Thursday, December 9, 2010

Week in review: Call of Duty Black Ops shows games can beat movies - Movies

Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:
Review: Call of Duty Black Ops shows games can beat the drama and action of movies — The continuous improvement of this game series shows something that fans have long known. Video games are as good at telling stories and conveying artistic themes as movies, books, or music.
Apple’s Wozniak calls Android the winner in smartphone race — Oh Woz, we love it when you shoot from the hip.
Can the internet bring down the TSA’s new enhanced pat-down search, also known as “touch my junk”? — Would-be traveler John Tyner has become a cause célèbre on the internet because he refused to subject himself to what he considered to be invasive body searching at the San Diego airport.
Steve Perlman shows off OnLive’s disruptive MicroConsole (video) — We talked to OnLive’s chief executive about its games-on-demand system.
Google investor John Doerr: Zynga is our best company ever — Doerr, the legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist, gave high praise to Zynga, the leading social game company, saying it was one of the best investments his firm had ever made
And here are five more articles we think are important, thought-provoking, fun, or all of the above:
Battle for your texts: Facebook Messages vs. Kik mobile chat — Now that we’ve seen Facebook’s new messaging service, it’s clearly not the threat to email we previously thought. But the new messaging service could pose a problem for the hot mobile chat startup Kik, which we’ve covered extensively.
Confirmed: Accel sold Facebook shares at $34B valuation — Looks like it isn’t just employees who are cashing out on their Facebook shares.
Microsoft and Cisco throw down the gauntlet for living room teleconferencing — Cisco’s Umi teleconferencing camera for home living room use and the Microsoft Kinect motion controller have more in common than you might think.
Why Texas may be a better electric car state than California — When power plant heavyweight NRG Energy announced that it would invest $10 million in the rollout of the nation’s first privately-finance electric vehicle charging network, it also revealed that the city it would debut in would be … Houston, Texas. Um, what?
Developers: Get ready for your closeup in VentureBeat’s Mobile App Spotlight — Are you an app developer with a creation that’s ready for the klieg lights? VentureBeat has partnered with Intel to provide a new showcase for your mobile app: VentureBeat’s Mobile App Spotlight.
Companies: Accel Partners, Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Kik, Microsoft, NRG Energy
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