Fact: Nintendo's Wii is on track to outsell Sony's record-setting PS2 at 115 million units sold. That's according to comparative NPD sales data for both systems. No other console has sold faster in its first eight months of availability than the Wii.
Despite its undisputed initial success, however, several industry pundits remain unconvinced. "The Wii will fade," they say, suggesting that the machine's novel motion-controls and antiquated graphics technology will soon cause the system to wane in popularity.
They're probably right, assuming one of two scenarios. Scenario A: Nintendo and/or its third-parties are incapable of delivering compelling software throughout Wii's life cycle (however long that may be). Or Scenario B: That Nintendo will not release a Wii successor in front the traditional five year shelf life expires.
more
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Skype struggles to return to full service
As users of Skype - the world's most popular Internet telephone set service - struggled to get online Friday, the company continued to ask for patience.
Skype, which is owned by eBay, first reported outages Thursday, blaming a software glitch. By Friday morning, Skype had updated its Web page to tell users it was "on the road to recovery."
"Skype is stabilizing, but this process may continue throughout the day," the heartbeat.skype.com blog stated. "An encouraging number of users can now use Skype once again. We know we're not out of the woods yet, but we are in better shape now than we were yesterday."
The company assured users that the crash was related to an algorithm deficiency within Skype networking software and not some kind of cyberattack. Still, the outage is a blow to the growing company that has become a key aspect of eBay's financial strategy.
more...
Skype, which is owned by eBay, first reported outages Thursday, blaming a software glitch. By Friday morning, Skype had updated its Web page to tell users it was "on the road to recovery."
"Skype is stabilizing, but this process may continue throughout the day," the heartbeat.skype.com blog stated. "An encouraging number of users can now use Skype once again. We know we're not out of the woods yet, but we are in better shape now than we were yesterday."
The company assured users that the crash was related to an algorithm deficiency within Skype networking software and not some kind of cyberattack. Still, the outage is a blow to the growing company that has become a key aspect of eBay's financial strategy.
more...
Friday, August 17, 2007
Microsoft Increases Hotmail Storage
Hot-on-the-heels of Google's announcement that it will start selling additional storage space to be used across it's applications, Microsoft has reportedly now announced increasing the storage limit for Windows Live Hotmail from 2GB to 5GB. The move places Microsoft squarely ahead of Google hitherto far behind Yahoo!'s outright storage offering.
A company blog says the changes will be rolled out over the next couple of weeks together with a series of other upgrades. Significantly, users will now be capable to store 10GB of email data for an annual subscription of $14.99. They will be able to forward email from their Hotmail account to a Gmail or any other email account. Microsoft has announced other improvements including: the ability to shut off the 'Today' feature that shows top news and features on the MSN portal; a modern security feature named 'Report phishing' that warns about possible cozenage Web sites linked to emails; better performance for Hebrew and Arabic writers; prevention of gemination of contact information; and the ability to set an machine-driven response; among others. Meanwhile, the company blog says Microsoft is also trying to make Hotmail run faster, as well as trying to increase the amount of time that messages are stored in the junk and deleted items folders before being automatically flushed.
more...
A company blog says the changes will be rolled out over the next couple of weeks together with a series of other upgrades. Significantly, users will now be capable to store 10GB of email data for an annual subscription of $14.99. They will be able to forward email from their Hotmail account to a Gmail or any other email account. Microsoft has announced other improvements including: the ability to shut off the 'Today' feature that shows top news and features on the MSN portal; a modern security feature named 'Report phishing' that warns about possible cozenage Web sites linked to emails; better performance for Hebrew and Arabic writers; prevention of gemination of contact information; and the ability to set an machine-driven response; among others. Meanwhile, the company blog says Microsoft is also trying to make Hotmail run faster, as well as trying to increase the amount of time that messages are stored in the junk and deleted items folders before being automatically flushed.
more...
Why NASA Won't Repair Endeavour
After a careful analysis of the risks, NASA is betting that the chances of catastrophe when the damaged space shuttle Enterprise returns to Earth on August. 22 are zero. If this were the NASA of old — the one that disastrously miscalculated the dangers of a leaky O-ring and a perforate heat shield to the Rival and Columbia shuttles, respectively — you would surely have heard a round of protest from at least a few highly qualified aerospace engineers.
Only in making the decision Th night to fly Endeavour household as-is, skipping an untested-in-space quicken job to the gouge on the shuttle's belly, NASA seems to have won the confidence of the whole shuttle engine room community. John Shannon, chairman of the Endeavour mission management squad and the man who assessed the risk, made the call in based on an abundance of testing and analysis over the past week, rather than from any rocket jockey arrogance, which was largely blamed for the last two shuttle losses. Among the 30 organizations from which scientists were called in for independent analyses: Ames Research Snapper; Langley Research Center; the Whiteness Sands Test Facility; and the Johnson, Kennedy and Marshall blank centers. And, of course, at that place was input from NASA military headquarters.
read more...
Only in making the decision Th night to fly Endeavour household as-is, skipping an untested-in-space quicken job to the gouge on the shuttle's belly, NASA seems to have won the confidence of the whole shuttle engine room community. John Shannon, chairman of the Endeavour mission management squad and the man who assessed the risk, made the call in based on an abundance of testing and analysis over the past week, rather than from any rocket jockey arrogance, which was largely blamed for the last two shuttle losses. Among the 30 organizations from which scientists were called in for independent analyses: Ames Research Snapper; Langley Research Center; the Whiteness Sands Test Facility; and the Johnson, Kennedy and Marshall blank centers. And, of course, at that place was input from NASA military headquarters.
read more...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
