Sony to finally open its PS3 online universe tomorrow
Today, Sony announced that its PlayStation 3 virtual world Home will be officially opened tomorrow, two years after it was initially announced. The free online service is the first console-based metaverse.
Creating a whole world for PlayStation 3 users is no small undertaking. First unveiled nearly two years ago, Sony's Home attempts to combine the online metaverse concept with the entertainment of console-based network gaming. Users create 3D avatars and home spaces where they can customize content, socialize, or play games.
'The cow goes moo,' 2008 edition
Speakaboo this week rolled out its holiday edition, which simultaneously allows you to bond with the kid in your life, contribute to a worthy cause, and have Principal Skinner tell you a story. How's that for multitasking?
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Beyond Ubuntu, IBM considers other Virtual Desktop environments
With the economy squeezing IT budgets, IBM hopes that the recently unveiled Virtual Desktop solution for Ubuntu Linux will be followed by similar company announcements for other Linux distributions, an IBM official told BetaNews.
IBM is interested in participating in a whole series of Virtual Desktop announcements for running users' desktops on Linux servers, according to Inna Kuznetsova, cross-IBM Linux executive, in an interview with BetaNews Tuesday afternoon.
The Amazon Honor System, 2001-2008
The "tip jar" system that provided a donation option for thousands of small sites in the early 2000s and raised millions for survivors of Hurricane Katrina and other disasters will turn off the lights on Thursday.
The Amazon Honor System launched after the implosion of the first dot-com era, offering small sites a means by which visitors could offer their support for the costs of furnishing well-liked content.
MySpace falls into Google's OpenID arms
Social-networking drama continues this week as MySpace plights its open-identification troth to Google Friend Connect. It also announced a name change for its own universal-login system.
The announcement came on the heels of news from both Facebook and Google that their respective OpenID systems are out of beta.
Parallel programming model adopted by AMD, Nvidia, among others
The graphics processor that's typically relegated to the process of filling triangles in geometric space with color, took a huge step closer to becoming an all-purpose code execution tool today, with the ratification of OpenCL 1.0.
Most PCs today have a minimum of two extraordinarily powerful processing mechanisms, and I'm not talking about "cores." The first is a compilation of multiple cores -- today, more often as many as four per unit, for 16 in a four-way server. The second uses a fundamentally different architecture, designed for pipelining identical instructions that are repeated tens of thousands of times, to be executed in parallel, in a process that on paper resembles the stretching and folding of taffy.
Level 3 to lay off 450, hires new president/COO
Fiber-and-telecom giant Level 3 will lay off around 450 employees, making up eight percent of its workforce, according to information released by the Broomfield, Colo.-based company on Tuesday.
The layoffs are expected to be confined to North American operations. The CDN (content delivery network delivery markets) groups, which handle video streaming services and the like, are not expected to take any cuts. The layoffs are starting now and should be effected by the end of December.
Google intros an unlocked 'developer's' G1 model for global use
Google is now offering an unlocked version of HTC's Android-based G1 phone which can be used almost anywhere. Priced at $399, the phone also contains features geared to advanced developers...if you don't mind its shipping costs.
Like T-Mobile, Google is now selling an unlocked version of HTC's Android-based G1 phone which is suitable for use just about anywhere, even outside the US. But Google's Android Dev Phone 1 -- ostensibly for developers -- is different from T-Mobile's because, among other things, it is flashable.
From LG to 4G: The first LTE phone chipset
At a research facility in Anyang, South Korea this morning, LG unveiled its Long Term Evolution (LTE) chipset, which it claimed is the first designed to provide mobile handsets with 4G connectivity.
The company claims the new 4G technology could provide downlink speeds of 60 Mbps and 20 Mbps and higher.
Microsoft open-sources a chunk of its Channel 9 code
Proving its refreshingly serious intent to become a truly contributing member of the open source community, Microsoft this week is releasing part of the engine for its own development blogs.
A recent incarnation of MSDN's very popular Channel 9 blog (one of Microsoft's best ideas in its history) remodels its ASP.NET infrastructure to take advantage of Microsoft's model-view-controller architecture. ASP.NET MVC is the system where the software components responsible for creating, assembling, and requesting data are kept separate from one another, resulting in simpler, faster code.
TiVo debuts ads during fast-forward and pause
With the TiVo Pause Menu that launched today, even if a user is fast-forwarding through the traditional ad breaks on a time-shifted program, he will still be subject to "premium" ads designed to appear in the truncated space.
The new system, announced this morning, would enable ads to be served during fast-forward or pause states.
Microsoft is open to purging its search caches after six months
Of the three major search engine companies, Microsoft is the first to voice its willingness to meet a request by EC regulators to keep users' search data for just six months. But Microsoft will only do so if Google and Yahoo also comply.
Microsoft told European authorities on Monday that it's willing to retain search data for six months rather than the current 18, but only if Google and Yahoo also agree to keep search data for six months.
Here comes the Mi-Fi: Novatel debuts its portable 3G hotspot
Novatel Wireless' Mi-Fi portable broadband hotspot is about the size of a triple-thick credit card, and does the job of a 3G modem and wireless router all in one unit.
Novatel Wireless' Mi-Fi portable broadband hotspotis about the size of a triple-thick credit card, and does the job of a 3G modem and wireless router all in one unit.
Titanium launched as 'open source alternative' to Adobe's AIR
Download Appcelerator Titanium Preview Release 0.1 for Windows from FileForum now.
Titanium -- a desktop, mobile, and Web development environment which enters public preview today -- is designed as a open source alternative for Windows, Mac and Linux developers to Adobe's AIR.
Now, it's Sony's turn to take the hit: What it means, and why
Sony was already suffering from internal issues, but now the global economy is forcing the CE giant to consider not only scaling down, but scaling back its innovations for next year.
That the global economic predicament should impact Sony, headquartered in one of the hardest hit countries, should surprise no one. This morning, the company admitted that it, too, is taking its medicine. It will cut 8,000 jobs in its electronics divisions worldwide, which is bad but not catastrophic news, and it will reduce temporary or seasonal employees as well.
