Wii continues to hammer PS3 in Japan

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1. Wii continues to hammer PS3 in Japan - 2007-07-03 12:16:26-04
   The Nintendo Wii continues to outsell both Sony's PS3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 in Japan. Although the Wii has been on sale since late last year, they're selling so briskly supply still hasn't caught up with demand and long lines form when shipments arrive at stores. Enterbrain Inc., the publisher, found that Wii also outsold Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) Xbox 360 in Japan in June. Nintendo, the maker of "Pokemon" and "Super Mario" games, sold 270,974 Will consoles in Japan in June, while Sony sold 41,628 PS3 machines, and Microsoft sold 17,616 Xbox 360 consoles, it said. Overseas sales weren't available. And the lead is getting larger: The latest numbers suggest that Nintendo's lead is widening. Wii outsold PS3 just four...
   
2. The secrets of mother-of-pearl strength - 2007-07-03 12:31:21-04
   Do you know that the nacre layer, or mother-of-pearl, which is found in pearls and abalone shells is 3,000 times more fracture-resistant than aragonite, the mineral of which it is composed? According to researchers at University of Wisconsin-Madison, this remarkable strength "is due to well-defined nanolayers of organics at the interfaces between micro-tiles of aragonite." "You can go over it with a truck and not break it -- you will crumble the outside [of the shell] but not the [nacre] inside. And we don't understand how it forms -- that's why it's so fun to study," said the lead researcher. But if becomes possible to harness the mechanism of formation of nacre, it would be possible to produce cars that...
   
3. Windows losing ground to Linux clients -- how far off can the servers be? - 2007-07-03 12:31:26-04
   Martin LaMonica at CNET has a blog on a new Evans Data survey that shows erosion on developer allegiance to Windows client ports. This makes for some interesting reading, along with the comments. I wonder who sponsored, if anyone, the survey. I can't vouch for the survey integrity, but the findings jibe with what I'm seeing and hearing -- only I think the erosion trend is understated in this survey, especially if global markets are factored. I think too that this represents more than a tug away from Windows purely by Linux clients, and may mask the larger influence of open source more generally, as well as virtualization, RIAs, Citrix, OS X, and SaaS. The impact of SaaS in particular...
   
4. Microsoft's worst run project: Windows 2000 - 2007-07-03 12:52:42-04
   Microsoft's Iain McDonald, director of project management for Windows Server, says the worst run project at the software giant was Windows 2000. That tidbit comes from an interview Mary Jo Foley just posted. To folks that aren't familiar with the intricacies of Microsoft this revelation is a bit of a stunner. Was Windows 2000 really a worse run project than Vista, which had a do-over in the middle of the project? Windows ME? That couldn't have been so hot. When you ponder all of Microsoft's worst hits--and the projects behind them--Windows 2000 doesn't instantly register.  In fact, Ed Bott gave Windows 2000 a 9 on a 10 scale in his rating of Windows versions. But who am I to...
   
5. iPhone descending a staircase - 2007-07-03 12:57:11-04
   Our friends at TechRepublic provide step-by-step instructions for disassembling an iPhone and, importantly, putting in back together again. I don't recommend you try this at home with your precious iPhone, but the photo gallery is worth a look as we head into the July 4th holiday in the U.S. As a bonus, I have uncovered that the aesthetically prone Steve Jobs may have based the interior of the iPhone on Marcel Duchamp's famous 1912 painting, " Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2." There is also an association, perhaps subliminal, with Jobs' favorite recording artist, Bob Dylan. The cover art for Dylan's 1978 recording, "Street Legal," shows Dylan descending a staircase, but not in the nude as in the case...
   
6. Google petitions again to weigh in on Microsoft-DOJ case - 2007-07-03 13:04:21-04
   If at first you don't succeed, complain, complain again. Google has filed a second request to be considered a friend of the court in the Microsoft-Department of Justice antitrust case. As noted by Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Todd Bishop, Google filed its latest five-page request on July 2, a week after Judge Collen Kollar-Kotelly rebuffed its initial attempt to weigh in on whether and how Vista's integrated desktop search violates terms of the antitrust consent decree. On June 25, Google filed a brief asking Kollar-Kotelly to extend antitrust oversight of Microsoft, as well as to force Microsoft to provide more specifics regarding its plans to alter Windows Vista's integrated desktop search technology in order to improve the performance of rival, third-party...
   
7. The Internet in Your Pocket - 2007-07-03 14:23:06-04
   With the title, you might have thought that this article was going to be about the iPhone. Well, not directly. The title refers to a talk that Tero Ojanpera, the CTO of Nokia, gave at the O'Reilly's Emerging Telephony conference last March. Olanpera says that "There is no such thing as a mobile Internet -- there is just the same Internet for everyone -- no matter how you access it." He believes that converged devices are the future because converged, programmable platforms allow you to mix and match content from various sources. Ojanpera points to two important changes that have occurred online: First, the middleman was eliminated--no one uses travel agents anymore. Second, active participation grew--blogs, social networks, and wikis...
   
8. LG to offer "YouTube" phone - 2007-07-03 15:20:35-04
   The Korean tech giant LG has signed an agreement with Google to develop a cellphone aimed specifically at YouTube users. Apple's iPhone might allow you to watch YouTube videos, but LG's phone goes several steps further, allowing you to record video and upload them directly to YouTube.  The phone will also support 3G and will go on sale in Europe int he second half of 2007. It's an interesting idea, but I do wonder how many YouTube users will be willing to pay for a cellphone to allow them to record and upload video without having to turn to a PC. Anyone here interested in such a phone?
   
9. Simplicity put Palm's Pilot on the map. Is Palm's Foleo 'PC' an encore performance? - 2007-07-03 15:54:49-04
   Much the same way Steve Jobs was Apple's Prodigal Son, returning to the company and reinvigorating it with the sorts of innovations that put it on the map in the first place, Palm founder Jeff Hawkins has apparently returned to his roots in hopes of sparking a revival at his legacy -- one that's based on the same principle that garnered Palm the attention it got in the early 90s: simplicity. The first result is Palm's $499 Foleo which is due out later this summer. Last week, while at Digital Experience in NYC, I got a chance to see the Foleo (captured in the above video) first hand. Coming in at around 2.5 pounds and offering 5 solid hours of...
   
10. Autonomy and Zantaz pursue dark matter - 2007-07-03 16:28:34-04
    Yesterday I wrote about Orchestria, software that provides policy management for messages and Web and file activity to prevent data leakage and ensure corporate governance and compliance with regulatory and corporate standards. I described this class of software as bring more fine-grained controls to unstructured data, the dark matter flowing through enterprises. Today Autonomy acquired Zantaz for $375 million in cash to bring some order to the dark matter. Automony is known for its enterprise search technology and Zantaz has focused on electronic discovery of unstructured data for compliance and litigation. In combination, the two companies could offer a service competes with Orchestria's, with real-time policy management, analytics and electronic discovery. Autonomy and Orchestria are joined by other firms trying...
    
11. From Web services to Web 2.0 -- same name, new game - 2007-07-03 17:27:31-04
    This week's announcement that Google had acquired GrandCentral Communications reflects one brand's evolution from Web services intermediary to Web 2.0 innovator. Up until a couple of years ago, we in the Web services/SOA world knew Grand Central as a kind of an integration-on-demand provider before the concept hit the mainstream. Now, a new GrandCentral is becoming well-known as an online service for integrating phone numbers and voice mailboxes into Web accounts. This is obviously a whole new company under the same name, but talk about a dramatic difference in business models. I had the opportunity to speak with CEO Halsey Minor on a couple of occasions back in the days of the old Grand Central, who described the company as...
    
12. iPhone Diary Day 6: iPhone's hidden RSS client - 2007-07-03 18:35:57-04
    Apple has answered one of my burning requests for the iPhone: a built-in RSS reader. Kinda. While it's not the dedicated RSS client that I hope they'll build for iPhone, it helps a news junkie get his fix on a slow EDGE data connection. It works like this: when you click on an RSS badge on a site Safari for iPhone it redirects you to a page at reader.mac.com. The page shows the RSS feed in a tight layout that's lean and mean. There aren't any settings to speak of, but you can create a bookmark of the reader.mac.com page and tap off to it via the little bookmarks icon on the bottom tool bar in Safari. Navigating to that...
    
13. Hillary's top strategist accused of illegal eavesdropping - 2007-07-04 00:20:44-04
    Illegal eavesdropping's not just for the NSA and Hewlett Packard. Hillary Clinton's top strategist has now been accused of improperly tapping into a rival's BlackBerry messages, The Washington Post reports. Mitchell E. Markel, a former vice president at the polling firm of Penn, Schoen & Berland, filed a lawsuit claiming his BlackBerry was monitored by the firm for nearly a month after he left to start a rival firm. Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's chief strategist, approved of the spying, Markel claims. Markel asserts that Penn, Schoen & Berland hacked into Markel's BlackBerry and set up a fake email account to which his emails were forwarded. Howard Rubin, an attorney for Penn, Schoen & Berland, denied the firm engaged in any...
    
14. Poll: Rush Limbaugh is giving away 10 iPhones, each with two-year calling plans - 2007-07-04 00:44:41-04
    I was visiting the Rush Limbaugh Show website earlier today. Didn't go there out of political solidarity (far, far from it), but to see how Rush was going to spin President Bush's outrageous commutation of Lewis Libby's sentence into something justifiable to his neocon dittoheads. While on the site, I discovered something interesting. Starting on Monday and lasting for the next ten days (except for july 4), Rush is giving away a total of 10 iPhones. Not only that, but the winning iPhones come with a check to cover the cost of two-year AT&T calling plans. Rush's spiel: Everybody who wins an iPhone, we're buying you a two-year service contract with AT&T. We will send you a check, roughly...
    
15. UK Archives, Microsoft tackle format obsolescence - 2007-07-04 00:58:17-04
    Can your office run Windows 3.1 or open documents written in Word 5? The fact that most people can't is of grave concern to the UK National Archives, the BBC reports. Archives chief Natalie Ceeney said society faced the possibility of "losing years of critical knowledge" because modern PCs could not always open old file formats. Thus the Archives welcomed a Microsoft initiative to allow PCs to read old documents in their native formats. At a launch event, Microsoft's UK head Gordon Frazer spoke of a looming "digital dark age." He added: "Unless more work is done to ensure legacy file formats can be read and edited in the future, we face a digital dark hole." The National Archives has...
    
16. FeedBurner becomes FreeBurner - 2007-07-04 01:08:01-04
    It's not unusual for Google to acquire a company and make their flagship product completely free -- it has happened several times in the past with Keyhole (Google Earth), Picasa, SketchUp, and Urchin (Google Analytics). Surely it wouldn't stop there. Today Google announced that two previously for-pay services from FeedBurner are now completely free -- they are called MyBrand and FeedBurner Stats PRO. MyBrand lets you take the FeedBurner service to a new level by using your own domain name as the feed URL. This has several advantages for all bloggers, but mostly for larger blogs or blog networks by allowing feeds to reflect your own brand. Instead of a URL that looks something like http://feeds.feedburner.com/zdnet/Google, it's now completely possible...
    
17. US-CERT heads to Estonia to help, learn about cyberattack - 2007-07-04 01:17:47-04
    US-CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) is headed to Estonia to do a little forensics on the well-reported cyberattack that took out much of the small country's infrastructure, InfoWorld reports. Gregory Garcia, assistant secretary for cyber security and telecommunications with DHS, said: "We are sending someone from our organization ... to help them with forensic analysis and to do some additional training on how to secure their infrastructure". Estonia accused Russia of attacking its networks and early press reports backed the charges up, but now investigators now say they don't know exactly was behind the incident. "The data that we have does not speak to who's behind it. There's no smoking gun," said Jose Nazario, senior security engineer with Arbor Networks,...
    
18. Captain Cyborg and the Problem of Evil - 2007-07-04 03:15:41-04
    (This is a re-run, from Dec 16/05.) While looking at a problem related to archiving thousands of project proposals and reports for a large IT consulting firm I was struck by the ease with which these could be classified into two strongly differentiated groups: those based on clerical or other worker replacement, and those focused on enabling an existing workforce to do more, better, or different things. I think this is a general phenonmenon that reflects fundamental value differences between data processing and scientific computing. Thus virtually all data processing projects from the introduction of IBM's Hollerith Type III Tabulator in 1921 through to today seem to focus on benefits to be achieved through the replacement of clerical and other...
    
19. Firefox improved on Vista, but still no protected mode - 2007-07-04 03:17:31-04
    Since our last article on Firefox's problems with Vista, considerable progress has been made to improve the browser for Microsoft's newest operating system. We caught up with Mike Schroepfer, VP of Engineering at the Mozilla Foundation, to bring us up to date. [ZDNet] When Vista first came out, users reported a number of problems running Firefox on it. Have these issues been worked out now? For example, Users were unable to set Firefox as the default browser for all applications. [Schroepfer] Vista changed the way in which default applications are registered. There are many applications currently shipping which do not use the OS provided API's to launch the default application and instead try and read the registry directly to determine...
    
20. AMD posts blatantly deceptive benchmarks on Barcelona - 2007-07-04 03:37:50-04
    After AMD admitted the bad news last week that their Barcelona product would be late and underwhelming on clock speed, the AMD propaganda machine has gone in to hyper drive with the latest salvo of blatantly deceptive benchmarks.  After claiming to have the high-road on ethics, AMD showed hypocrisy on three separate occasions (one, two, and three).  But this latest round of deceptive benchmarks is so outrageous that it's criminal. On AMD's "Barcelona" performance page, AMD shows the following fictitious and outdated information.  Apparently some of these misleading numbers are even showing up on Wall Street Journal advertisements. It's fictitious since AMD doesn't have a 2.6 GHz Barcelona quad-core CPU and they won't even have it in September which is...