China :: Science & Technology

ViewSonic made good on a rumor from earlier this month and debuted its ViewPad 7x tablet running Google Honeycomb at Computex in Taipei. The 7-inch slate is powered by Android 3.0.1, the same version I used on Acers 10.1 tablet for my review. The company hasnt yet announced a price point or launch date for the small tablet, but at least it has proven that Googles tablet platform can officially run on smaller-screened devices. The ViewPad 7x ought to be far easier to carry than larger Honeycomb tablets, as it weighs in at a scant 380 grams (0.83 pounds). The tablet runs on Nvidias Tegra 2 processor, includes HSPA+ integration for mobile broadband connectivity, a pair of cameras, support for 10 multi-touch points on the display and HDMI output. Essentially, the device offers nearly everything found in its larger peers, but in a more portable package. Of course, that now includes Googles tablet system, which Acer is reportedly having problems with for its A100 , another 7-inch tablet tha

Chinese Internet company Kingsoft has published its unaudited financial results for the first quarter of 2011, stating that its net operating revenue declined by 6% year-on-year from CNY245 million to CNY231 million; and its net profit declined by 25% from CNY89.74 million to CNY66.89 million. According to the report, Kingsoft's revenue in the first quarter was 71% contributed by entertainment software and 28% contributed by application software.In the first three months of 2011, Kingsoft's income from entertainment software was CNY163 million, a decrease of 1% compared with the previous quarter and an increase of 1% compared with the same period of last year. The report of the company shows that the daily average peak number of concurrent users of Kingsoft's online games was 680,000, a decrease of 11% compared with the previous quarter and a decrease of 25% compared with the same period of last year.Meanwhile, its monthly average number of paid users was 1.26 million, a de

What separates the mostsuccessful venture capitalists from the rest of the pack? According to the Stanford University researchers behindthe new Startup Genome Project , the biggest difference between the simply good and the absolutely fabulous lies in how each group assesses startups.Afterinterviewingventure capitalists of all stripes over the last five months, the Genome team Max Marmer, Ron Berman and Bjoern Lasse Herrmann found most investors rely on a limited snapshot of a few data points (such as team, traction and market). But after matching that strategy up with investors deal lists and track records, they foundthat practice often led to nowheresville, especially early on: While these can be good validators that entrepreneurs are onto something, a snapshot of the team and traction can often be misleading. A great set of resumes cant tell you how well the team actually works together. And traction was often measured in absolute numbers of users and revenue, but those metrics ar

Zynga continues to expand way beyond the farms that made it famous. The San Francisco-based social gaming company on Tuesday announced the launch of its first strategy combat game, Empires & Allies . Empires & Allies is the first title to come out of the Los Angeles development studio Zynga opened last year. The game will launch internationally in 12 different languages on Wednesday, June 1. In a press release, Empires & Allies executive producer Amer Ajami said the game incorporates the social mechanics that have defined Zyngas super popular, if less bellicose, titles. Empires & Allies is strategy combat gone social think CityVille meets Risk, the press release quotes Ajami as saying. Were focused on bringing our players a new form of entertainment, and a strategy game is definitely a new playground for us. Zynga has displayed a keen focus on growth in recent months with a series of acquisitions of well-reputed indie gaming developers. These deals, and the launch

The new trend in cloud computing appears to be app-store-like marketplaces where software vendors and infrastructure experts can share their operational know-how, and cloud-computing management platform RightScale became the latest to hop on the trend today with its MultiCloud Marketplace . RightScale follows other recent efforts by server-monitoring startup ServerDensity and systems-management startup ScaleXtreme . The purpose of such efforts is simple: enable advanced use cases without having to offer them as services within the platform itself. In the case of a company like RightScale , which provides a management layer to ease the task of launching and running resources on Infrastructure as a Service clouds such as Amazon Web Services and Rackspace, a configuration marketplace is primarily about letting users expand their RightScale use at their own speeds.One might also view the MultiCloud Marketplace as an answer to the growing portfolio of AWS services such as CloudFormation

Last week at our Technode Collide Conference , Mr. Xu Hao, CEO of Camera360 , announced that the Android-only photosharing app has reached 6 million users globally, in 12 months of launch. That is doubled from a mere three months ago; on Feb 25, 2011, the app reached 3 million users . Its been almost 6 months since Gang last talked to Mr Xu, and predicted the app can be much better than Instagram . And yes, judging from the user figures, Camera360 has already surpassed Instagram, whose iPhone user base is at 4.25million as announced last week . Developed by a Chengdu-based startup PinGuo Digital Entertainment and invested by Matrix Partners , Camera360have nearly reached 6 million globally, half of which are from China, the rest half are from the US, Korea, Japan, Spain, Russia, etc. And the number is still increasing largely day by day. Different from Instagram, Camera360 focuses on growing the user base first, then a social network. Inspiration from Color and Instagram: Accumulate us

Third-place U.S. cellular carrier Sprint filed a petition with the FCC today formally requesting a block of the AT&T-T-Mobile merger saying it would harm consumers, competition and the broadband economy and would produce no tangible public interest benefits. The filing comes after Sprint testified before a Senate judiciary subcommittee meeting earlier this month, where CEO Dan Hesse said the merger would lead to a duopoly controlled by AT&T and Verizon (VZ). The filing which is in response to AT&Ts request to acquire T-Mobiles U.S. spectrum licenses is not dramatically different than what Sprint has been saying for some time about the $39 billion acquisition. But it lays out clearly why the company feels the merger is so potentially harmful. Sprint said the deal would not only reduce competition, but also harm innovation and investment and could ultimately mean slower economic growth for the country. And it would not do anything to alleviate AT&Ts spectrum needs; Sp

Reed Hastings, chief executive officer and founder of online video company Netflix, has a pretty clear idea of what the future of video looks like. It needs high-speed fiber broadband, it involves sensors and it is all on-demand. Given his track record of being able to accurately predict the future of video he called video the killer app of broadband at our NewTeeVee conference in 2009 it is easy to buy into what he has to say. He also predicted that video would be available as streams on many devices and to many screens over the Internet. It has been an amazing year for the company. Netflix has seen its subscriber base leap up from 14 million to 22 million in the US. Its stock has been on a tear and it has seen rivals such as Blockbuster fall by the wayside. It has been painted both as the savior of niche television shows and the destroyer of broadband . When I think of Netflix, I think of a big data company with a special focus on user interaction and content. Of course, there