GamePark’s GP2X F-200 handheld ships

Published in October 30th, 2007

We’ve all over GamePark’s handheld in the past, and it looks like the company is finally ready to let us have one of our very own — the touchscreen Linux-based handheld emulation monster is shipping for $169. Features include SDHC support, improved 8-way D-pad, the 320 x 240 QVGA touchscreen, and all the other features that’s made the original F-100 model so popular. Hit the read link to get hacking.

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Ratchet & Clank do it again (AP)

Published in October 30th, 2007

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A mascot is only effective if you know what he stands for. Just as most Americans connect Mickey Mouse with Disney and Tony the Tiger with Kellogg’s, every gamer associates Mario with Nintendo and Sonic the Hedgehog with Sega. ADVERTISEMENT

Since the introduction of the PlayStation in 1995, Sony has tried to find a mascot as distinctive as Nintendo’s. Candidates have included Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Sly Cooper (a fox) and Daxter (an “ottsel”). But despite the fact that all of them have headlined some excellent games, none has become synonymous with Sony. That doesn’t mean we don’t have a soft spot for them. Since the debut of the PlayStation 3, I’ve been looking forward to the system debut of the “lombax”/robot team of Ratchet & Clank. Now that it’s arrived, I’m wondering: Why aren’t these guys as big as Mario? _”Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction” (Sony, for the PlayStation 3, $59.99): Ratchet is apparently the last surviving lombax, sort of a cross between a raccoon and a bobcat; Clank is his robot sidekick. In “Tools of Destruction,” the boys are on the run from Emperor Tachyon, a despot who bears a grudge against the entire lombax species. The chase takes our heroes to a variety of gorgeously rendered planets, with Ratchet hoping the trail will lead to his home world. As in the previous games, “Tools” deftly mixes platform running-and-jumping with mind-blowing firepower. New weapons include a tornado launcher and the Groovitron, which causes all your enemies to dance rather than fight. There’s an impressive variety of gameplay — from straightforward shooting to outer-space battles to an infectious little puzzle challenge — with very tight controls. Even after you finish your missions on a planet, you’ll want to come back and find all the hidden treasures. With Pixar-quality animation in service of a frequently hilarious story, this is the most delightful PS3 game yet. Four stars out of four. _”Crash of the Titans” (Sierra, for the Wii, Xbox 360, $49.99; PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, $39.99; DS, $29.99): Crash Bandicoot emerged from the Naughty Dog studio in 1996 as a scatterbrained hero with a devastating, tornadolike attack. Since Naughty Dog moved on to Jak and Daxter and palmed Crash off on other developers, he hasn’t matured much, bottoming out with last year’s dreadful “Crash Boom Bang!” In “Crash of the Titans,” the villainous Neo Cortex is creating an army of mutants. The twist is that Crash can “jack” the titans — that is, he can stun them, mount them and then control them. Each of the titans has different characteristics, so there are new skills to learn on just about every level. When you’re not riding a titan, however, the action is pretty generic, basically running, jumping and punching your way through extremely linear levels. The graphics, even on the Xbox 360, are bland, and the fixed camera angles make it easy for enemies to sneak up on you. This game won’t make Crash a star again, but it’s a step in the right direction. Two stars. _”The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night” (Sierra, for the Wii, $49.99; PlayStation 2, $39.99; DS, $29.99): The three Spyro adventures that Insomniac Games created between 1998 and 2000 were some of the PlayStation’s most satisfying — if underrated — games. Insomniac moved on to Ratchet & Clank, while Spyro was adopted by lesser studios that haven’t been able to capitalize on his charm. “The Eternal Night” is the second chapter of a planned trilogy, and it’s unnecessarily morbid. The dragons are at war with the apes (yeah, whatever) and Spyro has to repel the hordes by whipping his tail and breathing fire. The platform-jumping sections are weirdly difficult for a character with such inherent kid appeal, and even the addition of “dragon time” (which slows everything down, a la “The Matrix”) doesn’t make them much more tolerable. Clunky animation and horrendous voice acting (from fairly big names like Elijah Wood and Gary Oldman) round out a disappointing package. I hope Spyro someday finds a developer that loves him; the little guy deserves better. One-and-a-half stars. __ On the Net: _”Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction”: _”Crash of the Titans”: _”The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night”:

Microsoft shows off future features of Project (InfoWorld)

Published in October 30th, 2007

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San Francisco (IDGNS) - Microsoft showed off some features of the next version of Project, to the delight of the crowd gathered at the Microsoft Office Project Conference in Seattle. ADVERTISEMENT

The audience applauded a new timeline view that will become available. Alice Steinglass, senior program manager for Microsoft Office Project, showed how users can cut and paste the timeline into other applications, such as a PowerPoint slide. Once pasted, users can alter individual components of the image, deleting sections and changing the font, for example. That's one feature that furthers Microsoft's goal of making Project not only easier to use for project managers but usable by more people in an organization. "At the end of the day, the fundamental thesis here is that we are all project managers because we all manage work," said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, addressing the audience on Tuesday. "Whether my personal project management system happens to look more like a formal project or a task list that I might keep in something like Excel or Outlook, we need to make sure that we give rich tool sets to people at all levels of the food chain to help them do work management." A major user interface change to come within Project that Steinglass showed off is the icon ribbon at the top of the screen, similar to the one featured on many other Microsoft programs such as Word. Users can click on different tabs at the top and the icons available in the ribbon change. With the click of an icon, users can, for example, filter for incomplete tasks or group by resource name. These functions currently require several clicks in Project 2007. Future versions of Project will give customers an easier way to customize fields. The current method is complicated and will eventually be replaced with a blank column that users can simply start filling in with any information they want. As soon as they do, a new blank column automatically appears. If a user inputs a dollar figure in the column, the rest of the column automatically configures for dollars. Steinglass also showed off enhancements that will come to Web access to Projects. If a user makes changes to several time frames for completing tasks, the application won't automatically update the overall schedule, so as not to slow down performance. When a user is done making changes, a Calculate Changes button makes the alterations, highlighting every item that has changed. Users can hit Undo repeatedly to get rid of changes. Microsoft doesn't even have a name for the next version of Project, so there's no time frame for when these features will become available. Project 2007 began shipping earlier this year, and some Project 2003 users say they're waiting for the first Service Pack release before they'll move to the latest version. Microsoft executives expect that Web access will become important in the future. Practically every user of Project will take advantage of Web access, allowing partners and remote workers access to it from online, said Mike Angiulo, general manager of the Microsoft Project business unit. Ballmer wagered that in five years, about 50 percent of Project customers would use a fully hosted version, with the rest using an on-premise server. Microsoft may also do some work enabling more access to Project from Windows Mobile devices. While there is a need for access to Project from mobile phones, users won't want the full version, Ballmer said. "What you want to do is say what aspects of the Project experience are people going to want to take on the phone," he said. For example, people may want to check on the status of a project and input information from their phones, he said. Some existing functions already available let people use their phones to change tasks within Outlook and those changes will be replicated on the Project server, said Angiulo. On Monday, Microsoft said that in two or three weeks it will announce the ship date for Service Pack 1 for Project 2007. When pressed for more details on Tuesday, Angiulo said that it's on the same schedule as the release date for Office 2007. He added that the final code is being tested, an indication that release is imminent.

Microsoft gets more time to fight states (AP)

Published in October 30th, 2007

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SEATTLE - A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday granted Microsoft Corp. an extra week to respond to states pressing for extended oversight of the software company as part of a 2002 antitrust settlement. ADVERTISEMENT

Two separate groups of states filed motions last week asking U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to monitor Microsoft for five more years, through 2012. Kollar-Kotelly gave Microsoft until Nov. 6 to oppose the motions, a week longer than the states requested. In one court filing, New York, Maryland, Louisiana and Florida said they were concerned that the oversight may not have “enough traction to enhance long-term competition” among makers of computer operating systems. The judge gave the U.S. government a Nov. 9 deadline to submit an amicus brief, and said the states must file additional responses by Nov. 16. She also canceled a status hearing that was slated for Nov. 6. The antitrust settlement reached between Microsoft, the federal government and 17 states barred the software maker from certain anticompetitive behaviors and sought to keep it from using its operating system monopoly to quash competition in other types of software. While Microsoft and the states spar in court, Kollar-Kotelly herself extended parts of the consent decree — originally set to expire Nov. 12 — to no later than Jan. 31, 2008.

CE-Oh no he didn’t! Part XLVII: NBC Universal chief says Apple “destroyed” music pricing

Published in October 30th, 2007

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CE-Oh no he didn’t! Part XLVII: NBC Universal chief says Apple “destroyed” music pricing

Posted Oct 29th 2007 8:26PM by
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CEO Jeff Zucker clearly did not get enough raisins in his cereal this morning, because dude was not holding anything back during that he gave at Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Communications — in addition to saying NBC had made only $15M in iTunes video sales despite being the number one producer of content, he flat-out said that Apple and iTunes had “destroyed the music business” in terms of pricing and that video was next unless “we take control.” Of course, seeing as consumers can access Universal’s entire music catalog with various subscription services for under $10 a month ($36 a year, in the case of Yahoo Music) and entire NBC shows for free on the web, but still choose to buy songs and shows straight-up on iTunes anyway, it might be fair to say that NBC Universal is still figuring out how to monetize its content effectively, but really, where’s the fun in that? , fight!

IBM to recycle silicon for solar (InfoWorld)

Published in October 30th, 2007

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San Francisco (IDGNS) - IBM announced Tuesday that it has created a process allowing its manufacturing facilities to repurpose otherwise scrap semiconductor wafers. ADVERTISEMENT

Since the silicon wafers need to be nearly flawless in order to be used in computers, mobile phones, video games, and other consumer electronics, the imperfect ones are normally erased with acidic chemicals and discarded. IBM had been sandblasting its castoffs to remove proprietary material. Some of the pieces, called "monitors," are reused for test purposes. The new process cleans the silicon pieces with water and an abrasive pad, leaving them in better condition for reuse. The entire process to clean an 8-inch wafer is about one minute. Eric White, the inventor of the process, said that IBM can now get five or six monitor wafers out of one that would have been crushed and discarded. The cleaned wafers can also be sold to the solar-cell industry, which has a high demand for the silicon material to use in solar panels. White said that shortage would need to be "extreme" to use the wafers in consumer electronics and that IBM does not plan to do so. The IBM site in Burlington, Vt., has been using the process and reported an annual savings in 2006 of more than $500,000. Expansion of the new technique has begun at IBM's site in East Fishkill, N.Y., and 2007 savings estimates are more than $1.5 million. The Vermont and New York plants are IBM's only semiconductor manufacturing sites. Chris Voce, an analyst with Forrester Resarch, does not anticipate savings for the end-user, but added, "When a semiconductor company can improve its process and drive efficiency into their manufacturing process, that's always great for their margins, but it's even better when there are broader benefits for the environment." Annually, IBM estimates that the semiconductor industry discards as many as 3 million wafers worldwide. IBM plans to patent the new process and provide details for the semiconductor manufacturing industry.

Payouts for Seagate workers in N.Ireland (AP)

Published in October 30th, 2007

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DUBLIN, Ireland - Seagate Technology, a leading maker of computer hard drives, offered big payouts Tuesday to more than 900 workers being laid off at a Northern Ireland plant. ADVERTISEMENT

The U.S. company said it would offer departing workers six weeks’ pay for each year they worked at Seagate’s 10-year-old plant in Limavady, Northern Ireland — but only if they stay in their jobs until the plant’s planned July 2008 closure. But local politicians criticized the offer because of the strings attached, even though it would mean employees get parting payments averaging more than 22,000 British pounds ($45,000). Employees who leave Seagate before the plant shuts down would get smaller but still substantial payouts, based on four weeks’ pay for each year worked. Limavady politician John Dallat said the company’s offer was disingenuous “because the only people who qualify fully are those who stay around for the ‘final hanging.’ We know, from the experience of other workers, that those who stay to close the factory gate have reduced their chances of a new job to practically nil.” Seagate is the largest private-sector employer in northwest Ireland, attracting many of its workers from across the border in the Republic of Ireland. It told the Limavady work force of its closure plans Monday and revealed the layoff terms Tuesday. The plant manufactures aluminum substrates, a core component for hard drives. Seagate says labor, shipping, utilities and other costs have grown too high in Northern Ireland, exacerbated by the U.S. dollar’s exceptional weakness versus the British pound. The company already buys most of its substrates from other suppliers and plans to open a new substrate-making facility in Malaysia next year. The Northern Ireland government said it was investigating its legal right to ask for Seagate to pay back some of the millions in British state funds contributed to developing Seagate plants at Limavady and in Londonderry, where 1,400 are employed making read-write heads for hard drives. Seagate says those jobs are not at risk. Seagate has received more than $30 million in aid from the government’s Invest Northern Ireland agency and its predecessor, the Industrial Development Board of Northern Ireland, since the U.S. company was wooed to the British territory in 1993. ___ On the Net: Seagate’s Limavady site:

Samsung unveils Super-WriteMaster 16x DL DVD burner

Published in October 30th, 2007

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Samsung unveils Super-WriteMaster 16x DL DVD burner

Posted Oct 29th 2007 7:30PM by
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has rolled out its fastest yet, with the Super-WriteMaster (ha!) SH-S203N running at 20x for DVD±R discs, 16x for dual layer DVD+R variants, 12x for DVD-RAM, and progressively slower for other disc standards. It’s all kitted up with a SATA connection standard, and supports LightScribe burning so you know what the hell’s on that disc you just burnt. Samsung says this is the fastest dual layer DVD burner out there: we don’t know if that’s true, but we do know it’s faster than our crappy 8x DL burner. Pick it up anywhere from now for $79.99.

Seven-year Internet tax ban heads to President (InfoWorld)

Published in October 30th, 2007

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San Francisco (IDGNS) - The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a seven-year extension to an Internet tax ban, the final step before the legislation heads to President George Bush to be signed into law. ADVERTISEMENT

The House on Tuesday approved the Senate version of the Internet tax moratorium, which would ban Internet-only taxes such as access taxes for seven years. The current ban has been in effect since 1998, except for a lapse during most of 2004. Many supporters of the moratorium had , but some lawmakers and state and local government groups had that a permanent ban would hurt state and local governments' ability to raise money. Opponents of a permanent ban also questioned if telecom carriers would try to expand the ban to services such as VoIP. Bush is expected to sign the legislation. He has supported an Internet tax ban, and he signed the last extension, passed by Congress in late 2004. The ban on Internet taxes expires Thursday. Lawmakers in favor of extending the ban say it's important to promote the adoption of broadband, which, in turn, creates jobs and improves the U.S. economy. Earlier this month, . After the Senate passed the seven-year ban last Thursday, the House on Tuesday voted 402-0 for the seven-year ban. The tax moratorium does not ban sales taxes online. It applies only to taxes that would be unique to the Internet, including taxes on Internet access. Sen. John Sununu, a New Hampshire Republican, praised the House for passing the seven-year ban, which he cosponsored. The Senate version of the bill, awkwardly named the Internet Tax Freedom Act Amendments Act, specifically exempts e-mail and instant messaging from taxes after some groups raised concerns that the House version of the bill could allow taxes on those services. "It's great to see Congress act on time for a change and take an enormous step for Internet tax freedom — banning access taxes and protecting e-mails and instant messaging for the next seven years," Sununu said in a statement. "I will continue to fight for a permanent ban on access taxes, but this is a strong step forward. Taxing the Internet is wrong for consumers and wrong for the economy." The United States Telecom Association, a trade group, and Verizon Communications both praised Congress for passing the extension. "Broadband access is now a crucial driver of America's economy, and this moratorium extension will ensure continued investment and growth in the broadband marketplace," Peter Davidson, Verizon's senior vice president of federal government relations, said in a statement. "This is good for consumers and businesses across the country."

IBM taps Alcatel for unified communications strategy (InfoWorld)

Published in October 30th, 2007

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San Francisco (IDGNS) - IBM and networking provider Alcatel-Lucent are teaming up to take Microsoft head-on in the unified communications market. ADVERTISEMENT

Through the partnership, announced in Boston at the Fall VON conference Tuesday, Alcatel-Lucent is offering integration of its OmniTouch audioconferencing feature into IBM Lotus Sametime, the companies said. Customers that have both Alcatel-Lucent's OmniTouch Unified Communication software and IBM's Lotus Sametime product can take advantage of the new offering, which will be available in the next few weeks on IBM's Web site for . The move is the first time IBM and Alcatel-Lucent have collaborated on unified communications, though IBM counts other networking providers — such as Cisco Systems, Avaya, and Nortel Networks — as partners in this market. IBM is positioning itself as an open-standards alternative to , which made a big splash earlier this month in San Francisco when it launched , the linchpin of its unified communications strategy. Microsoft also has cozied up to telecommunications companies, as well as networking and wireless handset providers to push its products in this market. The deal announced Tuesday calls for Alcatel-Lucent and IBM to offer the OmniTouch My Teamwork for Lotus Sametime, a free plug-in that provides the ability to click-to-conference directly from both Lotus Sametime and Lotus Notes, as well as to provide audioconference scheduling and management from Lotus Sametime's Web conferencing feature. Akiba Saeedi, an IBM program director for unified communications and collaboration, said that as not only an application, but also a platform on which partners can build new software for unified communications. The company's open-standards architecture is designed to make it easy for partners such as Alcatel to build software that can plug-and-play directly into the product, she said. Other companies that have built unified communications plug-ins for Sametime include Cisco and Avaya, which have both built click-to-call features for Sametime, and Polycom and Radvision, which also offer audio- and videoconferencing add-ons to Sametime. Microsoft also has tapped some of these same companies to support its Office Communications Server. However, Saeedi said that Microsoft also has built audio and video features into its platform that compete with offerings from its partners. Taking a different tack, IBM wants partners to add value to Sametime and does not plan to build features that compete with plug-ins they provide, she said.