Crenk » Steven Finch

Cross Fire: Free Online Multiplayer Shooting Game

Steven Finch — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:16:47 +0000

Cross Fire is a completely free online multiplayer First Person Shooting game.

Gameplay:

It is very clear that the developers have aimed to just build a normal game that everyone will want to play. No photon lasers, No energy fields, Just some blood and guts.

Due to the developers spending less time on the flashy features, they spent a lot more time tweaking the features and trying to provide a complete and finished gaming experience.

Game Modes:

Search and Destroy: You win by either eliminating all members of the oposing team, or by completing set objectives (e.g. defusing or planting a bomb). This game mode is usually played in multiple rounds. The team with the most rounds won being the victor.

Team Deathmatch: An explanation shouldn’t be needed here. Eliminating as many members of the enemy party as possible is your sole mission. There’s only one round, with instant respawns for whoever is killed. The victor is the team that reaches the kill limit first.

Elimination: Similar to Team Deathmatch, only without instant respawn. The team that manages to eliminate all members of the enemy party wins a round. A set number of rounds needs to be won to win the game.

Ghost Mode: This is an innovating and unique game mode, newly introduced by Cross Fire. The Black List members are invisible, but have only a knife and C4. They need to blow up a target, but can be heard by the Global Risk members, who are visible, but have access to all weapons.

Download Cross Fire

Cross Fire is a free 268 MB download. It’s intensive action, but light graphics ensure great fun on both the stronger and weaker computer systems.

You can register here, download it here, and please write down your opinion in the comments section below.

Top 5 Free Blackberry Applications

Steven Finch — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:58:48 +0000

We thought we would let everyone know what our favourite five blackberry applications are.

Facebook For Blackberry

Everyone knows what Facebook is! Facebook lets people share pictures, messages and online applications with their friends. Facebook seems to be everywhere and they even have a Facebook application for the Blackberry. A really neat feature of this app is their recent update which allows you to automatically link Facebook profile pictures of your friends with their contact entry in your Blackberry’s address book. You can download Facebook for Blackberry on your Blackberry’s browser here: http://www.facebook.com/blackberry.

Twitterberry

If you use Twitter and have a Blackberry, then Twitterberry is for you. With it, you can send out Twitter updates quickly and easily as well as see your friends timeline, view replies to your Tweets and direct message your friends. Download Twitterberry here: http://orangatame.com/ota/twitterberry/. Crenk Twitter account – http://twitter.com/crenk

Blackberry Appworld

Made directly by Blackberry, Appworld allows you to browse through a wide variety of many other Blackberry apps and download and install them on the spot from the application. Many different developers contribute their applications to the library that’s available for download. The limitation to this application is that you must have a free PayPal account in order to get through checkout of some apps. You can download Appworld from your Blackberry’s browser here: http://www.blackberry.com/appworld

Viigo

Viigo is a feature-rich application which lets you view news & RSS feeds, audio clips & podcasts, stocks & money data, weather and more. From the one application, you can do a lot of things and browse many blog RSS feeds, see sports scores, view local weather, and even read books. Viigo also bills their software as “the one app you’ll never want to be without” because of its wide range of features it makes available to you. You can download Viigo from your Blackberry browser here: http://www.getviigo.com.

Pandora

Pandora, has a great free Blackberry application which allows you to do almost everything you can do on the desktop version except right on your phone. You can create new stations, listen to already created ones, rate songs and more. Download it from your Blackberry’s browser here: http://www.pandora.com.

Skype Deal Finally Completed and Worth $2.75 Billion

Steven Finch — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:00:12 +0000

So much has happened in the last few months with regards to Skype. eBay which bought Skype for $2.6 million back in 2005 has finally settled its litigation with Skype’s founders, and now the sale and restructure has been finalised.

The result: Skype now owns all of its technology, the founders received 14% of Skype and two seats on the Board of Directors, eBay keeps 30% of Skype, and the rest is owned by outside investors.

1. eBay now owns 30% of Skype, outside investors (including Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board) own 70%.

2. 14% or so is owned by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of Skype who have been added to the investor pool.

3. The Skype deal values the company at $2.75 billion, which is a little higher than the price eBay paid for Skype in 2005.

4. Joltid Limited is an investor in Skype. Joltid is owned by the Skype founders and was a major part of the legal dispute between eBay and the founders. The company held a key P2P technology that Skype now owns as part of this deal.

Thats the full recap on the new situation for Skype. Hopefully now Skype can move forward and start more innovations with their product.

Go Squared Release Their New Live Stats Platform in Closed Beta

Steven Finch — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:44:29 +0000

Traffic analysis is one of the most important parts of understanding your sites and its readers. Im a firm believer that sites and blogs need to really get to know their audience and offer them whatever they want.

GoSquared has launched their new LiveStats product in which they are trying to combined with their exsiting SellAds and GetSeen products. LiveStats is a real-time traffic monitoring app for small and medium sized websites. If you head over to http://gosquared.com, you can signup and then add your site. Once accepted you will be able to see in real time users visiting your site and their basic information.

Information available includes:

Browser
Country
Operating System
URL
Enterance Source

There are a few additional options, but instead of running through everything I just thought I would add their introduction video:

Music Video Site Vevo To Launch on December 8th

Steven Finch — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:01:38 +0000

Vevo has to be one of the most anticipated launches of the year and it is all set to go live on December 8th. The source is the Vevo twitter account. The announcement comes a day after Hulu said it too would make a foray into the music video space, with a deal to put up some music videos from EMI on its site.

If you have been living under a rock for the past 6 months, then Vevo is a new music video joint venture between the major record labels and YouTube. At launch the site will include music from Sony and Universal. This is a big move because the most popular sites at the moment on YouTube are the music video channels. Vevo allows YouTube to make even larger revenues because its a lot easier to place advertising against a quality peice of content like a music video, instead of the user generated content on its normal site.

Team Vevo email:

Dear member of the VEVO VIP pre-launch mailing list (Note: that would be anyone who signed up at Vevo.com for updates),

We are excited to tell you that VEVO will launch the evening of Tuesday, December 8!!

We’ve been working night and day for months to bring you the best music video and entertainment experience we can dream up, and in just about 3 weeks you can see it online for yourself!

The VEVO service at VEVO.com and at YouTube.com will go live in coordination with our launch event in New York on December 8th. We’ll be sure to let you know as soon as it’s up and running so you can start having some fun

We can’t wait to show you what we’ve been working on!

In the meantime, please keep in touch and let us know what you think about all things VEVO!

Myspace Acquires Imeem (Music Streaming Service) for Only $8 million?

Steven Finch — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:42:41 +0000

It has now been confirmed that Myspace has closed on its acquisition of Imeem, the music streaming service. It is paying a fire sale price of $1 million, sources familiar with the situation tell me, and could pay up to $7 million to $9 million in earnouts for key employees, who will likely include CEO Dalton Caldwell.

The deal basically values Imeem at around $8 million, even though Sequoia and Warner Music have already pumped $25 million into the venture.

I dont understand why Myspace thought it was a good idea to purchases Imeem! Was it just about the users who are still active on Imeem, cause it definitely wasnt about the technology or the earnings potential.

Apple Tablet Has Been Delayed Till Late 2010

Steven Finch — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:07:25 +0000

It has been reported that Apple plans to postpone the launch of their much anticipated tablet PC from an original March 2010 launch to late 2010.

Sources also indicated that in addition to Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry), Quanta Computer and Pegatron Technology are expected to be manufacturing partners for Apple’s two tablet PC models – one of which will have a 10.6-inch TFT LCD panel while the other will have a 9.7-inch OLED panel.

LG Display currently is making OLED panels using its 4.5G production line and LG Display’s five-year US$500 million panel purchasing contract with Apple includes supply of OLED panels, the sources pointed out.

Since 9.7-inch OLED panels are currently priced at about US$500 and panel costs normally account for about 30% of the device’s total cost, Apple’s 9.7-inch OLED tablet PC is expected to have a cost of about US$1,500-1,700 (based on today’s prices), the sources estimated. However, OLED panel prices are dropping rapidly and are expected to reach an acceptable level for notebook products by 2011, so the sources believe Apple’s delayed schedule may include such considerations.

The sources estimate that Apple’s tablet PC cost will drop to around US$1,200-1,500 by the second half of 2010 with the retail price reaching about US$2,000. The price could be more flexible if bundled with telecom providers’ 3G services. Meanwhile, the 10.6-inch LCD panel-based Apple tablet PC is expected to priced in the US$800-1,000 range.

Acer Liquid A1 Released To UK Customers Before End Of November

Steven Finch — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:51:48 +0000

The new Google Android phone on the market is the Acer Liquid A1. Instead of waiting a few months for Google Android 2.0 it has decided to move forward with 1.6 and get this great phone into market.

The Acer Liquid A1 is scheduled to be released in the next few weeks in the UK and is priced at £286 before tax. With the Acer Liquid A1 no contract is required based on that pricing.

Features include:

3.5 inch WVGA touchscreen
3G data access
Wifi and built in GPS
Bluetooth 2.0
5MP camera
SnapDragon processor

There’s still no word on whether a Google Android 2.0 upgrade option will be made easily available to Liquid A1 users.

Random Posts

Roomba Pac Man: Robot Pac-Man Game

Steven Finch — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:08:26 +0000

The vacuum, long an instrument for chasing cats, has now been turned against its own. What better use for automatic home appliances than to have them chase each other in classic video game style?

Five Roomba vacuum robots and a software, originally developed to control unmanned aerial systems is all some dudes from the University of Colorado needed to create a quite unusual Pac-Man clone.

Random Posts

Seesmic for Windows: Best New Twitter Client Optimised for Windows 7

Steven Finch — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:11:31 +0000

Here at Crenk we have been lucky enough to have access to the new Seesmic for Windows. Seesmic is a Twitter and Facebook client that lets you track and update you streams from one simple location and via multiple accounts.

At the Microsoft PDC09 conference yesterday, Seesmic announced their new native Twitter client for Windows. This application is engineered for Windows and optimized for Windows 7. Seesmic for Windows provides users managing Twitter the best experience available by combining the best features what Windows 7 has to offer.

We can offer all our readers access to the new Seesmic for Windows (Currently Closed Beta), by clicking the link here.

Hitachi Releases Cheap Portable 2TB SimpleDrive Hard Drive

Steven Finch — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:03:56 +0000

I remember when 80MB hard drives were are really big thing and now Hitachi is coming out with a very sleek 2TB hard drive which is part of their SimpleDrive family.

I also thought the price of this hard drive was going to be quite expensive, but then it turns out its only $250.

So what do you think if the design and the actual size of this drive for the money?

Join Crenk on Facebook and Get The Latest News and Free Invites

Steven Finch — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:24:30 +0000

If you enjoy reading Crenk and have a Facebook account, be a fan of our Facebook page and join in on the fun! You’ll be rewarded with exclusives, invites and the latest reviews of web apps.

We will also use our fan page to occasionally inform you about premium software giveaways.

In addition to that, you’ll have the chance to participate in Crenk polls and discussions; and ask our Crenk writers technically-related questions or just tell everyone how much you love reading our site!

The Pirate Bay Closing Their Torrent Tracker for Good

Steven Finch — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:08:53 +0000

The big news this morning is that the Pirate Bay is closing down their torrent tracker for good. After launching the torrent tracker back in 2003 it quickly became one of the worlds largest Bittorrent trackers on the Internet, with some 25 million peers using the service. The Pirate Bay was launched by a few friends in Sweden and was never supposed to turn into a business, and never really did (probably the ultimate open source project).

Despite this success, The Pirate Bay operators today decided to pull the plug and close down the tracker permanently. The evolution of the BitTorrent protocol has made trackers redundant they say, as BitTorrent downloads work well with trackerless solutions such as DHT and PEX.

“Now that the decentralized system for finding peers is so well developed, TPB has decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down! It’s the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date. We have put a server in a museum already, and now the tracking can be put there as well,” the Pirate Bay crew write on their blog.

Additionally, Torrentfreak has learned that The Pirate Bay operators are talking to other Bittorrent site ownwers to encourage them to follow suit and completely ditch torrents in the future. BitTorrent has reached a point where trackers and torrents are no longer needed to download files successfully. Supported by all of the major BitTorrent clients, DHT and PEX can handle the transfers and Magnet links can easily replace traditional torrent files.

There are still other services for users who dont want to go trackerless just yet, which include OpenBitTorrent and PublicBitTorrent.

Its really sad to see the end of this famous tracker, however times change and technology moves on, and all credit to The Pirate Bay team for trying to push the move even quicker.

Evernote Raises another $10 million in Series B Funding

Steven Finch — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:12:47 +0000

Its been reported that Evernote the popular note taking service has raised another $10 million in Series B funding. This series B funding comes after already raising $6 million.

Already Evernote has a solid business model with a great number of premium subscribers who already pay for the service. Thus, Evernote has nearly two million users, some paying in the premium model, so why the new funding? Is Evernote looking to purchase any other startups or push their service into default applications on mobile phones?

Andrew Sinkov, VP of Marketing, tells us, “All of that money is going into the product. That’s always been Evernote’s approach. Our product is our marketing, so we’re using the funds to make Evernote better, more functional, and more accessible to new users. We’re also adding new platforms, new language support, and lots of other good stuff.”

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates at CNBC Townhall

Steven Finch — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:53:07 +0000

Google Chrome OS To Launch Within a Week

Steven Finch — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:01:04 +0000

Google’s Chrome OS project, first announced in July, will become available for download within a week.

Google has previously said they are working with Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba on the project. It is expected that Google will be very careful are launch and will only endorse a small set of devices for installation.

There has been a lot of news around the Google Chrome OS, including Linux OS and reports that it was going to launch back in October.

Dell Inspiron Zino: Sexy Dell Home Theatre and PC Option

Steven Finch — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:06:26 +0000

Last summer Dell mentioned they were going to launch their tiny Inspiron Zine PC and now its here. It looks like an excellent addition to any home theater or desktop, especially if you configure it with a terabyte of hard disk space, 8GB of RAM, 64-bit Windows 7, a 512MB ATI Radeon HD 4330 graphics card capable of blasting out 1080p, and its upcoming optional TV tuner. Sounds like hot competition for Apple’s newly updated Mac Mini.

There’s no Intel Atom processor or the NVIDIA Ion platform on board as we had hoped, but we’re still satisfied with the highest-end processor available on it, the 1.8GHz dual-core AMD Athlon Neo X2 6850e. Decked out with all this goodness, the Zino’s not the cheapest home theater PC in the world, but its price of around $700 fully configured ain’t bad. Or if you go with its basic trim, you’ll have a fully functioning PC for a rock-bottom $229.

Google Chrome for Mac is Coming in December

Steven Finch — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:30:30 +0000

PC users have been able to use the Google Chrome browser for some time now, however for everyone using Macs they have been waiting patiently for their own non-developer version. Chrome day for the Mac is coming very soon.

CNET is reporting that recent discussion in a Chrome mailing list points to an early December launch. We could be just weeks away from a beta version of Chrome for Mac.

The Google group update in question is light on details, but by requesting that developers update to support Browser Actions, it also suggests that a December launch date for a Mac version is fast approaching.

Google Chrome’s product manager, Nick Baum, writes:

“The extensions team has been working hard to get BrowserActions ready, and
they’re already working great on Windows and Linux. We’ve noticed that many
of you have updated your extensions to take advantage of the new UI. We’d
like to encourage the rest of you to do so as well!

You can find the latest docs here:
http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/browserAction.html

Why make the switch now? The earlier you switch, the more time you will have
to polish your experience for our Beta launch in early December. We realize
this means dropping Mac support for a couple of weeks, but we already have
people working on that. If you prioritize the Windows and Linux versions,
we’ll bring you cross-platform parity as soon as we can!”

The post provides an interesting clue to the future of Google Chrome for Mac. We can only hope the early December beta launch date is accurate.

Microsoft Project Natal (Controller Free for Xbox 360) Coming November 2010 and Cheap

Steven Finch — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:02:28 +0000

Microsoft’s upcoming Project Natal add-on for the Xbox 360 is one of the most exciting and interesting new gaming peripherals to be announced in some time. Now it has been reported over at Wireninja that the new Project Natal will be coming in November 2010 and will ship 5 million units in its initial batch, which includes 14 games and a super-low price of £50.

One publishing source says Microsoft is “trying to get as close as possible to ‘impulse buy’”. Another even says the camera could even retail for just £30.

Activision, Bethesda, Capcom, Disney, EA, Konami, MTV, Namco Bandai, Sega, Square Enix, THQ and Ubisoft all committed to make games for the device in an announcement made at last month’s Tokyo Game Show.

Spectrum: Bright and Colourful Professional Two Column Free Wordpress Theme

Steven Finch — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:53:23 +0000

Spectrum is free Wordpress Theme designed and delivered to you by Ignacio Ricci. This theme looks very bright and colourful. You can also give this theme a whole new feeling simply by changing the background image. Take a look around to check out it’s features. Enjoy using this lovely theme in your blog.

Free Movies Theatre: Watch Movies Online Without Downloading

Steven Finch — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:12:54 +0000

Previously here on Crenk we have reviewed many sites that aim at providing users with a hub for being able to watch movies online without downloading anything. Today we have come across another site that claims to do this the best, FreeMoviesTheatre.

FreeMoviesTheatre pretty much does what it says on the tin and that is provide some great movies users can watch right within their browser. The site itself provides a great list of genres from Animated to Bollywood and Sci-Fi. All the latest movies are there too, plus they have a simple option to download the movies. I would like to see the site have a easier download function instead of using a third party, however if they did this them I’m sure their site would be illegal.

Currently, FreeMoviesTheatre has over 4500 movies online and they are growing fast. Im not entirely too sure how legal this site is, but make use of it before they get taken down!

5 Leading VOIP Services That Are Skype or Gizmo5 Alternatives

Steven Finch — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:26:30 +0000

There has been a lot of talk about Skype and now Gizmo5 this week, so we thought we would let everyone know about 5 new VOIP service that are on the rise.

Truphone (www.truphone.com), London, became the first true Internet calling application in Apple’s App Store when the company introduced Truphone for the iPhone a year ago; it’s now available for the iPod touch, BlackBerry, Nokia and Android devices. Truphone enables free to low-cost mobile calling over available Wi-Fi or local wireless networks for owners of iPhones and other smartphones who travel out of their home service areas. It’s especially advantageous for international travelers who want to make inexpensive calls from their mobile phones wherever in the world they may be. Further, Truphone eliminates the uncertainty of expensive roaming charges altogether, so people who call using Truphone know what they’re paying and what they’re getting. And calls between Truphone users are always free. The company’s Truphone Local Anywhere service, coming later this year, aims to eliminate the high cost of calling other countries by making all calls “local.” Truphone Local Anywhere will become the mobile service of choice — delivering cost savings and convenience — for anyone who travels, or lives abroad and needs to stay in touch with family, friends and business colleagues, wherever they may live.

ShoZu (www.shozu.com), London, is an intelligent social media hub currently used by people worldwide to enrich connections with the people in their lives by effortlessly exchanging video, pictures and commentary between mobile devices and favorite social networks, photo sharing sites and information resources. The company’s patented technology provides fast, easy, one-click uploads of photos and video clips from the mobile to the Web, full-resolution photo and video delivery without compression, an emerging suite of services that push content to the phone, the ability to work in the background even if a connection is dropped, and other unique features that simplify and enhance the user experience. The company was founded in 2000 and has formed partnerships with some of the leading players in the mobile ecosystem, including Motorola and Samsung.

Boingo Wireless (www.boingo.com), Los Angeles, is the global market leader in Wi-Fi. Boingo makes it easy for consumers to enjoy Wi-Fi access on their laptops or mobile devices at more than 100,000 hotspots worldwide — including airports, hotels, cafes and metropolitan hot zones — with a single account. Through its Concourse Communications Group, LLC subsidiary, Boingo operates wired and wireless networks at 20 of the top 100 North American airports.

Hi Def Conferencing (www.hidefconferencing.com), Hoboken, N.J., from Citrix Online is a multi-party communication service that delivers crystal-clear quality and realism in audio get-togethers. The service uses advanced audio processing of up to 5 times the bandwidth of legacy telephone systems, making it easy to hear the subtleties of participants’ speech, accents and inflection – dramatically improving comprehension. Hi Def Conferencing also brings clarity to what users pay. As a predictable, fixed-fee service, it eliminates the billing surprises typically associated with other conferencing services. For a flat monthly fee, high quality conferencing is within the reach of everyone – encouraging ad hoc group collaboration with family members around the world. Participants access Hi Def Conferencing easily over traditional landlines, mobile carriers or broadband VoIP services, such as Skype.

iotum (www.calliflower.com), Ottawa, is a Voice 2.0 company that aims to reinvent business conversations and shape a world of relevant communications where devices, social networks and Web services work seamlessly together to let people communicate with whom they want, when they want and on the device they want. iotum’s business is to design and provide a simple, supportive and intuitive environment to enrich business conversations. iotum’s products and services bring greater meaning and productivity to typically stale and static multiparty communications and meet the growing teleconferencing needs of a broad range of customers across many industries. Iotum’s flagship service, Calliflower, makes it easy for people to plan and participate in engaging and meaningful conference calls that bridge business and social networks.

Free Downloadable Add-Ons Make for Speedy Browsing

Steven Finch — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:08:20 +0000

Mozillas Firefox Bookmarking Add-Ons make browsing on-line faster, more organized, and more convenient. While there are hundreds of free Bookmarks Add-ons to choose from through Mozillas AMO website, only a handful of them have received a coveted Recommended rating. Features vary wildly, and though some are a slight improvement over Internet Explorers Favorites, others succeed at being both simple and sophisticated.

If you just want to take the bookmarks names off the Bookmarks Toolbar to allow for more bookmarks to appear, Smart Bookmarks Bar 1.4.3 is an okay option. Its straightforward, but doesn’t give you much in the way additional functionality. Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar 4.0 does just what it says. As you get too many Bookmarks for one row, additional rows will appear. Of course as you add more and more bookmarks, you wont have much space left on your screen.

Xmarks 3.3.2 is popular because it synchronizes your bookmarks and passwords and allows you to access and update them on each computer you keep. Plus it supports Firefox, as well as Internet Explorer and Safari. One slightly worrisome feature of Xmarks is that it captures all of your Google searches (and other search engines) so it can interject websites into your Search results (they call this their “discovery service”). Just like Google, it keeps a history of websites that you visit, so security is a concern. Although Xmarks says its encrypted, it doesn’t seem impossible for its server to get hacked and all of a sudden have all of your passwords for sale to the highest bidder on the net.

The best feature of samfind Bookmarks Bar 2.0.3 is how fast it gets you to the sites you visit most often. Its totally customizable, and starts you off with some of the most popular websites already configured. Bookmarks are organized by Topics and its easy to add websites, even letting you drop and drag sites you want to add right from the address bar. You can position the samfind Toolbar where you want it, and you can select the look of websites on the Bar as icons, icons and text, or text. You can also change samfind’s layout to fit several times as many websites as you normally could, saving valuable screen space.

Shareaholic 1.9 supports over 60 social sites, allowing you to choose your favorite social services and access them from a single drop down menu. This add-on is tightly focused on bookmarking/sharing, blogging/publishing, as well as emailing, and link shortening. You can have instant access to shared web pages with the websites in these categories. In this respect it is similar to some of the other add-ons mentioned, although with fewer numbers of websites to interact with.

Mozillas Recommended Bookmarks Toolbars are all free downloads, and they offer a variety of features that will appeal to virtually any level of web browser. Once installed, they can all make repeated visits to the Internet a whole lot quicker and a lot less cluttered. Now if we could only find our car keys

Google Acquires AdMob and Gizmo5, Plus Playfish Acquired by EA

Steven Finch — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:16:58 +0000

It has been a very big day in acquisitions for both Google and Accel partners. Google has announced that they have acquired Admob and Gizmo5. Admob is a mobile advertising network in which cost Google $750 million.

AdMob founder Omar Hamoui sent the following letter to customers:

Today we announced that AdMob has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google for $750 million. We are extremely excited about this new partnership and what it means for our advertiser, developer and publisher partners.

AdMob’s people, products and tools will continue to work to deliver successful campaigns for you and to effectively monetize your mobile traffic – no interruptions. Our product and engineering teams will keep building great products for our customers. Our sales team will keep working with our thousands of advertisers to deliver successful campaigns. Our business development team will keep working to maximize ad revenue for the more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications that make up AdMob’s publisher network.

After our deal closes, AdMob will work with Google to accelerate the pace of innovation in mobile and do an even better job for you. We believe this deal will benefit our advertisers, developers and publishers by:

*Increasing our investment in building innovative and engaging ad units across platforms and to further improve targeting and tracking.

*Building even more powerful relevance and optimization capabilities, and more powerful technology and tools to monetize mobile traffic.

*Increasing the effectiveness of display advertising on mobile devices by leveraging Google sales team, infrastructure and relationships.

*Improving the already high level of service and support we deliver to our advertisers, developers and publishers.

Im very surprised that Admob sold out to Google on this occassion. I know that $750 million is not an average sum of money, but with Googles track record of advertising products that aren’t Adsense is pretty terrible. Back in February 2007 Google purchased Adscape, which still hasn’t really taken their in-game advertising product to the next level. Additionally, Google killed Feedburner’s very profitable advertising network and replaced it directly with a much worse product for the type of market, Google Adsense. Accel partners won out big on this acquisition as they and Sequoia Capital were the early investors.

Gizmo5 Acquisition:

Gizmo5 was the other company in which Google purchased today, but for only around $30 million in cash. Gizmo5 is a VOIP infrastructure. In previous months Gizmo5 was in talks with Skype about a potential sale, mainly because Skype was having big issues with their current infrastructure. This is a very interested move for Google, I’m not entirely sure why they purchased VOIP infrastructure. The only possible solution is that they are thinking about tying it in with their current Google Voice offering.

EA purchase Playfish:

After lengthy negotiations, Electronic Arts closed it’s anticipated acquisition of social gaming startup Playfish for $275 million in cash. An additional $25 million in stock will be set aside for retaining the top talent at the startup, and another $100 million in earnouts are part of the deal as well if the business hits certain milestones. This has no reaffirmed how lucrative this market current is. I would not be surprised to see a Zynga IPO or Playdom acquistion in the first half of 2010.

News Corp Strategy with Rupert Murdoch on Paid Content Online, Google, BBC and More.

Steven Finch — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:42:43 +0000

Great interview with Rupert Murdoch on the paid content, BBC, YouTube and more.