Wii expected to dominate global console market

San Francisco (CA) - A veteran industry analyst has predicted that Nintendo will continue to dominate the global console market. According to Michael Pachter, the Wii's low price point, "innovative" controller and compatibility with standard definition television sets are likely to provide it with a "competitive advantage" over the next two years.






"We expect Nintendo to sustain this competitive advantage by introducing a high definition version of the Wii, perhaps as early as the end of 2010, in order to convert its large installed base into true 'next generation' households," Pachter wrote in a report quoted by IndustryGamers. The report, titled "Money for Nothing, How Ancillary Revenues Can Extend The Console Cycle," also hypothesized that the PS3 is likely to capture significant market share - or second place - due to Sony's "victory" in the high definition DVD format war. Concurrently, the Xbox 360 will "fade to third place" as it suffers from a significant "lack" of popularity in Japan.

"We expect the Wii to capture 49% share of the U.S. and European market by the end of 2009, followed by the Xbox 360 at 29% and the PS3 at 22%. By the end of 2011, we see Nintendo 'winning' the console war by maintaining its share, with 48% of this market. We expect Sony to pull even with Microsoft, each with 26% market share. These estimates do not include console sales in Japan, which we expect to be dominated by Nintendo with over 65% market share through 2011," stated Pachter.

In addition, Pachter surmised that videogame storage would increase exponentially to 1 terabyte or more - with digitally distributed software accounting for only 50 percent of all software sales by 2019.

Courtesy: http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/43037/98/

Toyota Research Achieves Brain Control of Wheelchair

Researchers in Japan have developed a brain-machine interface (BMI) system that allows for control of a wheelchair using thought.



The system processes brain thought patterns and can turn them into left, right and forward movements of the wheelchair with a delay as short as one-thousandth of a second. That's a vast improvement over other systems that can take as long as several seconds to analyze and react to the user's thoughts.

It was developed by scientists at the BSI-Toyota Collaboration Center, a research and development center established in 2007 by Japanese government-related research unit RIKEN, Toyota Motor, Toyota Central R&D Labs and Genesis Research Institute.

The system measures the electrical activity in a person's brain using electroencephalography (EEG) data gathered from five sensors above the areas of the brain that handle motor movement. It seeks to interpret the measurements to achieve control of the wheelchair.

It can also adapt to a particular user's thought patterns to improve accuracy to as high as 95 percent, the researchers said. Training on the system for 3 hours a day for a week is enough to have it tuned in to a user's motor-control thought patterns.

In a video released of the experiments a researcher is shown navigating a wheelchair left and right between six chairs in a room using the technology. A laptop computer mounted on the wheelchair is all that's needed to interpret the researcher's thought patterns.

To perform an emergency stop, the researcher just had to puff out his cheek: a sensor mounted there detected the movement and brought the wheelchair to a halt.

Courtesy: http://www.pcworld.com/article/167525/toyota_research_achieves_brain_control_of_wheelchair.html

Gateway introduces high-definition netbook

San Francisco (CA) - Gateway has introduced a high-definition netbook with an 11.6-inch display. The LT3100 - which weighs just 3.14 pounds - features an AMD Athlon 64 L110 processor, a full-size keyboard, multi-gesture touchpad and a ATI Radeon X1270 GPU.



"The Gateway LT3100 is a smart netbook choice - it gives customers the freedom to connect to the Internet for everything from staying up-to-date on the latest viral videos and enjoying digital music and photos, to checking on the status of projects and studying for classes," explained Ray Sawall of Acer America. "At the same time, it delivers reliable mobile communications. Customers get the larger-sized 11.6-inch display along with enhanced netbook performance, so they can do even more while on the go."According to Sawall, the LT3100 can be purchased with up to 2GB of DDR2 memory, a 250GB internal hard drive and a 6-cell Li-ion battery that provides five hours of power.

Other features include:

• Multi-in-1 Digital Media Card Reader


• 802.11b/g Wi-Fi


• Integrated Web Camera


• Two Built-in Stereo Speakers


• Three USB 2.0 Ports

The LT3100 is pre-loaded with Microsoft Windows Vista and has a starting MSRP of $400.

Courtesy: http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/42964/135/

People will dump their Crackberry for an iPhone

Four out of 10 Blackberry users are tempted to switch to an iPhone while iPhone users are fanatically loyal to the Apple device.

That's according to a survey by Crowd Science. The CEO of the outfit, John Martin, claimed that the results "reflect the great challenges Blackberry faces in stemming the iPhone stampede."

The survey shows that only 14 percent of non-Blackberry smartphone users will buy another Blackberry. And 82 percent of iPhone users are loyal followers of the Apple fashion.

The survey also shows that people using iPhones use a wide range of the functions available on the phone, including email, GPS, wi-fi and Internet access.

And iPhone users appear to be far happier with their machines than Blackberry users are, according to the survey. They like the screen size, the way you can navigate on the iPhone, the large number of add-ons and video playback.

Rather than being restricted to a bunch of fanboys, 71 percent of owners of smartphones use them for business and pleasure.

Courtesy: http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/42958/145/

Download PwnageTool 3.0

Latest version of the popular iPhone jailbreaking utility PwnageTool from iPhone Dev Team is now available for public downloading, the new PwnageTool v 3.0 supports jailbreaking the new iPhone firmware 3.0 on all versions of iPhone and iPod Touch devices except the new iPhone 3G S, The Dev Team also warned not to use PwnageTool 3.0 if you are using yellowsn0w and wait few more days until new iPhone unlock UltraSn0w is available.



Contrary to everybody's expectation it now seems that UltraSn0w is not able to unlock iPhone 3G S as of now, but if you have any other version of iPhone/iPod Touch with any baseband and firmware the new PwnageTool will work.


Only Mac OS X version of PwnageTool 3.0 is available now, a windows version is in the pipeline and is expected to be released soon.

Unofficial Download Mirrors [Size 22.7 MB]:
http://www.revotech.org/mirror/PwnageTool_3.0.dmg
http://www.istation.at/pwnagetool_3.0.dmg
http://neon.hexxeh.net/PwnageTool_3.0.dmg
http://www.itouchmaster101.com/PwnageTool_3.0.dmg
http://www.zackoch.com/iphone/PwnageTool_3.0.dmg

Courtesy: http://www.megaleecher.net/

iPhone 3.0 - Here it comes

Apple senior vice president of iPhone software Scott Forstall used Monday's WWDC keynote to deliver the news that iPhone users have waited months to hear: The new iPhone 3.0 OS will be released on June 17, 2009.

iPhone 3.0 will be a free release for all iPhone customers -- both original iPhone users and iPhone 3G users will be able to download it at no charge once it's released. iPod touch customers can download the new release for $10, and it will work on first- and second-generation iPod touch models.

Many of the new features in iPhone 3.0 have been talked about before: Cut, Copy, and Paste, for example; landscape mode in all key applications, including Mail, Notes and Messages; spotlight support across the entire device; and ubiquitous searching. Peer-to-peer Bluetooth-based multiplayer gaming, push notification, in-app store support and other capabilities factored into demonstrations showing off iPhone 3.0's new features, as well. The complete list of features are listed in Apple's website.

Courtesy: PCWorld

http://www.pcworld.com/article/166311/iphone_os_30_coming_on_june_17.html

Nokia E72 Video Leaked

An internal video of yet to be announced Nokia E72 cellphone got leaked on internet, the successor to existing popular model Nokia E71 has various improvements like updated button layout, touchpad-like directional pad, 5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and is powered by latest Symbian S60 Feature Pack 2 (v3.2) OS.

The phone looks very promising the the video and is definitely worth a wait as no information is yet available about launch or price.
Courtesy: www.megaleecher.net

Bill that could kill H-1B visas

Article from rediff

Nearly two months after its introduction sparked a furore both in India and in America, the controversial Durbin-Grassley visa reform bill has again been brought before the United States Senate.

Its fate holds major ramifications for Indian individuals and Indian IT companies seeking US work visas, with some claiming that its passage could result in the decimation of the business model for Indian outsourcing firms like Wipro Technologies, Infosys Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services.

According to the Senate's web site, the bill has officially been logged as:
S. 887 - A bill to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to reform and reduce fraud and abuse in certain visa programmes for aliens working temporarily in the United States and for other purposes.

It was introduced by US Senators Dick Durbin (Democrat-Illinois) and Charles Grassley (Republican-Iowa), and contains new stipulations that companies must follow to acquire temporary US work visas, commonly known as H-1Bs and L-1s.

The most controversial of these stipulations, the so-called '50/50' provision, would prohibit companies with more than 50 US employees from obtaining any additional work visas if more than 50% of their entire US workforce is made up of H-1B or L-1 visa holders. The provision would essentially prevent companies like Wipro and Infosys from hiring more Indian workers to work in the US.

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