Sony BMG signs new mobile music deal
Sony BMG said Thursday that it had reached an agreement with Thumbplay to add about 7,000 pieces of content to the mobile media service.
Altogether the service has about 80,000 ringtones, wallpapers, games, videos, and voice-tones among other items. Sony said it will add content from its artists across most of those categories.
MySpace mulls launching digital music service
MySpace is reportedly looking into offering a digital music service in conjunction with record labels, possibly as a joint venture.
The social networking site declined to confirm its plans to BetaNews, only saying it "is not commenting on the rumors." However, several Web logs and the Associated Press are quoting sources within News Corp. claiming that the initiative is a reality.
HP shows more success in PCs, servers and storage than in printers
Hewlett-Packard is off to a great start for 2008, on the whole, turning in first quarter results that show growth across PCs, storage, servers, and most other product categories.
But surprisngly, revenues from printers -- traditionally the mainstay of HP's business -- actually showed a drop of two percentage points in consumer unit sales from the beginning quarter of 2007.
Analyst: Evidence of a backlash against mobile convergence
Research released today by analysis firm In-Stat reveals US businesspeople are not quite ready to move from using multiple portable devices to a single converged device, even though demand for such a device appears to be on the increase.
Manufacturers describe "convergence" almost as a force of nature, and the driving incentive behind the design of almost every category of CE. They say customers are the ones pushing convergence, but today's research from In-Stat actually suggests otherwise.
One thousand Xbox Live games expected by year-end
In its annual demonstration of programming prowess at GDC on Wednesday, representatives of the Redmond company announced seven new community-created games for free via Xbox Live, and promised more...for the Zune.
Microsoft expects explosive growth through community-created games, stated its corporate vice president in charge of Xbox Live, John Schappert today. That growth would put some 1,000 plus games on Xbox Live by the end of this year, far exceeding its competitors' catalogs.
New news aggregator site has a metaphorical approach to relevance
The popularity of Digg, Techmeme and other news aggregators has triggered a new wave of startups. Yesterday, one more site added itself to the ocean of second-source news: Newspond, with an intriguing -- if somewhat secret -- method of differentiating itself.
"Introducing the most advanced news site on the planet," Newspond's "About" page boasts. "At the heart of Newspond lies a self-sufficient news engine. This machine intelligence continually watches over and reads hundreds of different web sites, including everything from major news portals, to the tiniest blog or forum."
Microsoft divides 'small' from 'medium' businesses for its next servers
With fewer businesses purchasing server software a la carte, Microsoft has generally been successful with pre-packaging its multiple server products in attractive combinations. Its newest sets of options, however, take some explaining.
Just when you were getting used to the abbreviation "SMB" (small-to-medium business), comes the time Microsoft decides to divide the category...and even subdivide the divisions. At next week's launch event in Los Angeles, Microsoft will be showing off four sets of packaging options for its next generations of server software, with two pairs of packages divided among small and "mid-size" businesses.
New SDK offers program control through the user's scalp
At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Emotiv is showing off its headset controller, the EPOC, a unit which reads cognitive actions and facial expressions.
The device works through a series of electromagnetic sensors which contact the wearer's scalp. Depending upon the application, the sensors may be used to read emotion, facial expression, cognitive action, and the abstract category of "visualization." It currently has the capability to recognize 30 discrete conditions. For emotions, the device acts as a sort of primitive mood ring, using brainwave patterns to tell whether its wearer is excited, calm, tense, or frustrated.
CTP for SQL Server 2008 now available
Its final release has been pushed back to as much as six months after Microsoft's big launch party for it, which is still slated for next week. In the meantime, potential customers are being given a taste of some new and game-changing functionality.
Yesterday afternoon, Microsoft posted its Community Technology Preview for SQL Server 2008, which will be general businesses' first, best look at the next edition of what analysts perceive to be Microsoft's fastest growing product line -- faster than even Windows itself.
NAND Flash to cool off significantly in 2008
After projecting a 27 percent rise in revenue growth in NAND previously, iSuppli has abruptly lowered their projections, saying a single digit rise is much more likely.
The problem will extend to DRAM chips as well, a market already significantly softened during 2007. While many NAND manufacturers have the capability to switch to DRAM as a safe haven, struggles there will not provide much solace.
ARM announces software for 3D graphics on phones
Mobile device CPU manufacturer ARM today announced Mali-JSR297 software, which takes full advantage of OpenGL ES 2.0 standard GPU and allows for 3D graphics processing on mobile platforms.
OpenGL ES has been appearing with increasing frequency in handsets, such as nVidia's recent prototype phone and Symbian OS devices.
Analysts: Studios will gain from HD DVD's exit, but consumers' won't
Consumers would really have been better off right now with Toshiba's HD DVD format for high definition video than with Sony's Blu-ray approach, a principal analyst at ABI Research told BetaNews today.
Big film studios will gain from Toshiba's exit from the high definition (HD) disk market, although not as much as they'd like -- and consumers won't benefit at all, at least initially, according to analysts at market research firm ABI Research.
Endless reboots force suspension of Vista SP1 updates
The reason it's called "beta testing" is to anticipate and isolate problems. But a big problem reported by some -- not all -- Vista SP1 testers is causing Microsoft to take a step back.
The regular update cycle for testers of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 was suspended yesterday afternoon, following multiple reports of downloaders discovering their automatically updating computers stuck in an endless cycle of reboots. This would mark the second time in two months that pockets of testers reported such a problem.
Sony taps Ensequence to deal with BD-J complexity
After many developers had already spurned Blu-ray Java (BD-J) in favor of HDi, the XML-based interactivity layer for HD DVD, the outcome of the format war is now forcing reluctant developers to accept the winner's methodology.
With the timing perhaps not coincidental, a deal was struck today between Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and interactive content developer Ensequence. The deal involves Sony Pictures reselling Ensequence's on-Q Create suite to Blu-ray partners for use on their discs.
Is your outdoor antenna ready for DTV?
Today, the Consumer Electronics Association and the National Association of Broadcasters announced upgrades to Antennaweb.org, aimed at telling the consumer whether his TV antenna (remember those?) is ready for the DTV transition.
The broadcast television switch, according to FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, needs to be presented in a more coherent fashion so consumers will no longer be confused. A recent FCC study showed that awareness of the transition reached just under 80% in January 2008, compared to 38% of the prior year. However, getting the message out is still not enough. 34 million over-the-air television viewers need more information to prevent what Adelstein referred to as "confusion that could turn into widespread panic."
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