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Back in August, social game developer Kixeye raised $18 million in series C financing, and added Zynga Andrew Trader to its Board of Directors. And today the self-proclaimed “largest maker of online strategy combat games” has announced the addition of another ex-Zynga exec into the fold.

Brandon Barber will be joining Kixeye as the SVP of Marketing, where he will report directly to Co-founder and CEO Will Harbin. Barber brings significant gaming experience to Kixeye, as he previously co-founded online sports game developer Lionside, which was acquired by ngmoco (qua DeNA) in June of this year. Behind Barber (who was also VP of Marketing and Production), Lionside brought sports games to Facebook, and created titles like NBA Legend and Lionside Football.

Before founding Lionside, Barber was the first VP of Marketing at Zynga, establishing the company’s initial communication, brand, and product marketing strategies. Zynga created that role specifically for him and, considering that he reported directly to Andrew Trader, it seems that the former Zynga duo is linked up again.

Prior to Zynga, Barber served as the Director of Global Marketing at EA, where he was “responsible for the concept, design, deployment and profitability of EA’s web services based business model”, among other things.

Kixeye has had a great year, picking up a few key staffers, as well as becoming profitable and cash-flow positive. Look for more big moves in 2012.

Party Earth, a media company that provides reviews, up-to-date calendars and user-generated photos of social venues (i.e. bars, nightclubs, beaches, casinos and whatnot) in a variety of cities throughout the USA and Europe, has secured $4 million in funding from undisclosed investors.

“Party Earth is the best destination online to discover how to have the most fun offline – no matter where, when, or with whom,” claims president and CEO Sam Altman.

The website currently offers tens of thousands of local reviews, photos, events, and videos across 19 cities around the world, from London to Amsterdam, Venice, Barcelona and Munich, as well as major cities in the U.S. like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Party Earth users can discover places to visit and parties based on their personality, current mood, or who they are going out with. This approach allows the company to deliver hyper-targeted member-exclusive offers, product specials, event and venue recommendations, and more.

With this new funding, Party Earth aims to enhance the site by adding social features for users to interact, check in at venues, share their experiences, create their own social calendars, upload photos and video, and more.

Additionally, the company says it is planning a new mobile platform that will “marry geo-location services with its content”, whatever that may mean.

Bad news for you rooted Nexus S owners out there running Google Wallet, as research firm ViaForensics conducted a report that found some security flaws that exposed the way the payment system encrypts other data that could be used in a social engineering attack. 

ViaForensics’ report spoke highly of Google Wallet but also remained critical on security holes it detected:

“While Google Wallet does a decent job securing your full credit cards numbers (it is not insecurely stored and a PIN is needed to access the cards to authorize payments), the amount of data that Google Wallet stores unencrypted on the device is significant (pretty much everything except the first 12 digits of your credit card),” the report continued. “Many consumers would not find it acceptable if people knew their credit card balance or limits.”

Furthermore, the research company also said “If I know your name, when you’ve used your card recently, last 4 digits and expiration date, I’m pretty confident I could use the information to my advantage.” This may be true, but isn’t this the case with most password/pin related services like email and ATM cards?

Speaking as a owner of the Nexus S 4G and avid Google Wallet user, I’d say it’s a lot more secure then most people think. These flaws were only detected on devices that were rooted, not those that come unrooted straight out of the box. If you know anything about rooting or jail-breaking, then you’d know it makes your handset considerably weaker when it comes to security; the report is valid, but nothing ViaForensics discovered was new or surprising to me.

Rooting your phone always poses some risks, please know that folks.

[via cnet]

Rooted phones may expose unencrypted data stored in Google Wallet originally appeared on IntoMobile.com on 2011-12-13T17:18:49Z. FV1gMYsz9b5j

Bad news for you rooted Nexus S owners out there running Google Wallet, as research firm ViaForensics conducted a report that found some security flaws that exposed the way the payment system encrypts other data that could be used in a social engineering attack. 

ViaForensics’ report spoke highly of Google Wallet but also remained critical on security holes it detected:

“While Google Wallet does a decent job securing your full credit cards numbers (it is not insecurely stored and a PIN is needed to access the cards to authorize payments), the amount of data that Google Wallet stores unencrypted on the device is significant (pretty much everything except the first 12 digits of your credit card),” the report continued. “Many consumers would not find it acceptable if people knew their credit card balance or limits.”

Furthermore, the research company also said “If I know your name, when you’ve used your card recently, last 4 digits and expiration date, I’m pretty confident I could use the information to my advantage.” This may be true, but isn’t this the case with most password/pin related services like email and ATM cards?

Speaking as a owner of the Nexus S 4G and avid Google Wallet user, I’d say it’s a lot more secure then most people think. These flaws were only detected on devices that were rooted, not those that come unrooted straight out of the box. If you know anything about rooting or jail-breaking, then you’d know it makes your handset considerably weaker when it comes to security; the report is valid, but nothing ViaForensics discovered was new or surprising to me.

Rooting your phone always poses some risks, please know that folks.

[via cnet]

Rooted phones may expose unencrypted data stored in Google Wallet originally appeared on IntoMobile.com on 2011-12-13T17:18:49Z. FV1gMYsz9b5j

Engadget got its hands on a pricing guide from Costco that suggests the Galaxy Nexus will be available starting December 15th. Don’t get too excited as this is one of several launch dates tossed around in the past month. Thus far, all the dates have all come and gone without the appearance of the Galaxy Nexus.

Maybe this rumor will be the one that finally pans out, and the Nexus will launch later this week. If it lands at Costco, the Galaxy Nexus should also go on sale at Verizon corporate stores and other third-party resellers. Thankfully, we won’t have to wait too long to find out if this rumor is true. If Verizon does plan on selling the Nexus this Thursday, the carrier will be making its big announcement today or tomorrow.

[Engadget]

Costco document hints at December 15th launch for the Galaxy Nexus originally appeared on IntoMobile.com on 2011-12-13T17:18:32Z. FV1gMYsz9b5j