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RockYou CEO Lance Tokuda Steps Down
Nov 24, 3:42AM
RockYou founder and CEO Lance Tokuda is no longer leading the company, we've confirmed. Tokuda helped found RockYou back in 2005, and led it through several funding rounds totalling nearly $130 million. The change comes at a critical time in RockYou's life, as the company attempts to reinvent itself and bounce back from substantial layoffs. I spoke with RockYou COO Lisa Marino, who says that Tokuda told the company he would be stepping down last month, around the time that it pivoted to focus primarily on social gaming. A significant but undisclosed percentage of RockYou's workforce was laid off as part of the transition, and the company hired former EA exec Jonathan Knight to serve as SVP of RockYou Games.
$1.3 Billion Oracle-SAP Verdict Is Biggest Ever For Software Piracy
Nov 24, 2:44AM
After an 11 day trial whose highlights included the hilarious "Where In The World Is HP CEO Leo Apotheker?" the Oracle vs. SAP intellectual property case has finally ended today in a whopping $1.3 billion dollar verdict, "The largest amount ever awarded for software piracy" according to Oracle co-president Safra Catz. 
Breaking: Me.Com Data Breach?
Nov 24, 2:13AM
I was just logging into me.com today to find that my password would not work. Strangely, we also received this tip that describes a security breach in Apple's own accounts. I'm asking around at Apple right now but has anyone else noticed a password problem? Apparently a hacker has a list of logins and passwords and they're being systematically changed. Correlation is not causation and all that, but it's awful fishy. At the very least pop over to your Me account to check it out. 
RockMelt Rolls Out Its First Big Update: Chromium 7, More Social, Better Gmail
Nov 24, 2:09AM
You remember RockMelt, right? After the social browser launched two weeks ago, talk about it exploded — then seemed to die down just as quickly. But today brings an update that may get people interested again. The service has just rolled out their first big update to their browser. Version 0.8.36.74 (sexy name) contains a number of bug fixes and stability improvements. It also updates the underlying Chromium browser to version 7 finally (for those keeping score at home, the Chromium open source project is already well into version 9). But the real keys here are the functionality improvements. Namely, the new RockMelt makes it even easier to be social. 
Flash Free: Aviary Hatches A Lightweight HTML5 Photo Editor For The Web
Nov 24, 12:23AM
Aviary is very good at what they do. That is, offering relatively powerful tools for amateur artists to edit content online. But all of those tools are Flash-based. And some of Aviary's partners didn't like that too much, feeling they were too cumbersome. And some users were interested in the tools, but also wanted something more lightweight. So Aviary went to work, and came up with a new editor built entirely with HTML5. The project, which they codenamed "Feather", is an HTML5 photo editor that resides on both Aviary's site, and can be easily integrated with any third party site. The tool, which appears as a small square widget overlay, allows people to quickly edit photos without Flash. And it gives third-party sites an option for a light tool that their users can use right on the site.
Online Holiday Spending To Reach $32B; E-Commerce Sales Already Up 13 Percent
Nov 23, 11:33PM
Good news for online retailers this holiday shopping season. According to data collected by comScore, e-commerce spending should increase by 11 percent this holiday shopping season. Already, consumers have spent $9 billion online in the first 21 days of November, which is an 13 percent increase versus the corresponding days last year. comScore is forecasting that online spending from the November to December period will reach $32.4 billion, representing an 11 percent gain versus year ago. In 2009, consumers spent $29 billion on holiday e-commerce purchases. Last year's e-commerce holiday spending rose by 4 percent from 2008. 
Holiday Gaming Greatness For You & Yours
Nov 23, 10:57PM
It's high time to recommend y'all some video games for your holiday perusal. Oh, I know my opinions aren't always appreciated by some of you, but therein lies the beauty: if you wanted "safe" and/or "popular" you could always watch Good Morning America. You know, "Golly gee, this is so much fun!" Balderdash, I say. Balderdash. So let's get on with this.
Patent Office Agrees To Facebook's "Face" Trademark
Nov 23, 10:33PM
All Facebook needs to do is pay the issue fee within three months of today and the "Face" trademark will be issued with a patent number to be published in the official USPTO gazette and everything. For all intents and purposes today's status update is as good as gold for Facebook's hold over "Face" usages in "Telecommunication services, namely, providing online chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users in the field of general interest and concerning social and entertainment subject matter, none primarily featuring or relating to motoring or to cars."
Android's App Store For Pornography, MiKandi, Adds Support For Paid Applications
Nov 23, 10:05PM
Yes, as Steve Jobs likes to point out, Android has at least one third-party App Store that is dedicated to pornography and other 'adult' content. No, it doesn't have anything to do with Google — it's made by a company called MiKandi (NSFW). And while it draws plenty of snickering and sneers from the Apple faithful, it capitalizes on a fact of life: a lot of people watch porn. And some of them are willing to pay for it. Today, MiKandi has released a new version of its adult app store. The company says that it's been rebuilt from the ground up, and it also includes one major new feature: support for paid applications. Previously MiKandi apps have been free; now developers will be able to generate revenue through a channel other than advertising.
Will the Real "eBay of Social" Please Stand Up? (TCTV)
Nov 23, 9:05PM
In the venture business being ahead of your time can be almost as bad as being late to a market. But the other great thing about the venture business is there are exceptions to every rule. Craig Denato is hoping that Oodle is the exception to that one. He's spent more than ten years building a social classified company, powering the marketplaces for Oodle.com, MySpace and Facebook and growing to more than 14 million unique users. It's backed by some of the smartest investors on the Web like Reid Hoffman and David Sze from Greylock, who both invested in Facebook and LinkedIn so they know a thing or two about the social graph. Now one of Facebook's other hot venture capital investors, Accel Partners, has funded Yardsellr which claims it'll be the "eBay of Facebook;" meanwhile Groupon's runaway success has made everyone reevaluate social shopping. So what does all that mean for Oodle? For one thing, the company isn't slowing down. 
Duke Energy And ITOCHU Testing New Uses For Old Electric Vehicle Batteries
Nov 23, 8:14PM
Duke Energy and ITOCHU Corp. announced a partnership today through which they will evaluate and test new uses for old electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Once they are too spent for life on-the-road, EV batteries could store power and deliver a charge elsewhere, the companies reason. EV batteries falling below 80 percent of their original capacity when fully charged will be candidates for replacement and reuse. Duke and Itochu promised to begin their project by testing Ener1 lithium-ion batteries extracted from a fleet of 80 EVs in a Duke Energy facility in Indianapolis. 
Ask a VC: Why We're Thankful for David Hornik
Nov 23, 7:01PM
David Hornik of August Capital has bailed me out in a short week by hopping into the Ask a VC chair that I neglected to book in advance. The timing wasn’t planned, but it’s appropriate. The first time I ever interviewed Hornik, I was still at BusinessWeek and when I asked him to send a [...]
Blekko Partners Up With Search Engine DuckDuckGo
Nov 23, 6:50PM
Blekko, the little search engine that could, has come off the success of hitting one million search queries day and 30,000 slashtags (human curated search topics like /colleges, /vegan, /SEO) created in it's first week of existence. Now it has taken a unique "if you can't beat them, join 'em" approach to the search market and partnered up with fellow market outlier DuckDuckGo, which like Blekko, is a search engine that prides itself on having more relevant results than Google with the added bonus of not keeping any of your personally identifiable info.
Facebook Alternative Diaspora Launches Their Private Alpha With Some Bet Hedging
Nov 23, 6:48PM
We've been tracking the progress of Diaspora, the open-source Facebook alternative, since before the project even started. That's because the idea got so much buzz on the crowdsourced micro-funding site Kickstarter, that they were able to turn a goal of raising $10,000 in 39 days into $200,000 from 6,500 backers in the same timeframe. But with such high expectations, you have to deliver. And many expressed doubts that the small team of college students could do that. After the money came in, the team sequestered themselves for the Summer to work on the project. Despite some hiccups, they were able to unveil the source of the project in September to mixed reviews. Meanwhile, a user-facing alpha launch was promised for October. That came and went, and they pushed the launch to Thanksgiving. Well, we're two days away from turkey day, and Diaspora has delivered this time.
Minus Makes Photo Sharing As Simple As Possible
Nov 23, 6:18PM
It is isn't often that a web service needs almost no instructions. Minus, part of the minimalist design trend inspired by apps like Glen Murphy's DropMocks, allows you to drag and drop photos from your desktop into your browser in order to arrange into galleries, edit and share via URL. Yes that's all it does -- Single service web apps are so hot right now. Founders Carl Hu and John Xie want to eventually expand into documents, music video, and other files, but as of yet the Boston based service is delightfully simple, like a no frills imgur. Start your sharing!
Curated.by Aims To Be The "Smithsonian Of The Web", But They Need Your Help
Nov 23, 5:59PM
Last night was interesting. I was sitting down to do some last-minute research for a post I was working on (this one) when news began to break that North Korea had just attacked South Korea. As usual, news was flowing through Twitter faster than any one source, but I needed a way to filter the noise. Oddly enough, the product I was writing about is perfect for that: Curated.by. Using Curated.by's extension, I began flagging tweets that I found to be most useful for the Korea situation. Then I checked the Curated.by site to see that someone else was already way ahead of me (in this case, co-founder Bastian Lehmann), so I started following his curation of the events. It was fascinating to watch a tool go from interesting to useful in seconds.
Zynga Is "Extremely Pleased" With Playdom/Disney Litigation Settlement
Nov 23, 5:45PM
A little over a year ago Zynga sued rival game startup Playdom for, among other things, misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract, breach of the duty of loyalty, tortious interference with contracts, tortious interference with existing and prospective economic advantage and unfair competition. The defendants included four ex-Zynga, then Playdom employees as well. It's been a fairly dramatic year of legal maneuvers. The day Zynga filed the lawsuit a judge issued a temporary restraining order against Playdom that prohibited Playdom from using any Zynga data. In March a different judge issued a preliminary injunction against Playdom that prohibited them from releasing a specific game (whatever game that was has been kept confidential). And then in August the big slap down against a former Zynga employee who had been found to have acted inappropriately. 
SkyFire 3.0 For Android Finds A Friend In Facebook
Nov 23, 5:43PM
Given the underwhelming past few years in Flock's history and the seemingly lukewarm post-launch response to RockMelt, I'm not entirely convinced that anyone actually wants a bunch of social networking stuff tied into their browser. So far, the browsers that pull the bigger numbers are the ones that suck the least, not the ones with the most feature bloat. Keep It Simple, Stupid. Alas, you can't have a trendy feature without every little guy taking a swing at it. Next up with the bat? SkyFire.
People Search Engine MyLife On Track To Record $60 Million This Year
Nov 23, 3:30PM
People search site MyLife has flown under the radar for the most part since the site debuted from the merging of Reunion.com and Wink in early 2009. Today, the company is releasing a number of statistics about its growth over the past year. MyLife is a full-fledged search engine which not only finds people—thanks to aggregated search across social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace—but also helps visitors connect with them all on the same site. MyLife pulls information from public records and also allows users to subscribe to the search site to connect with others, track their searches and more.
Greed? No, Video Is Good As Oliver Stone Invests In Startup
Nov 23, 2:45PM
Vzaar, an online video platform aimed at SMEs that want to publish video, has been plugging away since 2007, but seemed to go in an odd direction - aiming at eBay sellers who wanted to sex-up their auctions. Needless to say it was the low end of the market and eBay auctioneers tend not want to spend money on a dedicated video platform outside of free ones like YouTube. But after bringing in new management, new CEO Stephen McCluskey, formerly with PA consulting group, has pivoted the company towards a more upstream market and gone out looking for new funding. Through various twists and turns on that funding road it's now found further funding - terms undisclosed - through a slightly left-fieldsource, namely Hollywood director Oliver Stone, famous for movies on The Doors, JFK and Wall Street. He's invested alongside existing investor Sophrosyne Ventures LLP. 
iOS 4.2.1 Jailbroken, Ready For Consumption
Nov 23, 2:32PM
If you're a regular jailbreaker, you'll be happy to know that iOS 4.2.1 is jailbroken already and that you can download the iOS version and roll your own install immediately. RedmondPie has a great how-to but it's pretty simple.
Data Storage Company Scale Computing Raises $17 Million Series C
Nov 23, 2:24PM
Scale Computing, a provider of midmarket clustered storage solutions, this morning announced it has secured $17 million in Series C funding in a round led by Scale Venture Partners with participation from Northgate Capital and existing investors (including Benchmark Capital). This latest round of funding brings the total raised for the company to $31 million. 
Navigate Black Friday Crowds With Milo's Real-Time Product Inventory And Deal Tracker
Nov 23, 2:00PM
While the deals are great, Black Friday crowds are the worst. You have to get up at the crack of dawn, suffer madness in parking lots, only to fight with other shoppers over a limited quantity of marked down items. Today, Milo is giving you a tool that could help you avoid Black Friday crowds by checking product-inventory before you head to the mall or shopping center. On a designated Black Friday landing page, Milo will aggregate and track Black Friday discounts at national merchants, so shoppers can know when sale items sell out and where they remain in-stock. And Milo promises that all of these inventory listings are updated in real-time.
Apple Acquired Nuance? Five Reasons Why It's Probably Not True
Nov 23, 1:41PM
Rumors are swirling this morning about voice technology giant Nuance Communications being acquired by Apple, following remarks made by the company's co-founder Steve Wozniak in a short video interview by TVDeck (see below, skip to the 0:40 mark). While the acquisition would make sense for Apple to make on a strategic level, there are a couple of reasons why it's most likely not true. Update: aaaannd confirmed: Wozniak says he was wrong about Nuance/Apple deal
JiWire Acquires Location-Based Mobile Shopping Platform NearbyNow
Nov 23, 1:30PM
Mobile advertising company JiWire is announcing today that it has acquired location-based mobile shopping platform NearbyNow. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. NearbyNow allows brands to show products within in app or an ad and confirm availability of the product in the actual store. Users can also reserve the product in the store for pickup. For example, a Seventeen Magazine mobile app user sees an ad for boots online and can click through to check local inventory. If they are in-stock, the shopper reserves the boots and they are ready at the counter when she arrives. The company says that ad click-though rates are more than 20 percent and conversion-to-purchase average rates of 5.8 percent.
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