Despite a silver-tongued PR team capable of spinning any irrelevant Second Life happening into a New York Times story, former Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale couldn't save himself from the downside of the virtual hype cycle. His "life's work" has become a punchline. Here are the five mistakes that added up to cost…
It's fitting; the Second Coming of the phone will get a game from On High. Alongside Apple's SDK demo today, Electronic Arts' Travis Boatman showed off a version of Will Wright's magnum opus Spore running on the iPhone. The release date hasn't been finalized, but the hope is it will coincide with the game's…
Jason Young, CEO of technology publisher Ziff-Davis, couldn't solve the company's $225 million debt problem. That means a round-trip back to bankruptcy court, whiled it restructures yet again. What it has left to restructure is an utter mystery.
Steven Spielberg, who allegedly believes in ghosts, is launching a social network for other tinfoil-wearing crazies. Thank god they'll all be corralled in one place; fear that they might find a leader and organize.
Quarterlife, the stapled-together-for-prime-time Web-video series about twentynothing artists, flopped so hard that NBC is kicking it off the team. It sucked in a measly 3.1 million viewers during its NBC debut last night — half what programs on ABC and CBS pulled. As penance, "Quarterlife" will be riding the pine on…
The San Francisco Chronicle must be shedding readers even faster than staff. Reportedly, it was losing $1 million a week before shedding 100 employees last May. In order to maintain circulation, the Chronicle is engaging in an extensive telemarketing campaign. For the last few weeks, I've been an unwilling target.…
Jakob Lodwick is back in the Bay Area, kicking it at his cousin's San Francisco-based startup. The only thing slightly more terrifying than the prospect of one of our local girls becoming his new softcore pinup is the notion that Lodwick might end his blogging strike. Oh wait, he has — three times over. Lodwick,…
San Francisco is the city every manchild with a wee knowledge of Ajax and a penchant for dropping vowels from proper nouns flocks to in the hopes of striking a venture capital goldmine. It's not exactly a revelation that you're all a bunch of greedy louts, but Forbes, in what is no doubt a highly scientific study, has…
Apple is now the second largest music retailer, beating Best Buy, in the United States. NPD Group, the market-research firm which tracks sales, estimates 12 single-song downloads as an album. Why don't they just count revenues? That would be easier. [BusinessWeek]
Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello isn't content to sit idly by twiddling his thumbs until retirement. He'd rather spend as much as possible to keep his company relevant to the vanishing-attention-span generation of males whose spending pads his pension. They're interested in fast cars and sports — which makes…
Failed social networking entrepreneur Mark Pincus, the force that brought the Internet both Tribe.net and Acebucks, now hopes to dominate the Facebook application market with his new casual games company Zynga. He claims he hasn't touched his $10 million in VC funding because he's in the lucrative business of selling…
"Second Life is slowing down and taking investors with it." — Blogger Adrian Crook during his "Free to Play" panel at the Game Developer's Conference. He says businesses in the virtual world are being forced to shut down because there isn't the population to support them.
Anime-flavored virtual world Gaia Online started up "Gaia VJ," a service which lets you watch video on the Internet with friends, late last year. Fed by video repositories like YouTube, iFilm and MetaCafe, Gaia VJ allows teens to create video playlists and share them with friends in exchange for in-game currency.…
Coddled by close-hovering helicopter parents, Generation Y (of which I'm a proud member) is incapable of taking initiative. (This very post was "suggested" by Owen Thomas, yet I get to take all the credit.) We never had to struggle up multiple hills, in the snow, to get to school, so we lack any true sense of…
It began as farce; now it ends in tragedy. CNET is abandoning Consumating, the dating site it bought in December 2005. It has since lost interest in maintaining the dating site which Ben Brown launched as a satire — something to do with its top line being a parody of actual revenues. Consumating's official shut down…
IBM has ended the climate crisis by making an educational virtual world for teens.
SF Weekly writer Mary Spicuzza attempted to track down Griot, a Wikipedia editor with a record of baiting other users into getting banned. She chronicled her meandering, unsuccessful saga in 4,275 paralyzing words. Snipping out a lot of needless narrative and ruminations about anonymity and accountability online, we…
"I forgot to mention something important earlier: I don't think Wii Fit's purpose is to make you fit." Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, on the origins of Wii Fit. Too bad it's already sold 1.2 million in Japan based on the notion that it does. The non-exercise videogame is out in the U.S. later this year. [Wii.com]
Four words: Hello Kitty virtual world.
Michael Dell is adding one more bronco to his stable, email backup service MessageOne. The company is ho-hum — boring enterprise software; the founder, not so much. That's because his last name is also Dell. As in Adam Dell, Michael's younger brother. That's not the only part of this deal that's staying in the family:…
