VentureBeat |
- Spoon wants to scoop up gamers with a new cloud gaming service
- RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook coming April 10?
- Apple expected to ship 40M iPads in 2011, convincing iPad 2 mockup appears
- Today’s valuations: Is it 1999 all over again?
- Deals & More: Napster founder grabs $250K more for Supyo
- Apple unveils the iPad 2 today — but will it answer our 7 questions?
- Dozens of Android apps pulled from market due to malware infections
- EA’s Battlefield 3 will wage hand-to-hand combat with Call of Duty
- Why Windows Embedded Compact 7 should be Microsoft’s anti-iPad strategy
- HTML5-compatible videos jump from 10% to 63% in the past year
- Sony Ericsson shows off Xperia Play phone with PlayStation controls (video)
- GutCheck wins the $1M prize at DEMO
- DEMO: Will stepping into the CVAC pod improve your health?
- Daily deals site 1SaleaDay raises tens of millions
- DEMO: QPrize winner Enterproid is the mullet haircut for Android phones
| Spoon wants to scoop up gamers with a new cloud gaming service Posted: 02 Mar 2011 09:00 AM PST
Announced at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the service offers a lot of benefits similar to OnLive’s, where users can play games they haven’t downloaded to their computers. Today, Spoon is launching with more than 200 games on its web site — all for free. The list includes casual games such as Jewel Quest and Farm Frenzy to classics such as Pac-Man. If it works, then video game fans will have a new and inexpensive way to instantly enjoy online games without waiting a long time or paying a lot of money. And publishers will have a new distribution system that can deliver games to gamers in a fast and convenient way.
"This is an important moment for Spoon and the cloud gaming industry,” said Kenji Obata (pictured), founder and chief executive of Spoon. “Spoon's unique virtualization technology introduces new ways for people to play and market games online. For the first time consumers can enjoy the benefits of cloud gaming, without the normal trade-off in performance." The trade-off in performance is what you get when you play Flash games online. You don’t have to download much with Flash, but the games look more like cheap cartoons than high-end works of art. OnLive solves the trade-off problem by taking advantage of a fast-internet connection and combining it with server-based gaming and compression. That is, OnLive stores and executes games in powerful servers in data centers. Then it compresses that data as small as possible and sends it to your computer at blazing speeds. You see cool high-end graphics on your machine that look as if they were stored and executed on your own computer. Spoon’s approach is a little less radical. It downloads the games to your desktop or laptop and runs them locally. This hybrid processing model strips out a lot of the high-end server costs that OnLive pays, and it also gets rid of the need for very fast bandwidth. Once launched from the web, Spoon games behave like installed games and can even run offline for disconnected play. Spoon also behaves like server-based games do in one respect. It automatically syncs the stage of your game across all of your Spoon registered devices, allowing you to play an up-to-date saved game from any PC. Spoon games can also be incorporated into web sites, blogs and social networks using Spoon Feeds. Those are short HTML (hypertext markup language — the lingua franca of the web) snippets that embed games into web pages. Consumers can test and purchase games using Spoon’s fully integrated digital rights management and payment processing system. No console or extra hardware beyond a desktop computer is required. Spoon has gotten titles from a bunch of publishers, including Namco Networks, Alawar Entertainment, iWin, and 1C. I played Alawar’s Aztec Tribe game and it took me about a minute or two to get the game up and running, after registering first. I played the game on my laptop and learned how to build my little civilization. Then the game expired and it asked me if I wanted to pay $7 to buy it. In most downloadable games, particularly those with good graphics, you often have to wait a long time. That tests the patience of many gamers who want instant gratification. But Spoon is fast enough to hang on to a player who might otherwise quit a big download. At the same time, it capitalizes on the resource that people already have — the computing power in their desktop computer — to reduce the need to have extremely powerful servers. By doing so, it preserves the responsiveness and offline capabilities of a game, even though it is nominally operating as a cloud game. Spoon says publishers and developers will like this because Spoon enables them to distribute their games on the internet cloud for free. The gaming industry can thus deliver games on demand. Spoon clearly needs a somewhat decent computer on your end, and the games that are available on it now are not extremely demanding. So it remains to be seen if Spoon can grow up to be competition for the likes of OnLive, Gaikai or Otoy, which are focusing on high-end games. But it’s a new player with a new take on the industry. For gamers, it’s convenient to try games with no installation (or minimal installation). Spoon’s DRM and payment system makes it easy to turn demos into purchases. For developers and publishers, Spoon becomes a new way to get games to spread in a viral way. It’s essentially a new marketing tool. The company was founded in 2006 and has 20 employees. It has not raised outside funding. Obata got the idea as a doctoral student in theoretical computer science at the University of California at Berkeley. He was developing application virtualization technology and thought it would work with games. I first met him at the Casual Connect game conference in Seattle last year and the system was working fine then. But the company now has much more support from the game industry. It could use bigger names, but 200 games is pretty good for a new system launch. Spoon isn’t yet available on the Mac. Companies: Gaikai, OnLive, Otoy, Spoon People: Kenji Obata
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| RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook coming April 10? Posted: 02 Mar 2011 08:25 AM PST
That date falls in line with RIM’s plan to release the tablet some time in the first quarter. BGR says that the OS will be finalized on March 31, but users will be prompted to install an update as soon as they boot up the device. I expect we’ll hear even more leaked information on the PlayBook soon, as it would be a good way for RIM to subvert the iPad insanity brought on by today’s iPad 2 launch event. Also in PlayBook news, HP apparently isn’t taking too kindly to the tablet’s slick multitasking interface. Jon Oakes, HP’s director of product marketing for the WebOS-powered TouchPad tablet, apparently considers the PlayBook’s interface a WebOS imitator. Speaking to Laptop Mag, Oakes said:
RIM, to its credit, responded by saying that the PlayBook’s interface is just the result of good design. RIM senior vice president for business and platform marketing Jeff McDowell likened the situation to how competing cars end up looking similar after going through a wind tunnel. He also said that QNX, the software company that RIM bought last year and whose OS powers the PlayBook, may have had that interface in mind before they started working with RIM — which shifts any blame of design imitation from RIM to QNX. People: Jeff McDowell, Jon Oakes
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| Apple expected to ship 40M iPads in 2011, convincing iPad 2 mockup appears Posted: 02 Mar 2011 07:43 AM PST
Apple will ship between 6 million and 6.5 million iPads in the first quarter, the sources say. The numbers include shipments of both the original iPad, and the iPad 2 that’s expected to be announced in just a few hours. Apple’s initial batch of iPad 2s will sit somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 units, according to the sources. Digitimes is known for its connections with original equipment manufacturers, and other companies that sit on device supply chains, so its shipment numbers are often worth paying attention to. A previous Digitimes report from December estimated that Apple will ship 65 million this year, but that was based on an extrapolation from display shipments. The 40 million number seems more realistic, and it falls in line with analyst estimates that say Apple will ship between 40 million and 50 million iPads this year. In other news, the most convincing iPad 2 mockup yet has hit the web via the Chinese gadget site DGtle. The site itself doesn’t seem to be too sure on its legitimacy, but the mockup looks to be higher quality than previous iPad 2 designs. It also features elements we’re expecting to see from the new tablet today, including a slimmer design, front and rear cameras, and a larger speaker.   
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| Today’s valuations: Is it 1999 all over again? Posted: 02 Mar 2011 06:00 AM PST (Editor’s note: Megan Jones is an investment banker and former Director at Hadley Partners. This story originally appeared on her blog.) Zynga is reported to be raising $500 million at a $10 billion valuation. Twitter recently raised $200 million at a $3.75 billion valuation, and turned down a rumored offer of $5 billion from Facebook (which, itself, is valued at $50 billion). Meanwhile, Groupon turned down a reputed offer of $6 billion. As these companies start going public will these seemingly high valuations have a larger impact? Are we facing a new bubble? The easy answer is probably – but let's delve deeper. One of my first projects as a young investment banker was to value a client whose legacy business was dying out quickly but whose new (radically different) product lines weren't quite done being developed. Typically, one starts a valuation by looking at the company's numbers: Revenue, margins, earnings or EBITDA, ongoing investment requirements and such. Thus valuing the existing, though dying, business was easy as it had financial results. The new one – with no finished product and a new market, but no existing presence? Not so simple. We made up numbers (called projections and actually based more on data than simple guess work). We did this by asking management for their projections and the support behind them. Then we did some estimating of our own. We looked at their industry and related industry projections. We looked at the total market size and comparable company multiples in like industries. We studied both high-growth industries and groundbreaking companies. We came up with a variety of projections and used traditional valuation methods such as DCF and comparable company models. We guessed, used some common sense and numerous footnotes and came up with a valuation. Judgment, based on past experience, was key. Fast-forward to the late 1990s and the dot-com explosion. I pitched and worked on a number of deals in that heated sector and always looked back to my earlier project for common sense approaches to valuing companies that were creating industries. I also learned a new variable – the company’s reputation in its industry. Sometimes, no one can better evaluate a company than its competitors who hear the customer feedback, know the space and understand the product or service. Those were the early days of the Internet, when pretty much anything flew. Things are different today. The management teams of the companies listed above have held on longer and raised more private money than earlier dot-coms. They have more users and potentially huge global markets. They are more than a footprint. So do today’s valuations make sense? Maybe. Using traditional metrics the answer really depends on whether they execute and grow as the market is expecting them to. Using historical numbers and comparing them to as "like" or similar companies (which, admittedly, is tough) the valuations are very rich. But their growth rates are as high as the expectations. While lofty valuations leave them little room to underexecute, some of them will exceed these expectations. (Remember the naysayers who said Google's valuation was too high at the IPO?) Note that these valuations and multiples are mostly being afforded to the top tier companies. What worries me more is that the concept has started trickling down, leading to heady valuations for less game changing or successful companies. That trend – to me – is more worrisome than a few high profile and well-run companies getting a diamond valuation. Lately, I've heard too many institutional investors say that they are now happy with more certain – though with less potential upside – returns. I cringe. Nothing is certain and hopping on yesterday's trend, or today's over priced trend, is dangerous. The public markets are now double their lows of less than two years ago and around their highs from before the crash. But evaluate a company and not the market. No one can predict the market, but good companies will find ways of growing, adapting and making money. Traditional valuation metrics should never be ignored as market multiples do play a large role in company values. Companies: Facebook, Groupon, Twitter, Zynga
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| Deals & More: Napster founder grabs $250K more for Supyo Posted: 02 Mar 2011 06:00 AM PST Today’s funding announcements include companies focused on cleantech, advertising, ethernet and mystery topics:
Powerit Solutions gets $5M, new CEO: The cleantech company has raised a new funding round led by Black Coral Capital to help industrial and commercial businesses plug into the smart grid. Based in Seattle, the company has also hired Matt Shiltz, formerly president and CEO of electronic signature company Docusign, as its new CEO. MaxPoint Interactive brings in $8M for targeted ads: The digital advertising firm has raised a new round of funding from Madrona Venture Group and Trinity Ventures for its neighborhood-level ad targeting technology. Founded in 2007, the company is based in Cary, North Carolina with offices in New York and Austin. Actelis Networks lands $4.5M for ethernet solutions: The Fremont, Calif.-based provider of a copper-based broadband service has raised a new round of equity funding, according to a filing with the SEC. The company, which was founded in 1998, works with more than 200 service provider customers to deliver its services in more than 40 countries. Actelis is backed by investors including ATA Ventures, Global Catalyst Partners, Saints Capital and Adams Street Partners. Companies: Actelis Networks, Adams Street Partners, ATA Ventures, Black Coral Capital, DocuSign, Global Catalyst Partners, Madrona Venture Group, MaxPoint Interactive, Napster, Path, Powerit Solutions, Saints Capital, Supyo, Trinity Ventures, Voxli People: Joey Liaw, Shawn Fanning
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| Apple unveils the iPad 2 today — but will it answer our 7 questions? Posted: 02 Mar 2011 04:00 AM PST
The announcement takes place at 10 am and happens just a half hour before Nintendo chief executive Satoru Iwata takes the stage next door at the Game Developers Conference in the Moscone Center. The fact that Apple chose to unveil the iPad 2 right on top of the Nintendo announcement tells you a lot about who the competition is. The iPad 2 is sure to be a cool gaming device, competing head to head with Nintendo’s market-leading game device. Nintendo will launch its new 3DS handheld — which can display glasses-free stereoscopic 3D — on March 27. The original iPad blew the tablet market wide open last year, selling nearly 15 million units in 2010 after debuting in April. But the iPad 2 will launch into a much different environment, with lots of competition from the Motorola Xoom and other Android 3.0 tablet computers. More rivals are coming every day, from RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook to Hewlett-Packard with its upcoming WebOS Touchpad tablet. The seven key questions we’re waiting to have answered are:
We hope we’ll get the answers today. Companies: Apple People: Steve Jobs
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| Dozens of Android apps pulled from market due to malware infections Posted: 02 Mar 2011 12:16 AM PST
The malware attack shows that Android’s big advantage — the openness that gives it an edge over Apple’s closed mobile ecosystem — is also Android’s biggest disadvantage when it comes to protecting users against cyberattacks. While Apple screens its apps, Google allows just about anybody to upload apps into the Android Market. It hopes to head off bad stuff by putting power in the user’s own hands to grant permission for apps when they want to access sensitive things. Apps released by developers under the names “Kingmall2010″, "we20090202″, and "Myournet" contain the DroidDream malware and have been pulled from the Android Market. Google could remove infected apps as well using remote technology, but it has not yet done so. Lookout Mobile Security has a list of all of the apps that have been pulled. The apps reportedly could compromise a user’s personal data. The malware was discovered by a user named Lompolo on the popular news aggregation site Reddit. The user noticed that the developer of one of the malicious apps had posted pirated versions of legitimate apps under the developer name Myournet. Lookout also said that it identified a large number of other apps that also contain the DroidDream malware and it is working with Google to get those apps removed. Lompolo found that two suspicious apps had been created in a way that allows them to break out of an Android app’s security sandbox, which isolates code to prevent security breaches. A blogger at Android Police verified that they contain code that can steal a user’s sensitive information. Users who have downloaded the infected apps may have had their data compromised. Lookout said it has pushed out an update to its users of its mobile security software that will protect them from DroidDream attacks. Companies: Google, Lookout Mobile Security
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| EA’s Battlefield 3 will wage hand-to-hand combat with Call of Duty Posted: 02 Mar 2011 12:00 AM PST
EA released new images and video tonight, and it showed the game off to the press at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. When you look at the video below, you’ll have to agree that combat games are pushing the absolute edge in realistic graphics technology, whether you hate violent games or not. Good or bad, this is the state of the art. You can tell that this competitive battle is a huge one just by looking at the frequency with which each company is now launching major games. Activision Blizzard is now launching a major Call of Duty game every November and it follows that up with a couple of multiplayer map pack launches in the subsequent months. EA launched its Medal of Honor game in October 2010, and it launched its Battlefield Bad Company 2 game in March, 2010. EA executives have been saying recently, when asked how the battle with Activision is going, “just wait until you see Battlefield 3.” That’s a punishing release schedule. This means that each company has multiple teams working on the titles, which take tens of millions of dollars to make and a team of maybe 100 people working for two years. With the multiple teams at work, each company can now release a major title every year or even more often than that.
The new Battlefield game is set in Iraq, near the Iranian border, in the year 2014. As you can see from the trailer, U.S. Marines are engaged in pacification efforts in the middle of a city. The graphics are pretty darn stunning and are among the most realistic I’ve seen. You can look closely at the see-through smoke, the facial hair on the soldiers, the dancing flames, the sunlight coming through the windows, the shadows, the haze in the city. EA will slowly reveal trailer after trailer to tease gamers and get some froth going among the rabid fans. Normally, video game companies make a scene look more sexy with pre-canned animations that are more like computer-generated films than actual game play. But as you can see when the action starts in this firefight, the live game play is almost indistinguishable from the look of the scripted sequence. That’s the mark of a very realistic video game experience. The next installment of the Battlefield 3 video trailers will debut on March 16. Battlefield 3 will debut this fall and it’s very likely going to go head to head against a Call of Duty game. Check out the video below. Companies: Electronic Arts
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| Why Windows Embedded Compact 7 should be Microsoft’s anti-iPad strategy Posted: 01 Mar 2011 10:47 PM PST
The company yesterday released Windows Embedded Compact 7 — the successor to Windows CE for consumer electronics — to the public as a free 180-day trial. Microsoft says that it will be used to power devices like phones (Windows Phone 7 is based on Windows CE), GPS units, and in-car computers. It could also potentially be used for tablets in the future, but Microsoft has shown little interest in that possibility so far. Instead, Microsoft is still trying to pursue Windows 7 as a legitimate tablet operating system, which has wrought failed devices like HP's Slate. Rumors are also floating around that the company will be positioning Windows 8 as its flagship tablet offering. But Windows 8 won't be released until 2012 at the earliest, which leaves this year completely open for competitors like Google, RIM, and HP to grab a slice of the tablet market from Apple. If Microsoft wants to compete in the tablet arena and take on the iPad, it needs a powerful-yet-lightweight mobile operating system. Windows Embedded Compact 7 is clearly its best option. So why is the company once again trying to convince us that a desktop operating system like Windows 8 can magically turn into a tablet-optimized platform? Now Microsoft could conceivably have some master plan in mind for Windows 8 on tablets. But history doesn't inspire much hope. The company tried to convince us that Windows XP was a tablet operating system for years, and when that failed it ignored the tablet market altogether. Microsoft’s many failures with bringing Windows to tablets proved that desktop interfaces are meant for the keyboard and mouse, not multitouch interaction.
Windows Embedded Compact 7 is the closest thing Microsoft has to Apple's iOS, which powers the iPad, and Google's Android mobile OS. The OS brings with it support for Adobe Flash 10.1, Microsoft Silverlight, and a new mobile version of Internet 8, among other improvements over Windows CE. Basically, it seems perfectly positioned to power tablets. Unfortunately for us, the closest Microsoft has gotten to bringing the OS to tablets was via a prototype at Computex last year. Asus had also mentioned that it intended to use Windows Embedded Compact 7 in a tablet last year, but it later chose to go with Android. Since then, we've heard little about other manufacturers volunteering to use the OS in their tablets. We're only a few hours away from the iPad 2's announcement, and it's becoming increasingly clear that Microsoft is the only company among its peers without a clear tablet strategy. RIM, a traditionally enterprise-focused company that would likely have trouble finding "sexy" in the dictionary, managed to blow me away with its slick BlackBerry PlayBook. Even HP has managed to deliver something compelling with its WebOS-powered TouchPad. I'm not sure what it will take for Microsoft to realize that nobody wants to run Windows 7 or Windows 8 on a tablet. But the company will likely realize soon that it will need to come up with some sort of solid tablet strategy. And when it does, it will become abundantly clear that Windows Embedded Compact 7 is its best option to take on the iPad. Companies: Apple, Google, HP, Microsoft, RIM
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| HTML5-compatible videos jump from 10% to 63% in the past year Posted: 01 Mar 2011 08:30 PM PST
Using its video index, which consists of around 30 million videos from 30,000 video sources — including YouTube, Vimeo, and Hulu — the company spent the last year tracking the percentage of those that offered H.264 as a viewable format. The rise over the year has been rapid, having soared from 10% in January 2010 to 26% in May, 54% in June, up to 63% just this month. With major players such as YouTube, Apple, and Microsoft rallying behind it, the format has quickly become a viable contender to Flash, which has historically been the dominant format for Internet video producers. Famously, in a letter published by Steve Jobs last year, the Apple CEO provided numerous reasons for excluding Flash support in the company’s mobile devices and rallied his support behind the format, seeing it as a viable industry replacement for the future. Companies: MeFeedia
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| Sony Ericsson shows off Xperia Play phone with PlayStation controls (video) Posted: 01 Mar 2011 06:12 PM PST
The device has a unique identity that blends a smartphone and a gaming device into one, making it stand out from lots of other smartphones or game handhelds on the market. The question is whether game-focused smartphone buyers will opt for this rather than dish out money to two different devices. Game developers are in the middle here because they can make or break the platform. Mobile developers are being torn in many directions as platform owners try to recruit them to make games for their phones. What Sony needs is someone to create the equivalent of Angry Birds, the top seller on the iPhone, as an exclusive for the Xperia Play. That won’t be easy to do. Sony showed off the phone at the recent Mobile World Congress, and we got our first close-up look today (see video below). The game experience is pretty good, but it will have a lot of competition ranging from the Nintendo 3DS to the Sony NGP, a high-end device with a quad-core processor, coming soon. The new Xperia phone is “PlayStation certified,” meaning it can carry the Sony PlayStation brand name and can use Sony’s control scheme for controlling games, including its signature D-pad button controls and its circle-square-triangle-X buttons. But in what is sure to be a disappointment to fans, there are no titles directly imported from Sony’s library of PlayStation Portable games — at least so far. These are all Android titles.
Peter Farmer (pictured), head of marketing for North America at Sony Ericsson, said that versatile control scheme means you can play a wide variety of games in a wide variety of styles. More than 20 publishers have committed to making games for the phone and roughly 50 titles are in the works for it. The phones will hit the market in April from carriers such as Verizon and Rogers (in Canada). Sony announced that Unity Technologies would support development for the platform. Brian Bruning at Unity said that it would take a matter of days to port games to the Xperia Play and then a matter of hours to optimize the game for the controls. “We are talking about the convergence of smartphones and gaming and this is smack dab in the middle of it,” Farmer said. Sony Ericsson said that it has a marketing relationship with Major League Gaming, the professional gamers league, which will now start a joint promotion by adding a new mobile tournament ladder to its pro gaming circuit. The Xperia Play phone has a 4-inch FWVGA screen, a 5-megapixel front camera and a VGA front camera. It can use a variety of Wi-Fi speeds and its memory is expandable up to 32 gigabytes, with eight gigabytes included. It uses the 2.3 version of the Google Android mobile operating system. Check out the hands-on video below. Companies: sony ericsson People: Peter Farmer
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| GutCheck wins the $1M prize at DEMO Posted: 01 Mar 2011 05:51 PM PST GutCheck, the startup that wants to make focus group research more affordable, just won the top prize at DEMO. The Denver-based company has built a database of possible interview subjects, along with relevant demographic information. So if a business wants to do consumer research, they specify the kind of consumer that they want to interview, and GutCheck connects them for one-on-one chat room interviews. The service costs $40 per person, compared to what the company says is a standard focus group cost of $500 per person. GutCheck was chosen by the attendees at DEMO, the technology launchpad conference coproduced by IDG and VentureBeat. They selected the People's Choice winner from the 47 companies doing full launches at the conference. Now GutCheck will receive $1 million in free advertising from IDG publications. (GutCheck co-founder and CEO Matt Warta is pictured above.) And here are the other DEMOgod winners, chosen by VentureBeat's Matt Marshall, who is the event's executive producer, in consultation with the VentureBeat editorial staff and the DEMO team:
[image via Flickr/Stephen Brashear of New Media Synergy] Companies: ecoATM, GutCheck, Manilla, Nimble, V3, Zugora People: Matt Warta
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| DEMO: Will stepping into the CVAC pod improve your health? Posted: 01 Mar 2011 05:30 PM PST
CVAC Systems is demonstrating an eyebrow-raising fitness technology at DEMO: The company says that by spending 20 minutes in its CVAC pod two or three times a week, customers can improve athletic fitness and general wellness. The company’s name stands for “Cyclic Variations in Altitude Conditioning,” and that’s what happens inside the pod. Once you’re inside, the air pressure is increased and then decreased to simulate the experience of being in high or low altitude. CVAC claims these changes “stimulate an individual's natural adaptation response to environment.” Sound a little out there? Well, you can read more about the technology on the CVAC website. The Temecula, Calif. company says it also has a scientific board of advisors that includes faculty from the University of Hawaii and the University of Canterbury. President and chief executive Allen Ruzskowski said the company has sold the pod to both businesses (you can see a list of locations with a CVAC pod here) and to consumers, but he predicted that the biggest audience will be corporate wellness programs. He said a pod costs more than $100,000, comparing the price to a Tesla Roadster. When I asked Ruzskowski how he plans to get companies on-board with this idea, he said, “Once a 50-year-old executive tries it out for a week, that’s all it takes.” Companies: CVAC Systems People: Allen Ruszkowski
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| Daily deals site 1SaleaDay raises tens of millions Posted: 01 Mar 2011 04:55 PM PST
A company spokesperson wouldn't give me an exact funding amount, but said it was "a high 8-figure number", i.e., in the tens of millions of dollars. There are obviously tons of popular daily deals services online, led by group deals site Groupon. 1SaleaDay says that across its five sites (1SaleaDay.com, Shadora.com for jewelry, Ben's Outlet for electronics, Dynamite Time for watches, and GlassesUnlimited.com for watches) it reaches 1.5 million customers. Here's how founder and chief executive Ben Federman described the way his company stacks up against the competition:
The funding comes from Optima Ventures, an affiliate of Optima International. Optima and 1SaleaDay are now teaming up to form Octagon Commerce, a parent company that owns all five sites and will launch new social media and e-commerce products. (For more thoughts about social commerce, see my write-up of One Kings Lane CEO Doug Mack's comments earlier today.) Companies: 1SaleaDay, Octagon Commerce, Optima International, Optima Ventures People: Ben Federman
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| DEMO: QPrize winner Enterproid is the mullet haircut for Android phones Posted: 01 Mar 2011 04:40 PM PST
Enterproid gives Android phone users what some might call a mullet, the controversial haircut that’s sometimes described as “business in the front, party in the back.” In Enterproid’s case, this takes the form of access to a virtualized phone profile for business use that's wrapped in a separate layer of security. Users swipe down the top of their phone, like when they are accessing active applications, and tap a button to switch to their other profile. They have to type in a password, and they then get access to a business profile for their phones that basically behaves like an actual Android phone. A lot of companies worry about keeping the data on those phones secure. Enterproid's Divide software fixes that problem by keeping the information isolated on remote servers. All the data is stored on remote databases and transferred through the Internet. That means that if a user inadvertently downloads a virus, there isn't a chance that it will get a hold of the phone's business data. IT professionals can also remotely interact with phones running Enterproid's Divide software. They can see which phones are accessing the enterprise database and running a business profile. IT professionals can also remotely wipe the business profiles off phones without wiping personal profiles. The service comes with a dashboard that shows how each user is using their phones — both for business and for personal use. IT professionals can see how much data and how many voice minutes each user is consuming for their personal and business profiles. They can also track the phone via GPS, such as if an employee is travelling — and they aren't supposed to be at Disney World. Individual users can also access their phones remotely. They can choose to wipe their entire phones or wipe just the personal data on the phones — such as when they lose the phones. But they can't remotely wipe only the business profile or interact with it. Only IT professionals are able to access it for security reasons. Companies: Enterproid
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To play the games, you have to download a small browser plugin. After that, you can click on a game and download another small plugin. On fast connections, those download take seconds. The company’s goal is to make the world’s apps and games instantly playable, anywhere. In fact, beyond games, Spoon also has thousands of apps available.
Research in Motions BlackBerry PlayBook tablet will hit store shelves on April 10, multiple sources tell the mobile site 
After shipping 15 million iPads in 2010, Apple is expected to deliver 40 million iPads in 2011, supply chain sources tell 
Supyo raises $250K for secret startup: Napster founder Shawn Fanning and Voxli founder Joey Liaw have raised additional debt funding for a company known as Supyo, Inc., 
Everybody knows that 
Dozens of apps have been pulled from the Android Market because they have been infected with malware. The infection is one of the worst to hit the mobile market, which has been relatively safe from malware attacks compared to the constant barrage of infections on PCs.
This fall, EA will launch Battlefield 3, its latest entry in the great feud between EA and Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty series. As you can see from the images, the graphics are startlingly realistic. This means that EA has been busy, investing millions upon millions of dollars in better computer graphics and larger development staffs in an attempt to knock Call of Duty, the best-selling game of the holidays for the past couple of years running, off its throne.
The game is being made by EA’s Digital Illusions CE (DICE) studio in Sweden. That studio has toiled on the Battlefield series since it began. With Battlefield 3, DICE has upped its game considerably, shifting from games that really did used to look like video games, with all of their clear flaws that reduced the feeling of realism. But the scenes that EA is showing off now look more like a movie or a combat video.
It's just like Microsoft to have a perfectly good tablet solution and do nothing with it.
Given that Windows Phone 7 is based on Windows CE's kernel (the heart of every operating system), Microsoft should have wised up and pursued the same strategy for tablets. Windows Phone 7 impressed me with its speed and gorgeous interface, and there's no reason why Microsoft can't translate that experience to tablets. Rumors say that it may try to place similar slick design elements atop Windows 8 for tablets, but if that's the case, why burden tablets with a full-blown desktop OS?
Video aggregator site MeFeedia 
Sony Ericsson
But the phone also has a touchscreen — partly for controlling phone functions or the user interface — as another way to control games. It has two analog control circles in the middle of the device’s pop-out game pad as well. Lastly, the phone has “shoulder buttons” behind the screen and motion sensors.
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