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<title>Haaze.com / ecosavvy / Published News</title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com</link>
<description>Test Web 2.0 Content Management System</description>
<pubDate>Thu, 28 Apr 2011 07:10:53 +0000</pubDate>
<language>en</language>
<item>
<title><![CDATA[Yahoo Mail down, and users cry foul]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=yahoo-mail-down-and-users-cry-foul</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=yahoo-mail-down-and-users-cry-foul</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 28 Apr 2011 07:10:53 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>ecosavvy</dc:creator>
<category>Marketing and advertising</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=yahoo-mail-down-and-users-cry-foul</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Yahoo Mail, which boasts more than 250 million users worldwide, hasn't been working for many of them today.The company was vague about how many customers were hit by the outage, what the cause is, and how long the problem will last.&quot;Yahoo mail is currently inaccessible to some users,&quot; the company said in a statement. &quot;We are working to correct the issue and restore all functionality immediately. We know that this may have caused some inconvenience and we apologize to our users who might be affected.&quot;Spokesman Jason Khoury said the outage affected a &quot;small subset of customers.&quot;For the customers without mail, though, the outage trigged outrage, particularly on Twitter. Comments there ranged from the polite, such as @stickmantoo's &quot;May I just say I'm not a fan of yahoomail right now. fail&quot;, to the more helpless pleading of @susanborst, who tweeted, &quot;Come on yahoomail...upgrading servers...&quot;should clear up within a couple of hours&quot; really&quot;Add a comment if you are experiencing problems with Yahoo Mail.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[AT&T sweetens the iPhone pot with extra minutes]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=att-sweetens-the-iphone-pot-with-extra-minutes</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=att-sweetens-the-iphone-pot-with-extra-minutes</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 11 Feb 2011 08:10:32 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>ecosavvy</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=att-sweetens-the-iphone-pot-with-extra-minutes</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Yes please!(Credit:Amanda Caparoon)AT&amp;T isn't just getting aggressive with ads to tout theiPhone on its network versus Verizon's, it's giving away minutes as well.Many current AT&amp;T iPhone users have received text messages from their carrier today thanking them for being loyal customers, and while the text doesn't say so, we're sure it's also a thanks for not switching during Verizon's underwhelming iPhone launch this week.  The text comes with instructions to reply with &quot;yes&quot; to receive 1,000 extra rollover minutes. AT&amp;T tells us these will be applied to each iPhone on the account.The texts are coming from the number 11113020, and when a user replies with the &quot;yes,&quot; another text is received saying that the minutes will be applied in the coming weeks.  With our testing, we found that iPhone users can simply text &quot;yes&quot; to the SMS number and get the deal, though we can't say yet if it applies to all iPhone customers or just those with contracts expiring soon.So, iPhone-using Crave readers, why not give it a try and tell us back here if it worked for you Really, it couldn't hurt.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Microsoft to drop 3D, plug-in need in Bing Maps]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-to-drop-3d-plug-in-need-in-bing-maps</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-to-drop-3d-plug-in-need-in-bing-maps</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 02 Nov 2010 07:10:02 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>ecosavvy</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-to-drop-3d-plug-in-need-in-bing-maps</guid>
<description><![CDATA[This story was updated at 4:50 p.m. PDT with a new headline, and additional comment from Microsoft.Microsoft has taken the covers off a future update to its Bing Maps service that removes the need for its Silverlight browser plug-in to view an alternate mapping layer, and has also announced that it plans to remove its 3D map viewer. The changes will arguably make the service more approachable to the masses, but indicate that the company is going in a different direction with its online tools and technology platforms.In a post on the Bing community blog, Bing Maps Product Manager Brian Hendricks detailed two big changes to the company's online mapping service.The first of those is the removal of the 3D maps layer, which lets users see 3D renderings of some buildings, as well as landscape topography. Microsoft first introduced the 3D feature in early 2007, and it's since come to include nearly 70 cities around the world. To make sure the removal of 3D doesn't litter the Web with a bunch of non-working URLs, the company is changing every map link, map tour, and desktop shortcut to simply direct users to whatever part of the map the 3D version had been pointing to. Buildings that had been 3D models before will also become pushpin locations.The other change coming to Bing Maps is more subtle and may even go unnoticed by many. Users no longer need to have Silverlight installed to use Bing Maps' bird's-eye view. This is the isometric view that the company has used in addition to top-down photography to give users a better sense of two-dimensional scale. Here's the difference compared to your standard aerial view:According to Hendricks, this change was due to the company's efforts with Ajax, which, as Hendricks notes, allows people to use the feature &quot;without custom plug-ins for individual features.&quot; That also means bird's-eye view will work on mobile devices that may not have been able to run the Silverlight runtime.(left) Bing&amp;39's aerial view provides a top-down view, while (right) bird&amp;39's-eye is taken at a 45-degree angle.(Credit:Josh Lowensohn/CNET)The changes go along well with Microsoft's push to implement Web standards in the browser, as was presented at the company's Professional Developers Conference, which took place last week. But at the same time, it also muddles the message the company has been pushing since yesterday, that it still believes Silverlight to be an important technology, and one that can differentiate itself from existing Web services. Saying the same thing can now be done with Ajax, the technology Silverlight was utilized to replace just less than a year ago, does not say much for its future as part of the company's online services strategy.Update: A Microsoft spokesperson has released a statement clarifying some of the changes mentioned in the company's post:Today's announcement on the Bing Maps blog was around the end of life of the Active X-based 3D Map control and it has nothing to do with our commitment to Silverlight. We continue to invest in Silverlight functionality, which delivers the richest possible experience for our users' specifically through our map apps that run in the browser on the PC and the Silverlight map control forWindows Phone 7 applications.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Android adds to dominance of smartphone market]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=android-adds-to-dominance-of-smartphone-market</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=android-adds-to-dominance-of-smartphone-market</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 01 Nov 2010 07:10:11 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>ecosavvy</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=android-adds-to-dominance-of-smartphone-market</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Google's Android operating system continues to outpace the competition in the U.S., market researchers Canalys and NPD Group have found.According to Canalys, Google's Android platform was running on 43.6 percent of all the smartphones purchased in the United States in the third quarter. It was followed by Apple's iOS, which captured 26.2 percent market share, and Research In Motion's OS, which tallied 24.2 percent share. Microsoft's mobile OS held 3 percent market share in the quarter.NPD reported similar results to Canalys. NPD found that Android was running on 44 percent of smartphones bought during the third quarter, though it claims Apple's market share was 23 percent. RIM was just behind Apple with 22 percent market share, according to NPD. The market researcher asserts that Android's growth over the second quarter--about 11 percentage points--was stolen from &quot;RIM, rather than Apple.&quot;&quot;The HTC Evo 4G, Motorola Droid X, and other new high-end Android devices have been gaining momentum at carriers that traditionally have been strong RIM distributors,&quot; NPD executive director Ross Rubin said today in a statement. &quot;And the recent introduction of the BlackBerry Torch has done little to stem the tide.&quot;As disappointing as it might be for Apple to see Google take the top spot in the mobile OS market, the company can find solace in the fact that theiPhone 4 was the best-selling mobile phone in the quarter, according to NPD. In fact, four of the five top-selling handsets were smartphones, NPD said.The iPhone 4 was followed by RIM's BlackBerry Curve 8500 series and the LG Cosmos, which is a messaging phone not a smartphone. The Android-based Motorola Droid X and HTC Evo 4G rounded out the top five.As popular as the iPhone has been, it's hard to see how Apple will be able to keep pace with Google. Canalys found that worldwide, Android was running on &quot;more than 20 million units&quot; sold during the third quarter. That figure represents a whopping 1,309 percent gain year over year, compared with the 1.4 million Android-based devices sold in the third quarter last year.Android's strong third quarter follows a similarly blistering second quarter. During that period, Android was running on 33 percent of all smartphones sold in the U.S., NPD reported at the time. Android was followed by RIM and Apple with 28 percent and 22 percent of the market, respectively.Going forward, many researchers believe Google's mobile OS will continue to see similar successes. Gartner said in September that it believes Android will own 29.6 percent of the worldwide mobile market by 2014, trailing only Symbian with 30.2 percent share. In a similar report, IDC said it expects Symbian to have 32.9 percent worldwide market share in 2014, while Android will have 24.6 percent share. RIM and Apple would own 17.3 percent and 10.9 percent of the worldwide market, respectively.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Will Trion World&'s Rift online game kill World of WarCraft (interview)]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=will-trion-worldrsquos-rift-online-game-kill-world-of-warcraft-interview</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=will-trion-worldrsquos-rift-online-game-kill-world-of-warcraft-interview</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>ecosavvy</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=will-trion-worldrsquos-rift-online-game-kill-world-of-warcraft-interview</guid>
<description><![CDATA[No one at Trion Worlds has promised that the company&amp;'s first fantasy role-playing online game, Rift: Planes of Telara, will be a World of WarCraft killer. Indeed, many makers of massively multiplayer online games have tried to knock out Blizzard Entertainment&amp;'s online subscription game, but WoW has ruled for six years and it just got a major upgrade with World of WarCraft: Cataclysm, which sold 3.3 million units in a day. But that doesn&amp;'t intimidate the folks at Trion Worlds, which has raised more than $100 million and has more than 200 people working on a variety of MMOs. Of course, beating WoW is the ultimate prize, since WoW has more than 12 million paying subscribers and it generates more than $1 billion in revenue per year for Activision Blizzard.Rift is in the midst of closed beta testing, and I&amp;'ve had a look at the beta version up close. The graphics are beautiful and the unscripted dynamic events, where the world can change in an instant, are working as advertised. We had a chance to catch up with David Reid, head of marketing at Trion Worlds in Redwood City, Calif. (and former marketing chief for Microsoft&amp;'s Xbox 360) about the upcoming game, and here&amp;'s what he had to say:VB: You&amp;'ve been working for a long time on this game &amp;8212' more than five years. What are you doing with the beta testing nowDR: The beta process is about testing scalability. How many players can we support Ita4a4s about getting some feedback from a number of real users so that we can tune some of these last knobs. But in a lot of ways, beta will be almost like a launch for us. We know that a number of MMO companies have made the mistake of going out with the beta with a product that really should not have been characterized as a beta. They paid for it. We are not doing that kind of a beta. [Laughs]VB: You&amp;'re getting close to releaseDR: We feel like we are very close to release-level quality. We are tuning. We are polishing. We are scaling.VB: So after five years, you&amp;'re not making money on this game yet.DR: Not yet, but really darn soon. What day of the month is itVB: How will the launch proceedDR: Herea4a4s probably how it works. The best game companies launch their newest titles with a presale program. That is the point where the consumer can put money down for the game. Technically, when that happens, the game won&amp;'t be formally live. It will still be in testing. But we are going to treat it as if it were the real launch. We will have 24/7 support in all languages. We will treat these players as if they are paying customers. We&amp;'re very close to that right now. We&amp;'ll open it up to the public for a large beta test soon.VB: At that point, you will have tens of thousands of people playingDR: Absolutely. I cana4a4t disclose specific numbers of the beta, but we are in the midst of some very large beta test events now and we just keep scaling it up. The first beta event was just the data center in Dallas, and so Europeans were in the beta, but they were playing on Dallas servers. We are opening a data center in Amsterdam for the European users. Operationally, that&amp;'s very important for us. We&amp;'ll bring up the different languages over time.VB: The whole idea of a &amp;''Rift&amp;'' is that you can open up a portal into the world and flood it with monsters. Then the players all go to that area and fight off the invasion. How many people can you concentrate in one place in the worldDR: Thata4a4s a question with many potential answers. Because therea4a4s the geographic point of it and then there is the hardware server part of it. The servers have multiple sections, or shards. Right now, we are figuring out how many people on a shard is too many. But what is unique about our game is that you can have a very large number of players all in one place and you can interact with all of them. You don&amp;'t have to worry that you can&amp;'t find your friends because they are in a different region or a different server. When a Rift opens, it is a dynamic event. The Rifts can happen in any geographic location and you can have lots of them at once. We have shown in our beta testing that all of that is working properly. We will ramp this up to an industrial scale.VB: Is the game designed to be split into shards at allDR: It is a game with shards. But we are being very careful about not locking people to particular servers and things like that. MMOs have always had that kind of problem. MMOa4a4s, by their nature, are incredibly social experiments, right And people in Europe want to play with people in North America, and people in North America want to play with people in Australia, and thata4a4s just how these communities have been built online as opposed to a pick-up basketball game in your neighborhood.So if you lock those servers and youa4a4re not letting those people play with friends, then you are, by definition, fracturing those communities. We have to do this well because we are going into a territory where there are well-established brands that already have communities rallied around them. We want to win with the people who play these games regularly. If they have a guy in their group who is in New Zealand, you have to bring them all into the game together. This is something wea4a4ve been really focused on.VB: So you can manage this game by throwing in more servers when you have peak usageDR: In full transparency, Ia4a4m probably not the ideal guy to answer that level of question. But what I can tell you is that we do have with both the Dallas data center and the Amsterdam data center. We have servers operating in a beta process and we can fire more of them up as the population grows. We can add more firepower to the servers if there are more people or if we are going to amp up the events in the game, such as create sharper artificial intelligence, better physics, or more Rifts. One thing we are looking at is how many Rifts should be occurring in a given zone of the game so that a player can feel like they have a lot to choose from. What level of that is fun One thing we want to communicate to the player is that they will start with all of the features that they expect to have in a AAA quality game. You have your zones, dungeons, quests, character classes, fashions, monsters &amp;8212' and on top of that is this dynamic layer where the Rifts open in the world and change the environment of the game dynamically. The dynamic layer is what causes the social play, because you have to rally with your friends to stop the Rifts. It impacts your decisions as a gamer and the decisions of the groups of gamers as well.VB: What is your marketing message these days about your game being the &amp;''WOW killer&amp;''DR: Well, to be clear, no one in Trion has ever said that, and I dona4a4t think anybody in Trion ever will. If you look at the lineage of great MMOs, starting with Ultima Online, you see generational improvements. Ultima Online was the first commercial success in the MMO business, but it was two-dimensional and weighted toward players fighting other players. That wasn&amp;'t much fun for the new players. EverQuest came along with 3D animation and players fighting against the environment. It was a real commercial success and it was prettier. Still, it had its bugs. World of WarCraft came along in 2004. It was an improvement on what came before and it was very polished. Within that game, you could have some great solo experiences. Other games have tried to emulate it.We think of Rift as the next step in that evolution of product. Wea4a4ve taken a look at what World of WarCraft and others in that generation of MMOs have done and done really well. There were really innovative things that happened in Warhammer Online and in the Age of Conan. But those two products, in particular, didna4a4t, of course, capture everything that a World of Warcraft player was looking for. The players didn&amp;'t migrate from WoW.In part, Rift is our love letter to the players who played the games that came before us. We love those games and we think this is the next generation, much like players move on to a new console with every generation.VB: So WoW just went through that big change with Cataclysm. I guess you can do the same kind of upgrade just about every dayDR: Yes. And that is a bit of what the engine of the Rift game and our End of Nations game is about. For all of the interconnected play that you have in an MMO, those worlds are still remarkably static. There isn&amp;'t much to do until a patch or a giant expansion comes out. And what the portal mechanic in Rift does is add a level of real life variability. Ita4a4s the first time really that in an MMO, you have the beginnings of emergent game play of things that will happen in this game that the developers arena4a4t able to predict and that the players are going to have a real hand in deciding. If a Rift opens on a town, you can help save it or you can wait for it to do its work.VB: Is the audience for these games as large as ever, or are the free games sucking out a lot of the paying playersDR: It has been fun to watch the industry evolve. We sit right here next door to one of the worlda4a4s largest publishers (Electronic Arts). Those kinds of publishers are putting a lot of focus on what Ia4a4ll call the shallow end of online gaming: the casual, the mobile, the social. Those are all really fine businesses, but at the end of the day, we still think that it is the gamer who spends the most money especially in tough economic times. These are people who will forego other things and will eat ramen noodles for weeks if thata4a4s what it takes to pay for their Xbox Live subscription or their MMO subscription. That audience is very demanding. For them, you have to build a great, immersive product. In the past couple of years, the MMO businesses have not served this customer well. They have launched games that needed more time or innovation or just better quality.We are capitalized well enough here that wea4a4re not making that same mistake. As I said, for us, the beta test is really like a launch in a lot of ways. We&amp;'re not bringing a half-finished product to market.VB: You made a reference to All Points Bulletin, which failed miserably after five years of development. You don&amp;'t interpret that failure as bad for the whole MMO marketDR: No, we dona4a4t. I think a lot of people could see those things coming and it wasn&amp;'t just APB. Final Fantasy XIV had a very rough start. There are other games over the past few years. It isna4a4t that the market isna4a4t there. It just comes down the fact that if you have quality product, gamers are willing to pay for it. But dona4a4t try to convince them your product is high quality and charge them a high price if it&amp;'s not. That is the road to death.VB: Are you tempted to play around with different business models because the industry has changed so muchDR: Sure. There is a lot to think about there. It is, you know, from a business perspective, a very exciting time. Innovation is important, in both the game, the marketing and the business model. With Rift, we will use the standard approach. We will sell a premium product in digital form as a download or in a retail store. We will charge an appropriate price and have a monthly service fee that you pay after your first 30 days have passed.VB: You have developed a flexible server infrastructure for your game. How will you make use of thatDR: We can do updates. We will do some handcrafted design and launch it on a regular basis. But we can also change just a bit every single day, every couple of hours, whatever, as players react to and encounter dynamic content. Now, we have big plans on this front because this is part of whata4a4s really new and special about what wea4a4re doing. Those plans are nothing I can talk directly about yet, but I will tell you that it is something that makes you think hard about how the customer encounters your product and experiences it. There are critical moments in a consumera4a4s mindset of, &amp;8216'Am I having enough fun to continue paying for this game&amp;' and we think very hard about when to uncork more awesomeness in our dynamic layer of things to satisfy a very difficult customer who is used to some very high quality product.VB: I saw a report that said someone had reached the highest level possibly in Cataclysm on the day it came out.DR: That kind of gamer is going to be part of our audience. I am not surprised. Again, it only added five new levels. I&amp;'m impressed with that player, but I&amp;'m not shocked. People take a lot of pride in being the first to race through the content. As a publisher, that terrifies you. It means your work is never done. But it&amp;'s also something you admire in the audience.VB: So, thata4a4s the kind of thing you will be ready forDR: It is different for us. We have a very different kind of MMO with dynamic content. When you hit the highest level, you haven&amp;'t finished all the content. When you hit our level cap, you don&amp;'t have to leave the game.The challenge for the publisher is that once someone hits the highest level, they will still have awesome game play experiences.VB: If you look back on the five-plus years, how would you say you made good use of that time Sometimes when a game takes that long to finish, it&amp;'s a bad sign because of the cost overruns or because the design becomes outdated.DR: That&amp;'s right. Ita4a4s a hard business, right And you look back and therea4a4s probably any number of small things you look at and say, a4AYes, we could have squeezed that a little more efficiently. But a large amount of what you get with the time and the financing that the time gives you is the ability to bring in a great team of people. Then you give them the time to get the chemistry right and build what they want to build. The soul of this product is the ambition behind it and the polishing that has gone into making it right. You can&amp;'t do these games without huge investments, awesome talent, and a lot of time. For venture financing, $100 million sounds like a lot. But these are really ambitious projects, and you have to be in this league to be competitive. We have used that money to build not one game but to commission a number of games that are all very groundbreaking.VB: Did you guys get some benefit from seeing Blizzarda4a4s leaked release scheduleDR: It got headlines everywhere and we looked at it like everyone else. But I don&amp;'t think we would change any of our plans based on internet rumor.  Check out a video recording of one of the unscripted Rift scenes in action below.Previous Story: Founder Institutea4a4s Adeo Ressi says you cana4a4t teach entrepreneurship (video)PrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: massively multiplayer online game, mmo, Rift, Rift: Planes of TelaraCompanies: Blizzard Entertainment, Trion WorldsPeople: David Reid          Tags: massively multiplayer online game, mmo, Rift, Rift: Planes of TelaraCompanies: Blizzard Entertainment, Trion WorldsPeople: David ReidDean 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.VentureBeat 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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<title><![CDATA[FarmVille co-creator working on stealthy startup BetterWorks]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=farmville-co-creator-working-on-stealthy-startup-betterworks</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=farmville-co-creator-working-on-stealthy-startup-betterworks</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>ecosavvy</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=farmville-co-creator-working-on-stealthy-startup-betterworks</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Is your job about to get a lot more addictive Maybe &amp;8212' Sizhao Yang, one of the original team members behind insanely popular Facebook game FarmVille, is working on a new startup called BetterWorks that wants to create &amp;''rewarding work environments.&amp;''Yang was co-founder and chief executive of virtual environment startup MyMiniLife, whose team worked with Zynga to develop FarmVille. In August 2009, shortly after FarmVille started to take off, Zynga acquired MyMiniLife, and the companya4a4s founders joined the Zynga team. And FarmVille has continued to grow, becoming Zyngaa4a4s flagship title and also one of the main targets for critics who say Zynga is little more than a copycat. (CityVille finally unseated FarmVille this week as Zyngaa4a4s biggest game.)According to Yanga4a4s LinkedIn page, he left Zynga in November 2010 to join BetterWorks, where is he&amp;'s serving as the chief operating officer and chief financial officer. The company is still in stealth mode, so both Yang and co-founder/CEO Paige Craig said ita4a4s too early to talk about the product. On its web site, the company says ita4a4s working on a product that a4Aallows business owners to create rewarding work environments quickly, easily and affordably.&amp;''Yang and Craig are both angel investors, while George Ishii, the third co-founder, was the a co-founder of Geni, the startup that eventually became micro-blogging service Yammer. The company is based in Santa Monica, Calif.[image of Yang via the BetterWorks blog]Previous Story: Is Skype about to release video-calling for mobile devicesPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: FarmvilleCompanies: BetterWorks, MyMiniLife, ZyngaPeople: George Ishii, Paige Craig, Sizhao Yang          Tags: FarmvilleCompanies: BetterWorks, MyMiniLife, ZyngaPeople: George Ishii, Paige Craig, Sizhao YangAnthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining the site in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. (All story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com) You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.VentureBeat 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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<title><![CDATA[China&'s LDK Solar takes $33 million stake in Solar Power]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=chinarsquos-ldk-solar-takes-33-million-stake-in-solar-power</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=chinarsquos-ldk-solar-takes-33-million-stake-in-solar-power</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>ecosavvy</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=chinarsquos-ldk-solar-takes-33-million-stake-in-solar-power</guid>
<description><![CDATA[In a move to beef up demand for its product, Chinese solar wafer manufacturer LDK Solar announced today it has acquired a 70 percent stake valued at $33 million in solar project developer Solar Power Inc. (SPI).The deal should create demand for LDK&amp;'s modules by offering up the California-based SPI&amp;'s portfolio of projects, which include utility-scale power plants. It has also developed commercial-scale distributed generation projects at a Costco building and the Staples Center in Los Angeles and also manufactures solar modules and tracking systems. SPI gains in the deal by getting a strengthened balance sheet' it will also sell to LDK some manufacturing equipment and hand over control of its former module manufacturing facility in Shenzhen, China.LDK&amp;'s shares rose this week on news it raised $240 million by selling a minority stake in its polysilicon unit to investors, and the company alsoreported strong order books for 2011. It has a financial support from the government via credit lines at state-run banksdespite having shaky financials, according to the Motley Fool.The deal exemplifies two trends in the solar market right now. Firstly, it showsthe move among manufacturers to buy up projects to ensure demand for its products. One major deal of that vein happened last fall when panel maker Sharp purchased for $305 million solar project developer Recurrent Energy. Top global panel manufacturers SunPower and First Solar have also purchased and developed their own solar projects around the world to lock in continued demand for their products and services. In the case of a recent SunPower deal, it designed and built a solar park in Italy then sold it to a new group of owners, but will continue to supply maintenance and operations.Secondly, the deal showcases another example of cross-pollination between Chinese and U.S. solar companies. While Chinese manufacturers have pushed prices down thanks to government subsidies &amp;8212' to the dismay of some U.S. solar contenders &amp;8212' they have also teamed with American companies for cutting-edge components. For example, Innovalight sells its efficiency-boosting solar panel ink to Chinese manufacturerslike JinkoSolar. Startup Azuray has inked deals to provide its solar harvest optimization technology to Chinese solar panel and parts manufacturers Suntech and Renhe.Next Story: SiBeam leads charge on next-generation wireless home networking Previous Story: Motorola and LG announce 4G tablets running Android 3.0PrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: Solar, solar manufacturing, solar project developer, solar waferCompanies: Azuray, First Solar, Innovalight, JinkoSolar, LDK Solar, Renhe, Solar Power Inc., SunPower          Tags: Solar, solar manufacturing, solar project developer, solar waferCompanies: Azuray, First Solar, Innovalight, JinkoSolar, LDK Solar, Renhe, Solar Power Inc., SunPowerIris Kuo is the VentureBeat's lead GreenBeat writer. She has reported for The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong, Houston Chronicle, the McClatchy Washington Bureau and Dallas public radio. Iris attended the University of Texas at Dallas and lives in Houston. Follow Iris on Twitter @thestatuskuo (and yes, that's how you  pronounce her last name).VentureBeat 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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<title><![CDATA[iPad 2 appears set for April with iPod Touch cameras]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ipad-2-appears-set-for-april-with-ipod-touch-cameras</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ipad-2-appears-set-for-april-with-ipod-touch-cameras</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>ecosavvy</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ipad-2-appears-set-for-april-with-ipod-touch-cameras</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Expect  to see Applea4a4s iPad 2 in April &amp;8212' a year after the original iPad hit  store shelves &amp;8212' according to a report by Digitimes, which points out that Apple has also added five new printed circuit board (PCB) suppliers for the tablet.Additionally,  therea4a4s a chance that the iPad 2 will sport the same cameras being  used in the most recent iPod Touch, 9to5 Mac reports.Digitimes  says that the new PCB suppliers will begin shipping a4Aany-layer HDIa4  PCBs &amp;8212' a technique that leads to finer circuit patterns, which are  ideal for phones and tablets &amp;8212' in small amounts between late February  and early March, with mass shipments set to begin in April. The news  fits in with a previous Digitimes report that said Apple would begin shipping iPad 2s in February and have the device available for sale in April.As  for the camera news, all signs are pointing to the iPad 2  having front and rear cameras, the real question now is what their  resolution will be. If 9to5Maca4a4s information &amp;8212' which was dug up from an  Apple developer kit &amp;8212' is to be believed, the iPad 2 will sport a VGA  quality front-facing camera and a 1 megapixel rear camera. Those specs  are about the same as what the current iPod Touch supports.News  of a front-facing VGA camera isna4a4t a huge surprise, but it&amp;'s  disappointing. The iPhone 4 features a similar VGA-quality front camera,  but other tablets like Samsunga4a4s Galaxy Tab feature higher quality 1  megapixel shooter. A rear 1 megapixel camera definitely seems too low &amp;8212'  the Galaxy Tab offers a 3 megapixel rear camera.I  wouldna4a4t get too upset yet, though, as therea4a4s a very good chance the  information 9to5Mac pulled hasna4a4t yet been updated with correct  specifications for the iPad 2.Next Story: With Schmidt out as CEO, Google can stop copying Microsoft Previous Story: Deals &amp;038' More: Five9 raises $8.6M to handle customer calls in the cloud, CWR Mobility grabs $1.5M for mobile CRMPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: cameras, iOS, iPad, iPad 2, tabletsCompanies: Apple          Tags: cameras, iOS, iPad, iPad 2, tabletsCompanies: AppleDevindra Hardawar is VentureBeat's lead mobile writer and East Coast correspondent. He studied philosophy at Amherst College, worked in IT support for several years, and has been writing about technology since 2004. He now lives in Brooklyn, New York. You can reach him at devindra@venturebeat.com (all story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com), and on Twitter at @Devindra. 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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<title><![CDATA[Biggest shopping boom since before the recession continues]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=biggest-shopping-boom-since-before-the-recession-continues</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=biggest-shopping-boom-since-before-the-recession-continues</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>ecosavvy</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=biggest-shopping-boom-since-before-the-recession-continues</guid>
<description><![CDATA[There is no such thing as an online Grinch. The biggest holiday spending boom since before the recession continued on Monday, which was known as Green Monday. Physical store retail sales are up as well as e-commerce shopping by consumers.In the first 43 days of the November-December shopping season, consumers have spent $23.82 billion online in the U.S., according to market researcher comScore. That&amp;'s up 12 percent from the same period a year ago. For the week ending Dec. 12, spending was $5.31 billion, up 12 percent. And on Monday Dec. 13, online sales were $954 million, up 12 percent from a year ago. Green Monday is the day when online sales typically peak, as after this date many online retailers can&amp;'t guarantee they can ship goods for arrival before Christmas. But this year, retailers are guaranteeing on-time delivery and free shipping for sales through Dec. 17.Most of the big shopping days have been strong this year, with Thanksgiving Day sales up 28 percent, Black Friday (Nov. 26) sales up 9 percent, and Cyber Monday (Nov. 29) sales up 16 percent. Green Monday was the second-heaviest online spending day on record, behind Cyber Monday, which topped $1 billion, said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore. The rest of this week should see an online shopping frenzy, as two-thirds of consumers still haven&amp;'t finished their holiday shopping, comScore said.Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that physical retail sales rose 0.8 percent in November from a month before, reaching their highest level since 2007. Sales are up 7.8 percent for the three months ending in November. The surge pushed stocks to a new two-year high.[Top photo: Reuters]Previous Story: WikiLeaks roundup: Assange granted bail but still jailed, 3 hackers arrested, Air Force blocks access to cablesPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, e commerce, Green Monday, online salesCompanies: comscorePeople: Gian Fulgoni          Tags: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, e commerce, Green Monday, online salesCompanies: comscorePeople: Gian FulgoniDean 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.VentureBeat 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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<title><![CDATA[Can Nexon make social games more engaging (video)]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=can-nexon-make-social-games-more-engaging-video</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=can-nexon-make-social-games-more-engaging-video</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>ecosavvy</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=can-nexon-make-social-games-more-engaging-video</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Nexon has proven to be one of the fastest-growing online game companies of the past decade. The Korean company pioneered the microtransactions/free-to-play business model, where users play for free and buy virtual goods with real money. In the past five years, Nexon&amp;'s Maplestory game has signed up more than 100 million users, including 7 million in the U.S., and its games are some of the most engaging on the web.Now the company is setting its sites on social games on Facebook and mobile games on tablets and smartphones as well. It wants to succeed through something that hasn&amp;'t really been tried in Facebook games yet: hooking users through engaging game play, rather than via casual &amp;''snack&amp;''-type games.In the struggle between hardcore and casual, casual games have won so far on Facebook. Simpler games such as CityVille and FrontierVille have had much better luck reaching audiences. But Daniel Kim, chief executive of Nexon America in Los Angeles, believes social games will continue to evolve' he notes that in early Hollywood, most of the successful movies were Westerns. Only later did the industry evolve other types of films.Like many other game companies, 16-year-old Nexon faces a tough transition. Maplestory and other Nexon games are hefty online titles that have to be downloaded. By contrast, Facebook games are often light and casual, built with Flash animation and played instantly via web browsers. Even though Nexon is one of the giants of online games, it&amp;'s new to social and mobile games.Kim said in an interview at the Dice Summit video game conference in Las Vegas that Nexon&amp;'s focus is on connected games, building online community, and creating competition that drives engagement. Despite the slowdown in game industry growth, Nexon&amp;'s formula has kept its rate of growth high, Kim said. Altogether, Nexon is operating more than 30 games as online services across the world. Most of that is on the PC. But Nexon now wants to move on to a variety of platforms.In an interview with Nexon&amp;'s Kim last year, we talked about the dinosaurs of the game industry (console game makers), the mammals (the free-to-play online game companies) the rats (the social game companies on Facebook), and the cockroaches (the mobile game makers). The question is, who among these different rivals is going to inherit the EarthNexon manages to hang on to its players for a long time, with many of them playing for months. A higher percentage of Nexon&amp;'s users convert to paid users than is normal. To try to get Facebook players, who often play for just five minutes a day, to switch to longer engagement times is a challenge.Nexon is working with two outside studios, Antic of Canada and One2Tribe in Poland. The goal is to get Nexon to move as fast as a startup. It aims to get double-digit payment rates, double-digit average revenue per user, double-digit tens of millions of users playing, and double-digit months of engagement. Nexon&amp;'s games are played by users for hours per session, compared to a matter of minutes for social games. And Nexon&amp;'s numbers of concurrent users, or the number playing at any given time, hit new peaks for Maplestory in December after the company launched a major update to the game.&amp;''When it comes to engagement, I feel Nexon has a 10-year head start,&amp;'' Kim said. &amp;''But we are trying to move into new platforms and to do that via engagement.&amp;''It may be late compared to rivals such as Zynga, but Kim says the market is just getting started.Check out my video interview with Nexon&amp;'s Kim below.Next Story: Nokiaa4a4s Windows Phone 7 concept devices look like sexy beasts Previous Story: Entrepreneur Corner: Ignoring common sense and keeping poachers at bayPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: Dice Summit, MapleStoryCompanies: Daniel KimPeople: Daniel Kim          Tags: Dice Summit, MapleStoryCompanies: Daniel KimPeople: Daniel KimDean 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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<title><![CDATA[Privacy setting on Facebook financials to change in 2012]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=privacy-setting-on-facebook-financials-to-change-in-2012</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=privacy-setting-on-facebook-financials-to-change-in-2012</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>ecosavvy</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=privacy-setting-on-facebook-financials-to-change-in-2012</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A document sent to potential Facebook investors suggest that the social networking company intends hold its initial public offering by mid-2012, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, though there still plenty of ambiguity about Facebooka4a4s plans.The news came to light in a memo sent to the investors that Goldman Sachs lined up for Facebook. In the memo, Facebook says that it expects to surpass 500 shareholders this year, a key threshold set by the Securities and Exchange Commission for the regulation of private companies. That, in turn, would mean Facebook has to either go public or disclose the same financial information as public companies by April 2012.It&amp;'s possible for a company to cross the threshold without public disclosure, as long as they bring their shareholder number under 500 by the end of the fiscal year. That might support Fortune&amp;'s earlier report that Facebook wants to use the Goldman funding to buy back shares from its employees. In other words, Facebook might cross the threshold but then buy back enough shares to go under again. But today&amp;'s articles make it sound like that isn&amp;'t what Facebook has in mind (though it&amp;'s hard to speculate since neither newspaper quotes the memo directly.)After news leaked about Goldmana4a4s investment in Facebook, there has been plenty of debate about Facebook&amp;'s intentions. (The firm reportedly invested $450 million at a $50 billion valuation, and could raise another $1.5 billion from its clients. You can read more about the history of the deal here, including the fact that Goldman only originally planned to invest $300 million.) Does the funding set the stage for an IPO, or is it a way for Facebook to stay private The memo presents strong evidence in the a4AIPOa4 column, though John Coffee, a law professor interviewed by the Journal, notes that Apple and Google both started reporting their financials publicly a4Awell ahead of doing an IPO.a4Some financial information out has already leaked out through the same investor document, which says Facebook made $355 million of profit from $1.2 billion in revenue during the first nine months of 2010. (Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has said that the company isna4a4t focused on profitability yet.)Next Story: Salesforce buys Web-collaboration startup Dimdim to bring Chatter up to speed Previous Story: Verizon announces 10 LTE 4G devices, including phones from Motorola, Samsung and HTCPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: IPOsCompanies: Facebook, Goldman Sachs          Tags: IPOsCompanies: Facebook, Goldman SachsAnthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining the site in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. (All story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com) You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.VentureBeat 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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