Science launches its third startup this month, mom-commerce site Wittlebee

Sean Percival and his wife, Laurie, are known in the L.A. tech scene for being a particularly stylish couple.

So of course, when the couple welcomed their first child into the world, the world expected the child to, you know, live up to the family standard. But there was a slight roadblock.

“Laurie had a lot of trouble just finding simple, solid-colored clothes without some kind of horrible logo on it,” said the Percival patriarch … Continue Reading

Following heavy criticism, Apple announces new investigation into labor conditions at Foxconn

Last month saw several big stories reporting on poor working conditions at the factories in China which makes Apple products. Chief executive Tim Cook responded by saying that Apple had nothing to apologize for. Now Apple has announced a series of special “voluntary audits” at Foxconn factories in Shenzen and Chengdu, China. The full press release is below.

Tim Cook responded directly to a damning story in the New York Times with a letter to … Continue Reading

Reddit tries to crack down on child pornography with new rules banning suggestive subreddits

Running a massive online community is a tricky business. The administrators who police the site are trying to strike a balance between encouraging users to contribute and keeping unsavoury and illegal behaviour to a minimum. Reddit, a news aggregator and online community which has seen massive growth over the last year, allows users to create subreddits, which are essentially themed forums centred around topics like technology, humor and thousands of more obscure pastimes. Over the … Continue Reading

Ad startup Marin Software takes a late-stage $30M

Marin Software, a San Franisco startup focusing on online advertising, has just announced a $30 million round of fundraising.

This is the company’s sixth round of funding in as many years.

Marin offers an all-in-one platform for managing display, search, social, and mobile marketing.

It mainly focuses on clients spending $100,000 or more monthly on online media buys. Altogether, this adds up to around 1,500 clients pumping $3.5 billion through Marin’s system each year.

The … Continue Reading

Google TV YouTube updates on the way, just in time for original content

One of the best upgrades in Google TV 2.0 was the addition of a dedicated YouTube app — now, it’s about to get even better with an update set to launch this week.

The new YouTube GTV app will offer a smoother interface and a new feature called Discover that will (surprise!) make it easier to find interesting videos. Discover will be a particularly useful addition as Google readies its plans for YouTube original content, … Continue Reading

Steve Jobs gets a Grammy, one award out of Adele’s reach

The late Steve Jobs was honored with a Grammy Trustees Award on Saturday for his contributions to the music industry, which included helping to develop the iPod and reshaping the way music is sold with the iTunes Store.

The award is meant to “recognize contributions to the music industry in areas other than performance,” CBS News reports, and was accepted by Apple’s SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue.

“Accepting this award means so … Continue Reading

SNL on Verizon’s 4G marketing: “It’s an old person’s nightmare”

While it’s pretty much hit-or-miss these days, when Saturday Night Live scores, it still does so with a vengeance.

Last night the sketch comedy show aired a segment that ripped apart Verizon’s 4G LTE marketing confusion, bringing to light the biggest problems facing the smartphone market today when it comes to general consumers.

In short, there are too many devices vying for your attention (many with terrible names), and the advantages of 4G LTE seems … Continue Reading

Microsoft India Store gets hacked, passwords and usernames exposed (updated)

You can now add Microsoft to the list of companies that have recently been burned by hackers.

Microsoft’s online store in India was hacked this morning by Chinese hacker group EvilShadow team – 7z1&Ancker, reports WP Sauce. Even worse, it appears that the store’s database of usernames and passwords has been leaked as well, potentially exposing those users’ payment information.

At the time of this post, Microsoft’s India online store is still offline. We’ve dropped … Continue Reading

Google planning massive “Experience Center” and secret test labs at Googleplex

There are big changes ahead at the Googleplex, Google’s Mountain View headquarters

The company is developing a huge 120,000 square foot “Google Experience Center,” which will serve as a sort of private museum and meeting center, as well as labs for secret projects and the company’s @Home automation endeavour, reports the Mercury News.

The new buildings are big part of Google’s $120 million constructions efforts at the Googleplex, and they show how the company is … Continue Reading

Spotify takes music quality to the “extreme” on iPhone

If you’re a Spotify user with an iPhone, it’s time to pump up the volume.

The popular music streaming service has added support for extremely high quality 320 kbps music streaming and offline synchronizing — just about the best sound you can get from compressed music files.

Spotify originally offered low quality (96 kbps) and high quality (160 kbps) settings for streaming and syncing on its mobile apps, but an update over the weekend has … Continue Reading

An animated explanation of how your personal data gets tracked and sold

Keeping up with our theme from yesterday’s post about how frictionless it has become for users to give unfamiliar apps broad and permanent access to their data, we stumbled on this interesting video about the personal information people unwittingly share with their mobile phone carriers.

The video comes from Michael Ringley, a graphic designer living in San Francisco. It tracks the life of an MMS message, 28,000 of which are sent every second, and shows … Continue Reading

Activision’s Eric Hirshberg: turning games into brands and other non-douche moves (exclusive interview)

Eric Hirshberg was an experiment when Activision Blizzard‘s chief executive hired Hirshberg as CEO of the Activision Publishing division about 18 months ago. Hirshberg was an art school graduate who rose through the ranks of the creative side of advertising and eventually became CEO of billion-dollar ad agency Deutsch LA. Most video game CEOs rise through the ranks of finance or game development. But Hirshberg was a lot more comfortable with a paint brush in … Continue Reading

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It’s 10pm, do you know where your data is?

With the advent of OAuth, an open standard for authorization, you can easily sign up for new services and apps simply by relying on your Facebook and Google profiles. But that simplicity also makes it easy to give total strangers a window into our lives, as Wired’s Andy Baio explains in a recent post.

Instead of filling out a lot of forms and trying to remember a new password, you can just rely on the … Continue Reading

Jay-Z and Beyonce sidestep the paparazzi with a Tumblr for baby Blue Ivy Carter

It’s an empire state of mind. The world’s most famous musical couple has turned to New York’s Tumblr as the blogging platform of choice for showcasing the first photos of their new baby girl, Blue Ivy Carter.

Tumblr, founded by Manhattan’s David Karp, has defined itself as the best service for bloggers who want to showcase their creativity, especially through photos.

On their Tumblr, Jay-Z and Beyonce are clearly trying to nip the paparazzi in … Continue Reading

Along with CIA takedown, information compromised at Homeland Security by Anonymous

The pace of attacks by cyber vigilantes seems to be increasing in 2012. Yesterday news broke that the website of the CIA was down, an attack for which Anonymous claimed responsibility. Today CNN is reporting that attacks also hit government agencies in Mexico and Alabama, and that “information was compromised” at Alabama’s Department of Homeland Security.

In a release, Alabama Department of Homeland Security Director Spencer Collier said that his agency was conducting a forensic … Continue Reading

DEMO leaves Boulder, hits Boston, Chicago, LA, Austin, Singapore and more (photos)

As part of our mission to find the most exciting, disruptive tech for this season’s DEMO, we recently stopped off in Boulder, Colorado to check out the coolest startups in the region. Below are some photos from the meetup we had there.

Then we flew back to SF on Thursday, where we invited some exciting new companies to pitch at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, and found several we expect to invite to launch at … Continue Reading

GamesBeat weekly roundup: DICE Summit news and more

Here’s some of the stories that ran only on GamesBeat this week. We’re running more stories exclusively on the GamesBeat section of VentureBeat now, particularly when the stories are mainly of interest to game readers. The broader interest stories are running on VentureBeat as well. And please visit the GamesBeat section to catch up on game news. We’re ramping up our game coverage, so you’ll find more and more news at GamesBeat.

Here’s some of … Continue Reading

Instagram makes mobile photo-sharing more hip with filters, enhancements

Mobile photo-sharing service Instagram updated its application today with a new filter, enhancement feature, and a makeover to its user interface.

Instagram lets you take a photo with your iPhone and layer it with different filters for that extra hip look. You can then connect it to your social networks and share it with the Instagram community. Now, the company is introducing a new, sleeker interface that’s easier to navigate. The updates include a new … Continue Reading

Crowdtilt launches to group fund anything (and it means anything)

Crowdtilt, a new group-funding site backed by startup incubator Y Combinator, has launched today to help you fund anything. The site lets you group fund any project or goal you can come up with, from trips across the country to buying a wedding gift.

“Essentially, we’ve taken our favorite elements of crowdfunding platforms and provided them for groups of friends instead” Crowdtilt chief executive and co-founder James Beshara told VentureBeat in an email.

Crowdtilt’s focus … Continue Reading

Here’s what we REALLY thought about this week’s news (video)

Skyrim is awesome; Pinterest users need to calm the hell down; and Facebook users need to stay away from the gun cabinet.

In this week’s episode of VB Weekly, the VentureBeat writing staff takes a front seat, with a range of our editors and reporter spouting off about the stories they found most interesting.

This week, we’re talking about:

Steve Jobs’ FBI file
the crazy coming features for hit game Skyrim
Facebook’s all-new lightbox for

… Continue Reading