Week in review: BlueGlass challenges Demand Media with new publishing tool

Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

Content-maker BlueGlass launches new tool for online publishers — Online marketing company BlueGlass Interactive has released a content creation tool for publishers that it hopes will put it in direct competition with powerhouse content provider Demand Media — minus the negativity that Demand has attracted because of accusations that it runs “content mills.”

Kik Messenger sees explosive start — a mobile chat better than SMS? — Kik, a new chat application for smartphones that is quicker and more social than SMS, is showing impressive viral uptake. And its growth appears to be accelerating.

U.S. Supreme Court set to hear video game violence case — The country has long been divided about whether violent video games should be formally regulated. Now the U.S. Supreme Court is planning to weigh in on the matter, and oral arguments were held last Tuesday.

MacBook Air review: a laptop that blurs the line between work and play — VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi praises Apple’s new laptop as sitting “right at this intersection of work and play.”

Sony’s PlayStation Phone strategy takes shape as prototype picture leaks out — Back in August, rumors of a PlayStation Phone leaked out. Now the Engadget tech blog has a photo of the device and some of its specifications.

And here are five more articles we think are important, thought-provoking, fun, or all of the above:

The big tech pedigree doesn’t help: Whitman and Fiorina go down in flames — Perhaps this week’s California elections should be a lesson for executives at big tech companies.

How Facebook plans to make money from deals — After Facebook confirmed Wednesday that it’s launching a deal service that businesses can use to lure in customers, I spoke to the company’s executives about how the feature might pay off.

Are venture capitalists sheep? Why cleantech investing is down — There’s been a spate of bad news for cleantech investing lately. VentureBeat’s Iris Kuo discusses why.

Apple approves SkyFire iPhone browser with Flash video support — Mobile browser developer SkyFire has seemingly done the impossible by getting its Flash video-capable web browser approved for Apple’s App Store.

Why won’t utility companies innovate? Smart Grid leaders explain — Utility companies aren’t willing to innovate and develop smarter power grids because it simply isn’t cost-effective most of the time, a number of cleantech leaders said at our GreenBeat 2010 conference.