VentureBeat |
- Digital music sales slightly beat physical purchases in 2011
- Startup and the City: A startup vocabulary lesson
- Samsung reports record quarterly profit, while HTC sees first big drop in two years
- Ultra-tough Gorilla Glass 2 debuting next week at CES
- Top ways gamers are raising money for charity
- DeanBeat: Game companies raised a record-breaking $1.54B in 2011
- Bummer: All major music labels are now suing Grooveshark
- Nokia scoops up Smarterphone, now has another mobile OS to deal with
- Dropped your phone in the toilet? Use Bheestie to fix it
- The top 5 CES trends that will matter in 2012
- Bad Siri: voice assistant doubles iPhone 4S data usage
- Sprint’s first LTE 4G phone will be a souped-up Galaxy Nexus
- Social network Piazza connects students with their teachers, raises $6M
- Want to rent a new Warner Brothers DVD via Netflix? Prepare to wait longer
- Fusion-io announces groovy new auto commit memory input-output system
- Student startups show off business solutions at Demo Enterprise
- Sprint slows down data speeds for top 1 percent (updated)
- Facebook about to launch Actions, the final piece of its plan for frictionless sharing
- The game within the game: Making mobile gaming work for developers and consumers
- What’s going to happen in mobile tech in 2012
- Google TV’s second wind: New devices coming from LG, Samsung, Vizio and Sony
- New Chrome Beta release renders web pages as you type, screens downloads
- Buyosphere raises $325K, relaunches as Q&A for shoppers
- Japanese game industry’s revenue falls 8 percent
- Super-fast Thunderbolt ports likely headed to iPad and iPhone
- Eight technologies for a healthier 2012
- Swedes say file-sharing is a new religion
- AT&T doubling its LTE coverage with 11 new markets
- Epic Games: “We do not support the current version of SOPA”
| Digital music sales slightly beat physical purchases in 2011 Posted: 06 Jan 2012 08:34 AM PST
It may seems odd that it would take this long for digital music to take the leadership spot, since digital music has been on the rise among consumers for the better part of a decade. However, it’s taken the major music labels about as much time to make sense of the digital music business model rather than cling to CDs. And even now, digital sales are just barely ahead. According to the report, digital purchases made up 50.3 percent of all music sales in 2011 — up 8.4 percent compared to last year. Meanwhile, physical sales music albums totaled 228 million in 2011, a decline of five percent compared to 2010. As for music artists, Adele’s 21 was the highest selling album in both digital and physical sales, while her single “Rolling in the Deep” took the top spot for bestselling digital song with 5.8 million purchases. When it comes to streaming, Lady Gaga is the undisputed champion. The report names her 2011′s most streamed artist. Yet, Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass” was the most streamed song of the year, with 84.9 million audio plays and over 71 million video streams. Some other figures from the report worth noting (especially the last bullet point):
Filed under: media, VentureBeat        
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| Startup and the City: A startup vocabulary lesson Posted: 06 Jan 2012 08:30 AM PST
I come from a right-brained family of lawyers, English teachers and journalists. We dabble in word puns and bananagrams but not math or logic puzzles. That is to say, I don't come from a culture of engineering. Each day I work at my startup, I learn to understand the engineers a little better, but I'm still light years away from considering them a known quantity. I'm learning that a lot of tech startup culture comes from computer engineering culture. The vocabulary and turns of phrase that pepper the everyday goings on at my company have elucidated the way that engineers think and approach everyday matters. For example, after a few weeks in our stylish new office, we decided that the desk setup wasn't quite right. Or rather, it didn't maximize efficiency. We discussed how we might improve this situation. And then we cleared everything off the desks and started to move them around. But engineers don't just move furniture until it looks right. They prototype and then iterate until they come up with the perfect setup. It's a science. We pretended to sit in our desks and worked out all the issues with the different formations until we came up with the best solution. It's not just the lexicon, but the insight into the way engineers think that I find so fascinating. It's just so systematic. I wasn’t handed a vocabulary list before my first day at work, but I've been doing a good job of picking up these words on the fly. One morning before my coffee had fully kicked in, my coworkers asked for my feedback on a candidate I'd met briefly. "She seemed really smart and we had a good conversation," I said. "A quick bit rate, right?" a coworker asked. "A what?" I responded. "A bit rate…quick at processing," he said, perhaps noting that my bit rate wasn't speedy that morning. It was just that I'd never heard the word bit rate used, let alone to describe a person. Not only am I learning a new industry, I'm learning a new language to go along with it. A few weeks ago we had one day of calendar malfunction. Maybe it's the startup world (or just modern life), but at my work, Google calendar is like an oxygen tank. We all rely on it to survive and thrive during busy days. To meet with a coworker, you calendar them in. It's okay to grab lunch with a friend or go to the dentist, but it better be on the calendar. But on this particular day of calendar chaos, uncalendared and miscalendared people kept appearing. One job candidate had not been on our schedule at all and one came in a few hours early. And on this star-crossed day, one of the users I found on Craigslist showed up even though she wasn't calendared. It's easy to imagine how stressful this day was for everyone. I daresay we pulled it off, but no one was happy about the organization failure. Afterwards, the team gathered around to do a root cause analysis of the situation to figure out why it happened and to ensure it would never happen again. I've always been more of the put a bandaid on it/throw your problems under your bed type, so it's refreshing and enlightening to be surrounded by people who get to the bottom of every issue. I'm sure there are countless other words and phrases that I've been too busy thrashing about to pick up on. I'm just thankful we are creating a culture of limited tolerance for acronyms. Because we all know, TNSTAAFL (there's no such thing as a free lunch). What are other quintessential startup vocabulary words? Should I run a query to find more? Keyboard image via Shutterstock
Previous Startup and the City columns: Lessons from landing my first startup job View from the other side of the hiring process Filed under: Entrepreneur Corner, VentureBeat        
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| Samsung reports record quarterly profit, while HTC sees first big drop in two years Posted: 06 Jan 2012 08:18 AM PST
Both companies reported their fourth quarter earnings today, but the results couldn’t be more different. Samsung’s operating profit jumped 75 percent to $4.5 billion in the last quarter, while HTC’s net income dropped 26 percent to $364 million. Samsung admits that its earnings saw a spike from the $1.38 billion sale of its hard drive business to Seagate, but the company still managed to ship around 32 million smartphones during the quarter, according to estimates by Dongbu Securities. (The numbers aren’t too surprising, since Samsung toppled Apple as the world’s top smartphone maker back in October.) Facing stiff competition from both Samsung and Apple this season, HTC’s smartphone shipments fell to 10 million units during last quarter and are estimated to fall further to 8.5 million units this quarter. The big difference for the two companies may be in how they position their flagship smartphones. Samsung launched its Galaxy S II line last year to much anticipation. All of the phones feature the same basic hardware, albeit with some minor differences in screen size and features. HTC, meanwhile, announced several new high-end phones during 2011, and it was sometimes unclear how they were different. If a phone nerd like myself has trouble keeping track of HTC’s multitude of smartphone models, I don’t think a regular consumer would have much of a chance. By removing the complication of choice, Samsung can more clearly direct consumers to its new models. Overall, Samsung said it sold over 300 million phones — including both smartphones and low-end devices — in 2011. Via Bloomberg 1, 2 Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Ultra-tough Gorilla Glass 2 debuting next week at CES Posted: 06 Jan 2012 08:01 AM PST
The first generation of Gorilla Glass is already featured on popular devices like the iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire and Android phones from Motorola and HTC, so a new form of this scratch-resistant and hard-to-break glass could be a big win for smartphones, tablets, TVs and more. The company hasn’t yet announced how much stronger Gorilla Glass 2 is than its predecessor, but Corning will reveal more details next week on the CES floor. The company has said it will take its product a step further with new implementations, including large HDTVs. At CES, Corning will show off Gorilla Glass on an 82-inch advanced multitouch LCD display, automobile interiors, home appliances and a massive video wall. “Handset and tablet device manufacturers are clearly driving toward higher functionality from thinner designs,” said Corning senior VP James Steiner in a statement. ”Corning's latest innovation in Gorilla Glass technology is very well positioned to meet these challenges and enable broader touch technology penetration.” Corning has been around in some form since 1851 and focuses on specialty glass and ceramics. It manufactures Gorilla Glass in the U.S. and Japan. Filed under: mobile        
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| Top ways gamers are raising money for charity Posted: 06 Jan 2012 08:00 AM PST Gamers are a generous sort, as evidenced by the countless ways in which they have been raising money for charities over the past several years. 2011 was an especially noteworthy year, a year in which the Child’s Play charity alone raised $3,512,345. Child’s Play was founded by Penny Arcade owners Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins in 2003 as a charity dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games in a network of over 70 hospitals worldwide. Throughout the year, the charity hosted and inspired hundreds of events that helped lead to over a $1,000,000 increase from last year donations, by far the largest margin in the history of Child’s Play. Some of the most notable events from 2011 include the Child’s Play Gala and Auction, which raised $351,000 for the charity by auctioning off rare pieces of video game history along with the chance to appear in a Penny Arcade strip. Ümloud, the annual “Rock Band Night for Child’s Play” saw its third year of existence bring in more than twice the amount of money raised last year, coming to a grand total of $26,523.85. The Annual Child’s Play Golf Tournament was also founded this year, along with a brand new website redesign. Child’s Play has now broken the $10 million mark for donations over its lifetime. Another huge impact on the charity scene has been the Humble Bundle. There were six bundles this year, each raising hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions, of dollars for not only indie game developers, but also Child’s Play and the American Red Cross. Bigger companies have made their mark as well, including Zynga’s efforts to raise money through their social games on Facebook. Coming off hugely successful donation campaigns such as the Haiti relief efforts, Zynga.org, the philanthropy focused initiative of Zynga, collected over $3 million for the Japan quake relief. $1.5 million of the proceeds were donated by Lady Gaga, a celebrity that would become even further attached to Zynga when GagaVille launched in May. Things have not slowed down in the new year either. Just yesterday the guys and girls over at Speed Demos Archive began the six day marathon of speed running known as Awesome Games Done Quick, and they have already raised over $20,000. AGDQ has become a January tradition of sorts, gaining steam every year as it sees more coverage and more people tuning in to watch some of the most talented international players race through games while raising money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Not only is this a chance to watch gamers much more talented than yourself complete games ridiculously quickly, many of them detail the tips and tricks of the runs as they go. Donate money to the prevention of cancer and learn something about your favorite games too. Viewers are also given the opportunity to donate money toward specific goals, such as whether the runners will play Pokemon Red or Pokemon Blue. As if all this wasn’t incentive enough to tune in, there are prizes to be won during almost every run and a life-size replica Master Sword being given away at the end of the marathon. Feel free to pick up a cheap shirt as well with some fantastic artwork, bearing a name that has become the marathon’s slogan: “Serious Time.” We have not even breached the surface of how much gamers are doing for charities all around the world. The methods are usually just as entertaining as they are effective, as the above examples should make abundantly clear. Look forward to another year of gamer generosity in 2012. Filed under: games        
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| DeanBeat: Game companies raised a record-breaking $1.54B in 2011 Posted: 06 Jan 2012 08:00 AM PST
In 2011, games took center stage. Game investment changed fundamentally during the year, as investors shifted their money into social, mobile and online games as they chased after users who were embracing the newest platforms for games. The total game investment number is up more than 47 percent from the $1.05 billion raised by 91 companies a year ago, based on VentureBeat’s own research. By comparison, 115 game companies raised a total of $663.1 million in 2009. And in 2008, 112 game companies raised $936.8 million. Keep in mind that Nexon raised $1.2 billion and Zynga raised $1 billion in their IPOs in 2011, bringing the total amount of capital raised by game companies to $3.75 billion. Even if you don’t count those two IPOs, venture capital funding for games has never been bigger. Zynga, the social gaming giant and creator of FarmVille and CityVille, accounted for a third of all of the venture funding raised in 2011. Those numbers chronicle the biggest gold rush in the history of games. Just a few years ago, venture capitalists were afraid to invest in games because they were a lot like Hollywood movies, where it was too hard to pick the hits. But the collision of the web, social, mobile and online gaming trends led to a huge disruption for the industry and lots of opportunities for game startups. Major VC firms such as Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DCM, Andreessen Horowitz, and others all poured money into big game companies this year. Google Ventures became an active strategic investor as it recruited startups to make games for its Google+ social network. Powered by the success of games such as Rovio’s Angry Birds, mobile game startups came into their own during the year, raising as much as $18 million per round.
We’ve chronicled the gold rush religiously ourselves but have also pulled data for these fundings from the internet at large, the Internet DealBook, Digi-Capital, and the National Venture Capital Association. We've ranked them here in order of the amount of money raised, and I've linked to our coverage or to those or who covered the funding. If there were no stories on the funding, I linked to the company’s own web site. Fundings where the amounts weren't made public are listed alphabetically at the end. If you've heard of others, please note in the comments and we'll add them to the list. The list includes companies that raised funds in prior years but disclosed for the first time in 2011. It's likely that some companies from last year's list or this year's have gone out of business. If so, let us know in the comments. We expect that we'll be revising the list upward in the coming weeks as we add more deals that we didn't know about. This year, we decided to add fundings that involved gamification, or the use of game mechanics in non-game applications. Each company link takes you back to the story we wrote about the company. In the rare cases where we did not cover the story, the link takes you back to another publication’s story on the funding. Happy reading. 1. Nexon — $1.2B for initial public offering on Tokyo Stock Exchange. Investors: the public. Dec. 13. 2. Zynga — $1B for initial public offering on Nasdaq. Investors: the public. Dec. 16. 3. Zynga — $490M for strategic expansion. Investors: Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Investments, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Feb. 1. 4. 5. Razer — $50M for gaming peripherals and hardware. Investors: IDG-Accel China Capital. Dec. 20. 6. Rovio — $42M for mobile games such as Angry Birds. Investors: Accel Partners, Felicis, and Atomico. March 10. 7. OnLive — $40M for games-on-demand service. Investors: HTC. Feb. 9. 8. 6waves Lolapps — $35M for social and mobile games. Investors: Nexon. Aug. 3. 9. Lumosity — $32.5M for brain-training games. Investors: Menlo Ventures, FirstMark Capital, Harrison Metal and Norwest Venture Partners. June 16. 10. Kabam — $30M for hardcore social games. Investors: Redpoint Ventures and Intel Capital. Jan. 20. 11. Gaikai — $30M for game-streaming technology. Investors: NEA, Qualcomm, Benchmark Capital, Rustic Canyon and Intel Capital. July 20. 12. Happy Elements — $30M for Chinese social games. Investors: Legend Capital, DCM. Oct. 16. 13. Tapjoy — $30M for mobile ad network and monetization services. Investors: J.P.Morgan and existing investors. July 5. 14. Online Warmongers — $25M for free-to-play online games such as War Inc. Battlezone. Investors: Cybergun. Aug. 25. 15. Wooga — $24M for social games on Facebook. Investors: Highland Capital Partners, Tenaya Capital, Balderton Capital, and Holtzbrinck Ventures. May 30. 16. CrowdStar — $23M for social, mobile and Asian online games. Investors: Intel Capital, Time Warner Investments, The9 and NVInvestments. May 23. 17. 18. Gazillion — $20M for online game worlds. Investors: Temasek Holdings, Revolution Ventures, Oak Investments, Hearst Corp., Pellon Ventures, Abu Dhabi Media. Nov. 8. 19. Kixeye — $18M for hardcore games on Facebook. Investors: Jafco Ventures, Trinity Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners. Aug. 4. 20. Papaya Mobile — $18M for mobile social gaming network. Investors: Keystone Ventures and DCM. April 27. 21. TinyCo — $18M for social mobile games. Investors: Andreessen Horowitz. Feb. 25. 22. Zeebo — $17M for interactive education console for kids. Investors: undisclosed. Aug. 29. 23. Fourth Wall Studios — $15M for alternative reality entertainment. Investors: California Capital Equity. March 8. 24. Raptr — $15M for gamer social network. Investors: DAG Ventures, Tenaya Capital and Accel Partners. Feb 10. 25. Rumble Entertainment — $15M for mobile and browser-based games. Investors: Google Ventures and Khosla Ventures. Dec. 1. 26. CocoaChina — $14M for mobile games in China. Investors: Sequoia Capital China, Steamboat Ventures, Northern Light Venture Capital. Aug. 26. 27. Nubee — $13M for mobile games in Singapore. Investors: Vega Corp. Dec. 10. 28. SNS Plus — $12.5M for Asian social games. Investors: WI Harper Group and Matrix Partners. Nov. 28.
30. Digital Chocolate – $12M for social and mobile games. Investors: Intel Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures, and Bridgescale Ventures. Feb. 22. (CEO Trip Hawkins, pictured right). 31. Kontagent — $12M to expand social analytics service into mobile. Investors: Battery Ventures, Maverick Capital, and Altos Ventures. Nov. 10. 32. Rivet Games — $12M (estimated) for web, social and mobile games. Investors: Softbank Capital, Baseline Ventures, Floodgate, and Outpoint Capital. April 20. 33. Supercell – $12M for hardcore real-time social games. Investors: Accel Partners and Klaas Kersting. May 25.
35. HealthTap — $11.5M for gamification of communication in doctor-patient relationships. Investors: Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Mohr Davidow Ventures, and Mayfield Fund. Dec. 6. 36. Peak Games – $11.5M for social gaming in emerging markets. Investors: Earlybird Venture Capital, Hummingbird Ventures and an unnamed strategic investor. Sept. 27. 37. DreamBox Learning — $11M for adaptive learning education games. Investors: Reed Hastings and John Doerr. Dec. 7. 38. Tiny Speck — $10.7M for web games such as Glitch. Investors: Andreessen Horowitz and Accel Partners. April 12. 39. OMGPOP — $10.1M for social game site. Investors: Spark Capital, Betaworks, Rho Capital and Softbank. June 1. 40. Moca World — $10M for mobile social networking games. Investor: Infinity Venture Partners. June 14. 41. Funcom — $10M for massively multiplayer online games. Investors: Stelt Holding. Dec. 13. 42. Idle Games — $10M for social games based on its proprietary Idle Engine, with social recommendations. Investors: not disclosed. Oct. 13. 43. Sourcebits – $10M for mobile games and apps. Investors: Sequoia Capital and IDG Ventures. May 11. 44. A List Games — $9.3M for marketing games via digital distribution. Investors: The Ayzenberg Group. Nov. 21.
46. Icarus Studios – $8.1M for online game development platform. Investors: undisclosed. March 24. 47. Kobojo — $7.75M for social games in France. Investors: Endeavour Vision and IDInvest Partners. April 26. 48. Ignite Game Technologies — $7.5M for online racing games. Investors: Steve Bellotti and Bill Budinger. July 12. 49. Rocket Ninja — $7.5M for social games. Investors: Marcel Boekhoom. Nov. 22. Filed under: deals, dev, games, mobile, social        
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| Bummer: All major music labels are now suing Grooveshark Posted: 06 Jan 2012 07:28 AM PST
Grooveshark is different from other prominent streaming music services like Spotify, MOG and Rdio because it doesn't have broad licensing agreements to play the majority of its music. It depends on its users to upload music that can be enjoyed by the community. If a user uploads a file that he or she doesn't own and it gets a DMCA complaint, Grooveshark takes the file down. The record label is accusing Grooveshark of not paying any royalties since entering into a streaming music licensing agreement in 2009, according to a Reuters report. This means that all four of the major music companies are now suing Grooveshark for one reason or another — making the music startup’s future look mighty bleak. Previously, Universal Music Group, Sony Music and the Warner Music Group filed a lawsuit against Grooveshark for allegedly pirating thousands of songs through its streaming service. Grooveshark estimates that it owes EMI about $150,000 in fees. EMI, however, said that the amount owed is much larger and that Grooveshark has “continued to exploit” its copyrighted music while ignoring demands for both accounting statements and payments. We’ve reached out to Grooveshark for comment and will update this post with any new information. Gainesville, Flo,-based Grooveshark has over 30 million active monthly users that stream more than 15 billion songs per year, according to the company. In November, the company rolled out a new design of its online music player that includes a social layer. Filed under: media, VentureBeat        
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| Nokia scoops up Smarterphone, now has another mobile OS to deal with Posted: 06 Jan 2012 07:11 AM PST
The acquisition was actually completed back in November, but today it was made public by Smarterphone investor Ferd Capital, which put 6.5 million Euros (about $8.3 million) into the company since 2007. Given Smarterphone’s target market of dumbphones (pretty much anything that’s not a smartphone), its technology will likely be used together with Nokia’s aging Symbian platform, which is still very popular among low-end devices. Nokia hasn’t yet commented on the purchase, but there’s little reason to think that Smarterphone’s tech will find its way into its Windows Phone devices. If I had to guess, it looks like Smarterphone is poised to become a new software layer on top of Symbian that will make low-end phones appear more like smartphones. Given that Symbian is still the top mobile OS by many measures, it makes sense for Nokia to find new and interesting ways to push the platform forward. Nokia has given up on selling Symbian phones in the US, and in other tech-savvy countries it will likely be better off focusing on Windows Phone, but the company still needs to pay some attention to emerging phone markets.
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| Dropped your phone in the toilet? Use Bheestie to fix it Posted: 06 Jan 2012 07:00 AM PST
The Bheestie Bag (pictured) can dry out small electronic devices after you drop them into water or spill something on them. It’s a pretty low-tech but innovative way to solve one of today’s modern curses: cool electronics that aren’t waterproof. To rescue a device, make sure you remove the battery and then drop it into the Bheestie Bag. Zip it and seal it. (Don’t open the plastic bag of beads that comes with it). You can keep it in the bag for a day, but longer will work better in ensuring that the device dries out. If it’s a flip device, make sure it is open all the way. I tried it out myself, after a gadget mishap. I dropped my Verizon 4G USB modem from Pantech on the ground outside my home. It rained that night, and I found it the next morning, soaking wet. So I dropped it into a Bheestie Bag for three days and opened it up. I put it into my laptop and it worked fine. Bheestie has a number of other testimonials on its site. The bag has powerful water-absorbing beads (made from a material dubbed molecular sieves) that physically bond with the water and literally pull it out of the electronics. The absorbent materials are like the silica gel desicants that ship with a lot of packaged goods, but they work better at drying things out, says Karen Wildman, co-creator of the Bheestie Bag, in an interview. The Bheestie costs $20 plus shipping and it is available on the company’s web site, Amazon, Restoration Hardware stores, and REI. As an aside, most phones have an indicator in them these days that changes color when the device has been submerged in water. Wildman said that the bag works most of the time, particularly if the customer leaves the wet gear in the bag for the appropriate amount of time. Inside the bag, the materials create an extremely dry environment, so it’s important to keep the bag sealed. The product is the brainchild of two sisters, Wildman and her sister Lisa Holmes. They were constantly battling malfunctioning electronics due to moisture and water damage. Wildman had the initial idea after her son’s Nintendo GameBoy got wet when he dropped it in a pond. After moving to Texas, she had some trouble trying to keep her hearing aids dry, due to the humidity. She applied that knowledge toward finding materials for the Bheestie Bag. So she teamed up with Holmes, a triathlete, and came up with something that helps active outdoor people deal with the problem of wet electronics. Portland, Ore.-based Bheestie consists of just the two sisters, but they have sold more than 100,000 Bheestie Bags over the past few years. Now they’re ratcheting up their marketing and trying to raise awareness about how to fix soaked electronics, Wildman said. “It’s an awareness problem, as most people just throw the electronics out when it gets wet,” Wildman said. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| The top 5 CES trends that will matter in 2012 Posted: 06 Jan 2012 07:00 AM PST If you couldn’t tell by the avalanche of product news hitting VentureBeat over the past few weeks, the next Consumer Electronics Show is almost upon us. The annual trade show, which has been held in Las Vegas for more than a decade, is where many of the world’s biggest electronics companies debut their new products, announce major news, and desperately try to remind us that they exist. A flood of news is par for the course at CES (VentureBeat will be covering the event extensively, as we’re sending more writers than ever before), but every year a few major themes emerge that will resonate for the rest of the year. While the value of CES has arguably declined over the past decade — with companies like Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft announcing plenty of products at their own press events throughout the year — the show still provides us an interesting glimpse of what lies ahead. This year’s trade show is poised to be one of the biggest in years, as the Consumer Electronics Association believes it will draw 149,000 attendees to more than 2,700 exhibitors occupying more than 1.8 million square feet of exhibit space. Here are our predictions for the CES trends that will make a profound impact on the technology world, both for businesses and consumers, in 2012. 4G networks, round 2
At CES, AT&T will be showing off its first run of LTE 4G phones, following the launch of its network back in September. Leading the pack for AT&T will be the Nokia Ace, AKA the Lumia 900, which we think could turn the tide for Windows Phone. AT&T certainly has a lot of catching up to do, and we suspect that the carrier will be making some major announcements regarding aggressive expansion of its network. Sprint, meanwhile, has said that it will have a major roll out of its LTE network in the middle of 2012, which will be followed by the arrival of LTE phones later in the year. The company was the first to launch a 4G network years ago, but it ran the slower WiMax standard. Now that LTE has proven to be faster and easier to deploy, Sprint has to jump ship from WiMax. We expect Sprint to divulge many more details about its LTE plans at CES. That leaves T-Mobile, which for the past year has been embroiled in a potential takeover by AT&T. Now that that’s not happening, the carrier will likely move forward with plans to expand its HSPA+ 4G network, which at this point has already reached 42 megabit speeds in nearly 100 cities. Ultrabooks, the new face of laptops
Eventually, all laptops will resemble what we’re calling ultrabooks. The laptop industry has long aspired to fit as much power as possible in a tiny package. Ultrabooks are the realization of that dream. It used to be that ultraportable laptops came at a premium, then low-cost (but underpowered) netbooks eventually proved machines didn’t need to be expensive to be very portable. With ultrabooks, you get extreme portability and a decent amount of power at a price not much more expensive than mainstream laptops. Intel researchers say Ultrabooks enable “flow,” or the idea of being able to work in an uniterrupted manner. Ultrabooks are also the best way for computer manufacturers to combat the rise of tablets. While slates like the Kindle Fire are getting increasingly cheaper, it’s still not as easy to be productive on a tablet (yes, even the iPad), as you can on a full-fledged laptop. At only a few pounds heavier than 10-inch tablets, ultrabooks could be seen as a companion to cheap tablets, and for some consumers they may even erase the need for a tablet altogether. Mobile chipsets achieve desktop power
This year, the race is on for quad-core chipsets that will bring to mobile computing power on par with some desktops. We’re expecting to see plenty of devices featuring quad-core chipsets from many of the above companies at CES. Qualcomm has the new Snapdragon S4, and Nvidia has Tegra 3, both of which will be able to run complex 3D games and high-definition video without a sweat. Qualcomm has one of the keynote speech slots, while Intel and Nvidia have press conferences on Monday. Intel is finally stepping into the game with its new Atom-based mobile chipset, codenamed Medfield. It may not be initially as powerful as the competing Tegra and Snapdragon platforms, but after sitting out the mobile chipset wars until now, Intel has to start somewhere. The company will reportedly show off its first Medfield-based Android phone, built by LG, at CES. The consumer cloud takes off
At CES, look out for companies showing off ways to connect your home and mobile devices with all sorts of media options. We expect cloud-based music and gaming to really get hammered into consumers heads, especially with connected TVs and mobile apps. Companies such as Verizon, Gaikai, Joyent , and Slacker will all be on CES panels discussing how to move forward with media in the cloud. One company we expect to leave an impression at CES is Shodogg, which uses the web and cloud power to seamlessly move video content between screens, from TV to phone to computer. Another company that could shine is former DEMO winner WeVideo, which makes video editing in the cloud a reality. Car tech revs up
Ford specifically will be a big player in this space at CES with the introduction of a cloud-connected concept car that can beam data between cars and sync your schedule and music from home. The company will also show a beta version of its MyFord mobile app, which can find electrical charge points for electric engines and plan efficient routes using MapQuest. With the ever-increasing demand that technology should help make driving safer, we can also expect that sort of tech getting a spotlight this year. CES will have a number of companies detailing technologies to help with "auto collision avoidance, land drift assistance, parking, speed monitoring, hands-free, text-to-voice, driver drowsiness detection and more." The start of a great yearWhile CES is bastion of consumer technology, there are still plenty of trends that will dominate the year that won’t have much of a showing at the trade show. One of the biggest is Windows 8, Microsoft’s latest operating system that will boldly attempt to unify a tablet and desktop interfaces. From what we’re hearing, Microsoft won’t be announcing much significant Windows 8 news at CES, though you can be sure plenty of other companies will have Windows 8-related news in tow. Looking beyond CES, there’s plenty to look forward to this year: Tablets that won’t suck; the eventual release of Apple’s completely revamped iPhone (which we’re hoping will prove those iPhone 5 rumors true); and mostly for me, the many surprises that 2012 will bring. Filed under: green, media, mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Bad Siri: voice assistant doubles iPhone 4S data usage Posted: 06 Jan 2012 06:59 AM PST
The study by Atlanta-based mobile network monitoring firm Arieso said that iPhone 4S owners use twice as much data as iPhone 4 owners and three times as much data as iPhone 3GS users. In an interview with Bloomberg, Arieso CTO Michael Flanagan specifically calls out Siri for helping these owners use more data. Increased usage from Siri, as well as other data-intensive features, is indicative of a larger problem: smartphones are placing a new level of pressure on mobile broadband networks around the world. "The introduction of increasingly sophisticated devices, coupled with growing consumer demand, is creating unrelenting pressure on mobile networks,” said Flanagan, in the study. “The capacity crunch is still a very real threat for mobile operators, and it looks set to only get harder in 2012. The mobile industry needs new investment and new approaches to boost network performance and manage the customer experience.” Arieso also said that “extreme users,” the top 1 percent of data hogs, are using up half of all downloaded data. Yesterday, Sprint got in a little hot water for admitting it slows down data usage for the top 1 percent, even though the company advertises a "truly unlimited data" plan. In a final note, Arieso believes the data usage issues will only get worse before they get better. The company believes mobile carriers need to immediately invest in further network improvements to help keep up with this new level of demand. "Without adequately preparing networks to support the new generation of smart devices, operators risk spiraling and misplaced operational expenditure and delivering a sub-par quality of experience to customers,” Flanagan said. “It's critical that operators redouble their efforts to limit the impact of this inevitable squeeze." Filed under: mobile        
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| Sprint’s first LTE 4G phone will be a souped-up Galaxy Nexus Posted: 06 Jan 2012 06:33 AM PST
Sprint will launch its own version of Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus as its first LTE device, according to an ad that ran on CNet yesterday (see right). Notably, the phone will be slightly faster than current iterations, clocking in at 1.5 gigahertz instead of 1.2Ghz. Yesterday, Sprint announced its first LTE markets, Atlanta, Dallas. Houston, and San Antonio, will launch in the middle of the year. The Galaxy Nexus news makes Sprint the second US carrier to offer the phone, alongside Verizon. (We expect AT&T will announce its plans for the phone next week.) With Sprint starting off with one of the best Android phones on the market, it’s going to be tough going for any other LTE devices that launch alongside its new 4G network. Since Sprint is starting in only a few markets though, it likely doesn’t have many other LTE handsets lined up. To refresh, the Galaxy Nexus inches into tablet territory with its 4.65-inch screen. Spec-wise, the phone has pretty much everything you'd want in a dream device (although its camera still lags behind the iPhone 4S' more sophisticated 8-megapixel shooter). The Galaxy Nexus is also notable for being the first Android 4.0 device. Filed under: mobile        
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| Social network Piazza connects students with their teachers, raises $6M Posted: 06 Jan 2012 06:00 AM PST
Piazza is a social network and "online gathering space" that encourages student collaboration under the guidance of professors and teaching assistants. Students can ask their professor questions regarding assignments, collaborate with fellow students on projects and engage in discussions day or night. "The inspiration [for Piazza] started with the idea to emulate face to face collaboration among entire classes, as if students were all sitting together in a library working together," Pooja Sankar, founder and CEO of Piazza told VentureBeat. Students can connect with Piazza's online dashboard, and with dedicated iOS and Android apps. Piazza emerged from beta in January and has been adopted by many colleges including Stanford, Georgia Tech, Berkeley, MIT, Cornell, Harvard and Columbia. "Many universities employ course management systems, but after one semester using Piazza they've noticed it's far more superior to what they already have" said Sankar. Course management systems, such as Blackboard, often focus on assignment postings without much social interaction. Piazza aims to move away from static message boards, open up discussion between students and teachers and increase course engagement. "With the funding we plan to increase our user base, further build on our platform and increase social interaction features," noted Sankar. Piazza also plans to bring its social network to more schools and universities in 2012. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round, with participation from Kapor Capital and Felicis Ventures. The company has also been funded by Sequoia Capital and SV Angel investors. Piazza launched in 2009 and is based in Palo Alto, California. Currently it has 10 employees and has raised more than $7 million to date. Student image via Shutterstock Filed under: deals        
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| Want to rent a new Warner Brothers DVD via Netflix? Prepare to wait longer Posted: 05 Jan 2012 11:53 PM PST
Basically this means you’ll have to wait 56 days after a new Warner Brothers DVD goes on sale before you can rent it through Netflix, Redbox and Blockbuster. Previously, all WB movies would become available 28 days after the DVD went on sale, but studio executives want a longer window of opportunity to sell DVDs exclusively through retail stores. The news is scheduled to be announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week, according to an AllThingsD report. And while Warner Brothers is holding back the availability of newly released DVDs from traditional physical rental services, it doesn’t affect streaming video services. Streaming services typically have to wait 90 days or more before new releases become available to subscribers. The basic business model for a film is to have it cycle through various mediums to maximize revenue. It starts with the movie theater premier, followed by a DVD-only window, a rental window and finally a streaming video service. This is why streaming services are the last to gain access to a film in many cases. Warner Brothers isn’t the only content producer that’s being finicky about its DVD availability. Yesterday, Time Warner-owned premium television network HBO decided to yank DVDs of its original programing (Sopranos, Sex in the City, True Blood, etc.) from Netflix’s DVD-by-mail rental service. In HBO’s case, its motivation to pull its DVDs had more to do with making the content available through other means, such as its HBO Go streaming service, premium cable channels and the new Ultraviolet product. Filed under: media, VentureBeat        
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| Fusion-io announces groovy new auto commit memory input-output system Posted: 05 Jan 2012 07:31 PM PST How do you sex up an input-output system that will blow away data center bottle necks? Have Verne Troyer announce it at a groovy DEMO party with drink serving go-go girls! Fusion-io, announced its new auto commit memory system, which allows a company to execute one billion input-output commands per second (called IOPS by techies) in a rack of eight servers. Previously, an I/O rate that high would require a roomful of servers, the company said. This plays into Fusion-io’s goal of shrinking the data system and making it as efficient as possible. Fusion-io chief scientist and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak described it as, “least costly, most efficient, fastest operating.” The company, which went public in June 2011, has grown based on its ability to deliver newer, faster ways of moving data from storage to server CPUs, as people learn more about the information at their finger tips. Fusion-io’s flash chips are more reliable than traditional solid-state disks (SSDs) and are much faster. The company released its first chip, at the DEMO conference in 2008, and released its newest iteration, the ioDrive 2 in October 2011. The ioDrive 2′s purpose is to speed up web page load time, while not overheating your servers. For David Flynn, chief executive of Fusion-io, the company’s main purpose is to deliver useful products to the cloud computing generation, and move away from the outdated hard drive storage still used in many data centers. The New York Stock Exchange uses Fusion-io’s technology. Not coincidentally, it is also the exchange Fusion-io stock trades on. This new technology is called auto commit memory, which, according to Fusion-io’s blog, “is a new memory type that uses the underlying flash to present a persistent memory directly to applications.” It’s an extension to Fusion-io’s ioMemory architecture, and promises to significantly reduce latency and overhead in servers when transferring data. For the press conference, the company set up a rack of eight HP ProLiant DL370 servers, each equipped with eight ioDrive2 Duos, and displayed a meter on-screen that they said showed the rack was executing one billion I/Ops. Fusion-io was able to execute a million in 2009. The next year it did the same with HP’s servers. The auto commit memory extension will be available in April of this year. “The company culture starts from the beginning,” said Wozniak at the event. “One of my big jobs was recognizing what was beautiful about the various products. What’s in that rack there, last time we were here, would have filled this room.” The company is able to achieve this by making chips that speed the process of moving data from short term to long term memory by putting data closer to the processors which will call for it first. The average processor utilization today is less than 20 percent, says Flynn. So by making memory faster, he says, Fusion-io’s technology can potentially improve server performance fivefold, by getting CPU utilization closer to 100 percent. Wozniak, Flynn and Fusion-io chief marketing officer Rick White announced the product at the DEMO event, Enterprise Disruption: An Evening of Change and Innovation in San Francisco. Check out the announcement video with Verne Troyer above. And don’t miss our gallery of photos of Woz and special guest Leonard Nimoy. Filed under: cloud        
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| Student startups show off business solutions at Demo Enterprise Posted: 05 Jan 2012 07:11 PM PST
Three early-stage, student-led startups and one more-established startup hit the stage at the first-ever DEMO: Enterprise Disruption event tonight to show off their best efforts at reinventing the enterprise. Teamitt describes what it does as combining people, processes and data to produce more effective results. It’s a sort of dashboard for enterprise resource planning that can give managers better insights into correlations between training and results. Think of it as a kind of Facebook for your company, letting you find employees by expertise, give them invitations to training, The founders are students from Stanford and UC Berkeley, so Teamitt is already bridging one big cultural communications barrier: That between Cardinal fans and Bears fans.
“They’re potentially offering something that’s useful… I was impressed,” said Dr. Forrest Baskett, a partner at New Enterprise Associates who reviewed the startups’ pitches. “A project like 1DocWay is going to live or die less on technology and more on understanding the adoption dynamics in their industry,” said Peter Wagner of Alpha Venturi, another investor. “It looked like the team had a pretty good handle on that.” To start out, 1DocWay is focusing on behavioral health (psychiatry). The company already has a customer (a hospital) and is looking for its seed round of funding. The founders are Wharton business students.
“I was worried about their targeting,” said Baskett. “Software developers have some characteristics we all know about. One, there aren’t enough of them and two, they don’t spend much money.” Stanford University provided Diffbot’s initial funding and it was the first company to be selected for the Stanford incubator, StartX. Sococo is a kind of virtual office building for collaborating with your co-workers. It represents each person on the system as a little round head, and you can move from virtual room to virtual room to chat with different groups of people. In Sococo’s “conference rooms” you can also use real-time audio conferencing and document sharing to work on projects together. Also, as of today, the company is adding videoconferencing to its features. “The whole category of cloud-based communications is a rich one,” said Wagner. He was cautiously optimistic about the company, but suggested that it might need to focus. “[Sococo is] biting off a lot, though. It’s a great category, but there’s a fair amount of clutter,” Wagner said. One thing Sococo has going for it: a cute interface that is a bit like Turntable.fm meets the Sims, with little “pop” sounds whenever someone pops into your space. Speaking more generally, Baskett was bearish on the whole category of cloud services. “I think that cloud services has only started to develop into what it can be down the road,” said Baskett. “I think the cloud is going to change [a lot], in fundamental ways that we’ve only scratched the surface of.” Follow #democon on Twitter for up-to-the-minute updates from the DEMO Enterprise event. Photos: Dylan Tweney/VentureBeat Filed under: cloud, DEMO        
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| Sprint slows down data speeds for top 1 percent (updated) Posted: 05 Jan 2012 06:12 PM PST Don’t listen to those Sprint ads that tout a “truly unlimited data” plan — they may not be entirely true. The carrier actually slows down data speeds for the top 1 percent of its smartphone customers, CEO Dan Hesse admitted Thursday. “For those that want to abuse it, we can knock them off,” Hesse said at an investor conference, according to Dow Jones Newswire. The practice may not fall in line with what the company preaches in its advertisements (like the one seen above), but it is consistent with an October 2011 decision to stop offering unlimited 4G data plans for tablets and broadband cards. Throttling or not, Sprint remains the only U.S. carrier to offer an unlimited data plan for the Apple iPhone. That fact alone should keep the company in the good graces of mobile users and help it continue on its long road to recovery. Another part of that recovery plan, at least according to a leaked ad obtained by The Verge, seems to include the Sprint Galaxy Nexus, the carrier’s first 4G LTE phone. And because Hesse also revealed Thursday that the company will launch LTE in Atlanta, San Antonio, Dallas and Houston market by mid-2012, we know the device is coming soon. Update: New reports suggest that Hesse was misquoted and that the throttling statement was made in regard to customers roaming on partner networks. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Facebook about to launch Actions, the final piece of its plan for frictionless sharing Posted: 05 Jan 2012 04:55 PM PST Facebook’s ambitious plan to weave various actions we take across the web into the social network via “frictionless” sharing is finally ready to be deployed, VentureBeat has learned. The remaining pieces of Facebook’s new Open Graph are in the final stages of testing and are nearing release, a source familiar with the matter told VentureBeat. The social networking company is quickly working to validate partners and could turn on the latest element, Facebook Actions, any day now or, at the most, in a few weeks, the source said. The new Open Graph, unveiled at Facebook’s f8 developer conference in September, consists of three key elements: Timeline, Ticker and Actions. The first two pieces have been successfully deployed — although they both were met with some user resistance. Now, it’s time for the world to be introduced to a whole new type of social sharing with Actions. (Facebook told developers to expect the first Action approvals in January.) “We're currently focused on the rollout of Timeline, which already features several apps in the news, music and video categories. In the coming weeks, Timeline apps will launch in more categories, including fitness, sports, food, and travel,” a Facebook spokesperson told VentureBeat when asked about the deployment. What are Actions, exactly? You already know what they are — you’ve been using them for months. Facebook previewed the new Open Graph capabilities with its own “Read,” “Listen” and “Watch” Actions (that’s why you’re always in the known when a Facebook friend listens to tracks on Spotify or reads an article from the Washington Post Social Reader). Facebook calls this kind of sharing frictionless because the actions are automatically posted to your Ticker or Timeline. You can think of them as the new “Like” button, but Actions are instead used to document the behaviors you take elsewhere on the web. Actions are created and defined by third-party developers, and soon you’ll start to see them everywhere: in Ticker, News Feed and Timeline on Facebook, and in the applications or on the sites you’ve already come to love. A cooking site, for instance, could create the “Cooked” action and associate that action with its collection of recipes. You’d then be able to click a button to indicate that you’ve cooked something and automatically share that update to Ticker. You’d also be able to add that same cooking application as a box to your Timeline, and in so doing show off all the recipes you’ve made in a small container on your Timeline. Just how big of a deal is this? Facebook itself calls Actions (and their associated Objects) “the building blocks of Open Graph.” Filed under: dev, social, VentureBeat        
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| The game within the game: Making mobile gaming work for developers and consumers Posted: 05 Jan 2012 04:25 PM PST
Mobile game development has also transitioned, from niche hobby to lucrative profession. While developers continue to push the boundaries of mobile gaming, the industry must consider the business imperatives affecting the evolution of this dynamic marketplace. As it does so, companies will have to address three distinct challenges: Console vs. mobileTechnology hurdles that once prevented mobile gaming from rivaling console gaming are gone. Battery life, formerly a huge hurdle for mobile devices, is less of an issue now, although there will always be trade-offs around how and where the best gaming experiences are delivered. Advanced mobile technologies are offering better power performance for longer play as well as new innovations, all of which can match the console online experience. This raises the question of whether the next-generation gamer will need to buy a dedicated gaming machine at all, if their mobile devices can match the console experience. At the same time, visionary companies are taking mobile gaming to uncharted places. Take vision-based augmented reality (AR), which superimposes 3D graphics on real world objects and landscapes to create immersive 3D games that combine real and virtual worlds. The mobile technology in this area is advancing and bringing brand new gaming experiences to life. Imagine the camera in your smartphone being able to recognize the objects you see and provide information in real time that would be useful to you as you moved around. Companies doing research in AR for mobile are working on the technologies to make that possible — and it’s something that you can’t do at all in the traditional console world. The LTE revolutionNext-generation 4G networks are winning points with consumers as game developers harness bigger, faster pipelines in new and creative ways. The industry-leading 4G standard is now Long Term Evolution, or LTE, and it’s enabling a whole new kind of mobile game. For example, Gameloft (a Qualcomm partner) will soon release Modern Combat 3, an exclusive game that is one of the first massively multiplayer on-line (MMO) mobile games to take advantage of LTE's bandwidth and low latency. LTE opens the door to MMO games for more powerful mobile gaming experiences. That's exciting for the millions of players seeking to replicate the intensity of online console gaming on their mobile devices. LTE's main game development challenge is production expense: It costs more to make an LTE game, with its richer graphics and larger amounts of data, than a game meant for a lower-bandwidth connection. While LTE is quickly expanding in the U.S., it needs broader penetration to become a profitable and viable option. Until then, games made for LTE will be slow in coming to market, especially from smaller game developers. The solution? An ongoing commitment from the mobile industry to double down on proliferating LTE on a global scale. As the networks become universal and more LTE-enabled devices come to market, it will make economic sense for developers to commit to the technological investment. Mobile enablers and carriers can help set the table for their game developer partners and bring more LTE games to life by driving LTE access and adoption. Getting graphicMobile graphics innovation is at an all-time high. Enhanced graphics processing units (GPUs) make it possible for consumers to enjoy immersive gaming experiences on mobile devices that were previously only possible on consoles or desktop PCs. Many developers have started to enhance their games with the addition of new location-aware and social features, as well as optimizations to enable higher performance when running on mobile devices. However, this is still far from the norm. Business realities often necessitate optimizing games for the capabilities of lowest common denominator hardware, resulting in a less impressive user experience for a wider audience. Managing that balancing act is a challenge for any developer. Chipset companies and manufacturers must work with middleware and game engine vendors to bring an increased supply of optimized implementations to mobile platforms. By offering developers the best of both worlds, we'll progress toward an ecosystem where the optimal gaming experience — one that takes full advantage of the GPU — is possible on the majority of mobile devices. A whole new worldThe future is bright. We're on the verge of mobile experiences that previously only seemed possible if Captain Kirk and Spock were prominently involved. Creating the best possible gaming experience across wireless platforms is the only way to equal (and potentially surpass) console gaming while spurring innovation within the mobile industry. But we can only get there by thinking bigger. That means increasing the ratio of games fully optimized for the capabilities provided by modern mobile hardware. If we're to make AR and LTE gaming an everyday reality, we must begin by embracing and taking full advantage of the incredible developments made over the past couple years. It's a daunting challenge, but it's one we can take on together. Game on!
Top photo: Judy van der Velden/Flickr Filed under: games, mobile        
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| What’s going to happen in mobile tech in 2012 Posted: 05 Jan 2012 03:55 PM PST
All signs indicate that smartphones and tablets will become even more indispensible parts of our business and personal lives in 2012 and beyond. Mobile data traffic is at an all-time high, teens are (unbelievably) texting more than ever, mobile games are experiencing massive growth, mobile broadband device shipments are up 239 percent year over year — even mobile malware is evolving and is forecasted to become profitable for cybercriminals within the next several months. So what's next? We took a look back at the mobile developments over the past year and developed a few key predictions for what we might see in 2012. The 2012 summer Olympics: competition goes mobileLive online streaming of major events has replaced traditional TV broadcasts for many connected sports fans. The 2012 Summer Olympics will take this evolution one step further and become the first major sporting event to be watched more from mobile devices like tablets or smartphones than via desktop or laptop computers. As products like the iPad and Android devices continue to proliferate, we could also see this spread more broadly into the entertainment realm. Plastic holiday gift cards get the cut — for goodThe rapid growth of NFC and mobile payment technologies is already having an impact on traditional purchase methods this holiday season. Next year, this impact will spill over into the gift card realm and displace the quintessential gift idea for the time-crunched (or, ahem, less “creative”) buyer. Keep an eye out next year for post-holiday shoppers redeeming those gift dollars via smartphone and tablet. BYOD to workLast year saw rapid growth of tablet usage within the workplace; current reports show penetration at about 5 percent in the enterprise and predict this number will double in the coming year. In line with this trend, my company, Equinix, predicts businesses will begin to adopt “bring your own device” (BYOD) policies to accommodate the increasingly mobile and tablet-centric employee. This will subsequently accelerate adoption of cloud-based business services in order to provide users with a consistent experience across a variety of platforms. Carriers look to connectWith consumption of mobile video and applications skyrocketing, mobile network operators will face a significant gap in their current architecture and ability to scale in the coming year. This gap mirrors the growing pains that the wired Internet faced nearly 15 years ago as data demands exploded and networks were unable to handle the capacity. In 2012, we'll likely see new business models emerge to help carriers and content providers forge closer partnerships and integrate systems faster and easier, all while keeping up with subscriber demands for better, faster performance.
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| Google TV’s second wind: New devices coming from LG, Samsung, Vizio and Sony Posted: 05 Jan 2012 03:18 PM PST As expected, Google TV will get a big shot in the arm at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. LG, Vizio, and Sony will be announcing new Google TV devices at CES, while Samsung will announce its products later in the year, the company announced on the Google TV blog Thursday. The new devices come on the heels of the Google TV 2.0 launch this past fall, which added apps, a refined interface and Android 3.0 to the platform. Google says that GTV activations have doubled since the update’s launch, and things will only pick up with new devices on the horizon. Full details about the GTV devices will be announced next week, but this is what we know so far: LG is implementing Google TV in a new line of TV sets running its custom L9 chipset. Google was less precise about what Sony, Samsung and Vizio are up to, but I’d imagine the software is landing in TV sets rather than set-top boxes. (Though Sony may still announce some sort of revision to its Google TV Blu-ray player.) In addition to Google’s recent partnership with Marvell for Google TV chipsets, the company is also tapping Taiwanese chipset designer MediaTek. The new chipsets means that next-gen GTV devices will be faster and sport 3D capabilities, and it also gives GTV device makers plenty more choice when developing products. With an impressive list of new partners, this year is already off to a much better start for Google TV than 2011. In its first year, the platform suffered from poor sales, and it was served a black eye when Logitech publicly dumped it, claiming that Google TV caused it to lose over $100 million in operating profit. That also led to Logitech’s CEO stepping down. Somehow I don’t think you’ll see Logitech at Google’s celebratory GTV mixers this year. Filed under: media, VentureBeat        
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| New Chrome Beta release renders web pages as you type, screens downloads Posted: 05 Jan 2012 03:10 PM PST
“To get you where you want to go even faster, Chrome will now start loading some web pages in the background, even before you've finished typing the URL in the omnibox,” Google software engineer Dominic Hamon wrote in a blog post on the release. “If the URL auto-completes to a site you're very likely to visit, Chrome will begin to prerender the page.” The speedy new feature reminds us a lot of Google Instant, a lightning-fast 2010 search enhancement that returns results as you type. The new Beta release has also been infused with security features to better protect users as they download files from the web. The browser can now scan the executable files you download — .exe and .msi files only to start — to determine whether they are malicious in nature, and provide with you warnings to keep you informed. The update demonstrates Google’s ongoing commitment to speed and security. Once the new features make their way over to the stable version of Chrome (a Google rep said a date hasn’t been set yet), they’ll certainly help make the company’s increasingly popular browser further stand out from the likes of Safari, Internet Explorer and Firefox. Image courtesy of thesussman/Flickr Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Buyosphere raises $325K, relaunches as Q&A for shoppers Posted: 05 Jan 2012 01:51 PM PST
Following a successful rebranding effort, the team has just closed an oversubscribed seed round of funding — $325,000, to be exact. The funding will be aimed squarely at new user acquisition as well as a couple key hires. The round, which eschewed big-name Silicon Valley capital for firms and individuals based closer to Buyosphere’s Montreal headquarters, was led by Real Ventures, Canada's largest seed venture fund. Also participating were angel investors Jesse Kaplan of Seek Capital, John Granger of Grassfed Capital, David Chamandy of Machkor Holdings and Thomas Merlin. Part of today’s news is Buyosphere’s pivot. Previously, the startup was focused on providing a shopping and fashion-focused community with links to purchase history but without invasive cookies. The company’s pared-down mission is now providing a Q&A platform for shoppers. Hunt calls it “a Quora for shopping.” “We’re demonstrating the power of peer to peer shopping search,” Hunt said in an email with VentureBeat. “Algorithms are a long way off from picking up nuances that a person can. And personal taste is full of nuance.” Eventually, the Buyosphere team, which includes co-founders Cassandra Girard and Jerome Paradis, hopes to revolutionize online product search through a combination of social search and intelligent use of data. “We invested in Buyosphere because they are tackling what is fast becoming a large problem in e-commerce,” said Real Ventures partner Mark MacLeod in a statement. “Today’s online shopper is faced with almost limitless choices but severely limited time. Buyosphere offers customers a solution combining personalization, curation and social features to help connect consumers and brands.” While the amounts might seem small to someone accustomed to the mega-rounds raised by San Francisco-based startups, Hunt says even a little money goes a long way in Montreal. “There is considerable talent in the area and we are well-situated to retail and fashion hubs like New York,” she concluded. “It’s the best of both worlds.” Filed under: deals, VentureBeat        
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| Japanese game industry’s revenue falls 8 percent Posted: 05 Jan 2012 12:59 PM PST Japanese game industry revenue fell 8 percent in 2011, due primarily to a lack of software hits and a steady decline in a major console game sales. Famitsu, a well-respected Japanese video game magazine, is reporting the decline in revenue. Hardware sales were actually up 2.4 percent thanks to the Sony PlayStation Vita and the Nintendo 3DS which were released last year. However, software sales fell fell 13.7 percent to way below the average from a year before. This marks a string of years in which the Japanese video game market has seen a decline, according to andriasang.com. While Japan relies on Sony and Nintendo for its gaming needs, the Xbox 360 is still the odd man out overseas, which continues to hurt the Japanese game industry as a whole. The remodeled Xbox 360 and its newest peripheral, the Kinect, are both hits and have had a huge effect on the American market. However, in Japan, the Microsoft machines seem to be an oddity. That makes the market dynamics look a lot different from the western world. While the western market continues to grow and have a stronger, more stable market in place, Japan may continue to see stats like this in the future. Here’s are the top hardware sellers: Nintendo 3DS: 4,135,739 PSP: 1,960,177 PlayStation 3: 1,467,261 Nintendo Wii: 937,451 Nintendo DS: 711,204 PlayStation Vita: 402,794 Xbox 360: 114,075 Filed under: games        
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| Super-fast Thunderbolt ports likely headed to iPad and iPhone Posted: 05 Jan 2012 12:48 PM PST
Thunderbolt I/O ports, which Apple has already installed in its newest MacBooks and iMacs, are up to 12 times faster than FireWire 800 and up to 20 times faster than USB 2.0 ports. Apple and Intel jointly developed the technology, and if included on iPhones and iPads, it would make data transfers significantly faster that what is offered now. Using Thunderbolt ports would mean faster re-charging as well. Apple’s latest batch of patent applications, which were first spotted by Patently Apple, were released by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this morning. Patently Apple points out that Apple may be creating its own cabling technology to handle Thunderbolt connections, and that owning patents related to it will help it achieve these goals. While we don’t expect the next version of the iPad — rumored for release in March — to include a Thunderbolt port, it’s not hard to imagine the iPad 4 including one, based on these patents. As for the iPhone 5, which will likely see release in summer or fall 2012, a Thunderbolt port would be a nice but unlikely surprise. Would you like to see Thunderbolt ports on the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch? Filed under: mobile        
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| Eight technologies for a healthier 2012 Posted: 05 Jan 2012 12:15 PM PST
The combination of diet, exercise and sleep, according to my Singularity University colleague Daniel Kraft, are keys to good health. Kraft, a physician-scientist who chairs the medicine track and runs the FutureMed program at Singularity, believes that we can end the obesity epidemic and reduce the incidence of "non-communicable" diseases (such as heart disease) through technology. Kraft helped me put together an assessment of the technologies available today that can help you fulfill your New Year's resolutions for good health. 1. The Digital Mirror: A written commitment is a powerful tool when it comes to motivation. That power is enhanced when the commitment, and our failure or success in achieving it, is shared with others. Today, we can broadcast our weight, whereabouts, current song selections, and our latest meal over social media. You're more likely to maintain your motivation to lose weight when you know your friends can see your gains and losses on an easy-to-read graph. There more than 17,000 health and fitness applications in the Android and iTunes marketplaces. Exercise applications such as RunKeeper enable seamless pacing, tracking and scoring of workouts. My favorite when I go hiking is MotionX GPS—in addition to keeping track of how much and how fast I've walked, it remembers where I've been. Others like Skimble provide tracking and virtual coaches from a large library of workouts. There are apps for tracking your dietary indiscretions or to brag about your veggie intake. For example, The Eatery, enables you to crowd-source the healthiness of your meals. And for helping you count calories, there's LoseIt — which claims that the average user loses 12 pounds. 2. Self-Tracking Devices: Logging in and recording data points have long been a barrier to self-tracking. Consider this barrier all but eliminated. Web-connected scales like Withings, and blood pressure cuffs like iHealth, communicate with your smartphone and Web browser, recording your data with every use. They can also be configured to share your vital stats via email or Twitter. For those who need to track blood sugars, the FDA just approved iBGStar, a glucometer integrated with the iPhone. 3. Move it or Lose it: The most effective therapy for depression, poor sleep, arthritic knees, heart disease, prevention of Alzheimer's and many other disorders is exercise. As little as 30 minutes of active walking per day can make a massive difference in your health and longevity. Wearable devices like the 'FitBit', which I use and which constantly motivates me to walk more, and the pending 'Basis' heart rate and motion monitor tracks the number of steps you take, calories you burn, and miles you walk. These devices provide dashboards, connect to your social networks and allow you to set goals and targets. Company divisions or work groups can leverage the social component to foster friendly competition. Meanwhile, new startups are emergingto engage and reward those who do. 4. Enhance the power of sleep: The power of a good night's sleep is often under-appreciated. It's all about quality and duration. Applications, resting under your pillow, can track your motion at night and help you develop better habits. By using the Zeo Sleep Manager, I was able to notice a significant difference in the quality of my sleep on days that I was checking emails after 9 PM, and when I turned my computer off early. Devices like Zeo and Lark bring much of the power of an expensive sleep lab to your home, and can help identify signs of diseases such as sleep apnea. 5. Genomes come home: We have seen the pricing of genomic sequencing continue to plummet at more than double the rate of Moore's Law. It doesn't take a complete DNA sequence to make use of one's own genetic makeup. Consumer-focused companies such as 23andMe, Navigenics, and Pathway Genomics now offer partial genomic analysis (not a full sequence) for about $200—the cost of a high end pair of shoes. While the "fun" side of ancestry and family background can be illuminating, several aspects of genetic predisposition can be actionable. Knowing, for example, that a relative has twice the risk of developing Type-II diabetes or a significantly higher propensity of developing cardiovascular disease may provide the necessary encouragement to stay in shape, modify your diet, or engage in earlier screening and prevention. 6. In Case of Emergency: Quick reference tools such as iTriage help enable rapid response, whether it's finding and obtaining guidance on treating a minor burn or directions to the nearest hospital. They can, ultimately, be the difference between life and death. And in-case-of-emergency applications are improving on the traditional medical bracelet. These applications store essential information about you and provide emergency contact numbers. 7. Gamification: Anyone who has been addicted to a video game, or knows someone who has, can appreciate the power of immersion and interaction. Video-game developers are marrying physical and social activity, giving players an opportunity to exercise and socialize while they play. And web-based applications like HealthMonth are getting in on the game as well. 8. Mindfulness: Our attention spans have been keeping pace with technology in that they are getting shorter as technology is getting faster. The benefits of almost any form of mindfulness or meditation practice are well documented. And, as with nearly everything else, there's more than one app to help you through it. Hopefully, with a bit of help from technology, you will fare better at keeping your New Year's resolutions than in previous years. The really good news is that this is just the beginning. Over the next few years, we will see thousands of new devices and technologies that will help you monitor and improve your health. Washington Post columnist Vivek Wadhwa is a visiting scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, director of research for the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University, and senior research associate for the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. Copyright 2011, WashingtonPostFiled under: VentureBeat        
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| Swedes say file-sharing is a new religion Posted: 05 Jan 2012 12:09 PM PST
The Church of Kopimism (Get it? “Copy”-mism?) was recognized by the state just before Christmas. Laugh if you like, but the “free-as-in-freedom” and copyleft crowds have long had a quasi-religious fervor about their activities. Regard, if you will, public figures such as Cory Doctorow or Richard Stallman; are they not prophets and priests in a manner of speaking? Do they not proselytize and preach? The Church of Kopimism just makes it all formal. The church’s site, which is temporarily down as of this writing due to a glut of traffic from Slashdot, says that in its religion, “Information is holy, and copying is a sacrament. Information holds a value, in itself and in what it contains, and the value multiplies through copying.” The movement started in 2010 with Isak Gerson, a 19-year-old philosophy student. The church’s application made the rounds within the Swedish government three times before the organization was successfully recognized as an honest-to-goodness religion. “Being recognized by the state of Sweden is a large step for all of kopimi,” said Gerson on the church’s site. “Hopefully, this is one step towards the day when we can live out our faith without fear of persecution.” If file-sharing is your jam, you can still call yourself a member of the church. The organization states it doesn’t have any formal initiation process or membership requirements; “you just have to feel a calling to worship what is the holiest of the holiest, information and copy,” reads the church’s website. The Church of Kopimism’s services are called kopyactings. In these going-on, celebrants share files and remix to their hearts’ content. Now if only BitTorrent clients could be recognized as a holy sacrament, we’d all have a bit less to worry about. Many thanks to our own, dear Heather Kelly for Photoshopping the Swedish Pope up there, and apologies for any blasphemy or heresy we may be committing in the name of immature humor. via torrentfreak Filed under: media        
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| AT&T doubling its LTE coverage with 11 new markets Posted: 05 Jan 2012 11:52 AM PST
AT&T’s LTE (Long-Term Evolution) network is considerably faster than the current 3G network speeds — meaning 4G-capable mobile devices can access the internet faster. In November, the company began rolling out new 4G-capable phones, such as the Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket and HTC Vivid. Sadly, iPhone owners won’t be able to take advantage of the new faster network since it doesn’t support 4G. AT&T first rolled its LTE network out in September 2011 to five big cities, including San Antonio, Chicago, Dallas, Houston or Atlanta. As of today, the company has added New York City, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego, Raleigh and Austin. AT&T said the full LTE network expansion should be completed by late 2013 and will include most major cities. The faster network puts AT&T in line with Verizon and Sprint, which rolled out their own high-speed 4G networks months ago. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Epic Games: “We do not support the current version of SOPA” Posted: 05 Jan 2012 11:46 AM PST
In a brief statement on the Epic Games forums, Senior PR Manager Dana Cowley says many have asked the company about its opinion on the controversial bill, which seeks to combat online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. “Epic Games supports efforts that would stop overseas websites profiting from pirating our games, but we have to do that in a way that’s compatible with freedom of speech and due process of law,” Cowley says. “Thus, we do not support the current version of SOPA.” Epic Games is a member of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), which has come under fire recently for its strong support of the bill. Online gaming publication Rock, Paper, Shotgun has asked members of the ESA to denounce SOPA, calling it a “draconian attempt to introduce government censorship of the Internet at the behest of unelected corporations.” Destructoid Reviews Editor Jim Sterling has also drafted an open letter to the ESA. “It is hypocrisy on a most despicable level to continue supporting SOPA after asking gamers to fight for the rights of the game industry [during the Brown vs. EMA/ESA Supreme Court case],” he writes. Epic Games is not the only ESA member against SOPA. 38 Studios has taken a quieter, less official stance against it on its Facebook page, stating,”Based on the SOPA bill’s current structure, 38 Studios believes that the bill requires further restructuring and review to ensure it both preserves rights and protects intellectual properties.” However, video game publisher Capcom seems to be in favor of the bill, telling Digital Trends, “The ESA represents us on these matters." If it passes, the Stop Online Piracy Act would allow the U.S. Department of Justice and copyright holders to obtain court orders against websites accused of copyright infringement. The accused sites could find themselves blocked by Internet service providers or barred from doing business with advertising networks and payment sites such as PayPal. The bill would also make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted material a crime that could carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison if you stream 10 movies or songs within six months. For more information about the legislation, check out VentureBeat's ongoing SOPA coverage. Filed under: games        
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For the first time in history, digital music sales were higher than traditional physical sales in the U.S., according a 
In the epic battle for smartphone dominance among Asian device makers, Samsung is on top with a record quarterly profit, while HTC faced a major blow in the holiday quarter.
EMI, one of the largest record labels in the world, is suing streaming music service 
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As more car manufacturers develop electric engines and green solutions to help with gas mileage, they are also looking at ways to add more communication and media technology to vehicles. This year at CES, companies like Ford, GM, Mercedes-Benz and Audi will be showing off mobile apps that interact directly with cars and dashboards that function more like full-fledged computers. CES will also play host to a panel about cars that use short-range vehicle-to-X (V2X) technology that will allow cars to interact with other cars, traffic lights and pedestrians.
While Sprint was likely saving news of its first-ever 4G LTE phone until the Consumer Electronics Show next week, an online ad leaked the news a bit early.
In an effort to boost lagging DVD sales, film studio Warner Brothers has decided to delay all new releases from becoming available through many popular movie rental services.
Fast is never fast enough for Google. Case in point: The latest version of Chrome Beta, Google’s testbed browser for those who want to browse on the bleeding edge, now loads web pages while you type.
Welcome to 2012 and a new list of New Year's resolutions — a list that likely includes some variation on adopting a healthier lifestyle. Thanks to the acceleration of technology, fulfilling your resolutions this time around may be easier than it was in 2011.
Sweden has recognized file-sharing as a legitimate, officially sanctioned religion.
AT&T, the second largest U.S. wireless carrier, is expanding coverage of its high-speed LTE network to 11 new markets, the company announced today.
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