Microsoft tries to patent a working 'Magic Wand' for Xbox 360
With this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo (better known as E3) less than two weeks away, speculation has been steadily increasing about the big game companies' announcements. One of the major topics of chatter has been updated controller schemes, and entries for both the PlayStation3 and the Xbox 360 in the Wii-like motion controller category.
The latest application for a patent for such a device to come to light was filed by Microsoft in November 2007. Attributed to Chief Experience Officer James "J" Allard, it covers the architecture of a multi-sensor control environment.
Acer increases netbook size with new Aspire One
Acer unveiled its second-generation netbook products today, which include the 11.6" Aspire One 751h, a unit that goes for the bigger overall footprint but with a marginally slimmer profile.
Besides its 11.6" LCD screen (1364 x 768, 16:9), the Acer Aspire One 751h is equipped with a 1.22 GHz Intel Atom Z520, 1 GB SDRAM, and a 160 GB 5400RPM SATA hard drive. Not a lot has changed since the last generation, It comes installed with Windows XP Home SP3, has a multi-card reader, and supports 802.11b/g wireless. The suggested baseline retail price is even the same as the last generation: $349.99, or $379.99 with a six-cell battery.
Panasonic's losses quadruple Sony's: down $4.68 billion
This week, major Japanese consumer electronics companies posted their fiscal 2009 revenues, and provided an outlook into the coming year. To say earnings have been disheartening would be a multi-million dollar understatement.
Because of a harsh currency exchange and declining sales, Sony registered a loss of around one billion dollars, NEC's net loss was upwards of $3 billion, Hitachi lost a staggering $8.03 billion, and Sanyo -- which is in the process of merging with Panasonic -- reported a net loss of $970 million.
Verizon Wireless LTE deployment will be ready in 2H 2010, says CEO
Verizon has been an active supporter of LTE since 2007, and anticipated a rollout of the 4G wireless standard in the first half of 2010. Up to this week, judging from what company officials had been saying publicly, the first LTE deployment has been moving along swiftly. CTO Dick Lynch said he expected it would be ready as early as the final months of 2009.
But in an LTE developer's conference on Wednesday, Verizon brought those lofty goals back down to Earth a bit. Instead of the first half of 2010 for commercial deployment, Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam said the first 20 or 30 LTE markets won't be ready until the second half of the year, and complete US coverage won't be attained for another five years. He did not, however address Lynch's prognosis for an early first rollout. (Verizon Wireless is a joint venture between Verizon and Vodafone.)
HP notebook batteries recalled in response to burn hazard
If you're the owner of an HP Pavilion or Compaq Presario made in the last five years, the odds are in favor of you being involved in a battery recall of some sort. In 2005, some 80,000 Pavilion and Presario batteries were recalled, in 2006 another 4,100 were added. Most recently, the massive recall of more than 10 million Sony batteries affected around 32,000 HP notebooks last October.
This week another 70,000 have been tapped for recall.
Toshiba sues to block Imation/Memorex DVDs
Japanese consumer electronics company and fundamental DVD patent holder Toshiba filed a patent infringement suit yesterday against Imation Corp and related vendors for "reckless disregard of Toshiba's patent rights" in the creation of recordable DVDs.
Toshiba licenses its essential DVD patents both individually and jointly as a part of the DVD6C Licensing Group, which also includes Hitachi, Panasonic, JVC, Mitsubishi Electric, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, and Warner Bros.
Student-developed Flixster app comes to Android
Flixster, the social network for movie buffs, has taken strongly to the gadget, widget, and mobile app distribution channel. Following up on the success of its Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, and Orkut gadgets, it released a popular iPhone app at the end of summer 2008. Now the service has moved onto the Android platform and released a similar app.
Flixster's "Movies" app for iPhone was actually not developed by the company itself, but rather by a Carnegie Mellon sophomore Jeffrey Grossman, who released it to the iTunes App store on his own. Flixster hired Grossman as a consultant, bought his app, and re-branded it.
Sony loses a billion, but it's not alone
Sony has marked 2008 as a billion dollar loser.
But this is slightly good news. In January, the Japanese consumer electronics giant braced the public for 2008 earnings that it expected to be more than two and a half times worse. The bad part is that despite Sony's best efforts, which include a workforce reduction of 16,000 and closure of 8 manufacturing facilities, the strong Yen is responsible for 85% of the company's losses. The company's sales and operating revenue were only down 2% otherwise.
Verizon subsidized netbooks to come from HP
In March, Verizon representatives unofficially said that it could begin selling netbooks with nationwide broadband service as early as the second quarter 2009. Now, the company has said it will begin selling them on May 17.
For a moment, it looked like Verizon would follow AT&T's plan, and offer the Acer Aspire One netbook. At one point, Acer's brand name even showed up on the Verizon Wireless product page, though it was a dead link, and could potentially have correlated to another Acer product, such as its rebranded E-Ten smartphones.
RealNetworks calls Hollywood studios an 'illegal cartel'
RealNetworks is now pointing an accusatory finger at Hollywood, and yesterday filed a countersuit in the U.S. District court of Northern California calling the DVD Copy Control Association and its related Hollywood studios an "illegal cartel."
The suit originated late last year when Real's DVD archiving software RealDVD was taken to court, and then temporarily banned for violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The hearings continued, but it turned out that RealDVD wasn't the main reason for the litigation after all. The true threat, as RealNetworks would reveal, was a product known as "Facet" -- a set-top box that allows CSS-protected DVDs to be copied, stored, and recalled at any time, like a much cheaper Kalidescape (the product upon which Real based its initial defense.)
FCC: It should only take a day to change your phone number
The Federal Communications Commission will soon give voice communication service providers (wireline, wireless, and VoIP) only a single day to transfer a subscriber's number when they change carriers, instead of the previous four-day requirement.
"Delays in number porting cost consumers money and impede their ability to choose providers based solely on price, quality and service," the commission's statement yesterday said.
Clearwire aligns with Cisco for WiMAX
Today, mobile WiMAX operator Clearwire announced that its core infrastructure provider for the Clear 4G mobile WiMAX network moving forward will be Cisco.
Scott Richardson, Chief Strategy Officer of Clearwire said, "By teaming with Cisco, one of the world's most forward-looking IP network infrastructure providers, we're building a robust and cost-efficient next-generation network that's designed specifically for delivering rich broadband services."
Novatel portable hotspot to launch with Sprint, Verizon
Novatel's MiFi 2200 was unveiled last December, promising a portable 3G hotspot in a package no larger than a deck of cards. The unique device is unlike previous carrier-subsidized 3G modems in that it not only includes a wireless router for sharing connections, but that it also requires no host machine for use.
The 3.5" x 2.3" x .3" device weighs only 2.05 ounces, supports up to five simultaneous Wi-Fi connections, WEP and WPA2-PSK security, and includes SPI Firewall protection. The device is battery-powered and can run for about four hours on a charge. Novatel publicly showed the device off for the first time less than six months ago at CES 2009.
Retailers face new hurdles in their exodus to the Internet
This Friday, May 15, the United States Census Bureau will release its revised quarterly e-commerce market estimate, in which the government looks at overall retail performance and compares it with the online retail environment. Since the turn of the millennium, e-commerce has been expected to eventually supplant on-site shopping, and has represented an increasing portion of all retail sales. That is, it did until 2008.
Because of the recession, the Census Bureau last year predicted that growth would all but cease in e-commerce. The National Retail Federation found that these predictions were mostly true, and marked a 2% decline in Internet spending in 2008, the first such decline since becoming recognized as a significant retail channel.
Hanging up now: Verizon backs out of landline business in 14 states
In a deal valued at $8.6 billion, Verizon Communications has agreed to sell its wireline assets in Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Washington, West Virginia and parts of California to Connecticut-based Frontier Communications.
Verizon will spin off its assets into an independent business called New Communications Holdings Inc. (creatively called "SpinCo") which will then merge with Frontier's existing model in approximately one year's time. Frontier will earn 4.8 million lines and incur $3.3 billion in debt.
Tim's Bio
Tim Conneally was born into dumpster tech. His father was an ARPANET research pioneer and equipped his kids with discarded tech gear, second-hand musical instruments, and government issue foreign language instruction tapes. After years of building Frankenstein computers from rubbish and playing raucous music in clubs across the country (and briefly on MTV) Tim grew into an adult with deep, twisted roots and an eye on the future. He most passionately covers mobile technology, user interfaces and applications, the science and policy of the wireless world, and watching different technologies shrink and converge.
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