Category: Tech news

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.

The case continues, but the drama has reached its peak. The court today held one former Zynga and Playdom employee, Raymond Holmes, in contempt and sentenced him to ten days in county jail and a $4,000 fine. Fortunately for Holmes, Judge Mark Pierce then suspended the sentence. That means Holmes won’t do the time unless he continues to, well, piss off Judge Pierce. The full order is embedded below.

What did Holmes do? Lots of things apparently: destruction of evidence on laptop, destruction of Mozy backup, failure to identify other storage devices with Zynga documents and the signing of two false court certificates. The court says Holmes admitted to his improper actions and apologized.

Worse still for Playdom is the last sentence of the court document. It says it’s “appropriate to impose a non rebutable evidentiary presumption in favor of Zynga regarding the meta data lost when Def Holmes erased his hard drive.”

In the middle of all this Playdom got bought by Disney. And so it’s not surprising that Disney has settled this with Zynga before it actually went to trial, they don’t have any emotional investment in the feud.

What’s the settlement? No one’s talking, and Disney for whatever reason is always completely paranoid about specific financial terms leaking out. Just a few bland statements. A joint statement:

“Today, Zynga Game Network, Inc. and Playdom announced that they have reached a confidential resolution of their litigation.” -Zynga and Playdom

And Zynga’s statement with a little more color:

“Zynga is extremely pleased with the final resolution of its trade secret suit against Playdom and various individuals. The settlement reflects the very serious nature of the conduct involved, as reflected by the preliminary injunction, restraining orders, and contempt order issued by the Santa Clara Superior Court. We have great respect for Disney and are thankful that following its acquisition of Playdom, Disney resolved the matter to our satisfaction.” Reggie Davis, General Counsel, Zynga

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.

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.

Founder and CEO Jeffrey Tinsley says the site is getting 26 million monthly unique visitors according to Omniture’s statistics. comScore actually reports that the site saw half that traffic, or 12.7 million unique visitors in October.

Tinsley says that MyLife has 41 million registered members and is adding 2.4 million U.S. monthly members monthly. The site currently lists 205 million U.S. records out of 1.2 billion people records worldwide. And in terms of revenue, Tinsely says that MyLife will see $60 million in revenue in 2010, and is expected to grow by 40 percent in 2011.

While MyLife sees Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn as its competition, the site doesn’t really have any social features beyond the ability to find and message people. That being said, people search is expected to be a $10.8 billion business by 2013, according to a recent Forrestor study, so MyLife seems to have hit a possible goldminein terms of revenue.

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.

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.

Read more…

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

First off, Wozniak probably meant Siri, the “personal assistant” Apple confirmed to have acquired back in April. Siri, a spin-out from Stanford Research Institute, uses speech recognition technology from Nuance for its voice-activated search capabilities, which may have been the root of Wozniak’s confusion. Nuance just this morning announced that it’s also powering voice search for IAC-owned Ask.com’s iPhone app.

Secondly, Nuance just released its Q4 2010 earnings yesterday, and made no mention of being (in the process of getting) bought by Apple. You would think they’d at least tell shareholders that if it were the case.

Third, the earnings press release does mention that Nuance considers Apple to be one of its “key mobile customers”, along with the likes of Amazon, AT&T, Nokia, Palm and Motorola. Maybe Wozniak meant that Apple has a strong vendor-client relationship with Nuance.

Fourth, Nuance is currently valued at over $5 billion. Apple has a war chest the size of the universe, so they could easily pick up the company if they wanted to, but I seriously doubt Apple would spend such a a sizeable chunk of its $50 billion+ in cash for a purchase of a publicly listed, profitable company which may seem sound on a strategic level, but could well prove to be a nightmare on an integration level.

Fifth, I simply don’t believe Wozniak would be in the loop if this acquisition was still in progress or signed very recently. He obviously still has strong ties with Apple, but it’s not like he’s part of senior management, nor is he a board member.

To conclude, I think Wozniak simply misspoke. Hey, it wouldn’t be the first time.

Unless of course he didn’t, in which case I’ll have to come back and update this post 🙂

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.

The Milo.com Black Friday page aggregates sale prices and availability for more than 5,000 products, ranging from electronics and toys to apparel and home goods. To
access the limited-time deals and see if a product is available with a special offer, shoppers can either browse the homepage or use the Black Friday filter, located on the sidebar of search pages.

Milo, which includes real-time inventory information for over 52,000 national retailer locations, says that you can also use the company’s newly released Android app to access Black Friday deal updates as well.

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.

The advertising and shopping platform will be complementary to JiWire’s own advertising network. JiWire says that it plans to combine its existing location-based advertising platform that runs across Wi-Fi and mobile for devices such as iPads, smartphones and laptops with NearbyNow’s platform to increase ways in which advertisers can reach new local customers at scale and drive in-store conversions.

NearbyNow has raised nearly $20 million in venture funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and others.

We’re a service-orientated organization and as such our goal is to assist the consumer in choosing the best possible fit for their gadget-facing needs. We’re no blue sky imagineers: we’re professionals. We want you to be happy and we have an easy-to-remember motto: AWPBFDDtWBBFAAPGGFPWAS (Always Be Posting Black Friday Deals During the Week Before Black Friday And Also Post Gift Guides For People Who Are Shopping). And we’re sticking to that easy-to-remember motto through this week over at CrunchGear.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to head over to CG and view some of the deals we’ve gathered up thus far and keep your eye on things this week and through Mobile Monday (which is totally a made-up holiday.) Also, keep your eye on the Gift Guide for our takes on the best holiday gifts.

We know that email has done away with the nine to five job but does anyone ignore emails over holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving anymore? A new study by email software company Xobni suggests that going completely offline from email over the holidays may also be a thing of the past. According to the survey, 59 percent of U.S. working adults will check work email over holidays.

Of the survey respondents over half (55%) check work email at least once a day and more than one in four (28%) do so multiple times throughout the day. The data also showed that 79 percent of those that check email while on holiday stated that they have received a work-related email from a colleague or client on holidays.

So are U.S. worker happy about the onslaught of email over the holidays? According to the survey, 15 percent are “thankful” or “relieved” to have the distraction of work email over the holidays. On the other hand, 41 percent of those that receive an email from a co-worker/client while they had time off for the holidays saying they are either annoyed, frustrated or resentful after receiving these emails. The survey also found that 12 percent of respondents actually “dread” seeing work emails populate their inbox and 10 percent even feel pity for those who do send work-related emails on holidays.

Regardless of how the actually feel about work email over a holiday, 42 percent of those that check work email while they have time off for the holidays still believe that staying up-to-date on email eases their workloads once they return from break. Some respondents (19 percent percent) that receive work emails from a co-worker/client while they had time off for the holidays say they feel “thankful” or “relieved” at having the distraction.

So what about the breakdown when it comes to males vs. females? Xobni says that
employed males are significantly more likely to check work email on holidays – 67 percent – compared to just 50 percent of women. Employed middle-aged adults feel the greatest urge, with 65 percent of those aged 35-44 stating that they have checked work emails on holidays.

One in ten (10 percent) who admitted to checking email while off for a holiday stated that they did so while spending time with friends or relatives at Holiday parties/gatherings or during meals. A small amount of those (5%) that check work email while they have time off for the holidays even admitted to using work email as excuse to avoid awkward family moments and other holiday commitments.

Photo Credit/Flickr/StereroGab

MyThings, which provides personalised retargeting services, this morning announced that it has raised $6 million in their third round of funding. The financing round was led by T-Venture, Deutsche Telekom’s venture capital arm, with participation of previous backers Accel Partners, Carmel Ventures, Dot Corp and GP Bullhound.

MyThings, founded in 2005, claims its technology is capable of increasing return conversion rates of online retailers by more than 500%. Its proprietary optimisation technology is currently being used by leading European retailers such as Price Minister, Republic, PIXMania, Etam and Orange, and its total reach is said to surpass 1 billion monthly impressions these days.

Local reviews site Qype, which lets you review any venue from restaurants and bars to gyms and childcare, has raised a new funding round amounting to a combined 6.5 million euros to throw fuel onto its mobile business. Investors include Vodafone Ventures and existing backers. Currently the largest user-generated local review site in Europe (yes, it’s ahead of Yelp), Qype has raised 3.5 million euros from Vodafone Ventures and a further 3.0 million euros from its existing three investors, Advent Venture Partners, Partech International and Wellington Partners.

The main aspect of this deal means co-branded version of Qype’s application will be pre-loaded on supported Vodafone devices, including Blackberry and Android on handsets in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands and Ireland. It’s likely that Qype will do best out of pre-installation on Android devices.

The HP Envy 100 box is daring me to open it, but I am afraid. Four words: Print Scan Copy Web, hover over an ominous printer on the box front. I gently slip open the top, anticipating the terror of endless plastic wrap and cardboard. What’s this? A tote bag? Sweet, I didn’t even have to donate to PBS! Yes, even mere mortals like yourself, and not just obscenely “rich” and “handsome” tech writers like me, will have your HP Envy 100 wrapped in a delicious free tote bag.

But seriously, the Envy’s packaging is a welcome change from the usual mess of plastic and parts. And while there is the requisite foam and some baggies, at least HP put a bit more effort into presentation while minimizing unnecessary bad-for-mother-earth clutter. Plus, a free tote bag never hurt anyone.

Once you haul it out of the box, you see that the Envy 100 printer/scanner/copier looks like it was designed by Darth Vader. Ominously coated in gloss black with silver accents, it’s barely 4 1/2 inches tall; sleek enough to slip into a pretty small space. Even the paper-output handler is an automatically retractable arm that barely sticks out. On the outside, this machine looks badass. But just how evil is it?

First, you’ll need to install the rather small ink cartridges. Unfortunately, there aren’t separate color ink cartridges that would save money on refills. You get one multicolor ink cartridge and one for all your blacks. Perhaps more alarming: After running through one 50-page load of plain paper and a few photos, the Envy software showed black ink hovering near 50 percent. HP claims the ink-measuring software may not be completely accurate, but be forewarned dear reader, your ink costs could get real big, real fast.

After connecting the power cord, the 3.5-inch LCD touchscreen lit up, and the Envy held my hand as it led me through a zenfully simple setup process … until it was time to install the software on my computers.

Installation on a Vista PC came off without a hitch, aside from the usual “opt out to not install this extra addware that you’ll never use.” Next up was a real test where the Envy scored with a +2 critical-hit bonus roll. Yes, dear reader, HP graciously provides Linux drivers on their website. So, for all 20 of y’all out there using Ubuntu or K or X whatever, HP deserves a shoutout. Just be prepared to go through the usual “missing library” installations Linux requires to make anything work. (Mac users can ignore this entire paragraph.)

Once hitched up to my home Wi-Fi network, and loaded with paper (up to 80 sheets), it was time to waste some trees with hard-copy output. On a notebook running Vista, using a wireless connection, and Normal print-quality settings, the Envy averaged 4.5 pages per minute when handling simple text or text with grayscale graphics. On plain paper, text was sharp and dark, while color photos printed in grayscale tended to be slightly dark.

The Envy showed more moxie with color graphics. A high-resolution full-page photo printed out in slightly more than nine seconds. While that may be pretty poky, the colors were excellent with subtle detail, and a near perfect match to the graphic onscreen. Of course, to get good results, you’ll have to make sure your color management is spot on, as well.

The only strike against the Envy’s printing was that some glossy photo paper came out with faint, but noticeable marks from the paper-feed mechanism. Some gloss-paper coatings are more delicate than others, and different paper brands and qualities had different results, with a good number showing no marks at all. Photo perfectionists should try a few different kinds of paper. In my tests, Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy II has the best ink saturation while HP Premium Photo Paper matched the original the closest.

Copying is a no-brainer. Just touch the Copy button on the LCD screen, pick color or black, choose the number of prints, and you’re done. Copying output was a shade faster than printing, but not by much. For black-and-white copies, the Envy averaged 4.2 ppm. A single page color copy came out at 42 seconds. It’s certainly not blazing speed, but output on plain paper was on par with the Envy’s printing.

Scanning with the Envy is straightforward, as well. You can scan up to 1200 dpi so it’s useful for blowing up old photographs and other small artwork. The Envy tended to brighten scanned images a bit, reds in particular, but overall detail was very good, and any slight color variations were easily fixed in photo-editing software.

As with most other printers in this class, the HP Envy does direct printing from cameras, as well as from memory cards, with a top USB port and SD card slot. You can also scan results to a memory card instead of to a computer.

Another nice printing touch is e-print. Just send an e-mail from your phone or a computer to the printer’s unique e-mail address, and you’ll have hot, fresh copy ready and waiting when you get home. You can also check the status of an e-print job online.

Lastly, we come to the apps. Apps? You say, “I have enough electronics yapping at me all day. I just want my printer to print, my scanner to scan, and my copier to copy.” HP says, “With the Envy, you’ll have your apps, and like them!”

Flip out the Envy’s LCD touchscreen and you’re presented with a bunch of preloaded app icons. Some of the available apps are fairly useful, some definitely not. Do I really need a printer to spew out tic-tac-toe games when a pencil is about 100 times more efficient? More importantly, why would I want to print only the first couple of sentences of a blog post?

Other apps like Google Maps are useful for a quick print. Even so, it feels awkward and silly to peck out an address on the tiny LCD screen when my computer is a few feet away. True, you wouldn’t have to turn your computer on, and it might come in handy if you have a large home with the Envy as the central output/input peripheral. Thankfully, you can delete apps you don’t want or need to reduce clutter, and load some new ones you do want.

The HP Envy 100 is a jack of all trades, and does most jobs pretty well. It’s not particularly fast, but solid text output combined with excellent color prints merit consideration. The real question is: Do you need all the extras like apps and e-mail printing? If not, you could probably save some bucks and get similar performance from a more stripped down all-in-one.

And then there’s the boondoggle of most printers: per-page costs. With limited ink capacity and a hungry appetite, you might be buying ink cartridges more than you’d like, but at least you can carry them home in your new tote bag.

WIRED Excellent color output with subtle detail on gloss photo paper. Super-sleek Vader-approved design, low-profile chassis doesn’t hog space. Easy setup and installation. Downloadable Linux drivers available. Good LCD touchscreen

TIRED Small ink cartridges — doesn’t use separate ink cartridges for each color. Mediocre print speed. Gloss-black finish is a fingerprint and dust magnet. Cover for USB and memory card feels fragile. Paper-feed mechanism can mark some gloss-paper coatings.

See Also:

• Review: Brother Printer Offers Wireless iDevice Printing Now …
• Review: Polaroid PoGo Printer Spits Pics on the Quick
• Canon PIXMA iP4700 Printer – Wired News
• HP Photosmart A646 Compact Photo Printer – Wired News

If you’ve tried TomTom’s GPS navigators in the past and have found them to be reliable if a bit of a snooze when it comes to design and interface, the new TomTom GO 2505 TM ($320) with its 5-inch interactive glass touchscreen should make you sit up and take notice.

With a smart new body featuring sloping matte black corners, a slightly rounded grey metallic back and a sharp GUI with colorful, easy-to-read icons, the TomTom Go 2505 TM is cool enough to hang with your slick new iPhone or Amazon Kindle. Better yet, it makes getting from place to place easier and a little more fun.

We recently brought the TomTom Go 2505 on one of the more boring excursions known to man: a Sunday shopping trip to New Jersey with the Mrs. (no fault of the Mrs., though). While the TomTom certainly didn’t brighten the scenery as we cruised the turnpikes and off-ramps of Jersey, it did get us to our various destinations quickly and painlessly. Returning to home base in Manhattan afterward didn’t go as smoothly, though. (More about that later.)

Along with the stylin’ redesign, the GO 2505 has a new stress-free and secure “click & lock” magnetic mounting system. While this may sound like a small detail, it’s nothing short of a godsend for anyone who has had a GPS unit or portable satellite radio fly off the windshield and into your lap when you hit the brakes.

To mount the GPS cradle, just push it against the windshield, twist the base, and it will suction lock in place. (No spittle necessary!) The GO 2505 unit then clicks onto the cradle and snaps down solidly with the help of magnets embedded in the device. Like most GPS navigators, the 2505 uses a rechargeable battery powered by the charging socket in your car.

On the downside, even when the TomTom’s battery is fully juiced, you’ll still need to keep the 2505 plugged into the charger if you want live traffic updates because the traffic receiver is built into the dangling cable. (That’s annoying.) And live traffic coverage with fast alternate-route suggestions is where the 2505 TM really shines.

In TomTom-speak, the TM designation in the model name means the 2505 receives lifetime map and traffic updates. In our real-world test, the navigator helped us avoid a nasty backup on the NJ Turnpike by immediately rerouting us to local roads. Before we could say “WTF?” we were making good time on a two-lane highway with only a few SUVs and minivans in front.

The live turn-by-turn instructions were loud and clear but we were disappointed that the female “Stephanie” computer voice was one of only a few pre-loaded options in English. No offense to Stephanie but she gets kind of irritating after a while. Customization choices, in general, are few on the 2505, but we’re told other voices and themes will be available in the near future as TomTom rolls out new software.

We loved the Advanced Lane Guidance feature, which shows you the correct lane to be in to catch your exit. (This came in handy in New Jersey where exit signs come fast and furious.) Though it’s not as responsive as an iPhone or iPod, the 2505’s touchscreen worked fairly well for us as we swiped between screens and pinched and enlarged our route. As already mentioned, the revamped menu system is easy to read — though the screen washes out in direct sunlight — and intuitive. We would like to see more Back buttons though; we kept getting stuck back at the home screen.

The only place where we got into trouble with our directions was heading back to Manhattan after our shopping trip. Instead of hopping on the turnpike, Stephanie kept insisting we take a shortcut around New Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford. While that may have made sense on paper, it didn’t take into account the New York Giants game that was about to start. In fairness to Stephanie, traffic wasn’t so much a problem at that point but the thousands of blue-shirted Giants fans tailgating around the parking lot did tie us up.

WIRED Quick continuous routing (and rerouting) keeps you one step ahead of the traffic snarls. Helpful magnetic click-and-lock mount system should’ve been invented a long time ago. Voice recognition gives you control over basic functions while keeping your hands on the wheel. Bluetooth compatibility lets you answer cellphone calls, hands-free, with the navigator.

TIRED Traffic receiver in charging cable means you have to stay plugged in to steer clear. Hard to type in locations on touchscreen if you have fat fingers. No music options.

See Also:

• Review: Garmin Edge 705 GPS Offers Maps and Metrics for Data-Happy …
• The Wi-Fi iPad’s Dealbreaker: No GPS
• Nike+ App Ditches Dongle, Gains GPS
• Review: Knight Rider GPS Directs You in K.I.T.T.’s Voice

Back in August, Gmail launched what is perhaps my favorite new feature ever: integration with Google Voice, which lets you make and receive calls directly from your computer.

Earlier this month, there were some initial reports that Google had improved on this feature with a nifty addition: the ability to record inbound Google Voice calls directly from Gmail. Now it looks like Google is rolling out the feature more broadly — we’ve polled a few people and they’re all seeing it, and there are plenty of reports on Twitter of people noticing it for the first time.

Now, Google Voice has let users record some phone calls for a long time, but it’s not exactly intuitive — you have to hit the number ’4′ on your keypad (most people probably don’t even realize they can do this). The feature is only available on inbound calls, and there’s a verbal notification given to both parties on the call that recording has been activated.

The Gmail implementation seems identical in terms of functionality — you can still only record inbound calls, and there’s the same notification when you activate it. But it’s a heck of a lot more convenient.  A new ‘record’ button sits just above the dialpad, and it’ll probably introduce a lot of people to the handy feature for the first time.

There do seem to be a couple caveats: first, as mentioned earlier, this is only available on inbound calls. Second, it looks like this doesn’t work on voice calls that are routed directly from one Gmail contact to another (without using Google Voice).

We’ve reached out to Google to see if the feature has been activated for everyone.