VentureBeat

Remember the game Risk? You know, the one with the world map where you battle other players to gain the most terrain and literally take over the world? Yeah, fun game. Apple may think so too, and thanks to a new graphic (below) made by a commenter in The Mac Observer Forums (and found by Apple 2.0), you can really see it.

All of the areas in red are where Apple has or will soon penetrate the market with its game-changing mobile device. This red area is expanding quickly as Canada, Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey have all been added recently. Likewise Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico and Uruguay all may be on board thanks to Apple inking a deal with America Movil. And don’t forget about the rumored Spain and Poland expansion.

Incidentally, the two countries perhaps most associated (at least in the past) with being “red”, China and Russia, are not yet red on this map. Expect both to succumb once the 3G iPhone hits.

[Photo: CdnPhoto - used with permission]

As more and more news floods the Internet, more and more companies are releasing products to help you sift through that flood. One of the latest is socialmedian, a site that uses social networking tools to help users find the articles that are most interesting and relevant to them. The idea, says chief executive Jason Goldberg, is that people with common interests are better at filtering the news for each other than traditional media.

With so much competition, it’s hard to see how another news site can stand out. To use my own habits as an example, I live and die by aggregators like Techmeme and Google News, and there are plenty of sites that offer a more social experience too, most prominently Digg (which just announced a partnership with Facebook). Even Google has started adding sharing and commenting features to its RSS reader. And there are specialized news networks, like the political site Skewz.

But the plethora of sites also points to the size of the problem, and the room for different approaches. Goldberg (who previously co-founded Jobster) argues that his team offers the best tools for personalizing the news experience.

The site is still evolving, but its core features are its customizable news networks and the ability to “clip” stories. There are currently more than 600 networks on topics like tech news, venture capital and the presidential campaign. Even better, users can create their own networks, identifying general topics and specific news sources that socialmedian should scour for articles.

Within the stories in each network, users can “clip” the ones that are most relevant to them. That saves the story on a user’s own home page — more importantly, other users can see in their news feeds what you have clipped. Now, “clipping” may sound a bit like “digging” (namely, saying you like a story on Digg), but the focus is less on the all-out popularity contests that you find on Digg, and more on seeing what people with similar interests are reading.

It also helps that socialmedian continues to add bells and whistles. For example, it has launched a contest for users to create and vote on the best design for the site, and it just enabled RSS for user’s news feeds.

Socialmedian is still in private testing mode, so it’s too early to say much about its traction. Still, Goldberg says that 30 percent of the early users are returning to the site daily and view nine pages on average during each visit.

Goldberg also sent out an email today saying socialmedian is “inching toward” public testing. Until then, we’ve got 200 invites for our readers, so you can check it out for yourself. Just go to the socialmedian site, and create a new account using “venturebeat” as the password.

New York-based socialmedian has raised a seed round from angel investors and from the Washington Post. Goldberg says he may raise more angel money later this year.

Research In Motion and Thomson Reuters have created an $150 million venture investment fund, called the BlackBerry Partners Fund, to support developers building applications that run on the Blackberry.

The fund comes on the heels of the iFund, a similar $100 million fund announced by Kleiner Perkins, a well-known Silicon Valley venture capital firm, to support the RIM Blackberry competitor, the iPhone.

VentureBeat learned of the news in advance of the fund’s official announcement and launch. If you go the fund’s web site, you’ll see a clue, i.e,. suggesting the announcement will be made in Las Vegas at a convention on Monday.

The fund will be used to invest in both applications and services for the BlackBerry platform, but it won’t be exclusively to support the Blackberry. Companies that support other mobile platforms in addition to the Blackberry can also apply for monies for the fund.

The venture firm backing the fund is Canada’s JLA Ventures, a Montreal and Toronto firm active in mobile. That firm will co-manage the investing process, together with the investment group of Canada’s largest bank, RBC Venture Partners. RIM and Thomson supplied the money, and will advise in the fund’s management. Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO, Research In Motion, is on the fund’s advisory board.

The fund will choose investments regardless of a company’s stage of development, balance sheet or geographic location. It will also support application development across industry segments, with a bias toward supporting the most innovative mobile offerings for customers.

Co-managing partners of the fund are John Albright, managing Partner of JLA Ventures, and Kevin Talbot, RBC Vice President and Managing Director of RBC Venture Partners. “Whether it’s access to corporate data or the latest craze in mobile entertainment, we want to fund companies that are forerunners in driving adoption and further enriching the mobile experience,” Albright said in a statement sent to VentureBeat.

Areas to be considered include mobile commerce (payments, advertising, retailing and banking), vertical and horizontal enterprise applications, communications, social networking, location-based applications and services (navigation and mapping), media and entertainment, and lifestyle and personal productivity applications.

Below you’ll find this week’s PartnerUp Opportunities of the week.

PartnerUp is an online community for entrepreneurs and startups that helps them find people for their business, such as co-founders, business partners, advisors, board members, and skilled technical people. In addition, PartnerUp helps entrepreneurs ask for and offer up advice, find commercial real estate, and find resources for their business.

You can find thousands of additional opportunities by signing up for PartnerUp or browsing PartnerUp’s Business Opportunities Directory.

Board of Directors/Advisory Roles

Board of Director, K and P Distributing Inc
Advisor/Partner, TIG
Board Member, Entertainment Furniture Manufacturer
Board of Directors, Essential Development
Advisor, SASH & Associates Inc.

Business Development/Sales/Marketing

Director of Business Development, Desert Rain Software
Marketing, Sales, and Operations Management, Chill Factor Clothing
Business Development, Innovative Design Group
Business - Marketing Partner, GreenLit Production
Marketing Advisor, Leafling Media LLC

Co-Founder/Business Partner

Co-Founder/Partner, CurrentRF
Co-Founder, Online Travel-Leisure 2.0 website
Co-Founder, FairSoftware
Managing Partners, Bynum Advisors Group
Partner/Advisor, Lombard Global

IT/Internet/Software

Internet Programmer, Trigeia.com
Head of Information Technology, WEBEYEZ
Founding Team LAMP Development, Huddler.com
Lead developer/ Co-founder, Stealth Startup
Web Designer, Star Stream Holdings LTD.

Browse thousands of additional opportunities on PartnerUp

PartnerUp is offered as a free service thanks to the generous support of:

The back-story on Jangl’s slow death — Yesterday, we reported on Jangl’s asset sale process. A tipster tells us that Seattle-based WhitePages had offered to buy Internet phone company Jangl for $20 million, but then kept the company in diligence for more than a month and walked away at the last minute — giving Jangl no choice to but throw in the towel when it ran out of time and options. Whitepages flew down from Seattle for regular meetings, and Jangl’s execs flew up to Seattle, but then WhitePages caught wind that Jangl was running out of money and that investors had given Jangl’s team a deadline to sell by May 15. WhitePages whittled down its offer first to half, then cut off a severance agreement to those who would be laid off, and then lowered the offer even more: “They had us over the barrel,” said one Jangl employee.

Virgin Mobile USA considering merger with Helio — While many MVNOs have simply collapsed or been closed by their parent companies, Virgin Mobile USA and smaller rival Helio have scraped by, if not flourished. The two may solve some mutual problems by undergoing a merger, which would create a bulkier combined company and add to their respective plan and phone options. However, mocoNews suggests that they might still look for a private equity buyout afterward.

VC investment continues to move overseas — Limited partners say they’re still wrestling with the implications of more and more venture capital activity moving abroad. The comments came during the LP panel at the recent meeting of the National Venture Capital Association. VentureBeat didn’t make it to that panel, but VentureWire was there to note some of the most interesting facts and figures. There’s definitely a lot of activity — almost 20 percent of domestic funds were deployed outside the United States in 2007, compared with 7 percent in 1998, according to Bob French of Adams Street Partners. And David York of Paul Capital predicted that within the next decade, as much as 50 percent of global venture capital activity will take place outside the United States.

Yahoo launches regional search variant – Yahoo’s Indian team has put together a search product called “Glue Pages” that integrates traditional search with results pulled from Yahoo’s portal business, including content like recipes, medical information, images and restaurant listings. The feature is undergoing testing on Yahoo India, with no plans as yet to offer it in the United States. More at CNET News.

Warner Music may invest again in imeem — In an encouraging turnaround for the music industry last year, Warner Music dropped a lawsuit against music sharing social network imeem, then followed up with an investment in the company. It may tag along with Sequoia Capital and make another investment this year, according to the Silicon Alley Insider.

RealNetworks spins off game studio — RealNetworks, maker of the most irritating media player ever created, has spun off its games division, which includes recent acquisition Trymedia. The gaming business is one of RealNetworks’ most profitable; it will retain an 80 percent ownership stake, but will allow the new company to forge its own path.

Real Goods Solar prices IPO real low — Solar installer Real Goods Solar, which recently announced plans for an initial public offering, has priced its 5.5 million shares at the bottom of its $10-12 range. Most cleantech companies have held off from IPOs this year due to the current market troubles.

Google achieves coveted “brain drain” status — The BBC has a report on the steady stream of executives away from Google, many of whose departures we’ve also noted, including Chris Sacca, Gideon Yu and Elliot Schrage. Many are headed to Facebook, which is described in the article as “the Google of yesterday, the Microsoft of long ago,” while Google is called a “behemoth” that is “no longer the firm it once was.” Google’s current position, of course, is precisely where Facebook aspires to be.

Forbes.com launches business social network — Following in the footsteps of BusinessWeek, Forbes.com has launched its own social network, the AnswerNetwork. As might be expected from the name, users are expected to ask questions and share answers with each other, in return gaining competence rankings based on their expertise. LinkedIn, which is BusinessWeek’s partner, has a similar feature, although it seems to be only moderately popular with users.

updated
We’re at the point that when either of the two social networking giants, MySpace and Facebook, does something, the other has to respond. Yesterday, MySpace unveiled its “Data Availability” initiative, allowing other sites around the Internet to utilize its users’ data to update profiles, photos, videos and other attributes. Today, according to a TechCrunch scoop, Facebook is following that up with “Facebook Connect”. Which does, wait for it — the exact same thing.

As Mike Arrington points out, Facebook Connect is basically an updated version of Facebook’s API for third party sites. These sites will now be able to use Facebook’s trusted identification methods, profile information (including pictures, videos, events and the like), friend lists and privacy settings. Just as with MySpace’s announcement, the idea is to make Facebook a central hub of users’ web experience.

Lest you think this wasn’t a game of one-upmanship: whereas MySpace announced Twitter as a launch partner for its initiative yesterday, Facebook is launching with Digg as a partner. The social news voting site is quite a bit larger than the micro-messaging Twitter.

Facebook Connect’s formal launch won’t happen for a couple of weeks. We’ll update when we know more.

update: Dave Morin, Facebook’s senior platform manager has posted on the Facebook Developers Blog with more details about Facebook Connect. Some of the details:

Today we are announcing Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect is the next iteration of Facebook Platform that allows users to “connect” their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site. This will now enable third party websites to implement and offer even more features of Facebook Platform off of Facebook – similar to features available to third party applications today on Facebook.

Here are just a few of the coming features of Facebook Connect:

Read the rest of this entry »

When the mobile web browsing company Mowser shut down in April, a lot of people were surprised by co-founder Russell Beattie’s comments suggesting the mobile web simply wasn’t worth the effort. A debate took off in the blogosphere as to whether or not the mobile web was dying. Today, however, comes Mowser’s resurrection thanks to the Ireland-based consortium dotMobi (the group behind the .mobi Internet domain names) which purchased Mowser’s assets for an undisclosed amount.

We had a chance to chat briefly with Mowser’s other co-founder Mike Rowehl on the news today via email. He is over in Ireland working with the dotMobi team to integrate Mowser into their strategy. Here’s what he had to say:

VentureBeat: There seems to be a debate brewing over whether or not this was a firesale, with the purchase does Mowser’s vision of the mobile web go right back to where it was at the start?

Mike Rowehl: dotMobi is most likely going to be running the service in a different form - meaning not keeping it as the publicly available mowser.com site providing the web services it does now. Instead they’ll apply a different business model, and integrate the technology behind Mowser into other products as well as roll out some new offerings. Those offerings in general probably will not be the advertising supported services that Russ and I were running, dotMobi has a different channel and is able to use a different model.

VB: What is your and Russ’ role going to be now?

Rowehl: We’re both going to be doing some contracting with dotMobi until they have plans made and all the technology understood. After that it’s still up in the air.

VB: What is Mowser’s place in a mobile world shifting to devices like the iPhone that puts the “real Internet” in your pocket?

Rowehl: There was plenty of stuff that Mowser could have done to not just strip pages down and allow them to be viewed in minimal form on old phones. With just Russ and I working on the code none of them were realistic. However dotMobi has a lot more resources to throw at the problem, and they’re interested in not just making the pages minimally work but also in customizing them with information and services appropriate to folks on the go. Even in a world with lots of advanced devices, the web as a whole could use some services to make services more suitable for mobile users. If the dotMobi folks can nail a few of those the role of Mowser can evolve with those devices.

VB: With dotMobi being based in Ireland, is its vision and now the vision for Mowser more of a global one rather than a U.S. based one?

Rowehl: The Mowser vision was never really restricted to the US, and a large chunk of our traffic came from places like India and South Africa. That said, the dotMobi vision is definitely global, where ever there are people with handsets there should be appropriate services to get them the info they need when they need it.

Rowehl also noted that while he didn’t want to speak for Beattie as to whether or not his pessimistic thoughts on the mobile web had changed thanks to this purchase, he did feel Beattie simply spoke more out of frustration than anything else. Rowehl also said that his stance was never inline with Beattie’s (something which he laid out on his own blog).

We previously wrote about an extension of this debate, whether mobile application were dying or thriving.

Mobile life is blooming. Some 47 mobile social network companies have emerged globally, to help cater to our need to message and communicate while on the go.

But what about the huge incumbents, like MySpace or Facebook? Will they thrive on the mobile web?

Well, the 47 mobile-only networks will probably tell you that mobile is a whole different animal, and downplay the threat of a switch by their millions of users to those big guys. But in reality, even though some mobile-only social networks have gotten big — Mocospace, for example, has 1 billion page views worldwide, most of it in the US — their computer-based rivals are catching up now that new wireless devices, such as the iPhone, are making it easier for internet apps to transition to mobile.

My goal for this article was to find the top ten most significant social mobile companies.

It was difficult reporting. With so many different players competing in the mobile social network space, we’re seeing a lot of different approaches and fragmentation. For my own thinking, I sketched out a diagram during lunch with an entrepreneur (see above for a cleaned up version of it). It’s partly based on generalizations, but it’ll give you an idea of what’s happening here in the U.S.

I’ve organized the mobile social companies into four groups. In addition to heavyweights MySpace and Facebook, I’ve picked eight companies — based on market share, differentiation through features, niche market and technology — that seem to be emerging as the most significant players.

[Disclosure: I consult for one of the companies named here, Peperoni.]

Group 1: The internet heavyweights – MySpace and Facebook
When I talked to MySpace and Facebook to see what kind of uptake they’d been seeing on their mobile sites (eg. m.myspace.com) I got quite a surprise. According to the user numbers they provided, both companies have already passed Mocospace.

MySpace’s Brandon Lucas, Senior Director of Mobile Business Development told me MySpace Mobile USA had 1.4 billion visits last month. That’s compared to 1 billion visits to Mocospace this March, according to Mocospace CEO Justin Siegel. A source at Facebook confirmed to me that Facebook Mobile has also passed Mocospace’s numbers in the USA, too, but didn’t give me specific numbers. Expect announcements on that in the coming weeks.

MySpace Mobile launched in December 2006, followed by Facebook Mobile a month later. The growth of MySpace Mobile and Facebook Mobile is mainly due to operator deals that put them “ondeck.” MySpace and Facebook are looking to close as many deals with operators as possible. For Myspace Mobile, the goal is to be available on-deck with “every major operator, everywhere,” Lucas says. As of now, MySpace Mobile has signed 23 carriers in 13 countries, and we expect the number to rise. M-Metrics told MySpace Mobile around three weeks ago that they are the fastest growing mobile site in the US, says Lucas.

The barrier to traffic growth, according to Lucas, is awareness. Expect more banner ads for MySpace Mobile on its web site very soon to raise awareness. MySpace is willing to split revenue with operators, he says. Despite the split, “mobile advertising has grown in the last six months to be a real business for us”, he adds. He sees MySpace as playing the same role on mobile devices as it does on the web. He wants MySpace to be a “mobile advertising driver” for the industry — and wants to lure the brands advertising on its online version to add mobile advertising too. He said MySpace Mobile “wants to build a business for everybody” and that “we will share insights for everybody to profit.”

I also asked Lucas to comment on a MySpace strategy statement I came across in Stuart Dredge’s recent article on social mobile networking in New Media Age: ”We expect that half of our total traffic will be coming from mobile devices within the next five years,” the article quoted a MySpace representative as saying. Brandon said that’s a January quote from MySpace CEO Chris De Wolfe and reaffirms that mobile is one of the Read the rest of this entry »

Call it Funware. That’s the name for applications with game-like mechanics and game-like behavior that really aren’t traditional video games. And Funware just might steal the thunder from video games, which may no longer have a monopoly on either interactivity or fun.

With new places to play — such as the iPhone, on Facebook, or even with Google mash-ups on personlized web sites — web-based social interaction is changing the way that many people entertain themselves.

While the term may be new to you, you can readily grasp it, particulary if you’ve heard the phrase, “Facebook is a game.” Tossing sheep at your friends on Facebook certainly qualifies as Funware. So does competing to get more followers on your Twitter account than your friends. And so does filling out your profile details on LinkedIn, the professional networking site that gives you a little reward if you fill out the otherwise tedious online form in full.

The name “Funware” was coined by that Gabe Zichermann, CEO of New York-based start-up rmbr, to classify his own company’s photo-based fun application. Funware examples are proliferating, giving Zichermann plenty to blog about. But he’s not the only proponent of this new kind of threat to traditional web sites and game companies alike. In a recent panel discussion of the subject at the Web 2.0 Expo, the panelists concluded that Funware is something every social media and gaming company should embrace.

“Unequivocably, for the first time, games have direct competition for user time,” Zichermann said in an interview. “Until now, we’ve been [like] Pac-Man eating the cherry of television and the printed word. Now, a new type of application has emerged that, in the long term, could be more engaging and sticky than what the game industry produces.”

Zichermann, who posted his first Funware title today at rmbr,  has a vested interest in espousing this view that game companies are lagging on Funware, as he plans to raise money soon for his own Funware company. But he has a decade of experience in games (he was founder of game downloading firm Trymedia, which Real Networks bought) and so he has some credibility in claiming to be ahead of the curve. And other industry veterans back him up.

Funware includes applications such as eBay, which made it fun to earn rewards as a competitive buyer or seller on its auction site. The term may also be applied to alternate-reality games such as “ilovebees.com,” where masses of players collectively solved a mystery about an invasion of earth. The site I’m in like with you uses game-like behavior to radically reshape a typical dating application.

The Google Image Labeler, created by Carnegie Mellon University researcher Luis von Ahn, is built around an “ESP” game where two people try to simultaneously label an image and, without being able to communicate, try to come up with the same label for the image as the other person. If they correctly identify a person in a picture as a man, they can get some points; but if they correctly identified the man as Bill Gates, they would get more. The game helps Google improve the accuracy of its image searches.

Flickr traces its origins to game industry veterans Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, whose team stumbled upon photo-sharing while they were trying to make a game. Bunchball has made a tool, dubbed Nitro, that makes web sites more engaging by instilling them with reward-based activities. Entellium has built game principles into its customer relationship management software and Seriosity has a game-like email program.

One of the ominous things for the video game industry is that almost none of these Funware ideas or businesses have come from game companies, which are now failing to catch on to an expansion opportunity. It’s an odd situation, given that game designers are the ones who best understand how to keep consumers addicted, Zichermann says. What’s more, it’s possible that social networks that use fun game mechanics may actually be robbing games of their audiences, he adds. Read the rest of this entry »

I just got home from the annual meeting of the National Venture Capital Association, which was a fun experience. This may sound a little weird (especially since I’m not looking to get funding for a startup anytime soon), but it was actually kind of exciting to be in a conference room full of venture capitalists. They are, after all, the heart of what we cover at VentureBeat, but until now I’ve only been able to meet a few of them. Even better, I got to pick some of their brains.

The meeting’s highlight was watching famed venture capitalists John Doerr and Michael Moritz interview each other, but there were other events of interest. In this mobile post, I summarize some of the discussion on policy issues relevant to VCs (the short version — significant legislation is unlikely to pass this year) and talk about my general impressions of the conference.

Note: I mention the carried interest tax, but don’t go into much detail so as not to bore people to death. Those of you who are interested can read more at the NVCA’s website, as well as our article about why we support the tax.

Shawn Fanning, who gained fame after launching early music file sharing company Napster, is in advanced stages of talks to sell his most recent social gaming start-up, Rupture, for $30 million.

The buyer would be Electronic Arts, but unlike first reported by Techcrunch, the deal hasn’t gone through. I reached someone very close to the deal but who requested anonymity, who said “nothing has been signed, but it’s getting close.”

“Is it likely to go through?,” the source continued. “Yes.”

Finally, it looks like Fanning will hit paydirt. Napster went bankrupt after facing insurmountable legal challenges, and Fanning’s second music start-up SnoCap didn’t do very well either, and was reportedly sold for very little to imeem.

We reported on Fanning’s Rupture a year and a half ago, when it first emerged with a goal to bring social networking to popular online multiplayer games like World of Warcraft. It has stayed in a private testing mode since then, having delayed its launch, so Electronic Arts is obviously buying the company for its technology and potential. The area of online social gaming is promising because millions of gamers have formed communities with each other through playing, but their interactions have been limited by the confines of proprietary software.

With social networking and online gaming all the rage (with $1 billion in subscription sales alone), it’s no surprise that Electronic Arts, the giant game maker, which has been struggling to find itself in recent years, would be interested. EA is working on a variety of online games. The company’s Mythic division has been at work on “Warhammer Online” for four years and it expects to launch the fantasy-role playing game in the fall. Spore, another single-player game with online elements, will launch in September. But it isn’t immediately obvious whether those games could use the Rupture technology. Sometimes the technology behind a game on a major title is written in stone years before its launch.

Fanning and co-founder Jon Baudanza will both join Electronic Arts under the planned agreement.

Rupture raised about $3 million last year from Ron Conway’s Baseline Ventures, Joi Ito and Reid Hoffman among others. (Dean Takahashi contributed to this post).

On June 9 (or June 15 — or sometime before July 12), a lot of first generation iPhones may magically turn into plain old iPods. I say this because while the majority of people I have talked to who don’t own an iPhone plan to buy the second iteration of the device, every single person I’ve talked to who already owns a first generation iPhone plans on buying the second one. (Well, except our own Eric Eldon, who had the misfortune of buying one a few weeks ago.) Assuming those people aren’t going to both set up new accounts with AT&T and maintain their old ones, this is going to create a plethora of older iPhones that aren’t used as phones.

While it would be incredible if Apple and AT&T offered some sort of trade-in incentive for old iPhones, this is probably unlikely. After all, how many times has Apple updated one of its iPod lines mere months after a previous update while leaving those first adopters to sulk in their outdatedness?

So what will become of these old iPhones? Well, as one friend tells me, the iPhone is still hands down the best iPod they’ve ever owned. With the combination of Multi-touch technology and the software enabling very smooth CoverFlow action (the view you might know from the iTunes software where you pick songs based on album covers), I’d have to agree. So why not just keep it as a nice second (or fourth, in my case) iPod?

On the other hand, if you have a second generation iPhone, do you really need another iPod? Certainly some people buy the smaller versions, the iPod Nano and the iPod Shuffle, for activities such as going to the gym, but the iPhone is comparatively bulky for something like that. Likewise, some people buy what is now known as the iPod Classic (formerly known as the plain old iPod), which is bulkier but can store up to 160 gigabytes of data, simply for storage of their entire collection of music, photos and movies. For most people, the 4 or 8 gigabyte (or even 16 gigabyte if you have the newer version) iPhone simply does not have enough storage to act in that capacity, especially with Apple’s new emphasis on video content.

So what to do? Well perhaps we will see a mini-economy pop up around the buying and selling of first generation iPhones on the cheap. However, if the second generation version is really going to be only $199 after an AT&T subsidy, these devices (which were once $599) are going to have to be sold only a year later at a huge loss.

Perhaps the first generation iPhone can make for a good hand-me-down or re-gift — provided AT&T makes this easy. Or maybe it’ll be a nice charitable donation. We’ll probably also see some lawsuits from early adopters claiming the device wasn’t meant to last through their 2-year contracts with AT&T.

One thing is certain — come July (or whenever the 3G iPhone is released), there are going to be a lot of iPhones out there on the streets. Whether most are used or unused is up to Apple and AT&T.

We’ve contacted Apple for a comment on any upgrade policy; something tells me they won’t have anything to say…yet.

Microsoft is apparently serious about this whole “not buying Yahoo” thing. Today the software giant’s law firm sent out letters to each of the proxy board members it had lined up, releasing them from their obligation, according to The Wall Street Journal. The proxy board is the group of executives and industry leaders that Microsoft had lined up to nominate to replace Yahoo’s current board of directors had Microsoft decided to go hostile in its bid to takeover Yahoo.

What this means is that Microsoft will not be attempting a hostile takeover of Yahoo again anytime soon. This is a strong gesture to refute speculation by just about everyone since Microsoft pulled its bid five days ago that it could turn right back around with another offer — especially considering that many prominent Yahoo shareholders are said to want such a move, and with some potential new trouble brewing with Yahoo given the news that Google is wavering on a long term search advertising deal with the company.

Interestingly enough, The Wall Street Journal is also reporting that members of this proxy board have already been approached by some Yahoo shareholders, who themselves are thinking about nominating their own alternative board. They only have until May 15th to do so for the shareholder meeting which will take place in July.

While Microsoft is moving on for now, it’s probably still foolish to believe it is moving on for good. We’ll see how several factors, namely Yahoo’s financial situation and Microsoft Internet market share, play out over the next several months. At that point we may hear the talk start about getting the old band (the proxy board members) back together.

[photo: Universal Pictures]

Dressing up as a person of the opposite sex and casting magic spells in a fantasy world has become a popular American pastime. U.S. online video game subscriptions are generating $1 billion a year in subscription revenue, according to market researcher NPD Group.

Those numbers include revenue from massively multiplayer online games (virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft), casual games such as card games on Pogo.com, and online games on consoles such as the Sony PlayStation Network and Microsoft’s Xbox Live online gaming services.

The numbers are important because sales of retail PC games have been declining or have been flat, prompting many to conclude that consumers are turning to console video games such as Wii Sports on the Nintendo Wii. But the subscription data, which NPD only began collecting in October, shows that PC games are still a vibrant market, said Anita Frazier, an analyst at NPD.

On a monthly basis, more than 11 million gamers are subscribing to online games in the U.S. Console subscription revenues grew 9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008.

The top five games in the first quarter of 2008 were “World of Warcraft,” “RuneScape,” “Lord of the Rings Online,” “Final Fantasy XI,” and “City of Heroes.” The top casual sites in subscribers were Electronic Arts’ Pogo.com, Real Networks’ RealArcade.com, Bigfishgames.com, Gametap.com, and Disney.com.

And yes, this commercial message has been brought to you by sponsors Microsoft and Intel. Just kidding.

[photo: flickr/flawedartist]

When Apple announced deals with all the major movie studios to bring rentals to its Apple TV device, it turned the device from a dud into a potential player in the living room. “Potential” is the keyword there. It’s a nice device, but it still lacks that certain something that could put it over the top. That something could be DVR functionality, more computing functionality (such as a native web browser, instant messaging, or the ability to run something like Google Earth), or perhaps gaming. A new patent uncovered by AppleInsider suggests Apple is looking into that last possibility.

Yes, we’ve heard this before. Rumors of Apple entering the gaming market are nothing new, but some of the best of those rumors suggest Apple should team up with Wii-maker Nintendo do create something for a living room. Well, it doesn’t appear a partnership between the two is coming, but this patent looks like Apple is more or less “borrowing” some of what has made the Wii a great console.

The images below probably look very familiar if you’ve seen a Wii (to be fair, the patent, which was just uncovered, was filed in November 2006 — right when the Wii was first coming out). You have a remote control-like controller that allows for full movement. A sensor placed near the television uses infrared technology to translate that movement in three dimensional terms.

While it is certainly possible that Apple is just working on a point and click remote to make navigating the Apple TV more intuitive, it did flat out state in the patent that: “the absolute x- and y-positions of [the] remote control can be used, for example, in video games to position a user’s character or to otherwise track the movement of the remote control in a user’s environment.”

AppleInsider also notes that this 3D remote technology could be used to mimic some of what Apple is doing with its software via Multi-touch technology. For example instead of pinching with two fingers to zoom a picture in or out, simply moving this remote forwards or backwards could have the same effect.

While Apple may be working its way into gaming, Nintendo may be working the other way, towards more of an entertainment console.

[photo: flickr/nicolasnova]

Updated

Facebook has reached an agreement with the attorneys general of 49 states whereby the social network will adopt more than 60 specific new measures to ensure that it keeps minors safe on its site.

Among other measures, requests by a user to change their own age will be scrutinized and recorded, and Facebook will only grant a single request by a user to change their own age above or below 18. So 16 year-olds who use Facebook will have more trouble pretending to 100. For more new measures, as well as those that the company already has in place, see below the article.

The announcement is quite a publicity coup for the attorneys general, as you can see from this list of articles that have been written about the news.

But the problem isn’t Facebook, or other social networks — it’s a lot bigger and more complex. Some children, for whatever reason, appreciate the attention of creepy older people they happen to meet online. A recent study showed most interaction between children and predators that ended in criminal activity happened with full knowledge of both parties about the other person’s age (older) and their intentions (sex). Among the findings, only five percent of perpetrators pretended to be teenagers. [Update: I’d like to hear from experts that show the threat of social networking, because here’s another article about experts saying the risk “of a child being forced into sex from an online predator is almost non-existent.”

This same group of attorneys has worked out a similar set of measures on MySpace, and it hopes to do the same for the entire web through better age identification technology, it says.

I totally agree that pedophilia is terrible and needs to be stopped, and I also recognize that social networks need to be responsible for the safety of their underage users. But Facebook has already been taking heat for this issue for years, and the company has already been proactive in implementing measures to prevent abuse. Examples: It already prominently displays a great deal of privacy information and it provides links all over its site to report objectionable material.

At this point, I question whether or not this new agreement will end up having any significant impact, or if it is rather only something that these attorneys general will point to as a “result” they got, the next time they go up for election. I’m not sure why the attorney general from Texas, Greg Abbott, didn’t sign on, but at least today he’s busy putting a repeat child abuser in jail and launching a web site to fight online identity theft.

Sample measures, including both measures that Facebook already has in place and that it plans to add, formally confirmed through the agreement:

- Age and identity identification tools

- Automatic warning messages when a child is in danger of giving personal information to an unknown adult

- Restricting the ability of users to change their listed ages

- Aggressive response to remove inappropriate content and groups from the site

- Safety and privacy guidelines that third party vendors and developers are required to adhere to as part of Facebook’s Terms of Service

- Immediate severance of links to pornographic websites

- Immediate removal of Facebook Groups dedicated to incest, pedophilia, cyber-bullying and other topics that violate Facebook’s Terms of Services

- Immediate investigation of Facebook users who violate the Terms of Service, and expulsion of those individuals that violate the safety or privacy of other users

- Prominent display of privacy information and safety tips

- Require users under 18 to affirm they have read Facebook’s safety tips when they sign up

- Review models for abuse reporting and perform a test using the New Jersey Attorney General’s abuse r