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Cartoonist Hugh Macleod’s Blue Monster — the beast urging Microsofties to “change the world or go home” — will get its own bus for the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas on January 5. The blue guy with the big teeth is more cute than frightening, but there’s another reason to run for safety if you see this sucker turn the corner. Guess who’s driving it? Hint: the answer is NSFH — not safe for highways.

Source:Valleywag

Travel search engines Kayak and Sidestep will merge to form a new company, according to reports. As part of the deal, Kayak raised another $196 million from current investors Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst Partners and Accel Partners as well as from Sidestep investors Norwest Venture Partners and Trident Capital and new investors Oak Investment Partners and Lehman Brothers Venture Partners. The merger will create the fifth largest online travel destination. That sad boast might make you wonder, how’d they get so many VCs on board?

The same way flatlining startups always do: the promise of an imminent IPO. Or at least that’s what Trident Capital’s Woody Marshall told VentureBeat.

Mike Shaver, an executive at Mozilla, maker of the popular Firefox browser, promises a ten-day turnaround on bugs, and then backpedals furiously. [ha.ckers.org]

Source:Valleywag
videogames BBC “Simon Nelson”

Simon Nelson, the BBC’s new-media guru, is delivering a keynote at next week’s Edinburgh Interactive Games Festival. His speech, as described in the official literature, is why “the [BBC] had something to learn from games and how games will figure in the Beeb’s new media folio in the future.” The Internet interpreted this as a pending announcement of a BBC videogame strategy — the rumor strengthened by BBC’s current portfolio of downloadable games based on its TV shows. And it’s not like it would be that strange. Even the New York Times has started using newsgames to illustrate everything from the oil crisis to the E. coli outbreak. But the BBC is now denying everything. More’s the pity.

Beeb spokesreaders quickly shot down such rumors. The keynote, they claim, will focus on the convergence of media and what games and television can learn from each other — not a new game strategy. Idiots. The fusty Beeb could use something to spice up its offerings. If PBS can run an alternate reality game, why not launch the British Broadcasting Company into the virtual world?

Source:Valleywag

First came Facebook’s marketplace feature, a challenger to Craigslist’s for-sale listings. Now the social network is taking on filthy-rich Craig Newmark in another key attractor: the couch-surfing market. Travel search-engine SideStep has signed up on Mark Zuckerberg’s team by building a Facebook app, CouchSwap, to target the broke college-student traveler. You can search for a couch by location or send out special requests — a much more efficient way to go about locating crash space than trawling Craigslist listings. And after a successful crash, users can rate their stay. If you want to participate, though, you’ll have to be willing to share your living room, too — a requirement Craigslist doesn’t impose. The dark horse in this race: The established CouchSurfing.com community. (Photo by Erik Abderhalden)