MySpace upping ante in online social games (tech)
SAN FRANCISCO () – MySpace on Wednesday began courting videogame developers as it moved to capitalize on the booming popularity of playing games online at social networks . “We initially embraced games a few years back with a gaming platform but at the end of the day it was fairly isolated in certain parts of MySpace,” MySpace co-president Mike Jones told at a Game Developers Conference here. “MySpace is going to put as much weight behind games as we put behind music.” After being eclipsed by online social networking star Facebook , MySpace made itself into an Internet community for people who make or love music. MySpace sees its prime demographic as Internet users between the ages of 14 and 36. The social network claims more than 100 million users, about 30 percent of whom rack up about a total of a billion minutes of online game play each month. Jones believes that by better weaving online games into the fabric of the online community those figures can be doubled to 60 percent of MySpace users logging more than two billion minutes of play monthly. MySpace is striving to reclaim lost glory and expand its popularity in a social networking world dominated by Facebook, which boasts more than 400 million users. “MySpace is not falling off a cliff but, at the same time, they see gaming as a ladder to find their way into more people’s lives and get back on the radar,” said analyst Scott Steinberg, author of Get Rich Playing Games. “Facebook has left them crowded out. At the edge of the spotlight is still out of the light.” MySpace unveiled a new games gallery at myspace.com/games and began automatically recommending games to new members along with song and friend suggestions based on profiles. Jones promised game developers that the website will make it easier for their creations to spread “virally” by “very gently and slowly” modifying how friends share news of fun titles. “I really want to make sure we solve the problems of 13 to 34 year-olds and a big part of that strategy is games,” Jones told developers at GDC. “It will be easier for you to bring games over to MySpace.” The News Corp -owned social networking service also announced a Neon application that lets MySpace games be played on Apple’s popular iPhone devices. MySpace used feedback from developers to revamp its online gaming platform. “We are impressed with MySpace?s renewed commitment to deliver a great gaming experience to their users and our players,” said Marianne Borenstein, a vice president at Playdom, a major maker of games for MySpace and Facebook. The MySpace announcement came shortly after co-founders of the social networking service unveiled a partnership to acquire online gaming platform MindJolt. Chris DeWolfe , Colin Digiaro, and Aber Whitcomb said they will spread MindJolt to more websites and smartphones as well as work with game developers to create tools for online play. MindJolt reported that more than 20 million people play each month on its platform, which features 1,300 “of the best casual games on the Web from developers worldwide.” “MindJolt has quickly become an “on-ramp” to the Internet for the world’s independent game developers ,” said MindJolt chief executive DeWolfe. “Our goal is to make it even easier for developers to get their games noticed and make more money from their work.”
Summary Box: OnLive game streaming to come in June (tech)
THE SERVICE: OnLive will let you “stream” popular high-end games over the Internet, using a mechanism similar to watching TV shows or listening to music online. THE NEED: Players don’t have to own consoles such as the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3 or the latest, most powerful personal computers . The game runs on a computer elsewhere. AVAILABILITY: Launches June 17 for $14.95 a month. Buying or renting games will cost extra, but the company did not disclose pricing. Available only in continental U.S.
Marketplace for Google techps Targets Microsoft Office (NewsFactor)
With its mind in the clouds and an eye on rival Microsoft, Google on Tuesday launched an online application store for third-party programs that can be integrated with its online Google Apps office suite , with a single log-in and Google’s universal navigation. The programs can sync with Gmail and Google’s calendar, and use document-sharing features. With 25 million application users and services for two million businesses, Google clearly hopes to reduce Microsoft’s dominance in business-productivity software. Some 50 companies are offering applications in the initial Google Apps Marketplace inventory. Early Arrivals A random sampling on the marketplace Wednesday included EZAsset, a business asset-management tool; Manymoon for social productivity, project management, and task management ; Fresh Books, a billing and bookkeeping utility; and eFax, an Internet fax service . Google reportedly charges developers $100 for a listing, then takes 20 percent of sales. The marketplace is intended for companies with their own domain, and Google Apps membership is required. A premier membership is $50, with an unlimited number of users per account. To lure customers away from the competition, the marketplace offers a tutorial on importing data from Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes. Suite Deal The Mountain View, Calif.-based Google previously had a solutions marketplace offering add-ons for programs. But Google Apps Marketplace will allow the company to generate revenue while also driving more interest in its online suite. Google has increasingly battled for turf with Microsoft , recently introducing the Chrome operating system to challenge the dominant Windows. The software giant has taken the fight to Google’s front door with its Bing search engine , which it hopes will soon be the default search window on Apple’s iPhone. Microsoft has announced cloud partnerships with Hewlett-Packard and Chunghwa Telecom and has other cloud projects in the works. The HP deal is a three-year, $250 million project to integrate Microsoft programs and HP hardware. Cloud-computing services could be a $14 billion industry by 2013, according to research firm Gartner. But there is growing concern about the risks companies face. Are Clouds Safe? Chet Wisniewski, an analyst at the U.K.-based security firm Sophos, said the Google Apps Marketplace could be a good option for people who already trust a cloud with their information. “Developers could offer enhanced encryption or security features requiring two-factor authentication to access sensitive documents,” Wisniewski said. “The bigger issue is, should you trust your data to be stored in the cloud in the first place? We saw how Twitter’s corporate Google Docs were hacked into last year through the use of a careless password.” “As an organization, someone could be trying to access your data for years and you have no visibility into the inbound connections, firewalls, password guesses, etc., if it is off-premises,” he said. In another entry in the growing online applications market, Intel has opened its AppUp Center, to be included on several netbook models, to build popularity for its Atom processor chip. The company’s goal is to eventually have the chip make its way to smartphones and other hardware, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Amazon ruffles Canadian feathers with depot plan (tech)
TORONTO () – Internet retailer Amazon.com has smashed up against Canadian pride in its efforts to open a distribution center in Canada , as booksellers grumble that it can’t understand the role of Canadian culture. “Individual Canadian booksellers have traditionally played a key role in ensuring the promotion of Canadian authors and Canadian culture,” Stephen Page, president of the Canadian Booksellers’ Association, said in an angry statement that calls on the government to block the plan. “These are values that no American dot.com retailer could ever purport to understand or promote.” Seattle-based Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, already sells books, electronics, music and consumer goods through the Canadian website http://www.amazon.ca. It was not available to comment on Wednesday, but it’s not clear how much would change under the distribution center plan. The retailer has said the center would allow it to pass along huge savings to its Canadian customers. The booksellers want the government to reject the application because they say it contravenes an act that requires foreign investments in the book publishing and distribution sector to be “compatible with national cultural policies and be of net benefit to Canada and the Canadian-controlled sector.” The government has promised to make a decision soon. But Conservative lawmaker Maxime Bernier , a keen proponent of deregulation and free trade , said on Wednesday that Canadians would end up voting with their cash. “I think it’s good. There are people who want to have more services. The Canadians, in the end, they’re going to vote with their dollars, and if they want to buy something they will. People will decide in the end.” Canada’s content rules call for radio and television broadcasters to air a certain percentage of content written or produced by Canadians, while booksellers must ensure that a percentage of their inventory is Canadian. The Globe and Mail newspaper said the government, which has a strong free trade agenda , was leaning toward approving the shipping center because it would offer a “net benefit” for Canadians and the amount of Canadian content would not change. Amazon, which forecasts sales of up to $7 billion in the first quarter, already competes with Canadian retailers, including Indigo Books and Music, Canada’s biggest bookseller. (Additional reporting by Louise Egan in Ottawa ) ($1=$1.03 Canadian) (Reporting by Scott Anderson; editing by Janet Guttsman)
Palm Inc. teeters in crowded smart phone market (tech)
SAN FRANCISCO – Last year, Palm thought it had all the pieces for a turnaround in the market it pioneered: A new CEO known for making the iPod a household name, a sleek new smart phone called the Pre and fresh, intuitive operating software. Instead, the company is in danger of going the way of its 1990s Palm Pilot , making it the latest innovator to learn that great technology and an accomplished leader don’t guarantee success. Several analysts say Palm Inc . might not remain an independent phone maker for more than a year or two. It just could be too late to stop the momentum enjoyed by Apple Inc.’s iPhone and Research In Motion Ltd. ’s BlackBerrys — not to mention a growing crop of phones running Google Inc. ’s Android software . Palm spokesman Derick Mains said the company had no comment. Consumers have gravitated toward smart phones for their versatile features, such as Internet access and applications that can be downloaded. One out of six U.S. adults had a smart phone last year, according to Forrester Research . But Palm — a leader in the early days of handheld computing — was slow to adapt. It began fighting back in earnest in January 2009 at the International Consumer Electronics Show. It unveiled the stylish touch-screen Pre and webOS, software that allows Palm phones to do something the iPhone can’t — run multiple apps simultaneously. Ed Colligan , who was then Palm’s CEO, said at the time that the new products somewhat marked a relaunching of Palm itself. But it hasn’t gone as smoothly as Palm hoped. Palm released the Pre last June, for use on Sprint Nextel Corp.’s wireless network , and followed it in November with a cheaper model, the Pixi. Verizon Wireless started selling upgraded models of these phones in January, and AT&T Inc . plans to offer webOS phones later this year. Despite widespread availability and positive reviews, consumers haven’t really embraced the products. Palm sold 810,000 phones in the quarter that ended Aug. 28. In the next quarter, sales fell to 573,000. And Palm’s latest report, due March 18, is not expected to be bright. Palm recently cut its forecast for that period, citing sluggish sales. Discouraged investors have sliced the company’s stock price by more than half since the Pre hit stores. In that same time, shares of Apple have risen nearly 50 percent to all-time highs, while RIM shares have fallen 11 percent. One big problem for Palm is standing out in a crowded market dominated by Apple and RIM. Many analysts believe Palm’s latest products are good, but the company simply hasn’t been able to make potential customers realize this. Not for a lack of trying: Palm spent $74.1 million on sales and marketing in its last reported quarter, up 64 percent from the previous year. Verizon and Sprint have advertised the Pre and Pixi, too, but now probably aren’t doing it as aggressively as they would if they had the phones exclusively. On Palm’s end, at least, the marketing push is likely to last for several more quarters as it tries to connect with consumers, said Deutsche Bank analyst Jonathan Goldberg. For a larger phone maker such as Motorola Inc ., in the midst of its own comeback attempt, an advertising blitz might not be such a big deal. But Palm is much tinier than its key competitors. It takes Palm an entire quarter to sell as many phones as Apple sells in a less than a week. RIM spent six times as much on a category it calls selling, marketing and administrative expenses in its last quarter as Palm spent on sales and marketing. One thing Palm has: a CEO who helped make Apple what it is. Right before the Pre launch, Colligan was replaced by Jon Rubinstein , 53, who spent a decade at Apple during its own comeback run. He started in 1997 and was a pivotal figure behind the brightly colored iMac computers and the iPod. He came to Palm in 2007 as executive chairman under a deal in which Palm sold nearly a third of the company to private equity firm Elevation Partners . Still, even the most astute leadership isn’t enough in such a competitive market, Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek said. “It takes distribution, it takes cash, it takes luck. It takes a lot of things, and if all those things don’t click your probability of success is low,” he said. It also takes time. And Palm wasted it during many years of corporate restructuring, according to Donna Dubinsky , a former Palm CEO and board member. Dubinsky and Jeff Hawkins founded Palm in 1992, and in 1995 it was bought by U.S. Robotics, a modem maker that was acquired by 3Com Corp . in 1997. Palm spun off as its own company in 2000, two years after Dubinsky and Hawkins left to form a rival startup, Handspring , that made influential early smart phones. In 2003, Palm acquired Handspring and spun off PalmSource , which made the PalmOS handheld computing software , as an independently traded company. PalmSource was bought by Japan’s Access Co. in 2005. Dubinsky said all the shuffling took “critical resources and attention from product development.” And even though it happened years ago, she called the decision to spin off PalmOS a “huge strategic error.” “As RIM, Apple and Palm all have demonstrated, these devices need to be highly integrated hardware and software developments in order to optimize the user experience,” Dubinsky wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. “When Palm no longer could advance the OS, and had to create a new one, it lost several years.” So what will happen to Palm now? Misek thinks the company could keep spending its cash — it had $590 million at the end of its most recently reported quarter — and run out of gas in a year or two. Or, it could try to conserve funds and angle to be bought out. But Misek thinks a buyer could be dissuaded by the year or two it might take to get webOS working on new phones. Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu thinks Palm could be purchased in the next year by a company such as Motorola or Dell Inc . That would give those companies their own smart-phone software rather than making them rely on software found on many kinds of devices. In fact, Wu said, Palm’s best asset is its intellectual property. Palm has patents on its own style of the touch-screen technology that Apple popularized and is now suing phone maker HTC Corp. over. Ultimately, Wu thinks the smart phone market will look like the PC market, which was crowded with competition early on but eventually produced a short list of winners and a smattering of losers. “Palm’s almost on that list of losers,” he said.
Rob Glaser Thinks Mobile Is the Next Big Thing (tech)
In his first speech since stepping down in January as CEO of the company he founded, RealNetworks Chairman Rob Glaser on Wednesday encouraged startups to look for business opportunities in wireless. Several independent trends are reinforcing each other and suggesting that “the next five or 10 years will represent as dramatic a sea change in the digital environment as we’ve seen the past 15 or more years,” he said, during a speech at a Mobile Monday event in Seattle. That sea change revolves around wireless, he said. Glaser pointed to recent Gartner research predicting that by 2013, the installed base of smartphones will exceed the installed base of PCs. “That’s fundamentally a revolution,” he said. He also said that it’s important to note that smartphones are getting smarter. While Google started using the term “super phone” during its launch of the Nexus One phone, Glaser thinks that the term is a valid one to describe the new generation of phones. Super-phone users: can choose from tens or hundreds of thousands of apps; tend to have 40 or more apps on their phones; use touch screens to interact with the phones; view content on superior screens; can access the entire Internet rather than a subset of it; and can access location information from the phones. At the same time, there has been a “massive explosion of media and consumption,” he said. “In wireless, it’s echoing the massive growth on the wired broadband side. The digitization of our lives is getting to the point where we just assume that something we do on one device naturally propagates everywhere else.” Taking advantage of new opportunities resulting from these trends isn’t necessarily easy, he said. “It’s not shooting fish in a barrel,” he said. Some of the challenges involve the fact that not all devices have the same capabilities and not all networks offer the same levels of service. Also, building commercial business models and working with the variety of necessary partners including mobile operators, software developers, phone makers and other service providers is complex, he said. Success for startups may also depend on whether the predominant structure of the mobile market is horizontal or vertical. At this stage, it’s uncertain which model will win, he said. Google, with its Android platform, has built a somewhat horizontal business model where it makes the software but different companies make the hardware and develop services. Apple, which is now one of the most successful mobile-phone makers, has a completely vertical structure. “In my view, if that’s the way the industry plays out and there are vertical stovepipes, we will have a much slower pace of innovation and there will be a tremendous loss in terms of value creation versus a more horizontal approach,” he said. “I don’t think it’s inevitable which way it will go.” Glaser gave startups one parting piece of advice: “If you have the opportunity to be lucky or good, pick lucky every time,” he said. When he started Real in 1994, he was lucky that his timing was just right because the bigger, established companies were focused on interactive TV, he said. “When we came up with an Internet streaming solution we didn’t have big competition for the first couple of years,” he said. He advised startups to try to focus on an idea, scaling up before established companies notice.
Global agency reconsiders address for porn sites (tech)
NAIROBI, Kenya – A global Internet oversight agency is reopening discussions about whether to create a “.xxx” domain name . It would be an online red-light district where porn sites can set up shop away from the wandering eyes of children and teenagers. Parents would be able to use the system to help block access to porn sites. Because its use would be voluntary, though, the “.xxx” suffix wouldn’t keep such content entirely away from minors. The proposal has already been rejected three times since 2000. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees the allocation of Internet addresses, may revive the bid yet again. ICANN is meeting this week in Nairobi, Kenya , and is looking at a review by an outside panel questioning ICANN’s grounds for the latest rejection.
OnLive game streaming service to start in June (tech)
NEW YORK – In an industry first, a new gaming service will start allowing people to “stream” popular games over the Internet in June, similar to checking Web-based e-mail or listening to music online. OnLive Inc., launched a year ago with much fanfare, embraces ” cloud computing ,” in which software runs on a computer elsewhere, not on the player’s own PC or game console. That means players can buy or rent high-end games such as ” Mass Effect 2″ with even older, less powerful computers and Macs. Until now, players must buy discs or download the game. OnLive Inc. said Wednesday it will start offering the service on June 17 for $14.95 a month. The games, however, cost extra. An adapter that plugs into a TV set comes later.
Google techps Marketplace Brings Cloud Services Together (tech)
The new Google Apps Marketplace extends the search giant’s underpowered applications suite, offering a collection of other vendors’ Software-as-a-Service applications that work with Google’s cloud. The new online store also gives Google a new, if small for now, revenue stream that isn’t driven by search-related advertising. Google Apps , which recently crossed 25 million registered users and 2 million registered businesses, provides e-mail, calendaring, chat, word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and other applications over the Internet. It is available in multiple free and paid versions, all of which can work with applications acquired from Google’s new store, the company said. The Apps Marketplace opened Tuesday night with 50 companies participating, most offering Software-as-a-Service that integrates with Google’s cloud-based applications. Most participants are names most customers won’t immediately recognize, though Intuit has created a payroll system and Box.net offers a content management system , both sold through the online store. There are also CRM, fax, ERP, and other apps available, with the most-installed apps as of early Wednesday being Manymoon , a free “social productivity, project management, and task management” application; Aviary Design Suite, a free tools and templates package that works inside Google Docs ; TripIt , a travel organizer; and OffiSync , a synchronization tool that “extends the core functionality of MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint with unique Google cloud services.” In many cases, the integration is quite minimal, but still useful to frequent Google Apps users. For example, Intuit merely makes payroll stubs available to Google Apps users through their calendars. Others expand or at least make good use of the capabilities of the anemic word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation modules that comprise Google Docs, part of the Google Apps suite. Some applications, such as those from Atlassian Software , creator of a hosted software development suite, appear more likely to bring their own existing and future customers to Google Apps than vice versa. In this case, Google Apps are used to add chat, word processing, and calendar features inside the Atlassian suite. Commercially, the big winners are likely to be applications that extend Gmail , calendaring, and contacts, the most widely-used Google Apps, which together can compete nicely with Microsoft Outlook and Exchange. EchoSign , an electronic signature service, integrates with Google apps to provide document review, approval, and signature. eFax , meanwhile, offers a version of its online faxing service, but appears to offer only minimal integration with Google Docs. While Google does not release specific usage figures, beyond admitting that “two million” businesses actually translates into only 200,000-300,000 daily users, ad-free Gmail is the clear draw for companies considering the paid Google Apps Premier Edition . If your company is using or considering Google Apps, the new online store is an interesting development. But, because Google’s suite is fairly uneven, with some elements much more fully-featured than others, some of the add-ons will be much more interesting and useful than others. In general, the items in the Apps Marketplace appear to bring more functionality to Google Apps than Google brings to them. Google previously had an online solutions marketplace for Google Apps, but it did not support online purchasing. The new Google Apps Marketplace charges developers $100 to add an application and then collects a service fee of 20 percent of online purchases. How does this change things? Google Apps Marketplace will not be a huge overnight success and does not reduce the need for Google to get serious about improving the features and functionality of Google Docs. Its word processor is more of a glorified HTML editor than it is Microsoft Word and nobody is likely to confuse Google’s spreadsheet features with those of Microsoft Excel . While Google doesn’t need to match Microsoft feature-for-feature, its current apps are light by any reasonable measure. My guess is that some of the add-ons will develop a following and may expand Google Apps usage into new niche market segments, where Google Apps provide useful added functionality not already included in the add-ons. Less clear is how many customers will choose Google Apps initially because of the availability of specific add-ons. I think this will happen in some cases, but how often remains to be seen. On a scale of 25 million users, this may be tiny, but compared to perhaps 300,000 paid Google Apps users, it could provide, over time, a significant boost. Despite what I admit is my often negative tone, I really do like Google Apps and recommend it in specific circumstances. Gmail , for example, is first-class, and its calendar and contacts components are quite credible. Google Docs also can be an excellent collaboration tool , if not the best word processor or spreadsheet you’ve ever used. The ability to easily access e-mail, calendar, contacts, documents, and files from any browser or smartphone makes my life easier. I am regularly working on collaborative documents that are then imported into Word for final formatting and printing. I am already testing some of the add-ons and plan to report back on how much more useful they help Google Apps become. I’d love to hear your comments, especially if you are a paid Google Apps customer. Da vid Coursey has been writing about technology products and companies for more than 25 years. He tweets as @techinciter and may be contacted via his Web site.
Google prepared to quit China over censor feud: executive (tech)
WASHINGTON () – A top Google executive reaffirmed Wednesday that the Internet giant is prepared to leave China if Beijing says it must censor Web searches or quit the country. “Google is firm in its decision that it will stop censoring our search results for China,” Google vice president and deputy general counsel Nicole Wong told a key US House of Representatives Committee . The company is mindful that it has “hundreds of employees on the ground” and understands “the seriousness or the sensitivity” of its decision but “we will stop censoring” search results in China, she said. If Beijing’s response is to demand the firm shutter its google.cn site and close up shop in China, “we are prepared to do that,” Wong told the House Foreign Affairs Committee . “We are not going to change our decision on not censoring results anymore,” she told lawmakers looking into the relationship between Internet technology and aiding democratic activists around the world.
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