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Week in review: Modern Warfare 2 smashes records, Facebook co-founder’s Asana raises $9M

Here’s our rundown of the week’s business and tech news. (It’s a little shorter than normal due to the Thanksgiving holiday.) First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 smashes industry records — The latest in a parade of video game hits, Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has sold an estimated $550 million in the first five days of its release, bringing the entire Call of Duty series to $3 billion in sales.

16-year-old launches Vye music-sharing site. Another Napster? — With the help of close friends and family, Charles Allatt has launched Vye Music, which aggregates search results from other music sites.

What are Google’s real motivations behind Chrome OS? — A former Google employee (who wasn’t involved in the Chrome OS project) argues that people are missing some of the key implications behind the in-development, web-focused operating system.

Review: Multiplayer gaming makes Modern Warfare 2 live up to its hype — VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi says the sales juggernaut’s single-player campaign has strong gameplay but a weak plot, but it really excels in multiplayer mode.

And here are four more stories we thought were important, thought-provoking, or fun:

Facebook co-founder’s Asana raises $9M from Benchmark, Andreessen-Horowitz — The startup was founded by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and lead engineer Justin Rosenstein, who say they’re trying to reimagine productivity management.

Our top 10 gift ideas: Last year’s gadgets are worth the price — We look at 10 products or services that make good gifts because they’ve been around for a while, meaning the kinks are worked out and the prices are lower.

LinkedIn expands platform in an attempt to one-up Facebook Connect — The professional networking site is allowing external business applications to access your LinkedIn data (with your permission of course). The goal is to turn LinkedIn into your default professional identity across apps.

IPO talk revs up for Tesla Motors — Rumors swirled earlier this week that the electric car maker would be considering an initial public offering soon, though the company denied it. Speaking of Tesla, the city of Downey, Calif. is looking like a probable spot for the company’s assembly plant.

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Our top 10 gift ideas: Last year’s gadgets are now worth the price

Sometimes the newest gadgets are too far out on the bleeding edge. They don’t work out of the box, and they have a few too many bugs in their initial versions. They’re also usually too expensive. But the following list of 10 cool gift ideas focuses on products or services that have been around for a while. The kinks have been ironed out and the prices are lower.

They have sold well enough to move past the first generation, and now they have been refined into something that is far more useful, practical and inexpensive for consumers.

1. iPhone 3GS. The Apple iPhone debuted a couple of years ago and is now worth buying. Apple’s premiere cell phone is still the best smart phone around and is the gateway for more than 100,000 new apps that take you into the era of mobile computing. The 3GS, which debuted this summer, has features that earlier models should have had: multimedia messaging, video recording, and voice dialing. It’s also a lot faster and capable of displaying high-quality videos and 3-D games on the iPhone’s 3.5-inch touchscreen.

Available apps, including plenty of games, are turning into outstanding experiences. And with everything from Google Maps to the New York Times to a built-in compass, the 3GS brings a wealth of information that you need while on the go. Naysayers believe that other phone makers are going to catch up with Apple soon. But I don’t see that happening with any phones on the horizon. Price: $199 for 16 GB version with two-year AT&T plan and $299 for 32 GB version.

2. PlayStation 3 Slim. Sony debuted the PS 3 for $599 in 2006 — a crazy price for the typical video game player. This fall, it finally brought the machine down to earth, launching the smaller and slimmer PS 3 Slim at the reduced price of $299. This machine is finally starting to look like a bargain. It has a built-in Blu-ray player. What’s more, game developers such as Naughty Dog have finally created games (Uncharted 2: Among Thieves) that look far better than anything else on the market.

There are plenty of exclusives coming, including such games as the online multiplayer game MAG and the God of War III game that will make this console a must have. It’s time for both Microsoft and Nintendo to step up their game, or they may face some actual market share loss as Sony makes a comeback.

3. Amazon Kindle. The time has come for eBook readers. There are thousands of electronic books now available on the Amazon Kindle eBook reader, which has a six-inch screen. You can also get top newspapers, magazines, and blogs wirelessly downloaded to the device, which displays books in black and white. This week, Amazon extended the battery life of the Kindle by 85 percent — giving it seven days of battery life — and it upgraded the Kindle so that it can read Adobe PDF documents.

The overall eBook category is starting to move faster, with new devices in the offing. If you want to wait for something cooler, next year will bring new eBook readers from Plastic Logic, Barnes & Noble (whose Nook is sold out for now), and Spring Design. But the Kindle has a huge book selection, and it is working out its kinks on a daily basis. Price: $259.

4. Livescribe Pulse smartpen. Livescribe recently introduced its own app store for the Pulse smartpen, which is a writing pen that has a computer and display built into it. It can record the words you’re listening to as you write them and then will play back the recording as you move the pen over your written words. There are 5,500 apps makers working on new software to run on the pen. Some of the apps are creative; you can translate words from English to Spanish just by writing them and tapping a translation icon on the paper. You have to buy special paper for the pens, but there are lots of cool things you can do with them. They’re now on sale in 25 countries and at various retail outlets. Price: $169 for 2 gigabyte model; $199 for 4 GB.

5. Logitech Harmony 700 universal remote. This remote is pretty smart. It helps you take control of the jungle of equipment sitting in your AV rack around the TV. To program it, you look up the model numbers for all of your devices. The remote is compatible with 250,000 devices. Then you log into the Logitech web site and enter the devices. The remote will then set up special buttons such as “Watch TV.” The remote will turn on the TV and also set it to the right channel needed for viewing TV. It will leave your Tivo alone if that recorder has to be on all the time. And it will switch the inputs to the correct setting if you are playing an Xbox 360 game on an HDMI input or watching a DVD movie on a video input. In short, it gets rid of a lot of the hassles you have if you have multiple remotes and set-top boxes. It comes with rechargeable batteries. Price: $149.99.

6. HP TouchSmart PC. With the Windows 7 operating system, touchscreen computers are getting better and better. I remember when HP introduced its first touchscreen desktop computer in January, 2007. You couldn’t do much with it except tap on the screen as if you were clicking a mouse. Now, HP has introduced its third generation of the machines. With Windows 7, the touchscreen can recognize your gestures, much like you can pinch to resize images with two fingers on the iPhone. The software comes with built-in touch apps such as Hulu Desktop, Netflix (pictured right), Pandora, Twitter, and the HP Music Store by Rhapsody. You can just touch the screen to pick and play movies, music, or send messages.

The good thing about these models is that HP is including more software that makes use of the touchscreens. You can use the webcam to snap your picture and then use the software to create a virtual character based on your image. You can then distort the image and have a ball. It’s the same kind of fun program that is built into Apple’s Photo Booth application. The all-in-one TouchSmart 300 and HP TouchSmart 600 desktops have wide screens for high-definition content. The 300 version has a 20-inch diagonal screen, and the 600 (available Oct. 22) has a 23-inch model. The 300 starts at $899, and the 600 starts at $1,049.

7. Nanovor. OK, I cheated. This is actually a new product. (Then again, the latest fighting toy product isn’t new in a lot of ways. Webkinz managed to marry plush toys with codes to activate web experiences a while ago. And Pokemon has created an addictive, fun game play for years.) But Smith & Tinker’s Nanovor has taken a fresh crack at the idea of doing hybrid toys and web sites. You can connect two toy Nanoscopes together to fight with a friend in person, or you can manage your Nanovor creatures online and then fight in online battles. This hybrid model has a lot of promise. You can start playing for free on the Nanovor web site and then pay for upgrades as you need them. Online, you can customize your creatures, download them to the Nanoscopes, and then challenge other players to fight your custom creation. The Nanoscopes cost $49 for a pair.

8. Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ HD Media Player. Crowding around the PC to check out a bunch of family pictures is just no fun. Seagate’s second version of its theater product is built for people who don’t want to go to much trouble just to connect a PC to a flat-panel TV in a living room. You simply transfer your photos, videos or music to a FreeAgent Go external hard disk, which serves as a backup drive. Then you take the hard disk and plug it into the Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ HD Media Player. The theater plugs into the TV via an HDMI cable. (The earlier version didn’t have HDMI and was missing other essential features as well). With this setup, you can use a remote control to display all of your photos in a slide show on the TV set. You can also watch videos and listen to music. There are other ways to get your photos on your TV these days, but this one is pretty darn simple. And that’s what matters most these days. It costs $269 with a 500 gigabyte FreeAgent Go drive included.

9. EasyBloom Plant Sensor. If you don’t have a green thumb, this sensor will help you. You stick it in the ground for a day or so and wait as it collects soil and other data. Then you plug it into a computer and it recommends what you should grow in that soil. It takes into account the sunlight, moisture, and soil quality. It will tell you if it’s OK to grow tomatoes by the patio or parsley on the window sill. The sensor and web site make their recommendations based on horticultural expertise that takes into account micro climates and how various plants do in various settings. It makes sense to try it out, since most plants that Americans buy or plant die within the first year. Price: You can get it for $40 on Amazon.com. Also sold in Home Depot, Burpee and Brookstone stores.

10. Shutterfly photo books. These books have been around for a while. But it’s much easier these days to upload photos into a Shutterfly account and then create nicely designed photo books from them. You can pick which pictures will go on the cover and on the inside. The software automatically lays out the page, based on how many photos you want on each page. Once you’re done adding photos, you can press publish and the book will be shipped (at your cost) wherever you want it sent. It lets you have an instant self-published photo book. These are perfect gifts for kids, who have the fun of having a book all about them, or grandparents who have never seen photo books with this kind of good production value. It’s a lot of work to upload photos, but it’s not so bad once you get the hang of it. Price: $29.99 for an 8.5 x 11 photo book. Prices vary for other sizes. A 5 x7 photo book with a soft cover is only $12.99.

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HP Envy, dv8 Quad, Mini 311, and numerous other Windows 7 machines now available to order

Since today really needs a good heap of news to somewhat balance out yesterday’s glut, HP has updated its online store to give it an abundance of new and revised Windows 7 machines, including the Envy series (Beats edition and all), Pavilion dm3 with AMD Neo or Intel CULV chips, Core i7-packing dv6t/ dv7t / dv8t Quad editions, and the not-so-netbook CQ61. We’re still not seeing the previously-leaked dm1 ultraportable anywhere, but the Mini 311 and a slightly updated Mini 110 are, with the option to jump from Windows XP to 7 for a cool $50 / $30 respectively. Most everything in the store, desktops and laptops, has been updated to at least include Windows 7 as the standard shipping OS, and while all claim free 2-day shipping, estimated shipping dates begin sometime the week after 7’s Oct 22nd launch — no early chances here, folks. Browse the read links and keep an eye on the shiny red “new” icons (no flashing GIFs, we’re afraid) for the entire revised lineup.

Update: As a number of you have pointed, the Envy product page is a bit, well, sloppy. Typos and missing commas notwithstanding, it seems to biggest laugh is the cost of customization, i.e. $800 more to downgrade from a 500GB HDD to 320GB or 250GB (same price), or $900 more to downgrade from 6GB or 4GB of DDR3 memory. Yeah, it might be best to hold off on that one until HP get the kinks worked out.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Read – Desktop lineup
Read – Laptop lineup
Read – Envy series lineup

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

HP Envy, dv8 Quad, Mini 311, and numerous other Windows 7 machines now available to order originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Video: Pre virtual keyboard developing rapidly, gets easy install method

We know you just can’t wait to get typing on the Pre’s lush touchscreen, and the folks at WebOS Internals must feel the same way as they’ve been hard at work making their on-screen keyboard a functional reality. Installation has been made a breeze thanks to the Preware app, and usability seems to have improved markedly since the pre-alpha version, but a few kinks remain that need to be ironed out. Still, if you’re willing to put up with some buggy behavior and the potential for your Pre to melt into a puddle of fiery lava, then slide past the break to get educated on the how, what and where to download.

Continue reading Video: Pre virtual keyboard developing rapidly, gets easy install method

Filed under: Cellphones

Video: Pre virtual keyboard developing rapidly, gets easy install method originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook Begins Testing Facebook Lite, A Faster Simpler Version Of The Service

It looks like Facebook has tonight turned on a feature called “Facebook Lite” for some users to test out. We’re getting bombarded by tips about it, and some of us are seeing it as well. Unfortunately, it looks like it’s not fully ready for prime time yet, but we have more information and what looks to be a screenshot below, so keep reading.

So what is it? Well, it looks to be exactly what it says it is, a lighter version of Facebook. The beta tester message reads:

We are building a faster, simpler version of Facebook that we call Facebook Lite. It’s not finished yet and we have plenty of kinks to work out, but we would love to get your feedback on what we have built so far.

The URL for the feature is http://lite.facebook.com. So far, users are reporting not seeing much different about the site, if anything.

You’ll recall that MySpace launched a “lite” version for its profiles in April.

Update: Okay, while it seems that most of the users who are getting this message now are not seeing much different, earlier this week, it looks like a very select few may have gotten a sneak peak at Facebook Lite. According to their tweets on it, it appears to be a more Twitter-like. One user notes that it, “looks like a simplified version of twitter with comments enabled. On 2nd thought, it looks like simplified FriendFeed.”

That is of course very interesting since Facebook just bought FriendFeed for around $50 million yesterday.

Update 2: We just found a screenshot of what this apparently looks like. Again, this was taken a few days ago.

We are updating this.

[thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

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Warhammer Online coming to the Mac

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, Odds and ends

More good news for MMO players on the Mac: Warhammer Online has joined the ranks of EVE and of course World of Warcraft by announcing the release of a Mac-compatible client. Most of you already interested were probably playing with Boot Camp, but that hasn’t stopped Mythic from working on a Mac client. It’s in beta now (and free to current players, with a free trial available for those who haven’t stepped inside the MMO yet), and they’re aiming for a release in the Fall. And how nice is this: Mac players will get two titles of their own, as well as an exclusive in-game trophy.

Unfortunately, the client doesn’t run truly natively — Mythic is owned by EA, so, you guessed it, Transgaming’s Cider is behind this port, too. Cider isn’t always the best way to run games (native would be the way we’d like to see it), but many of the problems we’ve seen with the technology are a few years old now, so hopefully it’s gotten better (and that’s likely what this beta is all about) — hopefully they can work out all the kinks before the official release in the Fall.

Warhammer Online is an excellent MMO, especially notable for its heavy PvP elements and its innovative Public Quests and Tome of Knowledge feature (kind of like achivements, but even more in-depth). It’s a little late coming to our platform, but it’s good to finally see another big game take on Mac support.

TUAWWarhammer Online coming to the Mac originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The new Xbox Live dashboard update preview is… live!

That’s right kids. Netflix movie parties, avatar accessories, Games on Demand (though no proper Xbox 360 titles yet — this is just the preview after all). We just got the update and are exploring right now, so stay tuned. If you’re one of the select few, let us know in comments!

Some notable bits thus far:

• Netflix now has way, way more options. You can actually browse content via the app, which is great. As a commenter points out, HD content is now denoted with a tag.
• There isn’t any avatar prop content available just yet — hopefully we’ll get to pick out an awesome gun to carry around soon though.
• No Games on Demand content from the current gen console is available, but apparently the games will start rolling out in early August (sigh).
• As we noted in previous posts, the preview doesn’t boast any of the Last.fm, Facebook, or Twitter additions yet.
• We know they’re still working the kinks out, but there seems to be noticeable slowdown when shifting between pages, something we’ve never noticed before in the NXE.

Filed under: Gaming

The new Xbox Live dashboard update preview is… live! originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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