Google has confirmed their purchase of the virtual currency start-up Jambool for $70 million, continuing its strong expansion into the social gaming market.
“We’re pleased and excited to welcome the Jambool team to Google. We are committed to offering consumers and merchants innovative digital payment solutions and Jambool will help Google evolve our payments offering and expand into digital goods and content,” says Google.
Jambool was founded in 2006 and has been a hit with its Social Gold virtual currency product.
Social Gold can be used in MMOs, virtual worlds, regular online games and social gaming applications.
The company was started by former Amazon execs Vikas Gupta and Reza Hussein.
Last month, Google purchased the social gaming developer Slide, for $182 million, and earlier in the year, Google invested about $150 million in developer Zynga, the company behind hits like Farmville.
Result for: gaming applications
Google has continued its strong expansion into the social gaming market, purchasing the virtual currency start-up Jambool for $75 million.
Jambool was founded in 2006 and has been a hit with its Social Gold virtual currency product.
Social Gold can be used in MMOs, virtual worlds, regular online games and social gaming applications.
The company was started by former Amazon execs Vikas Gupta and Reza Hussein.
Neither company has confirmed the purchase price but multiple sources place the price at $55 million, with another $20 million based on incentives.
Last week, Google purchased the social gaming developer Slide, for $182 million and earlier in the year, Google invested about $150 million in developer Zynga, the company behind hits like Farmville.
Result for: gaming applications
Philips has announced that it will be showing off a new 22-inch 3D display at the upcoming InfoComm 2008 event on June 18th.
The display is based on a WSXGA (1680×1050) LCD panel and will use Philips’ WOWvx technology “to provide 3D-like images without requiring users to wear special viewing glasses.” Technically, WOWvx uses Philips’ internal 2D-plus-Depth (the 2D image and its depth map) format “and combines it with the Declipse format developed especially for autostereoscopic 3D displays such as this one. Declipse provides additional “background” information for a more realistic 3D effect.”
The company says the display can be used commercially in digital signs used for advertising, retail and gaming applications at casinos. Other specifications include a standard 16:10 aspect ratio, 300cd/m2 brightness, a 1,000:1 contrast ratio and relatively fast 5 ms response time.
The display will go on sale during the Q4 2008, although there was no word on pricing.
