Ryan McLaughlin
Recent posts
A federal court has signed off on the seizure of domain names belonging to suspected piracy websites by U.S. law enforcement. Puerto 80, the owners of domain names Rojadirecta.com and Rojadirecta.org, was denied a request for the return of domain names seized in February by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) in a Manhattan...
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BestBuy Canada has sparked rumors of an early-2012 release of the PlayStation Vita today with the posting of a Vita pre-order release date of March 30, 2012. The pre-orders apply to both the Wi-Fi only and Wi-Fi + 3G models that Sony is releasing. Sony confirmed just last week that the handheld would be releasing in North America and Europe...
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Avid Steam users and otherwise enthusiastic indie game players are well-acquainted with the Humble Indie Bundle, a semi-annual drive offering collections of independently released computer games for direct download, free of digital rights management (DRM). Two of these bundle drives have been completed thus far, raising over $1.25 million...
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Iomega is getting back into the Mac game with the release of its new Mac-exclusive hard drive today, the creatively-named Mac Companion Hard Drive. The 3.5-inch drive, which is designed to match the current iMac model, comes in 2 or 3TB options and runs at 7,200 RPM. it connects via Firewire 800, Firewire 400-800, and USB 2,0 cables. The outside...
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Good news for Google: the Canalys research firm has found that Google's Android OS dominated the worldwide smart device market in the second quarter. Canalys, which analyzes shipments in 56 countries around the world, found that Android was the leader in 35 of them, leading to the operating system's secure hold on 48 percent market share during...
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It's no surprise to anyone that Apple is doing well, but it may be surprising to many that the company is doing better financially than its own home country. Latest figures from the US Treasury Department show that the country has an operating cash balance of $73.7 billion, while Apple's most recent postings show a balance of $76.4 billion....
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In a surprising change of pace, it appears that GameStop will be returning to the PC games market with an announcement that customers can now place pre-orders for digital downloads. Seemingly following EA's lead, the brick-and-mortar retailer has begun shifting the some of its focus off of packaged goods sales and onto digital distribution....
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Sony has posted financial results for the first fiscal quarter 2012, and the company has been hurt by a decline in PS3 sales. Fiscal Q1 revenues from game hardware, software and online services dropped 11.9% from the previous year to $1.5 billion, while unit sales of the Playstation 3 dropped to 1.8 million compared to 2.4 million the year...
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Well, this is some news that is sure to frustrate gamers: Ubisoft has decided that it will continue implementing its special constant-connection anti-piracy measures because, to nobody's surprise, it works. The company's restrictive digital rights management (DRM) system, which was recently announced to be included in upcoming release Driver:...
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EA CEO John Riccitiello said in a quarterly earnings call yesterday that the game console cycle, that is, the 4-5 year long space between console development and launches, is over. Between this and recent statements that physical storefronts will be disappearing in the near future, it sounds like EA has it all figured out. During the conference...
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This past week has been a busy one for Google. Users of the company's Google+ social networking service have been up in arms over the deletion of several accounts for violating the service's "real name" policy, and the company is now backtracking to quell the rage. The service's support teams, which...
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It appears that there are more problems to worry about with smartphones than just data protection or simple thievery. Nowadays, even attachment to a gadget is cause for worry. "Watching people who get their first smartphone, there's a very quick progression from having a basic phone you don't talk about to people who...
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Earlier this week, hacker collective Anonymous decided that it would found its own social networking site after being shut down on Google+. The site, which is (temporarily) named Anon+, will give users freedoms that sites like Facebook and Google+ will not, according to developer/hacker "Higochoa." Higochoa is part of a team of 12 to 15 other...
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Sprint Nextel is considering rolling out family-plan type subscriptions for data services, according to an announcement yesterday. "You'll see this from us," said Fared Adib, Vice President of Product Development for Sprint, at a roundtable discussion with reporters. Adib said that the reason tablets haven't taken off is because there haven't...
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Video games publisher Electronic Arts says that the end is coming for brick-and-mortar video games stores. Speaking to Eurogamer in an interview yesterday, EA Sports Vice President Andrew Wilson made clear his thoughts on the future of game purchases. "There will come a day where I think that people will stop going into GAME and GameStop....
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After having its Google+ profile removed for community standards violations, hacker collective Anonymous has decided to try the social networking thing for itself. The site, currently running under the temporary name of AnonPlus, is only a splash page at this point, with a message explaining the intent and goals of the site. Primarily, Anonymous...
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Western Digital announced today that the company's new WD Scorpio Blue 1TB Mobile Hard Drive is now shipping. The 9.5 mm, 2.5-inch hard drive comes packed with a 1TB capacity squeezed into a tiny package to fit most mainstream notebook computers. The drive utilizes a 500GB-per-platter areal density and can claim the crown as the highest...
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California voters prepare: Amazon.com Inc. has announced that the California Attorney General's Office has approved its petition for a referendum that will let voters decide whether or not to overturn a new law that forces online retailers to collect sales taxes in the state. There has been a large amount of criticism pointed towards...
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It seems that no matter what steps Apple takes to prevent people from jailbreaking their devices, within no time at all enthusiasts have bypassed those steps. A few days ago Apple released the iOS 4.3.4 update to stop hacking and jailbreaking, specifically an exploit in the way PDF files handle fonts. This exploit could potentially allow a...
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All good things must come to an end. With Sprint being the last major oasis for unlimited data plans, the news that subsidiary Virgin Mobile is going to begin throttling users is indeed negative. With competitors Verizon, and AT&T killing off their unlimited data plans and T-Mobile throttling users, customers desperate...
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Blackberry developer Research In Motion is reportedly working on a media box that connects to televisions and streams content from Netflix, Youtube, and other nearby media devices. The box, which is code-named the Blackberry Cyclone, is intended to compete with similar products from Apple, Google, and others. The specs for the box, which come...
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Google+ may be on track to be the fastest-growing social network in history, after an announcement Thursday by CEO Larry Page. As previously predicted by Ancestry.com founder Paul Allen, the service has had skyrocketing numbers, gaining as many as 2.2 million users within a period of 32-34 hours earlier in the week. The news of the...
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