Only a few days after Valve's Gabe Newell dished on why Valve, makers of the Half-Life series, doesn't develop for OS X, it seems that Apple decided that they needed to make their position known as well.Bear in mind that Newell's general explanation revolved around Apple changing their support team rather frequently, and not seeming to have...Read more...
Who would have thought of a cell phone that could double as health monitor and inspirational trainer? Japan's NTT DoCoMo Inc., that's who.So what all does a cell phone/fitness trainer do for you?It's probably a shorter list of things it won't do for you:“The sensor can tell whether you're walking, running, climbing stairs, or resting,...Read more...
The Minnesota file-sharing case that we've been reporting on is now over, and the RIAA has won. Perhaps that's not the end of the story, however, as the odd & contradictory statements from the defendant were perhaps topped by some made by a music industry rep.One of the experts called to testify in the trial was none other than Sony...Read more...
Viewsonic has added three new monitors to its lineup. All the new screens are priced at under $349. New offerings include 19" and 22" in widescreen format, and a non-widescreen 19". With a Dynamic Contrast ratio of up to 4000:1 (typ), the VX1940w and VX2240w provide many benefits such as enhanced light and dark images and reduced...Read more...
As the launch of Apple and Starbucks' partnership nears (October 2nd) Starbucks has announced a promotion running from October 2nd to November 7th, in which customers at participating locations can download the "Song of the Day" (selected by Starbucks, naturally), free from iTunes.From Oct. 2 to Nov. 7, baristas in the company's more than...Read more...
It would appear that Sony is shopping around for companies willing to buy their cell architecture, and Toshiba may be the next owner of the technology and/or the production facilities.The rumored price for the deal: A whopping $870 million.“The speculation comes amid intensifying competition among the world's computer chip makers, including...Read more...
You won't have to say "cheese" any longer with this new Sony camera feature. Using face detection technology, the camera won't snap a high-definition picture until a selected subject smiles."Using the smile recognition shutter function selected by the touch panel, you can pick which of up to eight people is the key smile," said Akira Tokuse...Read more...
A mistranslation or misinterpretation of a statement by Sony's vice president for consumer electronics, Katsumi Ihara, led many U.S. media outlets to believe that Sony was dropping all support for DVD. But in reality, that's not the case.The Japanese Agencies press service translated Ihara's statement as follows: "We plan to make all our...Read more...
Sony announced four new models of Blu-ray disc recorder/players today. The new models have big capacity -- up to 16 hours of hi-def programming on 50 GB discs. The most expensive model has a 500GB hard drive, to boot, but you'll pay for it -- $1752. Note to Sony: the room I watch movies in didn't cost that much to build. "With...Read more...
The Wikipedia entry for Microsoft's upcoming Halo 3 has been edited by none other than somebody in the Liverpool offices of Sony Computer Entertainment Studios Europe.Without further ado, here is the edit: “The original entry stated: 'Halo 3, the third game in the best-selling Xbox game franchise Halo, is a highly anticipated first-person...Read more...
Sony has a two tier model and pricing structure for their Playstation3 consoles. They sell their old model with the 60 gigabyte hardrive for US $499, and a modestly more powerful 80 gigabtye model for $599. According to Sony Games President David Kararaker, Sony has shipped all the 60 gigabyte consoles they are ever going to make, and once...Read more...
Electronics giant Sony announced a new version of its Walkman today. But instead of Pet Shop Boys and Flock of Seagulls cassette mix tapes, this one plays digital media, including video. And Sony was sure to point out that the devices aren't tied to any particular media format, unlike *cough* Apple *cough* players. And to sort of drive the...Read more...
Super Talent Launches New Family of Personal Media Players San Jose , California - Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of DRAM memory modules and flash storage solutions, today launched a new line of VIDEGO personal digital media players. These...Read more...
It's been nearly two years since since Sony got into the rootkit business. Not intentionally, but the DRM installed by Sony BMG CDs when you tried to play them on your PC had rootkit qualities. Not only that, but in a real-life example of the vulnerability, hackers used it to hack World of Warcraft.Unfortunately, it seems Sony did not learn...Read more...
We first took a look at Intel's P35 Express chipset back in May, when it was released into the wild to supplant the still relatively youthful P965 and usher in the era of DDR3 memory and 1333MHz FSB Intel processors. The P965 is a tough act to follow. Despite its intended mid-range market placement, Intel didn't hamper the P965 in any way...Read more...
It's amazing that there are still Sony batteries in the world left that have not been recalled. Or at least, it seems that way. Today Toshiba annunced its second recall of Sony batteries in a month. This time around, the Consumer Product Safety Commission says 1,400 of the lithium-ion batteries containing Sony-made cells sold with...Read more...
Panasonic System Solutions Company has created the so called “Walkthrough Iris Identification System,” which is a device that can scan a person’s iris while he/she walks through. As we may have already seen in the movies, iris identification is a highly advanced type of biometric authentication technology that does not use ID cards or passwords,...Read more...
Perhaps signalling another nail in the coffin of DRM, Universal Music Group has announced that it will begin a test program of DRM-free music sales, starting August 21st and lasting through January 31st of next year. Surprisingly, the songs will not be available through iTunes, which has already been selling DRM-free music from EMI, though...Read more...
Sony’s PlayStation 3 has experienced a huge problem with sales ever since its release in late 2006. Just when things were starting to look up with the price cut on the PS3 and the widespread backing of Blu-ray technology, the PS3 has managed to get itself in a bind again. U.S. company Parallel Processing has filed a lawsuit against Sony on...Read more...
Halo 3, due to be the last installment in Bungie’s wildly popular franchise, is going to support 4 player cooperative play mode: “So you were probably wondering why we didn’t want to commit to two player co-op online over Xbox Live. We certainly got plenty of mail asking, no, demanding that we make it happen. Of course we were working on...Read more...
Apple recently made an announcement that its iTunes online music service has reached the 3-billion-downloaded-songs mark. In fact, Apple’s iTunes Store recently outshined both Amazon and Target and took the number three spot in the list of America’s largest music retailers. Apple’s vice president of iTunes, Eddy Cue, stated, “‘We’d like to...Read more...
While Gordon Gekko (from the movie Wall Street) might have argued that greed is good, excessive amounts of it aren’t always conducive to effective business relationships.Enter Steve Jobs and Sony CEO Howard Stringer. Both of them are running corporations that sell music, and it appears that friction has developed as a result. Jobs called...Read more...