Another day, another “acqhire” for social gaming giant Zynga. The company is announcing the acquisition of UK-based Wonderland Software, the social gaming studio behind the hit iOS game GodFinger. Zynga is acquiring the team and select IP from Wonderland but not GodFinger the game. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Wonderland Software will become Zynga Mobile UK and will be based near Guildford, a famous game development center in the UK. This marks Zynga’s first studio in the UK, a market that Zynga says is important for the company. Wonderland Software CEO Matthew Wiggins immediately assumes the role of General Manager, Zynga Mobile UK, reporting to Zynga Mobile Chief David Ko. → Read More
Apple aims to set the record straight about the gathering and use of location information by iOS devices. We're updating this post, but here's the full Q&A:
Apple starts off by saying unequivocally that Apple has never, and will never track the location of a customer’s iPhone. → Read More
Asus has a whole host of accessories on tap for the hot Transformer tablet/netbook. The keyboard dock was just the beginning. There’s a desktop dock, HDMI-VGA adapter, a very iPad-ish looking folio case, and an adapter to plug in a USB flash drive. Asus has yet to make these official so no word on pricing or availability. They appeared on Asus’ Italian Facebook page about four hours ago. The only thing missing now are the actual Transformers. They’re sold out everywhere and backordered out to nearly irrelevance. Well, there’s always the Xoom. There are plenty of those available along with their entire range of accessories. → Read More
Apple has just announced the availability of the white iPhone. Unlike the black iPhone, it is able to reflect all colors of the visible, spectrum thereby making it white. It will be available tomorrow at Apple retail stores, AT&T, and Verizon wireless. It will also be available in the following countries on Thursday, April 28:
White models of iPhone 4 will be available in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macau, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, UK and the US
Standard pricing. Our long national nightmare is over. → Read More
“Fancy.” Was pretty much the word that came to mind after finally unwrapping the Avanti 3 from US-based watch winder maker Orbita. This isn’t the first package from Orbita that I have had to wage sweet war with to open, so I know this is a trend. I have to say that if Orbita ever decided to get out of the watch winder business they would find immediate use in the “package stuff up so that no matter what, nothing will damage it” business. If the attention to detail they use when packaging their products up for delivery speaks anything about the attention to detail in their products – these products should seemingly last forever. → Read More
Atlanta, GA-based Sparkfly has landed $2.5 million in funding for its mobile engagement platform, SparkQuest, which aims to connect consumer deal redemption with merchant point-of-sale technology.
This capability basically enables consumers to get instant and repeat rewards at the merchants they frequent most (merchant list here), as well as ‘experiences’ that are tailored to their personal interests. → Read More
While electric bikes per se are a good, eco-friendly concept, a lot of the models out there actually look pretty boring. Not so Panasonic’s BE-ENZ032 [JP], a sports e-bike that just went on sale in Japan (Panasonic says that the design was inspired by Motocross bikes). → Read More
Chicago-based startup SitterCity has raised $22.6 million in funding led by New World Ventures and Baird Venture Partners, with Apex Venture Partners, I2A, and Point Judith Capital participating in the round. This brings SitterCity’s total funding to $30 million. Benedict Rocchio, BVP partner and Adam Koopersmith, partner with New World Ventures, will join the company’s Board of Directors.
SitterCity goes beyond just connecting families with child care. The site also offers access to caregivers for pet care, eldercare, home care and tutoring. Sittercity guides clients through an in-depth screening process of potential caregivers, which includes background checks, references and parent reviews. → Read More
In July last year, Rackspace caused quite a splash in the cloud computing world when it decided to opensource the software behind its cloud storage and computing platforms to create Openstack, an Iaas-based cloud platform (more on that from the Scobleizer). Fast forward 9 months, and we are seeing over 60 companies worldwide (Dell, Cisco, Intel, NTT Data to name just a few) developing solutions based on Openstack.
Tokyo-based Midokura is currently working to solve a hard problem that has barely been tackled before: flexibly virtualizing networks. Midokura’s key technology is called Midonet, a network virtualization platform that creates a control layer on top of the physical network. The company says it’s the only one to have “a true virtual network model” in a cloud stack. → Read More
1. Why is Apple tracking the location of my iPhone?
Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so.
We don’t know where you take your iPhone. We’re not Google evil. → Read More
People always say “Superficial UI duplication is the sincerest form of flattery.” If that’s true then Microsoft should be blushing because this pirate “HTC” phone – it looks more like a Samsung Omnia – is paying them all sorts of complements. → Read More
First Asahi Glass’ announcement from yesterday, now this: Toshiba Mobile unveiled a 7.0-inch LTPS TFT LCD panel with a capacitive multi-touch input function “integrated in the liquid crystal cell”. In other words, manufacturers won’t need to add a touch panel to the LCD, making the Toshiba device 57% thinner and 48% lighter than comparable screens of that size. → Read More
RIM has picked up another company today—social calendaring application Tungle.Me. The startup taps into your social graph and simplifies the process of finding and connecting with friends and colleagues.
Tungle.me, which we’ve previously written about here, offers users a free web-based application that lets you share calendars across companies and platforms, schedule meetings with individuals or groups inside or outside their company and propose multiple meeting times in invitations. The service currently syncs with a number of calendar applications, including Outlook, Google Calendar, and Apple iCal. → Read More
There have been many studies examining the most popular and ideal names for CEOs and professionals. But what’s better than examining the actual data from over 100 million professionals from around the globe? Professional social network LinkedIn has done a deep data dive on the top CEO names, and most popular names by industry and country.
LinkedIn contrasted CEOs with the average LinkedIn professional to find the top names that are over-represented among CEOs. The top CEO names found on the network, in order, are: Peter, Bob, Jack, Bruce, Fred, Deborah, Sally, Debra, Cynthia, and Carolyn. One trend LinkedIn highlights is that the most over-indexed CEO names for males tend to be either short or shortened versions of popular first names. Female CEOs, on the other hand, use their full name to project a more professional image, reports the network. → Read More
PapayaMobile, the developer of a plug and play technology that incorporates social gaming elements into iOS and Android games, has secured $18 million in Series B funding led by Chinese venture firm Keytone Ventures and DCM. This brings Papaya’s total funding to $22 million.
PapayaMobile hosts mobile games on its social network, which is comprised of over 15 million users and offers mobile developers the tools to build social gaming apps on Android and iOS. Since launching the gaming platform last year, 350 applications have integrated PapayaMobile. PapayaMobile has experienced over 375% growth in its user base since opening its social gaming network in June of 2010. → Read More
Apple aims to – finally – set the record straight about the gathering and use of location information by iOS devices. The entire Q&A can be found below.
Apple starts off by stating that it has never tracked, and will never track the location of a customer’s iPhone. The company goes on to say it’s partly to blame for any ‘confusion’ about it, though, because users haven’t been ‘educated’ to fully understand the technical issues with providing mobile users with fast and accurate location information. → Read More
Pixazza, a Google Ventures-backed photo tagging service that has been compared to an “AdSense for Images,” has hired a new executive officer today, appointing Terry Murphy has Chief Financial Officer. The company has also surpassed 100 million unique visitors per month, which is up from 70 million unique visitors per month in March.
Murphy joins Pixazza from RiseSmart, where he was CFO. Previously, Murphy was the senior vice president of finance for virtual call center company LiveOps. In his six years at LiveOps, he helped led the company’s financial operations during a period of explosive growth as annual revenues increased from $18 million to $140 million. In his new role, he will direct Pixazza’s finance, accounting, human resources, facilities and legal functions. → Read More
CloudPassage, the developer of cloud server security software, has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding led by led by Benchmark Capital.
CloudPassage offers a server security and compliance product specifically built for elastic, dynamic cloud environments. While companies are able to deploy security firewalls around content stored in data centers, as companies move to the cloud for servers, they face a security challenge of securing a dynamic, scalable environment. → Read More
Visual analysis company Viewdle this morning launched an Android app called SocialCamera that allows users to instantly tag photos, add captions and share them on Flickr or Facebook, by email or MMS. The demo video below explains how the app works in more detail.
The Android application, which is still in beta and not to be confused with Justin.TV’s Socialcam app, is free of charge and should be available through Android Market today. → Read More
There it was. Like the White Tower of Ecthelion, glimmering like a spike of pearl and silver. It was 15 feet away from me. The white iPhone.
Tonight I was at dinner with a couple of friends when something caught my eye. I cut into our conversation. “Look at the table next to ours. Is that the white iPhone?” Both of my friends, geeks like me, got excited. Yep. → Read More
