a one-in-three chance that any major figure — Paul, Palin, Trump, Bloomberg or Bachmann — will run as a third-party or independent [candidate],” Pennock said in an email with VentureBeat. “Even if he does, it’s not clear Paul would play the spoiler the way [Ross] Perot or [Ralph] Nader did. His platform has many elements (e.g., antiwar) that appeal to the left as well. His supporters may overlap nearly as much with Obama’s as with Mitt Romney’s.” Rothschild countered that if any one of the current Republican contenders were to run as a third candidate, it would be Paul. “We cannot say conclusively how much of an affect his candidacy will have on the outcome of the race, but he does have a very coordinated and strong national organization,” said Rothschild. “First, his presence will influence the platform of both parties. His strident antiwar appeal and his libertarian economic values will force both sides to address those issues. Second, he will siphon off more people who would have voted for the Republican nominee than people who would have voted for the Democratic nominee.” In other words, Paul’s domination of the social media conversation might, much like Nader’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns, shape the conversation nationally and not be mere sound and fury. Social media: What is it good for?Washington bigwigs went social in a big way in 2011, hosting Facebook-themed town halls and taking to Twitter to express themselves and drum up support. But while social media will continue to be a big part of political campaigns, the candidates’ main focus is still and will likely remain on more traditional arenas, especially television ads. “The primaries and presidential face-off itself in November will not be ‘won’ just on social media. They just add to the merry political marketing mix which has been around for a while,” Cook stated. “Even Obama’s famous ‘social’ campaign of 2008 was largely before todays’ key platforms, Twitter and Facebook. But it did involve a huge amount of advertising.” In the end, said Cook, voters should continue to look toward mainstream media, not just social media barometers, for accurate predictions of the race ahead of us. “Mainstream media is more a polished mirror of real life, and social media is still distorted and fragmented, like a fairground hall of mirrors.” Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Apple nabs Adobe’s Todd Teresi to head iAd Posted: 04 Jan 2012 02:12 PM PST
Todd Teresi, formerly a vice president of Media Solutions at Adobe, is now steering Apple’s mobile ad ship, Bloomberg reports. More specifically, Teresi will serve as vice president of iAd and report to VP of Internet Services Eddy Cue, according to GigaOm. The news is a glimmer of hope for iAd, which has had trouble finding clients even after discounting its rates by 60 percent. Miller’s departure in August didn’t help either. He came over to Apple when it bought his mobile ad firm, Quattro Wireless, for $275 million in 2010, but ended up leaving for a venture capital gig at Highland Capital. Since then, Cue has been juggling iAd among his many other duties, but he likely hasn’t had much of a chance to focus on the plaform’s problems. Teresi may be able to figure out a way to make iAd successful — though that’s certainly going to be much more difficult now than when the platform launched in the summer of 2010. Teresi was also the chief revenue officer at Quantcast, and was at Yahoo for a decade, where he managed global sales and eventually ads, according to his LinkedIn profile. Apple pitched iAd as a way to deliver media rich ads on native iOS apps, but its reach is limited, since the ads only appear on Apple devices and have no way of extending beyond apps. Competing ad networks like Greystripe let advertisers run campaigns across multiple mobile platforms and mobile websites, not just apps. Competitors have also become more skilled at running rich media ads over the past year. Apple certainly didn't help its case by demanding tight control over ads initially (a policy it has since relaxed). Filed under: media, mobile, VentureBeat        
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Your love-hate relationship with email could skew more toward the love end of the spectrum in the new year if one startup has anything to say about the matter.
Historically video games have always been a medium where game design ideas and art styles are adapted and refined from one title to the other. Far more prominent releases than Vector Tank have remained unchallenged for drawing inspiration from other IPs. The dual-stick vector shooter Geometry Wars is hard to imagine without the influence of Atari’s Asteroids. Indie game ‘Splosion Man was “
Art Currim from Black Powder Media adds: “Ultimately, we are placed in an un-winnable position on paper. Apple can delete our game at any time. Atari can insist it’s a copy of their game. We’re not accepting that it’s similar enough to justify the copyright infringement claim.”
That Google is developing its own Nexus Android tablet isn’t much of a surprise — Google chairman Eric Schmidt 
Just five months after 
Popular blogging platform 
Newly appointed Yahoo CEO 
More than four months after 
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