Gears Chainsawed BioShock Last Week

BioShock is definitely one of the biggest things that happened to the gaming industry this year. You’d expect it to top the charts as the most played games on the Xbox 360 this week right? Wrong! Gears of War topped the charts with BioShock following second. If you go to think of it, although BioShock is a better game (in my opinion), Gears of War seems like better value for money since it offers a co-op mode as well as team deathmatches. I’m sure that it would be a whole different ball game if BioShock had an online mode. Either way, here’s the list of the most played games last week:

Xbox 360 Top Live Titles (UU’s)

1. Gears of War
2. BioShock
3. Medal of Honor Airborne Demo
4. Madden NFL 08
5. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas
6. skate. Demo
7. Guitar Hero II
8. Forza Motorsport 2
9. BioShock (Demo)
10. Call Of Duty 3

Olympus Launches Stylus 790 SW

Olympus recently introduced the 8 megapixel Stylus 790 SW, the newest addition to its Stylus SW line of digital compact cameras. Available in five colors (orange, blue, lime, black and silver), the shockproof, waterproof, freezeproof and dustproof camera captures amazing images in any situation - whether it is a day of fun at the beach, an action-packed snorkel adventure, a family ski trip or a night out with friends.

Some of the signature features include:
Face Detection Technology
Shadow Adjustment Technology
2.5-inch HyperCrystal LCD screen
TruePic III Image Processor

"The Stylus 790 SW offers the performance and durability that consumers have come to trust from the Stylus SW family with a sleek new look and innovative feature set," said Mark Hoffman, director, Product Marketing, Olympus Imaging America Inc. "Face Detection and Shadow Adjustment Technology ensure effortlessly sharp, bright images anytime, anywhere. The rugged, waterproof body design makes it the ideal camera for active lifestyles and a must-have for vacations and outdoor (or underwater) adventures."

The Stylus 790 SW will be available in the US by September 2007. It includes: a wrist strap, camera WIN/Mac USB cable, audio/video cable, LI-42B Li-Ion rechargeable battery and charger, manual, warranty card and OLYMPUS Master 2 software (CD-ROM). Estimated Street Price is $299.99.

No news on the Indian launch or pricing yet.

Nokia Mobile Battery Explodes in West Bengal(india)

A Nokia mobile battery of the BL-5C series exploded Friday while it was being charged at a shop in Asansol in West Bengal.

No one was injured.

The incident occurred at a mobile shop, Puja Telecom, at Ushagram locality in Asansol in Burdwan district.

This is the third incident of cell phone battery blast in the state in as many days.

On Thursday, the battery of a Reliance cell phone of Classic series exploded in a shop at Chakdah in Nadia district of West Bengal where it had been given for repair. No one was injured.

Two days ago, a 24-year-old pregnant housewife Kishori Saha of south Kolkata received splinter injuries on her face as a Nokia mobile phone exploded during charging. The phone was a Nokia 2100 handset with BL-3D series battery.

The mobile explosion at Asansol occurred within a week of a Nokia mobile phone battery blast in Gujarat. The explosion took place at a shop in Gujarat's Palanpur on Aug 28 while the phone was being charged.

Nokia had already issued an advisory asking people to return their BL-5C batteries. The company in the advisory on its official website has stated that some 100 such incidents have occurred across the globe while charging the battery.

Google Begins Hosting News on Its Site

Internet search leader Google Inc. on Friday began hosting material produced by The Associated Press and three other news services on its own Web site instead of only sending readers to other destinations.

The change affects hundreds of stories and photographs distributed each day by the AP, Agence France-Presse, The Press Association in the United Kingdom and The Canadian Press. It could diminish Internet traffic to other media sites where those stories and photos are also found - a development that could reduce the online advertising revenue of newspapers and broadcasters.

Google negotiated licensing deals with the AP and French news agency during the past two years after the services raised concerns about whether the search engine had been infringing on their copyrights. The Mountain View-based company also reached licensing agreements with The Press Association and The Canadian Press during the same period.

Financial terms of those deals haven't been disclosed.

The new approach doesn't change the look of Google News or affect the way the section treats material produced by other media.

Although Google already had bought the right to display content produced by all four news services, the search engine's news section had continued to link to other Web sites to read the stories and look at the photographs.

That helped drive more online traffic to newspapers and broadcasters who pay annual fees to help finance the AP, a 161-year-old cooperative owned by news organizations.

Now, Google visitors interested in reading an AP story will remain on Google's Web site unless they click on a link that enables them to read the same story elsewhere. Google doesn't have any immediate plans to run ads alongside the news hosted on its site.

Although the change might not even be noticed by many Google users, the decision to corral the content from the AP and other news services may irritate publishers and broadcasters if the move results in less traffic for them and more for Internet's most powerful company.

A diminished audience would likely translate into less online revenue, compounding the financial headaches of long-established media already scrambling to make up for the money that has been lost as more advertisers shift their spending to the Internet.

Google has been the trend's biggest beneficiary because it runs the Internet's largest advertising network. In the first half of this year, the 9-year-old company earned $1.9 billion on revenue of $7.5 billion.

Despite Google's dominance in search, its news section lags behind several other rivals. In July, Google News attracted 9.6 million visitors compared with Yahoo News' industry-leading audience of 33.8 million, according to comScore Media Metrix.

Yahoo Inc., along with other major Web sites such as Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, have been featuring AP material for years.

Under its new approach, Google reasons readers won't have to pore through search results listing the same story posted on different sites. That should in turn make it easier to discover other news stories at other Web sites that might previously have been buried, said Josh Cohen, the business product manager for Google News.

''This may result in certain publishers losing traffic for their news wire stories, but it will allow more room for their original content,'' Cohen said.

Vlae Kershner, news director for the San Francisco Chronicle's Web site, backed up that theory, saying Google News mostly refers readers interested in the newspaper's staff-written stories. ''This is going to have a very minimal impact on our traffic,'' he said.

Referrals from Google News accounted for 2.2 percent of the traffic at newspaper Web sites during the week ending Aug. 25, according to the research firm Hitwise.

Caroline Little, chief executive and publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, said she worries about anything that might erode her site's advertising revenue. ''That's how we make money,'' she said. ''We will be watching this carefully.''

For its part, the AP intends to work with Google to ensure readers find their way to breaking news stories on its members' Web sites, said Jane Seagrave, the AP's vice president of new media markets.

In recognition of the challenges facing the media, the AP froze its basic rates for member newspapers and broadcasters this year and already has committed to keeping fees at the same level next year.

That concession has intensified the pressure on AP to plumb new revenue channels by selling its content to so-called ''commercial'' customers on the Web. Those efforts helped the not-for-profit AP boost its revenue by 4 percent last year to $680 million.

''AP relies on its commercial agreements to help pay the enormous costs of covering breaking news around the world, ranging from deadly hurricanes and tsunamis to conflicts like the war in Iraq,'' Seagrave said.

Sasmung Rolls Out 2 New Mobiles At IFA

Samsung must have their R & D team on speed with new phones being released all the time. Their two latest additions are the SGH-i6 and the SGH-F330. Both models are sliders but the F330 is designed to be more adept to the music generation.

Samsung’s SGH-i620 slider was launched at IFA, Berlin and is a Windows Mobile device running on Windows Mobile version 6.0. It’s a slim phone at just 0.63 inches thick. It’s a tri-band GSM enabled phone that also supports UMTS and HSDPA and Bluetooth V2.0 with A2DP support as well. It also has an RSS reader. The i620 also has a 2.0 megapixel camera that with VGA video recording capability. What does make the phone a bit different is that the slide out keypad is QWERTY. And QWERTZ for the Germany release.

The SGH-i620 is equipped with a 2 inch QVGA display sporting a 320 x 240 pixel resolution with 65k colors. It has an inbuilt memory of approximately 80MB with microSD card support for external memory. Office Mobile suite is, of course a preinstalled application so users can view MS documents. It’s also equipped with an MP3 player and is a 3G enabled handset.

The second phone that Samsung has shown off at IFA is the SGH-F330 slider. The F330 is also a tri-band GSM phone that’s 3G enabled. It also supports Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP compatibility, but is said to only support GPRS and is not EDGE enabled. It also has a mirrored surface with soft touch keys. The F330 is branded as a music phone that has an inbuilt memory of around 20MB with microSD card support. It also has an FM radio, a 2 megapixel camera, with a second VGA camera in front for video calling.


There’s no information on when it will or if it will hit our market.

Via MobileBurn and IntoMobile.

Sony Plans to Launch Cheapest Blu-ray Player

Sony plans to release its budget-priced BDP-S300 Blu-ray player to the UK in September. The model, which will sell for 399 pounds, will be joined in October by the 599 pound BDP-S500. Buyers of either can avail a free copy of the Spider-Man Trilogy on BD, after filling an online form.

Rachel Banin, Product Manager for Home Video at Sony UK says, “Blu-ray is taking off and the BDP-S300 player is designed to give many more people a way of joining the party in style. Whether you opt for the BDP-S300 or the high-end BDP-S500, you will be able to appreciate the unique fidelity to the cinematic original offered by 24p True Cinema technology, something not currently available from all manufacturers, plus one-touch operation thanks to BRAVIA Theatre Sync.”

Both models can deliver 1080p/24 via HDMI, but only the higher priced model offers Dolby TrueHD decoding and a Bitstream output for DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD. The players are also compatible with AVC-HD format discs with x.v.Colour, CD and DVD. The BDP-S500 will also support BD-R/RE discs.

Panasonic Launches 16GB SDHC Memory Car

Panasonic has announced that the company will release a 16GB Pro High Speed SDHC Memory Card. The new card, designated RP-SDV16GU1K, will feature both high capacity and high speed and will be globally released in November 2007 with an estimated retail price of Rs. 13,096 ($319.99). This is the latest addition to their Pro High Speed line-up which offers five models: 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and now the 16GB card sizes with the Class 6 Speed specification

"As more and more people become engaged in the High Definition lifestyle, there is a growing demand for recording High Definition video and high resolution digital still images," said Zoe Susice, Panasonic's national marketing manager. "A key part of the High Definition lifestyle is the expansion of HD camcorders and high-resolution digital still cameras demanding card-based recording media with larger capacity and higher data transfer speeds. Our new model meets this demand with a massive 16GB data storage capacity and a high data transfer speed of up to 20MB/s."

The 16GB high data storage capacity is ideal for AVCHD High Definition recording. When used with Panasonic's High Definition SD video camera (HDC-SD5), the card can record approximately 4 hours of High Definition video in AVCHD normal mode, and approximately 2 hours 40 minutes of 1920 x 1080i full High Definition video in AVCHD fine mode. The card can support data transfer speeds of up to 20MB/s.