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WSJ: Sinking social news site Digg bought by NYC firm Betaworks (updated)
Digg, once one of the shining stars of the social media world, is now a sad shell of of its former self. The once mighty news-sharing service founded by Kevin Rose, has just been snatched up by a small New York City firm called Betaworks for a paltry $500,000, according to the Wall Street Journal. The site still draws roughly seven million visitors a month, but that's a far cry from the more than 30 million is was pulling in during its 2008 heyday. And the pocket change paid for the property pales in comparison to the over $45 million it raised from investors over its lifetime. The sale follows the departure of its most high profile exec, the aforementioned Rose, who is now in charge of Google Ventures. Betaworks plans to revitalize the brand involve folding it into News.me, another social news service, which launched in April of last year. The deal only includes the property itself and the brand -- none of Digg's remaining employees will be making the move to Betaworks. Of course, there were very few left once the Washington Post subsidiary Social Code hired 15 engineers from the floundering service, which accounted for more than half of its workforce. Update: As it turns out, that "$500,000" figure may not tell the whole story. TechCrunch and AllThingsD are both reporting that there's a lot more to consider besides the cash outlay.
OUYA's $99 Android-based gaming console meets Kickstarter goal: $950k in under 12 hours (update: it's a record)
The gaming public at large has spoken. In less than 12 hours, Yves Behar's Android-based OUYA gaming console has reached its lofty funding goal of $950,000 on Kickstarter. To refresh your memory, the $99 system (which was only $95 for 1,000 swift early adopters) packs a Tegra 3 CPU, 8GB of storage, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, a USB 2.0 port and an SD card slot -- that price also grants you a single controller with a touch sensor. Most notably, the system is aimed at being extremely developer-friendly, having open hardware and software with a push for free-to-play content. There are only about 5,000 units (out of 10,000) (update: that number has been bumped to 20,000, with just under 10k available) left at the $99 price, so feel free to check out our in-depth chat about OUYA with Behar himself here before you head over to Kickstarter. It appears that the traditional business model for gaming consoles just got rocked, and we can't wait to see the final results. Update: If you thought that was fast, you'd be right: Kickstarter has confirmed that OUYA achieved the biggest first day ever for one of its hosted projects, and it's just the eighth project ever to crack the million-dollar mark, joining an esteemed company that includes Double Fine's upcoming adventure game and the all-time champion, the Pebble smartwatch.
OUYA's Android-based, hackable game console now official: we chat with designer Yves Behar (update: funded)
A handful of details briefly slipped out about the project earlier, but now it's here: the OUYA, an attempt not just to delve into the cutthroat world of TV game consoles but to try and shift the goal posts. At its heart, the design sounds more like a smartphone than a gaming rig with a quad-core Tegra 3 and 8GB of storage running Android 4.0. The upscale, RF wireless gamepad's standout is a built-in trackpad for playing mobile games alongside the familiar sticks and buttons -- clever, though not entirely new. But with completely open hardware and software, an emphasis on free-to-play gaming and an all-important $99 price, the system is a gamble by a handful of game industry luminaries that at least a subset of players are frustrated with the status quo enough to want a real break. Read on for the full details, including a Kickstarter project as well as added details from our chat with OUYA (and Jambox) designer Yves Behar.
Report: Kevin Rose moving within Mountain View, now a partner at Google Ventures
Have you been wondering what Digg co-founder, Kevin Rose, has been up to since joining the Mountain View team a couple months back? Well, AllThingsD is reporting that Mr. Rose has left his duties as senior product manager of Big G's social network in order to make a move to the company's investment firm, Google Ventures. According to the report, the switch has now been confirmed by an undisclosed Ventures spokesperson, although no further details were given at this time. The move itself isn't exactly a surprising one, given Rose's previous, and hefty history of venturing into startups within the industry. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts in the comments section below.
UK voice choir sings Please Retweet Me song for charity, probably has no idea what it means (video)
So here's the deal: the UK Meningitis Trust wants to help raise awareness about the disease it's dedicated to battling and has a 30-strong male voice choir at its disposal to do it with. How does it reach the widest possible audience? If your ideas include namedropping every major social media site set up over the last decade, a nod to the iPhone versus Android dichotomy, and the use of Yahoo as a bad pun, then you must be the guy responsible for putting together the video after the break. Congratulations, it's awesome. The behind-the-scenes footage with these old crooners isn't too terrible either.
Quick, come follow us on Digg before our wagon tips over!
You know what the best way to avoid dying of dysentery is? It's following your friendly, neighborhood MMO site on Digg! Following us on Digg grants you a 99.8% chance of not dying from dysentery when trekking through the dangerous landscape that is the virtual Oregon Trail. Following us also affords you other amazing benefits, like getting all of our best headlines sent straight to you! You can vote on the content we post, so be sure to vote up the stories on our site that you love! Plus, if all of that wasn't neat enough, the things you Digg about MMOs can be shared with us, and we might even cover it! All of this helps us learn what content you lovely readers want to see on the site, and it gives you another say in how we do things here at Massively. So what do you have to do to get all of these benefits and a free set of buffalo meat? All you have to do is visit our Digg page and follow us! That's it! Don't have a Digg account? Well you can get yourself one in no time flat.
Follow Engadget on the new and improved Digg... you know you want to
You may have noticed that Digg got a pretty major overhaul yesterday. One of the nice aspects of the improved site is that it's a little more social than its previous incarnation. So if you're in the market for someone new to follow on Digg... well, you could always hit up Engadget on Digg. You probably won't regret it. You can also follow Engadget on Twitter and Facebook, too!
StumbleUpon releases official mobile app
Social sharing network Digg has had their own, official iPhone app out for several months, and now StubleUpon has joined the mobile game. This week, the StumbleUpon app was released for both iPhone and Android devices, finally giving users quick and easy access to browse...er...stumble links that might interest them, depending on their profiles. Just as with the website and its browser toolbar, the app works quite well and quickly to display photos, pages and videos on your device whenever you touch the "stumble" button. Some of the icons aren't obvious as to what they do, such as the one identifying items in your StumbleUpon incoming links box. Other than that, though, it's a well-polished interface. Something the app does not do, though, is allow one to submit new links. For that you will need to use a bookmarklet with Safari or use your desktop browser. The app is available now, for free, in the app store.
iPad apps: Twitter and social networking essentials
As you might've notice, either here on the site or likely elsewhere on the internet, we at Engadget have somewhat of an affinity to social networking. With a new screen sitting here saving us some screen real estate, we decided to give a number of Twitter and other pro-social apps a go for perennially staying connected to our online friends -- so long as there's a decent WiFi connection nearby. Here's the highlights from what we've toyed with, and stay tuned for even more roundups on the horizon. Twitterific for iPad (free; $4.99 for Pro account) - Definitely the best Twitter app on the iPad so far (pictured above). It works great in portrait and landscape, contextual links conveniently pop out and photos even get special format treatment. No option to upload photos when tweeting, but we're guessing with a lack of a camera, it didn't seem as necessary an addition -- we like to show off our screen captures and saved browsing images, but hey, that's just us. The only deterrent for power users is that you can only view one column at a time, but with lists, saved searches, and all other thread options easily accessible from the leftmost column, we didn't find it too inconvenient whatsoever. [See in iTunes]
TUAW First Look: Digg's iPhone app
Digg released its official iPhone app this morning, and after playing with it for a little while, I can tell you that it does what it says on the box: it will let you browse, interact, and comment on the popular news aggregator without many problems (there was one major issue -- I'll mention it in a second). However, in general, the app isn't all that different from the interface they released a while back. Sure, there are a few app-y touches, but mostly the app just feels like a Digg-specific browser. I suppose that's what they were going for. The app works pretty easily -- you can dive in and view the top, recent, or upcoming stories in any of Digg's categories, and clicking on each headline sends you to an in-app browser with the page displayed (as best it can be -- of course Flash movies don't work, and lots of the really popular links on Digg are murdered via bandwidth already). At the bottom of each page, you'll find buttons to like or dislike the story (sorry, Digg or Bury), a button to save the story if you're logged in to your Digg account, and the option to share the link. When you select the share option, you can send it off to the iPhone's clipboard, Twitter, Facebook, or Email.
Hellacious marketing: Dante's Inferno is in the code
It seems the marketing team behind Dante's Inferno hasn't burnt out yet, with several ASCII art campaigns popping up in the source code for several popular websites. All direct to the same Dante's Inferno site. The first image (above) appeared in digg's code, as noted by brentcsutoras, and other sites like IGN, GameSpot and Kotaku also had their source code altered to display Dante-related images. It's one of the cuter, somewhat classier approaches to this title's marketing, and that makes it oddly noteworthy. If you're wondering why there's nothing in our source code (we're checking now just to make sure) ... we don't let anyone touch that. We consider it to be at least third base and you really have to get to know Joystiq before it's prepared to take the relationship to that level.
Star Wars: The Old Republic goes Web 2.0
It's never been easier for an MMO to promote itself with the growing prevalence of social networking plaforms. Star Wars: The Old Republic, only officially announced this week, has already established a following on Facebook. It's also on the usual suspect MySpace, and you can follow BioWare's frequent Twitter updates on the game. Star Wars: The Old Republic also has a Flickr photostream up and running. BioWare has stated that even more is on the way, with plans for a YouTube Channel as well as Digg and Delicious integration. It seems that most in-development MMOs are seizing onto the fact that Web 2.0 and all that it brings are crucial to making gamers aware of what they're doing. Is it overkill? You decide. But it should be interesting to see how MMOs leverage social networks as time goes on. A good example of what's possible may very well be what's happening right now in Superstruct, a multiplayer game played out almost entirely over social networks and the web. Interesting times. BioWare has finally unveiled Star Wars: The Old Republic, their new MMO! Massively's got you covered on all the details -- from liveblogging the announcement to screenshot galleries and more. Join us in the Galaxy far, far away!
Rumor: iTunes 8 to include Genius recommender, grid view, new visualizer
Kevin Rose is at it again, with a brand new round of rumors about iTunes 8, supposedly premiered next week at the big Apple iPod event. Did I miss the meeting where we all declared him king of iPod rumors? King or not, he's got what he claims is inside information, including a writeup about something called the "Genius" sidebar, which creates recommended playlists for you, a new grid view (like Delicious Library?), and a new music visualizer.Additionally, Rose's tipster mentions HD TV shows in the iTMS, and reiterates the previous rumors of new IPod nanos and Touches. None of these things are a huge surprise -- while the Genuis system will certainly be interesting to see (and make fun of) if real, HDTV and the new iPods are old news in Rumorville by now.Is it OK if we hope for some faster and easier iPhone syncing with a new version of iTunes as well? Whatever is coming next week, we'll find out all about it then.
Robo arm Diggs without complaining, smells better than your brother
Look, this top ten celebrity child-rearing tips list of ours is gonna make it to the top, we just know it, and we're tired of hitting up family members to get stories out of the single digits. Luckily there's a better way. The robotic Digg arm -- which appears to be slightly or entirely fake -- refreshes a page, detects Digg badges on the screen, and then moves the cursor over them to "manually" Digg the stories. Apparently the bot can Digg 1500 stories a day, but we're gonna need some more evidence than this joke vid (embedded after the break) to be convinced of this bot's actual, welcomed existence.[Via Make]
Widget Watch: Digg.com widget 1.1
If you are addicted to Digg like we are, then the Digg.com widget from Hasan Alayli might be just right for you. This very simple Dashboard widget allows you to quickly browse the most dugg stories on Digg. On the creator's website, he says that it is developed using the Digg API and the AJAXSLT javascript library. Digg.com widget is available as freeware from the creator's website or from the Dashboard widget section of Apple's website.
How to tweak the Leopard Dock's color
Earlier, I posted about how you can revert those new lights in Leopard's Dock back to Tiger's old triangles (and I can't say I was too surprised to find out that most of you didn't want to revert anything-- do what feels right, man), and I said that the next thing to go would be Leopard's shiny Dock-top.And now, here we go-- Something Awful's echobucket has apparently found the files that need to be changed to edit the look of the dock. As with the triangles, the Dock elements have a few sizes to them, so replace the "scruve-x.png" files (where x is "l," "m," "sm," or "xl") in the Dock package's /Contents/Resources folder (make sure to back up the original files just in case, too), and then type "killall Dock" in the Terminal to restart it, and bingo, a slightly less bright dock.In fact, just by changing the color of those pictures, you can change the color of the Dock itself (here's an orange dock on a black background for Halloween, via Digg commenter HacKing). It can't be too long before some enterprising programmer figures out how to put all of this inside an easy-to-use app, but here's the real question: if it's all this easy, why didn't Apple offer us this kind of customization ourselves? Sure, when you hand the paintbrushes to the people, things can get ugly, but they can also get much more beautiful, too.[via Digg]
POP Takeout lays out social news in MobileSafari
Sometimes you want a list of what's hot on the social news sites at a quick glance-- an easy-to-access look at the Zeitgeist, if you will. And for those times, there's POP Takeout, a site Wade M put together and sent to us that offers up a quick list of social news headlines from Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, Tailrank, and Newsvine, all listed in a site that's easy to browse and right on your iPhone (or iPod Touch-- I guess we should just start saying "in MobileSafari").The only complaint I'd have is that each link goes to the social news site's page for the story, and not the actual link for the story itself. I'd use something like POP Takeout because I don't want to visit Digg or Tailrank, and hitting the link and making me click through causes me to do that anyway.On the other hand, if I worked for Digg, I'd have a serious problem with someone listing my articles and not providing a link through to the site-- it's content theft, more or less. But if Wade could work out a way to keep Digg happy and send me to the news stories with just one click, it'd be a better solution all around.
Digg releases official iPhone interface
We've come full circle on the iPhone software merry-go-round-- the first app we saw for the iPhone was a mockup built with Digg's API, and now Digg has released their own iPhone application.And it works pretty well, even if you're not using an iPhone. You can log in right there in the interface, and even browse topics through a drop-down menu. Perhaps the biggest new feature is a "mini-permalink" page that will automatically grab the top 5 moderated comments from the regular Digg page and only show those. That right there is almost enough to make me browse the iPhone Digg rather than the regular Digg, even on my desktop-- the fewer and more useful Digg comments I can see, the better.Kevin Rose also promises a way to see the top stories in the iPhone interface is coming, and since there is no way to actually add comments yet (you have to go to the main Digg page for the article to do so), they may work on that in the future as well. After all this app was supposedly thrown together in 48 hours-- Rose promised coder Joe Stump that if he did it in two days, he'd get an iPhone, and apparently he did.
iPhone webapp mock up
We all know that Mac developers aren't thrilled with the 'iPhone SDK' which boils down to creating webpages with JavaScript. This isn't anything new or exciting, since we've known for awhile that the iPhone is running a full version of Safari. David Cann has whipped up a demo page that shows you what this web experience might look like on the iPhone. Using the Digg API, David wrote this Digg page that lets you skim Digg's categories. He has made the source code available, so you can dive in for yourself. Oh, and I tested it in Safari 3, and it works so I assume it'll work on your iPhone.
The downloadable demo rumors: still rumors
The Internet has been slightly a splode lately with rumors about a new Wii channel for game demos. Game blogs everywhere have been picking up the story, which originally came from German magazine Games Aktuell via their website, Cynamite. Unfortunately for those of us waiting for an announcement of a demo channel, this ain't it. Most of the sudden interest seems to come from a popular Digging of the article-- and both the Cynamite article and the Digg posting are, in Internet terms, prehistoric.The Cynamite article uses (the German equivalents of) words like "official" and "confirmed", but we have our doubts-- stemming mainly from the fact that it was posted on December 1st of last year and nobody else has said anything about it since. We find it odd that Nintendo would reveal a new feature to only one magazine, over four months (or however long it may be before such an announcement occurs) before its official announcement in any region. We also find it odd that this news would be delivered in Europe and nowhere else; Europe isn't exactly the first priority for video game companies, as any gamer living there has discovered. It seems more likely that this news would eventually come out of multiple Nintendo representatives in communication with multiple sources-- at least one per region. And we'd really expect this kind of big exclusive to come to a Japanese magazine like Famitsu.Don't despair yet, small-free-game-segment fans. Just because this particular posting probably isn't an official announcement doesn't mean Nintendo won't eventually start offering demo downloads. They've got a nice Internet-capable console now, and they're delivering actual games over the Internet for the first time. Why wouldn't they throw some demos up on one of the Wii channels?
