Gregarius » Items by Dean Takahashi

Items by Dean Takahashi

AMD launches new mobile graphics chips at CES

Posted: January 9th, 2009, 6:01am CET by Dean Takahashi

Taking a jab at rival Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices is introducing a series of new mobile graphics chips today designed for everything from low-cost laptops to high-end gaming notebooks.

The new ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series is aimed at raising the bar for graphics performance in mobile computers. The company is unveiling the chips at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where AMD chief executive Dirk Meyer is giving one of the keynote speeches.

The products are low-power versions of the ATI Radeon HD 4000 series launched six months ago and could give Nvidia some serious competition. The desktop chips were so good — hitting at the sweet spot of the graphics market — that AMD took a lot of market share away from Nvidia. Nvidia, in turn, has scored some good business with Apple. But AMD hopes to pull the same feat in the mobile market now. The question is whether people really want to pay more for good graphics on their laptops.

The company has segmented the market to target four types of consumers: gamers, consumers who want high performance but thin laptops, mainstream users, and those who want cheaper and lightweight laptops with good battery life.

The graphics are good enough to run the most popular video games and play high-quality videos. The chips will be available at the end of the first quarter in new laptops. AMD will announce its customers at a later date.

CES: Mattel revamps web sites and launches digital toys

Posted: January 9th, 2009, 6:00am CET by Dean Takahashi

Digital toys and web sites for kids have had a mixed history. But the future is so full of techno-savvy kids that toy makers are finding they have no choice but to move into the digital realm by providing better online entertainment as well as digital toys in the physical world.

Mattel is going to do that by making its first full-scale appearance on the show floor of the International Consumer Electronics Show, which features a Kids@Play Summit this week in Las Vegas. Among the moves Mattel is announcing is a complete revamping of its online strategy, which will now target everyone from small kids to adults to bring out the “kid in all of us.”

In the past, the company used its web sites to promote its brands. Now it’s going to provide a lot of interactive games and content on the sites in an initiative dubbed the Mattel Digital Network. The network is a portal into a bunch of games with open-ended play. The site is named not only at the youngest kids but also at adults who are fans of the Barbie, Hot Wheels, Matchbox and Radica brands.

Mattel is beefing up its efforts because technology is in almost every household now, said Chuck Scothon, general manager and vice president of Digital Media Mattel. He said, “While adults view this as technology, kids don’t. They just see it as another way to play.”

Previously, Mattel operated brand-centric web sites, such as the BarbieGirls.com virtual world or the Hot Wheels site, which has been around since 1995. The sites have games and activities for kids and are typically in the top five brand sites on the Internet. Now the company is trying to broaden beyond that, focusing on experiences for everyone from five-year-olds to 21-year-olds. The play experience for the new Mattel Digital Network will have sections that target specific age groups, genders, interest levels and time available.

In 2009, for instance, Barbie will celebrate her 50th birthday. Mattel will launch marketing programs targeted at adults and their memories of playing with Barbie dolls, and many of those programs will play out online. A lot of user-generated content will be involved in those promotions.

El Segundo, Calif.-based Mattel has a lot of tough competition, since it has one set of competitors in the toy market and another set in the digital realm. The others have been successful in a variety of ways. Lego has done well with Lego brick-themed video games, and Disney is tripling its investments in video games over time.

Mattel has stumbled in the past. In 2006, the company launched a low-cost game console, HyperScan, targeted at boys 12 years and under. But the company scrapped that console after it was trounced in the market by the Nintendo Wii and other consoles. Scothon said the lesson from that experience was to know when to do things internally and when to partner with someone externally.

Scothon says Mattel will bring its experience of play and adapt it to the digital market. It will do that on its own as well as with partners.

At the show, Mattel will highlight eight products:

• Mind Flex — a mental acuity game that uses a lightweight headset with sensors to measure alpha and theta brain activity. Players move a small foam ball in the air. If they concentrate, the ball rises; if they relax, the ball falls.

• Barbie Digital Nail Printer — You can print custom designs directly onto your fingernails.

• UCreate — With a UCreate tablet and software, kids can draw their own shapes and create a game around them.

• UMix — Music fans can create their own musical mashups with MP3 music.

• XTRACTAURS — The dinosaur toys let kids fight online. You can connect a “DNA extractor to a dinosaur and then connect it to a computer to unlock an online experience.

• U.B. FUNKEYS Game Factory Tool — Lets kids create their own Funkeys game to go with their U.B. Funkeys physical toy characters. They can post the designs to UBFunkeys.com where kids can vote on the best creations.

CES: Sharp touts subtle TV advances, but will consumers care?

Posted: January 7th, 2009, 9:39pm CET by Dean Takahashi

Giant electronics manufacturers have the advantage of continuing to invest during a downturn. Sharp Electronics is no exception. But it remains to be seen if shell-shocked consumers will go for technologies that add only subtle quality improvements to TVs. At its press event at the International Consumer Electronics Show today in Las Vegas, Sharp has announced something called Superlucent Super Advanced Superview panel technology, which makes an image on a liquid crystal display TV brighter and more vibrant.

Sharp will also have connected TVs that can log into the Sharp Aquos Network portal with web widgets such as a Navteq traffic report map. Users can plan their commutes while watching TV morning news. But Aquos Network doesn’t yet make web video available to viewers. I can’t say there was anything really earth-shaking in this press conference.

DisplaySearch, a market researcher, expects dollar volume of LCD TVs to fall in 2009 by 16 percent to $64 billion, but it expects a recovery in 2010. Accordingly, Sharp has begun construction of a new factory — featuring a tenth-generation technology that can fit eight 50-inch panels on one sheet of glass — for making LCD panels. It will be operational in March, 2010 and will be able to make larger LCD TVs more efficiently and cheaply, the company says. Sharp will also make solar panels at the same site.

Mike Troetti, president of Sharp Electronics Marketing Company of America, said Sharp was one of the top three LCD TV companies based on December sales. Overall, its sales are up 10 percent in units over last year, with the highest growth in 40-inch screens and up as well as in 32-inch screens specifically. He thinks the coming digital TV transition — when the U.S. shifts from analog to digital TV signals on Feb. 17 — will lead to sales of smaller TVs as families replace TVs in bedrooms or kitchens that don’t have access to high-definition signals via cables. In the past, Sharp has focused on large screens that are 40 inches and up. It continues to do so but is maintaining a line of 32-inch TVs too.

CES: Toshiba to launch TVs with Cell microprocessor

Posted: January 7th, 2009, 7:56pm CET by Dean Takahashi

In a bid to move to the high-end of high-definition TVs, Toshiba will introduce a new series of TVs in 2009 that feature the Cell microprocessor developed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM.

The Cell has a bunch of processors on a single chip and serves as the heart of the PlayStation 3 console.

The company calls the new technology Cell TV and is showing it off in its booth. Scott Ramirez, vice president of marketing at Toshiba America Consumer Products, said that the new TVs will be able to display in 4,000 x 2,000 pixels, or at least twice the resolution of today’s 1080p high-definition TVs. The 4K x 2K resolution is widely viewed as the next step forward in visual quality after HDTV. It may not take off for years.

Toshiba will have to demonstrate the need for Cell processing, which in the PlayStation 3 has as many as eight functioning processors on a single silicon chip.

In the past, Toshiba showed off a Cell chip demo where it could render a bunch of videos on a screen at the same time. This feature could be used to create an easier way to navigate a bunch of channels. It could, for instance, show off a bunch of channels with the videos playing all at once. You could see the videos playing on a channel and decide to switch the channel more quickly.

This shows that Toshiba, for one, isn’t giving up on the original Cell dream. While Sony sold off its Cell chip business to Toshiba, the original idea was to use the Cell across a bunch of consumer electronics devices where video processing was key. The Cell’s biggest success has been in the PS 3, which has sold more than 17 million units.

But Sony’s dream for the Cell was much bigger. Most other TV makers use their own chips or those developed by video processing specialty companies. The idea behind Cell was to get rid of all of the other custom chips and have Cell, whose number of processors depends on the application at hand, replace them.

Richard Doherty, an analyst at Envisioneering Group, said that there is a lot of Cell derivatives are in development. IBM is working on a previously announced 32-core Cell microprocessor.

In other news, like LG, Toshiba plans to introduce Internet-connected TVs later this year with Yahoo TV Widgets built into them. Overall, the company believes 23 million liquid crystal display TVs shipped in 2008, and that number will be up 5 percent to 24.1 million in 2009. Toshiba said it moved from four-percent market share in the U.S. LCD TV market a year ago to 10 percent today. On average, a 52-inch LCD TV cost $1,948 in November, and very few TVs are now sold above the $2,500 price.

Netgear introduces more connected entertainment gadgets

Posted: January 7th, 2009, 6:50pm CET by Dean Takahashi

Connected entertainment is clearly a big theme at the International Consumer Electronics Show taking place this week in Las Vegas.

Today Netgear showed off three products that make it a lot easier to use the Internet with consumer electronics gear.

Its first product was the Netgear Internet TV Player, which is enabled by the company’s partnership with
Mountain View, Calif.-based Verismo Networks. This little $199 set-top box will connect to a TV and give users access to hundreds of video web sites. While some TV makers are integrating web connectivity with their TVs, they are only giving access to a few sites like YouTube or Netflix. But with the Netgear player, you can access paid or rental movies on CinemaNow, free content on sites such as YouTube and BitTorrent, and video content on lots of other sites.

The integration with the TV looks easy. With a remote control, you can access channels such as the Oprah Winfrey channel at the press of a button. The product will be out this summer.

The second product is good for construction site workers, campers, or anyone else who needs broadband on the go. The Netgear 3G Mobile Broadband Router can access a 3G broadband cell phone data network to give access to the web just about anywhere you can get 3G reception. It will be out in January. Not sure of the price.

The third product is a follow-up to one introduced a couple of years ago. The Netgear Digital Entertainer Elite connects the collection of videos on your PC — including Blu-ray quality high-definition videos — with your TV. You can use a remote to browse through your PC video collection on your TV. It will sell for $399 starting in February. These three products are just a few of 15 being introduced.

LG shows off watch phone, mobile digital TV, and wireless video networking

Posted: January 7th, 2009, 5:37pm CET by Dean Takahashi

South Korea’s LG Electronics kicked off press day at the International Consumer Electronics Show this morning with a flurry of new technology and product announcements.

Other TV makers will likely match some of these announcements, but LG’s focus on mainstream consumers suggests that some technologies that have been talked about for a while — like the ability to move wireless video around the home — are ready for prime time.

Woo Paik, chief technology officer and one of the fathers of high-definition TV, spelled out some of the technical advances, including a watch phone with a touch-screen interface.

Paik also said the company will get rid of networking wires attached to its flat-panel TVs by integrating WirelessHD, the 60-gigahertz wireless video transfer technology developed by SiBEAM. With a range of about 30 feet, WirelessHD can transfer full 1080p video without data loss.

LG will also integrate 3-D stereoscopic vision technology into its upcoming TVs. It will also move to eliminate motion blur in fast-action videos by shifting its models from 120 Hertz refresh rates to 240 Hertz, meaning that screens are updated 240 times a second.

The company also demonstrated high-definition terrestrial TV working on a mobile platform. Samsung talked about experiments with this technology a year ago, and now it looks like more companies are able to do it. No telling exactly when this technology will hit the market.

LG said its North American sales hit $13 billion in 2008, up 16 percent from a year ago. The company is selling a phone every second now. On the green side, LG expects to reduce its carbon emissions by 30 megatons by 2020. LG also has demos of solar-based cell phone charging stations at the show.

On the content side, LG is integrating CinemaNow, YouTube, Netflix and Yahoo widgets into both networked Blu-ray players and TVs.

All told, 36 models of TVs are being introduced. LG says its brand recognition keeps climbing, from 83 percent in 2007 to 92 percent in 2008. And the company says it will keep spending on research and development, as well as marketing despite the recession.

CES kickoff party shows off some hot new products (first Internet radio for cars is the coolest)

Posted: January 7th, 2009, 6:03am CET by Dean Takahashi

This evening I went to CES Unveiled, the beginning party for journalists at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The place was packed with the usual tech journalists. We were in our own little bubble of excitement while the world economy melted down outside.

Midway through the event I ran into Gary Shapiro, who reminded me he is the president and chief executive of the Consumer Electronics Association, not the executive director as I called him earlier. (Oops). He told me that things look good for the show and he really didn’t mean to imply (as he said in our earlier interview) that attendance would be measurably down. He said the show is likely to draw 130,000 attendees, but that’s the estimate they give out every year because they really don’t know what will happen. He assumes they will take some hit from the recession compared to the 141,000 attendees of last year, but so far things look good, he says. Somehow, I don’t think he’s going to get a bigger crowd than last year. We’ll find out later in the week, although audited numbers will come much later.

In any case, Shapiro told me to check out the Blaupunkt table. And the car audio company’s product was pretty cool: the first Internet radio for cars. This car stereo can play 20,000 radio stations. You could spend your time endlessly scrolling through those on a drive from San Francisco to New York. But it uses a service dubbed miRoamer from startup Torian Wireless to get its music from the Internet.

With the push of a button, you can switch from AM/FM radio stations to tens of thousands of Internet radio stations. You can browse by country, genre, station and keyword. You can also go to the web portal with a PC and instruct your device to play only certain preset radio stations. That cuts down on the browsing time. If you don’t want to do that, you can cruise through the top-100 feature on miRoamer.com.

The radio gets its music streamed in real time via a Bluetooth connection from the radio to your 3G cell phone. I’m not sure it’s going to work, given the spottiness of 3G coverage in the U.S. But you have to give them credit for trying something ambitious. The Blaupunkt guy told me that if you’re speeding fast, you’ll need higher bandwidth to make sure the radio reception doesn’t get choppy. There may be a reason no one’s tried Internet radio in the car before, but if it works, it’s going to change the landscape for players like XM Sirius satellite radio.

It will cost $349 to $399 in the U.S. when it ships in the second half of the year. There will be two versions, one that occupies a single radio deck in a car and another that occupies two. It’s not clear whether Blaupunkt will charge a subscription fee or will make the service available for free.

For those of you who aren’t easily impressed with a first of that sort, I thought WowWee also had a cool product line with its Pico Projectors, dubbed Cinemin. Ranging from $299 to $399, these are tiny projectors that can show a movie on a ceiling, wall, or anywhere else you can find a blank space. The three products include the Swivel, which can tilt up 90 degrees so you can watch a movie on the ceiling, the Stick, which has on-board memory to store movies that you can take on the go; and a Station model that is more for office conference rooms but is still smaller than a lot of today’s projectors. They will come out at varying times from the second quarter to the fourth quarter. The products are based on Texas Instruments’ Digital Light Projection technology, which is commonly used in rear-projection TVs and consists of chips with lots of microscopic mirrors to project light.

WowWee, of course, is best known for its consumer robots. It had a few at the table this year, including a Spyball, which is a little ball with a web cam. Michael Rush of WowWee was reluctant to let it roam around the room full of hundreds of journalists because he figured someone would step on it. Its wheels are retractable. When they’re out, Spyball can go rolling around a house, spooking the pets and spying on whoever you want. Ah, just think of the civil liberties violations you can perpetrate with this sucker, which sends videos back to your computer or game machine via Wi-Fi. It costs $149 and will be out in the fourth quarter of 2009. It’s a lot like last year’s model from WowWee, the Rovio moving robotic web cam. But this one has a better, Orwellian name to it.

LG also showed off a new liquid crystal display television that was less than an inch thick. We’ll see if that winds up being the thinnest of the show. You can never tell. I’m sure we’re going to see a lot of cool new TV technology at the show. I’m looking forward to seeing the newest generation of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) ultra-thin TVs.

On the plane, I sat next to Dhaval Ajmera, an executive vice president from Verismo Networks, a Mountain View, Calif.-based company with a pretty cool VuNow set-top box that brings all sorts of Internet video into the TV. Verismo has 70 employees and is privately funded. It isn’t seeking money at the moment; rather, it’s trying to generate some revenue first through sales of its $99 and $149 set-top boxes, which compete head to head with boxes from Roku but offer much more than just Netflix’s selection of 10,000 movies. Verismo has all sorts of content, from YouTube to CinemaNow movies.

Tomorrow, check back in this space for reports from all of the big company press conferences, starting with LG in the morning and going through to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s keynote speech in the evening. I’ll be covering most of it.

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Steve Jobs — not on the deathbed — has hormonal imbalance, will remain CEO

Posted: January 5th, 2009, 4:16pm CET by Dean Takahashi

Steve Jobs announced today that he has been losing weight throughout the past year because of a hormone imbalance that has been robbing his body of proteins. He said sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis and the remedy is a relatively simple treatment. He said his doctors expect it will take until this spring to regain his usual body weight.

” I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my recovery,” he wrote in a letter addressed to the Apple community.

Jobs made the rare public disclosure about his personal health because of the flurry of rumors set off by his decision to have Phil Schiller deliver the Macworld keynote, including stories of “me on my deathbed.” He said he decided to share the news “so that we can all relax and enjoy the show tomorrow.” Jobs has been fiercely protective of his privacy, but his health has been much discussed because of his importance to Apple.

The announcement is sure to drive a spike in Apple’s stock price since Jobs is considered the architect of Apple’s turnaround and is vital to Apple’s future. Speculation on his health has been swirling for months since he appeared gaunt at his last major Apple speech in the summer. But Apple shareholders and everyone else in the Apple community will likely breathe a sigh of relief that this condition isn’t life threatening.

Apple’s board also made an announcement in support of Jobs.
Here’s the text of Jobs’ note:

Dear Apple Community,

For the first time in a decade, I’m getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.

I’ve decided to share something very personal with the Apple community so that we can all relax and enjoy the show tomorrow.

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment. But, just like I didn’t lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my recovery.

I have given more than my all to Apple for the past 11 years now. I will be the first one to step up and tell our Board of Directors if I can no longer continue to fulfill my duties as Apple’s CEO. I hope the Apple community will support me in my recovery and know that I will always put what is best for Apple first.

So now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.

Steve

Reader poll: When will the economic winter begin to thaw?

Posted: January 2nd, 2009, 5:37pm CET by Dean Takahashi

Here’s a new year poll for our readers. When do you think the economic winter will begin to thaw? We want your opinions about how quickly indicators will start to improve compared to year-ago figures. How optimistic are you? Let us know in the comments.

CES preview: what to expect at the big, not-so-gloomy tech trade show

Posted: December 30th, 2008, 12:57am CET by Dean Takahashi

THE BIGGEST U.S. TECH TRADE SHOW WILL FEATURE EMERGING MARKET TECHNOLOGY, 3-D GLASSES, AND DIGITAL CONTENT, ACCORDING TO SHOW CHIEF GARY SHAPIRO

The International Consumer Electronics Show coming up next week promises to be a sober extravaganza. It will have all the splashy booths and big parties as in past years, but it won’t be the best-attended show in history because of the economic slowdown.

Even with the economy in a funk, the show should be a guidepost for the changes in store for the electronics industry during the year ahead. Costs are lower for convention goers, as Las Vegas hotels have dropped their rates a couple of times to fill rooms. That should keep the place from being a ghost town.

The show will be smaller than last year, but not dramatically so, according to Gary Shapiro, executive director of the Consumer Electronics Association, which runs the show. There will be an estimated 130,000 attendees, down about 8 percent from 141,000 a year ago. The number of exhibitors will be the same at about 2,700, though the square footage of the show will be down 5 percent from 1.8 million square feet a year ago to 1.7 million square feet this year. The show is being held Tuesday, Jan. 6 to Sunday, Jan. 11 and is not open to the general public. I’ll be one of thousands of journalists attending.

Exhibitors tend to book their space a year ahead of time, so exhibit space is a lagging indicator of a tough economy. But Shapiro notes that the average trade show will be down 22 percent in attendees in 2008. In that context, the expected drop in attendance is not so bad.

“Everybody is being hit by the economy, but we are stronger than almost every industry,” Shapiro said. “The good thing for us is that the leisure business has dried up in Las Vegas and freed hotel rooms.”

This show will be different this year because Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will give the opening keynote instead of Bill Gates, who previously gave the opening speech for 11 years in a row. Ballmer may disappoint the crowds if he doesn’t make some mention of the Zune phone that the company has been secretly working on in an effort to take on Apple’s iPhone. Ballmer will be speaking just a day after the Apple keynote by Phil Schiller at Macworld in San Francisco.

Still, there will be keynote speeches from Sony’s CEO, Howard Stringer, and Ford’s chief, Alan Mullaly. John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, and Craig Barrett, chairman of Intel, will give speeches about emerging markets for new technologies. Barrett will likely show off a new version of Intel’s low-cost Classmate PC for children in developing countries. This one will feature a touch screen. What’s interesting is that emerging markets and green technology — once small parts of the show — are now a big part of the affair. Shapiro notes that there are 10 million new cell phones being sold in India each month. In the U.S., the average home has about 25 consumer electronics devices, down one from a year ago, according to CEA surveys.

The CEA is having success recruiting new companies, with about 300 new companies showing this year. One of those is Verizon. NBC Universal (booth pictured left) and Sony Pictures have bigger booths this year, a sign that the content companies feel welcome at what used to be an electronics hardware show.

There are some drop outs. Sanyo has pulled out, since it is being acquired by Panasonic. Cisco withdrew from a big presence on the show floor and is presenting in hotel suites instead. Philips Electronics, which pulled out of the TV business in the past year, is also not exhibiting for the first time in many years.

This is the last show before the transition to digital TV signals happens in the U.S. on Feb. 17, 2009. The transition has been a part of the discussion at every CES for the past decade. But Shapiro said he is relieved that some of the bitter fights, such as the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD media format war and the XM-Sirius merger, are over.

There will be focus on 3-D displays and glasses. 3-D movies are catching on like never before (as shown with the popularity of Disney’s Bolt film) and Hollywood is launching a bunch of 3-D films in theaters next year. Companies such as Nvidia, Samsung (picture from last year), Viewsonic and IZ3D plan to bring that into homes so that it looks like movies or game characters are springing out of your TV sets or monitors. I have yet to see glasses-based 3-D that looks stunning, so I remain skeptical about these products.

Wireless video — or transferring high-definition video from one device to another inside a home — will be moving past the experimentation stage as a variety of competing networking products are introduced, Shapiro said.

Just as it seemed like liquid-crystal displays (LCD) were becoming dominant, TV makers will also introduce new versions of the organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays that deliver crisp HD video images. Last year, Sony introduced an 11-inch screen for sale at a high price, but presumably the costs are going down.

CES is also going to show it’s more than a geek event, thanks to areas dedicated to older consumers as well as kids. Mattel will be showing digital toys on the show floor for the first time, a sign that electronics is increasingly important to hooking kids on the latest toys.

Shapiro said that politics will enter into the picture as the tech industry tries to shape the policies of the new Obama administration. Companies are also trying to position themselves as the greenest company, putting new importance on low-power and efficient battery technologies.

As for celebrity sightings at CES, there should be plenty, perhaps as companies try harder to get the attention of the recession-minded press and the public. Monster Cable, for instance, is throwing a concert headlined by singer Diana Ross. From Akon to Stevie Wonder, the celebrities show that companies want to target all sorts of demographics with their products. Maybe inside the echo chamber of the huge trade show, it won’t seem like we’re in the midst of an economic catastrophe.

The top 20 game stories of 2008

Posted: December 26th, 2008, 2:00pm CET by Dean Takahashi

2008 has been a big year for the games market. Game sales soared to new heights this year and resisted the onset of the recession. Here’s a recap of our biggest game-market stories this year (including some links for related stories) for those of you who may have missed them:

1. The Nintendo Wii broke all sales records and expanded the market for gaming beyond nerds. The Wii tapped into a need to play more casual and social games. We had a Q&A with Nintendo of America’s president, Reggie Fils-Aime, about the phenomenon.

2. The industry hit a record $22 billion in the midst of a recession. A census estimates there are 44,400 people working in the U.S. game industry.

3. The iPhone emerged as a game platform. With companies such as Ngmoco making iPhone-only games, the market took off. Thousands of games are now available on Apple’s App Store.

4. Activision closed its merger with Vivendi Games, which included the crown jewel Blizzard Entertainment, maker of World of Warcraft. In post-merger life, the crown jewel was left to operate as its own independent company.

5. VentureBeat uncovered the behind-the-scenes story of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death hardware failure. Microsoft fired the game tester who talked to Venturebeat.

6. Electronic Arts struck out with its holiday line-up. Spore disappointed, and EA was forced to lay off 10 percent of its staff.

7. Both Microsoft and Sony tried to make console games into a more social experience. Sony launched Home virtual world for PlayStation 3, while Microsoft debuted its new Xbox Experience including movies from Netflix. Sony was able to get a bunch of partners to launch inside Home, but users overwhelmed Home in its early days.

8. Electronic Arts courted Take-Two Interactive with a $2 billion hostile takeover bid, but the maker of Grand Theft Auto IV wanted a higher price and the companies gave up on merger talks.

9. Microsoft cut console prices, finally addressed Red Ring of Death with Jasper-based models of the Xbox 360.

10. Advanced Micro Devices took leadership in graphics chips back from Nvidia. It did so by shooting for the sweet spot of the market. Previously, Nvidia owned the gamer market. But now the tables have turned.

11. World of Warcraft expansion pack Wrath of the Lich King sold 2.8 million units in 24 hours.

12. Google launched, then buried, Lively virtual spaces. But it got off the ground with in-game advertising.

13. The redesigned E3 trade show — once a signature extravaganza that drew 80,000 people — was a train wreck, drawing only a few thousand underwhelmed media and business people. Afterward, the game industry vowed to bring the old show back.

14. Music video games overtook sports games, thanks to Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises.

15. Nintendo DS ran away with the portable market, outselling the PlayStation Portable by two to one. Then Nintendo announced the DSi improved version of its handheld.

16. Grand Theft Auto IV sold 10 million copies, despite the criticism of anti-violence critics. The biggest game industry critic Jack Thompson was disbarred for unprofessional conduct.

17. Scrabble clone Scrabulous took off on Facebook, Hasbro sued, the game was shut down and the replacement Scrabble tanks.

18. Wii Fit broadened the video game audience and brought the exercise genre — which had been just a niche in the past — to mainstream audiences.

19. Funware — the use of game mechanics in non-game applications — expanded the game industry’s reach beyond games.

20. YouTube became a huge channel for game marketing.

Please check out our link to VentureBeat’s inaugural game conference, GamesBeat 09, on March 24.

Interview with Peter Nieh on using the government to bridge cleantech financing gaps

Posted: December 25th, 2008, 2:00pm CET by Dean Takahashi

Peter Nieh is a founder of Lightspeed Venture Partners. The venture capital firm manages over $2 billion in capital and just closed its most recent fund, Lightspeed VIII, worth $800 million, earlier this year. Some of Lightspeed’s hits include Brocade, Ciena, Informatica and Riverbed Technologies. Nieh began focusing on cleantech investments three years ago, and the company has made five investments in the field to date. He recently made a bunch of predictions about where the cleantech industry will be in 2009. We caught up with Nieh at the recent AlwaysOn Venture Summit West conference.

VB: How did you make the switch to investments in cleantech?

PN: We investigated companies to see if they met our bar for being high-impact companies. We saw that. By contrast, with nanotechnology, we looked a few years ago and we didn’t see that. We saw a confluence of things. We think there are venture opportunities with commercializable technologies. They weren’t technologies looking for solutions like we saw in nanotech. There was a fair degree of technology risk but fairly low market risk. If you could produce a solar cell that had higher efficiency but had half the cost of a crystalline silicon solar cell, you can expect there would be a market for it. With other businesses, there is a lot of consumer adoption risk. You can build a web site and nobody would come. You might not get traffic. If you could produce diesel fuel that is clean and has good economics, you can sell it.

VB: You’ve been worried about a financing gap, where it takes a lot of capital to bring cleantech products to market. Can you describe that?

PN: We saw this danger a few years ago. Companies are going to have to get more creative. One of them is to joint venture. Your startup can team up with someone who has a low cost of capital. You supply the technology, they supply the capital and other know-how, and then you find some way to divide up the ownership equitably.

VB: You put money into the lithium ion battery maker Mobius Power. Why are you a big fan of energy storage investments?

PN: Lithium ion batteries hit the market in 1993 and have had a great run. They have produced better performance gains, but they are incremental. They are starting to hit a wall. They have to balance better performance against safety concerns. We invested in Mobius in lithium ion batteries. These kinds of batteries have always used the same kind of electrolyte. So you are stuck with the same kind of chemistry. Mobius introduces a new electrolyte that lets you innovate with more materials. The promise is to break that trade-off of performance and safety. But they are not addressing grid-based storage. You need new kinds of innovation. There are no leaders in that space. So I think that will take off. We are actively looking at that space. We predict energy storage will get more investments and will be an important sector going forward.

VB: What else are you interested in?

PN: We want to focus on energy efficiency. In the past, it has been hard to get those things adopted. We are looking for companies that can grease the skids of adoption. It’s like there were MP3 players that weren’t popular until the iPod came along and Sharp Wizards that weren’t successful until the Palm Pilot came along and created the PDA market. We think there is a lot of leverage in great design. In something that is really easy to implement. It’s easier to sync your PC music to a portable because of the iPod.

VB: Climate change is such a big problem, it could take years for some of the startups to make an impact. If cleantech startups have a long-range focus, isn’t that a big investment risk?

PN: If you look at the enterprise software market, the big companies are the ones that can build a sales channel. It’s an uphill battle for a startup there. For an efficient solar panel, there are known distribution channels. So cleantech companies have a technology risk, a financing chasm, and then a low-market risk. We will not invest when there is a problem on all of those fronts. When you have multiple risk factors, you wind up with a low probability of success.

VB: Will the Obama administration be active in closing the financing chasm?

PN: This is an area that government has not focused on much. They have done things like Department of Energy or Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency research. They have been much more comfortable funding fundamental research. I would say take a chunk of the dollars and help companies reach commercialization. A bunch of these companies are two or three years away from being viable — making alternative fuels, solar cells, or clean coal. Those hit at the heart of the energy problem.

VB: Some people will complain that that amounts to corporate welfare. How do you respond to that?

PN: That’s right. Where change is required, you can’t draw too many lines. You have to look at what is practical. You should make sure you understand the role of the government relative to the private sector. There are inefficiencies in the private market. But the country needs these technologies.

VB: It seems like some of the cleantech ideas are fairly crazy. How do you view them?

PN: If you can do more with less, and create less carbon dioxide in the process of making concrete, there is value in that. If you can create plants that require less resources to cultivate, there is value in that. These ideas aren’t so wacky. It’s not science fiction. When I talked to my partners about using algae to create fuel, my partners thought it was something out of Star Trek. But these things aren’t so far fetched. We are bioengineering drugs for humans. Why not bioengineer things for the sake of saving the earth? It can create real economic value.

Game and virtual world fundings top $500 million in 2008

Posted: December 23rd, 2008, 10:00pm CET by Dean Takahashi

This year, VentureBeat wrote about [updated] 59 game companies that raised more than $500 million worth of venture capital and angel funds. That’s nothing compared to the $5 billion or so going into cleantech, but it’s probably one of the biggest years for venture investment in video game companies. Many of these companies may shut down because of the recession, but the successful ones will create revenues, profits and jobs in the years ahead. We’ve ranked them here in order of the amount of money raised and linked to our coverage of them. Fundings where the amounts weren’t made public are listed at the end. If you’ve heard of others, please note in the comments and we’ll add to the list.

1. BigFish Games — $83 million for casual downloadable games

2. Trion World Network — $70 million for online multiplayer server games. (The company is working with the Sci-Fi channel on an episodic online game that ties into a TV show and has other titles in the works too.)

3. Real Time Worlds — $50 million for online games such as All Points Bulletin

4. Turbine, maker of the Lord of the Rings Online — $40 million for massively multiplayer online games

5. G10 online game company — $38 million from China’s The9

6. Zynga — $29 million for social games

7. Playfish — $17 million for social games

8. GameDuell — $17 million for skill-based games

9. Playspan — $16.8 million for virtual goods platform

10. Nurien Software — $15 million for fashion-oriented social online game

11. Social Gaming Network — $15 million for Facebook and other social games

12. Expresso Fitness — $14 million for its virtual cycling exercise bikes

13. SouthPeak Interactive — $12.9 million for indie games

14. Raptr – $12 million for gamer social network

15. Gaia Online — $11 million for casual massively multiplayer online game

16. Challenge Games — $10 million for web-based online role-playing and sports games

17. World Golf Tour — double-digit millions for golf simulation

18. Bigfoot Networks — $8.75 million for game networking hardware

19. Crispy Gamer — $8.25 million for irreverent game news and reviews site

20. Heatwave Interactive — $7.5 million to improve online game production

21. Riot Games — $7 million for quick-hit online games

22. Playlogic — $7 million for indie games

23. Metaplace — $6.7 million for web-based virtual world

24. Conduit Labs — $5.5 million; reveals LoudCrowd

25. Play Hard Sports — $5 million for casual online sports games

26. Robotgalaxy — $5 million for virtual world

27. Ngmoco — $5 million for iPhone games; makes a splash with its game launches

28. Hollywood Interactive — $5 million for site with celebrity-oriented games for women

29. RocketOn — $5 million for parallel web games and social network

30. Popjax — $4.7 million for web quiz show games

31. Sparkplay Media — $4.5 million for 3-D browser-based games

32. Twofish — $4.5 million for virtual goods business

33. Webcarrz — $4 million for online car racing game world for boys

34. Machinima — $3.85 million for game fan videos

35. FlowPlay — $3.7 million for teen games

36. Three Rings — $3.5 million for online virtual-goods based games

37. Fluid Entertainment — $3.2 million for kids’ online games

38. C3L3B — $3 million for casual games

39. Kongregate — $3 million for user-generated games site.

40. GamerDNA — $3 million for social networking game site

41. Lumos Labs — $3 million for brain games

42. WeGame – $3 million for game fan videos site

43. Playfish — $3 million for social gaming

44. Mpowerplayer — $2.5 million for mobile gaming

45. Alamofire — $2 million for casual games

46. Akoha — $1.9 million for social games

47. Ball-it — $1.5 million for game-interface technology

48. Gamook — $1.5 million for online games

49. Shidonni — $1.5 million; launches drawing site for kids

50. Casual Collective — $1 million and launches Flash games

51. Dizzywood — $1 million for kids’ online games

52. 8D — $1 milion for online fantasy world

53. Rebel Monkey — $1 million for casual games

54. Sabi spins out of Microsoft to do educational games that bring drawings to life

55. MindFuse raises money for online massively multiplayer online games

56. Digini raises undisclosed amount for game-creation tools

57. OGPlanet of Korea raises undisclosed amount for online game importing

58. Meteor Games is started by Neopets founders to create new online gaming world

59. Sparkplay Media gets funds for massively multiplayer online game with social network

Please check out our link to VentureBeat’s inaugural game conference, GamesBeat 09, on March 24.

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Dean’s picks for the top games of the holiday season

Posted: December 23rd, 2008, 2:00pm CET by Dean Takahashi

Here are my picks for the best games of the holiday season. There is a lot of violent fare here, but this is the first time that I’ve included an iPhone game on my favorites list.

1. Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360) Microsoft/Epic Games, Nov. 2008. Epic livened up the dark and gloomy world from the previous game with more vibrant colors, only to plunge much of the action deep underground. But the theme of destroyed beauty — both on the grand planetary scale and on the individual human level of the loss of a wife — runs through this game and really motivates you to strike back at the damned Locust mutants who come from underground. Flamethrowers, chain guns, and the the familiar chain saw bayonets keep this game as bloody as they come. It has a sick sense of humor, like when your squad has to chain saw its way through the bloody belly of a giant worm. This one is worth playing all the way through to the end of the single-player game and then going online with multiplayer play.

2. Resistance 2 (PS 3) Sony/Insomniac Games, Nov. 2008. This first-person shooter is a big improvement over the original 2006 game in almost every way. There is a constant pressure to move forward because your character, Nathan Hale, is infected with a virus and could succumb at any moment. This one-man crusader has to take down as many of the alien Chimera before collapsing. Big bosses, including a 300-foot tall Leviathan, can seem like insurmountable obstacles until you figure out the creature’s weak points. There are creative new weapons like the Splicer that shoots a circular disk that saws enemies in half. The game has beautiful graphics and a variety of enemies that are difficult to take down, even with a wide selection of choice weapons. But it ultimately falls short of the combat intensity of Gears of War 2.

3. Fallout 3 (PC, Xbox 360, PS 3) Bethesda Softworks, Oct. 2008. You can freeze time for as long as you need in this role-playing game. Much like last year’s Mass Effect, you can then choose the actions that your character will take to make it through a nearly impossible firefight. Then you unfreeze time and watch the action unfold. It thus becomes a thinking person’s game rather than a twitch shoot-em-up. The game is set against the backdrop of nuclear devastation. It has 1950s-style bomb-shelter commercials and cheerful music that are reminiscent of my favorite game from last year, BioShock. If you liked last year’s surprise from BioShock, this one from the makers of Oblivion will suit you just fine.

4. Call of Duty: World at War (PC, Xbox 360, PS 3, Wii) Activision/Treyarch, fall 2008. This uses the same graphics engine as last year’s Call of Duty 4. While it’s still eye-popping visually, it is a little too familiar to be considered innovative. But now the action is back in the familiar territory of World War II. It takes place in the Pacific theater and introduces all the elements of a fierce race war, jungle warfare with realistic foliage, and flamethrowers. The Japanese make fierce rivals, with everything from ambushes to suicide attacks.

5. Left 4 Dead (PC, Xbox 360) Electronic Arts/Valve, Nov. 2008. Zombies make for great enemies. Look at the popularity of the Resident Evil games and movies, as well as hits like Dead Rising. The world of Left 4 Dead is one where a pandemic turns everyone into a zombie. You are trapped in a city and you have to wade through the sea of zombies, dispatching them along the way with heavy caliber weapons. But the tough thing about this game — and the terrifying thing — is that the zombies are fast. You have to rely on your allies to watch your back and to cover you while you reload. Otherwise, you’re toast. This game is just plain wonderful shoot-em-up-until-you-run-out-of-bullets fun. Just hope the ammo lasts until you reach the next convenient safe room or ammo pile.

6. Dead Space (Xbox 360, PS 3) Electronic Arts, Oct. 2008. This is an original work from Electronic Arts that started out slow but has gotten great reviews. You’re investigating a mining accident that has unleashed a deadly fury on a mining colony and a giant mining space ship. It’s in a familiar genre originally pioneered by the film Alien and executed well in games by Doom 3. But it’s fun to pause the action and engage in “strategic dismemberment,” or shoot out the right organ or appendage in the monster that’s attacking you. The pace is slower than Doom 3, mainly so that the game can scare the wits out of you with the tension that results from wondering what’s just around the corner. You can assemble your mining tools into a variety of weapons.

7. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PS 3, Xbox 360, Wii, PS 2, PSP, DS), LucasArts, Sept. 2008. Star Wars junkies feared the worst after the end of the last trilogy. But they’ve been pleasantly surprised with the animated film Clone Wars and a new game have extended the life of the franchise to end all franchises. I like the moral dilemma that the main character faces. You start as an evil apprentice to Darth Vader at the beginning of the Rebellion against the Galactic Empire, after the end of the Episode III film. The game also uses two innovations that bring The Force to life like never before. Everything in the game’s setting has physical attributes, meaning you can use the objects in the environment in the game. Everything is destructible, from glass to giant beams. You can toss this stuff around at hapless enemies. And those enemies are smarter and embued with self-preservation. Use the Force to pick up a Stormtrooper and the poor guy will hang on to something for dear life.

8. Prince of Persia (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) Ubisoft, Dec. 2008. The Prince of Persia series has always been good at magical combat. You can run across walls to avoid collapsing floors and jump high in the air to come down on top of your enemies. Add to that a cel-shaded animation style that bridges the world of 3-D and cartoons and you’ve got an immersive experience. This latest installment adds a companion in the lovely form of Elika, who helps with the critical jumping puzzles and combat duels. She’s a rare companion who isn’t truly annoying and is critical to completing tasks. Your job is to restore life to a dying world and defeat a series of bosses with your sword and magic. Along the way, you learn about Elika’s past, and that takes you to the story’s climax.

9. Legendary (Xbox 360, PC) Nov. 2008. Gamecock Media/Spark Unlimited. This game is one of those rare independent titles that makes me believe there is still room at the table for the little guys in console games. You start out as an art thief who inadvertantly sets chaos loose upon the world by opening Pandora’s Box, which has been shut in a museum. The ensuing scene of the destruction of a city is one of the most riveting you’ll see in games. The graphics aren’t perfect and the game leads you along a prescribed path, but it’s a thrill-ride. The first-person shooter lets you take on mythological creatures such as minotaurs, werewolves, griffons, firedrakes and others.

10. Rolando (iPhone) Ngmoco/Hand Circus, Dec. 2008. The iPhone isn’t the greatest gaming device, considering there are no buttons to mash. But its multi-touch screen and tilt sensing make for some unique game mechanics. Ngmoco has exploited those in Rolando, where you tilt the screen to make your little Rolando balls move where you want them to go. It’s a lot like Loco Roco, but the control schemes are different. You can select multiple Rolandos at once to get through a particular puzzle, or tap to use just one of them. You roll them one at a time or as bunch into different landscapes and solve the puzzles to keep them moving.

Please check out our link to VentureBeat’s inaugural game conference, GamesBeat 09, on March 24.

PowerBeam steps closer to launch of wireless electricity

Posted: December 23rd, 2008, 12:25am CET by Dean Takahashi

Transferring electricity through the air to power an electronic gadget seems impossible. Nikola Tesla, the radio pioneer, tried unsuccessfully to do it in the early 1900s. Technical hurdles have plagued the attempts to do the same thing ever since.

But PowerBeam, a small Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company that I first came across in April, 2007, says it is making progress on a technology that can transfer electricity — or more accurately generate electricity — across a room. It does so by focusing a laser on a solar cell, which converts the energy into electricity.

Grier Graham, vice president of product development, said the company can use a laser to generate about 1.5 watts of power to a solar cell as far away as 10 meters. That’s enough to power an electronic speaker or small low-wattage light-emitting diode (LED) lights. It can also charge the battery in a digital picture frame. But it’s not enough to operate a laptop (which requires maybe 30 watts to 50 watts).

But down the road, this product and others like it could create an enormous market for wireless devices that need power but are handicapped if they are tethered to a cord. These are devices that can’t get enough energy from direct sunlight to power them.

The current prototype’s receiver (left) is smaller than a fist and its transmitter (pictured at top) is about the size of half a brick. That’s a lot smaller than the original prototype I saw. The company still says it is about 18 months from having the products in the market. These folks have a long way to go, but they are making progress.

Graham, the brother of co-founder David Graham, says that the company needs to raise money to create a low-cost, fully customized version of the product. PowerBeam needs about $5 million to $6 million to do that.

The company raised $600,000 in a seed round from European venture capitalist I2BF. The company is one of perhaps a handful that will show some kind of wireless electricity technology at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Competitors include Witricity and Powercast. But both of those aren’t transmitting electricity as far as PowerBeam is trying to do. Other competitors are focusing on transferring electricity a very short distance from a charging pad to a cell phone. The idea is to use inductive coupling (or other methods) to charge multiple cell phones on one charging pad. The companies in this market include Powermat, eCoupled, WiPower and WildCharge.

PowerBeam was started a couple of years ago by co-founders David Graham and Xiaobing Luo. They point a laser at a solar cell, which takes the light and converts it into electricity. The problem with using a powerful laser to do this is you could slice somebody in half. So the company uses lasers that are powerful enough to do the job, but are safe. For instance, a safety system cuts the laser power if something interrupts the beam.

In future versions, Grier Graham thinks people can use this technology to power laptops without power cords. They could, for instance, sit at a cafe or a hotel ballroom and draw power from a light fixture above the room. The laser can seek out a solar receptor and concentrate its energy on that spot when it finds one.

You could also use it to power a security camera that doesn’t get enough light from a solar cell alone. In the near term, the company is focusing on getting a small amount of electricity across a room to power the digital picture frames, speakers, and lights. The company has four full-time employees and three contractors.

Skateboard champ Tony Hawk caught regifting fruitcakes

Posted: December 22nd, 2008, 9:26pm CET by Dean Takahashi

I got a fruitcake from skateboard champ Tony Hawk and I’ve regifted it. I was the 6,281st person to do so. This was a virtual fruitcake that is making the rounds on Facebook as part of a charitable campaign.

I happen to agree that the fruticake is the perennial lousy holiday gift, right up there with the tie. It gets passed around so much that it’s the perfect analogy for spreading word about something through viral marketing.

In this case, Hawk is one of seven celebritites — Yao Ming, Jimmy Johnson, Nicole Richie, Joel Madden of the band Good Charlotte, Ben Roethlisberger and Fall Out Boy — who participated in a gift-giving campaign, Re-gift the Fruitcake on Facebook or through the web site www.regiftthefruitcake.com.

There is a serious side to it. You can make a donation to charities via PayPal. Hawk’s own charity, the Tony Hawk Foundation, has given $2.5 million to fund 400 skate parks in low-income areas around the country. eBay’s PayPal will make a $20,000 donation to each celebrity charity as part of the campaign.

“It’s an incentive to get the Facebook generation into philanthropy,” Hawk said. “It encourages people to pass along the message about the charities and donate money.”

Hawk, a skateboarding champion, has his own money to give because he is the celebrity behind Activision Blizzard’s billion-dollar skateboarding game franchise. Since 1999, ten games have been released under the Tony Hawk label. The latest is a Nintendo DS game that has an accelerometer so that you can tilt the handheld player to produce skating motions on the screen. Hawk said that accelerometer-based games are a sign of things to come, but he noted that the iPhone is a little challenged at the moment because it doesn’t have game buttons.

But back to the fruitcake. Facebook has proven to be a great way to spread the word about charities through applications such as Causes, a Facebook app which has raised more than $2.5 million for charities in the past year. I’d expect that this year, even in a tough economy, charities will get greater exposure than ever thanks to these viral marketing campaigns which cost almost nothing.

Solarflare raises $32 million plus debt for high-speed networking chips

Posted: December 22nd, 2008, 7:48pm CET by Dean Takahashi

Solarflare Communications has raised $32 million in venture capital to finance the growth of its high-speed networking chip business.

The company’s 10GBASE-T PHY chips make it possible to transfer data within data centers at 10-gigabits per second over the Ethernet protocol, allowing for faster performance and better energy efficiency. Most data networking infrastructure operates at just 1 gigabit per second today.

Backers include Oak Investment Partners, Acacia Capital, Anthem Venture Partners, and others. On top of the venture round, the company expects to close on $12 million in venture debt financing related to the equity round. With the new round and debt, the company has raised $158 million in financing to date.

That’s a pretty staggering amount, but it’s consistent with some of the chip startups that have raised money this year. It’s not unusual for companies in chips to raise $100 million or more. Sometimes, as was the case with Montalvo Systems, even that kind of money isn’t enough.

Irvine, Calif.-based Solarflare has been shipping its second-generation chips to switch and server vendors since Dec. 3. The company will use the new money for production and support costs.

The company previously raised $26 million in June. Solarflare was started in 2001 as a chip design firm focused on 10-gigabit Ethernet networking. In 2006, it merged with Level 5 Networks in Cambridge, England. It launched its first-generation chips in Feb. 2007.

The company hopes to dominate 10-gigabit networking the way that Broadcom and Marvell have dominated 1-gigabit networking. But those companies are big rivals. Another start-up rival is Aquantia, which raised $25 million in March.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that national energy consumption by servers and data centers could nearly double by 2011 to more than 100 billion kilowatt hours, representing a $7.4 billion annual electricity cost. With Solarflare’s chips, it’s easier to shift data to outlying equipment with lower-energy costs.

The company has 120 employees.

NeoEdge Networks launches NeoMOM to measure product tastes

Posted: December 22nd, 2008, 5:00pm CET by Dean Takahashi

Among the major brand advertisers, relatively few grocery product advertisers have moved online to target female audiences. One reason is that there hasn’t been good data collected that tracks the tastes of women online.

That’s why NeoEdge Networks, which operates an ad network for in-game advertising for casual games, is launching its NeoMOM demographic measurement tool today. The company will survey users across its network and issue reports every month so that advertisers can learn things such as what toothpaste women buy and what influences their purchases.

NeoEdge inserts video ads into games that players download from web sites. It has found that roughly 70 percent of players are adult women ages 24 to 54. That’s a highly desirable group for advertisers in the consumer products category. While the company can collect data on all gamers, it called the tool NeoMOM because mothers have a lot of clout in consumer purchases and advertisers want to reach them.

It will be interesting to see if advertisers respond as NeoEdge hopes. After all, there are other sites and ad networks on the Internet that directly target women — Glam, iVillage and Sugar — and these sites are capable of collecting data for advertisers too. But in this case, NeoEdge believes that it can get more accurate data more quickly because of reward systems built into the games. Basically, the surveys can be tied to games that people would normally pay for. If gamers are asked to fill out short surveys in exchange for some kind of discount on the game, they will likely do so. Another way to get gamers to fill out surveys is to reward them points for doing so, particularly if the points can be cashed in. Since gamers are motivated to play, they will put up with things that others who are just seeking information online won’t put up with.

Ty Levine, vice president of marketing at Mountain View, Calif.-based NeoEdge, said that the company has found that its online surveys have a higher response rate than usual, on the order of 8 to 9 percent, compared to average response rate of about 1 percent for online surveys. Hence, he believes that NeoEdge can produce detailed research inexpensively and share the results with brand advertisers.

NeoEdge isn’t going to sell the research. Levine believes the data will spur advertisers to spend more online to precisely target the audiences they want to reach. If, for instance, the data shows that a certain group of people aren’t aware of a brand, the advertiser can find a way to target that group and spend the necessary money to raise the awareness. That, in turn, should directly benefit NeoEdge, which gets a portion of the ad revenues that run inside online games. The first survey results will be available in mid January for advertisers.

Levine said that the data will complement what’s available from market researchers such as comScore, Nielsen, Quantcast and others. NeoEdge works with more than 50 game publishers to puts ads in games that are played by a community of more than 20 million people. There are more than 500 games in the network.

The company’s consumer audiences play for 45-minutes a session, an average of three times a week. In any given session, NeoEdge shows about six video ads to the players. Through the use of quick polls and “polls of the week,” the company has a chance to get opinions quickly from the participants.

Seagate CEO Bill Watkins seeks to avoid $#!+ eating contests in hard drives

Posted: December 22nd, 2008, 2:00pm CET by Dean Takahashi

Bill Watkins is always good unplugged. The chief executive of Seagate, the $13 billion Scotts Valley, Calif.-based hard disk drive maker, is trying to avoid commodity mud-wrestling and is trying to develop his own version of chip-based flash memory to replace the low-end of the hard drive market. It’s a tough balancing act to invest in new technology and deal with the worst recession in memory at the same time. We attended a dinner in the spring and caught up with him again recently.

Q: If the economy wasn’t where it is now, what would your position be like?
A: The macroeconomic picture is overwhelming. We had the best year in the company’s history in the year that ended June. Revenue and profits. It was the best year we’ve ever had. And I’m now in the worst December I’ve ever had. This macro problem has basically stopped everything.

Q: The flash memory chip makers have been in a funk since a year ago.
A: Yeah, I’ve been talking to Eli [Harari, chief executive of flash memory chip maker SanDisk] for a long time. Their industry got [itself] way out of whack on over-capacity. In hard drives, people aren’t buying desktops, they aren’t selling notebooks. At retail, external drives are doing OK. We have maybe 45 percent of all desktops with 3.5-inch drives. As desktop drops, where there are three competitors and we have a large share, we are heading to the notebook market where we have six competitors and an 18 percent share. We have to move ourselves to do better in notebook. We have to deal with the transitions from high-end notebooks to low-end notebooks.

Q: Are you guys going to have layoffs?
A: We’re going to have a restructuring in January. There will be layoffs. We’ve made internal announcements. We’re going to have to get capacity and demand in line, and that will require a restructuring.

Q: Are you doing your own internally developed solid state drives (flash memory chips that function as hard drives)?
A: We are doing it internally. We have two kinds of SSDs. We are spending $80 million to $90 million on SSD technology development. This is actual chip technology. I’m buying chips and developing the technology.

Q: Have you said what the manufacturing strategy will be?
A: We will develop technology and farm it off to the TSMCs or Spansions [contract manufacturers] of the world. If I can’t develop it myself, I’ll buy it. We think about flash the way we think about DRAM. We do silicon development. We design the controller, the firmware, the interface. It will be made by a foundry. Our first games that come out will take a current chip and put it into a drive and controller that we develop.

Q: What kind of technology are you developing for a chip-based memory?
A: We don’t believe in the current technology. The current flash technology doesn’t get to the right storage density and low cost to replace hard drives. SanDisk is doing 3-D chip stacking that they bought with Matrix. Phase shift from Samsung is being developed, but they’ve downplayed it recently. There are MRAM technologies. But we believe there is another solid-state semiconductor technology that needs to be developed that can scale down as needed. We are investors in start-up companies now and we’re working internally on it. If we get that technology, we will have contract manufacturers. I won’t go build massive fabs.

Q: You have a lot of patents on that?
A: Yes. We will wrap it in patents. We were investors in SanDisk. We have been investing in solid-state chips since 1990. Early on, we thought of it as a low-end, low capacity solution. We think now it can be an enterprise tier-zero architecture. Tier zero is where people buy servers and don’t store anything. They just do transactions. They buy high-performance hard drives. They buy fast drives, put 10 of them together for about $3,000. They get 2,000 gigabytes of storage. But they only use a small amount of it. They buy 10 drives, destroke them, meaning you only use the outer part of the disk that is faster. If you came up with a 200-gigabyte drive, the people who need them are like Morgan Stanley. They close at the market close and have all this data that comes in and they move it to the storage. This is five percent of the market, but it is a cost-per-gigabyte play. I replace 10 drives with one with the same speed. I can save them a lot of money. Flash is real, but people are hyping it in the wrong area.

Q: Is it possible for start-ups to make much headway in coming up with a brand new storage technology?
A: It’s worth noting that Samsung has to pay a lot of money in license fees to SanDisk, which was once a small company. All it takes is four smart people who know how to do something and they go up against 200 average people who don’t know how to do crap. [Laughs]. This valley was started on people who are smart enough to beat big companies. We are investing with start-ups because doing it myself takes way too much crap. Doing it with a start-up keeps the crap off my plate. We do creative stuff with a joint venture because they can do it much more efficiently. I’ve spent time with solar start-ups. There are 70 in the Bay Area. I’m just helping them out as part of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. It will help me. When they come out, they will need hard drives too.

Q: If you look at something like MRAM, it’s been in the labs so long that it’s hard for them to catch up with the market leaders. They can’t run fast enough, right?
A: That’s true, although I see MRAM more as a competitor to DRAM chips, not hard drives. I don’t underestimate start-ups.

Q: What’s going on with Eco Seagate (where the company sends its employees through a grueling survival course in New Zealand) this year?
A: I probably won’t be able to pull it off this year. I don’t want to spend the money. I pulled it out one other time in 2000 because of finances. If we’re making money, we’re going to do it.

Q: You’re not expecting a great year?
A: No. I’m hoping it comes back faster. We’re prepared for a bad two quarters coming up. If we think there is a big inventory problem, we’re going to make sure that we’re in better shape. Right now, we’ve probably got capacity to make 40 percent more drives than we’re going to ship. Maybe we’re at 70 percent capacity. I think there will be an inventory issue with the PC guys before this quarter is out. It shouldn’t be this high right now. It might make for a lousy January.

Q: But it’s still not as bad as 2001.
A: Yeah. But our numbers are a whole lot bigger now. When you have thi

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