Zynga: The FarmVille creator has hired Steven Chiang as president of the development studios, CEO Marc Pincus announced on his blog this week. Chiang co-founded EA-owned Tiburon Entertainment, the studio best known for the Madden NFL franchise. A longtime EA executive, he was most recently SVP and group GM for EA Sports.
Fairchild Fashion Group: Patrick McCarthy, chairman and editorial director of Condé Nast’s Fairchild Fashion Group and de facto editor of the fashion magazine W is leaving the company at y...
With the release of court filings in the three-year old copyright infringement suit between Viacom and YouTube, weve seen the video share site argue that it is not liable for infringing videos uploaded to its site, as it claims protection under the safe harbor provision of the Digital Milennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
But in Viacoms filing for a partial summary judgment, it makes the case that the sites founders and later executives of acquirer Google turned a blind eye to copyrighted material in an effor...
News broke yesterday that popular online Q&A; startup Formspring.me had raised some $2.5 million in venture funding and would be relocating to Silicon Valley from Indianapolis. As a user and fan of the service, I am happy to see the company rewarded for its success, and I am excited to see how they can improve their already great product. However, as a follower of the national and global startup culture, it is a little disappointing to see the company leave their home and head west to the Valley.
Form...
Once upon a time, you had to bring travel guides, maps and paper tickets on every trip. Today, you can just take your smartphone and get access to all of this information without having to lug a couple of books and magazines around with you. Today, according to a new study by analytics firm Compete, 38% of smartphone users conduct travel research on their devices and 28% use their phones to book at least some of their trips and travel activities.
Compete found that the most popular travel-related a...
In continuing to look at the way that Facebook has become a driving force behind online news consumption, Heather Hopkins of Hitwise has dove into the numbers again, this time examing how Facebook users compare with others in return visits.
According to Hopkins' article, Facebook not only drives a high amount of traffic, higher than Google News, but its users are far more loyal, as well.
Hopkins took a look at the data earlier this month, noting that Facebook drives three times as much traffic to...
Until now, anybody who wanted to implement real-time ads from OneRiot's RiotWise network had to get these ads through OneRiot's API and create a customized user interface around these ads. This severely limited OneRiot's appeal for website owner who wanted to experiment with real-time ads on their sites and services but were looking for a plug and play solution. Today, OneRiot is launching a new set of real-time ads that website owners can just plug into their sites. These dynamic ads will refresh automatic...
What is the effect of the Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems on cloud computing? Well, there have been quite a few if you look at where Sun's best and brightest have moved on to in the past few months.
Tim Bray is the latest Sun star to move on. You may know Bray as the co-founder of XML. Eve Maler is also a co-founder of XML. She had worked with Bray for many years until her departure from Sun last Spring to join PayPal. Eve as many of you many know, is one of the leaders in developing identity stand...
Google Analytics offers site owners an easy and free way to gather highly detailed analytics about their websites' visitors. A lot of people, however, don't feel comfortable with the idea that Google can track their every move on the Internet. After all, even if you don't use any Google product yourself, you will still send personal data about yourself to Google through programs like Google Analytics. According to an announcement the Google Analytics team just posted on its blog, you will soon have the opti...
For years, network operators happily called all the shots when it came to developers, effectively saying, You want to be on our network? Then jump through all these hoops to get approved, and be happy with whatever margins we pay you.
You cant get away treating people like that for too long. Indeed, these days, developers are calling the shots, requiring more open development platforms and a 70-30 split with mobile providers. Carriers such as O2 (Litmus) and SK Telecom have both agreed to the new arrangeme...
Google has partnered with Sony, Intel and Logitech to develop a yet-unannounced product called Google TV, according to an article by New York Times technology writer Nick Bilton. Google TV will be based on Android, according to Bilton, and could come in the form of a dedicated set-top box or a software platform that could be deployed on Internet-connected TVs and similar devices, directly competing with solutions from Vudu, DivX and Boxee.
Details about Google TV are still scarce, as Bilton dindt get a...
Social gaming startup Playdom is putting this past falls $43 million funding round to quick work lately. The San Francisco company is investing $5 million in Argentina-based social gamer MetroGames as part of the South American companys first round. The investment comes a barely two weeks after Playdom acquired Offbeat Creations, the developer of several Facebook-based titles, including dice game Super Farkle.
Communications networks are eating up a lot of power and with the proliferation of online video and data-rich mobile applications, such consumption is set to climb even further. According to the Smart 2020 report, information and communication technology services are currently responsible for a full 2 percent of the total carbon footprint; communications networks alone account for a third of that consumption. And the report estimates that given user demand and production, those numbers are going to double ...
After I participated in a rousing SXSW panel about content recommendations, Emmanuel Marchal, general manager of London-based LikeCube approached me in the hall to tell me about his company. I thought it was pretty cool, so I captured a video interview with him right there.
LikeCube was co-founded by a semantic web technologist and an anthropologist four years ago, and funded by the UKs National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts. It combines metadata, user activity and personalization to help c...
The US Department of Justice this week released slides from a presentation deck titled Obtaining and Using Evidence from Social Networking Sites. The document was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
The DoJ presentation describes Facebook as much more co-operative with law enforcement requests for user information than Twitter and MySpace are. It also explains to officers what the advantages of going undercover on social networking si...