Nintendo 3DS launches in U.S. |
- Nintendo 3DS launches in U.S.
- AMD calls out NVIDIA over GPU performance claims
- Acer Iconia Tab W500 & A500 head to Europe next month
- Google patches six Chrome bugs
- AMD manager backtracks on DirectX comments, commits support
- Nokia will continue to sell Symbian phones for 'a long time'
- MySpace lost 10 million users in a month?
- Facebook boots out 20,000 underage users per day
- Apple boots 'anti-gay' app from App Store
- Twitter order to hand over WikiLeaks data appealed
- Netflix reportedly close to $100m deal with Miramax
- Kodak patent case against Apple, RIM still alive
- U.S. creates 'panic button' for democracy activists
| Posted: 26 Mar 2011 10:43 PM PDT  The Nintendo 3DS gaming handheld has launched today in the U.S. with some places having launch parties at midnight. Nintendo is selling the console for $250 in Cosmos Black and Aqua Blue bundles that include a free charging dock and a 2GB SD card. Each 3DS comes with the games Face Raiders and AR Games pre-installed. Gaming on the 3DS is notable because new games can be playable in 3D without the need for special glasses. Nintendo released the console in Japan last month and in Europe on Friday. The launch titles are as follows: Three of the titles will be Nintendo-published, and all titles have an MSRP of $39.99: - Pilotwings Resort And third party published: - Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition from CAPCOM   (Article pic from outside of Best Buy launch party event in NYC)
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| AMD calls out NVIDIA over GPU performance claims Posted: 26 Mar 2011 05:11 PM PDT  AMD has publicly called out competitor NVIDIA over a performance claim made by the graphics chip-maker. Dave Erskine, Senior Public Relations Manager for Graphics Desktop at AMD, wrote on a company blog about how it prides itself on achieving excellence in its products and the integrity of its messageing. As an example, he used the flag-ship AMD Radeon HD 6990, describing how the company came to claim it was the World's Fastest Graphics Card. "We had designed it to be a game-changer and we hit the bull's eye. The result: The AMD Radeon HD 6990 achieved the highest default single graphics card score of X3303 using the industry standard 3DMark11 benchmark," Erskine wrote. "And when we launched it, we issued a press release in which we proudly called it the 'World's Fastest Graphics Card' and fully disclosed the basis upon which we made that claim." Earlier this week, NVIDIA issued its own press release, announcing the GTX 590 graphics chip. They also claimed in the press information that the GTX 590 was the World's Fastest Graphics Card. Erskine said that the folks at AMD combed through all the available information, looking for anything that could substantiate NVIDIA's claim. "So now I issue a challenge to our competitor: prove it, don't just say it. Show us the substantiation," he challenges, continuing on to drop no less than 4 links to reviews online that put the AMD Radeon HD 6990 at the top of the list of the fastest graphics cards on the market. Hopefully NVIDIA will entertain us all with a response, one way or another.
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| Acer Iconia Tab W500 & A500 head to Europe next month Posted: 26 Mar 2011 05:11 PM PDT  Acer's stab at the market for tablet PCs is hitting Europe on April 8 this year. It will launch its first two Iconia Tab models, which are the Windows 7-equipped W500 and the Android-equipped A500, each with a base price of £449. Each packs a 10.1-inch 1280x800 LED-backlit touchscreen. The W500 runs on AMD's Brazos technology, featuring a 1GHz C-50 APU with Radeon HD 6250 graphics, 2GB of memory and a 32GB solid-state disk drive. It also features an SD card reader, HDMI-output, G-sensor and built-in 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi. The system runs Microsoft's Windows 7 Home Premium operating system. The A500 runs on NVIDIA's Tegra 2 technology. It features 1GB of RAM and 32GB of flash storage. It features a read 5 megapixel camera and front 2 megapixel camera. It features 3G support, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a micsoSD card slot, HDMI-output and two USB ports. It runs the Android 3.0 (Honecomb) operating system. The W500 can also come with 3G at an additional cost and also can be bundled with a keyboard dock which also includes Ethernet and dual USB 2.0 connectors.
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| Google patches six Chrome bugs Posted: 26 Mar 2011 05:11 PM PDT  Google has pushed out an update for its Chrome browser addressing some serious bugs. The Chrome stable and beta channels have been updated to 10.0.648.204 for Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome Frame. The update addresses some performance and stability issues in the browser, and includes six security fixes. Additionally, support for the password manager has been added on Linux. Security fixes include..
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| AMD manager backtracks on DirectX comments, commits support Posted: 26 Mar 2011 05:11 PM PDT  AMD manager has gone into damage control over comments he made about the DirectX API in a recent interview with Bit-Tech. Richard Huddy, manager of AMD's GPU division, commented that developers wanted the DirectX API to "go away", saying developers had made such admissions in conversations. He hinted that DirectX and other APIs get in the way of creating some amazing computer graphics. However, in a newer interview with CRN, Huddy seemed to be backing off the stance and even claimed the comments shouldn't be taken literally. "The [Bit-tech] interview started off being about OpenGL, and the way APIs are developed," Huddy said. "Obviously there's pressure from Microsoft on hardware vendors to develop DirectX in a variety of ways. We spend a great deal of time getting feedback from game developers in the early phase of our hardware development, for products that are two or three years away from going to market." He said that only a handful of high-end gaming developers want to bypass DirectX and code directly for hardware. "If you held a vote among developers, they would go for DirectX or OpenGL, because it's a great platform. It's hard to crash a machine with Direct X, as there's lots of protection to make sure the game isn't taking down the machine, which is certainly rare especially compared to ten or fifteen years ago." He said the comment about developers wanting DirectX to "go away" shouldn't be taken literally. "Many people are still shipping DirectX 9 games, which is still a perfectly reasonable way to go," Huddy admitted.
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| Nokia will continue to sell Symbian phones for 'a long time' Posted: 26 Mar 2011 12:15 AM PDT  Nokia has moved to quash fears that it may be preparing to drop Symbian-based phones much too quickly. The Finnish mobile phone giant said it will continue to sell handsets that run Symbian software for a long time after it has started to move devices that run Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 software. The company is expected to begin phasing out Symbian over the coming few years as it rolls out WP7 handsets. "We will be selling (Symbian) devices long after Windows Phone devices from Nokia have already started to appear," Purnima Kochikar, head of developer relations at Nokia, said in a letter to devs. Symbian phones have lost market share due to competition from iOS and Android models, but it is still strongly profitable for Nokia. Kochikar said that coming Symbian models will focus on strong integration of services, and that they will use faster processors than their predecessors. They will brought up to GHz+ levels, which is where Nokia's competitors are already at. Both Nokia's N8 and E7 use 680 MHz processors.
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| MySpace lost 10 million users in a month? Posted: 26 Mar 2011 12:15 AM PDT  If analyst comScore is right about the latest trends for the recently revamped MySpace, then News Corp. has more to cry about. The industry analyst say its figures show MySpace lost an incredible 10 million users between January and February of this year. Specifically, it reports 63 million users of MySpace in February this year, down from 73 million just a month before. Compared to last year, comScore says MySpace has lost a massive 50 million users, down from close to 110 million in February 2010. The social networking site has attempted to rebrand itself as an entertainment hub focused on music. At one time it was considered the number 1 social networking site across the world, but saw its popularity eaten up by Facebook, which now touts over 600 million users. MySpace has recently announced it will slash half of its staff, and reports suggest that News Corp. is looking to sell the service asap. Having bought it for a princely sum of $330 million back in 2005, News Corp could expect to get as little as $50 million now for MySpace.
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| Facebook boots out 20,000 underage users per day Posted: 26 Mar 2011 12:15 AM PDT  It has been reported that Facebook currently kicks about 20,000 underage kids from its service every day. The minimum age requirement for using the social networking site is 13 years old. Even though Facebook has no way to check up on the actual age of a member, it still manages to remove 20,000 accounts per day of users that appear to have lied about their age to join. Facebook's chief privacy adviser Mozelle Thompson admits that Facebook's system for identifying and removing accounts held by underage users is "not perfect," but nevertheless, the company is at least doing something to try to uphold the age rule. The figure sounds like a lot, but it is nothing in comparison to the 600 million and growing users of Facebook. A Pew study that found half of 12 year old's in the United States use social networking sites must also be taken into consideration. U.S. Senator Al Franken has addressed the issue already, and co-signed a letter to Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. Franken argues that it should be impossible for underage and teen users of Faacebook to inadvertently share their phone number, home address or other sensitive information publicly where it could be misused.
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| Apple boots 'anti-gay' app from App Store Posted: 26 Mar 2011 12:15 AM PDT  Apple has been praised by several groups for responding to an online petition to remove an "anti-gay" application from its App Store. The app, launched by Exodus International, promoted the idea of "curing gay people." In response, a Truth Wins Out petition setup on Change.org received 146,000 signatures from people who wanted to see the application removed from the App Store. Apple responded by removing the application, prompting praise from several groups. "Apple made a wise and responsible decision to dump an offensive app that demonized gay and lesbian people," said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. "The real winners today are LGBT youth who are safer and less at risk for receiving Exodus' malice and misinformation." Gary Remafedi, a researcher from the University of Minnesota, had also previously requested that Apple take action against the application, which he said grossly distorted his work to back up its claims. The American Psychological Association, American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, and American Counseling Association have all rejected "ex-gay" therapy, saying that it can result in serious harm to the mental health of participants. "We're thrilled that Apple has removed this 'gay cure' app from the iTunes store after more than 146,000 people signed this petition," said Mike Jones, Editor at Change.org, the platform used by Truth Wins Out to launch the petition. "The message Apple is sending here is clear: there is no place for 'ex-gay therapy' on the Apple platform."
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| Twitter order to hand over WikiLeaks data appealed Posted: 25 Mar 2011 11:20 PM PDT  A U.S. Judge's decision to compel Twitter to hand over data of three users linked to the Wikileaks website has been appealed by rights' groups in the United States. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are challenging the ruling, made earlier this month, which compels Twitter to hand over data on American, Icelandic and Dutch twitter users somehow linked to the controversial website. "Except in very rare circumstances, the government should not be permitted to obtain information about individuals' private Internet communications in secret," said ACLU staff attorney Aden Fine. "If the ruling is allowed to stand, our client might never know how many other companies have been ordered to turn over information about her, and she may never be able to challenge the invasive requests." Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan rejected claims that seeking the Twitter information violated freedom of speech and privacy, on the basis that the three individuals had already made their Twitter posts and their associations public knowledge voluntarily. She also stressed that the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution protected people against "unreasonable" searches by authorities. She asserted that when all three relayed information with their Twitter accounts, they gave up any reasonable expectation of privacy. The EFF thinks this decision not only misses some big points, but is also a bad precedent to set. "Services like Twitter have information that can be used to track us and link our communications across multiple services including Facebook and Gmail," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "The Magistrate's ruling that users have no ability to protect that information from the US government is especially troubling."
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| Netflix reportedly close to $100m deal with Miramax Posted: 25 Mar 2011 11:20 PM PDT  According to the Wall Street Journal, Netflix is close to a deal with Miramax that could be worth over $100 million over five years. The outlet cites a source close to the companies in reporting that both are close to an agreement that will see Netflix streaming a considerable number of titles from Miramax's extensive library to its subscribers over the Internet. In an earlier report, WSJ valued the deal at about $50 million over five years, but then changed the figure to "far north of" $100 million over five years. Netflix has seen its streaming service grow to become a huge part of its business, while its mail-based DVD rental service is still in wide use. If the deal with Miramax goes through, it will reportedly result in more than 700 titles becoming available for Netflix customers.
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| Kodak patent case against Apple, RIM still alive Posted: 25 Mar 2011 11:20 PM PDT  A U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) panel has said it will review a January decision made against Eastman Kodak Co in a patent dispute. In January, an ITC judge ruled that Research in Motion, and Apple Inc., had not infringed on Kodak patents. Kodak brought the case to the ITC, which has the power to halt imports of products into the United States, as it seeks royalties for patented technology it says is used in Apple and RIM products. If victorious, it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties for Kodak. The complaint was filed with ITC in January 2010, and a final decision is expected in May of this year. Both LG and Samsung have settled in similar disputes with Kodak, agreeing to pay $400 million and $550 million respectively to license Kodak's technology. However, Kodak has struggled to get by in the modern world of affordable digital cameras and smartphones, with analysts considering its extensive patent portfolio as its most valuable asset.
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| U.S. creates 'panic button' for democracy activists Posted: 25 Mar 2011 11:20 PM PDT  The U.S. State Department is developing and pushing new technology to help democracy activists and other protesters around the world to get around blocks and censorship. One of the new technologies it is pushing is a panic button app made for mobile phones. In the recent slew of protests throughout the middle east, mobile phones have played a big part in driving the protests. However, mobile phones have been confiscated and data including messages and address books have been mined for information on others involved. Using the "panic button" would securely erase all of that information on a phone, and also send out a warning to everyone else to be careful. Since the U.S. Government asked Twitter to delay a scheduled update to allow Iranian users continue to use the site during the 2009 election protests, the administration has realized the usefulness of Internet and other services for activists. However, it has also noted how many oppressive governments can, and do, implement blocks and censorship to make it hard for people to communicate or get certain information. The state department has been working with technology firms to develop circumvention technology intended for use to get around state firewalls easily and on methods for activists to protect their communications and information from snooping. "We're working with a group of technology providers, giving small grants," Michael Posner, assistant U.S. secretary of state for human rights and labor. told reporters. "We're operating like venture capitalists. We are looking for the most innovative people who are going to tailor their technology and their expertise to the particular community of people we're trying to protect." The department has been criticized by lawmakers for taking too long to develop and promote the use of these new tools, but Posner said things are beginning to speed up now.
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