Sony, Philips, and Panasonic announced on Thursday that companies wishing to manufacture Blu-ray devices will now only need to attain a single license in order to do so. That’s a pretty big deal considering that 18 separate companies currently hold Blu-ray patents. Does this mean that we can soon expect Apple to start shipping Macs with Bluray?
The tool is a FireFox extension called FireBug and it is so cool that many web developers use FireFox for the only reason that it can be extended with FireBug.
The Jaunty Jackalope Alpha 5 is the fifth alpha release of Ubuntu 9.04, bringing with it a number of new features to improve daily computing.
Green Plug has more ambitious goals than just a universal charger: their innovation is a smart charger that interacts with a chip in the electronic device to manage power use while charging, while idling, and even in peak power situations. So they’re working on a way to plug your iPod dock into the smart grid.
While we’re excited about Oregon Trail for the iPhone, not every classic game works well for the touchscreen platform. The phone’s lack of real buttons makes anything requiring precision a lost cause. iPhone Contra would be an epic train wreck. But other games would work great. Here are five we’d love to see.
By Angela Gunn | Published February 27, 2009, 5:28 AM On the same day that the 150-year-old Rocky Mountain News announced that it was shutting down effective Friday for lack of revenue, Google News confirmed its plan to sell AdWords placement on its …
Mytob notes that sci-fi MMO Tabula Rasa is set to close down tomorrow, and the development team has something special planned for the game’s final hours. The decision to close the game was made in November, and it went free-to-play a month later, while the developers continued to roll out the new content they had planned. Now, after a round of patches and server merges, the beleaguered MMO has reached its shutdown date. The game’s primary enemies, the Bane, are launching an all-out offensive on Allied forces, which will culminate in a battle beginning at 8PM on Saturday and lasting until midnight. All players are being called in as reinforcements in this apocalyptic fight, though the final announcement says, “Penumbra has been informed of the situation and is standing by on the use of their last resort weapon. We can not afford to be complacent or uncertain, but if it is truly our destiny to be destroyed, we are taking them all with us.”
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adeelarshad82 writes to point out that details have been provided for President Obama’s proposed .7 billion in funding for NASA in 2010 (up from .2 billion in 2008). Quoting: “The budget calls on NASA to complete International Space Station construction, as well as continue its Earth science missions and aviation research. Yet it also remains fixed to former President George W. Bush’s plan to retire the space shuttle fleet by 2010 and replace them with the new Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, which would fly astronauts to the space station and return them to the moon by 2020. The outline does make room for an extra shuttle flight beyond the nine currently remaining on NASA’s schedule, but only if it is deemed safe and can be flown before the end of 2010.”
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commodore64_love writes with news that a number of cable companies, such as Time-Warner, Comcast, and Cox, are trying to establish themselves as content providers on the web in addition to television. They are currently negotiating with HBO, TNT, CNN, and a number of other channels to bring their programming online exclusively for cable TV subscribers. They say they’re not trying to develop “some enormous new revenue opportunity,” but rather trying to compete with sites like Hulu, which provide shows for free. “They pay networks a per-subscriber fee each month for the right to carry channels. But the cable companies have groused that they are paying for content that programmers are giving away for free on the Web. … People aren’t yet cutting the cord en masse – the Leichtman survey found that people who watch recent TV shows online every week are not more likely to give up TV service than other people. But the industry is heading off what could end up as a troubling trend. After all, the availability of free content online has befuddled other media industries, from music to newspapers. … The cable companies and others involved in the talks for a TV service said their goal isn’t to kill the online video goose, but to work out a plan that keeps everyone’s business intact.”
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Two UK mobile operators are reportedly fuming at Nokia for including a mobile version of Skype on its N97 handset. Both Orange and O2 are so terrified that the popular VoIP service will siphon away profitable cell minutes by allowing users to make free calls that they are supposedly threatening not to carry the device unless Skype is removed.
