Second World of Warcraft expansion released
Blizzard Entertaiment today has released the second expansion pack for its indomitable World of Warcraft massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Naturally, it's an excuse to throw a big party.
Called Wrath of the Lich King, the game pack adds new zones, dungeons, skills and abilities to the nearly five-year old World of Warcraft realm. Last year, Blizzard announced that the game had more players than the entire population of New York City after the first expansion pack Burning Crusade, was released. In a single month, it sold 3.5 million copies.
Netflix to officially phase out HD DVD on December 15
Subscribers to the online movie rental service Netflix this afternoon found a not-entirely-unexpected message in their e-mail, informing them that HD DVD-based movie titles would not be available in one month's time.
"Effective December 15, 2008, we will no longer carry HD DVDs," the message from Netflix reads. "At that time, we will automatically replace any HD DVD titles in your Queue with standard DVDs when available. You don't have to do anything...Last February, we announced that since most of the major movie studios had decided to release their high-def movies exclusively in Blu-ray, we were going exclusively Blu-ray as well and would be phasing out our HD DVDs."
AOL, if you can believe it, breaks traffic records
The service formerly known as America Online is, to be blunt about it, more popular than you are. Yes, this is still 2008.
AOL may have driven off some very loyal users with the announcement last month that it was ditching its Journals and Hometown properties, but blog-style sites are still clearly working for the service. Its "programming sites" are breaking their own traffic records, and the company overall reports its 21st quarter of year-over-year growth in unique visitors.
At last, AMD inaugurates the 45 nm quad-core Opteron era
In perhaps the most difficult period of its history, the company that re-introduced value and performance to the CPU market finds itself having to do the same thing all over again.
On the heels of Intel's announcement that it is beginning the phase-out period for the 45 nm generation of quad-core processors that it introduced only in March 2007, AMD is announcing the immediate availability of its "Shanghai" class quad-core 45 nm processors. With frequencies capped well below 3.0 GHz, just as AMD did with the "Barcelona" class, its marketing emphasis will continue to be on low-power performance.
Alcatel-Lucent reorganizes again under former BT head
In September, networking technology joint company Alcatel-Lucent named Ben Verwaayen, formerly of British Telecom, its new CEO. The company today announced its completed leadership team that will take office on the first of the new year.
Alcatel-Lucent has been in a protracted transitional phase where it has not yet become profitable. As such, it has taken on an all new leadership team and a new business model. The new model breaks operations into three regions: the Americas, Europe/Middle East/Africa, and Asia-Pacific (APAC).
Games for Windows Live to get Marketplace, full title downloads
Microsoft Today unveiled upgrades to its Games for Windows Live service -- the PC equivalent of Xbox Live -- that immediately updates the interface, and promises a Games for Windows Live Marketplace in early December.
The re-design optimizes the Live interface for Keyboard and Mouse, John Schappert, VP of Live Software and Studios said, "This new release was designed specifically with our community of PC gamers and game developers in mind. It's a natural next step in delivering a world-class online service for Windows gamers."
BlackBerry unleashes Storms and Javelins upon the world
Research in Motion's first touchscreen BlackBerry, the Storm, will be coming to Verizon on November 21 for $249.99. Germany will be getting the Curve 8900 (a.k.a. "Javelin") by the end of the month.
Officially announced in October, the 3G touchscreen Storm offers tactile feedback, accelerometer-driven portrait/landscape layout swapping, a 3.2 megapixel camera, and BlackBerry's famous productivity application lineup.
Newber plans 'second number' app for iPhone, possibly Android
NEW YORK, N.Y. - Pending Apple's approval, an iPhone app will let you redirect business calls to voice mail when you're out with friends, while letting personal calls through. But the manufacturer is also eyeing Android and Windows Mobile.
Instead of depending completely on whichever mobile phone is in your pocket, what about making the phone number itself "mobile"? An application first built to do just that is still being considered by Apple's App Store -- and start-up FreedomVOICE Systems is now thinking very seriously about versions of its Newber software for other mobile platforms.
Windows Live gets upgrade, final Essentials release
Microsoft's Windows Live team today formally announced a number of upgrades to the Live platform that constitute its "next generation," a more unified experience across all the services within Windows Live.
Beginning in the coming weeks, existing Windows Live users' home.live.com page will change from the current straightforward (read: Google-ish) list of services to a social, profile-based (read: Facebook-ish) setup where all the existing Windows Live services are tied together with a central update feed.
Intel's profit warning follows a profit warning
It's being called the "economic Katrina," and now there are signs that it has officially made landfall. After already preparing investors for bad news, Intel yesterday took the unusual step of proclaiming the news will actually be worse.
The first clear signs of an approaching financial maelstrom for Intel came as early as last April, when the typical seasonal downturn in revenue extended into double-digit percentages. Something was wrong -- demand from businesses and consumers alike was falling demonstrably, and low-margin businesses such as flash memory were already feeling a serious squeeze.
Christmas shopping not looking so much 'Blu' as dismal
It's the first holiday season since Blu-Ray put a stake in the heart of the rival HD-DVD format, but if Sony and friends thought that would mean a clear field of fire on shoppers' wallets...sorry, wrong year.
One would think that the looming digital TV deadline in February 2009 would drive the purchase of at least the new television equipment. According to most statistics so far, one would be wrong about that -- even though HDTV prices are on the decline.
Navigon GPS to use NASA data for 'panoramic' 3D views
NEW YORK, N.Y. - At the CES Unveiled press event Tuesday, Navigon previewed the 8100T, a device touted as the first in-car GPS navigation system to offer panoramic 3D views of mountains, valleys, and other highlights of the surrounding landscape.
During a stop by BetaNews at the booth, J. Michael Martin, channel marketing manager, showed how the upcoming Navigon 8100T will use maps based on NASA terrain data -- along with a built-in graphics accelerator --to capture experiences such as driving up hills and peering down through ravines on its wide-screen 4.8-inch display.
Belkin says 'Switch to Mac'
Belkin today announced what would have otherwise been an unremarkable piece of cabling had it not been given a name that sounds like a piece of advice.
The cable is meant to recreate on a Windows machine the Mac's built-in Migration Assistant, which is used to transfer user accounts, applications, network and computer settings, files and volumes between Macs. Migration is also an optional process when initializing a new Mac.
SBS 2008, Essential Business Server 2008 now available
Download a 60-day trial edition of Windows Essential Business Server 2008 from FileForum now.
At last, small- and mid-size businesses now have access to the final commercial editions of Microsoft's pre-configured, feature-packed buildouts of Windows Server 2008 tailored for the needs of corporations smaller than, say, GM.
Flu-gle? Google project maps the misery
Stop calling your mom to ask her if those sniffles and aches mean you've got the flu. You're going to mess up Google's stats.
After a year of testing that involved correlating data and tweaking algorithms with the Epidemiology and Prevention Branch of the Influenza Division at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Google's got a new map that shows where people are searching for info on flu-related topics. According to its tests, the map can accurately estimate current outbreak levels two weeks faster than traditional flu-monitoring systems such as the CDC's own reports.
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