economic

VC investment momentum continues in third quarter

Things are getting better for entrepreneurs, according to data released Tuesday by information services provider Chubby Brain.

Venture investment hit a multi-year low in the first quarter of 2009, reaching $5.3 billion in the second quarter and jumping a respectable 14 percent to $6.1 billion in the third quarter of 2009.

Statistics in The Pulse of the Innovation Economy report for Q309 certainly help quantify a resurgence in Silicon Valley, but we can't forget that entrepreneurs drive innovation, while venture capitalists facilitate it. Yes, money is often necessary, but the entrepreneurial need to solve complex problems is what has propelled the information economy.

A few highlights:

Invested dollars went up by 14 percent, with an 11 percent increase in number of deals September seemed to be right time to raise money with 40 percent of third-quarter deals occurring in the month California, and specifically the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley is the most likely location to raise money. Health care investing saw the most activity while green investors sat on their recycling cans

It should come as no surprise that the San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley is responsible for a large portion of third-quarter funding, taking 7 of the top 10 ranking spots. This is not a knock against other geographies, just a realistic recognition of how densely packed the valley is with VCs. … Read more

IDC: Spending on cloud services to hit 10 percent by 2013

New data from IDC's Cloud Services Forecast shows that cloud services will outpace traditional IT spending over the next five years and will represent $44.2 billion, or roughly 10 percent, of all IT spending by 2013.

However, the missing link in this data set is that these numbers account only for IDC's cloud services taxonomy (Application Software, Application Development and Deployment Software, Systems Infrastructure Software, and Server and Disk Storage capacity) and don't represent private clouds.

Private clouds--or at least internal enterprise applications that use the same principles--will undoubtedly become a major trend over the next … Read more

How age impacts social-gaming monetization

New data released by Gambit, a micro-transaction platform provider, illustrates the complexity of both customer targeting and analyzing micro-transaction buying patterns. The major takeaway: older players seem like a good target market until you dig in to find out that they don't spend a whole lot.

But, it takes a minute to understand the data, as Gambit's Susan Su points out in a blog post on how age impacts social-gaming monetization. While it would appear that older users are a good target market thanks to their high revenue-per-user statistic, they are actually pretty meaningless in terms of revenue. … Read more

Swedish group calls gaming addiction a 'pandemic' threat

A Swedish organization called the Youth Care Foundation claims that computer gaming addiction is reaching pandemic proportions around the world. This is the same group that called World of Warcraft "the cocaine of the computer games world" back in February.

In an interview with Sweden's English paper, The Local, Sven Rollenhagen of the Youth Care Foundation touts his position as one that helps young people in Sweden recognize and manage computer gaming addiction.

Already ahead of the curve by "daring" to view gaming addiction as something distinct from other common problems facing young people, Sweden'… Read more

Does IBM have a fix for banking infrastructure?

In the year since the worst financial meltdown in modern history, many financial institutions are still seeking to identify the root causes of the crisis and develop new ways to re-invent their business processes to ensure that such an event can never occur again.

In addition to human error, over-reaching risk, and simple greed, there was a key technology component that has been overlooked by most reports. According to Bob Picciano, General Manager of IBM Lotus Software and IBM Collaboration, this technological fault was made up of two elements; the lack of corporate-wide computer program integration at most banks, and … Read more

Report: Virtual currency No. 1 digital goods purchase

New research from video game market research firm VGMarket sponsored by Playspan reveals that gamers are actively making purchases to enhance their gaming experience, with free-to-play games leading the way to monetization. Playspan is a provider of monetization and payment solutions for games and virtual worlds.

Three out of four virtual goods buyers purchased in-game currency in the last 12 months and spent approximately $50 each. This statistic is interesting to me as I am always surprised when users buy in to currency that only works on one site. But, I suppose if it's the only option then you will eventually give in.

Of further interest in the report is the fact that free-to-play games may actually be monetizing better than MMOs (massive multiplayer online games) and social networks.

58 percent made purchases in free-to-play (F2P) games over the last 12 months. 34 percent made purchases in MMOs. 23 percent made purchases in social network games. The average respondent is currently playing three online games and 80 percent report buying digital goods for their own use while 20 percent said they purchase for gifts.

… Read more

The 404 416: Where our stocks are on fire and Jill hoses us down

Jill Schlesinger of CBS' MoneyWatch joins the show to talk about the economy. So it turns out that things aren't going to collapse, and we're not going to have to sell our bodies in a barter system. That doesn't mean, however, that we're out of the woods, and Jill is here to show us the way out. Throw in a little bit of health care, a little bit of Social Security, and a garlic smell? Only on The 404!

For the last couple of months, stocks have been soaring more than 50 percent since their March low. Jill says all that means is that the market doesn't think we're headed for Great Depression 2.0, but that doesn't mean we're out of trouble. In the dark, we imagine what V-, U-, and W- recoveries would look like. Strange... Justin, is that your hand on my leg?

Further down the line, we jump into the health care debate. Jill tells us her generation is screwing our generation and not in a good way. Essentially, they took all the good health care, and we (the 20-somethings) will just not be able to afford the premium "best health care" in the world, when we really need it. And somehow, Wilson reveals some of his Republican leanings? Say what?

Finally, we get into personal savings for the future, and we pick up the ashes of our 401(k)s. So while your parents may have lost a bundle on their retirement funds, we 20-somethings still have another 40 years before we really have to worry about our returns. Meanwhile, Social Security is a toss-up. Jill wants to advise President "Barry" Obama that the easy solution to fixing the "Third Rail" of American politics is just tying benefits to an age index. People are just living too long...death panels, any one?

Wow! So we hope you finally learned something on The 404. We sure did! Send in your feedback to the usual at the404 [at] cnet [dot] com. Follow Jill on Twitter. Or leave us a voice mail at 1-866-404-CNET, and you can debate us on the finer points of the liquidity of the money supply and U6 unemployment figures.

Episode 416 Subscribe in iTunes audio | Subscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Cell phones, cooking, coupons drive UK Net growth

New data from The Nielsen Company reflects some interesting new trends related to both the worldwide recession and the somewhat incongruous growth of Web browsing on mobile phones. In a nutshell, users are looking for mobile phone services, food and cooking sites, and coupons, all of which make perfect sense in today's economy.

Web sites related to mobile phones--both handsets and services--showed the highest traffic growth in the UK posting 58 percent growth on a year-to-year basis. According to Nielsen:

Visits to Nokia's site grew by 203 percent, while Vodafone and O2 also posted solid growth (91 percent … Read more

EnterpriseDB eases Oracle price increase pain

EnterpriseDB on Monday announced an Oracle Migration Assessment Program after Oracle recently raised prices on database modules by as much as 40 percent. This comes on the heels of license increases of up to 20 percent in 2008.

The program enables enterprises to migrate their applications running on Oracle to Postgres Plus Advanced Server, an open-source PostgreSQL-based database containing an Oracle compatibility layer, "with no disruption to operations, and delivers ongoing cost savings of 50 percent or more."

"Oracle's price hikes might be good news for those on Wall Street, but they're terrible news for IT departments trying to function in the worst economy since the Great Depression," said Ed Boyajian, president and CEO of EnterpriseDB.

It's no secret that Oracle is good at pricing--at least from its perspective. I can certainly understand why Oracle customers would be interested in a program that allows them to make a switch to a less expensive option that provides the same functionality. … Read more