Stardock's Sins of a Solar Empire leads PC game sales
Gamasutra's list of best selling games this week sees Sins of a Solar Empire in the number one slot, beating out Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and WoW: The Burning Crusade.
The Realtime Strategy/4X game was released on February 4, and has already received critical acclaim from several video game review publications. What has won it such praise is its unique combination of 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) civilization management gameplay with the battle speed of a RTS, and its sheer size, which creates an immersive effect heretofore unseen in strategy games.
Infogrames scoops up former SCE Studios boss
Confirming earlier reports, Sony Computer Entertainment's Phil Harrison has indeed taken a job with Infogrames, owners of the Atari brand.
Harrison stepped down from SCE at the end of last month. Industry insiders have speculated that his departure had a lot to do with Sony's failure to fully embrace social gaming, ceding control of the video game market to Microsoft and Nintendo.
Office Live Workspace beta now open to the public
Microsoft said Tuesday that it had opened up the beta of its Office productivity suite extension, offering a means of online collaboration for those that may not use its more expensive group productivity products.
The company first announced its efforts to bring its software-as-a-service vision to Office with the release of Office Live back in February 2006 in beta. However, at that time, it seemed to be more centered around assisting in the day-to-day functions of a small business rather than online collaboration for Office documents.
Dell challenges Panasonic in rugged notebooks
Today, Dell announced the availability of its Latitude XFR D630, a ruggedly designed notebook meant to serve as competition to Panasonic's Toughbook.
Though it cannot claim to have made the strongest nor first rugged laptops, Panasonic's Toughbook line of computers undoubtedly is the most recognizable rugged laptop brand on the market today. Dell, however looks to be moving in on the territory, by making direct challenges to Panasonic's performance.
Intel warns of lower margins due to flash meltdown
In a move that had a negative impact on stocks in general today, Intel lowered one of its key measures of profitability for the first quarter of this year due to lower than expected prices for NAND flash memory.
Some analysts are attributing Intel's move to uncertain demand for Apple iPods and other consumer electronics devices that use NAND flash.
Nokia to help move Silverlight to Symbian S60 devices
Every day, it seems, Microsoft is incrementally adding to its interoperability message. Tomorrow, as Nokia blurted out this morning, its regularly scheduled increment is a demonstration of Silverlight on a mobile platform other than Windows.
Today, Nokia provided something of a spoiler for tomorrow's keynote address at Microsoft's MIX '08 convention in Las Vegas: The two companies will be demonstrating Silverlight, Microsoft's runtime environment for rich graphics and functionality, running on the Symbian S60 mobile platform.
Google ports Gears to mobile to support offline app use
To some, the desktop version of Gears may have not made a lot of sense. But Google's port to mobile phones seems to show the platform's promise.
Google Gears was meant to assist sites in taking their Web applications offline, thus allowing developers to offer their services when no data connection is available. The functionality is added to a user's browser through a plugin for either IE or Firefox.
GPS in 3D may be coming to the US
Nav N Go, a producer of navigation software for handhelds, may finally be ready to bring its 3D GPS software to American handhelds, as it debuts its latest version this week at CeBIT in Hannover.
The company only recently began a strong appeal to United States clients, making its first appearance in the US at CES 2008 in January. At that time, the company was showing off its iGO multimedia navigation software, which today it has made official.
On second thought, IE8 will default to full Web standards
Should Microsoft choose for IE8 to follow the standards developers want or the ones they use? It's been a tough call, and late yesterday, the company reversed that call.
In a complete reversal of policy that will probably be reflected in later builds sent to private beta testers, the team building Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 has decided to make its Web standards-compliant mode -- the one reported to have passed the Acid2 standards compliance test -- the browser's default operating mode. The team made this choice apparently knowing full well that some existing Web pages -- those designed to work well with the majority browser rather than with written W3C standards -- may break.
Yahoo launches mobile web aggregator
Yahoo demoed a mobile application which it says will help users better manage online content.
OnePlace utilizes a bookmarking system to help users organize their data. Anything from news feeds, web sites, videos, images, e-mails, to search queries and other items are storable and automatically updatable without user interaction.
Broadcom acquisition could lead to cheaper Blu-Ray players
Without the format war going on in the background, Blu-ray consoles may no longer be able to justify artificial price premiums. So tech provider Broadcom may be stepping in to drive the adoption of cheaper components.
Broadcom announced Monday that it has acquired Sunext Design Incorporated, the US arm of Taiwanese company Sunext Technology which specializes in chips and architecture for optical drives.
Not your usual Microsoft keynote: Tom Brokaw
Last Wednesday in Los Angeles, developers and admins expecting Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer were treated to Tom Brokaw, a developer of a different kind with a message that changed the tone of the day, and maybe of Microsoft as well.
LOS ANGELES (BetaNews) - The message this time wasn't about how great things are, or how empowering the acceleration of agility can motivate the enterprise to harness the power of workflow. It was a mangled metaphor-free message, and it came from a source no one expected to hear from that day: former NBC News managing editor and NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw.
Microsoft Online Services extends SaaS to SMB users
At the Microsoft Office SharePoint Conference on Monday, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates unveiled plans to provide a software-as-a-service offering not just to the large enterprises already eligible for such a service from Microsoft, but to companies of all sizes.
Through the new Microsoft Online Services, business with less than 5,000 employees will be able to subsribe to Internet-based applications from Microsoft and its partners instead of buying hardware servers and software licenses. Initially, the company will offer subscription-based applications around e-mail and its SharePoint teamware.
Top-of-the-line phone added to pay-as-you-go service
Sprint Nextel's Boost Mobile brand this morning added the MOTOKRZR handset and two other phone models available to its Unlimited by Boost customers.
The Motorola MOTOKRZR was originally released in the middle of 2006, but is just now making the move to Boost Mobile, almost two years late. Specifically, the phone is available to Unlimited By Boost customers, who receive unlimited local and nationwide voice calling, plus talk, text, and Web for a fixed rate of $55 per month.
Growth in servers and mainframes may be slowing down
Worldwide server shipments showed "modest growth" during the last quarter of 2007, according to the latest numbers from analyst group IDC. Yet clearly, much of the growth happened at the lower end of the market, in x86-based Windows and Linux PC servers.
All told, server revenues picked up 2.4 percentage points from the final quarter of 2006 to reach $15.7 billion during the last three months of 2007. But Microsoft Windows-based servers shot up 6.9% in revenues and 9.8% in shipments during that same time.
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