Gregory Sullivan
Gregory Sullivan
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Blizzard Entertainment announced yesterday that their MMORPG game World of Warcraft passed the ten million subscriber mark. Interestingly, 5.5 million of those users are in Asia, with 2 million in Europe and 2.5 million in North America. Since debuting in North America on November 23, 2004, World of Warcraft has become the most popular...
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There are three big open-source blogging platforms: Blogger, Typepad, and Wordpress. Google owns Blogger, so they're plenty capitalized. Now Automattic, the commercial version of Wordpress, is getting capitalized too. They've received $29.5 million from a range of venture capitalists and interested businesses, including a small stake...
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Yahoo is an interesting entity. It has an enormous Internet presence, of course; 500 million visitors a month. But Yahoo seems like an audience without a show from time to time. Its share price has declined precipitously, losing half its value in the last two years; Google is killing them at Internet search; and social networking sites drag...
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Dell gets interested in blade servers from time to time, but have a much smaller presence in the market than HP or IBM. That might change with the rollout of their new M-series blades, which address several of the concerns of the end user: How much space does it take up, and how much electricity does it use to shuffle my ones and...
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The dreaded "R" word is being whispered on Wall Street again, and the boom and bust nature of the Tech sector makes it especially vulnerable to a downturn. Is there a corner of the tech universe where you can hide from a replay of Pets.com this time? According to Forbes, software-as-a service (SaaS) companies, providers of Internet based process...
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HBO,Time Warner's cable TV channel, is launching a service allowing subscribers to download and watch HBO content like the Sopranos and Sex in the City on their computers and various mobile devices. It will be offered as a free add-on to their existing subscribers to HBO and HBO on Demand. Targeted at younger subscribers and travelers who...
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A rising tide lifted all the boats in the video gaming industry, and we all shot those boats with RPGs in our spare time. The industry reports $17.9 billion in sales for 2007, 43 percent higher than 2006. The Wii led the way in hardware, and Halo 3 sold an astonishing 4.82 million games. The industry set new highs in every category of hardware...
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IBM had a great 2007. And while the stock market was tanking yesterday, they were having a conference call announcing they expected their earnings per share for 2008 to be even larger than they had previously anticipated, and their shares rose 5 percent on the news. How is IBM doing it, when so many other information and technology companies...
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Apple's superslim MacBook Air laptop sure looks nifty, as most Apple products do. But to paraphrase Edwin Starr: what is it good for? Gizmodo wondered the same thing, and compared it to four other small, high-performance laptops. If you're interested in thinness over all other things, the Air is your best bet. Other than that, not so much.It...
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Amazon.com has decided to pay a $1500 a day fine in France rather than comply with a court ruling ordering them to stop offering free shipping to their French customers on book purchases. They're filing an appeal as well. France limits the allowable discount on book sales, and contends that free shipping is a form of discount that would exceed...
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Everyone keeps telling me how smart Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook is, but I'm beginning to have my doubts. Fresh on the heels of his disastrous foray into datamining with Facebook's Beacon service, he seems to be unclear on the concept of copyright infringement. Hasbro and Mattel, owners of the copyright for the Scrabble word game,...
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Steve Jobs unveiled the MacBook "Air" yesterday, Apple's ultra-thin and light notebook computer that looks like something you'd put into an interoffice envelope. That is, if it didn't cost $1800 you might. But contrary to all the reports you're hearing, it's not the thinnest laptop ever, even if it is the thinnest available right now....
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It's lots of fun to see all the gaudy and enormous things displayed at the Consumer Electronics Show. But when you see a CEO standing next to a television the size of a roadside billboard that costs more than your last divorce did, you wonder if much of it will ever turn out to be a big hit with the general public. Brier Dudley poked around...
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There's no better indication that Apple computers are gaining marketshare than the fact that malware, viruses, and scams are occasionally targeted towards them now. Security firms are reporting that an old-fashioned rogue cleaning tool, called MacSweeper, is making the rounds now. It attempts to hoodwink you into buying their useless...
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Toshiba, backer of the HD DVD standard for next-generation high-definition disc players, is reacting to the move of many Hollywood studios to exclusively offer their entertainment on rival Sony's Blu-ray format. By "reacting," I mean "slashing their prices to the bone."Toshiba's third generation 1080i-capable HD-A3 is selling for a mere $139.98...
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Forget Spiderman or GI Joe or any other superhero you can name. Markus Frind should be your hero. He's a web entrepreneur from Canada who's managed to get a website up and going --online dating site Plenty of Fish -- that more or less operates itself. He says that on average he works ten hours a week. The pay's good, though; around ten million...
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Just like the rest of us nerds, Toshiba got to wondering what would happen if you put a Playstation 3 Cell processor into a laptop. They put one in one of their Qosimo G45 notebooks, which already sports an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU. They've named the system the Spurs engine. It allows the laptop to react to user hand gestures; scan through...
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We're not referring to just any keyword ad. But 1-800-Contacts is suing Lensworld for buying search link advertising using the keyword: 1-800-Contacts. The downstream effect of a win for 1-800-Contacts would essentially make buying keyword ads that feature things like your competitor's name or trademarks illegal. Google, call your lawyers....
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The Attorney General of New York has issued subpoenas to Intel, seeking information about whether Intel unlawfully compelled their customers to exclude rival AMD from the market for certain computer chips. At issue in Cuomo's probe is whether AMD has a fair chance to supply its X86 computer processing units for desktop and laptop computers...
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The entertainment industry is suffering from all sorts of downstream effects from the writer's strike. Companies from coffee shops in Los Angeles to payroll services are feeling the pinch, and some have gone under waiting for everyone to get back to work. But someone has benefited from it: Online video sites.The on-going writers' strike...
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Yahoo released the beta version of its browser-based MP3 player yesterday. It allows you to link MP3s from anywhere on the web on your web page, add Yahoo-supplied javascript, et voila! :working play buttons appear next to any MP3s. * The interface between your document and our library is unobtrusive Javascript and...
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What's new is old again, it seems. Security researchers are warning consumers to be cautious about using items like freebie flash drives that are given out as souvenirs at trade shows and similar events. There are recent reports of malware being loaded onto removable storage devices like USB flash drives, and even digital picture frames.In...
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