conferences

If you had any doubts that the iPhone must now be considered one of the world's most important gaming platforms, this week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco will try to put them to rest once and for all.

For years, GDC, as it's known, has hosted two days of "summits" early in the week, before the main keynote address and the bulk of the panels and sessions begin, including the longstanding GDC Mobile, which dealt with just about every issue a developer could want on mobile and handheld devices.

And this year is no … Read more

BOSTON--If the green-tech industry had its equivalent of the iPhone, it would be the electric car, a product that has cachet with consumers. But it's still unclear what will drive sales of plug-ins: will it be consumers willing to pay more for a greener ride or government mandates for fuel efficiency?

Speakers on a panel about electric vehicles on Saturday at the MIT Energy Conference said that both consumers and government policies will drive electric and plug-in hybrid car adoption. But they also expect electric cars will be premium products desired both because they are cleaner than gasoline-only cars … Read more

Update: Things are running a little late. It should be starting around 10:30 a.m. PST.

YouTube is holding a press conference at 10 a.m. PST Thursday and we'll be there live with photos and text updates of whatever it is.

Details are scarce at the moment, but we know for sure it won't be related to mobile phones or movies. That opens up the door for a number of things including new Test Tube features, more TV shows, and that whole live streaming thing which was rumored to be coming out sometime in 2008.

As … Read more

MIAMI--It's not fancy, nobody talks about "monetization," and there are no "breakout sessions" on the schedule.

Despite, or perhaps because of this, dozens of young Web developers swear by the annual Future of Web Apps conference in Miami, an annual winter event put on by tech events firm Carsonified. They came from up and down the East Coast, from local tech start-ups in Florida and even from Europe--for the most part, hailing from locales well outside Silicon Valley, hoping to soak up a bit of that insider knowledge.

Many in the developer community say that … Read more

After years of Facebook executives and investors saying "not yet" to an initial public offering, 2010 finally looked like the year when it could happen.

Nope. Or at least that's what two major Facebook investors, Jim Breyer of Accel Partners and Yuri Milner of Digital Sky Technologies, said during an onstage talk at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich on Tuesday.

A live-blog of rough notes from the talk reveals that both Breyer and Milner ruled out the possibility that Facebook will go public anytime soon. "I am happy to announce that there will be … Read more

It wasn't all keynotes, lectures, and roundtable discussions at last week's BlackBerry Developer Conference in San Francisco. Programmers, business folk, and even some journalists got a chance to test their skills maneuvering a motorized robot through an obstacle course--using a BlackBerry Storm as the controller (video below).

A development group within BlackBerry-maker RIM conceived of the Robot Challenge, and constructed four bots from a Lego Mindstorm set. It also built four identical obstacle courses that include a zig-zag gauntlet, a ramp, and a shooting gallery. Players who weren't able to get their robots over the finish line … Read more

BOSTON--Green tech has been a hot venture capital investment category the past few years, but that doesn't mean investors are actually earning money. In fact, some venture capitalists eyeing gold in green may soon be moving on, a panel of investors said here on Friday.

In the third quarter this year, green tech garnered more venture capital than the traditional categories of software and biotech, bouncing back after a sharp drop-off earlier this year. That reflects the high level of confidence that investing in energy-related technologies makes sense in the long run.

But there's a growing understanding that … Read more

Want great software for your mobile phone? Keep up the complaints. That was the message at a Tuesday session of the BlackBerry Developer Conference here in San Francisco aimed at developers. But it's a dictum that applies to all smartphone owners.

In the symbiotic relationship between the application developer and the user, a well-placed critique is key to a good programmer improving their mobile application. The motto of the squeakiest wheel getting the most grease may seem obvious, but the importance of user feedback becomes even clearer when articulated in dollar signs and numbers.

A single-star rating for an application on a review site or storefront can severely limit its chances of getting downloaded, and therefore of making money.

"This is the curse of the one-star," said session speaker Stephen King (not that Stephen King), CEO of app testing company Mob4Hire.

His company's research suggests that the bulk of users feel comfortable downloading new mobile software that gets four stars or above. With 69 percent of people discovering apps based on rankings, reviews, and friend recommendations, and the mobile app industry growing 26 percent year over year, according to Juniper Research, there's real money to be made or lost. Addressing peoples' complaints isn't just a best business practice; it may directly affect the bottom line.… Read more

A few months ago, e-mail search app Xobni told us they were creating a version for BlackBerry. At the BlackBerry Developer Conference in San Francisco on Monday, we got a look at it.

Xobni on the Windows PC is an Outlook add-on that quickly finds e-mail messages and attachments. On BlackBerry, Xobni will integrate with your e-mail account, where it will extract addresses, phone numbers, and social networking details to automatically create a secondary address book for your phone. You'll be able to use Xobni for BlackBerry to quickly find contacts--including those you have not physically added to the … Read more