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Disney Acquires Gaming Startup To Build HTML5 Games Outside App Stores

Mar 03, 10:48AM

Disney has acquired an HTML5 gaming engine startup called Rocket Pack, based out of Helsinki, Finalnd. A Disney spokesperson told us today, exclusively: "We can confirm that The Walt Disney Company has acquired Rocketpack, an integrated solution for plugin-free browser game development. Through a merger agreement, Rocketpack is now a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company reporting into Disney Interactive Media Group (DIMG)." Disney has not released the purchase price and asked us not to "speculate". But we will. One source told us it was between $10 million and $20 million. It's a fast acquisition - as of Feb 1, Rocket Pack was still developing the engine. We're also going to speculate as to why Disney wanted to own this IP. It's obvious really: You can build awesome games outside App stores - straight onto the Web, no Flash required, as it uses HTML5.

Finally, Placekitten: A Web Service For Kitten Photos

Mar 03, 8:47AM

Placekitten: Something every designer needs. "A quick and simple service for getting pictures of kittens for use as placeholders in your designs or code." "This is awesome," says a developer/entrepreneur who stumbled on it today and is apparently using it. It certainly has a little more character than services like Dummy Image. It's two days old.

'Sloppy Google' Is Lazy And Incompetent, Like A Human

Mar 03, 7:54AM

Sometimes I think we suffer from Louis CK syndrome, as in we don't fully understand how amazing it is to live in a time where technological advancements allow all the world's information to be accessed at our fingertips, among other things. A mashup of Html5 Canvas, processing.js, js, jQuery, and the Google Search API, the Sloppy Google project yawns as it completes erroneous searches, expressing its apathy for its work anthropomorphically. To further hammer it home, its "I Feel Lucky" button is perennially out of service.

Salesforce Debuts A More Social Service Cloud 3 With Chatter, Facebook And Twitter Integrations

Mar 03, 4:58AM

It's no secret that Salesforce is aggressively pushing its social agenda with product developments. Chatter, the company's "Facebook for the Enterprise," was recently updated with Facebook and Twitter-like features, including likes, @replies, trending topics and more. And today, Salesforce is injecting social into the new version of Service Cloud 3, the company's customer service SaaS application. As we've written in the past, the Service Cloud aims to capture crowdsourced pools of knowledge floating across the internet, combine this data with CRM functionality and provide a platform for commercial customer service, potentially replacing traditional on-premise contact center technologies which are disconnected from knowledge (i.e. social) that can be found in the cloud. To date, more than 15,000 customers have deployed the Service Cloud to power and deliver customer service.

Square Now Processing $1 Million In Mobile Payments Per Day

Mar 03, 3:13AM

Mobile payments startup Square has reached a new milestone this week—the company is now processing $1 million in payments per day, co-founder Jack Dorsey just Tweeted. Square was processing a few million in mobile transactions per week as of last fall, so the startup has seen a steady increase in transactions over the past four months. The startup just raised $27.5 million in new funding, and is gaining a lot of a lot of buzz, most recently debuting a fairly large billboard in Times Square. And last week, Square announced that it is dropping the $0.15 per transaction charge for businesses using the mobile payments service.

The iPad 2: Sleeker, Faster, And Light Enough To Use As A Frisbee? [Video]

Mar 03, 3:05AM

As you undoubtedly know by now, this morning Apple unveiled the iPad 2 — the successor to its massively successful tablet, and a product that's sure to sell millions over the next year. You may even know the differences between this device and the last one: it's thinner, lighter, and faster, with two cameras and a snazzy new magnetic case. But which of these things really matter when you actually pick up the device and start using it? This afternoon I sat down with MobileCrunch editor Greg Kumparak, who got a chance to play around with the iPad 2 during Apple's event. Check out the video above for Greg's thoughts on how the iPad 2 will fare in the evolving tablet landscape, and whether or not the iPad's sleek new size really makes a difference when you're holding the device.

A Week With Uber And This Blogger Is Totally Hooked

Mar 03, 2:39AM

I just finished a week long trip to San Francisco. This time I didn't rent a car, meaning I didn't have to deal with the rental cost, gas cost, parking and the delays in shuttling back and forth to the airport car rental area - usually at least $500 for the week and sometimes much more. I just used Uber instead, a service that launched last summer that lets you call up a black car service from your mobile phone. Here's our overview of the service. You add a mobile app, create an account with your credit card, and when you want a car you hit a button. A black car comes to you via GPS in a couple of minutes, and you can see how far away they are on your phone. When your trip is done, your credit card is automatically billed. I'm going to share all the data from the week with you here.

Drawing Inspiration From Facebook, Google Revamps Public User Profiles

Mar 03, 12:50AM

Way back in December 2007, Google began to roll out a new centralized Profile feature that allows users to establish their own public online profile, complete with a short bio and links to personal sites. They were mostly useless (you never really saw them), until 2009 when Google began incorporating them into search results (run a query for someone's name, and their Google Profile has a good chance of popping up). Which is a nice feature, but there's been one problem: Google profiles are just plain ugly. Open up a profile with the existing design and you'll see a poorly-organized smattering of links, a bio, and maybe a map — sort of like a personal homepage someone might have set up in 1998. They're not difficult to read, but compared to the social networks profiles we're all used to, they've never felt personal or social in the slightest. But now Google is looking to change that.

The Four And A Half Things Missing From The iPad 2

Mar 03, 12:29AM

Did you hear!? There's a new iPad. It's called the iPad 2. Clever, right? It packs a faster CPU, more powerful graphics engine, a fancy magnetic cover, thinner casing, herp, derp and more. It's a fair upgrade from the original although it's erroneous to call it revolutionary; evolutionary is more like it. In fact, there is still a fair amount of major features missing from the platform. Some of them are big enough to be dealbreakers, too.

Highlights (And Low Budgets) From The ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit 2011

Mar 02, 11:55PM

Today marked the last day of the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E) 2011 summit in Washington D.C. Here are some of the deals and agency decisions revealed or discussed at the summit, which are likely to impact green tech investors and startups in America for years to come. Progress on seed investments... The D.O.E. boasted that six, private companies that it seed-funded last year have raised a collective $100 million in additional private capital. Five of those companies are based in Massachusetts, and one in California, respectively...

TC Cribs: IGN HQ Gets Its Game On With Lawn Gnomes, Plumbers, And Creepy Dinosaurs

Mar 02, 11:34PM

The wait is finally over: TC Cribs is back. This week's episode features IGN — the web's most popular gaming destination — which happens to have an office loaded with video game memorabilia, arcade machines, and students of comic book lore. I also get a chance to show off my innate video game-playing abilities. Also make sure to watch our previous episodes if you haven't seen them yet. And don't worry, so long as I don't get struck with another bout of pneumonia, the wait for the next episode will be much shorter than this one.

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