VentureBeat |
- Ask the accountant: Will my international startup owe U.S. taxes?
- Intergi launches Playwire to help anyone make money from video ads
- Monsanto invests in Sapphire for algae, crops research
- Nyoombl pivots from video chat to broadcasting
- Worst idea ever: Sprint in talks to buy T-Mobile (report)
- Deals & More: Gigya grabs $6M to make web sites more social
- Data-driven future looms for product development
- LinkedIn, GitHub team up on collaboration tool for programmers
- Gameview’s Tap Fish tops 10M downloads in a year on the App Store
- iSwifter lets iPad access unlimited number of Flash videos and games (exclusive)
- Warner Bros. lets you watch movies within Facebook fan pages
- AMD launches world’s fastest dual-chip graphics card
- LiquidSpace launches its workspace-finding mobile app
- Meteor Games renews its social gaming assault with Serf Wars
- Google snaps up Brit pricing site BeatThatQuote for $61M
| Ask the accountant: Will my international startup owe U.S. taxes? Posted: 08 Mar 2011 09:00 AM PST This series is brought to you by TurboTax Home & Business Edition – Guides You to Your Biggest Tax Refund. As always, VentureBeat is adamant about maintaining editorial objectivity. TurboTax had no involvement in the content of this post.
We passed the question on to Michael Bowen of the law firm Akerman Senterfitt, where he’s chair of the state and local taxation practice. He also is a guest lecturer at Harvard University on corporate taxation. Here’s his answer:
Disclaimer: This "Ask the accountant" article discusses general legal, tax and financial issues, but it does not constitute legal, tax or financial advice in any respect. No reader should act or refrain from acting on the basis of any information presented herein without seeking the advice of appropriate professionals in the relevant jurisdiction. VentureBeat, the author and the author's firm expressly disclaim all liability in respect of any actions taken or not taken based on any contents of this post. From now through April 15, VentureBeat will be taking your tax and accounting questions and getting you expert answers. You can send us a question by email, leave one in the comments below, or reach us by Twitter or on Facebook or Quora. Our sponsor encourages you to read these related links. VentureBeat had no input in the selection of these stories. Filing a business tax extension, Business use of vehicles, What tax forms to file as a first-time business owner, What does healthcare reform law mean for businesses? Companies: Akerman Senterfitt People: Michael Bowen
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| Intergi launches Playwire to help anyone make money from video ads Posted: 08 Mar 2011 09:00 AM PST
Deerfield, Fla.-based Intergi is an ad representative company. It finds advertisers for more than 300 game publishers that post their titles on the web. Those publishers have more than 64 million users a month. Intergi specializes in tailored and integrated ad campaigns. That means that Intergi can find lots of ads to plug into videos. With Playwire, Intergi is creating a platform that simplifies the process of making money with online video ads for the under-served “long tail” of the market, or small-demand items that add up to a lot over time. The sad fact is that many people who publish video on the internet never make money from video ads. But Intergi hopes to change that. Playwire uses a free Bolt open source video player that can deliver high-definition video. Playwire supports more than 100 video formats and can stream video to mobile devices. It also has a built-in ad server. Playwire also includes everything else people need to publish videos online: encoding, hosting, content management, analytics, syndication, and monetization. Publishers pay for this infrastructure only as they make money. Jayson Dubin, chief executive of Intergi Entertainment, says that advertisers shouldn’t ignore the long tail of content publishers who can reach a lot more people now thanks to the internet. “No one has ever really tried to reach this customer base,” Dubin said. Playwire’s launch partners include Adap.tv, Adobe, Amazon web services, AOL, BrightRoll, Google, Specific Media, Tidal TV and Tremor Media/ScanScout. Other video platforms often require video publishers to sign up for contracts, where the videos have to get minimum views to make any money. But that has stopped a lot of small businesses from signing up. Instead, Intergi has a “pay as you go” business model, which allows publishers to get up and running quickly without paying upfront money. Publishers only pay for the storage they use each month and the more thy use, the less they pay. Rivals include Ooyala, Brightcove, YouTube, Kaltura and others. Dubin said the company is starting out small, with 500 beta testers now. Within a year, he will be happy if there are 5,000 to 10,000 publishers using the service. Intergi was founded in 2007 and it has 20 employees. The company is self-funded.
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| Monsanto invests in Sapphire for algae, crops research Posted: 08 Mar 2011 08:37 AM PST
Algae companies that originally set out to make biofuels have increasingly turned to other ways to leverage their technology. This is also true of biofuels startups in general. Yesterday, Solazyme — which has a contract with the military to deliver algal biofuels – launched a skincare linebased on its microalgae research. Sapphire is working on what it calls “green crude” created from algae, which can be refined into gas, diesel and jet fuel. And big-name partnerships abound in this field. Companies like Unilever, Procter & Gamble and others have all forged partnerships and or invested in biofuels startups whose technology could yield renewable ingredients or valuable research for their products. Monsanto is on the hunt for genes that can be applied to agriculture, especially those that increase crop yields and is a top supplier of genetically modified seeds. The two companies will use Sapphire’s research tools and algae to discover genes that could be applied to agriculture, while Sapphire says the deal will help “accelerate” the commercialization of algae as a renewable energy crop. They’ll do this by identifying genes in algae that affect an organism’s ability to supply strong yields even under non-ideal environmental conditions. The discoveries within algae could then be applied to corn, cotton, soybeans and other crops. Algae has a similar photosynthetic process to other plants, but are more efficient to work with, the companies say. [Image via Flickr/shaferlens] Companies: Monsanto, Sapphire Energy
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| Nyoombl pivots from video chat to broadcasting Posted: 08 Mar 2011 08:20 AM PST
The company wants to become a hybrid of Skype and YouTube; a service that will give users a more debate-like experience, as opposed to a strictly two-way conversation, TechCrunch reports. In 2010, Nyoombl launched a small device that connected to your TV, and enabled you to video chat with other users, as well as Gmail users on PCs and Macs who had Google voice and video chat installed. Unfortunately, the market became very crowded, with Cisco, IBM, and Polycom entering. As Cisco CEO John Chambers said after his purchase of Linksys, a maker of home-networking routers, “We think the time has come for Cisco to make a huge play in the home." Founder Oladayo Olagunju is being advised by Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy, entrepreneur Adam Rifkin, and venture capitalist Lara Druyan. The company, which is based out of Palo Alto, has received funding from one ex-Facebook executive. Nyoombl will be inviting users to try out the service here shortly. Companies: Nyoobl People: Oladayo Olagunju
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| Worst idea ever: Sprint in talks to buy T-Mobile (report) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 07:53 AM PST
The companies are supposedly far from finalizing a deal after on and off talks. The biggest roadblock, according to the sources, is Sprint and Deutsche Telekom’s inability to agree on T-Mobile’s valuation after it saw a major drop in profit and subscribers last quarter. If a deal is reached, Deutsche Telekom will land a major stake in the combined company. Deutsche Telekom vaguely confirmed the fact that it’s looking to sell of T-Mobile in an email statement to Bloomberg, saying that it may sell off all or part of the company. The company didn’t mention who it was looking to sell its T-Mobile business to. A Sprint representative declined to comment to Bloomberg, and we’re still awaiting an answer to our inquiries. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for both Sprint and T-Mobile — the third- and fourth-largest carriers in the US, respectively — to compete with AT&T and Verizon. Those companies have much larger network footprints, and as of February they also both offer Apple’s iPhone. By joining forces, Sprint and T-Mobile may find it easier to fend off competition. But while it sounds good on paper, in practice a union between the companies would likely result in disaster. Sprint and T-Mobile’s 3G networks are completely incompatible, and at the moment the companies are also pursuing completely different 4G strategies. T-Mobile is focusing on expanding its 3G network with HSPA+ technology, while Sprint is counting on its majority stake in Clearwire to deliver WiMAX 4G. Having the separate networks coexist under a single company sounds like a major headache, and it will be years before Sprint and T-Mobile subscribers can coexist on the same network. Instead of a union between the companies, T-Mobile may also consider buying wireless spectrum from Clearwire, two sources say. That will allow T-Mobile to either expand its network to regions where it doesn’t have full coverage, or strengthen it in metropolitan areas where it has to compete with other carriers. Companies: deutsche telekom, sprint, T Mobile
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| Deals & More: Gigya grabs $6M to make web sites more social Posted: 08 Mar 2011 06:00 AM PST Today’s funding announcements include software to help businesses with social networks, employee safety and shopping advice:
ZoomSafer brings in $1.1M to keep employees safe behind the wheel: The developer of risk management software has raised funding from White Birch Capital and SugarOak Holdings to prevent employees from using mobile phones while driving. Based in Reston, Virginia, the company offers one solution that automatically prevents fleet drivers from emailing, texting or browsing while driving. MyBuys snags $20M for personalized online shopping: The Redwood City, Calif.-based company has raised a third round of funding led by Rho Ventures with participation from Lightspeed Ventures and Palomar Ventures. The company provides more than 300 clients in the online retail space with its product recommendation technology, which combines a shopper’s behavior with algorithms to make relevant purchase recommendations. Bubbles & Beyond gets $1.7M for intelligent fluids: The Leipzig, Germany-based company has raised a second round of funding from LBBW Venture Capital, S-Beteiligungen, Hightech-Gruenderfonds and KfW to grow its presence internationally. Founded in 2006, the company develops customized intelligent fluids which have applications in the industrial, cosmetic and medical industries. Products on the market today can be used for graffiti removal and building preservation. Companies: Benchmark Capital, Bubbles & Beyond, Dag Ventures, First Round Capital, Gigya, Hightech-Gruenderfonds, KfW, LBBW Venture Capital, Lightspeed Ventures, Mayfield Fund, Mybuys, Palomar Ventures, Rho Ventures, S-Beteiligungen, SugarOak Holdings, White Birch Capital, ZoomSafer
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| Data-driven future looms for product development Posted: 08 Mar 2011 06:00 AM PST (Editor's note: Niel Robertson is the founder and CEO of Trada. He submitted this story to VentureBeat.) “I know that half of my advertising doesn’t work. The problem is I don’t know which half." – John Wanamaker For more than 60 years, this well-known statement about advertising has been an accepted truism. Roughly five years ago, though, there was a sea change in marketing in both the tools and attitudes of its practitioners. Armed with the ability to measure results at a fine-grained level, marketers started making more data-driven decisions about their advertising. The ability to measure was catalyzed by online advertising, a uniquely traceable medium for marketing. Accessibility to simple but sophisticated analysis tools like Google Analytics only increased marketers' abilities to be data-driven. Not only could they trace where their dollars had been spent, but also the effectiveness of each program, message, source and landing page from influence through to purchase. The next generation of marketers was born: data-driven marketing analysts. Engineering teams, meanwhile, have spent the past 25 years building software, shipping it on a CD (until relatively recently), sending it into the field and only received limited feedback on what does and doesn't work. Product development has primarily been about what's next, not about what's working. While big picture feedback may have made it back to the development team, the fine-grained detail of usage in the system was completely lost. Just like advertising, development is about to change. With the move to web-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) systems that can be instrumented to measure usage (Google Analytics, MixPanel, etc.), product teams now have access to rich data on how an application is really being used. Strangely, though, most product development teams still don't use this information (let alone instrument their applications). Why? Just as in marketing, while measurement tools exist, there is still a cultural gap between the data-driven decisions these tools allow and the way departments think and are organized. Part of this comes from the clichéd (but often true) story that most product development organizations are not truly customer-facing. Product management was designed to be the proxy for constituencies and what they want. But inevitably product management focuses on the future – what those users want next, not their opinion of the current application. We primarily still develop software through anecdote not data. Instrumentation of application usage should be a core discipline of every engineering team member. Each feature developed should be measured, and the developer should own the measurement and analysis of how successful it was. In an Agile SaaS model, your greatest strength is your ability to adapt quickly. Similar to poorly performing marketing programs that can now be adjusted quickly, features that aren't accomplishing their goals should be triaged and updated or removed. Before features are developed, software developers should determine how their success will be measured. In the same way marketing shouldn't spend $50,000 on a marketing campaign without tracking results, development teams shouldn't spend similarly on expensive development resources building and testing a feature without consideration of how to measure its success. It's hard to remove parts of an application that some people on the development or product management team don't "feel" are working well. The conversation becomes emotional and subjective and no-decision ends up being the decision. Thus, we all end up with a big bundle of feature cruft, lots of technical debt, and an application that makes development and testing regression cycles longer every time. The lingering question is, "what should we measure?" The quick answer, like in marketing, is start with everything. You simply don't know which metrics truly represent your users' experience until you start mining data. As you examine results, you'll start to get a better picture of what matters and what doesn't. Once your team understands the basics of usage measurement, they'll start to see the dynamics of how changing the application affects outcomes. This is similar to how a small change to a landing page can change lead conversion rates dramatically. Once your team is comfortable with the building blocks, elevate the development metrics to higher-level usage outcomes. These will of course depend a lot on what the goals of your application are – discussions that will lead you back into the product management domain. Just like marketing outcomes start to turn into sales outcomes, you will start to align your development team and your product management team. Fundamentally, this approach puts power back into the hands of the development staff. For 25 years developers have been screaming, "just give us problems and we'll solve them," but we've tied their hands with little data to allow them to know what to do. The revolution that's coming is for developers to get the data themselves, have a seat at the table, and recommend changes to the application based on results. Data empowers – and it will always trump anecdote.
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| LinkedIn, GitHub team up on collaboration tool for programmers Posted: 08 Mar 2011 06:00 AM PST
GitHub is a central repository for code and has become a key source of reputation for coders in the open-source community. Under the new partnership, GitHub actions will be introduced into LinkedIn’s network update stream and will be searchable through its Signal tool. If a user has collaborated on open-source projects on GitHub in the past, the program then introduces a user to their co-contributors on LinkedIn. The company said that by adding LinkedIn’s professional social graph on top of GitHub’s data, users will be able to add a significant social layer to the code. You can see the company’s statement about the partnership in its blog post. Here’s part of it:
Companies: github, kafka, linkedin, voldemort
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| Gameview’s Tap Fish tops 10M downloads in a year on the App Store Posted: 08 Mar 2011 06:00 AM PST
Mobile games are rapidly generating a lot of investor interest in the gaming sector. The frenzy over mobile games drew harsh comments from Satoru Iwata, chief executive of Nintendo, at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last week. “I can understand from his perspective why he would say that, because he sees mobile as a threat,” said Riz Virk, chief executive of Gameview in Mountain View, Calif. “But I think the center of gravity is shifting toward social and mobile games. There is a little paranoia about that.”
“Others tried to copy us, but we got it right,” Virk said. “We didn’t make it too overwhelming or complicated.” Now Gameview has expanded its Tap franchise to include Tap Jurassic, Tap Ranch, Tap Town, Tap Mall, and Tap Birds. It also launched the digital collectible card game Titans vs Olympians. Relatively few mobile games have hit the 10 million download number; Virk says the ones that do are the highest-quality games. Virk said that the company plans to expand to the Android platform in 2011. Android grew its market share from 5.2 percent in the U.S. to 28.7 percent of mobile devices, according to comScore. Roughly 350,000 new Android-enabled devices are launched every day. And since in-app purchases will soon be available on the Android Market, developers are more excited about making games for Google’s platform. Virk said that lots of indie studios are shifting into mobile games, where it doesn’t take huge budgets and giant teams to finish a game. Virk said that Tap Fish is the company’s best performing game in terms of users as well as the percentage of users who pay for items in the game. Virk said the company studied the iPhone market and figured out that simulations were in short supply(TinyCo said the same thing when it raised a recent round). It then hit the market with a lot of different simulations games. Now that the company is established, Virk said the focus is on making high-quality games and more engagement, or high average play sessions. As Gameview launches its games for the Android platform, it will add social networking technology from its sister company Ngmoco. Gameview has more than 120 employees, including 15 in the U.S. and a large team in Pakistan. Gameview was founded in 2010. Rivals include Electronic Arts, Glu Mobile, Disney-Tapulous, and sister company Ngmoco. Companies: DeNA, Gameview, Ngmoco, nintendo People: Riz Virk, Satoru Iwata
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| iSwifter lets iPad access unlimited number of Flash videos and games (exclusive) Posted: 08 Mar 2011 04:30 AM PST
Apple still has its objections to Flash, but iSwifter was able to get around those objections with its cloud-based technology. It executes the Flash content in its own data center and then sends video down the pipe to the user’s iPad, which has to be connected to a Wi-Fi connection. By doing this, iSwifter has created a tool can handle the flood of demand for Flash content on an Apple-created device. With iSwifter, users can get to just about any Flash ads, games or videos on the web. The technology is significant because it can build a bridge between Apple and Adobe, which have been in a state of geek warfare over the performance of Flash. Apple has blocked it on its mobile devices because of performance issues, but Adobe argues that Apple is putting its own self-interest ahead of users by protecting its App Store content from competition from Adobe Flash-based products. Burlingame, Calif.-based iSwifter secretly launched it a while ago and it has already been downloaded thousands of times and has made it to the top 100 Top Free games. The iSwifter app is available on a try-before-you-buy basis. You can download it for free and if you like it you can pay 99 cents. The iSwifter technology works a lot like OnLive’s cloud gaming service, which focuses on high-end console games. The Flash sites are processed in web-connected data centers. Then they are converted into video, which is then streamed directly to the user. “We let you see on the iPad exactly what you see on a PC that is running flash,” said Rajat Gupta, founder of iSwifter. The iSwifter browser competes with the Skyfire browser, which costs $4.99. But Skyfire isn’t really built to handle games or Flash animations. The iSwifter app will work on just about anything, said Gupta. The iSwifter app will also likely be offered on the iPhone and Android operating systems. In the future, it will also be available on Windows Phone 7, Samsung’s Bada gadgets, and the WebOS. “It definitely makes sense, since there are so many Flash games and videos out there,” said Atul Bagga, an analyst at Think Equity. “This is like a new distribution platform.” When you load the app, you have two options. You can browse web sites or play games. With the web sites, you can choose from one of the featured links or just type in the web address to go to any web site. For games, there is one game that is available for free each week. The others are available as free-to-play games. After a couple of minutes of playing, the user is prompted to make an in-app purchase to continue playing. If there is a drawback to iSwifter, it is that it needs a constant Wi-Fi connection in order to run, as the video has to be streamed in near real-time to create a continuous and good experience for the user. You can log into web sites such as Facebook and play Flash-based games such as FarmVille with iSwifter. Gupta says that iSwifter would be useful on Android systems as well, even though Flash is going to be available on those devices. That’s because all of the capabilities of Flash aren’t available on those devices. It’s worth noting that many Flash web sites are written for PCs and need a mouse and keyboard. That means they won’t work well on a mobile device unless they are redone in a touchscreen-friendly way. But iSwifter has built software — an abstraction layer built into the cloud platform — that captures a user’s touch-based gestures and then converts them into mouse and keyboard-style inputs that Flash games can understand. That conversion is done in real-time, or immediately. iSwifter is part of YouWeb, the technology incubator headed by Peter Relan, the chairman of CrowdStar, Aurora Feint and Sibblingz. iSwifter has created a Flash streaming service that is operated in the cloud, or web-connected data centers. With iSwifter, game developers can find a way to get their content from one platform to another, even if there is an obstacle standing in their way. The same is true for Flash-based video web sites. iSwifter has 5.5 employees and is hiring. The service is a great way to get around walled gardens. If companies such as Apple allow the app, it can then bring content that might otherwise not run — or be allowed to run — on the particular platform. By making their games available on iSwifter, game developers can avoid being locked out of certain platforms. And the developers do not have to adapt their games, changing them from one format to another, just to expand their reach to new platforms. Companies: Adobe, Apple, iSwifter People: Rajat Gupta
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| Warner Bros. lets you watch movies within Facebook fan pages Posted: 07 Mar 2011 10:42 PM PST
The new movie distribution method marks an attempt to draw new revenue streams from digital online technology — a top priority for Hollywood studios as traditional box office receipts and television viewing decline. What’s cool about watching a movie this way — the studio hopes — is that users will share the movie with their friends and watch it in a communal way as if they were going out to the movies together. Consumers will be able to use Facebook Credits, the social network’s virtual currency, to rent a title. The program will expand to movie purchases in the near future. Fans who “liked” Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film The Dark Knight can rent the film through the official Facebook page. Fans can click on the “rent” icon, apply their Facebook Credits (or buy them if they don’t have any), and then start watching the film with in seconds. The cost per rental is 30 Facebook Credits, or $3. The offer only works for U.S. consumers now. More titles will be available in coming months. "Facebook has become a daily destination for hundreds of millions of people," said Thomas Gewecke, president of Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. "Making our films available through Facebook is a natural extension of our digital distribution efforts. It gives consumers a simple, convenient way to access and enjoy our films through the world's largest social network." Fans can watch the film through their Facebook account for up to 48 hours after purchase. They can watch it in full screen, pause the movie, and resume playing when they log back into Facebook. They can also post comments on the movie, interact with friends and update their status. The interesting question now is how are they doing this? It could be a virtualization technology, like the kind that OnLive uses. Warner, after all, is an investor in OnLive. Gaikai has also talked about embedding games in sites. Maybe the same can be done with movies. Companies: Facebook, Warner Bros. Entertainment People: Thomas Gewecke
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| AMD launches world’s fastest dual-chip graphics card Posted: 07 Mar 2011 09:01 PM PST
The new card takes two of AMD’s fastest graphics chips and marries them inside a single graphics card, which can be added to a computer and power as many as five displays. The new card means that AMD is as serious as ever about fighting for market share at the high-end of the graphics chip market, even as it launches Fusion combo chips that meld a microprocessor and graphics in the same piece of silicon. The high-end gaming market is a sliver of the overall PC industry, but it signals where the mainstream technology of graphics will eventually go, and gamers at the high end are extremely influential. So it pays for AMD to keep sparring with Nvidia, which currently holds the speed crown for the world’s fastest graphics chip. AMD claims that the new dual-card graphics card can run 1.4 to 1.8 times faster than a card with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 graphics chip. With this card, AMD gamers will be able to run as many as five computer screens from a single card. AMD claims you can crank up the resolution to 7680 pixels by 1600 and still get outstanding speeds. For those who really want high speed, you can take two of these graphics cards and put them in a single PC. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD has had a very different strategy from Nvidia in the past few years. The company creates smaller, more power-efficient chips that hit the “sweet spot” of the market, rather than the largest and fastest graphics chips. But AMD can move quickly to put two smaller chips onto a single graphics card, resulting in a graphics card that is faster than one with a single Nvidia chip. Nvidia typically has the fastest desktop graphics chip, while AMD can take the crown for the fastest graphics card with two chips in it. It isn’t immediately obvious which company has the better strategy. But gamers are well served by the constant tug-of-war competition between the two. AMD is launching its AMD Radeon HD6990 graphics card, which has the code-name Antilles, as the newest member of its 6000 series of graphics chips. The card has two settings that make it easy to “overclock,” or run the chip beyond the recommended specification in the name of higher performance. Gamers can easily set the card to run at either speed, in contrast to past solutions that were much harder to overclock. The card runs on 450 watts of power — a very high number — but the design is laid out so that both graphics chips can dissipate the same amount of heat. Altogether, the performance exceeds 5.4 teraflops and each graphics chip has 2.64 billion transistors, or basic electronic building blocks. The chip is available for sale now.
Robison said AMD has now shipped more than 35 million graphics cards that are compatible with Microsoft’s DX11 graphics standard. There are 21 games and four game engines on the market that support DX11. The new graphics card has 4 gigabytes of GDDR5 memory and runs at 830 megahertz. It has 3,072 stream processors on board, which effectively means it has that many computing brains. the card can be overclocked to 880 megahertz. Among the top new PC games coming to the market soon that support DX11 are Dragon Age II (pictured below), Total War Shogun 2, and Deus Ex Human Revolution. The Dragon Age II game can be played with as many as five computer screens, with the game image stretched across all of those screens. Companies: advanced micro devices, Amd, Nvidia People: Neal Robison
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| LiquidSpace launches its workspace-finding mobile app Posted: 07 Mar 2011 09:00 PM PST
The idea of finding an empty desk to work at isn’t new. We’ve seen the launch of a number of co-working offices in San Francisco and elsewhere recently, as well as ShareYourOffice, a marketplace for renting out empty workspaces. But LiquidSpace is less focused on creating long-term work arrangements and more focused on finding someplace to work right now — the company has compared itself to Airbnb, the service that helps travelers find empty couches and bedrooms. One of the coolest things about the app is that it supports a variety of arrangements. They include private spaces, where a company only makes offices available to traveling employees or other approved guests; paid spaces, like a co-working office where you rent a desk for the day or the afternoon; and public spaces, like a Starbucks with WiFi. If you’re looking for a space, you can also specify exactly what you need: You might be happy as long as there’s a desk with free WiFi, or you might need a private conference room for three people. The listings will come mostly from the facilities themselves (particularly in the case of private or paid spaces), but users can also add venue information and photos. To help kick things off, LiquidSpace is also announcing a promotion next week where users who travel to the South by Southwest conference will be able to visit a number of “pop-up workspaces” in Austin locations like art galleries and coffee houses. The LiquidSpace app is free, because the company plans to make money by taking a share of all the paid transactions. It has raised $1.3 million in funding from Greylock Partners and Floodgate. Oh, and if you think the audience for the app is a bit limited, LiquidSpace has data showing the growing number of mobile workers, including an IDC study showing that there are more than 110 million mobile workers in the United States alone. Companies: LiquidSpace
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| Meteor Games renews its social gaming assault with Serf Wars Posted: 07 Mar 2011 08:29 PM PST
The game and others like it from Meteor are a test as to whether veteran game developers who have been successful in past lives can strike it rich again on Facebook, where newcomer Zynga dominates the field. It hasn’t been easy for anyone to challenge Zynga, but the rivals keep trying, since they know that Zynga has earned itself a multibillion dollar valuation based on its Facebook success. “We’re not worried,” said Donna Powell, president of Meteor Games. “The market can support multiple companies.” The Serf Wars game is the latest product from Donna (pictured center) and Adam Powell (pictured right), the married couple that brought us Neopets, the first major web-based kids game of its kind. They started Neopets in 1999 and sold it to MTV in 2005 for $160 million and then started Meteor Games in Beverly Hills, Calif., in 2007.
“We had to go one stage simpler,” said Donna Powell. Their first Facebook hit was Island Paradise, a farming game with a tropical theme. About a month into the launch, users started buying items such as fertilizer with real money. It has been monetizing ever since. The casual titles remains a hit with more than 400,000 daily active users. Enough players are buying virtual goods within that game to make Meteor into a profitable entity, even with more than 70 employees. That success gave the company more confidence to invest in multiple projects at the same time, with roughly 15 to 20 people on a team working for months at a time. Meteor has also launched Sweet Shop and Ranch Town as well, although those games haven’t been as big as Island Paradise. Donna Powell said that Serf Wars is an attempt to straddle multiple audiences. It has a battle element that will appeal to males, with a beautiful art style that will appeal to females. It combines both hardcore and casual features. Donna Powell said she thinks the new age of Facebook games resembles the early age of web games in the 1990s. Serf Wars can be played in short game sessions, but it also has a lot of depth to keep players busy for a long time.
Donna Powell said that the company is also making a branded-title with a major movie studio. That game is expected to launch in May, and there are a couple of other titles launching later this year. The company isn’t yet investing in mobile games. The focus is not to build games around a monetization scheme. Rather, the company focuses on fun. Eventually, the market may mature to the point that the company’s original hardcore game might become marketable again. “We believe that the best game will win,” Donna Powell said. “People will be ready to play the best games and get engaged. We see that engagement is the most important trend to watch.” So far, Meteor Games has been self-funded. But Donna Powell said there is a lot of interest from investors in the game market now and the company is evaluating its opportunities. Companies: Meteor Games People: Adam Powell, Donna Powell
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| Google snaps up Brit pricing site BeatThatQuote for $61M Posted: 07 Mar 2011 08:17 PM PST
BeatThatQuote helps its website visitors search, compare and apply for lower rates and cheaper prices on a variety of products including financial, insurance, and legal services, utilities, and shopping. The newly acquired company’s managing director John Paleomylites announced the deal on BeatThatQuote’s homepage:
BeatThatQuote has been growing rapidly — it is currently bringing in more pageviews than popular social networking company Facebook and was the fastest growing website in the U.K. in 2007. That popularity makes it likely Google will roll the company into its new deals service as it seeks to stay ahead of an increasingly crowded and diverse crop of hot startups such as Groupon and LivingSocial. Indeed, Google’s been on quite a shopping spree for companies it thinks has potential. The search behemoth nabbed 48 different properties in 2010, and Google’s vice president of corporate development David Lawee said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Saturday that the company will be similarly aggressive this year. It wants its new companies to continue innovating, he said. “If you’re en entrepreneur and you come to Google, your days as an entrepreneur are not over,” said Lawee. “Bringing small entrepreneurial teams into Google who have a strong vision for what they want to do has been highly successful for us.” Companies: beatthatquote, Facebook, Google, Groupon, Livingsocial, The Wall Street Journal People: David Lawee
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This week’s tax question:
Internet ad representative firm
Global agriculture and biotechnology giant Monsanto has taken an undisclosed equity stake in biofuels player Sapphire Energy. The two companies will also team together in a multi-year research collaboration.
Deutsche Telekom is apparently in talks with Sprint to sell its T-Mobile USA division, sources in the know 
Gigya raises $6M for social network integration: The software maker has raised equity and securities in its third round of funding, 
Professional social networking startup 
When it comes to simulating aquariums on the iPhone, nobody beats 
The 10 million downloads is a pretty good showing for Gameview, which was 
Apple
Warner Bros. Entertainment said tonight it will enable Facebook users to rent movies directly on Facebook and watch those movies within the studio’s movie fan pages.
Advanced Micro Devices
AMD is also offering updates to its Gaming Evolved program, which supports open standards for gaming technologies, said Neal Robison, director of ISV relationship management at AMD. One of the standards proposed in the past year is Open Stereo 3D, which calls for a common way to display stereoscopic 3D images on computer screens. AMD will launch a certification program for that standard in the second quarter, Robison said.
If you’re the kind of person who spends more time working at Starbucks than in your office (i.e., me), then you may be able to upgrade your work life with a new iPhone application called 
Like many game startups, 
At Meteor, the Powells (along with CEO Zac Brandenberg, pictured left) wanted to create a massively multiplayer online game that combined social and hardcore features. But they abandoned that title as it became more and more evident that they should make Facebook titles with casual themes. By early 2009, Meteor Games switched all of its resources into making Facebook titles.
The Neopets online game was novel in that neophyte audiences who tried the game had to be taught how to play a game. Neopets drew the players and then kept them playing by creating missions and avatars, going on quests and earning achievements. Donna Powell feels the same thing is happening now, where Facebook players have to be taught.
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