Filed under: Deals, Google (GOOG)

Hi-Media, which is based in Europe, is an interactive agency. And, it has some cash to work with. That is, the company has announced that it has plunked down $90 million for Fotolog, a highly popular photo-sharing site.

Fotolog has more than 10 million member accounts across over 200 countries. There are roughly 3.3 billion monthly page views. What’s impressive is that the growth has been primarily through viral methods.

Now, by being part of a digital agency, I think there are some opportunities for monetization. After all, Hi-Media has a strong ad network. Currently, Fotolog has a deal with Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG).

What’s more, Hi-Media also has a thriving micro-payments business. No doubt, this can be a way for Fotolog to sell premium offerings.

All in all, it seems like a pretty good deal. But, with a forecast of $2.3 million in revenues for 2007, the price tag is certainly frothy.

If you want to check out other M&A deals, click here.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Share This

Filed under: News

Our translation is sort of guesswork — the game’s title as of right now remains Senjou no Valkyrie — but we’ve got some new gameplay details to get you excited about Sega’s latest outing. Getting produced by Sega veteran Ryuutarou Nonaka, the game asks you to experience firsthand the drama of war. This smells like an SRPG, doesn’t it? They generally entail sweeping storylines about war. We’d be mostly right.

The game’s battle system employs third-person shooting with strategy RPG elements. This is done by switching between two modes: command mode and action mode. In the former, you’ve got an overhead map of the battlefield and you direct your units to destinations. No word if this is like Ogre Battle movement or Final Fantasy Tactics movement. In action mode, you’ll have complete control over your character and dole out pain according to how many AP (action points, we presume) have been allotted to said character. It sounds like an interesting genre-mix, so we’ll hold off on judgment until more info arrives.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Share This

Alas! Some foul foe has unleashed his giant laser egg-beater upon unsuspecting civilians out for a swim!

Immediately the ocean was whipped in to what can only be described as, FOAM OF DEATH, OR AT LEAST FOAM OF SMELLING REALLY BAD.

And, while scientists try to explain it away, the villain, no doubt bent on world domination through foamy ocean, gets away free as a bird!

but seriously…it looks like people are playing in this. It’s made of salt, “impurities,” rotting fish, and evil. Yet somehow, knowing this…doesn’t make it look any less like fluffy fun. Fluffy, puffy, fun. And rot.

Share This

Filed under: Breakfast, Dessert, West Coast, Grains, Dairy, Chocolate, Recipes, Fruit, Frying, Spirit of Summer, How To, Boiling, Eggs, America, Comfort Food, Sugar

Well, I told you about the cherry smoothie I made from the summer cherries I put into the freezer for safe-keeping. A lot of good those will be to me in the fall since I subsequently used them all for a liquid breakfast every morning thereafter until they were.

What I didn’t tell you is what I did with the cherries I kept fresh on the counter. You, my Slashfood faithful friends, suggested clafouti to spare my fingers the chore of pitting cherries, as well as a multitude of recommendations for what I should do with the result of my gluttonous run at the market. I took the advice of a few and made…

…cherry sauce.

Continue reading What I did with my cherry glut, part 2: Chocolate Pancakes with Cherry Sauce

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Green Tech

In the old days — the really old days — people washed their clothes by beating them on rocks. After a few millenia of that we moved on to metal racks, then spinning drums, then finally the front-loading Energy Star-rated washing machine. All of these techniques have always shared one thing in common, and that’s water. But those days may be drawing to a close thanks to the prototype Airwash, a clothes cleaner that uses ionized air to clean your dirty rags.

The Airwash creates compressed air “infused” with negative ions that do the dirty work of getting your gear pristine. Inside its shell are two suction panels that you slip your clothes over which “clean the clothes through cross-action, pulsation and sweeps.” It’s all delivered with an “emotive user experience through an intuitive buttonless interface” that will “humanise the washing machine into a symbol of holistic living.”

We’re not too sure about humanizing the washing machine, but anything that saves water is OK in our book … so long as it actually gets all of those mustard, ketchup, BBQ sauce, mayo, A1, maple syrup and ice cream stains we rack up every day at lunch.

From OhGizmo! and designboom

Related Links:

• Paper Airline Tickets to be Retired in June ‘08
• 10 Super Fast, Super Green Cars
• AT&T Reacts to Outrage Over 300-Page iPhone Bills

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Action & Adventure, Lionsgate Films, Theatrical Reviews

It sounds like a pretty basic (yet can’t-miss) project: Take two of the biggest international action stars, plunk them down into a basic plot framework, and just wait for the mayhem to start mounting. I’ll admit that the idea of seeing Jason Statham and Jet Li reign War on one another sounded like a pretty amusing way to waste 90-some minutes. And then the lights went down. And the movie started. And then for another 90-some minutes, I began wondering why I ever switched my major from education to film studies.

It’s amazing how many things the all-first-timer team of (director) Philip Atwell, (screenwriters) Lee Smith and Greg Bradley get wrong here, so I’ll just get this ridiculously obvious joke out of the way and then get onto the review: War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Whether you’re there for Statham’s cool blend of wit and toughness or for Li’s amazing martial arts skills — you’ll walk away from War disappointed. This is a movie that has two actors who are more than capable of delivering solid action scenes, and yet the duo are constantly undone by Atwell’s ham-fisted directing, a screenplay full of ideas that were old-hat about 25 years ago, and an editorial approach best described as “hyper-spasmodic, with extra strobe lights.”

Continue reading Review: War

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Filed under: Cellphones, Laptops

We’re still of the opinion that Palm should just abandon the whole Foleo concept and work on making the Treo competitive again, but despite our pleas, the company appears to be proceeding towards launch — manufacturing delays or not. Our tipster spotted the gentlemen pictured rocking what certainly appears to be a Foleo at an oil-change joint in Redwood City, California, and sent in a few snaps. According to her, our guy was happily typing away on the unit, occasionally stopping to refer to his phone (which obviously appears to be a Treo). That’s all the info we’ve got — but judging from the look on this guy’s face, the Foleo is just as frustratingly not-a-laptop as we assumed from the start. Two more shots after the break.

[Thanks, Michelle]

Continue reading Palm’s Foleo in the wild?

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Share This

Filed under: Gaming

It’s amazing what homebrew coders for the PSP are able to come up with, especially when you consider that the “solutions” don’t really solve anything. If you’ve ever hankered for a heartbeat recognition ability for your portable gaming machine, then here it is. One guy called Art simply soldered a coiled copper wire across the microphone input, which allows it to pick up the signal from a wireless heartbeat sensor. The result isn’t visually impressive — he hasn’t coded a graphical readout yet — but it should definitely inspire confidence in the homebrew community’s ingenuity. PSP pull-ups anyone?

[Thanks, Wraggster]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Share This

The LG Shine Signature, also known as the LG LC3600, is currently available in Korea. This slim candybar handset looks as though it targets the business crowd with a RAZR-inspired keypad to boot. It features a 1.3 megapixel camera, a built-in audio and video player, Bluetooth connectivity, and the option to engrave whatever you want behind - hence the “Signature” part of its name. Great for those who want to present a gift to a loved one. Rumor has it that an international version is in the works - hopefully this can be confirmed. I’d be one happy person if that were to happen…

Share This

Filed under: e-Distribution Games

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix will be available later today on the PlayStation Store. For $10, players will be able to play Capcom’s beloved puzzle game with new 1080p HD graphics, new gameplay modes, improved game balance, and new backgrounds created by Udon. Oh, and did we mention: online play?

For those unfamiliar, the point of the game is to move and rotate gems to form groups of the same color. By destroying gems of the same color, players will send counter gems on their opponents. In Tetris-fashion, when the screen fills up to the top, the game is over. The three game modes include:

• X-Mode: Classic Puzzle Fighter
• Y-Mode: Gems automatically break when three or more gems of the same color line up in a row vertically, horizontally, or diagonally.
• Z-Mode: Players move a 2×2 cursor around the screen rotating the positions of the highlighted gems; more gems are added from below, moving all the current gems toward the top.

In addition to rebalanced gameplay, players can also create their own drop patters through Counter Gem Edit. Online Ranked Matches will use the “TrueSkill system” for balanced fights. Finally, online leaderboards (a requisite for any online game) are included. Stay tuned later for more information on today’s Store update.

%Gallery-5009%

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Share This