After an initial refusal to turn over data to the at attorneys general representing eight US states, MySpace has now agreed to release the list of names of sex offenders registered on social networking website after the group subpoenaed MySpace for the information.

“Our subpoena compels this information right away – within hours not weeks, without delay – because it is vital to protecting children,” said Connecticut state attorney general Richard Blumenthal.

The group sent a letter to MySpace on the 14th of this month requesting the list of sex offenders along with documented steps that MySpace has taken to identify and remove the individuals accounts from the site. MySpace initially declined the request referencing the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and noted that they frequently have and do intend to cooperate with law officials provided that the proper …

The eyes of the gaming world were focused on Seoul, South Korea this past Saturday to see what the creators of “World of Warcraft” were about to unveil. At the Olympic Gymnastic Stadium fans and press alike watched the spectacular light show showcasing the accomplishments of Blizzard Entertainment, the makers of the world’s most popular massive multiplayer online role-playing game as well as the “Diablo” and “Starcraft” franchises. To say that “Starcraft” is a popular game for Koreans is an understatement; this is a nation where concerts are held featuring Korean pop stars singing tunes inspired by the 8-year-old real-time strategy (RTS) game. There’s even a league of professional “Starcraft” gamers who make hundreds of thousands of dollars battling each other in televised tournaments.

So when Blizzard dimmed the lights and rolled the animated video showing the world …

As of today the Optimus Maximus keyboard is ready for pre-order, but remember that there are a limited amount and only 200 orders will be available for early December, and in fact it appears from the pre-order page that as of this afternoon those 200 are already spoken for.

There will be another 200 available at the end of December and 400 ready to ship in early January. So, there is still hope in getting one but you better hang on to your hat because the price tag to pre-order an Optimus Maximus keyboard is 43 990.00 Russian rubles which equates to about $1,564 on the pre-order website. The exact number of keys that the keyboard would have were in question, but they officially came out with a version that has a total of 113 keys. …

Until recently Xbox 360 owners were able to download a firmware hack which allowed them to play backed-up games and essentially boot-legged copies of games on their game console. They were also able to participate with them on Xbox Live seemingly without any notice from Microsoft, but that appears to have changed.

Apparently with the recent Spring Update earlier this month and coinciding with the beta release of Halo 3, Microsoft has shown that they are able to detect and ban those consoles with modified firmware. When consoles with the modified firmware is detected users will receive an error code (Status Code: Z: 8015 – 190D). As a result, Microsoft is permanently banning modified console from the Xbox Live service, but they are not banning the individual user account. When trying to connect through the modified …

The Nintendo Wii game console has again come out on top in U.S. sales for the month of April compared to other same-generation game consoles, according to a report by the NPD group. In April Nintendo sold 360,000 of the Wii consoles compared to 174,000 with the Xbox 360 and 82,000 Playstation 3′s.

The gap between Nintendo and it’s competitors seems to be widening as the Wii sales went up by a little over 100,000 units from the 259,000 that were sold in March. The second place Xbox 360 unit sales where actually down 13% from the previous month, and Sony’s PS3 unit sales dropped 37% from March.

This month the Nintendo Wii console sales even overtook the other horse Sony has in the race – the PlayStation 2. In March the PS2 beat out unit sales in all of …

An announcement was made Wednesday by Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products, at the Searchology event at the Google campus in Mountain View, CA regarding a change in Google search engine results to something they are calling a “universal search model”.

Google, along with other search engines, have recognized that although they have various search engines for things like images, videos, news and patents, most users only use the main search engine and often are even unaware of the other features. Also it can be an inconvenience for users to have to switch between different engines of the same search provider to find relevant results.

The changes involved in the universal search are said to be slowly ongoing and subtle to notice, but nevertheless noticeable. A Google search may return results of web pages, maps, videos, books and photos all within the first ten …

Apple has announced that its iPhone has gotten the green light from the FCC to go ahead with a planned June launch according to Apple spokesperson Natalie Kerris, despite false rumors that the product will be delayed.

The iPhone was announced by Apple back in January by CEO Steve Jobs at the annual MacWorld conference. Very shortly after the announcement Apple was met with some resistance to the new mobile product due to legal issues with Cisco which after a little more than a month was resolved.

The recently FCC approved mobile phone from Apple features a full-size intuitive touchscreen interface and will download and play iTunes music as a nicely features multimedia phone. Rumors have already started about a new smaller iPhone nano type version due to …

Sony isn’t sitting on its haunches watching potential PlayStation 3 customers try to find a Nintendo Wii or open their wallets for a Microsoft Xbox 360 Elite. At a media event held in San Diego yesterday the company drummed up some excitement for its upcoming game lineup for the rest of 2007 and the start of ’08 and showed that there’s plenty of excitement to come for PSP and PS3 owners.

The game that’s attracted some of the biggest buzz is “LittleBigPlanet”, a community based game that lets up to four players solve puzzles by interacting with objects. The game is high on creativity, boasts impressive graphics thanks to the PS3′s Cell processor technology, has a very catchy soundtrack and is stuffed with an immense amount of cuteness that should appeal to a broad audience (and maybe even a jaded “Quake” gamer or two.) …

The New York City Police Department has purchased 10 Segway Personal Transporters for its force and will start using them for patrols in the city’s parks beginning this summer. The Segway PT has been slightly modified for police duty and now sports an extra bar for lights and a siren, reflective police labels, a handlebar bag for the cop gear, LED taillight and extra support for standing on the mat and cargo frames that also serve as lift handles.

Remember five years ago when guys like Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com said that the Segway would be the biggest thing every for cities and people would flock to use one. It never happened because essentially it’s a spiffed-up scooter and there’s no place to put your groceries, take passengers or stay dry and warm when it’s lousy outside. Who …

It’s getting closer and if you’ve been saving your pennies to purchase one of the few Optimus Maximus keyboards that will be made at the start of the product launch you only have two more days to go. On May 20 beginning at 3:00 PM Moscow time (that’s 7 AM to those on the east coast of the U.S.) Art Lebedev Studio will begin taking orders for its $1,536 OLED keyboard.

Only 200 of the Optimus Maximus keyboards will be made at the start of December, then another 200 more in late December and 400 more in January. It will be first come first served for the pre-orders. At the same time the company will release the full specs for their device.

A quick use of our pocket calculator tells us that if Lebedev sells out of its initial 200 unit order that …

In a May 14th letter to MySpace from the attorneys general of eight states, a request was made that MySpace deliver the names of registered sex offenders who are members of the MySpace social networking site.

The attorneys general representing Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania state in the letter that they are “gravely concerned that sexual predators are using MySpace to lure children into face-to-face encounters and other dangerous activities”. In the letter they express concern that thousands of sex offenders are “lurking” on the web site and the general design of the site and the absence of required parental permission to use the site for young children.

What they have asked for is a list of names of sex offenders registered on MySpace that are also listed in the Sentinel …

If you haven’t been following the story, Microsoft has recently made claims on a broad scale that various open-source software applications are infringing on patents that Microsoft holds, and although many of the cited issues are not relatively new Microsoft has chosen now as a time to do something about it.

Basically open-source software is distributed to users without any fees, and the source code is available for developers to modify or build on and to give back to the projects and/or redistribute for free to others. Revenue is earned from open source software generally by selling related services surrounding the actual products. Alternatively, companies like Microsoft and many others build applications that require purchased licenses and make the money by selling the actual software. As open source applications become larger in numbers, more …

The day when you will be able to flip pages on your newspaper while watching full motion video articles and ads may be sooner than you think. Yesterday LG Philips announced that it has successfully manufactured the first A4-size color electronic-paper capable of displaying up to 4,096 colors. The e-paper, which is a flexible thin sheet, measured 35.9 cm (14.1 inches) diagonally and is just 0.3 mm thick. LG also said that it had made its e-paper to be power smart and uses energy only when the image needs to change on the “page”.

E-paper works by using the electric charge to move electronic ink across a metal foil. Instead of using backlighting the e-paper reflects the light allowing for a greater field of angles (up to 180 degrees) to read the page from. LG Philips’ new e-paper also utilizes a color filter that …

Whoa… In the midst of Apple dropping their DRM with some labels and DVD codes being cracked, from out of nowhere comes a crack for the DRM on downloaded music from iTunes.

The creators of QTFairUse6 have made a way to rid your iTunes downloaded music of that pesky DRM and do with it as you wish, but of course this only works for the current version of iTunes (7.1.1), and unfortunately it only works for Windows.

No doubt by now Apple is working on the next version of iTunes to plug this hole so you’ll have to take advantage before the next upgrade, and Mac users will have to wait a little longer to see if something comes their way soon. Check it out:

hymn via Cruchgear

Patients in a Canadian hospital are getting a good dose of physical rehabilitation gaming by using the Nintendo Wii and its new controllers to work on movement and balance issues while recovering.

Therapists at the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital in Edmonton report using the Wii Sports boxing game to help a patient who is recovering from a brain injury from, well, boxing in fact. The therapists stated the playing the Wii boxing game was much more motivating for the patient than traditional therapies, and describe the patients progress as “incredible”. The Glenrose Rehab Hospital is the first in North America and a pioneer in using the Wii game console to treat patients.

“We try to use activity but there is only so many times you can bat a balloon around back and forth. And only so many times you …