VentureBeat |
- Amazon joins the NFC mobile payment party
- RIM’s BlackBerry Touch may wash away Stormy memories
- Social browser RockMelt makes its first big upgrade
- Verizon’s 4G ThunderBolt outselling iPhone 4 at some stores
- Walking the fine line between goals and ROI
- Google’s face-recognition app sounds great for stalkers
- Bessemer raises $1.6B fund — enough to own 3% of Facebook
- Fizwoz creates a legion of cellphone-armed citizen photojournalists
- Google’s Schmidt beats Apple’s Jobs in employee approval ratings
- Why Wisconsin’s ham-handed anti-wind power crusade blows
- Shopping and apps rule the day at Plug and Play event
- Silicon Valley singles all about queer, decadent robots in online dating profiles
- Retailer GameStop buys its way into digital distribution of games
- Shapemix for the iPad will unleash your inner DJ
- Applifier launches a portal to discover social games on Facebook
| Amazon joins the NFC mobile payment party Posted: 01 Apr 2011 08:46 AM PDT
According to two unnamed sources, the Amazon Payments unit is deciding whether to start a service based on near-field-communication (NFC) technology. With NFC, phones with special chips can establish short-range contact with readers at checkout counters. Mobile phones can then be used to pay for goods at stores with a simple wave. Research firm Gartner predicts large growth in mobile payments, with the estimated value of mobile transactions totaling $245 billion in 2014, up from $32 billion last year. Despite this large market, Amazon will be joining a crowded mobile payments space. Last December Google introduced the first Android phone with NFC, the Nexus S, and Apple and Microsoft are reportedly working on it as well. Google also announced yesterday that it joined the NFC Forum industry group. Although in a recent statement the President of mobile payment leader Sybase 365 said that NFC is overhyped, can we really ignore the fact that some of the largest technology companies are now betting on this technology? An unnamed source said that Amazon will decide whether to unveil an NFC mobile-payment services in the next three to five months. One thing is for certain — with the company introducing the Amazon Appstore for Android, which sells applications for Google's Android operating system, Amazon’s mobile ambitions have only just begun.
Companies: Amazon.com
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| RIM’s BlackBerry Touch may wash away Stormy memories Posted: 01 Apr 2011 08:34 AM PDT
I’m sure that’s what RIM wants. The Storm was widely criticized for its clunky SurePress feature, which tried to replicate the sensation of physical buttons by having the screen physically move when users interacted with the touchscreen. It was an interesting idea, but in practice it led to the Storm being a bear to type on. The BlackBerry Touch avoids the mess of SurePress altogether, and it’s also faster and thinner to boot. BGR says that the Touch is currently going by the code names Monaco (for the Verizon Wireless version) and Monza (for the global version). It will run BlackBerry OS 6.1, and will also require a BlackBerry ID to login. BGR speculates that it may be a way to tie cloud services, including file and contact synchronization, to the Touch. Physically, it looks more attractive than any previous Storm phone — RIM may finally have a touchscreen competitor that can take on the better looking Android phones (it still doesn’t hold a candle to the iPhone).
Companies: Research In Motion, RIM
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| Social browser RockMelt makes its first big upgrade Posted: 01 Apr 2011 08:04 AM PDT
Vishria and his co-founder Tim Howes have said that their goal with RockMelt is to re-think the browser in a way that makes sense for a more social, interactive Web experience. Instead of having to constantly return to their favorite websites and social networks, RockMelt users can view their friends' Facebook and Twitter updates, get notified about new content on their favorite websites, and start Facebook Chats with their friends — all through the browser itself. The new version of the browser, RockMelt Beta 2, should improve this experience in a couple of key ways. It now includes a Facebook Chat Bar at the bottom of the browser, so that users can have tabs for multiple chats at once. At the same time, Vishria said some users are actually turning the chat feature off because they're worried about getting bombarded by Facebook friends, so RockMelt now notifies you about a chat without opening a full chat window, making it easier to ignore messages if you're busy or if they comes from someone you don't want to talk to. The other big improvement is to RockMelt's Twitter support, adding things like the ability to view all your "@ replies" on Twitter and taking advantage of Twitter search. This makes it more likely that RockMelt users can address all their Twitter needs within the browser, and less likely that they'll have to visit the Twitter site itself. The third major addition involves what Vishria said is a rethinking of bookmarks. Many people just don't use bookmarks anymore, he said, but at the same time he saw something promising in apps like Instagram, which let you bookmark content to read later. So in addition to traditional bookmarks, RockMelt now has a "view later" option, where you can add content that you want to read later, but that you don't want to permanently add to your bookmarks. When RockMelt launched, the company got a lot of attention because of its ambitious vision and its backing from a venture firm whose partners included Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen. But there was also plenty of skepticism, because it seemed other startups had attempted and failed to achieve similar goals. This week, Mountain View, Calif.-based RockMelt didn’t share its total user numbers, but it didn’t reveal a few interesting promising facts about its users. On average, RockMelt users are spend more than six hours per day in the browser and share content every two to three days. The average user has three chats per day on RockMelt. And 41 percent of RockMelt’s United States users are in high school or college. “We wanted to build the next generation browser, so it’s gratifying to see that it’s actually being embraced by the next generation,” Vishria said. Companies: RockMelt People: Eric Vishria
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| Verizon’s 4G ThunderBolt outselling iPhone 4 at some stores Posted: 01 Apr 2011 07:31 AM PDT
The news doesn’t come as a huge surprise. The iPhone 4 hit Verizon stores in mid-February, and it was mostly purchased by iPhone-hungry Verizon users. The Thunderbolt, which launched two weeks ago for $250 with a two-year contract, appeals to an entirely different audience — one that wants the latest and great hardware, along with access to the fastest mobile network in the US. The real test for 4G Android phones will be how they contend with the iPhone 5 later in the year. Here’s how BTIG conducted its research:
The firm points out that the Verizon employees didn’t have any exact sales figures and were mostly culling from their own experience. Some Verizon workers also mentioned that lines for the Thunderbolt during its launch day were longer than those for the iPhone 4’s launch (but again, online preorders accounted for most of the iPhone 4’s launch sales).
Companies: Apple, HTC, Verizon, Verizon Wireless
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| Walking the fine line between goals and ROI Posted: 01 Apr 2011 06:00 AM PDT It’s certainly possible to set your goals too high when launching a start-up, but serial entrepreneur Brent Constantz, founder of Calera and other firms, says there needs to be a balance between ambition and the urge to see immediate returns on your investment in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture given at Stanford University. Constantz shares a story from his days in the med-tech sector to illustrate this point. (Can’t see the video? Click here) Companies: Calera
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| Google’s face-recognition app sounds great for stalkers Posted: 01 Apr 2011 12:32 AM PDT
CNN profiled Hartmut Neven, director of the Google project, who said that, in order to be identified by the software, people using the app would have to check a box to give Google permission to access their pictures and profile information. Google has not said what personal data might be displayed once a person is identified, CNN said. “We recognize that Google has to be extra careful when it comes to these [privacy] issues,” Neven told CNN. “Face recognition we will bring out once we have acceptable privacy models in place.” The company has not fully described what it intends to do with the app or when it will introduce it. It might be introduced as an add-on to an existing tool, such as its image search engine. Funny, I heard Google staff engineer David Petrou describe Google Goggles, which taps Google’s massive computing power to identify pictures of objects and products that you take with your phone camera. At the time in the spring of 2010, he said that Google’s technology was capable of recognizing faces, but the company had chosen not to do so out of concern for privacy issues. Evidently, the company changed its mind about privacy enough to let Neven proceed with his project. Google Goggles is good at recognizing things because it goes through a dozen different kinds of image searches, figures out the best result, and then returns an answer as to what it thinks an image is. This technology comes from Neven’s own startup, which was acquired by Google in 2006. The object recognition technology led to Goggles, while the face-recognition technology has been incorporated into Picasa, Google’s photo-sharing service. That software helps recognize faces in your computer’s photo library, where there isn’t as much of a privacy concern. Google also acquired another image recogntion company called Like.com in 2009. And Google has filed for patents on face recognition. Neven said it is possible to identify faces today, but the effort had stalled internally out of concerns about how privacy advocates might respond. Privacy issues are no small matter. Last year, Google had to pay $8.5 million in a legal settlement over complaints that its Buzz social-networking tool exposed the names of people with whom Gmail users regularly communicated. Google also agreed this week to let the Federal Trade Commission review its privacy procedures every couple of years. Google also got into trouble for collecting private data via is Street View vans that take pictures of streets. The stalker problem isn’t a joke. If you can identify a person’s name based on a photo, it isn’t that hard to find that person’s home address as well. But Google evidently thinks a lot of people would want help recognizing strangers. [photo credit: CNN] Companies: Google People: Hartmut Neven
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| Bessemer raises $1.6B fund — enough to own 3% of Facebook Posted: 31 Mar 2011 11:44 PM PDT
But to put that in perspective, that amount is only enough to buy a 3.2 percent stake in Facebook at its last known valuation of $50 billion. Luckily for the Larchmont, N.Y.-based fund, its strategy is to avoid the big deals in overheated sectors. Instead, the company plans to put its money in early-stage companies around the world. Rob Chandra, a partner at Bessemer, told the New York Times that the fund invests in “road-map” areas before they become really hot, not markets that are already crowded. About a quarter of the money is intended for companies based in India. Bessemer added several new limited partners with the new fund, including large endowments and corporations. Others that have moved into the billion-dollar fund game include late-stage investors Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. Others include Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Accel Partners. Accel closed a $1.3 billion fund today with its Chinese partner, International Data Group (IDG). Bessemer is about 100 years old and is one of the oldest funds in the country. It is an offshoot of Bessemer Securities, created by steel tycoon Henry Phipps, a co-founder of Carnegie Steel. One of its investments, the LinkedIn business social network, is poised to go public soon. Since 2000, Bessemer has made investments in emerging markets such as India, Israel, Latin America and Europe. Bessemer’s office in Mumbai, India, now almost as many people as its sizable office in Menlo Park, Calif., in the midst of Silicon Valley. The fund has made 31 investments in India, including Shriram EPC, an engineering services company that has grown to $400 million in revenues. [image credit: cpcml.ca] Companies: Bessemer Venture Partners, linkedin, Shriram EPC People: Rob Chandra
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| Fizwoz creates a legion of cellphone-armed citizen photojournalists Posted: 31 Mar 2011 09:54 PM PDT
The company may be on to something. Since its launch at the end of January 2010, Fizwoz has landed 78,000 users from 161 countries who upload their cellphone media to the site in hopes of earning some cash. And it's growing steadily — Fizwoz tells me that it's adding between 300 and 500 new users every day. It's practically impossible to buy a cellphone without a camera these days, even in many international markets. It's also clear that cellphone photo sharing is one of the most exciting areas in the mobile arena at the moment — just look at the success of Instagram and Color's massive $41 million in funding. Fizwoz represents the next logical step for cellphone media — now instead of sharing photos and video on the web for free, you can also make a quick buck by licensing them to media companies. The site offers three ways for trigger-happy cellphone shooters to make money: through putting their media up for auction, fulfilling assignments posted by media companies, and entering contests sponsored by big brands, publishers, sports teams and charities. CEO Andy Sheldon tells me that the company has paid out $18,000 since its first sale in June 2010. Typical sales can be between $5 and $500 (I assume mostly on the lower end of that spectrum). Sheldon says that it's only a matter of time before someone manages to sell their media for six figures. Strangely enough, it was a tragedy that inspired Sheldon to create Fizwoz with co-founder Ian Smith. He was fascinated by how many media organizations were relying on cellphone video shot by amateurs during the Mumbai terrorist attacks in 2008. With cellphone cameras getting steadily better, he figured that the opportunity was ripe to create a way for media companies to get access to amateur cellphone media. Sheldon says that over 70 percent of Fizwoz users are outside of the US — primarily because of its support for Nokia phones (which are also generally known for their high-quality cameras). The company has also made iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps available. They've also recently added support for multiple languages, including Spanish, French, German and simplified Chinese. Fizwoz has raised $400,000 in angel funding and it's currently seeking first round investors.
Companies: Fizwoz People: Andy Sheldon, Ian Smith
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| Google’s Schmidt beats Apple’s Jobs in employee approval ratings Posted: 31 Mar 2011 09:48 PM PDT
Schmidt has an approval rating of 96 percent, up 3 percentage points from a year ago, according to employee approval surveys by Glassdoor.com. Schmidt barely edged out Steve Jobs, whose rating fell 3 points to 95 percent. Glassdoor.com says that its latest survey of employee approval at the top 12 large technology companies yields some insights that aren’t normally measured with the daily ebb and flow of a company’s stock price. But the top bosses at Yahoo and Microsoft aren’t so lucky, as might be predicted by the companies’ recent performance. Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo, saw her employee approval rating drop the farthest among the tech giants, with her approval rating coming in at 50 percent, 27 percentage points below a year ago. Still, Bartz’s approval rating is still higher than the 34 percent that Jerry Yang had as CEO of Yahoo at the time he stepped down. Steve Ballmer of Microsoft saw a drop from 46 percent a year ago to 40 percent this year. Jeff Bezos of Amazon saw his rating drop to 83 percent from 87 percent a year ago. Larry Ellison of Oracle dropped 4 points to 73 percent. eBay’s John Donahoe rose 22 percentage points to 46 percent, while Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen fell 1 point to 57 percent. Intuit’s Brad Smith rose from 69 percent approval to 87 percent, and Michael Dell rose from 36 percent to 48 percent. Paul Otellini rose 9 points to 90 percent and Sam Palmisano rose 10 points to 57 percent. Overall, six gained and six lost. That’s predictable in one sense, since tech companies are recovering from the recession but not everyone is benefiting equally from the recovery. Glassdoor CEO approval ratings are calculated similarly to presidential approval ratings. Employees are asked: "Do you approve of the way your CEO is leading the company?" Glassdoor said it also looked at the company ratings for the 12 tech giants and found only slight changes in their average ratings from employees. eBay saw the biggest increase, while Amazon saw the biggest decrease. The only top exec missing is Leo Apotheker, CEO of HP, but he has been on the job a short time. Companies: Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Dell, eBay, Google, HP, IBM, Intel, Intuit, Microsoft, Oracle, Yahoo People: Brad Smith, Carol Bartz, Eric Schmidt, Jeff Bezos, John Donahoe, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, Paul Otelini, Samuel Palmisano, Shantanu Narayen, steve ballmer, Steve Jobs
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| Why Wisconsin’s ham-handed anti-wind power crusade blows Posted: 31 Mar 2011 08:37 PM PDT
Wisconsin legislators are arguing that current laws that dictate how far a wind turbine can be placed from someone’s property are not strict enough — that companies can place them too close to the homes of everyday citizens. The legislators argue that the turbines will affect local property and home sale values because they are an eyesore. They are also arguing that there is a chance of injury in having a massive piece of machinery nearby — though they don’t specify how they can cause injury. The claim that planting wind farms near a home can decrease its sale value is completely bogus. The reasons for trying to alter the regulations and force wind companies to build wind farms further from homes are not well-supported and are an unnecessary obstacle to the progress of wind energy. Any change in regulations after a turbine is built could prove to be disastrous. The injury argument makes sense — but that’s because a massive machine with many moving parts of any kind nearby can be a hazard. This comes after another company dropped plans to build wind energy farms in an area in Wisconsin over concerns about the regulatory environment. But a study initiated by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2009 debunked the claim that wind turbines would have a meaningful impact on local property values. The report indicated that — while there was a chance that individual homes would be impacted — as a whole, home sale prices were not impacted by the placement of wind turbines in the area. On top of that, the land that wind turbines occupy can also be used for agricultural purposes, such as for crops or grazing land. That might indicate that wind turbines are actually aesthetically pleasing — after all, they are an iconic image of renewable energy. The largest concerns typically come from a “not-in-my-backyard” (NIMBY) mentality, said Dallas Kachan, managing partner of Kachan & Co., a cleantech analysis and consulting firm. Some residents view wind turbines as an eyesore, and there’s a chance that the construction of wind farms will have an unexpected impact on indigenous wildlife and the environment. Some projects in California have even been scuttled because of unexpected environmental impacts, he said. “It’s not a no brainer that every jurisdiction will want wind power,” he said. “There are complicated regulatory, emotional and environmental variables.” There might be concerns about noise, safety and aesthetics. But I can’t think of a single person I’ve spoken to that has ever complained about the presence of a wind farm. This is purely anecdotal evidence on my part, yes, but many companies typically don’t run into resistance across the board when building wind farms, said John Lamontage, director of corporate communications at First Wind.
Wind turbines typically carry large capital costs — meaning the upfront cost of building and operating a turbine will take a long time to break even with the money saved by using wind power. Most wind turbines generate anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 megawatts of power, and the costs vary from state to state. For example, First Wind has a 30-megawatt wind farm in Hawaii that cost $125 million to build and a 57-megawatt wind farm in Maine that cost $140 million to make. The uncertain regulatory atmosphere cost Wisconsin a pair of wind power projects that would have brought more than 98 megawatts of power to the state. That’s particularly troubling given that the argument does not have significant life outside of a NIMBY-style debate — and that isn’t even what the legislators focused on, according to the report. Wind power still serves as one of the strongest renewable energy sources — along with solar power — that can scale to the size of an economy. “You wouldn’t see wind being developed in the way it is today if it wasn’t economical in terms of cost per kilowatt-hour,” Kachan said. “They’re continuing downward in price per kilowatt-hour with economies of scale and offshore manufacturing.” There are 40,810 megawatts worth of wind farms constructed in the United States as of 2010, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Construction of wind farms has been ramping up for the past several years as well — 10,010 megawatts worth of wind turbines were built in 2009, up 19.6 percent from 8,366 megawatts in 2008. Most of that is in Texas, where a whopping 10,085 megawatts worth of wind farms are installed. To put things in perspective, the average household consumes around 920 kilowatt-hours of electricity every month. Innovation is very far along in the wind power sector, Kachan said. That’s different from solar power, where the field is still somewhat nascent and there are a lot of ways to improve the technology, he said. Most photovoltaic cells — 6-inch-long wafers that capture sunlight and convert it to electricity — capture around 30 percent of the light shining on them and generate one watt of energy. Flexible panels that can be placed anywhere are even less efficient, capturing around 15 to 20 percent of sunlight. That means it would take around 1 million wafers — in the technology’s current form — to come close to the amount of power a wind turbine can operate. Solar power might be more efficient than wind energy a few decades from now. There might even be some new way of generating electricity that’s more efficient and has less of an environmental impact than both solar and wind energy. But for the time being — as the cost of electricity wind power continues to decrease — wind power should be viewed as a large priority for legislators as a way to generate reliable, clean energy. Now is not the time to stall projects like the one in Wisconsin — now is the time to push them even further. [Photo: chaunceydavis818] Companies: First Wind
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| Shopping and apps rule the day at Plug and Play event Posted: 31 Mar 2011 08:34 PM PDT
If there was a theme today among the 34 international startups that made the elevator pitches, it was that e-commerce is hot. In particular, a number of the startups focused on shopping, apps, and payments. The first place winner was Accedo, second was TapMap and third was Super Compare It. Accedo provides apps and an app store for connected televisions and internet protocol TV (IPTV). These are apps users can access while watching TV. Based in Stockholm, Sweden, Accedo was founded in 2004 and has shown consistent growth since 2007 and profitability since 2009. Accedo provides app stores in more than 30 countries to TV platform owners such as LG, Panasonic, and Philips. It also provides app stores to Deutsche Telekom, PCCW, Telstra, Viacom, NBC Universal and Time Warner.
Philip McNamara (pictured left), chief executive of TapMap, said the company doesn’t scrape data. It gets it directly from a retailer’s electronic inventory system in real-time. Right now, it displays that inventory for consumers. In the future, it will provide demand analysis trends and forecasts for retailers. TapMap makes money from retailers, marketing agencies, and ad agencies. It charges them a fee to access analytics on live product demand. The market potential is big, since TapMap reduces the need for advertising. And retailers spend $60 billion on advertising in the U.S. alone. Partners include Wal-Mart, PC World, Microsoft, Oracle and others. The data gets published through partnership with app developers such as Red Laser and Shop Savvy. The company is raising $1.5 million.
The company is looking for $500,000 in funding to build a functioning web site and hire developers. The San Francisco company with Italian roots is headed by Barbara Labate (pictured right) and her partner Zion Nahum. The Plug and Play Tech Center incubates startups in its Sunnyvale headquarters and various satellite locations. Its mission is to immerse startups in entrepreneurial culture and accelerate them by giving them space and access to other entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors and high-tech executives. There are more than 300 startups in the Plug and Play Tech Center's buildings (that’s 50 more startups overall than we counted last August). About 60 of them are international companies that were founded elsewhere. The international focus started a few years ago, amid the onset of the recession. It was a way to fill space in the buildings, but it was also a way of going full circle for Saeed Amidi, chief executive of the Plug and Play Tech Center. Amidi is an immigrant himself who moved to Silicon Valley from Iran in 1979, after the Iranian Revolution. His family started a Persian rug store in Palo Alto, Calif., and then moved into real estate. With Rahim Amidi and Pejman Nozad, Saeed Amidi started Amidzad Partners to invest in startups that moved into family-owned buildings; they scored big with investments in Google and PayPal. They started Plug and Play Tech Center almost five years ago, and now Amidzad invests in many of its startups. (Disclosure: Amidzad is an investor in VentureBeat). Plug and Play has partnered with 160 institutional venture capital firms, 50 corporate venture arms, 300 angels, and a number of foreign governments. Since its founding in 2006, companies in the Plug and Play centers have raised more than $750 million in funding. Also noteworthy today is Plug and Play opened its first startup accelerator for the Egyptian market. The accelerator will focus on fostering Egypt’s next generation of tech startups with events and other ecosystem assistance. Companies: Accedo, Super Compare It, TapMap
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| Silicon Valley singles all about queer, decadent robots in online dating profiles Posted: 31 Mar 2011 08:21 PM PDT
Quick: what words are Silicon Valley singles more likely to use than other Americans when describing themselves on Internet dating sites? Try these: queer, decadent, robot, raiding, wacky and telepathic, to name a few. Musician and exerimental media dude R. Luke Dubois aggregated data from 21 online dating sites in order to create this awesome visualization of the 20,262 unique words found in the dating profiles of more than 19 million single Americans. He then combined that info with geographical data to create an atlas of how people describe themselves and the people they want to be with. Each word appears in the place it is used more frequently than anywhere else in the country. So why do we care? Dubois’ project underlines the fact that we can learn a lot about the people who live within a certain geographic area by mining data from social networking sites and combining that with locational information. The result is a powerful way to gain insight into what makes a community tick. The singles data was harvested from Match.com, LavaLife, PlentyOfFish, Chemistry.com, Ok Cupid, Nerve.com, eHarmony, SinglesNet, PerfectMatch.com, FriendFinder, Great Expectations, AmericanSingles.com, Date.com, Christian Mingle, Gay.com, Blacksingles.com, Jdate, AsiaFriendFinder, Alt.com, and Collarme.com. And in case you were wondering, this is not an April Fool’s joke. The technorati just really love their robots, okay? Know a company that is doing interesting things with social network/geographic data along these lines? Call them out in the comments. [Image via R. Luke Dubois] Companies: Alt.com, AmericanSingles.com, AsiaFriendFinder, Blacksingles.com, Chemistry.com, Christian Mingle, Collarme.com, Date.com, eHarmony, FriendFinder, Gay.com, Great Expectations, jdate, LavaLife, Match.com, Nerve.com, Ok Cupid, PerfectMatch.com, Plentyoffish.com, SinglesNet People: R. Luke Dubois
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| Retailer GameStop buys its way into digital distribution of games Posted: 31 Mar 2011 05:32 PM PDT
Those deals are in addition to its acquisition last year of Kongregate. Officially, this shows that GameStop is like a duck escaping a crocodile — on the surface, it looks calm. But under the surface, it’s paddling like hell. In this case, GameStop doesn’t want to be eaten by the rivals who are bypassing retail and selling games direct to consumers. As history shows, nobody wants to be either Tower Records or Blockbuster Video when the music stops on physical retail. GameStop will work closely with Spawn Labs to develop its game streaming service. Spawn Labs was founded in 2009 and it allows players to play games on home machines while they’re traveling with laptops. The game plays in a console and streams its game to the laptop. You can interact with the game and the changes are sent back to the console. It’s doubtful that GameStop really wants that technology. Rather, it wants to be able to stream games directly to its consumers. The Impulse deal is also in the digital distribution space. Impulse lets you buy games online and download them to play on your computer, much like Valve’s Steam service. Impulse is a digital downloads portal of Stardock Systems with more than 1,100 games. It provides digital rights management and copyright protection tools for publishers. It enables game publishers to entice users with features like achievements, account management, friend lists, chat, multiplayer game lobbies and cloud storage. GameStop will continue to operate Impulse, but it will also integrate the digital distribution technology within its own web site in the coming months. There are plenty of reasons for GameStop to move with a lot of speed. Physical retailers such as Borders, Hollywood Video, Game Crazy, and Tower Records have all bitten the dust after being undercut by the low-cost infrastructure of stores on the web. This year, GameStop said it had set aside $100 million to spend on digital initiatives and only $70 million on store openings and store remodels. That’s much different from a few years ago, when the company was opening tons of stores. Also, during the year, GameStop estimates it will close 200 stores. J. Paul Raines, chief executive officer of GameStop, said in a statement, “With these important acquisitions, we will continue to make appropriate investments related to our multichannel strategy. GameStop is uniquely positioned to be the leader in both the physical and digital gaming space.” Stardock said its Impulse service has about 10 percent of the PC digital game delivery market, compared with about 70 percent for Valve’s Steam. Now GameStop will be in a position to compete against other digital game streaming firms such as OnLive, Gaikai, Otoy, Playcast and Spoon. No doubt some other game industry players will want to make defensive acquisitions of their own. Besides moving into digital, GameStop has also been remodeling stores to make them more appealing to gamers. It has been setting up new digital hybrid loyalty programs and is promoting its online game properties inside stores. Companies: Gaikai, GameStop, Impulse, OnLive, Otoy, Spawn Labs, Spoon, Valve People: J. Paul Raines
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| Shapemix for the iPad will unleash your inner DJ Posted: 31 Mar 2011 03:45 PM PDT
Shapemix ($4.99 on the iTunes App Store) takes advantage of the iPad's multitouch interface to let you mix music in "visual space," instead of dealing with the complexity of professional mixing software. Shapemix is one of those apps that makes tablets seem like less of a fad and more of a legitimate computing platform — that's why we've selected it for VentureBeat's Mobile App Spotlight, where we highlight cool new apps. While Shapemix is certainly no replacement for pro solutions, it's a cheap and simple way for anyone — from kids and novice musicians, to more experienced types — to dabble in music mixing. The app comes preloaded with two songs to help you get your bearings with its interface, as well as over 100 free tracks that you can use to create your own songs. The tracks include instruments like drum beats and guitar solos, and you can also customize them with reverb, delay and other effects. Shapemix's interface is one of its most compelling features. The Mix view lets you view the individual tracks as colored circles, which you can move up and down to control the volume, and left and right to control left and right stereo panning. The Time view is a more traditional audio timeline, except with full touchscreen support. Once completed, mixes can be published to Shapemix's website or Facebook. It's a shame the app doesn't offer you a standalone audio file to share with friends, but I'm sure intrepid users will find ways around that. The company says that eventually the app may allow users to download their tracks. Users can also download additional tracks and songs at Shapemix's website. More songs and tracks will be headed to the app as well thanks to a partnership with Downtown Music Publishing. The app, which came out of Legion Enterprises' incubator program, was developed by musician and RISD graphic design professor Colin Owens, who in a former life was frontman for the techno band "Blind." The company tells us that Owens spent years developing curriculum that brought together visual artists and designers, and he also spent a significant amount of time researching audio software tools. Before the iPad was released, he had to make do with a Korean touchscreen device to develop the core concept of Shapemix. Both Shapemix and Legion Enterprises are based in New York City. Legion Enterprises recently invested $10 million in tournament gaming company Major League Gaming, and it has a beer pong app called Red Cup Nation in the works. Want to have your mobile app featured like Shapemix? Then submit it to our Mobile App Spotlight!
Companies: Legion Enterprises, Shapemix People: Colin Owens
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| Applifier launches a portal to discover social games on Facebook Posted: 31 Mar 2011 12:30 PM PDT
The new Games on Applifier portal app attacks one of the big problems of a world with too many apps: discovery. It’s harder and harder for developers to get noticed with hundreds of thousands of competing apps in the market. Last year, Applifier created a cross-promotion bar, basically a strip of game links that sits above the game a user is playing on Facebook. Much like the cross-promotion bar of dominant Facebook game maker Zynga, the Applifier bar was meant to draw attention to other games. But rather than Zynga games, the Applifier bar linked to games of other small developer companies competing against the Zynga powerhouse. Applifier calls these companies the “rebel alliance,” a reference to Star Wars. That led to more than 100 million free clicks for a bunch of independent game makers last fall.
When players log in on Games on Applifier, they can get personal recommendations based on the games they have already played. They can also see a list of the top games and view their friends’ favorite games. Players get access to more fun games, and publishers can reach new audiences for free, Laakkonen said. When players click on a game within Applifier, they do not play the game while still inside the portal. Rather, the player enters a stand-alone game. The portal helps with retention, or hanging on to players, since they can follow their favorite games and get inbox updates when there are new features or changes. Publishers can send notifications to players that will get them back into the game. The inbox capability will launch in a couple of weeks. Anil Dharni, president of Funzio, said that his company’s Crime City grew to millions of users in part because of the Applifier cross-promotion bar. He said he is looking forward to the new features. That gives small companies like Funzio tools that are similar to what the largest Facebook game maker, Zynga, does with its own Zynga Message Center. Applifier’s members had more than 55 million users. Applifier was founded in April, 2010, and it now has more than 20 employees. Rivals include Appstrip from Tapjoy. Applifier has raised more than $2 million from MHS Capital, Profounders Capital, Tekes, Lifeline Ventures and angels. Back in 2008, Laakkonen’s company started as a social game developer. It launched a game but couldn’t find a way to get users to notice it. Then it switched gears to work on the cross-promotion bar. There are currently more than 200 games available on Applifier. Companies: Applifier People: Jussi Laakkonen
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Applifier
But that’s not enough, said Jussi Laakkonen, chief executive of Applifier, which is based in Helsinki and has an office in San Francisco. Facebook already makes the discovery of new apps possible through sharing by friends. It also can automatically share usage info on the user’s stream. Now the Games on Applifier portal app lets users discover new games with personalized recommendations from millions of anonymous game sessions. The service is free to players and publishers, and it is available now as an application on Facebook.
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