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<title>Haaze.com / sufbezi89 / Published News</title>
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<pubDate>Thu, 02 Dec 2010 08:10:24 +0000</pubDate>
<language>en</language>
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<title><![CDATA[Eye-catching Phones of 2010]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=eye-catching-phones-of-2010</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=eye-catching-phones-of-2010</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 Dec 2010 08:10:24 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>sufbezi89</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=eye-catching-phones-of-2010</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Motorola Flipout(Credit:Josh Miller/CNET)At CNET, we look at so many cell phones and smartphones throughout the year that many of them tend to look the same after awhile. That's why it's easy to remember the ones that looked especially unique or interesting, be it an unusual handset or a stunning smartphone. I've compiled a list here of the most eye-catching phones we've seen this year, be they short stubby phones like the Kin One or the giant handset that is the Motorola Droid X. They're listed in no particular order. We're sure we've missed a few so let us know in the comments of any phone that made you do a double take.Eye-catching Phones of 2010 <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[OpenFeint finds a way to co-exist with Apple&'s Game Center for the iPhone]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=openfeint-finds-a-way-to-co-exist-with-applersquos-game-center-for-the-iphone</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=openfeint-finds-a-way-to-co-exist-with-applersquos-game-center-for-the-iphone</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>sufbezi89</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=openfeint-finds-a-way-to-co-exist-with-applersquos-game-center-for-the-iphone</guid>
<description><![CDATA[When Apple launched its Game Center social platform for iPhone games, it looked like a supporting tool such as the OpenFeint platform was doomed. That&amp;'s because OpenFeint, a social game platform built by the startup formerly known as Aurora Feint and now called OpenFeint, did much of the same thing as Game Center, socializing games so that users would make friends and play more.But it turns out that iPhone game developers have not only embraced Apple&amp;'s Game Center, which offers features such as leaderboards for games, developers have also continued to use OpenFeint on top of Game Center. That&amp;'s because Open Feint has features that the developers can&amp;'t live without, said Peter Relan, chairman of Burlingame, Calif.-based OpenFeint, in an interview. Not only is the game platform surviving, it&amp;'s thriving.In essence, OpenFeint and Game Center are both attempts to duplicate Microsoft&amp;'s success with Xbox Live, the social online game service that sits on top of the Xbox 360. The iPhone needs its own social platform so that users can play multiplayer games with their friends, discover new games, and recommend games to other players. With Game Center, Apple is trying to build that functionality directly into the iPhone platform, dubbed the iOS. But OpenFeint was there first, and now it is hard to dislodge.OpenFeint is owned by Relan&amp;'s incubator, YouWeb, whose portfolio has a reported value of $1 billion. YouWeb also owns social gaming startup CrowdStar, cross-platform social game firm Sibblingz, and Flash-based iPhone app maker iSwifter. According to Forbes, OpenFeint&amp;'s value is $400 million, based on an estimate from Relan.Relan said that more than 300 top iPhone game developers now use both OpenFeint and Apple Game Center in a kind of one-two punch. Filshlabs&amp;' Galaxy on Fire 2, for instance, has become the top paid iPhone app and it uses OpenFeint&amp;'s social features and Game Center&amp;'s leaderboard service. By using both platforms, developers can maximize how much their games can spread and how much money they can make from them.&amp;''We have successfully moved above the Apple stack,&amp;'' Relan said, meaning that OpenFeint is a platform that sits on top of Apple&amp;'s platform. &amp;''We are very pleasantly surprised. The beauty of achieving scale (a lot of momentum) is the market  decides. Not you, not me, not Apple. Rumors of Apple Game Center hurting OpenFeint are greatly exaggerated.&amp;''OpenFeint has features that Apple Game Center doesn&amp;'t have, including a network save card, action replays, challenges, messaging and developer announcements. With messaging, friends can send messages to each other in real time. And with developer announcements, OpenFeint opens a direct communication channel between the game player and the developer. When a gamer reviews a game, for instance, the developer can respond to it. You can&amp;'t do that in Game Center, Relan said.&amp;''We used Game Center and OpenFeinta4a4s social features to push Galaxy on   Fire 2 to the top of the Top Grossing charts in iTunes in less than two   weeks,&amp;'' said Michael Schade, chief executive of Fishlabs. a4AOpenFeint  also provides  special features that keep hardcore gamers engaged. Using  their network  save card option our players play Galaxy on Fire 2 on  multiple devices  without losing progress.&amp;''Relan said, &amp;''We have something so fundamental to developers and they refuse to give it up. The fundamental thing we have is a direct channel from the player to the developer.&amp;''Of course, it&amp;'s possible that Apple will add more features to Game Center in the future. But OpenFeint has a lot of momentum behind it. Since Game Center launched in April (and formally in September), OpenFeint has more than doubled its user base from 22 million to 50 million users. Those users have activated OpenFeint in more than 125 million game downloads in the past seven months. OpenFeint has 14,000 developers who are making games with the OpenFeint software development kit. There are 3,800 OpenFeint-enabled games, up 119 percent since GameCenter&amp;'s launch.Relan said that games which use OpenFeint have a strong retention rate. The OpenFeint platform is free for developers, but they share revenue with OpenFeint if they use the OpenFeint X platform, which includes virtual currency used to purchase virtual goods in games. About half of its gamers come back to the game at least once a month. OpenFeint&amp;'s investors include DeNA, Intel Capital, and The9.Next Story: Cox launches mobile phone service to combat AT&amp;038'T, Verizon Previous Story: On the GreenBeat: Suntech buying $127 million of capacity in China, Infigen weighs $492 million wind investmentPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: apps, Game Center, games, iOS, iPhone, OpenFeintCompanies: Apple, Aurora FeintPeople: Peter Relan          Tags: apps, Game Center, games, iOS, iPhone, OpenFeintCompanies: Apple, Aurora FeintPeople: Peter RelanDean 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[In The Giving Mood, Amazon Also Unveils MP3 Gifting (That Can Magically Become Amazon Gift&nbsp'Cards)]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=in-the-giving-mood-amazon-also-unveils-mp3-gifting-that-can-magically-become-amazon-giftnbspcards</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=in-the-giving-mood-amazon-also-unveils-mp3-gifting-that-can-magically-become-amazon-giftnbspcards</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>sufbezi89</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=in-the-giving-mood-amazon-also-unveils-mp3-gifting-that-can-magically-become-amazon-giftnbspcards</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Earlier today, we noted that Amazon unveiled a new way to give people Kindle books as gifts. They&amp;'re also launching the same functionality for their Music Store as well, with MP3 Gifting.To be honest, it&amp;'s a little surprising that Amazon didn&amp;'t have this feature before. But it comes with a nice little bonus that only someone like Amazon can offer: if you receive an MP3 as a gift and decide you don&amp;'t want it, you can instead opt for an Amazon credit for the same amount, which you can use towards any product they offer.Just as with the Kindle book gifting feature, you simply have to enter a recipients email address, add a message, and choose the MP3(s) you want them to receive. Then you pay for it, and you&amp;'re done. They&amp;'ll get a message that an MP3 gift is waiting for them and a link to download it.Amazon says the process takes less than 5 minutes. And because Amazon&amp;'s MP3s are DRM-free, they&amp;'ll work anywhere.CrunchBase InformationAmazonInformation provided by CrunchBase<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Google Changes Its Rank Algorithm In Response To DecorMyEyes&nbsp'Story]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=google-changes-its-rank-algorithm-in-response-to-decormyeyesnbspstory</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=google-changes-its-rank-algorithm-in-response-to-decormyeyesnbspstory</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>sufbezi89</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=google-changes-its-rank-algorithm-in-response-to-decormyeyesnbspstory</guid>
<description><![CDATA[photo a4s 2007 Yahoo! Blog | more info (via: Wylio)Over Thanksgiving weekend a New York Times story, &amp;''A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web&amp;'' clued a lot of people in to some of the drawbacks of Google PageRank. Negative attention online and complaint links from customer service sites like Get Satisfaction can actually be a benefit to business as in the problematic case of online retailer DecorMyEyes.The Times piece followed DecorMyEyes customera4sClarabelle Rodriguez as she suffered online and offline harassment from DecorMyEyes foundera4sVitaly Borker, all in the name of improving his Google search rankings. While I saw that DecorMyEyes had dropped in the Google rankings for eyewear related searches like &amp;''La Font&amp;'' directly after the piece went out, it was only a matter of time before Google did something official.From the Google blog:&amp;''We were horrified to read about Ms. Rodrigueza4a4s dreadful experience. Even though our initial analysis pointed to this being an edge case and not a widespread problem in our search results, we immediately convened a team that looked carefully at the issue. That team developed an initial algorithmic solution, implemented it, and the solution is already live. I am here to tell you that being bad is, and hopefully will always be, bad for business in Googlea4a4s search results.&amp;''The Google post then goes on to outline the different ways the search engine could have solved the &amp;''Bad to customers = Good for PageRank&amp;'' problem, by either blocking or using sentiment analysis to pull sites with a lot of negative comments down in the rankings. Using sentiment analysis in search rank is tricky however, because it would also pull down sites about unpopular politicians and controversial issues like abortion.Instead of using either of those two solutions to account for cases like the one described in the New York Times article, Google instead wrote an algorithm that can detect which hundreds of merchants (including DecorMyEyes) have provided &amp;''bad user experience&amp;'' and algorithmically force them lower.This is obviously not a foolproof method and Google admits that people might be able to find a another loophole in ranking algorithms sometime in the future. But for now customers who use Google search for shopping, and Google&amp;'s public image, are just a little bit safer.CrunchBase InformationGoogleInformation provided by CrunchBase<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Photo app Picplz expands its social reach]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=photo-app-picplz-expands-its-social-reach</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=photo-app-picplz-expands-its-social-reach</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>sufbezi89</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=photo-app-picplz-expands-its-social-reach</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The past few months have seen the launch of two hot San Francisco startups with mobile photo-sharing apps &amp;8212' Instagram and Picplz. Today, Picplz announced that it&amp;'s catching up with the competition on the social networking front, by adding support for photo-sharing site Flickr as well as blogging services Tumblr and Posterous.Ia4a4m not sure if it&amp;'s fair to paint the two startups as being in a head-to-head rivalry, but both apps seem to be built around the same basic idea: Users take a photo, add a filter, add location information, then share the photo within the app and other social sites. The startups even share an investor in Andreessen Horowitz, though partner Marc Andreessen has said that he will take a more passive role in Instagram.Picplz has the advantage of working on both Android and iPhone, while Instagram seemed to be ahead in support for social networks. Now the tables have turned, with both apps allowing you to post to Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr, and Foursquare, and only Picplz supporting Posterous.At this point, the exact laundry list of services probably isna4a4t that significant, but I think it&amp;'s important for these apps to have a wide social reach &amp;8212' the selling point of an app like Picplz is the ability to share your photos anywhere, not just within the Picplz community.Picplz was co-founded by Dalton Caldwell, who also founded music-sharing service Imeem. The company recently raised a $5 million first round.Next Story: Google turns its year in review into a commercial Previous Story: Call of Duty and Kinect help video game sales hit record in NovemberPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: photo apps, photosharingCompanies: Andreessen Horowitz, Instagram, PicPlzPeople: Dalton Caldwell          Tags: photo apps, photosharingCompanies: Andreessen Horowitz, Instagram, PicPlzPeople: Dalton CaldwellAnthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining VentureBeat 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[Is a &''huge wave&'' of M&038'As, financing deals about to hit Silicon Valley]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=is-a-8220huge-wave8221-of-m038as-financing-deals-about-to-hit-silicon-valley</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=is-a-8220huge-wave8221-of-m038as-financing-deals-about-to-hit-silicon-valley</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>sufbezi89</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=is-a-8220huge-wave8221-of-m038as-financing-deals-about-to-hit-silicon-valley</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Investment banks are scrambling to open branches and make their presence known in the Silicon Valley area because they areexpecting a a4Ahuge wavea4 of mergers and acquisitions and financing deals in tech and media over the next two years, Kevin Covert, president and co-founder of boutique I-bank Covert and Co., told VentureBeat today.Covert launched his own new bank today after leaving investment bank Montgomery &amp;amp' Co., because he says the opportunities right now for investors looking to capitalize on a white-hot startup climate on the West Coast were just too great to pass up.a4A[I think] the media and tech industry will be leading the nation out of recession from the financial/housing crisis, because acquirers are now streamlined, flush with cash, and highly competitive,a4 said Covert.As part of that change, the venture capital industry has gone through a4Amajora4 changes, with a whole new investing climate emerging &amp;8212' all of which now has I-banks hungrily eyeing thousands of tech companies with great businesses still facing tight investing and a sluggish IPO market.Covert was the primary architect of Montgomerya4a4s investment banking business and helped establish the core M&amp;amp'A and private placement practices of the bank over the span of 10 years. He also founded the banka4a4s software and media groups.While there, he oversaw the mergers and acquisitions of Musicmatch/Yahoo, Club Penguin/Disney, DailyCandy/Comcast, MySpace/NewsCorp, PilotSoftware/SAP, Grouper/Sony, ifilm/Viacom, Rent.com/eBay, Ribbit/BT, DWL/IBM and Element5/DigitalRiver.He also captained the banka4a4s financing of Meebo, Realtime Worlds, WildTangent, Reactrix, Move Networks, KickApps, LegalZoom, Specific Media and VantageMedia.While making those deals, Covert said he saw that many smaller I-banks are now beginning to realize the enormous opportunities they have to get in on the ground floor of some of the worlda4a4s hottest pre-IPO tech companies.a4ABuyer and seller valuations are more aligned than in past five years,a4 said Covert, a4Aand there are no dominant tech investment banks to serve this upcoming wave of deals. Large banks [like] Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and Allen &amp;amp' Co. serve public companies, but it is the entrepreneurs and investors that desperately need quality M&amp;amp'A and financing services.a4a4AThe old-school investment banking world is changing,a4 he added.Next Story: How to publicly embarrass yourself with the Nintendo 3DS (hands-on video demo) Previous Story: Broadcom offers cheap motion-based gaming for set-top boxesPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Companies: BT, Club Penguin/Disney, Comcast, covert and co, Dailycandy, DigitalRiver, DWL, eBay, Element5, Grouper, IBM, ifilm, Montgomery &amp;amp' Co., Musicmatch/Yahoo, MySpace, NewsCorp, PilotSoftware, Rent.com, Ribbit, SAP, Sony, ViacomPeople: kevin covert          Companies: BT, Club Penguin/Disney, Comcast, covert and co, Dailycandy, DigitalRiver, DWL, eBay, Element5, Grouper, IBM, ifilm, Montgomery &amp;amp' Co., Musicmatch/Yahoo, MySpace, NewsCorp, PilotSoftware, Rent.com, Ribbit, SAP, Sony, ViacomPeople: kevin covertRiley McDermid is a contributing reporter to VentureBeat. She was previously the online editor at institutional investing and trading forum Markets Media, which she joined in 2008 from Dow Jones/MarketWatch in New York. Her work has appeared in the The New York Times, the Associated Press, Portfolio Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Barrona4a4s. She has won awards from the American Society of Business Publishers and Editors, the Magazine Association of the Southeast, the Mississippi Press Association and the Atlanta Press Club, and was a finalist for the Pacemaker Prize for excellence in news reporting. 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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