MerchantCircle may not be as well-known as business listing site Yelp, but its user base of small businesses who want to control their web presence keeps growing. The company says it recently signed up its 1 millionth business, about three-and-a-half years after launching. Los Altos, Calif.-based MerchantCircle creates online profiles for every small business it can find (it has created 15 million profiles in all), then encourages owners to “claim” those profiles and start paying for MerchantCircle services. The company has been criticized for going after those businesses aggressively, [...]

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There are a few companies that stand in the way of Intel as it tries to make an empire in consumer electronics chips. One of them is Broadcom, the Irvine, Calif.-based chip design firm that sells billions of dollars worth of chips in the home, mobile, and communications infrastructure markets. Scott McGregor, chief executive of Broadcom, plans to dominate the markets for chips used in set-top boxes, digital TVs, modems, cell phones, and wireless networking chips. During the downturn in the past year, the company strengthened its market position on a variety of fronts, even as it buried legal problems [...]

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SocialGO, a company that creates internal social networks for companies and other organizations, has brought in $800,000 in fresh capital, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Redwood City, Calif., the company is backed by Veddis Ventures.

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Can you really play high-end games on your modest PC, with no downloads? That’s a multi-billion dollar question. Entrepreneur Steve Perlman wants to make money by giving you a way to do that. Last year, he announced OnLive, a service that lets you play high-end games “on demand,” that is, over the Internet from a conventional low-end PC, and with no download. He’s certainly stirred things up in the gaming world, and we couldn’t be happier that he will be the keynote speaker at our upcoming GamesBeat@GDC conference on March 10 in San Francisco. Perlman is one of those [...]

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iVdopia, a video-based mobile ad network for the iPhone, has just added social features to mobile ads. Its new Talk2Me ads can be shared via Facebook and Twitter and offer various methods of response (call, SMS, email) and interaction. Ads like this that are specifically designed to be shared, in line with how we share Youtube videos or articles, are a pretty recent development. For example, a soft drinks company has created a video ad for a Facebook facial profiling application that matches a photo of the user with other users who look like him or her. This has a strong viral aspect and users [...]

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Intel gave tech investors a present today as it announced revenues and earnings that beat expectations. The report has broader implications for the larger technology market, since Intel is the world’s biggest chip maker and is a bellwether for the computer industry. For the fourth quarter, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company reported revenue of $10.6 billion, up 13 percent from the third quarter and 28 percent from a year ago (the largest percentage increase in more than a decade). Net income was $2.3 billion, up 23 percent from the third quarter and 875 percent from a year ago. Earnings [...]

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Even though Germany gets about as much sun as the average town in Alaska, it’s the world’s leader in the solar power industry. Why? Extensive and effective government subsidies. Today, it looks like subsidies will shrink 16 to 17 percent starting in April, with further cuts coming next year. Solar stocks all over the world have plunged in response to the news, providing a bittersweet opportunity for investors. Subsidy cuts have been a long time coming in Germany, where the solar market is so saturated that equipment and component prices have dropped off a cliff. The same problem has [...]

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If spending money to build a satellite phone network reminds you of a few recent financial debacles, you’re not alone. But regardless of its past foibles, Globalstar has created a real business and is announcing today that it is taking the first steps to deploying its $1.29 billion second-generation satellite phone network. While satellite phones seem quaint at a time of growing cell phone coverage, Tony Navarra, president of global operations at the Milpitas, Calif., company, said that many of Globalstar’s 375,000 customers are in remote regions of the U.S. and Canada. The phones used [...]

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Blippy, a site where users can share and discuss their shopping habits, just raised $1.6 million in seed funding. What’s really impressive isn’t the size of the round, but rather the roster of investors, which includes famed venture firm Sequoia Capital, Charles River Ventures (where Blippy was incubated), prolific angel investor Ron Conway, Mahalo founder Jason Calcanis, Hot or Not co-founder James Hong, and Textmarks chief executive Ariel Poler. Most appropriately, given the occasional media description of Blippy as a Twitter for your credit card, Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams [...]

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SGN, one of the top game publishers on the iPhone, has given its chief executive title to No. 2 executive Randy Breen. Founder Shervin Pishevar remains at the company as executive chairman at the company. Breen is a former Electronic Arts and LucasArts game veteran who joined the company in the middle of last year as chief operating officer. SGN has made its name doing unique games for the iPhone that take advantage of its touchscreen and tilt controls. Among its hits are the flight combat games F.A.S.T. and Skies of Glory, both of which push 3-D graphics to the limit on the iPhone. SGN started [...]

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