EA loses $310 million, announces layoffs
Video game giant Electronic Arts released its second quarter fiscal 2009 results, and announced that as a cost-cutting measure, it will be eliminating 6% of its total workforce.
"Considering the slow down at retail we've seen in October, we are cautious in the short term," said EA's CEO John Riccitiello in a statement. Because of this, the company has cut its holiday forecast, typically the strongest quarter of the year.
DDoS attacks target anti-discrimation campaign sites
In the final days of the election season, representatives of two anti-discrimination campaigns in Florida and California have confirmed that they were both targeted Wednesday night and Thursday morning by denial-of service attacks.
Representatives for Florida's No on 2 campaign confirmed to BetaNews Thursday afternoon that trouble with their Web site has been traced to a denial of service attack launched yesterday. A similar attack hit California's No on Prop 8 site, as confirmed in a press release.
Sun earnings report casts a cheerless light
Citing the difficult economy and a tremendous hit on their intangible value, Sun's earnings outlook is so uncertain the company declined even to give guidance for their upcoming quarter during their 1Q earnings call on Thursday.
The company's announced loss in the July-to-September period exceeded even the prediction the company made last week; adjusted for charges, the loss is somewhere between 2 and 12 cents per share. (Analysts had predicted one cent per share.) The company posted a $1.677 billion loss for the quarter.
Analysts at odds over mobile phone sales
Did mobile phone sales start to tank a lot from July to September, or not? Analysts voice some disagreement over recent sales statistics and how those numbers should be interpreted.
Mobile phone shipments rose 3.2% in the third quarter of 2008, according to a year-to-year comparison from IDC. Another analyst group, ABI Research, put that number at 8.2%. In new reports, however, both analyst firms found smartphones to be a bright spot from July through September, and both predicted that the current economic crisis will cast a shadow on holiday sales.
AT&T revives free iPhone Wi-Fi hotspot access
UPDATE:: According to AT&T statements today, the free Wi-Fi hotspot offer is not limited to iPhone users, but also users of the BlackBerry Bold, Pearl 8120, and 8820.
AT&T today said that on November 4th, some 17,000 hotspots will be open to "select smartphones," which includes several BlackBerry models. The company has plans to offer the service to more devices in the future.
Hands on with Microsoft's new WorldWide Telescope beta
On Wednesday, Microsoft announced the "Equinox" beta update to the WorldWide Telescope, its vast astronomical visualization software. We spent some time with the software to see how well you can navigate the universe in 3D.
Since its launch last spring, the WorldWide Telescope has attracted over 1.5 million downloads -- hardly an unknown application, and yet it's so ridiculously vast that it's hard to say anyone knows the WWT. Plenty of people have carved out their own happy niches, though, and among the fresh charms of the Autumnal Equinox beta is improved display of the service's virtual guided tours.
Motorola to ship first Android phone in late 2009, delays spin-off
Motorola today announced plans to ship its first Android phone toward the end of 2009, while canceling some other phones expected to launch early next year and postponing the intended spin-off of its mobile device business unit.
As previously reported be BetaNews, Motorola started to reorganize its mobile phone organization last spring in anticipation of a spin-off, after trying in vain to produce a successor to its once-ubiquitous Razr phone.
Apple quietly refreshes MobileMe
Yesterday, Apple pushed out an update to its MobileMe service, promising an overall enhancement in performance.
MobileMe, Apple's e-mail synchronization service, had an extremely problematic launch this summer, with numerous outages, rashes of lost e-mails, and cases of surreptitious installations in Vista. Many users complained that "it just doesn't work."
Intel and Asus collaborate on open source 'dream' PC hardware
Today, Intel and Asus unveiled a collaborative project which they hope will yield the first PC designed by "crowdsourcing."
WePC.com has been created to give consumers a place to discuss ideas and designs for three styles of PC that Asus will eventually build with Intel Atom, Centrino 2, and Centrino 2 Extreme processors. The three categories are: Gamer, Notebook, and Netbook.
Beatles music to star in video game, but not Rock Band
At a press conference on Thursday, MTV Games and Apple Corps. announced that a variety of Beatles tracks will be licensed for use in "a global music project" -- but that project isn't the popular Rock Band title.
Representatives of Apple Corps, MTV and Harmonix, the Mass.-based gaming company actually building the game, were rather coy about what the project would be. Though the two surviving Beatles and the widows of John Lennon and George Harrison have all been part of the design and have been privy to game demos, no information was forthcoming on gameplay -- not even to say whether the game will have a competitive aspect.
PDC 2008: Windows 7, WS2K8 R2 will get PowerShell v2
At the early morning session on the final day of PDC 2008, architect Jeffrey Snover officially confirmed that Windows 7 and the R2 edition of Windows Server 2008 will both get version 2 of PowerShell as standard installation options.
In addition, Snover said, thanks to the ability for an upcoming version of the .NET Framework to run in systems without graphical overhead, PowerShell v2 will also be supported in Server Core, the streamlined, command-line-only installation option for Windows Server introduced with the 2008 edition. Server Core is typically meant for systems that do not need to be administered directly, and can instead use remote management tools.
New Google tools sift and sort search results
There's new information this week concerning Google SearchWiki, an experimental feature that allows users to annotate, rank, amend and rearrange search results, and to see how other people have modified theirs.
The feature is for the moment available to a relatively small subset of users, randomly selected, and could disappear as quickly as it turned up. (In fact, it bears some resemblance to a brief experiment in November 2007, in which users could give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to individual results, and to earlier tests that allowed for re-ordering, adding and removing lists from one's own results.)
Hot Topic launches AIR-based, DRM-free MP3 store
PDC 2008: Look out for the 'delighters' in Windows 7
Color, a Microsoft design team discovered with the aid of a focus group, is quintessential to a positive user experience. In advising developers to add delight to their apps, a team leader made a revelation about Windows 7's mission.
LOS ANGELES - During a mid-day session on best practices for designing applications to take advantage of Windows 7, Microsoft's principal design manager Samuel Moreau told attendees that his team was charged with the task of building new visual elements into the new user interface specifically to make users feel better about the operating system.
TiVo users can soon watch Netflix movies on-demand
Finally following through on a partnership that was announced over four years ago, Netflix subscribers will soon be able to stream movies directly to their TiVo DVR.
A limited beta test has begun where TiVo users can browse more than 12,000 movies and TV episodes available through Netflix's "Instant Watching" service, where it streams video over the Web instead of mailing a DVD. The companies expect to expand the capability to all TiVo users by early December.
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