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It’s finally here; the moment where the iPad actually comes into some sort of contact with the market. As we announced before, iPad pre-orders begin at 5:30 AM PT (in about 1:30 hours), and the Apple Store is currently down, indicating that pre-order forms will be available when it comes back .. read full article »

On Monday morning, I helped Beet.tv executive producer Andy Plesser host his latest roundtable discussion on the future of online video, at The Guardian’s Kings Place HQ. In this video, Andy hears from The Economist executive editor Daniel Franklin that the “book-like” experience of .. read full article »

Twitter client HootSuite, which recently raised $1.9 million in funding, has now made an acquisition, buying up Android app developer Swift App. HootSuite says that Swift App was behind the development of HootSuite’s own Android app, which was released last week. The company says the .. read full article »

Kwedit, the innovative and suddenly controversial payments platform for virtual goods, is releasing some early data. The service lets users promise to pay later in lieu of a direct credit card payment when they want virtual currency for social games like Farmville. It’s not a legally binding .. read full article »

What do you do when you first fire up your browser? Most probably, you log into various sites that require a username and password – Facebook, Gmail, Twitter and the like. For me, personally, it’s quite a chore, as I need to log into over 10 different services before I start doing .. read full article »

Fresh off its recent Android launch, Canadian social media startup HootSuite acquired developer Swift App to beef up its presence on Google’s mobile platform. Sebastian Delmont, the developer behind Swift App, will join HootSuite as a mobile adviser. His company built a Twitter client of the .. read full article »

In the worldwide debut of both Eidos Montreal and its first project, Deus Ex 3: Human Revolution, art designer Jonathan Jacques-Belletete demonstrated how his team challenged status quo thinking by creating a visual language centered around two esoteric art styles, the the Renaissance and .. read full article »

Fascinated by the cloud and what it means for the future of Web apps, social gaming, open-source and the after life? Then you have plenty to keep you busy if you are heading to SXSW this year. This is part of a series of ReadWriteWeb guides to SXSW Interactive 2010. If this guide isn't your .. read full article »

We’ve talked a lot this week about the so-called “Location War” brewing at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas starting tomorrow. That war will happen, but actually, there are likely to be a lot of winners because a few of the location-based services should be able to leverage the exposure .. read full article »

Zimbalam, the digital music distributor from Believe Digital, launches in the US today. The service lets artists submit and distribute their music through 25 of the most popular music platforms, including Apple’s iTunes and Spotify, in addition to “several hundred additional stores .. read full article »

Today, the California Health and Human Services convened a summit with an expected three hundred people in the interest of a state HIE (Health Information Exchange). This project has been tasked by volunteers and state groups and led by Jonah Frolich, deputy secretary of California Health and .. read full article »

First, we'd like to thank all 596 survey respondents and the many Open Thread commenters who gave such interesting and valuable feedback in our recent post "Should Social Media Experts Be Required to Know Their Tech?" Over the past couple days, we've been able to put together a decent picture .. read full article »

The official Foursquare account just sent out a tweet letting everyone know that today is already the service’s biggest day ever. This is interesting since it’s actually the day before the SXSW conference kicks off in Austin, Texas. According to the tweet, Foursquare broke 275,000 check-ins .. read full article »

There are no shortage of location-based services launching this week at SXSW in Austin, Texas. Many of them allow you to “check-in” places to let others know you are there. So how do you differentiate between then and decide which to use? Well, here’s one good way. CauseWorld, is a free .. read full article »

WildTangent said today it has scored a significant new customer for its BrandBoost ad platform for social games. It is now teaming up with Playdom to integrate ads into Playdom’s popular Facebook game, Tiki Farm. BrandBoost will give Playdom’s gamers rewards such as virtual items and premium .. read full article »

The awards night for the Game Developers Conference is always a hoot. It starts out with the Independent Games Festival, where the industry celebrates the students, amateurs, and one-person shops of the industry. One of my favorite games of the year on the iPhone, Spider: The Secret of Bryce .. read full article »

On November 19th, 2006, Nintendo launched its fifth home console to the world. The Nintendo Wii was both ridiculed and praised for its unique controller system — the Wiimote — which detects movements in three dimensions.Three and a half years later, the Wii has dominated the market, .. read full article »

It’s long been known that Nokia’s had a hard time selling its popular devices in the U.S. But its latest smartphones coming have a series of enhancements that it hopes will make it more competitive. The phones will run the latest version of the open source operating system, “Symbian^3,” .. read full article »

Fresh off having the most popular music video in YouTube/Vevo’s history (“Bad Romance” with 140 million views and counting), Lady Gaga’s latest – “Telephone” – featuring Beyonce, has made its debut on the Web.The video is choc-full-o Lady Gaga shock value, and at more than 9 .. read full article »

Local newspapers may actually have an easier time charging for content than national and international news brands like the New York Times (NYSE: NYT). And what’s the biggest threat to paid music? Well, probably not piracy. These were among the assertions by panelists on paidContent2010’s .. read full article »

Reporters Without Borders released its annual report [PDF] on online access today. They call it Enemies of the Internet, and it shows a world where online censorship, intimidation and worse is increasing. It's not surprising that as access to the Internet expands, more and more dictators and .. read full article »

—Tremor Media: Mark Pinney has been promoted to COO from CFO. He joined Tremor Media two years ago, having come from AOL’s Platform-A (NYSE: AOL). Earlier, he was CFO and chief privacy officer for Tacoda, also an AOL property. —TVGuide.com: Christy Tanner has been appointed GM, .. read full article »

Early adopters take note: Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is taking pre-orders for the iPad at 5:30 a.m. Pacific on Friday. Last week, Apple announced that March 12 was the magical day for per-orders, but never specified a time. Now, it has been confirmed that electronic ordering will begin bright and .. read full article »

Rupert Murdoch, the legendary founder of News Corp., has always had a love-hate relationship with the digital world. Sometimes (read: during the bubbles) he loves it. Sometimes (read: during advertising recessions) he hates it. His recent moves – whether it be getting rid of some of News .. read full article »

Snaptu, a startup bringing an iPhone-style application experience to thousands of mobile devices, just announced it has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Sequoia Capital. Previously known as Moblica, Snaptu says it works on any phone that can run a Java application, adding up to more .. read full article »

Twitter turned on a feature that lets users geotag tweets directly from the web site. So now you don’t have to rely on mobile apps like Tweetie to triangulate where you are. The move should help add location data to a greater share of conversations flowing through the microblogging network and .. read full article »

Back in November of last year, the location-based social event service Hot Potato launched at our Realtime CrunchUp. Today, they’ve taken what was a solid service, and made it a lot better with a number of upgrades. First and foremost, there is a new iPhone application that just went live in .. read full article »

Location based social networks - are you over it already? It feels like location is all we ever hear about anymore, especially this week leading up to SXSW. We're excited about location too; see our enthusiastic write-ups What Twitter's Geolocation API Makes Possible and The Era of Location as .. read full article »

Ohai has grand ambitions of jumpstarting an industry for social massively multiplayer online (MMO) games. Think World of Warcraft crossed with FarmVille — engaging and rich, but also easy to use and social. The San Francisco-based company has a great ambassador in CEO Susan Wu, a former .. read full article »

Apple fanatics will be able to place their iPad orders at 5:30 AM Pacific time (8:30 Eastern) tomorrow, Friday, March 12th. The pre-orders will be available through Apple.com, and are expected to ship in the United States next month — April 3rd to be precise.The Unofficial Apple Weblog learned .. read full article »

A big name addition to WolframAlpha’s executive team. Barak Berkowitz, who headed blogging firm Six Apart until he left two-and-a-half years ago, is joining the search startup as managing director tasked with leading the “growth of WolframAlpha’s business.” Specifically, WolframAlpha .. read full article »

It’s getting tough to keep up with all of the location-related developments leading up to this year’s SXSW, and they just keep coming. Tonight, on the eve of the event, Plancast has just had its iPhone application approved. The service, which we’ve previously described as a ‘Foursquare .. read full article »

Ray Muzyka, chief executive of popular video game-maker BioWare, spoke at our GamesBeat@GDC conference in San Francisco about building game franchises. While onstage, Muzyka talked about his Electronic Arts-owned company’s upcoming games in the Star Wars, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age franchises .. read full article »

Looking for real-time data of its own, the FCC (yes, the regulatory body in Washington, D.C.) has released a mobile app for iPhone and Android. Don’t worry, the feds aren’t interested in listening to your phone conversations, rather they say the purpose of the app is to provide “Americans .. read full article »

Utilities around the world are still struggling to understand and implement new technology needed to make electrical grids cleaner and more efficient. Only 8 percent of them worldwide have finished rolling out smart meters and other equipment under the banner of “Smart Grid,” according .. read full article »

MSNBC is continuing to try make better use of social media as a distribution tool with a small effort that ties its @BreakingNews Twitter account to a dedicated Facebook page. It’s not clear how much Facebook fans want real-time news mixed with their friends’ status updates—as opposed to .. read full article »

Video game sales fell 15 percent in February compared to a year ago as the industry struggles to climb out of the recession. That’s a surprise, given the launch of some very strong titles. But it’s nothing new for the game industry in the past year. Overall U.S. video game sales were $1.26 .. read full article »

If you’re a gamer, you might have heard about yesterday’s news about the PlayStation Move, Sony’s answer to the Wii Remote and Microsoft’s upcoming Project Natal motion controller. In a demonstration yesterday, the company showed off the device, which utilizes remote-like controllers .. read full article »

TechStars is an early stage venture fund based in Boulder, Colorado. ReadWriteWeb was given an early peek at historical results data on TechStars companies, which the organization is about to release. The data shows acquisition and failure rates, as well as how many of the TechStar companies .. read full article »

If you’re one of those folks who responded to news of the Eclipse trailer today with a disgusted, “No thanks,” you really won’t want to watch this.Super Twilight fan and YouTube star NuttyMadam3575 recorded her reaction to the Eclipse trailer, unloading it to the Internet to the joy of .. read full article »

One of the more solid and genuinely useful Internet startups out there, travel fare aggregator Kayak, was dissected in a report released today by NeXt Up Research for SharesPost. NeXt Up thinks that with a heavy advertising spend, Kayak should have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18 .. read full article »

This week geo-crazy mavens were pleased to hear of location-based updates to Facebook, the launch of Foursquare analytics and of course yesterday's news of Gowalla's comment and picture functionality. So far the most common way to monetize these types of services is through sponsored leader .. read full article »

Plancast, the plan-sharing startup with big-name angel investors and "future as platform" aspirations, has just had its iPhone app accepted into the iTunes store. The app was built by contracted star developer Leah Culver. It's simple, functional, attractive and useful. It's going to be very .. read full article »

Betaworks, the New York-based startup incubator and early-stage investor, has raised $20 million in a second round of funding. The firm, which focuses on real-time web startups, was founded by former AOL executives John Borthwick and Andrew Weisman. Betaworks has made 24 investments so far, .. read full article »

Not too long ago, Toyota reigned as the seemingly untouchable hybrid leader. That dominance — in terms of both market share (50 percent of hybrids sold in the U.S.) and mindshare (no alt-fuel vehicle on the market is better known or more widely recognized than the Toyota Prius) — means that .. read full article »

Fremont, Calif.’s NUMMI automotive plant has been facing a death sentence for a while now. Slated to shutter on April 1, leaving upwards of 4,700 locals jobless, the facility was one of the biggest industrial employers in the southern Bay Area. But today, stealthy electric vehicle .. read full article »

This morning Google announced a new Blue Dot feature on the mobile version of Google Product Search that shows whether a product is in-stock at nearby stores. This seems to pose a threat to startup Milo, which highlights local inventory in product search results both on the web and mobile .. read full article »

LivingSocial, once one of the top Facebook app developers but is now focused on online daily deals, has raised a warchest of $25 million from investors in a Series B funding round.LivingSocial, based out of Washington, D.C., is the creator of the Visual Bookshelf, Pick Your 5, and Polls Facebook .. read full article »

A good business plan is like the trailer for a movie; it should be eye-catching enough to make an investor want to see more. After wading through too many long-winded business plans, Dutch investment firm Lunatech Ventures has built a web tool called Plan Cruncher that creates a one-page, visual .. read full article »

Most people in the world hear Hewlett-Packard and think “printers.” And who can blame them? Since the relatively recent emphasis on the “HP” instead of “Hewlett-Packard,” and the general consumer move away from printers, HP hasn’t really done anything noteworthy — well, other .. read full article »