Startups

PARIS -- The developers of the tremendously successful game Cut the Rope announced a new game today called Pudding Monsters.

In the game, the player must stick together wobbly single-eyed blobs of pudding into larger puddings, said Chief Executive Misha Lyalin. "They want to find the evil, bad man who steals their friends," plucking puddings out of the refrigerator as he walks by, he said.

He didn't announce a launch date for the game or even show how it works. But he promised that it will be slicker than Cut the Rope.

"Pudding Monsters is more … Read more

PARIS -- SmartThings, a startup that wants to bring remote control to everything from lights to liquor cabinets via the Internet, announced it's raised $3 million in first-round funding.

At the LeWeb conference here, SmartThings founder and Chief Technology Officer Jeff Hagins said investors included First Round Capital, which led the round, along with SVangel, Lerer Ventures, A-Grade Investments, CrunchFund, Start Fund, Max Levchin, David Tisch, and LeWeb founder Loic Le Meur. The company already raised pledges of $1.2 million through its Kickstarter project.

"The entire world is becoming programmable," Hagins said, and consequently, events in … Read more

Software startup Entangled Media today released a new app, Younity, that lets iPhone users access all their files from any device without storing files in the cloud. It's like iCloud, which syncs all your Apple devices so you can access the files from any device, but without the syncing or the cloud.

Younity allows devices to communicate with other devices -- both desktop and mobile -- to access files and stream music or videos.

"What we provide is glue," said Entangle Media CEO Erick Caso.

That would be the virtual glue that sticks all your devices together. … Read more

PARIS -- SoundCloud, a site for sharing songs and audio clips online, launched a redesign that lets people discover new audio, spotlights what's going on with an "activity" stream, and links users' activity with social networks.

The new SoundCloud version has been in closed testing but now is available for all users, said company founder and Chief Executive Alexander Ljung in a speech here at the LeWeb conference.

A new discovery section will help people find new material, he said. It's one reason users of the new site are 30 percent more active on the site … Read more

PARIS -- Startup Interaxon today announced it'll ship a $199 headset called the Muse next spring that will let people use their brainwaves to directly control videogames and other computing operations.

Interaxon Chief Executive Ariel Garten announced the Muse at the LeWeb conference here, and she showed off one application she thinks direct brainwave input will help people: infusing e-mails with emotion.

"This is the first though-controlled device that's stylish and easy to wear," Garten said of the Muse.

Using LeWeb founder Loic Le Meur as a guinea pig, she showed an application she called Emotype … Read more

PARIS -- It will take 10 years before the "Internet of things" catches on widely, said Nest Labs Chief Executive Tony Fadell, whose smart-thermostat startup embodies the technology.

"People think there's this Internet of all kinds of crazy devices that are going to talk to each other. It's going to take some time," Fadell said at the LeWeb show here. "Give it five or eight years and then you'll see machines talking to machines. Then it'll be commonplace in 10 years or so."

The Internet of things is the idea … Read more

Retailers have engineered Black Friday to whip consumers into a buying frenzy, but it turns out it can be good for startups looking for a good deal, too.

Backblaze, the online backup company that headed off a hard-drive price-hike crisis by enlisting friends and family as deputy procurement officers, found itself scouring the ads for good deals again during the holiday buying season. The result: another round of "drive farming" by people willing to help the company.

This time, though, the drive farming was open to the first 200 people who signed up to participate, and Backblaze paid … Read more

Peter Molyneux and his team of six programmers at 22Cans scrambled to cope when their first game, Curiosity, arrived on Apple's App Store a day early and high demand walloped the company's servers.

Here's a blow-by-blow look at how the English startup struggled through the launch and eventually recovered its poise. For a look at Molyneux' plans for the cube-tapping game, check our related coverage of 22Cans' Curiosity and other video game plans.

October 31: 22Cans, a startup closely watched in gaming circles based on Molyneux's decades-long track record, posts on its Facebook page that its … Read more

For storied video game designer Peter Molyneux, November 6 was supposed to be the calm before the storm. But it became the storm itself when his newest project, Curiosity, arrived a day early and exploded in popularity.

Molyneux's new gaming startup, 22Cans, planned to launch Curiosity on November 7. Twenty-two hours ahead of time, though, Apple's App Store published the "experiment," which is something like letting thousands of people pop the same sheet of bubble wrap at the same time.

So began a roller-coaster ride that combined a humiliating server failure with an intriguing new take … Read more