Monday, March 28, 2011

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McAfee: Change In Corporate Culture Leaves Businesses Vulnerable To Hackers Top
McAfee , the computer security company, has issued a fresh warning to the world's corporations and other large organizations. The firm has warned that hackers now have these bodies fully in their sights, and that a combination of the de-centralization of the workplace (thanks to to proliferation of mobile devices and the like) and the move to the cloud means in-house security technicians have their work cut out for them. And since there's a market out there for stolen corporate secrets, you can bet that the bad guys aren't going to stop anytime soon. Read more…
 
eBay Acquires GSI Commerce For $2.4 Billion In Cash And Debt Top
eBay has just announced that it has agreed to buy GSI Commerce , a provider of ecommerce and interactive marketing services, for $29.25 a share, or total consideration of approximately $2.4 billion . The acquisition , which will be financed with cash and debt, is expected to close in Q3 2011. With more than 180 customers across 14 merchandise categories, GSI has long-term commerce services relationships with a wealth of retailers and brands. eBay says it expects GSI clients to benefit from eBay's Marketplaces and PayPal services, particularly. The merger consideration represents a 51 percent premium over GSI's closing price on March 25, 2011. As usual, the transaction is subject to regulatory approval as well as other customary closing conditions. Under the terms of the merger agreement, GSI Commerce may solicit acquisition proposals from third parties for a 40-day "go-shop" period continuing through May 6, 2011. The agreement, however, also provides eBay with a customary right to match a superior proposal. As part of the transaction, eBay will divest businesses that it says are not core to its long-term growth strategy. The divestiture includes 100 percent of GSI's licensed sports merchandise business and 70 percent of ShopRunner and Rue La La . These assets will be sold to a newly formed holding company, which will be led by GSI founder and CEO Michael Rubin . eBay will loan said company $467 million in total, while Rubin will invest an additional $31 million in cash. eBay will host a conference call at 8 am PST/11 am EST today to discuss this announcement. CrunchBase Information GSI Commerce eBay Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Lady Gaga Donates $750K To Zynga's Japan Earthquake Relief Campaign Top
As we wrote a few weeks ago, Zynga launched a campaign with Save The Children to raise money via in-game donations in Zynga games like FrontierVille, FarmVille and CityVille for the relief efforts in Japan following the massive earthquake and tsunami a few weeks ago. Today, the social gaming giant is announcing that Lady Gaga has donated $750,000 , through the sales of her Japan Prayer Bracelets, to Zynga's fundraising initiative. She is also donating another $750,000 to the American Red Cross to support relief efforts in Japan. And in the past two weeks, Zynga players alone have raised more than $2.5 million for Save the Children's Japan Earthquake Tsunami Children in Emergency Fund and other causes. In a release issued by the pop singer and Zynga, Gaga said "I'm inspired that my little monsters banded together to help those affected by the terrible tragedy…What Zynga's players have done for the cause is equally inspiring, and I'm thrilled to partner with them to raise money that will go to Save the Children and the American Red Cross." Through Zynga games including Café World, CityVille, FrontierVille, FarmVille, Words With Friends, Vampire Wars, YoVille and Zynga Poker, more than 250 million players had the opportunity to donate 100 percent of the purchase price of newly created virtual items to the fundraising efforts. Via Credits, Facebook donated money generated through the purchases to support the initiative. The Japan fundraising initiative isn’t the first charitable campaign for Zynga. Since October 2009, hundreds of thousands of players have raised more than $10 million dollars for international nonprofits through Zynga.org. And Zynga was able to raise millions for the relief efforts in Haiti last year. Lady Gaga recently sat down with Google’s Marissa Mayer for a candid talk about tech, music and YouTube. CrunchBase Information Zynga Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Excelsior! Students Build Fruit Ninja Simulator Top
Since our rise from the primordial ooze, mankind has wanted one thing and one thing only: the ability to play Fruit Ninja inside of a little white room while using our hands as swords. That goal, friends, has been met and surpassed. I present to you Fruit Ninja in the CAVE, a version of Fruit Ninja played entirely in virtual reality. Click through for video.
 
An App By Any Other Name … Top
“One of the deep mysteries to me is our logo, the symbol of lust and knowledge, bitten into, all crossed with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order. You couldn’t dream of a more appropriate logo: lust, knowledge, hope, and anarchy.” – Apple exec Jean Louis Gassée on the naming of Apple Why is Color named “Color”? “A tribute to Apple’s color logo from the Apple II. This computer changed my life when I was seven (also a reference to another company name I’ve used.) My dad bought one from ComputerCraft run by Billy Ladin in Houston. He was one of the first computer resellers back in 1977. In an odd twist, I meet him in an elevator 15 years later and worked for him. He introduced me to the Web. Working at Apple was a dream. Color’s name is a tribute to Apple.” – Bill Nguyen, Color founder on why he chose the name Color Reading Semil Shah’s post on group messaging this morning, I was struck by the sheer numbers and diversity of the startup names scattered throughout: Yobongo, Disco, SocialCam, SoundCloud, Beluga, GroupMe, Fast Society, Rabbly, Whatsapp, Kik, textPlus, Convore, SMSGupShup, MessageParty, TextSlide, Bump Technologies, Color Labs and so on, all contenders in the saturated mobile social space. Some like MessageParty or textPlus had names that were actually related to their product, but many like Yobongo, Beluga and Disco had only a tenuous connection. It’s now pretty clear the app ecosystem has gone mainstream: People talk about apps the way they used to talk about music or drugs ( “Omg have you guys tried COLOR. Omg you have to try it. Omg we’re on it right now” ). And naming your startup has become like naming your band — An intricate dance between a multitude of contributing metaphoric and literal factors. So which approach, picking something random or actually related to what you do, makes more sense? @chrysb Chrys Bader You can tell it's a bubble because startups are raising so much money they can actually afford vowels in their domain names. about 14 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone Retweet Reply Two notable app launches this week highlighted how exactly an app’s name plays into public perception. The most visible instance of this was the launch of Color , an ubiquitous noun/verb name picked by Bill Nguyen and Peter Pham for their photosharing app with a hefty $41 million in funding. While initial complaints held that the app was unsearchable in both the Android and iPhone App Store and on Google because of its common name, that problem now seems to have been solved on Google. Perhaps all the inbound links from news and other sites are responsible for the fact that the service is now the eighth result for the word “color”? Color also somehow went from being invisible to being the first app to appear in the Apple App Store under the “color” search term (I’m hearing Android is still having issues ). Color’s name, while initially striking some people as slightly off if only for all its other connotations, is valid in that it accurately describes a core function of the Color Labs product, namely the fact that people are sharing images (a collection of colored pixels) through the app. The Color guys tell me (and Quora above) that they first came up with the name Color in a tribute to Apple’s original reverse-color logo and then bought the domain name for $350K .  In order to appeal to English speakers in other regions, they also bought the domain name Colour.com and redirected it to Color.com. And yes, this did not stave off complaints. @alisontan Alison Tan The 'Color' app isn't spelt the way I like it… #COLOUR about 15 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone Retweet Reply Contrast Color’s name with that of the other hot five-letter app of the moment, Disco . Currently it’s unclear whether Google made the $255K purchase of the domain Disco.com for a Slide-related purpose, or just to have on hand (Google has not given me a straight answer in any of my emails). If the latter is the case then it wouldn’t be the first time Google stockpiled domains ( bayareaburritos.com anyone?) for future use. Whether purposefully acquired or not, the name Disco seems to have a less of a direct relation to its core product than Color. While a disco (nightclub) does bring people together in a sense, the noun has absolutely nothing to do with group messaging, and I think users have already picked up on this distinction. All in all the choice to use Disco as a name for a group messaging app is incongruous, especially when you consider that Google also owns Hello.com. “This one fits to the product  #color , This one doesn’t fit at all  #disco ,” tweeted Berrehili Réda. “I don’t know, when I first heard about google’s product #disco, I thought they had finally released their music streaming service…” @mm Morgan Missen Google has owned Hello.com forever. I'm surprised they didn't use that name for Disco and wonder why they're saving it. http://t.co/lYApre9 about 11 hours ago via web Retweet Reply While it’s possible that the name Disco was already on the drawing board at Slide pre-Google acquisition, if Disco’s makers first chose a vague name and then built out a product for release, then they wouldn’t be alone. Private photo-sharing service Path still called itself Path (at Path.io) back when it was a list-making tool. Guess they thought the Path designation still held after the photo-sharing pivot. In a seminal post on the subject, VC Rich Barton holds in that making up a new word (like Kleenex or Yobongo) is much more powerful than trying to appropriate a already existing literal word like Color or Disco. But if you’d have to go with an existing word, I’d go with the one that has a strong tie-in to the actual product. Then again there’s always exceptions. No matter which apocryphal  origin story you believe, the word Apple has nothing to do with computers.  “If somebody had told me in 1970 that Apple would be the name of the top tech company, I would have laughed to death,” said VC Dani Nofal. Yes, and if someone had told me in 1990 that someone would name their company Color in homage to that top computer company Apple, I too would have chuckled. Color probably hopes it’ll be laughing all the way to an extended featured position in the App Store. @alexia Alexia Tsotsis Are you there Steve? It's me, Color. about 13 hours ago via Seesmic Desktop Retweet Reply CrunchBase Information Color Apple
 

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