Social gaming startup Zynga is seeing some impressive traction. It now boats 129 million monthly active users across its portfolio of more than 30 games, according to both Inside Facebook’s AppData (see chart) and Developer Analytics . That’s up from about 50 million three months ago, and 30 million in April. Zynga’s most popular games are FarmVille (the most popular game on Facebook with 50 million cumulative players), Mafia Wars (the second most popular game on Facebook with 25 million), Zynga Poker, and YoVille. The majority of Zynga’s users play its games on Facebook, but it also has games Bebo, Hi5, MySapce, and Friendster. Heere are some fun stats about each of its top games: FarmVille —sort of like a Sim Farm, where you grow your own crops and manage a farm, FarmVille users have built more than 40 million virtual farms (which is 20 times more than actually exist in the U.S.). Players buy 500,000 virtual tractors a day in the game. Mafia Wars —Every month, 140 million “jobs” are done by aspiring cappos in this game. Zynga Poker —This used to be calledd Texas Hold’Em. Every day about 150 million hands are dealt (more than ten times as many as are dealt on an averag day in Las Vegas), and on there are usually 250,000 concurrent players, so you can always find a game. YoVille —A game where you furnish a virtual apartment, buy pets, and eat funnel cakes. The 17 million residnents of YoVille have bought 10,000 pets and 40,000 funnel cakes since August alone. As Zynga continues to grow, so does the IPO talk (and the litigation ). Its revenues, which is well above nine figures now, comes largely from its virtual currency, as well as ads. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

We’ve got one of HP’s sexiest laptops ever staring us down here, the brand new Envy 13 . It hits the streets on October 18, running Windows 7 and brazenly demanding a $1,700 base price tag. Worth every penny? Perhaps. We’ll be going more in depth with the laptop over the next few days, but here are a few first impressions. This is one sexy laptop. It’s incredibly quality in its construction, and intensely attractive. The screen in particular is a knockout, showing up very bright and vibrant behind its glossy, mirror-tastic sheen The single button trackpad is severely miscalibrated, and perhaps an altogether bad idea. We’re having trouble scrolling consistently, but clicking is also a hit or miss affair — having multiple fingers on the trackpad at the same time seems problematic, with our cursor glitching this way and that. It’s also actually possible (likely even, if you’re as bad at mousing as we are) to “click” the pad and yet have nothing happen, which seems very counterintuitive. The keyboard is comfortable, but has a bit of a loose, pushover feel to the key action — not cheap, but not really best-in-class either. Boot time is pretty snappy, even with the quick boot Envy “Instant-On Solution” Linux acting as a pit stop along the way. With a full Core 2 Duo processor inside and a real feeling of heft and thickness compared to other laptops in “thin and light” land, it’s surprising that the Envy 13 goes with the same external Ethernet dongle of its predecessor, the Envy 133 . That full-powered processor? Snappy. It takes on YouTube HD, the real computer killer of our times, without breaking a sweat. The great thing about a “luxury” laptop like this (as HP dubs it) is that there’s so much more to explore, including an external Blu-ray drive in the box, the endless wire-free adventures promised by the optional slice battery, and of course the real prowess of the GPU when faced with 3D gaming and some HDMI output. Good times shall be had, we promise you that. Gallery: HP Envy 13 unboxing Filed under: Laptops HP Envy 13 unboxing and first impressions originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink  |  Email this  |  Comments

OnLive , the gaming company trying to reinvent the Games On Demand service, has announced a Series C round of venture financing from AT&T Media Holdings, Inc. , Lauder Partners , Warner Bros. , Autodesk , and Maverick Capital . Warner Bros., Autodesk and Maverick Capital have participated in previous rounds of financing as well. OnLive did not disclose the size of financing. OnLive has been working on the launch of its cloud-based OnLive Game Service, which delivers the latest games instantly through the MicroConsole TV adapter. Unveiled in March at the 2009 Game Developers Conference, the OnLive Game Service recently went into beta testing and is speculated to officially launch this winter. Palo Alto-based OnLive raised $16.5 million in previous funding. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

No, the device you see above is not simply a comically large smartphone (at least we don’t think it is). It’s actually a Snapdragon -powered, Windows Mobile 6.5 -running tablet developed by the folks at C-motech. While complete details are still a bit hard to come by, this so-called “Mangrove” device reportedly packs a 7-inch touchscreen, along with a full range of connectivity options including WiFi, 3G and WiMAX, plus a pair of USB ports and a microSD card slot for a bit more flexibility. Of course, it is still just a concept at the moment, but C-motech is apparently looking at ways to bring it to market — although your guess is as good as ours as to whether it’ll actually hang onto Windows Mobile during that transition or not. [Via jkkmobile ] Filed under: Tablet PCs C-motech shows off Snapdragon-powered Mangrove tablet originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read  |  Permalink  |  Email this  |  Comments

Yesterday, when I wrote that Tweetie was the best iPhone Twitter client not everyone agreed. Fair enough, there are a few other really great ones including Birdfeed (which we’ve covered here ) and Echofon (the app formerly known as TwitterFon ). And the team behind Echofon has today rolled something that puts it ahead of Tweetie in at least one regard: A native Mac client that syncs with the iPhone client. While Tweetie does have a ( very nice ) Mac client, there is no syncing between it and the iPhone version just yet. It is coming, but Echofon has beaten them to the bunch. This puts in in the league with TweetDeck, which also has a desktop and iPhone client that sync , but Echofon is nicer because it’s a native Mac app rather than running on Adobe Air. (Seesmic also has an iPhone app in the works that will sync with its desktop client, though that is again, Air-based.) So how is Echofon for Mac? It’s great. It’s super simple and very fast. It has a very clean design that is entirely silver and white which features your tweet stream, a new tweet input box along the bottom, and columns for Mentions, Messages, and Search along the top. You are alerted to new message updates by a number (the number of messages) placed next to the column name in which the new messages reside. Updates seem to come in quickly (every couple minutes or so). Adding a picture to a tweet is as easy as dragging one from your desktop into the new message area. Clicking on someone’s name or picture unveils a new tab that displays all of that users information, including most recent updates. And yes, there is multiple Twitter account support. There is also the ability to set different types of notifications for new messages including badging dock icons and Growl notifications. Also cool is a Highlights area which allows you to keep track of keywords that you don’t want to miss. Yes, this is basically saved search, but it gives you alerts, just like track of old. Another nifty little feature is that when you click the reply button on a tweet, the message you’re replying to appears right above the tweet entry field so you remember what you’re supposed to be talking about. It is important to note that sync only works right now for Echofon Pro users, but if you’ve been addicted to Echofon, hopefully you are using that anyway. (If not, get it, it’s $4.99 .) Eventually, the plan is to offer the syncing funtionality with the free version of Echofon as well. Currently, Echofon for Mac is being offered as a public beta. That means it may be a little buggy, and also missing some features (un, manual refresh?), but is also free. Eventually, when it’s ready to launch, it will carry a price (just as Tweetie for Mac does). Find it here . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco