Week in review: Valve widens the audience for Portal 2

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

Valve figures out how to widen its audience for Portal 2 — with boots — For Portal 2, Valve’s marketing machine has focused on widening the audience for the physics-based shooting game. And it has hit upon a way to target the female audience — or perhaps just the larger community of boot fans — with its latest game trailer.

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Screw you. Pay me. — Most entrepreneurs have found themselves saddled with a client who decides at the end of a project that they want to either renegotiate the terms of the deal or not pay at all. In this video, Mule Design co-founder Mike Monteiro explains how to respond.

New Black Ops map pack is confirmed for May 3 — Activision Blizzard confirmed Wednesday that it will launch its Call of Duty Black Ops Escalation map pack on the Xbox Live online gaming service on May 3.

Valve’s alternate reality game stirs fascination with Portal 2 — In another bid to create interest in Portal 2, Valve created an “alternate reality game” (ARG) to get fans started early. However, the move may have backfired.

SEC may let startups use social networks to raise money — The Securities and Exchange Commission may adopt rules to let Internet-age technologies be used in fund-raising.

And here are five other posts you won’t want to miss:

Glam hits $100M revenue, plans to file IPO as early as fall — The female-focused media and advertising company is said to be in the early process of hiring bankers to help it with the IPO, but won’t file to go public until after the slow summer months are over.

RIM CEO: How come we get no respect? — “Why is it that people don’t appreciate our profits?” Research in Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis asked this week.

Why Google is spending big to advertise Chrome — The company explained in a conference call that “everybody that uses Chrome is a guaranteed locked-in user.”

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KiOR looks to $100M IPO to convert woodchips to biofuel — Biofuel company KiOR is going public and wants to raise $100 million for a new plant that converts wood chips to petroleum.

FCC chairman gets heckled by smart meter protesters (video) — Clearly, the question of whether wireless emissions can cause harmful effects such as cancer continues to provoke a passionate response, and some folks don’t believe the research that has been done on the topic.