“We leave the door open for advertising. We'd like to keep our options open, as we’ve said before,” Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, wrote on the company’s official blog.

The ads will be targeted at the information on the service, according to the company.

To avoid a Facebook-like controversy–Facebook earlier this year claimed ownership of its users' info and then quickly reversed that decision–Twitter also offered more clarity as to who owns the "tweets," or messages posted.

The startup wrote on its blog Thursday that it “is allowed to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute your tweets because that's what we do. However, they are your tweets and they belong to you.”

The San Francisco company, which lets users share their thoughts online in posts that are up to 140 characters, claimed more than 50 million visitors in July,  or 15 times more users than during the same period last year, according to market researcher comScore.

]]>Lalee SadighiFinanceInternetGeneral newsComputershttp://www.redherring.com/Home/26204#0Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:13:43 GMThttp://www.redherring.com/Home/26204http://www.redherring.com/Home/26201Riot Games, a Los Angeles-based games publisher, on Wednesday announced it snatched $8 million in a new round of funding, bringing the startup’s total financing to $15 million.

The second round of venture funding was led by Tencent, a Chinese Internet company that counts over 448 million active users in China, and returning backers Benchmark Capital and First Mark Capital.

The startup, founded in 2006, develops online next-generation titles for consoles, mobile devices, and PCs.  Riot is about to launch its first role playing game, League of Legends, into European and North American markets, followed by a launch in Asia.

Tencent had already agreed to publish the company’s games in China.

Unlike other games that require a monthly subscription to play online or a physical disc, Riot’s games will be offered free of charge online with gaming sessions lasting 20 to 30 minutes.

“Although still nascent in western markets, Riot’ssession-based, free-to-play, virtual item-based business model is by far the most popular business model for monetizing games in Asia,” the company said in a statement.

The company plans to make money through the sale of virtual goods that enhance the user’s characters or avatars.

“The HTC Tattoo ensures that you can create the most engaging and appropriate mobile experience through simple yet powerful personalization,” the company said in a statement.

HTC’s Tattoo is the second phone, after the Hero, to use Sense, the company’s proprietary user interface. Sense allows people to open as many as seven applications at the same time and run customized applications.

This is the fourth phone produced by the Taiwanese phone maker based on  Google's open-source Android operating system. The third model, Hero, a touch-screen smart phone, was launched last week by Sprint Nextel, a little less than a year after the release of the first ever Android-based smart phone,  the G1.

Google is the latest agitator on the fast-moving smartphone OS market that counts players such as Apple, with over 30 million devices sold, and Research In Motion, with 28.5 million BlackBerry subscribers worldwide.

The 3G Tattoo smart phone sports a 2.8-inch touchscreen and comes with a 3.2 mega pixel camera, 3.5mm stereo headset jack, and an expandable micro SD memory.

The device will start selling on the European market early in October and will launch in other markets the following month, the company said. 

Redmond, Washinghton, Microsoft's popular Xbox 360 Elite, which packs a  120 GB hard drive, will join the PS3's price of $299, starting Friday. The Xbox 360 Pro, its $299 20GB console, will come down $50 at $249 while supplies last as it becomes phased out. Microsoft's Arcade, its cheapest Xbox, which comes without a hard drive, will stay put at $199.

Microsoft’s Xbox price cuts comes as stores are getting ready for a bleak Christmas holiday season.

Retail sales this holiday season are likely to range from up 1 percent to down 1 percent from last year, according to a report released Thursday by market research firm Global Hunter Securities.

Microsoft hopes the price cuts will reinvigorate a game market that has faced tough times in the recession.

According to industry analyst NPD Group, video game sales fell for the fifth straight month in July, down 29 percent from a year earlier to $848.8 million.

Among the three major players in the gaming industry—Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft—only Nintendo hasn’t given into the price-cutting trend. The Wii has cost $250 since its introduction in 2006.

In terms of sales, Nintendo is leading the pack with 52.6 million Wiis sold, while Microsoft sold 31.4 million Xbox 360s, compared with 23.7 million PS3s for Sony.

Starting today, owners of smartphones—excluding the iPhone, which oddly doesn’t support the feature—will be able to see via a color-coded chart how bad traffic is in their area.

Following Google’s usual mapping color scheme, major “arterial”roads, such as highways or busy boulevards, will now be coded red when heavy with traffic, orange when moderate traffic, and green when no traffic.

Google has been providing traffic data for major highways through Google maps for years using road sensors and an armada of private cars, but it used a new approach for its mapping of major streets.

The search engine behemoth retrieves local traffic result from users of Google Maps mobile themselves who send information about how fast they are moving whenever they use the application and choose the “My Location”option.

“When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time,we can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions,” wrote Dave Barth, product manager for Google Maps, in a blog post.

Inherent to this tracking technology is the problem of privacy. Google  tried addressing the issue pre-emptively.

 “We only use anonymous speed and location information to calculate traffic conditions, and only do so when you have chosen to enable location services on your phone,” Mr.  Barth wrote.

The funding was led by DCM and return investors Alsop Louie Partners, Foundry Group, Leo Capital Holdings, and Vulcan Capital, the venture arm of Microsoft co-founder Allen.

Mr. Allen is a regular in the top 20 of the Forbes 400 list of uber wealthy Americans, coming in last year just ahead of Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page with a net worth just south of $16 billion. The Washington State University dropout has investments in more than 40 technology, media, and content companies, as well as owns the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers and the NFL's Seattle Seahawks sports franchises.

Bellevue, Washington, Smith & Tinker launched its first game, Nanovor, which draws players into an online world where nanoscopic monsters, known as Nanovor, live and battle on silicon chips deep inside computers.

“With the release of Nanovor, we have put a stake in the ground as the first company to merge the best of a game studio, entertainment shop, and toy company all under one roof,” said Jordan Weisman, Smith & Tinker CEO, in a statement. 

Founded in 2007, the startup employs 50 people and sells its handheld Nanoscope for $49,99 and games for $10, $15, or $25.

The burgeoning Smith & Tinker enters the gaming market as many heavyweight makers of games and consoles, such as Nintendo and Sony, struggle to sell their games in a recession.

DCM is an investor in Red Herring.

Smartphone sales are growing fast with a 47 percent increase since last year alone, but regular mobile phones still represented 72 percent of all phone sales this quarter, compared with 28 percent for the data-handling devices.

Sales of regular mobile phones are slowly declining though. NPD’s report said unit sales of new regular mobile phones fell 5 percent in the United States from 77 percent last year.

NPD said the advanced features of smartphones are attracting customers despite their pricier data plans—AT&T and T-Mobile charge an extra $30 per month for data service.

"With the price gap between smartphones and feature phones narrowing, to remain competitive feature phones need to develop a better Web experience, drive utility via widgets, and sidestep the applications arms race,” NPD analyst Ross Rubin said in a statement.

The report said the top-selling regular mobile phones for the quarter were the LG enV2 and the Samsung Rant, while Apple's iPhone 3G and RIM's BlackBerry Curve were the top-selling smartphones.

Desktop virtualization, a technology that allows the hosting of several virtual machines and operating systems on a single physical desktop, is investor’s new darling as corporations can use the technology to save money on multiple devices and securely control remote computers.

Research firm Gartner forecasts that licenses for hosted virtual desktops, which numbered 300,000 in 2008, have the potential to grow to 50 million by 2013.

San Jose, California, Wanova, also came out of stealth mode Wednesday, emerging in a field dominated by Red Hat and Sun Microsystems as well as  entrants such as Citrix and VMware.

“Traditional desktop virtualization technologies have not addressed the problem posed by remote workers: Hosted virtual desktops still lack an acceptable end-user experience,” the company said in a statement.

Wanova claims its software, dubbed Distributed Desktop Virtualization, can do better because it addresses the needs of mobile and remote workers.

The startup, founded in April 2008, is run by CEO Ilan Kessler, a tech veteran who previously co-founded Actona, which was acquired by Cisco in 2004 for $82 million.

]]>Lalee SadighiFinanceInternetMagazineGeneral newshttp://www.redherring.com/Home/26182#0Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:37:44 GMThttp://www.redherring.com/Home/26182http://www.redherring.com/Home/26181Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday reported third-quarter earning that fell 19 percent from a year ago as sales of PCs and printers plummeted during the recession.

The Palo Alto, California, computing giant reported net income of $1.6 billion, or 67 cents a share, on revenue of $27.5 billion, down from $2 billion, or 80 cents, on $28 billion in revenue in the same period last year.

Excluding one-time items, HP posted a profit of $0.91 a share, slightly beating the average analyst estimate from Thomson Reuters of $0.90.

“Business is stabilizing,”  HP Chief Executive Mark Hurd said in a statement. “HP’s performance this quarter is a result of our strong business portfolio, efficient cost structure and scale,” he said.

HP’s business portfolio grew bigger in the last year when it acquired Electronic Data Systems for $13.9 billion, in an attempt to take on IBM.

In a note to clients, Pacific Crest analyst Brent Bracelin estimated that EDS accounts for 18 percent of HP’s total sales, or roughly $20 billion in revenue per year.

For its fourth quarter, HP expects to earn $0.97 a share, or $1.12 a share excluding one-time items. It also anticipates revenue to rise 8 percent from the third quarter.

Mr. Hurd offered a positive outlook. “We are confident that HP will be an early beneficiary of an economic turnaround and will continue to outperform when conditions improve,” he said in the statement.

HP shares were up $0.85, or 1.97 percent, to $43.96 in afternoon trading.

]]>Lalee SadighiFinanceInternetMediaSecurityMagazineGeneral newshttp://www.redherring.com/Home/26181#0Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:09:15 GMThttp://www.redherring.com/Home/26181http://www.redherring.com/Home/26177In an effort to compete with the Apple App store, Palm on Tuesday announced it is opening its burgeoning online store to developers who wish to sell their applications for its Pre phone.

Starting mid-September, Pre developers will be able to sell their Pre apps for a 70 percent share of each sale. The remaining 30 percent will go to palm.

The Pre, which started selling in the U.S in June, only counts 35 free applications in its store, while the iPhone store opened a year ago and counts over 65,000 apps, both free and priced.

Despite the low number of apps available, the company claims there is much enthusiasm for the Pre app store among its users, with more than 2 million apps downloaded since the phone entered the market.

Pre developers can start submitting applications for consideration starting today, the company said in a statement.

The designed apps would work on any present and future devices that run Palm’s webOS operating system.

The Sunnyvale, California, company's shares climbed $0.59, or 4.46 percent, to $13.82 in afternoon trading.

]]>Lalee SadighiFinanceInternetGeneral newsComputershttp://www.redherring.com/Home/26177#0Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:36:56 GMThttp://www.redherring.com/Home/26177http://www.redherring.com/Home/26176Ticket search engine FanSnap on Monday said it raised $5 million in a second round of funding led by Highland Capital Partners, bringing its total funding to $15 million.

The Palo Alto, California, startup was launched in March by former StubHub chief marketing officer Mike Janes. The Web site aggregates search of over 30,000 sports, concerts, and theater tickets for its service.

“We believe FanSnap will transform the ticket-finding experience so millions of fans can easily find live event tickets in the dynamic, fragmented, and sometimes confusing ticket market,” Richard de Silva, general partner at Highland Capital Partners, said in a statement.

The new startup faces tough competition from search engine behemoth Google, which provides countless links to live event tickets online.

San Francisco-based Mint.com's funding was led by returning investor DAG Ventures, Benchmark Capital, Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital, Sherpalo, and the Founders Fund, bringing the total raised by the company to $31 million.

“To be approached with funding in this climate is acknowledgement of our progress and potential in helping Americans to save and do more with their money,” Aaron Patzer, CEO and founder of Mint.com, said in a statement.

Mint.com, which claims 1.4 million registered users, up from 1 million in March, is a free online personal finance site that helps people track bank, credit card, investment, loan transactions, and balances through its interface.

Mint makes money through lead generation, recommending financial products to its users. The company claims it is tracking $175 billion in transactions and has identified $300 million in potential savings for its users.

Under the terms of the agreement, the two companies will begin working together immediately to design, develop, and market productivity applications, the companies said in a statement.

The new alliance brings together the two former foes--Microsoft’s mobile operating system competes with Symbian, the leading mobile OS, used on Nokia’s smart phones--in an attempt to fend off their mutual rivals, Apple and Research In Motion.

The Microsoft-Nokia deal will also give the Redmond, Washington, company some ammunition against Google, as the search engine behemoth has already launched free Web-based Office-like applications that directly compete with Microsoft Office.

The Microsoft mobile applications will first be available on Nokia's E-series phones, a business-oriented smart phone, but will then reach to other Nokia handsets, the companies said.

]]>Lalee SadighiFinanceCommunicationsGeneral newsComputershttp://www.redherring.com/Home/26170#0Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:21:12 GMThttp://www.redherring.com/Home/26170http://www.redherring.com/Home/26164

French advertising company Publicis on Monday said it plans to buy Microsoft-owned  Razorfish for $530 million.

Publicis has agreed to pay for online ad agency Razorfish with a combination of cash and stock. Microsoft will hold about 3 percent of Publicis stock after the deal closes.

This acquisition marks “another step forward in realizing our strategic vision of building a world leader in digital communications, a critically important space for our clients,” Publicis CEO Maurice Lévy said in a statement.

Under the new alliance, the French advertising giant--Publicis ranks fourth worldwide, behind WPP, the Omnicom Group, and the Interpublic Group of Companies--will buy display and search advertising from the Redmond, Washington, software giant for a period of five years.

Razorfish was part of Microsoft’s $6 billion package for Seattle digital marketing company aQuantive, purchased in 2007.