The Chinese company is perhaps originally known for bringing World of Warcraft to China through a prior partnership with Activision. More recently, it invested in U.S.-based OpenFeint, which was acquired by Japan’s Gree last year. It continues to work with OpenFeint on a version of the social gaming platform for China.

But the deal with Sony Ericsson in China will be a first for The9, which will be the exclusive operator of its PlayNow app store. It will provide technical and operational support, including testing, releasing and promotion of all apps.

The partnership is not unheard of; Sony Ericsson has leaned on other providers in the U.S., such as GetJar, to manage its app store here.

The PlayNow store in China will include games, as well as other apps and content, such as ringtones. It will work on Xperia phones that operate Android and Java.

Feature phones continue to be the dominant phone factor in China, but increasingly smartphones are being adopted, said Chris Shen, general manager of The9’s Mobile Business Unit, in an interview.

He said that since games are the company’s strength, it will be looking to partner with other content providers to integrate other products into the PlayNow experience. So far, 50 games have already been added to the store.

Shen said it will receive a cut of the revenues from sales of games, advertising and microtransactions. The9 must also share the revenue with third-party developers.

The company, which trades on the Nasdaq, has struggled to regain revenues that were lost after its World of Warcraft contract was not renewed in 2009.

In the second quarter of 2011, it reported a loss of $1.9 million on revenues of $3.9 million. The company’s stock fell 2 cents today, to trade at $6.80 a share.

But it also warned that Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Future Soldier, one of the Paris-based company’s big franchise hits, would be delayed by three months, or until its fiscal first quarter of 2012-13.

The game is expected to launch in North America on May 22, and in Europe on May 24, for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.

Ubisoft said it was expecting third-quarter sales of 650 million euros ($828 million), up 8 percent over the same period a year earlier. That exceeds its previous guidance of 620 million euros ($790 million), which was at the high end of its range.

Two of the games that Ubisoft said performed well during the holidays were Just Dance and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. The latter faced steep competition from both Activision’s Call of Duty and Electronic Arts’ Battlefield 3. Ubisoft also said it continues to see growth from online sales, which would include social games.

“In continuation of the robust trends recorded for the first half of the fiscal year, Ubisoft reported record-high sales for the Christmas period, exceeding expectations,” said CEO Yves Guillemot, in a release.

Due to its strong third-quarter performance, Ubisoft said it was revising its full-year guidance to 1.08 billion euros ($1.4 billion) on the high end. Operating income before some expenses is estimated to be up to 65 million euros ($82 million), up from the previous estimate of up to 60 million euros ($76.5 million).

Final third-quarter results will be published on Feb. 15.

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter maintained his neutral rating on the stock, and his 7 euro price target, based on the unclear release schedule and recurring delays.

Ubisoft, which trades on the Paris stock exchange, is currently trading at 5.23 euro.

At one point today, the stock dipped as low as $7.97 a share before closing at $8 even.

At that price, it is $2 below it’s initial stock price of $10, and has lost at least 20 percent of its market value in less than a month.

But why?

The San Francisco social games company has launched at least two new games since going public, and over the past few days, no harsh analyst report has come out with a negative rating.

It appears the once high-flying Silicon Valley company — known for addictive games on Facebook like FarmVille and CityVille, and mobile games like Words With Friends — is having a hard time gaining the market’s confidence.

To be sure, there’s no clear answer for the price drop; and other tech companies that recently went public, such as Groupon or LinkedIn, have experienced their own fluctuations. But there is one theory making the rounds.

Analysts and other sources suspect Zynga’s stock has been propped up over the past month by the underwriters, who agreed to buy shares if the stock started to perform poorly. The stock purchases would have created steady demand for the stock and kept the price relatively stable.

Furthermore, the theory goes, the underwriters have since met their obligations for buying the stock, and therefore are are no longer buying as many shares.

Incidentally, on Friday, Morgan Stanley — one of Zynga’s underwriters — disclosed that it had purchased nearly 16 million shares in December.

But while the disclosure, filed with the with the Securities & Exchange Commission, adds fuel to the theory, it is unclear if those shares were purchased as part of the IPO, or if they were spread out throughout the month.

Zynga declined to comment, citing its quiet period.

Still, whatever the reason for the drop, Zynga’s shares are seeing less demand.

As recently as last week, the stock was trading at $9.45 a share, but since then, it has struggled to stay above $9. On Friday, it lost 12 cents; today, it lost 81 cents, or 9 percent.

But even if the underwriting theory is on the mark, it doesn’t explain the broader question of why Zynga’s stock price is falling. Shouldn’t there be other investors who are willing to buy up a piece of Zynga?

Unfortunately, it seems the market isn’t sure what to do with the stock, or how to value it.

A social games company fits somewhere between traditional game makers, like Electronic Arts and Activision; and an Internet stock, like Google or LinkedIn.

Zynga gives away its games for free, but still manages to be profitable from selling virtual goods, such as a tractor or more power-ups, that a small number of players elect to purchase inside the games.

It’s also heavily reliant upon Facebook, which could be another problem. Facebook, too, operates privately, and reveals only as much information about its business as it has to — at least until it files to go public, which could be later this year.

In all likelihood, many of these investor fears could be settled when Zynga reports its first period as a public company. No word on when that will be yet, but the fourth-quarter report should come as soon as this month, and no later than February.

The Flip Camera
San Jose, Calif. — The Cisco Flip, a beloved handheld video recorder, was killed on April 12, 2011. Its untimely death was a result of the realignment of Cisco’s consumer electronics business.

Born in May 2006 as the Pure Digital Point & Shoot, the pocket camera went through many evolutions in its lifetime, later becoming the Flip Ultra and spawning the Flip Mino and Flip MinoHD. It found a new home in 2009, when it was acquired by Cisco for $590 million. The Flip was known as the life of the party at birthday and wedding celebrations, and will be remembered for its simplistic design and pop-out USB arm. “People literally flipped for the Flip when it first came out,” a friend of its parents, Pure Digital, said. It is survived by a number of boiled-down point-and-shoots and countless smartphone cameras, as well as video-sharing apps with annoyingly cute names like “Viddy.”

Its distant cousin, the Kodak Zi8, also went missing from the Kodak store earlier this year.

Guitar Hero
Santa Monica, Calif. — For Guitar Hero, Feb. 9, 2011, was the day the music died. The videogame franchise was killed when Activision announced during its fourth-quarter earnings call that it was shuttering the business unit dedicated to Guitar Hero.

The popular game was born in 2005 to Red Octane and Harmonix, and was distributed by Activision. Later iterations of Guitar Hero, which were developed by Neversoft, had band-specific titles and also incorporated more instrumental props, so fans could play drums or sing as well as play guitar.

But Guitar Hero sales fell off, and the game was eventually overshadowed by its record-breaking Activision siblings, the Call of Duty and World of Warcraft series. Revenues of Guitar Hero fell from $1.7 billion in 2008 to about $300 million in 2010.

Guitar Hero will be remembered for its love of music, with Aerosmith, Metallica and Van Halen among its favorite artists, and for creating living-room rock arenas for millions of users.

Guitar Hero is survived by Rock Band, Rocksmith, Rock Revolution and likely many other console and mobile games starting with “Rock” that we’re not aware of or haven’t been invented yet.

HP TouchPad
Palo Alto, Calif. — That flame which doth burn brightest often burns out quickly, or something like that.

The HP TouchPad was effectively killed on Aug. 18, 2011, at the young age of just 49 (that’s days). Prior to its demise, the TouchPad was praised for its bright 9.7-inch display, Beats audio and mostly for the fact that it ran HP’s intuitive webOS mobile operating system, though the tablet ultimately saw disappointing sales during its short life.

Hewlett-Packard, its maker, said webOS devices had not gained enough traction in the marketplace with consumers, and couldn’t justify continuing to produce hardware like the TouchPad around it.

HP’s new CEO, Meg Whitman, said later on, “I think we’ve got to walk before we run here.” The TouchPad is survived by a newly open source webOS system and a cult of rabid fans, as evidenced by its post-mortem fire sales. It joins the Microsoft Kin phone in a special Afterlife for Tech Products Less Than 50 Days Old, while its operating system remains in a state of purgatory.

Dell Streak Tablets and Mini 10 Netbook
Round Rock, Texas — The streak was not a long one.

Dell’s Streak 5 tablet, which was originally demoed at D8 in 2010, disappeared from store shelves in mid-August of this year. Dell hardly had time to recover from the loss before its sibling, the Dell Streak 7, was also discontinued.

Shortly after the loss of the Streak tablet, tragedy again struck the Dell family, when Dell confirmed it would no longer make consumer netbooks, feeling the pressure of tablets as well as an emerging shift toward thin, light “ultrabooks” in the laptop category. The Dell Mini 10 was known for being small, as netbooks are, and for being that laptop you knew you could always fit on the seatback tray on an airplane.

Apple MobileMe
Cupertino, Calif. — June 6, 2011, was Steve Jobs’s last appearance at an Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. It was also the day MobileMe effectively went away, with Jobs saying the $99 dollar service wasn’t Apple’s “finest hour.”

MobileMe launched at WWDC in July of 2008, and was meant to sync calendars, emails, bookmarks and photo galleries. For individual accounts, it came with 20 gigabytes of online storage and 200GB of monthly data transfer.

While great in theory, our friend MobileMe was not without flaws. In fact, AllThingsD’s Walt Mossberg said, in his review of the service, that MobileMe was “far too flawed to be reliable.”

Apple’s Internet-based sync services since 2000 have evolved, but have never truly gone away: Like an actual ghost, we know they’re there, and we see glimpses of how they work, but they still elude many people. MobileMe, in its earliest form, was iTools, and later on, the subscription service .Mac. Even now, we’re not entirely sure whether MobileMe was killed or simply reincarnated as something new — in this case, iCloud.

Adobe Flash on Mobile
San Jose, Calif. — This is the way mobile Flash ends: Not with a bang, but a whimper.

On Nov. 9, Adobe said it would no longer be developing Flash, its platform for interactive and rich media content, for mobile devices.

Macromedia Flash was born in 1997, the spawn of FutureWave’s FutureSplash Animator. Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005, thus becoming Adobe Flash.
As smartphone and tablet wars heated up in recent years, Flash support became one of the features that iPad competitors — mainly Google Android devices — touted to set themselves apart from Apple’s mobile products.

The tech world has contemplated what this could all mean for the future of Flash. As AllThingsD’s Ina Fried wrote, Flash’s death on mobile was seen as a vindication for the late Steve Jobs, who took a controversial stand by not supporting Flash on Apple’s mobile products. Could Jobs once again have seen the future? Flash is not a completely dead standard yet, but with developers increasingly adopting HTML5 as the new standard for Web language, it’s unclear what exactly will become of Flash.

Google Buzz
Mountain View, Calif. — A standard housecleaning session turned fatal this past October when Google pulled the plug on its social networking effort. Google Buzz, the predecessor to Google+, aimed to create a social network through Gmail.

Social and gregarious by nature, Google Buzz was born in February of 2010. Its early life was filled with strife, as users struggled to grasp the real-time social interactions that were occurring within email chains, and real privacy concerns emerged.

Despite its short life span, the memory of Google Buzz surely remains, as the search giant eventually had to settle with the FTC over privacy violations and is now committed to 20 years of privacy audits.

Memories, indeed.

Google Buzz is survived by Google+, and follows Friendster and Myspace to the social graveyard, although technically those still exist.

Readers, what do you think was the greatest tech product loss in 2011?

According to the expected year-end box-office data figures compiled by Hollywood.com, the industry raked in $10.1 billion for 2011 in North America.

While that seems like a nice haul, it’s 4.5 percent less than in 2010. While not enough to result a major downturn in limo-riding and Botox, the results are likely to cause entertainment moguls some worry, since they are accompanied by continuing trends, including another year of lower attendance.

And given that the revenue was unusually bolstered by more higher-priced 3-D movie-ticket prices — Hollywood released several dozen 3-D films in 2011, double the previous year’s amount — the latest numbers are even more disappointing.

While some holiday movies did well — namely “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol,” which has taken in about $70 million domestically since its opening less than two weeks ago — it pales in comparison to such digital hits as Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 videogame, which pulled in $400 million in one day from the much-desired youth market.

It surpassed $1 billion in sales in 16 days, eclipsing the box office of the blockbuster movie “Avatar,” which took 17 days to gross seven figures.

Does that mean that the continued competition for the leisure time of pretty much everyone between digital and analog has gotten worse — an epic battle of the movie industry versus game players, tablets and smartphones?

Or is it because so many movies made in 2011 turned out to be just awful? (If you saw “New Year’s Eve,” you’ll know exactly what I mean.)

One thing is clear: No one is going to pay for poor-quality content, no matter the screen size.

More number-crunching to come, as the industry debates the issue into 2012 (coincidentally, the title of a movie I happened to like, as you can see below!), and at the upcoming D: Dive Into Media at the end of the month, down near Los Angeles, in the belly of the Web-smacked beast.

Until then, let’s hope it does not come to this next year:

The NPD Group released a new report today that calculated the amount of money Americans are spending on games from the nontraditional market. That includes a lot of digital content, such as subscriptions, digital downloads, social games and mobile games, but also used games and rentals.

In the third quarter, it found that the amount spent on that “other content” totaled $1.64 billion.

While significant, NPD said it wasn’t enough to offset lower revenue from the traditional game market. NPD defines the traditional market as packaged goods sold at retail. In the third quarter, that totaled $1.3 billion.

“New physical retail sales had a rough third quarter,” said Anita Frazier, an analyst with NPD. “Increases in sales from some of these other monetization methods, and full game and add-on digital downloads in particular, only partially offset the decline see in the new physical retail channel.”

She said the overall market, including hardware, totaled $4.2 billion, down 11 percent compared to the same period a year ago.

For companies like Electronic Arts, which is investing heavily in mobile and social games and is placing big bets on online content, like today’s release of Star Wars: The Old Republic, the results of these monthly and quarterly reports are unrepresentative of the trends they are seeing.

“Everything is growing. If you look at the total interactive business, it’s a $50 billion market internationally, and that’s up double digits. That’s where we play,” said EA’s President of Labels Frank Gibeau. “We find it frustrating because it doesn’t tell the whole picture.”

In the second quarter, EA’s digital revenue, which includes downloadable console content, mobile and social — was up 30 percent year over year.

Even a company like Activision, which has been slower to develop games on Facebook and mobile, said that during the second quarter, revenue from digital channels — mostly downloadable content — increased 27 percent year ove year, and accounted for 37 percent of the company’s total net revenue.

For all-digital companies, like Zynga, which went public last week to raise $1 billion, its impact hardly seems to register.

“I think that ultimately we are an interactive entertainment company, not a packaged goods company,” Gibeau said. “We are platform and channel agnostic. The physical channel is a great channel and it’s going to be around longer than people think. … We are fine with that model, but then, when you bring that game home, you should be able to connect to the larger online world.”

At that rate, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company says it has eclipsed sales of the blockbuster movie “Avatar,” which took 17 days to gross seven figures.

The bloody first-person shooter, which operates across all consoles and on the PC, went on sale Nov. 8.

The game took only five days to gross $775 million and to shatter all entertainment sales records, including movies, books and videogames.

For perspective, Electronic Arts’ Battlefield 3, which is going head to head against Activision’s Call of Duty this season, has sold eight million copies of the game, according to Game Informer. EA hasn’t disclosed total sales figures.

Additionally, NPD expects strong sales of Call of Duty to break videogame records for the month of November.

Activision says the Call of Duty community has more than 30 million gamers, putting the franchise on the scale of other entertainment megafranchises, like “Harry Potter,” “Star Wars” and “The Lord of the Rings.”

The $60 game is accompanied by Call of Duty Elite, an online component that allows players to compete against each other for a chance to win prizes. Activision says six million players have already registered for the free or premium plans, with more than one million paying for access that costs $50.

“This November marks the best November on record for sales of new physical content,” said NPD Group’s Anita Frazier.

Activision said within the first five days of sales, Call of Duty shattered all previous entertainment records, grossing more than $775 million. In fact, its first month of sales beat the game’s predecessor by about 7 percent, NPD added.

In NPD’s report released today, it analyzed videogame sales for November, taking into account sales made at retail across both hardware and software. It excludes the sale of digital content, like mobile games and downloadable content.

In November, NPD said software sales totaled $1.7 billion, jumping 15 percent from $1.45 billion in the same month last year. Hardware sales weren’t so lucky, falling 9 percent to $982 million from $1.1 billion in November 2010.

The second-most popular title during the month was Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for Xbox, PlayStation and the PC. “In one month, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is just about half a million units shy of matching Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in lifetime sales. Its first month performance was a five-fold increase over Oblivion’s first month sales,” Frazier said.

The rest of the titles in the top 10 are:

• Battlefield 3, Electronic Arts
• Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Ubisoft
• Just Dance, Ubisoft
• Madden NFL 12, Electronic Arts
• Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, Sony
• Saints Row: The Third, THQ
• The Legend of Zelda: SkywardSword, Nintendo
• Batman: Arkham City, Warner Bros. Interactive

Experts Give the New Xbox Raves for Control, Creativity
(Dec. 6 2001)
Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Microsoft sold more than 960,000 consoles last week, with a majority flying off the shelves within a single 24-hour period.

Nintendo also said the Wii had the biggest Black Friday ever, selling more than 500,000 units on the day after Thanksgiving.

At one point during the shopping madness, a shopper pepper sprayed a crowd at a Wal-Mart to get her mitts on an Xbox (although reports now say police are investigating the incident to determine the cause of the attack).

Sony declined to release sales figures for the PlayStation 3 last week, but it is likely benefiting from a recent $50 price cut.

Such strong sales are mind-blowing.

People are lining up for — and in some cases fighting over — hardware that is five to six years old. It’s difficult to imagine any other consumer hardware that could attract that kind of demand after such a long period of time.

All three are nearing the end of their life cycles. The Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3 are both five years old, and the Xbox 360 is a year older.

Nintendo announced that it will release a new console, the Wii U, later next year. Microsoft and Sony have not said anything official, but they are both expected to follow with competing launches in the same time frame.

It has long been a pattern for all three rivals to release new hardware at the same time. A European PlayStation executive recently hinted that Sony’s plan was to continue that trend because it was “undesirable” to be significantly later than the competition, according to IndustryGamers.com.

Despite the odds, there are at least three reasons why sales continue to do well.

The lineup of games is as strong as it has ever been for the consoles; all three have tried sprucing up the hardware with accessories and adding downloadable content; and, finally, consumers don’t have a choice — the only alternative is to wait another year.

First, the games: This year, publishers waited until now to release some of the hottest titles of 2011; hardcore gamers in particular will have their choice of any number of blockbuster hits.

Activision’s Call of Duty game is already a runaway success, grossing $775 million in the first five days it was available, to shatter all entertainment records.

Also in the hardcore genre is Electronic Art’s Battlefield 3, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed, PlayStation’s Uncharted 3 and Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham City, which are all going head to head this holiday season.

But the consoles don’t just serve the hardcore genre anymore.

Last year, both Sony and Microsoft released motion-controlled gaming systems to rival the Wii’s technology, which has always been considered more family friendly and easy to use.

This holiday season, Sony and Microsoft are offering the most games ever for the Move and Kinect, respectively. Microsoft will have 75 new Kinect games available for the Xbox this holiday, four times last year’s number. Sony said the PlayStation Move is expected to launch 26 titles.

In addition to being used to play games, the consoles are turning into entertainment systems for the living room.

It started with the ability to use the Internet-connected boxes to stream Netflix to TV screens. Now the consoles are turning into media hubs, playing video, music and other content that is readily available over the Internet.

Microsoft and Sony have made entertainment a particular focus between their respective online networks, Xbox Live and PlayStation Network.

Microsoft will make a huge push on Dec. 6, when it rolls out a free update to Xbox Live. Users will be able to conduct a Bing search to find games, music and video across several providers. To make it even more family friendly, the Xbox Live user interface will be controlled with voice commands, rather than by the game controller.

By the end of the year, Microsoft expects that nearly 40 TV and entertainment providers — including Comcast, Netflix, Hulu, ESPN and HBO GO — will be available on its system.

All of these reasons added up could keep the pedal on the gas for what in any other segment would be considered ancient technology.

In an interview, John Koller, director of marketing for Sony’s PlayStation, argued that there’s a lot left in the current generation of consoles.

As an example, he said its predecessor, the PlayStation 2, is 12 years old, but continues to be used in homes around the U.S. as a game player and DVD player. Similarly, the PlayStation 3 substitutes as a Blu-ray player.

Overall, the PlayStation 2 ended up reaching nearly half of all U.S. households.

If that can be used as a guide, then the PlayStation 3 still has a very long way to go. In fact, the goal may be unattainable if new hardware is coming around the corner.

To date, Sony has sold 18.7 million PlayStation 3’s in the U.S. That makes up just a fraction — less than 17 percent — of the 112.6 million households, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau figures.

“We are nowhere near where we could be,” Koller admits.

Next year, the true testament will be how the hardware sells as we get closer to the release of Nintendo Wii U and consoles.

The gory first-person shooter has managed to outsell all movies, books and videogames during its initial debut.

It even surpassed last year’s release of Call of Duty: Black Ops, which grossed $650 million, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which sold $550 million.

In an interview, Activision Blizzard’s CEO Bobby Kotick told AllThingsD that the game’s entertainment value compares well against other more accessible media options.

“I don’t think we have empirical evidence to support this, but the cost per hour is a lot lower than any form of entertainment,” he said. “In this difficult economy, you are getting a great value.”

The latest installment, called Modern Warfare 3, retails for about $60 and is available on the Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and for the PC.

He said for that price, you get a social experience because of the multiplayer capabilities; a cinematic experience with good imagery and a story line; and an interactive experience. “It touches on all of the compelling areas of entertainment,” he said.

Activision is claiming that the Call of Duty franchise is one of the most valuable entertainment properties worldwide, having exceeded $6 billion in revenue over its lifetime. At that level, Kotick says, it is up there with “Star Wars,” the Harry Potter franchise, and maybe “Lord of the Rings.”

In its first day on the market, Activision sold more than 6.5 million units in North America and the United Kingdom at an estimated sell-through rate of more than $400 million.

It’s competing against a number of blockbuster first-person shooters that are being released this winter, like Electronic Arts’ Battlefield 3, which came out late last month. That title sold five million units during its first week of sales.

Not only is Call of Duty a big revenue hit, but it’s also likely sucking away time spent on other media.

According to Microsoft, more than 3.3 million unique gamers logged seven million multiplayer hours with the game by the end of Nov. 8, the first day it was available. At one point, more than 3.3 million concurrent users played the game on Xbox Live.

A companion social network for the game, called Call of Duty Elite, is being sold separately for $50 for premium access.

Kotick said Activision will release more information about sales on that soon, but “the response has been much higher than we anticipated.”

Electronic Arts is taking its Battlefield 3 franchise head to head against Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which can only be called a match-up between two giants.

Millions in marketing dollars will be spilled and billions will be mined from consumers seeking to play realistic role-playing war games.

However, the first round has been won by Activision, which clearly had the upper hand going into it based on last year’s success of Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Today, the company announced that the release on Tuesday shattered its own first-day sales records, leading them to declare that the game has become “the biggest entertainment launch ever.”

In all, Activision sold more than 6.5 million units in North America and the United Kingdom in the first 24 hours at an estimated sell-through rate of more than $400 million. Last year, the company’s first-day revenues totaled $360 million, or roughly 5.6 million copies, on day one sales of the game’s predecessor Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Comparatively, Electronic Arts’ Battlefield 3, which came out late last month, sold five million units during its first week of sales.

Analysts were bullish on Activision’s early results.

“We believe the MW3 Day 1 sell-thru is a positive datapoint, and the stock should react positively on the news,” said Citi’s Neil Doshi, who added that if Activision can hit sales of $1 billion in five weeks or less, the stock should jump once again.

Analyst Arvind Bhatia of Sterne Agee wrote in an note to investors that Activision’s runaway success could result in revenues of $700 million to $750 million in the first week alone.

While both games are heavy on the hardcore action and realistic shooting, the battle between EA and Activision is as real as it can get.

Electronic Arts is calling Battlefield 3 the largest and fastest-selling first-person shooter title in the company’s 25-year history.

Both companies will also be banking on making additional income from digital components. Activision has developed a standalone social network, called Call of Duty Elite, where players share video and create profiles for free. But the premium version, which includes competition for prizes, costs an additional $50.

Making the competition even more intense is that Activision and EA aren’t the only two battling for the hardcore players this holiday season.

Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is now available for preorder ahead of its release next week. PlayStation’s Uncharted 3 went on sale Nov. 1 and Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham City was released on Oct. 18. Microsoft also published its own first-person shooter, Gears of War 3, back in September.

Activision’s shares fell 17 cents, or 1.3 percent, today to trade at $12.81 a share. Electronic Arts’ shares jumped 30 cents, or 1.3 percent to $23.87 a share.

On sale Oct. 16, the game, called Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure, represents a major deviation from the company’s hugely successful war-based Call of Duty.

The game melds physical toys with videogames by using a “portal,” which is plugged into the console. Once an official Skylanders toy is placed on the portal, the character transports into the game and comes to life on the screen.

The game is similar to one announced recently by Disney that uses miniature toy cars and an iPad. In this case, kids place the physical toy on the iPad’s screen to interact with the game, which is based on the movie “Cars 2.”

Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing, told me in a phone interview that Skylanders has “got a couple real innovative stories to tell.”

Not only does the game enable physical toys to come to life inside of a virtual world, Hirshberg said, it also can be played cross-platform. “The toys travel from console to console and to the Web, and they remember everything that happens to them,” he said.

That means a child’s chosen character will remember what level it has attained and transfer that information from the player’s Nintendo Wii to an Xbox or Sony PlayStation at a friend’s house. Players will also be able to pick up where they left off on Android, iOS, Nintendo’s 3DS and online.

“If you play on your Wii and level up to 10 and then go to the Xbox, those all go with you,” Hirshberg said. “And then, on a road trip, you can log in to the iPhone version and the same thing happens.”

Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure will have more than 30 different characters.

The plot is about a mysterious world that has been taken over by a sinister Portal Master known as Kaos, who has frozen the Skylanders as toys and banished them to Earth. The players are charged with helping to return these heroes back to their world.

In a release yesterday, Activision said the games would be on display in Toys“R”Us as soon as this weekend, to get the buzz started ahead of the holidays.

Toys“R”Us Chairman and CEO Jerry Storch said, “We believe that the product line will be one of this holiday’s hottest gifts, and we can’t wait to offer customers a one-of-a-kind way to discover Skylanders at our stores.”

A $70 starter pack includes a copy of the game (on PlayStation 3, Xbox or Nintendo Wii), three Skylanders characters, the portal of power, a character poster, trading cards, stickers, Web codes and batteries.

Last week, PopCap accepted Electronic Arts’ bid of $1.3 billion, including earn-outs, and opted to turn down a smaller — but all-cash — $1 billion offer from Zynga.

With that kind of dough raining down on the games industry, it’s obvious that more blockbuster purchases will ensue.

If that’s the case, the question is who will be next?

First, it’s important to understand why there’s a sense of urgency. Right now, nontraditional digital gaming platforms, like mobile and social, are really starting to take off, and game publishers need new content and expertise to be a player on those platforms.

“The general conversations have increased,” said Kushal Saha, the managing director of the Information Technology practice at Cascadia Capital, a Seattle-based investment bank. “We are seeing a lot more activity in financings as well. When you have a $1.3 billion acquisition, that really creates a lot of tailwinds from investors and strategics.”

Tim Chang, a partner at Norwest Venture Partners, has a theory as to who will be the most active in the next wave of acquisitions: It will be companies from China and Japan that are trying to get a foothold in the lucrative U.S. games market.

Here are just some of the recent transactions: Tencent, the giant Chinese Web holding company, bought Los Angeles-based Riot Games for about $400 million; OpenFeint was purchased by Japan-based Gree for $100 million in April; and Japan-based DeNA bought San Francisco-based ngmoco for $400 million late last year.

Specifically, he says these companies will be looking to buy game studios, which can create content for new platforms.

Ngmoco is building a mobile social network, and while it develops some games in-house, DeNA will need much more content to be successful. Same goes for Gree, which purchased OpenFeint, a mobile social platform that has 100 million players signed up.

Gree’s Senior Product Manager Jori Pearsall said that Gree is trying hard to get up and running in the U.S., where they have hired about 40 employees who are independent from OpenFeint.

Pearsall says its first game is expected to launch soon on the OpenFeint mobile social network.

In other words, first comes distribution. Next up: content.

One example of this already taking place is the merger between 6waves and Lolapps, which was announced earlier this week. San Francisco-based Lolapps is making social games for Facebook, while Hong Kong-based 6waves has been more focused on building a publishing platform.

Together, the two will have a publishing platform with its own games.

One of the companies that is being considered an obvious acquisition target is Glu Mobile, which is making social games for smartphones and tablets. Since the PopCap acquisition was announced, Glu’s stock has been trading close to $6 a share, up from $5.20 early last week. It is now trading at $5.64.

Are people sniffing around Glu?

“Nothing is off the table. We’ll do what’s best for the shareholders. We have a vision and a strategy and we are executing on the goal of transitioning to one of the top three feature phone companies to our goal of being one of the top freemium tablet and smartphone games company,” said Michael Breslin, Glu’s VP of marketing.

Other potential acquirers are in the U.S., ranging from content companies like Time Warner and Disney to other game makers like Activision, THQ or Ubisoft. Zynga has been acquiring more than one company every month for nearly a year. Google could even be a candidate if it’s truly serious about its Google+ games network.

Other companies for sale that would have the content and the talent include any of the independent studios in the top 20 on Facebook or iOS, ranging from Crowdstar to RockYou, or even a virtual world like Linden Lab.

Photo Credit: Jason Pratt.

Closing another chapter on one of the Internet’s most iconic properties, Myspace has been sold to to Specific Media, an advertising network, for $35 million.

Sources close to the situation said the deal is being completed today, although it has not been officially signed. Myspace’s owner, News Corp., will hold on to a very small stake of less than five percent.

[UPDATE: It's official; see the press release and memo to Myspace employees from outgoing CEO Mike Jones below.]

AllThingsD broke news of Specific’s interest in Myspace yesterday.

The price is well below the $100 million that News Corp. had been hoping for, and a chasm away from Myspace’s one-time billion valuation.

The deal includes a halving of Myspace’s staff of 400, as well as other cost cuts. It’s likely Jones and other top staff will remain only for an interim period.

News Corp. bought Myspace for $580 million in 2005, and made that back via a lucrative advertising deal with Google when the social networking site was flying high.

But that was another time — the media giant has been trying to sell the site before the end of its fiscal year, which falls on Thursday, in order to get it off the books.

There were several other bidders in the process, including separate efforts by the two co-founders of Myspace, Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson.

More recently, the preferred acquirer was a group that included Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, but it fell apart over a number of issues.

This week, it came down to Specific and also a private equity firm, Golden Gate Capital.

According to a report yesterday in The Wall Street Journal:

Founded in 1999 by Tim Vanderhook and his brothers Chris and Russell, Specific Media helps marketers buy digital ads across the Web, online video, mobile and even the TV. The Irvine, Calif., company got its start brokering ad space for websites and quickly moved into the fast-growing business of collecting and using Web browsing, demographic, geographic and other profile information about consumers to target ads. The company now ranks among the largest online advertising networks in the country, reaching 170.9 million unique U.S. visitors in May, or about 79% of the U.S. Internet users, according to comScore Inc.

A Myspace deal would give the company access to data about Myspace users to be used for ad targeting. It also would transform the firm into a media company with its own ad space to sell instead of simply an online ad technology firm that brokers ad space on behalf of other websites.

Specific Media’s executive team includes knowledge of the inner-workings at Myspace, with two executives who previously worked at Fox Audience Network, News Corp.’s online advertising unit that sold ads for Myspace.

Specific Media has raised more than $110 million in funding, closing a $100 million round of financing from private-equity firm Francisco Partners in 2007. Since then, the company has acquired a couple of digital advertising companies, including online video company Broadband Enterprises and an Amsterdam ad technology company.

Here is the official press release and the memo to Myspace staff from Jones:

From: Mike Jones
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 11:26 AM
To: Myspace All
Subject: IMPORTANT COMPANY NEWS
Importance: High

Myspacers,

Today, we are announcing that Myspace will be acquired by Specific Media, one of the world’s leading online media and advertising platforms. Over the next few days you will be hearing from the team at Specific, including their CEO, Tim Vanderhook, regarding their exciting plans for Myspace and how it fits in with the overall vision of their company.

In conjunction with the deal, we are conducting a series of restructuring initiatives, including a significant reduction in our workforce. I will assist Specific with the transition over the next two months before departing my role as Myspace CEO.

I wanted to take a minute to thank you all for the incredible experience it has been to lead this company and to work closely with all of you over the past several years. While I regret we won’t be working together at Myspace any longer, I am very proud of the work we have done here and believe we have performed with excellence — even under extremely difficult circumstances.

My time here at Myspace represents the most engaging and challenging time of my professional career. I have found our team to be comprised of the best people I have come across in our industry.

You can read the press release below. Once again, thank you for all of your hard work and dedication.

Thanks,

-M

SPECIFIC MEDIA ACQUIRES MYSPACE FROM NEWS CORPORATION

Los Angeles, Calif. — June 29, 2011 — Specific Media, a digital media company, today announced it has acquired Myspace from News Corporation. As part of the agreement, News Corporation will take a minority equity stake in Specific Media. Additional terms of the agreement are confidential and will not be disclosed.

“Myspace is a recognized leader that has pioneered the social media space. The company has transformed the ways in which audiences discover, consume and engage with content online,” said Tim Vanderhook, Specific Media CEO. “There are many synergies between our companies as we are both focused on enhancing digital media experiences by fueling connections with relevance and interest. We look forward to combining our platforms to drive the next generation of digital innovation.”

Specific Media is an innovative global interactive media company that enables advertisers to connect with consumers in meaningful, impactful and relevant ways. Founded in 1999 by brothers Tim, Chris and Russell Vanderhook, Specific Media is currently headquartered in Irvine, CA and operates offices around the world.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

It was just supposed to be a three-hour tour, um, quick sale process!

But, like a storm-tossed ship looking for any safe harbor, the Myspace sale is still chugging along, with a deal that continues to be tossed around amongst low-paying and new lesser known buyers who are now in the $20 million to $30 million range, said sources close to the situation.

The price, said others, could go as high as $35 million, but it’s far cry from the $100 million that News Corp. had been aiming for.

As part of the deal, sources said the News Corp. unit will be making significant cuts in staff and costs — up to 50 percent or more — all contingent on the purchaser. The staff cuts are, obviously, directly related to the transaction and the winning bidder.

The media giant might also retain a small minority stake.

The two names — Specific Media and Golden Gate Capital — that are now in the forefront for an acquisition deal that News Corp. hopes to complete by Thursday, its fiscal year end, have not been among the acquirers mentioned previously in the myriad of reports about the deal.

Specific Media — a large, if lesser known, advertising network — seems to be in the lead, said sources. It has been around for a half-decade and has been funded by Francisco Partners.

Golden Gate Capital is a private equity firm with $9 billion under management, which has mostly specialized in turning around companies. It has never invested in a consumer Internet company.

Both companies, sources said, will focus Myspace on music, although it is not clear which rights the site has with music labels will transfer to a new owner.

Until last week, the preferred deal for Myspace centered on an investor group that included Activision CEO Bobby Kotick and in which News Corp. (which also owns this Web site) would retain a large minority ownership stake.

But sources said there were some transactional and legal complexities that made it less attractive and News Corp. opened up the deal talks with others again last week.

Golden Capital and Specific Media emerged most aggressively, although there still remain other interested parties, sources close to the situation said, among them another investor group that includes Myspace co-founder Tom Anderson, one its other co-founder Chris DeWolfe is part of and also interest from the Criterion Capital Partners, which bought AOL’s Bebo social networking site on the cheap a year ago.

But it’s now come down to time constraints and an agreement that can be reached before the end of this month, which is also the end of the media giant’s fiscal year.

In other words, let’s get Myspace off the books for 2012!

How it came to this will likely be the focus of many a business school case. After a spectacular start, Myspace has fallen on hard times both in terms of traffic and advertising revenues.

That’s why the music-focused social networking site has not sat exactly in the catbird’s seat in terms of negotiating leverage.

While there were some rumors last week that News Corp. would close Myspace down, the sale to a small player and the layoffs are the likely outcome.

While that’s cold comfort to its employees, it’s about the best Myspace can hope for right now.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

In a surprise cameo, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has gone Hollywood, appearing in a new trailer for the movie “Moneyball.”

Based on the excellent Michael Lewis book about the Oakland Athletics baseball team and its quirky general manager Billy Beane, who is played by Brad Pitt, Kotick is apparently playing its owner.

Kotick seems to do a pretty good job as a sports mogul, which is not much different than his one as a gaming mogul. And, if it works out as it seems it will, a social networking mogul as a possible new owner of Myspace.

Here’s the video of the trailer for the film, which comes out in September, with Kotick:

When the selling of Myspace winds down in the next week or so, it’ll probably attract a spate of comments about what a failure the whole social networking enterprise turned out to be.

And — especially when you recall what a Web phenom the social networking site was before it got blown out of the water by Facebook — it was.

That is, unless you think of the mob of former execs who have worked at the company over time, many of whom have moved on to some more golden opportunities after leaving the News Corp.-owned property.

That includes, most recently and notably, former sales head Michael Barrett, who is about to score big as CEO of AdMeld, which is reportedly in the process of selling to Google for $400 million.

Also a big winner: Former Myspace CEO Owen Van Natta, who was fired from that job in one of its many putsches and who quickly rebounded to a top job at online gaming powerhouse Zynga.

So, while it is one of the more overused memes of Silicon Valley, the “mafia” analogy — which has been applied to fertile entrepreneurial breeding grounds such as PayPal, before its acquisition by eBay — is useful when thinking about Myspace.

It is also a good thing to keep in mind about any tech company that goes off the rails: There might still be a silver lining, even if the start-up never sees the light of day again.

As proof, herein is a list I created after pinging a bunch of former Myspace folks:

Jason Oberfest: Former SVP of business development. Now, VP Ngmoco, which was sold to Japanese gaming giant DeNA for $400 million last year.

Dmitry Shapiro: Former CTO, Myspace Music. Now, at Facebook competitor Altly.

Adam Bain: While at Fox Interactive Media, he ran the ad platform for Myspace. Now, head of sales at Twitter.

Jeff Berman: Former president of sales and marketing. Now, GM of the NFL’s digital media unit.

Jason Hirschhorn: Former co-president and chief product officer. Now, on MGM board, angel investor, and there are rumors of him working on a curation start-up.

Amit Kapur: Former COO. Now, CEO, Gravity, an information filtering service start-up.

Chris DeWolfe: Co-founder and former CEO. Now, CEO, MindJolt, an online gaming roll-up.

Ross Levinsohn: Former president of FIM, he was integral to buying Myspace. Now, EVP of Americas unit, Yahoo.

Mike Lang: Former News Corp. strategy exec also involved in Myspace purchase. Now, CEO, Miramax.

Aber Whitcomb: Former CTO. Now CTO, MindJolt.

Jim Heckman: Former chief strategy officer of FIM. Now, CEO of 5to1, recently sold to Yahoo for $25 million.

Dani Dudeck: Former communications head. Now, PR head at Zynga.

Travis Katz: SVP of international. Now, CEO of Gogobot, a social travel start-up.

Richard Rosenblatt: Former CEO of Intermix Media and Chairman of Myspace, he sold it to News Corp. Now, CEO of Demand Media.

Angela Courtin: Former SVP of marketing. Now, EVP at Aegis Media.

These folks should be on the call list of whoever ends up buying Myspace. Last week, I wrote that an investor group, including Activision head Bobby Kotick, is now in the lead for the deal.

As an update, according to sources, Kotick has gotten clearance from Activision’s major shareholder Vivendi to do the Myspace transaction as a passive personal investment.

According to sources close to the situation, News Corp. is down to one possible investing group in its quest to make lemonade out of the lemon that its Myspace social entertainment hub has become.

In the lastest of many scenarios considered, several sources said its owner, News Corp., will continue to own about 20 percent of Myspace. The main bidder is a dark horse bidding group, which includes Activision Chairman and CEO Bobby Kotick as one of the potential investors.

The deal, cautioned sources, is not final and could easily fall apart.

Interestingly, if such a deal is struck, he would apparently be involved as an individual and not for the giant gaming company, and would play no management role in the company.

Kotick would presumably need permission from Activision for such a high-profile investment, even if he played a smaller role.

Kotick’s possible involvement has not been mentioned in previous reports.

Sources said the other possible bidders — including music video service Vevo, a group including Myspace founder and former CEO Chris DeWolfe, an internal effort by current CEO Mike Jones, several private equity firms and even myYearbook — mentioned in past reports have not worked out for various reasons.

Vevo had seemed the likeliest winner, but its bid appears to have foundered for now, due to the complex nature of its music label ownership.

It is not clear what the price will be for Myspace, which was once the leading social networking site before the world dis-Liked it for Facebook.

One thing is certain: It is nowhere near the $100 million that News Corp. reportedly sought.

The site — even after an overhaul to focus on entertainment — has recently been losing money and traffic, although it is still a large destination on the Web.

News Corp. declined comment, as did Kotick.

One of the most anticipated launches of the year is EA’s Battlefield 3, which is expected to go head to head with the seemingly unstoppable Call of Duty franchise.

But at the company’s eardrum-splitting press conference in downtown Los Angeles, it also showed off The Sims, which is reflective of a wider trend in the industry to embrace other platforms.

In addition to Battlefield 3 and The Sims, EA screened the latest Mass Effect 3, the upcoming Need for Speed (including foot races for the first time!), and, of course, Star Wars, its highly anticipated massive online multi-player game.

For Xbox this morning, a wider audience meant announcing a ton of Kinect titles, and for EA this afternoon, it meant announcing the release of its very popular Sims franchise on Facebook.

Sims Social is building off a brand that’s played by 140 million fans in 22 languages in 60 countries around the world. To date, it has been available on the PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Wii and mobile. Now you can play with your friends on Facebook, too.

Players will be presented with challenges, such as forming romantic relationships, flirting, joking and getting married. In this case, they’ll have the chance to play with Facebook friends, causing all sorts of real-life sparks to fly. For example, players will have the chance at participating in a royal wedding, to build a dream home or take a shower with their lover. In addition, they will be able to play pranks or achieve goals, such as having 10 girls in the hot tub at the same time.

Who needs Battlefield 3 when you can begin World War 3 among your friends, right?

The game is expected to launch “soon” in five languages with a mobile companion app coming later. “It’s about playing with life and the unpredictability of life,” said Jeff Karp, Executive Vice President of the EA Play Label.

The game will be free to play and users will be given the option of paying for virtual goods, such as clothes for your avatar and items for your home.

More From E3

• At E3, Xbox Lets Kinect Lead the Charge on Gaming, Live TV Ambitions
• Justin.tv Broadcasts Gamers’ Every Move on TwitchTV
• Who Needs War? Sparks Will Fly in EA’s New Sims Game for Facebook.
• Sony Unveils Vita Gaming Device at E3; Will Launch This Year for $249
• E3: Nintendo Unveils the Wii U With Tablet-Style Controller
• Three Key Takeaways From Nintendo’s Wii U (Plus Photos!)
• No Hacks to Report at Xbox, But Microsoft Isn’t Letting Its Guard Down
• Forget About 99 Cents, What If You Could Rent Mobile Games for 25 Cents?
• Digital Game Revenues Hit $5.9 Billion in 2010

In a third round of capital, Kabam raised $30 million, led by Redpoint Ventures, with Intel Capital and Canaan Partners participating.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based company, which has such titles on Facebook as Kingdoms of Camelot, Dragons of Atlantis and Glory of Rome, is focused on developing massively multiplayer games like Activision’s super successful Call of Duty: Black Ops on Xbox.

As social gaming has ramped up, titles so far have been more mellow, focusing on attracting the largest audience possible. Therefore, many titles by category leaders like Zynga have had a wholesome flavor, focusing on activities in daily life, like farming and cooking. Typically, the games take only a few minutes per session, and users interact with friends when asking for goods or helping each other out on tasks.

However, Kabam has integrated more traditional features into its games, such as battles and fights, that require more strategy. It also allows players to interact with one another via real-time chat.

Kabam, which has been flying fairly under the radar, has 200 employees, up from 20 in the beginning of the year, and has additional studios in San Francisco, China and Germany. In October, it acquired Wonderhill, and this year it plans to launch more games, continue hiring and make additional acquisitions.

A $30 million round by investors signals that the social gaming market is still far from mature, with growth opportunities and niches still remaining–despite Zynga’s dominance and major acquisitions by some of the top game producers, like Electronic Arts and Disney, already having taken place.

Gawker was told about the flaw in the method it used to store user passwords to its commenting system more than two years before it was hacked, the Guardian’s Charles Arthur reports.

A Gawker user posted a message on Get Satisfaction and received a promise to “improve it,” though no such improvement ever took place.

Well, we know how that turned out. A hacker group called Gnosis gained entry not only to the commenting system, but also to pretty much everything the Gawker team used to run its collection of sites.

Gawker was hacked. Gawker founder Nick Denton apologized. But the damage wasn’t limited to Gawker and its users.

Soon Twitter and LinkedIn were dealing with hacking attacks on their sites. Then Yahoo and World of Warcraft developer Blizzard forced users to change their passwords. And finally the collateral damage reached all the way to the New York Times.

We also learned that many of the people whose passwords were disclosed used simple ones. Topping the list: “123456.” And we all learned a little about the dangers of using the same password everywhere.

No comment yet from Denton, although I’ll certainly update if I hear back from him.

And in case you didn’t pay enough attention to all this, and why it’s not a good idea to share passwords across multiple sites, here’s a great cartoon from XKCD that illustrates the dangers:

Earlier this week, BoomTown went down to Santa Clara, Calif. to the offices of Chegg, the online textbook rental leader, to pay a visit on longtime Silicon Valley exec Dan Rosensweig.

The voluble Rosensweig has had a series on interesting posts, from stints at CNET Networks and Ziff-Davis before a top job at Yahoo (YHOO). After that, it was as a partner at the Quadrangle Group and then running the Guitar Hero division of Activision Blizzard (ATVI).

Now he is CEO of Chegg, where he arrived in February.

After raising $144 million in funding, Chegg has become the front-runner in the increasingly competitive online textbook rental space.

Venture firms, such as Kleiner Perkins, Foundation Capital and, most recently, Insight Venture Partners, have presumably handed over that money to co-founders Osman Rashid and Aayush Phumbhra in hopes of big returns.

And, of course, the inevitable IPO.

Chegg got its start in 2005 at Iowa State University as a classified rental service, where books were the dominant item, but evolved its business to focus on actually doing the textbook rentals.

The company’s unusual name, Chegg, is a mashup of chicken and egg and its model is similar to that of innovative video rental outfit Netflix (NFLX).

Chegg now serves close to 7,000 schools across the U.S., with 120 employees in Silicon Valley and more at a warehouse operation in Louisville, Ky.

Typically, a rental costs a fraction of what buying a book outright does. It is ordered online and then sent to a renter, who then returns it.

All this activity has attracted a lot of interest from both big and small players, especially given the $10 billion college textbook business.

That makes for lots of competition. The Barnes & Noble (BKS) College division recently began testing a textbook rental program, for example, and is rolling it out to 25 U.S. colleges. And BookRenter is a smaller competitor.

Today, in a bid to expand its offerings beyond books, Chegg said it had acquired CourseRank, a Mountain View, Calif. start-up that helps students “share their course schedule, take classes with their friends, read and write reviews on classes and professors as well as find out how professors grade.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Rosensweig talks about all that and more, such as digital downloads, in the video interview below, which includes a tour of Chegg:

And here’s the official press release about Chegg’s acquisition of CourseRank:

CHEGG.COM ACQUIRES COURSERANK

Popular college course planning site that helps students with course and professor selection, hopes for rapid expansion

SANTA CLARA, Calif., August 19, 2010–Chegg.com, the number one online textbook rental company, today announced that it has acquired CourseRank, the Mountain View-based start-up that provides college students an easy and convenient way to create and share their course schedule, take classes with their friends, read and write reviews on classes and professors as well as find out how professors grade.

“We are excited about adding CourseRank to the portfolio of content and services we can offer students to make college easier and more affordable,” said Dan Rosensweig, President and CEO of Chegg.com. “We all share a commitment to saving students time, money and making them smarter. It’s amazing how popular CourseRank has become on campus, having nearly 100,000 users and growing every day.”

Founded by five college students and already being used on 175 colleges and universities across the U.S., CourseRank helps students manage and plan their academic careers. CourseRank’s scheduling, planning and course review system guides students by arranging relevant course information in an easily accessible display where they can track their progress towards the goal of graduation, mapping courses taken, and grades received. A feature for students to find textbooks for their courses using CourseRank is currently in beta for select schools.

“We’re excited to be part of the number one online textbook rental company in such a hot space,” said Filip Kaliszan, Co-Founder and CEO of CourseRank. “We share Chegg’s commitment to using technology to make life easier and cheaper for college kids, and we are excited about expanding our reach to more schools, adding many new features in the next few months.”

CourseRank, founded in 2007 by three Stanford University students, has seen tremendous growth in the past year. To date, the company has achieved adoption by some of the country’s top schools including Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Cornell University.
Students can sign up for free and the first 5,000 will be entered for a chance to win cool prizes. For more information, visit www.courserank.com.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100819/cheggs-dan-rosensweig-talks-about-the-next-wave-of-online-textbook-rentals-and-more/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100607/coming-up-apple-wwdc-2010-keynote-live/ http://allthingsd.com/20100607/coming-up-apple-wwdc-2010-keynote-live/#comments Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:30:33 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=41829
Due to the highly publicized leak of its next-generation iPhone prototype earlier this year, one might expect the keynote address at Apple’s (AAPL) Worldwide Developers Conference today to be a bit short on big reveals. Yet CEO Steve Jobs has promised that it won’t disappoint, and he rarely fails to deliver.

What will he uncrate this year–aside from a new iPhone? New Mac Pros? New LED Cinema displays? Safari 5 with a new Bing search option? Mac OS 10.7? The next iteration of Apple TV? Join us here later this morning and find out. Our live coverage begins at 10 am PT.

Liveblog

9:38 am: San Francisco’s Moscone Center this morning is as packed as I’ve ever seen it. The attendee line for Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s keynote address began forming early this morning, and by the time I arrived at 8 am, it was already stretching from Moscone well toward the Fifth and Mission garage. No surprise. I’m told this is one of the biggest WWDCs ever, an event that sold out in record time.

10:05 am: Off to a late start because of a connectivity issue here. Jobs takes the stage to a standing ovation. “It’s great to be here.” From the audience: “We love you Steve!”

“We’ve got a packed conference for you this week,” says Jobs. We sold out in eight days.

A few updates to start. First: the iPad. We’ve sold over two million iPads…we’re selling one every three seconds…we’re now selling it in 10 countries.

10:05 am: Now a quick video reel of recent iPad launches abroad. Lots of giddy faces.

10:06 am: We’re in 10 countries today, we’re going to be in 19 by July…we’re making iPads as fast as we can.

Jobs notes that there are now 8,500 native iPad apps and they’ve been downloaded over 35 million times. That’s about 17 apps per iPad and that’s a great number, says Jobs. We’re just thrilled.

10:07 am: A quick showcase of some native iPad apps: eBay (EBAY), WebMD, Iron Man, the FT, Elements, a periodic table app by Wolfram Alpha. The Wolfram representative says his company earned more from the iPad app during first-day sales then it earned from five years of Google ads on PeriodicTable.com

10:08 am: Moving on to iBooks. Users have so far downloaded five million iBooks. That’s 2.5 books per iPad. Publishers tell Apple that as a share of total e-book sales, iBooks now account for 20 percent, and the figure is rising.

Today, we’ll see some enhancements to iBooks. Among them, the ability to make notes, a new control to bookmark the page and that shows bookmarks in the index of the books themselves, the ability to review and read PDFs [applause]. “What we’ve done,” says Jobs, “is to give PDFs a whole new bookshelf for PDFs in the iBooks apps….Those enhancements will be out just a little bit later this month.”

10:11 am: “Next, I’d like to talk a bit about the App Store,” says Jobs. “We support two platforms with the App Store. The first is HTML5, a fully open uncontrolled platform…anyone can write HTML5 apps and have them on our devices….The other platform is the App Store….Now you’ve read a lot about our process for approving apps. We get about 15,000 new apps a week, and they come in in about 30 different languages. Guess what? Ninety-five percent of them are approved within seven days. What about the five percent that aren’t? What are the reasons for that? One: The app doesn’t function as advertised by the developer. Two: The use of private APIs–we don’t want our apps to break. Three:The app crashes….So I think if you were in our shoes, you’d be rejecting apps for the same reasons.”

10:14 am: Jobs talks for a moment about eBay’s app. He refers to eBay CEO John Donahoe’s statement at D8 last week noting that the company’s iPhone app was responsible for $600 million in volume last year.

10:16 am: Jobs invites Netflix CEO Reed Hastings to the stage to talk about the Netflix iPad app. Hastings announces that Netflix (NFLX) will soon debut a new application for the iPhone.

10:17 am: The Netflix iPhone app will debut later this summer. For free.

10:18 am: And so begins a parade of app developers. Next up: Zynga. CEO Mark Pincus takes the stage to announce Farmville for the iPhone. Pincus chats a bit about how successful Zynga’s games have been and how active its users are. Now a quick demo of the game. Looks like the app is cross-platform. The demoer makes a point of noting that the farm she’s tending on her iPhone is the same as the one she has on Facebook: “Say goodbye to withering crops; we now have push notifications.”

10:21 am: Pincus: “With Farmville on the iPhone you can now farm anywhere and any time you want.” Evidently “tractoring” just got a whole lot better. [Not a Farmville player, so I'm not really sure why that's exciting.]

10:22 am: Farmville will debut on the iPhone by the end of June, says Pincus.

10:23 am: Today’s third demo will be from Activision (ATVI): Guitar Hero. The company has developed a new version of the game for the iPhone and iPad. It features rock-star customization, classic rock as well as newer indie stuff, gameplay that riffs off classic Guitar Hero. Activision’s game designers have optimized the new version for iPhone and touch play. Looks like it allows for whammy, pull-ons, pull-offs and “Star Power” as well.

Uh-oh. Demo guy gives us a bit of air guitar.

10:26 am: Guitar Hero is available now in the App Store. Price: $2.99.

10:26 am: Jobs returns to the stage. “Just last week we crossed five billion downloads….Now here’s my favorite stat…how much have we paid to developers to date: $1 billion. This is one of the greatest things we get to do, so let’s go do it again.”

10:28 am: Moving on now to the iPhone. “There have been a lot of statistics floating around. Some are okay, some are questionable. Here are some we like: A new survey from Nielsen shows RIM (RIMM) with 35 percent market share, iPhone with 28 percent. In Q1 2010, the iPhone had over three times the market share of Android.”

Another stat: The iPhone has a 58.2 percent mobile browsing share. “These stats should help put things in perspective for you.”

10:30 am: Now a bit of iPhone history. Jobs runs down a list of iPhone updates over the years. “Today, we’re going to give the biggest update since the iPhone launched….Today, we’re launching iPhone 4.”

10:31 am: The iPhone 4 has a number of new features. Jobs will cover eight of them.

“The first feature: An all-new design. Stop me if you’ve already seen this, ” he jokes. “This is without a doubt the most beautiful, precise thing we’ve ever made….The precision with which this is made is unheard of….It’s like an old Leica camera…nothing like it today….It’s just 9.3 millimeters thick. That’s 24 percent thinner than the 3GS….It’s the thinnest smartphone on the planet.”

10:33 am: There is, indeed, a front-facing camera. Camera with LED flash on the back. SIM card tray. A second microphone.

“Now, because there have been a few photos of this around, people have asked ‘what’s this?’ What are these lines on the new iPhone….Well, there are three lines, not one….Turns out, this is part of the device’s engineering….The stainless steel bands around the device are actually integrated antennas….This has never been done before.”

10:35 am: A quick feature review: Thinnest phone ever, stainless steel for strength, optical quality glass for scratch resistance, built-in antennas.

10:36 am: The second big feature: Retina Display. What’s Retina Display? We’ve dramatically increased pixel density….We’re putting four times as many pixels in any given space….This give us far more precision….This will give us really, really sharp text when we zoom in….We’re using 326 pixels per inch….No one has ever done this before….Turns out that 300 pixels is the limit of the human retina….So once you hit that number, images and text begin looking extraordinary.”

10:38 am: Jobs pulls up two frames showing the difference in appearance between text viewed with Retina Display and text without.

“And this isn’t just for text,” says Jobs. “It’s for pictures and video as well.”

10:39 am: Moving on to a demo. Jobs pulls out an iPhone 3GS and the new iPhone 4. Their respective displays appear onscreen behind him and the difference between the two is startling.

Oops–bit of a network problem. “Our networks here are always unpredictable,” says Jobs. “You know you could help me out here if you’re on Wi-Fi by getting off for a moment.”

Uh-oh. “Could not activate cellular network.”

“Yes, I know that,” quips Jobs. “Oh jeeze…well, looks like I may not be able to show you what I wanted to.”

Jobs moves on, shows off some pictures. Returns to the browser and tries again to bring up the Web page he had hoped to show. Ultimately, he gives up.

10:44 am: Details of display for the iPhone 4: 3.5 inches, 960×640, 326 pixels per inch, 800-to-1 contrast ratio, IPS technology for wider viewing angle and superb color. The iPhone display has 78 percent of the pixels we’ve got in the iPad.

10:45 am: Jobs says existing apps will look even better on the new iPhone. “But if developers do a little bit of work and put improved images into their apps, they’ll look even better. And we suggest you do that….This is going to set the standard in displays for years to come and we don’t think anyone else is close to it.”

10:47 am: Next innovation: The iPhone 4 is powered by Apple’s A4 chip. This is, of course, the same chip that powers the iPad. In other words, this new iPhone is going to scream.

10:48 am: Jobs pulls up a diagram of the innards of the iPhone 4. He notes that Apple was able to build in a larger, improved battery. Seven hours of 3G talk, 10 hours of video, 40 hours of music. 300 hours of standby [I think].

More on the A4: Up to 32 GB of storage. Quad-band HSDPA/HSUPA, 7.2 Mbps down.

10:49 am: A fourth innovation: “Remember when we added the accelerometer and that added up a whole new vista of gaming? Well, we’re taking that even farther and adding a three-axis gyro.”

It supports pitch, roll and yaw, and it’s tied to the compass and accelerometer. New CoreMotion APIs will allow some big leaps in gaming.

“Let me show you a demo. And since this demo doesn’t require the network, we should be okay.”

10:51 am: Jobs shows off onscreen movement via an iPhone Jenga game. First, without the gyroscope and then with it. When it’s activated, it enables 3-D rotation. Very impressive. Jobs plays the game for a few moments. “I did practice this a little bit,” he says, before toppling the tower.

“The gyro joins the four other sensors we have in every phone. I can’t wait to see what you all do with it.”

10:53 am: On to the fifth update: A whole new camera system.

“Everyone likes to talk about megapixels, but what we like to ask is ‘how do we take better pictures?’…What we’ve done is go from a three-megapixel camera to a five-megapixel camera, and we’ve added a backside illuminated sensor (something found in larger cameras)….These allow us to capture more photons per pixel….We’ve also added an LED flash.”

Jobs pulls up some unretouched photos taken with an iPhone 4 and they’re quite nice. Low-light photos are particularly impressive.

10:56 am: Whoa: The camera also records HD video. Full 720P at 30 frames per second.

10:56 am: The camera supports tap-to-focus video, built-in video editing, and one-click sharing via MMS, YouTube, etc.

“But we’re going even further than that,” says Jobs. “We’ve writing iMovie for iPhone.”

10:58 am: Apple’s Randy Ubillos takes the stage to demo the software. The application seems similar to the desktop version–uses projects, etc. It supports iDirect recording into its timeline. You can also import video from the camera app. Drag-and-pinch editing supported, as well as things like Ken Burns effects and themed transitions.

11:00 am: Ubillos demos titling in a movie and notes that the device uses geolocation to actually identify the locale at which a film was recorded. Five iMovie themes are included in app. Three movie export sizes up to 720P HD. And now a video reel of a short HD movie shot and edited entirely on iPhone 4. Pretty slick. Flip camera folks are probably chugging Mylanta right about now.

Jobs back on stage: “You’ll be able to buy iMovie for $4.99 from our App Store…if we approve it.”

Jobs circles back to the earlier demo that went wrong. He notes that some 500-plus Wi-Fi base stations in the room compromised the demo. “This here is a testament to how far we’ve come…some 500 base stations in the room.”

11:05 am: Bloggers are being asked to turn off their Wi-Fi and put their devices down in order for the demo to go forward. “I think bloggers have a right to blog, but if you want to see the demos, we’re not going to be able to do it,” Jobs says.”Unless someone has a better suggestion.” In reply, a number of audience members shout “Verizon!” Jobs: “We’re actually on Wi-Fi here.”

11:05 am: Moving on now to the sixth of eight new features Jobs will demo: IPhone OS4. Apple is renaming the OS, since it now runs on devices other than the iPhone. The new name is “iOS.”

The new version, iOS 4, has some 1500 new developer APIs, says Jobs. And there are over 100 new user features as well. The biggest is multitasking. “People say we weren’t first with that, and they’re right…but we wanted to do it right.”

Jobs notes Google (GOOG) co-founder Larry Page’s recent comment about multitasking running down mobile device batteries. “You know what? He’s right. And that’s why we took our time with it. We wanted to get it right.”

11:09 am: Now a demo of multitasking. Jobs opens up Pandora, selects a song to play, checks his email, fires up a browser and it finally connects to the network. He moves back to mail, swipes to bring up Pandora’s controls, turns Pandora off, begins reviewing email. There’s threading, and message-deletion has been simplified.

11:11 am: Moving on to folders and folder creation. Again, very simple. All drag and drop. Folders can be added to the dock. Jobs quickly creates a folder for all his sports apps.

Overview of iOS4: Multitasking, folders, Retina Display integration, unified mail inbox and threading, enhanced camera and photo apps, deeper enterprise support–tons of new features everywhere.

11:13 am: A few points about enterprise support–better data protection, mobile device management, SSL, VPN support, wireless app distribution.

11:13 am: Apple has added a new search engine option to iPhone–Bing. Google will stay the default. “We’re giving you the choice and you can decide now. Microsoft’s done a great job with Bing.”

11:14 am: Apple will provide developers with a golden master candidate of iOS4 today. Consumer release will follow “soon.”

Jobs: “We’re about to hit another milestone. This month we will sell our 100 millionth iOS device….There is definitely a market for your applications. No one else comes close to this.”

11:15 am: Jobs moves on, announcing that Apple is bringing iBooks to the iPhone and iPod touch as well. Same basic application, PDF support, iBook Store, etc.

Jobs: So now we’ve got iBooks on three different devices, so what can we do with them? You can download the same book to all your devices at no extra charge. You only have to buy it once…and iBooks will automatically, wirelessly at no extra charge, synch your place, your bookmarks and notes across all your devices.

11:18 am: Now a demo of iBooks on the iPhone. Jobs pulls up “Winnie the Pooh” on the video screen behind him. Same idea as iBooks for iPad. He writes himself a note, bookmarks a page. Then he returns to the book’s index page and points out that the bookmark and note now appear there. He moves on, shows off PDF support.

11:20 am: Jobs–iBooks is joining iTunes and the App Store as the third store on the iPhone. We have over 150 million accounts with credit card information. We believe this is the most in the industry.

11:21 am: Now: iAds. “Why are we doing iAds? To help our developers create low-cost ads for advertisers. With iAds, we’re trying to add emotion and interactivity to mobile ads…iAds keep you in the app, they don’t hijack users out of it.” By making sure that users know what an iAd is, they’ll know they won’t be hijacked out of an app. IAds are built right into iOS4. You don’t have to write an app to put it into your app. Apple sells and hosts the ads so all you have to do is put them in, and you’ll make money.

11:23 am: Apple has been selling iAds for just eight weeks but has already accumulated quite a list of customers: GE (GE), Chanel, AT&T (T), Liberty Mutual, State Farm, Campbell (CPB), Sears (SHLD), JC Penney (JCP), Target (TGT), Best Buy (BBY), DirectTV, TBS and…Disney (DIS) [of course].

11:25 am: Jobs pulls up an in-process Nissan ad for the company’s new electric car. “Nissan was a little hesitant to show you this…but I convinced them [laughter].”

Nissan’s iAd is essentially a 15-second video that appears along with some interactive elements. The app allows viewers to register to see additional materials. It also includes an MPG comparison chart. “This is a pretty compelling way for Nissan to get their point across….What’s more, Nissan is giving away a car through the ad.” Jobs enters to win a red Nissan Leaf.

11:29 am: Jobs–I think a lot of people are going to try to win the car. It’s a great idea…so iAds. We’re going to turn it on on July 1….So how well have we done selling iAds so far? Well, we’re pretty new at this, but I think we’re doing pretty well….We’ve sold about $60 million so far…and we’ve been selling them for just eight weeks….So we think we’re off to a great start.

Jobs again stresses that the point that iAds is to make money for developers.

11:31 am: His “eight things” overview finished, Jobs checks in with the audience? What do you think so far? [Applause]. Well, there is one more thing.

“In 2007 when we launched the iPhone, it was my privilege to make the first phone call on it to Jony Ive…and I’d like to do the same on this occasion.”

Jobs video-calls Jonathan Ive.

11:33 am: Video looks clear. Jobs again appeals to the audience to turn off Wi-Fi to prevent video freezes.

Jobs: You know this amazing. I grew up with “The Jetsons” and “Star Trek,” dreaming about stuff like this, and here it is.

Ive: I grew up the same way. And it’s real now isn’t it?

Jobs: It is real, especially if people turn their Wi-Fi off.

11:34 am: Big round of applause for the feature, which Apple is calling FaceTime video calling.

FaceTime is iPhone4-to-iPhone4 and it’s Wi-Fi-only. No set-up required.

You can use front or rear camera and you can switch between the two to show the person you’re talking to what you’re seeing. Supports portrait and landscape.

“FaceTime’s going to be Wi-Fi-only in 2010….We’ve got to work with carrier partners a little….And Apple will ship tens of millions of FaceTime devices this year, so there will be a lot of people to call.”

11:37 am: Now a FaceTime ad. Louis Armstrong soundtrack. “When you’re smiling…” Typical Apple fare. Grandparents calling grandkids. Pregnant mother showing husband live images of an ultrasound. Two people signing over the app. A cameo by Matt Damon. Big round of applause. Audience found the signing particularly moving.

Jobs: This is one of those moments that reminds us why we do what we do.

11:39 am: Jobs notes that FaceTime is based on a bunch of open standards–a bunch of alphabet-soup acronyms. “We’re going to make FaceTime an open standard…so that’s iPhone 4 and we think it’s the biggest leap forward we’ve taken so far.”

11:40 am: iPhone 4 will ship in two colors, black or white. $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB. AT&T is offering “an incredibly generous upgrade offer.” If your contract expires any time this calendar year you can agree to a new two-year contract and get those $199/$299 prices.

11:42 am: New iPhone lineup will go on-sale June 24. Preorders start a week from tomorrow. On June 24, iPhone 4 will launch in four countries. In July it will ship in 18 more.

11:43 am: In August, Apple will add 24 more countries. By September, the company will be shipping iPhone 4 in 88 countries.

11:43 am: Apple has designed some new accessories for the device: A new dock, some colorful new iPhone cases.

Upgrades for iOS will be offered for 3GS, 3G and iPod touch, though not all features will be supported. Upgrades will be free and available on June 21

11:45 am: Brief video overview of iPhone 4 with various Apple execs talking up the new device. “This is the biggest leap forward since the original iPhone….We’re bringing video chat to the world…and it’s going to change the way we communicate forever.”

11:46 am: Video reel stresses a number of points that Jobs has made so far: Retinal Display is the best mobile display to date…apps show more detail than you’ve seen on any device before…you can now switch between multiple applications and everything is as you’ve left it…intelligent folder-naming…simplified mail with threading…an LED flash for low-light pictures…HD video capture and video-editing with iMovie…iPhone 4 is simplicity, but behind it is outrageous technology…40 percent more talk time with new battery.

11:50 am: More from the video reel: “We developed an entirely new stainless-steel frame that functions as an antenna and the device’s primary structure…new high-impact glass used on front and back…even if FaceTime were the only feature we were delivering this would be an amazing device…with everything else, it’s going to change everything all over again.”

11:51 am: Jobs returns to the stage, pulls up a slide of a road sign showing the intersection of technology and liberal arts. He notes that this is what distinguishes Apple. “It’s the hardware and software coming together….It’s not just a new camera, it’s a new camera system and video-editing software….It’s the complete solution so that all of us don’t have to become system integrators.”

Jobs thanks the teams that have spent the past year developing the device. First name: Former IBMer Mark Papermaster. Applause too loud for me to catch second name. Other folks recognized: Bob Mansfield, Scott Forestall, Tim Cook.

11:54 am: Jobs wraps it up with a “This is our new baby. We hope you love it as much as we do.”

And that’s it. The keynote’s over.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100607/coming-up-apple-wwdc-2010-keynote-live/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100212/chinese-video-takes-aim-at-online-censorship/ http://allthingsd.com/20100212/chinese-video-takes-aim-at-online-censorship/#comments Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:00:23 +0000 Loretta Chao, Juliet Ye and Aaron Back http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=21291 The latest battle over Internet freedom in China is playing out in an online movie that pits an armored blue beast and his band of antiauthoritarian rogues against a sinister force called Harmony that seeks to clean up the Web.

The video, called “War of Internet Addiction,” is a send-up of government censorship starring videogame characters that has become one of the hottest things on the Chinese Internet, epitomizing the unruly spirit that thrives on the Web despite an intensifying crackdown on free expression in China.

The 64-minute video consists entirely of footage shot in the virtual universe of “World of Warcraft,” a wildly popular online game from Activision Blizzard Inc. (ATVI) in which millions of players around the world do battle via magical avatars.

The movie’s plot centers on gamers’ frustration with an actual bureaucratic battle over regulation of the Chinese edition of the game, but its subtext is a broad, biting allegory of the fight against government Internet controls, peppered with allusions to a list of real-world conflicts in China over the past year.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

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