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<title>Haaze.com / claudjohao / Published News</title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com</link>
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<pubDate>Sun, 13 Feb 2011 08:10:02 +0000</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Adobe spells out Flash-y plans for Android]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=adobe-spells-out-flash-y-plans-for-android</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=adobe-spells-out-flash-y-plans-for-android</comments>
<pubDate>Sun, 13 Feb 2011 08:10:02 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>claudjohao</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=adobe-spells-out-flash-y-plans-for-android</guid>
<description><![CDATA[(Credit:Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)Adobe may be leaving the flashy announcements to Nokia and Sony Ericsson this Mobile World Congress, but there are some plans pertaining to Flash that will impact a wide swatch of Android smartphones andtablets going forward.Adobe shared mostly statistics in a press event before the show, but bobbing in the sea of performance numbers (like: over 20 million Android Flash downloads in first six months) were some nuggets of information that spell out Adobe's commitment to help fuel the high-speed Android train. (Don't worry, BlackBerry fans. There's news for you, too.)Flash Player 10.2Adobe says it will release a mobile-compatible version of Flash Player 10.2 for Android 3.0 Honeycomb and BlackBerry Tablet OS. The updated version is touted to vastly reduce the a device's CPU usage and battery drain by letting the phone's hardware rather than software decode and render video. The company has tested Flash Player 10.2 on the Motorola Xoom, on netbooks, and on &quot;other pre-release products,&quot; Adobe said' likely the BlackBerry PlayBook. Compatibility issues will apparently keep Flash 10.2 off other Android OSes for the time being, and there's no road map except the promise that Flash Player 10.2 &quot;will come to the first devices in the next few weeks&quot; on smartphones and tablets, and then ship on other devices.We're still trying to discern the smartphone end of Adobe's distribution claim. So far all its certified smartphones are Android 2.2 or older, which would make them ineligible for the new Flash Player by Adobe's own terms.WebM videoIn addition to releasing the current Flash Player, Adobe also told journalists that they are &quot;committed&quot; to building support for Google's WebM codec into Flash, although it's not announcing a timeline. Adobe did say it's working with Google to support WebM, giving developers the ability to choose between WebM or H.264, both high-definition video codecs.WebM, which comprises the VP8 video codec plus the Vorbis audio codec, was initially not included in Adobe's plans. Previously Adobe said they'd only support the VP8 video standard.Digital editionsAdobe will continue to encourage developers to use its desktop-based Creative Suite apps to package content like magazines for mobile devices. There are currently over 100 such apps for theiPhone andiPad, and support for developers to create digital editions for Android is coming next. 2011 projections Over 132 million smarpthones will support Flash, 36 percent of smartphones will ship with it, and more than 50 tablets will ship with Flash Player either enabled or installed--including WebOS, BlackBerry Tablet OS, and Android platforms. Additional reporting by Stephen Shankland. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[CES: Reborn Pleo dinobot more interactive, tough]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ces-reborn-pleo-dinobot-more-interactive-tough</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ces-reborn-pleo-dinobot-more-interactive-tough</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 07 Jan 2011 08:10:53 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>claudjohao</dc:creator>
<category>Social</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ces-reborn-pleo-dinobot-more-interactive-tough</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Pleo the pet robot dinosaur is back after basically going extinct in 2009. (Credit:Tim Hornyak/CNET)LAS VEGAS--Pleo is an autonomous toy dinosaur robot that became more or less fossilized in 2009 when the company behind it went extinct. But it's been relaunched atCES as Pleo Rb with improved interactive features, longer battery life, and better skin.  Pleo Rb (for &quot;reborn&quot;) is designed to be an emotional robot. The Life OS artificial-intelligence system in each Pleo has unique innate personality traits such as obedience and courage. They begin life as a hatchling Camarasaurus, either male (blue) or female (pink), and then go through infant and juvenile stages, interacting with their owner and the environment as they go through mood and health changes. Users can download personalities and behaviors from developer sites, and upload them to the robot via its SD card slot. Priced at $469, Pleo is packed with sensors to see, hear, and feel its environment. The reborn model has voice recognition to respond to a given name, motion sensing, awareness of the time of day, and even a temperature sensor that makes it shiver in a cold room. Infrared sensors enable it to communicate with other Pleos. When two males meet, they'll shout at each other, but a male and female will nuzzle. Meanwhile, the lithium polymer battery life has been upped to 120 to 150 minutes. One problem that earlier Pleos had was that the skin paint would flake easily (the Pleo Rb still comes with a cotton cape). Innvo Labs, the company currently distributing the toy, says the pacifier-like thermoplastic material has been reformulated to last far longer. Another new feature is Learning Stone technology--essentially plastic stones containing RFID chips. Like the patterned cards that came with Sony's Aibo robot dog, the stones trigger behaviors in Pleo such as dance, bow, count, sing, and come here. Other RFID accessories, such as a plastic leaf, enable Pleo to eat--and if it doesn't eat, it becomes a sick, irritable little dinosaur. Didn't Jurassic Park begin like that <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[WTF: How long before Zynga becomes the most valuable video game company]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=wtf-how-long-before-zynga-becomes-the-most-valuable-video-game-company</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=wtf-how-long-before-zynga-becomes-the-most-valuable-video-game-company</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>claudjohao</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=wtf-how-long-before-zynga-becomes-the-most-valuable-video-game-company</guid>
<description><![CDATA[It&amp;'s time to start taking bets on this question: Could Zynga become the most valuable company in the video game industryWith its rumored funding round of $500 million, Zynga&amp;'s value is estimated to be $10 billion. That puts the company far ahead of Electronic Arts, which has a market capitalization of $6.47 billion. Activision Blizzard is the industry&amp;'s most valuable company, valued at $13.3 billion. This may be &amp;''bubble money&amp;'' for sure. But like it or not, the video game industry is going to have to admit that the game is changing.At the rate that Zynga&amp;'s value has been growing, you can expect that it will likely surpass Activision Blizzard&amp;'s value. I know for a fact that the executives at Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard are thinking, &amp;''WTF&amp;'' How can this be Zynga is just around four years old, while EA and Activision Blizzard are among the oldest in the video game industry.On its face, it is absurd. EA&amp;'s projected revenue for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2011, is expected to be as high as $3.7 billion (non-GAAP). For calendar 2010, Activision Blizzard&amp;'s revenues were $4.8 billion (non-GAAP). EA and Activision both have more than 7,000 employees. Both are profitable on a non-GAAP basis.Zynga&amp;'s revenues in 2010 are estimated to be $850 million, with a profit of $400 million, according to confidential sources cited in a Wall Street Journal story. The company has more than 1,500 employees and it has been buying a game studio once a month. By comparison, EA has said it is on track to hit digital revenues of $750 million in the fiscal year that ends March 31.Back in October, Zynga&amp;'s value was a mere $5.27 billion, according to limited trading on secondary markets, where employees and other shareholders are allowed to sell their stock to well-heeled investors. At that point, its value surpassed EA&amp;'s. What did Zynga do to double its market value in a little more than three monthsIf you look at Zynga&amp;'s value in terms of a multiple of revenues, it is trading at more than 11 times 2010 revenue. Activision Blizzard is trading at around 2.7 times 2010 revenue, and EA is somewhere around 1.7 times revenue. Is somebody overvalued hereZynga is most likely being valued on the basis of its potential revenues and earnings' since it is growing at a faster rate, investors are naturally going to value it higher. And Zynga is clearly part of the rarefied social media technology club that also includes Facebook, whose value has soared to $50 billion in a recent funding' Groupon, valued at more than $6 billion' LinkedIn, which is preparing to go public' and Twitter, valued at $8 billion to $10 billion. To give you an idea of how this group&amp;'s value has grown, we wrote a story in 2008 asking, &amp;''Is Twitter worth $150 million&amp;''Zynga has attracted enormous investor interest since it cracked the  free-to-play gaming model, where the games are free but players pay for  virtual goods. Asian game companies have done that as well and it is worth noting that Tencent&amp;'s value is around $46 billion on the Chinese stock market. Most of China&amp;'s online game companies, however, are valued at under $4 billion.Zynga&amp;'s value has also grown in the past there months because it has moved past its first big  hit, FarmVille, with its new game CityVille becoming the fastest-growing game ever. Plus, ita4a4s getting serious about international expansion and mobile gaming (in the latter case through the acquisition of Words With Friends-maker Newtoy).Mark Cuban, the investor who made $5.7 billion selling Broadcast.com to Yahoo in the last dotcom bubble, said in an interview that we&amp;'re in a pyramid scheme, not a bubble. He said investments in the hot companies are like an &amp;''internet chain letter,&amp;'' where early venture capitalists are happily selling to late-stage venture capitalists, who are selling to private equity investors. Somewhere along the line, the last investor either gets caught holding the bag or the company goes public.You can argue that Zynga&amp;'s value isn&amp;'t real, since we&amp;'re in a bubble, and it is bound to deflate. But traditional game companies shouldn&amp;'t get comfortable with that thought. That&amp;'s because Zynga could use its valuation to buy assets with real value. It has been buying a small game studio every month, but it has built enough of a cash hoard to buy a traditional game maker. It can invest enough money in new games where it will become a threat to be reckoned with. That is how bubble value turns into real value.The naysayers have plenty of ammo, as they can argue that upstarts such as Zynga are still small in the grand scheme of things. Zynga learned during much of last year that being No. 1 is a fragile position' after FarmVille peaked, and before CityVille launched, Zynga was losing millions upon millions of users. Then a new hit game, CityVille, lifted it back into growth mode.Lots of brands are going to attack Zynga&amp;'s core market of Facebook games this year. But it will likely be very hard to dislodge Zynga, which has moved into a kind of self-perpetuating state. Zynga has to spend a lot of money on marketing to stay there, but as long as it has the cash, and can get more of it, Zynga is very formidable on Facebook.But let me point out the obvious. The gaming market&amp;'s growth isn&amp;'t done. With each major disruption, the audience tends to grow ten-fold, as noted by game pioneer Richard Garriott. We&amp;'ve seen that happen as social games exploded, reaching far more casual gamers than hardcore games ever did. And we could see this happen again with the arrival of game-capable mobile devices.The biggest area of growth in the coming years is likely to be games for tablets and smartphones. In that market, EA has a huge position, while Activision Blizzard isn&amp;'t a player. And Zynga is just getting started in competition with big Japanese companies such as DeNA, which bought Ngmoco for $403 million, or roughly 13 times revenues.If EA and Activision Blizzard think of themselves as console gaming companies, they aren&amp;'t thinking big enough. If Zynga thinks about itself as a Facebook company, it isn&amp;'t thinking big enough. Mobile gaming and the larger digital markets that go with it are going to be where the real value gets created, since the audience size will grow from the potential of 600 milllion Facebook to billions of users.Mobile gaming is where the battle royal is going to be. And nobody has that market locked up yet. If everybody&amp;'s dreams about mobile come true, then the valuations of game companies are low. Now how&amp;'s that for a WTF thought[photo credit: Joi]Previous Story: Zyngaa4a4s new funding values CityVille maker at $10BPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: CityVilleCompanies: Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Groupon, linkedin, Twitter, ZyngaPeople: Mark Pincus          Tags: CityVilleCompanies: Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Groupon, linkedin, Twitter, ZyngaPeople: Mark PincusDean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat. Have news to share Launching a startup Email: tips@venturebeat.comVentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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