Steam, Valve’s digital distribution for video games (as well as a kind of “social network” for gamers, though the phrase “social network” makes me nauseous), is really quite successful. In 2009, its fifth year of operation, sales were up 205 percent over the previous year. The service has more than 25 million users, of which 10 million have full profiles. (I’m one of them, by the way.) That means you’re looking at a core user group, or “hardcore” in the gamer lexicon, of 10 million people. That’s a lot of people. → Read More
The iPad’s fate isn’t in the hands of Apple. Jobs & Co. has done their part and made the device. The iPad’s success lies solely in the hands of developers. Because unlike the iPhone or iPod touch, the iPad doesn’t really have a core function. The iPhone is nothing more than a glorified telephone and the iPod touch is just another PMP. But what’s the iPad? A big iPod touch?
None of the iPad’s functions seem to define it. Ebook reading? That may turn out to be just a novelty feature for many buyers. Web browsing? Maybe, but the Internet is formatted for a mouse and keyboard, a tablet simply doesn’t offer much, if any, advantage over a netbook or computer running a full OS. Early reports are even suggesting that the iPad isn’t even a solid media player because of its 4:3 aspect ratio.
Then there are the millions upon millions of apps Apple has accumulated over the last two years. They, and new iPad-specific ones, are the key to success for the iPad. Without them, the iPad would just be another concept-of-function device, targeted at a small crowd with its limited capabilities of web browsing, task management, ebook reading, and media playback. The apps will likely prove to be the justification many people will need to purchase the iPad. → Read More
Short Version: If you’ve seen the looping fireplace video (made famous by New York’s WPIX and commonly aired on TV around the holidays) or used it yourself, there’s a new video in town. Except instead of a burning yule log, there’s a girl sitting in a chair. → Read More
Electric car company Tesla Motors has filed for a $100 million IPO. There were rumors recently floating around that the company, which is led by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, would go public “soon.” One interesting tidbit from the filing: Musk only takes $1 in yearly salary.
Another interesting factoid: In the filing, Tesla states that it has seen net losses in each quarter since inception. The company expects to continue on the same path until it starts to deliver larger quantities of its Model S sedan, which is not expected until 2010 or later. Tesla took a loss in the first three quarters of 2009 of $31.5 million which is less than its loss for the same period in 2008, which was $57.3 million. Gross profit for the first three quarters of 2009 was $7.8 million compared to $561K for the same period in 2008. Sales for the first three quarters of 2009 topped out at $93.4 million. As of last December Tesla had sold 937 Tesla Roadsters in 18 countries. The company also saw a total of $108.2 million in revenue since its inception in 2003 until September of last year. → Read More
So EA is bringing FIFA Online to Western countries. It’s been available in Asia for a couple years now, and players from other parts of the world will get to join in on the fun. Oh, the game: it’s a free, online version of FIFA that you play on your PC. → Read More
So this is pretty handy. An Internet wizard has put together Steam Games Sales, a Web site that aggregates all of Steam’s current sales and puts them in one easy-to-read list. → Read More
In case it wasn’t obvious, being an entrepreneur is risky business. Even those that get investments have a relatively small likelihood of a successful exit. So early-stage investment firm First Round Capital has a plan to alleviate some of the risk: an entrepreneur’s exchange fund.
For those not aware, an exchange fund in this regard is exactly what it sounds like: company founders are given the option to give up a small piece of the stock they own in their venture in exchange for a piece of the action of the larger pool of all the First Round portfolio companies that choose to participate. Basically, this allows these entrepreneurs to diversify their own holdings without having to sell any stock. More importantly, it lowers their risk of walking away with nothing while adding an incentive to see other companies in the portfolio succeed. → Read More
This has not been the greatest start to the year for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. Days after news of the latest security flaw in Internet Explorer, Google is adding fuel to the fire by phasing out support for IE6 for two of its Google Apps products, Docs and Sites (which recently got an aesthetic upgrade).
For both the consumer and enterprise versions of Google Docs and Sites, the only browsers that will be fully compatible are Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+, Mozilla Firefox 3.0+, Google Chrome 4.0+ and Safari 3.0+. The phase out will take place beginning March 1. While you’ll still be able to access Docs and Sites from IE6, you will have restricted functionality and many features won’t work, making the applications for the most part useless. We hear that Google will be phasing out IE6 support for the remainder of Google’s major products, including Gmail and Calendar, over the coming year. This isn’t Google’s first move to phases out IE6 functionality for its products. Last July, the search giant began phasing out YouTube support for the Microsoft browser. For users of IE6, the online video site began pointing to ‘modern’ browsers like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.5 as alternatives. A similar prompt will now take place on Docs and Sites for users who are browsing from IE6. → Read More
Yes, we know. Magizines are dying, but that doesn’t mean they are suddenly void of great content. Like Wired. Great mag. I often pick one up on impulse during a bookstore trip. But I don’t have to anymore. DiscountMags.com has the hook-up, offering an entire year of Wired for less than the cost of one issue. → Read More
Cut to the Fox green room, as Peter Klein, CFO of Microsoft, prepares for an interview with Fox Business News Flack: Okay Peter. You can talk about pretty much whatever you want during this interview. Windows 7, Bing, whatever. Just don’t talk about Windows Mobile 7. → Read More
It’s one thing to hack your cable modem for your own personal edification, but it’s another matter to turn around and sell hacked cable modems to people. I mean, that’s just common sense, right? Smoke all the dope you want, just don’t sell it to kids on the street. (You’ll note I used the word “dope” like a 70-year-old man.) Some guy in Massachusetts found out the hard way, and he now faces up to 20 years in prison and fines up to $250,000. → Read More
This seems like a really good idea. A German company called Armatix has developed a handgun that can only be fired by someone wearing a biometrically unlocked wrist watch. An LED light on the gun glows green if it’s set to be fired or red if it’s locked. → Read More
Whoa, whoa, whoa, look what you can do with the internet! According to the video’s description: “Brian at CAIN MOSNI thought of a cool concept and coordinated a virtual “jam session” with musicians from all over the world!” Very, very cool. [YouTube via Gizmodo] → Read More
Fear of iPad is now beginning to circulate with increasing velocity. It seems folks are realizing that regardless of how many things were left off the machine, it still will be bought by virtually everybody on the planet who cares about tech and its show business arm, social media. That means it’s going to be a huge galactic success. That in turn means we have to be very afraid of Uncle Steve owning our data. Dave Winer suggests this in his second of two posts in a row. Of course, Dave alternates between decrying the locked trunk aspects of the system’s design and crying wolf about the end result when all these mistakes end up as a raging success. In fact, Dave may have hit on an unintended truth in all of this debunking. Namely, it’s what’s been left out that really defines the iPad. Take Flash. Please. When Jobs quarantined it on the iPhone, we all felt it was a tactical thing, more political than technical. Of course, it’s never been technical, even now when it’s kept off the iPad because it is responsible for such a great percentage of crashes in Safari or whatever. Actually, Flash is being kept off the iPlatform because It Sucks. Google’s HTML 5 liturgy is another contiguous example of how to sell the same message, but enquiring minds still want to know why we need a plug-in from a company that makes its real money from Photoshop. The Adobe guys are terrific engineers who’ve built a wonderful ecosystem off of a hole in the Arctic Circle of computing called cross-platform ubiquity. But what happens when the OS sucks in the functionality of such a play, as Windows did to Symantec with desktop replacements, compression, and various system management utilities? Oh, and security (remember Bill Gates’ parting push to protect us from the network.) Most recently I heard from Symantec in the form of a Facebook giveaway or some such. And Google now produces software, services, browsers, and OS under the same plan. They can afford it; Adobe can’t. So it comes down to this: if a site hosts Flash, they are making the same choice WordPerfect made in building an OS/2 version instead of a Windows one. This was when Microsoft was finally getting Windows up above the radiation layer of DOS, where WordPerfect had a stranglehold on the word processing market. IBM’s → Read More
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is totally not impressed by the iPad, 3D, or HD. In fact, he’s happy running the company in the same conservative way and thinks 3D and HD are fads.
“I have doubts whether people will be wearing glasses to play games at home. How is that going to look to other people?” he said in an AP report.
I’ve been running a 3D PC rig for the past week and I’m glad to say that I’m favorably impressed. Burnout Paradise is gorgeous and Batman looks amazing. However, Nintendo doesn’t do what Nintendo doesn’t want to do, so you’re SOL if you want to see Mario beat up Link in 3D. → Read More
For much of the past year, the major criticism of Foursquare was that it only worked in a few select cities in the U.S. and was basically iPhone-only. In the past few months, both Foursquare itself and a growing core of third-party developers have changed that. Today brings yet another expansion in the Foursquare universe with the beta launch of a Windows Mobile app.
To be clear, this app is only meant for touch screen Windows phones, and you need to be running either Windows Mobile 6.1 or 6.5. But if you have those, you can submit your email address here to be let into the beta. Once they kick the tires in beta for a bit, the plan is to submit the app to the Windows Marketplace for Mobile, Windows Mobile Sr. Product Manager Anand Iyer writes today on his personal blog. Iyer has been working on this project on the side for a few months now, and made the app along with the help of development house Touchality. → Read More
When the Toshiba TG01 launched way back in July of last year, it seemed like an absolute beast of a handset – and you know what? It still does. Packing a 1Ghz processor into an ultra-slim handset behind a big ol’ 4.1″ touchscreen, the TG01 is still right on the cutting edge if we’re only counting the hardware specs. Leaked roadmaps made us expect the sequel, the TG02, would launch sometime at the end of last year – but that obviously hasn’t happened. Just when we thought the project might have vamoosed, handset numero dos cruises on through the FCC. → Read More
Whoa. Rockstar just announced that the two DLCs for Grand Theft Auto IV, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, will be released for the PS3 and PC on March 30. That’s March 30 world-wide, mind you. The games will be sold separately (as downloads on PSN and Games for Windows Live) as well as in the familiar Episodes from Liberty City double pack. → Read More
Logitech’s popular MX 1100 cordless mouse costs $80 new, but you can get a “dented box” version for just $37 after using coupon code logi_mx1100_12910 on Logitech’s website. → Read More
Popular location-based social network Brightkite has simultaneously released mobile apps for some Nokia as well as Palm smartphones.
The release of the apps follows earlier launches of Android, BlackBerry and iPhone applications. → Read More
