Andreessen Horowitz Keeps Eating The Software World With $11.2 Million Investment In JavaScript Framework Company Meteor Meteor, the company behind an application development framework of the same name, today announced $11.2 series A funding from Andreessen Horowitz, with Matrix Partners also contributing. The investment follows Andreessen Horowitz’ record breaking $100 million investment in Githu

Google Gets Scientific, Adds A Voice-Enabled 34-Button Calculator To Desktop And Mobile Search Oh Google. Sometimes you’re so awesome. Google search has long featured a built-in calculator function but a recent update added a fully functional 34-button scientific calculator. Previously, when a user entered, say, 2+2, Google would simply display the sum above the search result. Now, when that equat

No Wi-Fi, Please, We’re British: Olympics Will Ban Personal Hotspots As if the rules at the 2012 London Olympics didn’t sound draconian enough, the organization has banned personal Wi-Fi hotspots from the games, thereby ensuring that people will just tether their phones in secret and surf the web like the champions they are. This follows hot on the heels of prohibitions from sharing Olympic news v

Still a Hobby? Apple Sells 4 Million Apple TVs in Fiscal Year According to Cook, Apple has now sold more than 4 million Apple TVs in the fiscal year. While Cook still says that this is "still at a level that [the company] would call a hobby," he says the company is continuing to "pull the string to see where it takes us." Cook also acknowledged that Apple "isn't one to keep around projects that it

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Last week, Foursquare began allowing business owners to send local updates -- say, their specials for the day, or a picture of their new outdoor seating area -- to their “best customers” when they’re nearby. “Best customers” are those who check in frequently, and possibly have "Liked" the venue on Foursquare. Now, businesses can aim those updates at users who aren't their best customers, but could

Foursquare Rolls Out Its First Big Money-Making Feature: ‘Promoted Updates’ Foursquare has revamped the experience of its app from the perspective of its users on both the consumer and merchant side. And on Wednesday, the company is pulling back the curtains on a long-awaited feature for all Foursquare watchers: Revenue generation. Foursquare is announcing today the pilot launch of “promoted updat

Facebook Opens First International Engineering Office In London Facebook announced today that they have opened a London engineering office, adding to their Menlo Park, New York and Seattle engineering offices. The company has 22 open positions at the new office. Facebook says it has engineers scattered at its other numerous U.S. and foreign offices, but this is the first official international eng

Coming Soon (Well, Maybe): All Those Tweets You Wrote Twitter CEO Dick Costolo told The New York Times that users will soon be able to access and download all of their old tweets. Twitter currently only lets users browse back through a few thousand of their old tweets. How soon? Costolo declined to give a timeline. Other third-party platforms already offer these servies. Facebook’s Download Your I

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Apple’s Feeling Europe’s Economic Crisis: ‘Essentially Flat’ Sales And A ‘Slowdown’ In Business, Says Cook Apple often gets a lot of love in Europe, but in the last quarter that wasn’t enough to help it against the tide of economic woe hitting the region. In today’s Q3 earnings call, CEO Tim Cook described sales in the region as “essentially flat to slightly positive” — and, not unlike the wider m

If You Don’t Think You Need It, You Haven’t Seen Greatness Editor’s note: Joe Kraus is a partner at Google Ventures, focusing on mobile, gaming, and local services. In 1993, he co-founded Excite.com, an early Internet search engine. He also co-founded JotSpot in 2004, a wiki company acquired by Google in 2006. Follow him on his blog, JoeKraus.com, and on Twitter: @jkraus. One thing I can hear with

Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the gaming industry’s top leaders? Learn more about GamesBeat Summit sponsorship opportunities here. The arcade is dead. You already knew that, but that industry’s coffin is about to get another nail. The cathode-ray-tube technology that powered the monitors for nearly every classic arcade game in the twentieth century is defunct. Sony, Samsung, a

Facebook Open Graph Leader Leaves: Director Of Product Management Carl Sjogreen Plots Next Adventure Facebook’s acq-hiring like crazy and retaining plenty of top talent, but today marks another post-IPO departure as Director of Product Management Carl Sjogreen told friends that he’s heading out to take some family time and “plot my next adventure”. However, he tells me there’s “no concrete ideas y

Apple Shipped 1.3M Apple TVs In Q3 2012, Still Calls It A Hobby “We are not going to keep products around we don’t believe in,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in regards to the Apple TV on today’s earnings call. He also stated that Apple still considers the product a hobby although Apple keeps at the project because they stated “it will lead us [Apple] somewhere.” Apple is very happy with Apple TV’s grow

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CEO Cook On China In Q3: Apple Had $5.7B In Sales, Still Growing At ‘Incredible’ Rate Apple today noted in its earnings call for Q3 that two-thirds of its Asia Pacific revenue is coming from Greater China at the moment. CEO Tim Cook noted that revenues in the country were $5.7 billion for the quarter, 48 percent increase on last year, and still growing at an “incredible rate.” To date Apple’s reve

Apple Q3 Earnings: Apple Now Has Over $117 Billion In Cash Reserves Apple closed its record June quarter with $117 billion in cash reserves, up from $110 billion last quarter. Crediting strong sales of almost all products as well as an improved economy. Asia-Pacific growth increased 25% this quarter (down from 100% last quarter), 2/3s of which came from China. Apple announced they would also conti

During Apple’s Q3 earnings call today, the company’s CFO Peter Oppenheimer announced that Apple now has 150 Million iCloud users. That’s up from 125 million users the company cited in its last quarterly earnings call in April. As Apple announced at its annual developer conference earlier this year, iCloud will be tightly integrated into Mountain Lion, the next version of OS X that’s scheduled to l

According to Apple’s Q3 filing, OS X Mountain Lion will be released to the public tomorrow, July 25. The OS improves on the current version, Lion, by adding iOS-like notifications as well as improvements like Game Center and tweaks to the Mail app. Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote: “We’re thrilled with record sales of 17 million iPads in the June quarter. We’ve also just updated the entire MacBook line, w