Aaaawkwaaard! I’m not at this week’s Game Developer Conference in San Francisco for various reasons (the main one being that I’ve been covering events non-stop for nearly two months and my body is falling apart), but we’re keeping a pretty close eye on things just in case. We’re hearing that things just got a little dramatic in the “ANGRY BIRDS – An Entertainment Franchise in the Making” panel headed by Rovio’s “Might Eagle” (read: head honcho) Peter Vesterbacka. → Read More
Launching today is Y Combinator company TellFi, an Internet-based phone system that is specifically tailored to enterprise needs. In building Tellfi, founders Jason Corwin and Conor Lee asked customers what their most desired features were in a calling system, and came up with voicemail transcription, multiphone forwarding, individual extensions for each user, toll-free numbers and support access. → Read More
One great thing about big corporations are all the rules. AOL has a twenty nine page Standards of Business Conduct policy that all applies to all employees. The document covers things like harassment, safe work environments, privacy, conflicts of interest and gifts. The best part is near the end when it gets into bribery and corruption.
“AOL strictly prohibits…bribery of government officials,” is an example of the rules that we are forced to live by. As you can imagine, it’s mostly common sense, and has been a subject of great amusement around the office for the last several months.
AOL is also very strict about alcohol in the office, and I’ve heard people complaining that HR won’t let them bring in a few beers to celebrate a new product launch. The only real question I had was why in the world they asked permission in the first place.
Our Company prohibits the abuse of alcohol or prescription drugs while performing your job duties or while on our premises.
We regret to inform you that the Modern Warfare 3 “teaser” from the other day was, in fact, nothing of the sort. You can almost hear the angels crying. → Read More
Ring flashes can come in handy for many shooting situations. Flash rings are especially great for creating even illumination giving subjects a flat look — very symmetric. One of the downsides to the flashes has been price, but the latest ring flash adapter from Photojojo has a price so low that even DIY options can cost more. → Read More
If there were a superhero who was powered by 100W lightbulbs it’s safe to say his days of fighting crime in California are over. The state will end the sale of 100W light bulbs after the current supply has been exhausted. It’s part of the federal Energy Independence Act and Security Act of 2007. Silly name aside, the law will go into effect in the coming years across the country. → Read More
Angel investor and fight picker Jason Calacanis on February 10, 2010:
Facebook lost half its value today.
Google Buzz 1.0 is a better product than the seven-year old Facebook. Look at Scoble’s post from TED… he never left GMAIL and he instantly has tons of comments… and they are more intelligent than the ones on Facebook.
Facebook has stolen everyone’s ideas for six years and today they just got a taste of their own medicine. Google has ripped off their interface and done it 10x better.
Game over… Facebook is the new MySpace.
Shazam, which now calls itself a mobile discovery company after broadening out beyond just music to also target the living room, has announced that co-founder of MTV Networks, John Sykes, has joined its board.
Sykes was instrumental in creating MTV some 25 years ago (makes me feel old, alright) as well as serving as President of VH1, which he rebranded and “lead to record audience ratings and profits, from 1994-2002″, according to the press release. He also spent time as Chairman and CEO of Infinity Broadcasting before returning to MTV Networks in 2005 as President Network Development. In 2008 Sykes left Viacom to join former MTV colleagues Bob Pittman and Tom Freston at the Pilot Group. → Read More
Portal 2 may be coming to the PS3 and bringing cross-platform play and some Steam elements with it, but the Steam interface is really designed for mouse navigation, not analog sticks. Valve is looking to fix that with a special “big picture mode” designed for use with big TVs and console controllers. → Read More
I was going to write that the transparent soles let you see what’s “underneath” the tread, but it’s not really underneath, since the sole’s on the bottom, right? It’s barely “above,” and it’s not really “inside.” So I scrapped the headline and wrote this paragraph. → Read More
Arguably, in the age of Facebook and, to a greater degree, Twitter, the early excitement around so-called Citizen Journalism has been surpassed by social media. But that isn’t stopping London-based Blottr, founded by Adam Baker, which thinks it’s found the right formula – a mix of collaborative publishing, ‘authentication algorithm’ and revenue sharing – to give the idea a new lease of life.
That’s not to say that social media is absent, sharing of articles via Facebook and Twitter is actively encouraged and tweets are automatically incorporated into stories, but otherwise this is more akin to a traditional online news publication, only one that is written by non-professional “journalists”. → Read More
It’s been about four months since Amazon announced its plans to acquire of Quidsi, the parent company of Diapers.com and Soap.com, for $540 million. The deal has not yet closed, primarily due to an extended review by the FTC.
The FTC took nearly seven months to approve the Google AdMob deal, so it is not yet as bad as it could be. But it is also unclear what antitrust concerns the FTC might have with this particular deal. Is the FTC worried that a combined Amazon-Quidsi will corner the online diapers market and provide free overnight shipping to parents all across the country? → Read More
Today, at the DEMO Conference in Palm Springs, Salesforce VP of Platform and Marketing George Hu remained markedly confident over Salesforce’s future, smiling broadly in the face of rising costs and dipping profits.
Hu has good reason to be smiling. Salesforce is the talk of the town these days, and one of the preeminent cloud companies in the market. It had a big fourth quarter, with sales growing 29 percent to $457 million. “It was a monster quarter, and the deal flow in the fourth quarter was just awesome,” CEO Marc Benioff gushed in a recent earnings call.
In addition to its customer gains, Salesforce has also been in an acquisitions tear. The company acquired Heroku, the Ruby application platform-as-a-service for $212 million in December and DimDim, a web conferencing service for $31 million, in January — on top of the addition of GroupSwim, a SaaS cloud enterprise service, back in December 2009. → Read More
There are a lot of rumors out there about the next version of GTA. But, the closest to confirmation we’ve seen so far is this resume from stunt driver Declan Mulvey. He lists his involvement with all the movies and video games he’s worked on and GTA V is one of them. → Read More
Last month, we first wrote about Founders Den, a new “private clubhouse” for entrepreneurs in the heart of San Francisco’s SoMa district. In that short amount of time, they’ve grown quickly and are now just about filled to the brim with young entrepreneurs working on a wide range of new startups. But their newest tenant is one they could have never anticipated: Gavin Newsom.
Yes, the Lieutenant Governor of California (and former San Francisco Mayor) has decided to forgo space in the stodgy old government buildings in the city and instead will call the Founders Den his home when he’s working out of the city (where he still lives). → Read More
Arduino seems like a great way to create interactive devices but historically it hasn’t been too hot for creating the ultimate in interactivity, computer gaming. That changed with the release of the Gameduino, a version of the open-source Arduino board pre-loaded with games, sprites, and inputs for various game controllers.
The Gameduino is an open source project and the creator has build a Kickstarter page to fund the actual production of the device. → Read More
With the Space Shuttle decommed and pretty much all funding to NASA cut and instead sent to abstinence education, it’s nice to think back on the magical days of yore when a beeping salad bowl could enthrall the world. Sotheby’s is letting us try for a piece of that history thanks to an auction they’re holding of some exciting space gear including this orbiter that once held a mannequin and a small dog during one of Russia’s first return flights into space. The orbiter is expected to fetch $10 million at auction. → Read More
Surely by now you’ve heard of the problems people have been having with their Gmail accounts. E-mails have been deleted, accounts have been disabled, and while Google has been hard at work trying to make everything right, it’s just another example of why moving your entire life to the cloud may not always be the best idea. → Read More
Twitter has changed the way we watch television. Say what you will about the 83rd Annual Oscars (and thus far the consensus is “meh”), you’ve probably already said it on Twitter. Mass Relevance and TweetReach, a Twitter analytics service with commercial access to the Twitter API, have teamed up to make a data map of yesterday’s mass conversation.
Over 20 Oscar-related terms like “Oscars,” “#Oscars,” “Academy” (but no specific names of celebrities or movies) were tracked between the hours of 5:30 and 8:45 PST during the show’s live airing. Total damage? 1,269,970 tweets, 1,663,458,778 potential impressions, and 388,717 users tweeting. → Read More
Intel has officially completed its acquisition of security giant McAfee, according to a release issued today. Intel announced the $7.68 billion, all-cash deal last August.
According to the release, McAfee will continue developing and selling security products and services under its own brand and “first fruits of their strategic partnership” will be brought to market later in 2011. McAfee will report into Intel’s Software and Services Group, which is led by Intel’s Renée James. → Read More
