Technology, Computers, Science, The Internet, Games
Scent of father checks daughter’s maturity
Chemical cues from fathers may be delaying the onset of sexual maturity in daughters, as part of an evolutionary strategy to prevent inbreeding, according to researchers at Penn State.
technorati tags:ScienceBlog, Biology, Evolution
Samsung announced today that it has developed the world’s first 40-nanometer memory device, allowing for 32 and 64GB CompactFlash cards. According to the company’s press release, the new design uses a Charge Trap Flash architecture, which “reduces inter-cell noise levels.
technorati tags:CompactFlash, Samsung, 32GB, 64GB
An update to the YouTube media player was just added. Very sleek. Check it out.
technorati tags:YouTube, MediaPlayer
Social network Xuqa’s in the black
Cynics take note, social networking and online game startup Xuqa has announced that their daily revenue has exceeded their operating costs and that they will take no more VC funding. They’ve raised $1.3 million from BV Capital and Skype investor Morten Lund; about half of that funding is left a year after launch.
Xuqa is currently focused on poker and hot-or-not style modeling contests but other games will be rolled out soon. Competitors play for “peanuts”, the in-game currency. Modeling contest winners get peanuts, interviews with a partner modeling agency and intros to other agencies. Those peanuts are given in exchange for activity on the site and then redeemed for privileges including the ability to see who has viewed your profile page and tools that can be used in play. Players who reach the highest status level in the game are given a $1000 cash prize.
Users play the games on the site for free and revenues are generated in some very interesting ways. Instead of paying cash for in game currency, users fill out market research surveys, browse Cost Per Action advertisements and refer other users. Other than those pages, the rest of the site is ad free.
technorati tags:Techcrunch, Xuqa, SocialNetworking, VCs, BreakEven
Seaking Alpha nails Benchmark Funding, Yahoo Deal
New York based Seeking Alpha, a financial news site that takes content submissions from over 200 contributors to cover over 4,000 publicly traded companies, had a very good day today. They are announcing a deal with Yahoo to include Seeking Alpha content in Yahoo Finance, as well as a round of financing from Benchmark Capital.
The Yahoo deal is very similar to a Yahoo/Gawker deal announced in November 2005, and which was terminated recently. Company-specific content from Seeking Alpha will be included on Yahoo Finance, with links back to Seeking Alpha. No money is changing hands either way.
The size of the Benchmark funding is not being disclosed. Michael Eisenberg, a general partner with Benchmark Capital Israel, is joining the board.
technorati tags:Collaborative, SeekingAlpha, Yahoo
Live.com leaving beta, replacing MSN search
Microsoft just put out a press release announcing the release from beta of Live Search and of Live.com in 47 markets worldwide. The release also says that Live Search will now power search on MSN. The changes don’t appear to have gone into effect yet, but they could at any time.
Live is Microsoft’s key play for the future and new company leader Ray Ozzie has been a vocal advocate of Live in particular and web based software as a service in general. Live.com places new emphasis on customization, RSS, blogs, video and other areas of emerging interest. Start.com was to fulfill a similar function, but when Start lost steam last fall the team posted to their blog calling for engineers interested in working on Live.com.
The company says that MSN attracts 465 million unique users worldwide per month. It’s long been believed that the MSN brand was being fazed out and would be replaced by Live.com as the intended home page and search engine for Microsoft’s huge user base. You could say that Live.com has a much more contemporary feel to it than MSN - or you could say that it’s a weak attempt to mimic Google’s sparse interface that ends up looking unfriendly and awkward. Today’s announcement also underlines the strangeness that Microsoft’s new YouTube competitor is being launched under the MSN brand.
technorati tags:Techcrunch, Live, MSN, Beta
