Archive for News

Nintendo again dominates sales, Wii shortage ensues

Posted in News by Darrin Olson on June 13th, 2008

Nintendo dominates game console sales in May 2008 with Wii and DSAccording to the latest NPD Group report for game sales in May, this is the fourth month in a row that Nintendo has come out on top for the number 1 AND number two spot for console sales. The Nintendo Wii and the handheld Nintendo DS were the two top-selling hardware units for May, 2008.

Nintendo sold over 675,000 Wii consoles in May and almost 453,000 Nintendo DS’s, which would probably explain all the new colors and designs they have been coming out with lately for the DS. Sony’s Playstation 3 followed with a little under 209,000 units sold and Microsoft sold 186,600 Xbox 360 units during the same period.

Weekly roundup of neat stuff

Posted in News by Conner Flynn on May 30th, 2008

Weekly roundup of neat stuff
It’s that time of the week again, which means a look back at the week that was in our network of blogs. It’s been a busy week all around and as usual Poptherapy kept you abreast on all the latest geek news and popculture, while over at Wealthyreader it was all about ways to get wealthy or stay wealthy. Our health blog, Healthyreader focused on ways to stay healthy and enjoy it all. Health, wealth and geekiness is a great combination. Here’s some of what you may have missed.

McDonalds lets you order with your phone

Posted in News by Conner Flynn on May 25th, 2008

McDonalds lets you order with your phone
In what surely has to be a perfect collaboration between McDonalds and Nintendo, McDonalds is making it easier then ever to order food that will have you working twice as hard on the Wii-Fit. hmmm. Then you’ll get hungry again. Let’s see, who makes it easiest to get a disc shaped hunk of grease on a sesame seed bun? And the circle is complete, my friends. McDonald’s will introduce a new system that’s currently testing in Japan.

It’s a payment application that’s downloaded into your phone and when you place your phone over an RFID reader, you can pay instantly or use coupons and the like.

Microsoft interested in Yahoo’s search business?

Posted in News by Conner Flynn on May 18th, 2008

Microsoft still having troubles with launching Windows XP Service Pack 3Microsoft released a statement today that said it was “considering and has raised with Yahoo an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo.” Microsoft would not give details, but word is that sources at both companies agree that it involves Microsoft buying Yahoo’s search business as well as their ad business related to text-based ads. I hope Yahoo puts out soon, cuz I’m getting sick of hearing about it.

Google Friend Connect: The web as a Social Network

Posted in News by Conner Flynn on May 12th, 2008

Google Friend Connect: The web as a Social NetworkGoogle has announced that they will launch Friend Connect, a new service that will allow any site to be turned into a social network. No charge. Basically, Google wants to turn the internet into one huge, universal social profile. Google wanted to tap into the hundreds of millions of users that participate in social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

But when you’re Google, you don’t make a competing site and then see what happens, you launch a service that turns the internet itself into one humongous social networking platform which can be used by anyone, with no charge.

Grand Theft Auto IV sales exceed expectations

Posted in News by Darrin Olson on May 7th, 2008

Grand Theft Auto IV sales exceed expectations on first weekAccording to a report in the NYT, Grand Theft Auto IV reached sales of over $500 million in its first seven days on the market. Take Two Interactive said the game sold approximately 6 million copies worldwide since its launch last Tuesday.

The numbers significantly exceeded expectations of many analysts who expected to see around 5 million copies sold in the first two weeks. Take Two also stated that 3.6 million of those copies were sold the first day of the launch globally for around $310 million in sales. This number even exceeds the numbers we saw for the Halo 3 launch for both first day and first week sales.

Microsoft bows out of Yahoo deal, for now?

Posted in News by Darrin Olson on May 5th, 2008

Microsoft backs out of Yahoo Offer but could come back after stock prices dropMicrosoft CEO Steve Ballmer issued a letter to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang over the weekend stating that the company withdrawing its offer to Yahoo. Microsoft had raised its bid to well over the $33 per share, upping it by nearly $5 billion which was still not enough to sway Yahoo board members.

“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer. After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal,” said Ballmer in the letter.

Cubans can now buy legal PCs

Posted in News by Conner Flynn on May 4th, 2008

Cubans can now buy first legal PCsCubans have been able to get underground and illegal PCs for a while, but the Cuban government only recently lifted the official ban on them. The first publicly-available machines just went on sale Friday. The QTECH PCs are state-approved are only available at a single store. The crowds had a chance to gawk at some not too cutting edge tech. The towers cost $780 and feature Celeron processors, 512MB of RAM, Windows XP, and come with a CRT display.

And even should they buy one, most Cubans won’t be allowed to have Internet access. Silly Cubans, the net is only for certain “trusted officials” and state journalists. The good news is that with computers now legally available, some expect black market prices on more up-to-date gear down the road.

Class-action over Creative’s PMP hard-drive claims

Posted in News by Conner Flynn on May 1st, 2008

Class-action over Creative’s PMP hard-drive claims
Much like car manufacturer’s claims about MPG, you aren’t going to get all the hard drive space that’s advertised on your devices, but it’s an issue that may haunt Creative at the moment. A class-action suit was filed against the company regarding the quoted capacity of their hard-drive based media players. It could potentially result in a huge settlement for anybody who bought a device between May 5th 2001 and April 30th 2008. Of course, Creative isn’t admitting any wrong-doing.

The suit alleges that Creative knowingly misled users by promising 7-percent more capacity from their PMPs than was actually even possible, and that they exaggerated the number of songs and the total length of playback in hours. Nothing has hit court yet, but if customers can prove they bought a Creative hard-drive based player in the seven year period, will be eligible for either a 50-percent discount on the price of a new 1GB PMP, or 20-percent off a single item bought from Creative’s US online store.

Wigix is eBay done Nasdaq style

Posted in News by Conner Flynn on April 29th, 2008

Wigix is eBay done Nasdaq style
Wigix is launching its online stock market platform for goods today, going up against the eBay auction model. The Wigix system is based on the bid/ask model used by NASDAQ and the other financial stock markets. Sellers offer any price for their items and buyers can pay the asking price or offer another one if they like. This new online trading model should help to eliminate problems like shilling and sniping.

Some features include: no listing fees, all trades happen immediately, sales data tracking so that users can get accurate market prices. Wigix also has some social networking and community features like blogging, friends lists, sharing, Facebook data access, and inventory tracking. Users can also become category experts and earn a share of their category sales, they can also become SKU owners: any user can add a new item which is not yet registered in the Wigix database, making them the “owner’ of this item’s SKU, they receive a share of all future sales of this specific item. Many people would say that it’s about time and that eBay should have done something like this years ago.

FirstPaper’s e-newspaper could be coming soon

Posted in News by Conner Flynn on April 9th, 2008

FirstPaper’s e-newspaper could be coming soon
These kinds of displays are developing rapidly and it wont be long at all before we are reading from electronic newspapers “printed” on a foldable display screen, similar to the Philips-LG newspaper above. Recently, media giant Hearst Corp, has been funding a start up called FirstPaper to develop the e-newspaper.

It uses a color display version of E-Ink that is being used in the Sony E-reader. The e-reader uses Linux as its operating system which might enable it hit the commercial market at a price that isn’t through the roof. If they can integrate the wireless capability to download newspapers and let users flip pages at a touch, paper newspapers could soon be history, which is good for the environment. But for now, we’ll just have to wait.

Yahoo standing tall against Microsoft threats

Posted in News by Darrin Olson on April 8th, 2008

Yahoo again rejects Microsofts offer and threats to buyout the companyYahoo CEO Jerry Yang on Monday shot back a letter in response to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s 3-week ultimatum for Yahoo to come to negotiations with a firm message that Yahoo has not changed their tune in regards to Microsoft taking over the search engine. Ballmer’s letter had spelled out plans for a proxy contest to unseat the exist Yahoo board of directors and that continued delays could reduce the $44.6 billion offer which would mean less for shareholders.

“Our board’s view of your proposal has not changed,” said Yang along with Chairman Roy Bostock. “We continue to believe that your proposal is not in the best interests of Yahoo and our shareholders.”

Instead of going through the negotiations Yahoo has chosen to beat their exclamation points into swords and fight back against Microsoft. Yang continued in the letter stating that the offer and proxy contest would not be in the best interest of Yahoo and certainly not part of a friendly transaction as Microsoft first proposed.

Microsoft gives Yahoo 3 weeks to accept, or else

Posted in News by Darrin Olson on April 7th, 2008

Microsoft gives Yahoo 3 week deadline to accept an offer.Microsoft issued another letter to the Yahoo board of directors on Saturday with a deadline of 3 weeks for the company to accept the previous $44.6 billion takeover offer that Microsoft proposed in the beginning of February. Despite some recent talks between the two companies, an agreement has not been made and Microsoft is starting to lean heavy on the search engine firm’s board by threatening to go straight to the shareholders if necessary.

“If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo! board,” the letter read. “The substantial premium reflected in our initial proposal anticipated a friendly transaction with you. If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, that action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal.”, stated Steve Ballmer’s letter to Yahoo.

Woman buried with cell nags husband via texting

Posted in News by Conner Flynn on April 4th, 2008

Woman buried with cell nags husband Via texting
Sadie Jones died five years ago and was buried with her most her cell phone. Her widower, Frank Jones, claims to be receiving text messages from beyond the grave. Shortly after his wife’s death, Frank claims he missed a call on his mobile, which didn’t even ring.

He claims the call was from his own home number, but there was nobody in the house. But when he entered the house, it smelled like cigarettes and her perfume. Frank also claims that his late wife has been sending them all SMSes from beyond the grave with words that Sadie would say, but no number. Isn’t that just like a wife? She nags you through life, nags you from the grave and just like when she was living, what the hell can you really do about it but try to block it out?

Hackers embed flashing animations on epilepsy forum

Posted in News by Conner Flynn on March 30th, 2008

RyAnne Fultz
Here’s a story sure to break your heart. A group of hackers invaded a support forum that was established by the nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation. They used JavaScript code and messages with flashing animations to assault dozens of visitors who suffer from the disorder.

The Foundation learned about the problem within 12 hours of the attack. And even though the boards were closed temporarily to get rid of the messages and animations, many readers like RyAnne Fultz, pictured here, experienced headaches and seizures before help arrived. There has to be a special place in hell for people who do this kind of thing.





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HealthyReader.com web site

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