Nimool

$33 million penalty for OnlineNIC

2008-12-27T21:20:00.004+01:00

OnlineNIC has to pay a penalty of $33.15 million for having 663 domain names which looked like Verizon too much. 3 of them were: verizon-cellular.com, varizon.com and Verizoncellphonecompany.com.

OnlineNIC made profit of people's typing error to get them on these parked domains, so that they click on advertisements and make them money. According to Verizon this is the highest ever money penalty given to someone/a company because of taking advantage of people with typing error.

OnlineNIC has got to pay Verizon $50,000 for each of the domains and has to assign them all to Verizon. OnlineNIC were not available at the court to defend themselves.

Microsoft and Yahoo! are also planning to sue OnlineNIC, Microsoft has a list of 97 domain names which look too much like theirs and Yahoo! has a list of about 500 domain names with the same complaint.

Zune and Xbox 360 will be unified!

2007-11-20T18:34:00.001+01:00

Xbox boss, James Allard, said in a interview that Xbox 360 and Zune will get connected to the same network. This way Zune will act as a complete entertainment solution.

Allard said in a interview with The New York Times that the user will have to buy separate cards, $50 for Xbox live for a year and $15 a month for Zune Pass.

Read the whole story here!

Assasin's Creed will contain less gore in Germany

2007-08-23T23:12:00.001+02:00

The yet to come game Assasin's Creed will contain less blood and gore if published in Germany. This follows after the previous announcement that Unreal Tournament 3 would be stripped from blood and gore, according to Ubisoft because it didn't appeal the German media autorities. The influence of violence in games has been, just like in the USA (with our all known hero Jack Thompson), the constant subject of debate lately. Incidents like the murder by two German teenagers who said to be inspired by a Final Fantasy game fed the opinion that there should be a control on the amount of violence in games. Now Assasin's Creed will be more friendly to all parents who seek to protect their child against images of things widely spread over television and goth band lyrics.

Playstation 3 not harder to code for

2007-08-17T18:11:00.001+02:00

The team that was responsible for Ubisoft's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, said it is not harder to code for the PS3 in comparison with the Xbox 360. Even though analysts keep saying this, it is up to the experience you have with the console your coding for.

The Playstation has been in the market for a shorter time than the Xbox 360, that's why developers need more time to understand the PS3's hardware. The PS3 is not necessarily harder to code for than the Xbox 360. They are two different consoles with different competences.

"It's wrong to say it's harder to code on the PlayStation 3, it's just something that needs to be learnt. It's not harder to develop on the PS3 than it is on the 360, it's just a different console. Developers might says it's harder because it just takes time to understand the technology, we're still early in the lifecycle."

Yann Le Tensorer from the GRAW team compared the PS3 with the PS2 which also took some time to develop for: "We need all developers to learn from the console, it was the same with the PlayStation 2. Our team are more than happy with the PlayStation 3".

Source: GameIndustry

Metal Gear Online Beta --> Soon!

2007-08-14T14:48:00.001+02:00

Konami will begin soon with the Beta tests. The (first) Beta test will begin from 20 August till 3 September. Unfortunately it's a closed Beta test and only people who are invited, can participate in the test.

The Japanese Beta testers have already received an E-mail with instructions. We don't know whether there will be a open Beta test after this or not, we can only hope!

Sony unveils European release dates!

2007-08-14T14:41:00.001+02:00

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has unveiled a new release date list for PAL regions:

August 2007
29.08 - SingStar Standalone - PS2 - € 30,95
29.08 - SingStar inclusief microfoon - PS2 - € 61,95

September 2007
05.09 - Rouge Galaxy - PS2 - € 61,95
12.09 - Warhawk inclusief headset - PS3 - € 61,95
12.09 - SingStar Standalone - PS3 - € 30,95
12.09 - SingStar inclusief microfoon - PS3 - € 61,95
19.09 - EyeToy: Play Sports Standalone - PS2 Platinum - € 20,95
19.09 - Tourist Trophy - PS2 Platinum - € 20,95
TBA - WipEout Pulse - PSP - TBA

October 2007
10.10 - ATV Offroad Fury Pro - PSP - € 40,95
10.10 - ATV Offroad Fury 4 - PS2 - € 61,95
17.10 - Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice - PSP - € 40,95
17.10 - Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice - PS2 - € 61,95

I don't know what happened with Heavenly Sword and Lair??? You guys have any idea?

Source: Ourworld

American Playstation Store update

2007-08-10T17:12:00.001+02:00

The American Playstation Store has been updated with some new content:

Piyotama (Game, $2,99)

Heavenly Sword Anime Part I (Trailer)

Heavenly Sword Making Of (Trailer)

Heavenly Sword Anime (Wallpaper)

Turok E3 Gameplay (Trailer)

10.000 B.C (Trailer)

Super Bad Red Band (Trailer)

Fred Claus (Trailer)

Again a Heavenly Sword wallpaper! Nariko is gorgeous :p I'm going to download this for sure! Games on the PSN don't make happy, because here we don't have prepaid cards!!! Sony must hurry man! I have no credit card.

Sony: next firmware update in September!

2007-08-10T17:03:00.001+02:00

Today Sony said next firmware update will be released early September. The main cause of this, is some technical problems with Resident Evil: Director's Cut. This game is downloadable on the Japanese Playstation Network and playable on the PSP.

It's yet unclear whether this is a firmware update for the PSP, the PS3 or probably for both!

What do you think?

Buy more storage from Google!

2007-08-10T15:36:00.001+02:00

We have a lot of space on Google for free and we love it!(1GB for Picasa Web Albums, 2.8GB for Gmail), but what if that doesn't satisfy your needs? Wouldn't it be great to be able to access ALL your photos anywhere? Or not having to remove your E-mails even with BIG attachments? Yes, that is great. If you look at your Manage Storage page you will see your Basic Storage usage, if you look a little better you will see: Need more space? Upgrade your storage.

These are the options:

6 GB ($20.00 per year)
25 GB ($75.00 per year)
100 GB ($250.00 per year)
250 GB ($500.00 per year)

And u can use the storage in all Google products! Just purchase through Google Checkout and you're done! Your storage will automatically renew within 24 hours.

Mexican billionaire wants to donate more than a million laptops!

2007-08-06T19:50:00.000+02:00

The Mexican billionaire, Carlos Slim Helu said he wants to donate more than a million laptops to children in Mexico. The 66-year-old man is right now the richest man in the world with 67.8 billion dollars.

Carlos Slim Helu wants to spend 70 million dollars on new laptops. These laptops will be given to schools and libraries for using and lending out. He hopes to improve the schooling of the children this way.

Don't let your Gmail get hacked!

2007-08-06T17:30:00.000+02:00

Your Gmail can get hacked just by sniffing your traffic and stealing your cookies, in other words by Session Hijacking! The best way to make sure you don't get hacked, is to make sure you're using the SSL version of Gmail(if you're a n00b, make sure your address bar is yellow--in Firefox--and the address begins with https).

Tip(thanks to Garett): If you don't have Firefox, make sure you type https instead of http. But if you're using firefox, install Greasemonkey and then install this script--GMail Secure--. This way your session remains always in secure mode.

Don't be too worry though, not anyone can hack your Gmail :)

Source: Googling Google

12 to 15 hours of gameplay for Heavenly Sword

2007-08-05T14:44:00.000+02:00

PS3 gamers were very satisfied with the Heavenly Sword demo on Playstation Network July 26th. As you all know the demo was very short and for that reason many gamers didn't know for sure whether the game would be long enough.

They have now exposed that Heavenly Sword will be offering somewhere between 12 and 15 hours of gameplay plus there will be enough extra content to make the game interesting enough to buy and play it over and over again. We can probably expect extras like: outfits and weapons for Nariko.

Well, I thinks that's a reasonable amount of gamepaly. What do you think? Will you buy this game? I certainly will :)

It's not really clear when Heavenly Sword will be released, but IGN says it's September 12th. Although this is not confirmed yet. Lets not hope any delay!

Source: QJ

Google lets users suggest a better search results

2007-08-04T20:28:00.000+02:00

Google shows again that it really cares about it's users and what they(users) think about Google's services. I just read in Googling Google that Google shows a suggestion form at the bottom of the search results, you can then fill in the URL you think is better to show for the word that your searching for!(it might not always happen if you search for something, though).

Garett mentions something very interesting and that is abusing this feature by webmasters who want a better pagerank filling in their own URL! What do you think?

Here is a screenshot:

Update

Google now shows a link at the very bottom of the page saying:"Dissatisfied? Help us improve".

When you go to the link, you can fill in which information you were seeking and why you are dissatisfied. You can also enter a URL that wasn't listed in the search result.

What do you think of this feature? I'd like to hear it from you.

The Pirate Bay wants to relaunch Suprnova.org

2007-08-03T13:58:00.000+02:00

Torrent site The Pirate Bay wants to relaunch Suprnova.org, the extremely popular torrent site that has been permanently shut down in 2004. In October 2005, Suprnova had a successor called Newnova!

The owner of the domain Suprnova.org assigned it to The Pirate Bay "boys". The owner is convinced that The Pirate Bay is the only team which can use Suprnova.org correctly.

GTA IV delayed until Q2 2008

2007-08-03T13:48:00.000+02:00

Gamers waiting for GTA IV to release October 19th 2000, will have to wait longer until they can enjoy playing GTA IV. Rockstar needs more time to finish developing the game.

Rockstar has delayed GTA IV to second quarter of 2008, that means that the game will be released somewhere between February 1st and April 13th.

I'm very sorry for you all, I know you've been waiting for so long :) There are still other good games this year to play, don't worry!

New deleteworm hates MP3s

2007-08-02T16:10:00.001+02:00

The worm that Symantec has called W32.Deletemusic, looks up MP3 files and removes them. W32.Deletemusic can only infect Windows PCs. It's not very dangerous, because it only can spread itself thorugh USB flash drives and floppy disks.

You would say W32.Deletemusic is written by the music industry to counteract illegal copying of MP3s, because it's so well done, but computer security expert Graham Cluley thinks it's written by amateurs.

Sophos advices PC users to turn off "Autorun" for CDs and USB flash drives to not to get infected.

It is not the first time that a virus or Trojan horse removes MP3 files, two years ago "Nopir B worm" and last year the Trojan horse Erazer did the same thing.

Microsoft office for Mac delayed to 2008

2007-08-02T15:56:00.000+02:00

Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit has announced that Mac-users have to wait longer for the successor of Office 2004 for Mac. In January 2008 you can buy the Office pack for the Mac.

A couple of months ago they announced that it would be ready somewhere between June and December 2007. The reason for the delay is that they did some quality tests on it and it's not good enough yet. Some functions are not working properly.

Source: Ars Technica

"Google dreams of mobile phone calls for free"

2007-08-02T15:52:00.000+02:00

Google wants to let people call by paying the cost with the advertisement income.The search giant hopes to offer such a telephone service in the future. Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google Inc. thinks that advertising in mobile phones is much more interesting than all other kinds of advertising.

"What's interesting about the ads in the mobile phone is that they are twice as profitable or more than the nonmobile phone ads because they're more personal."

Google refuses to comment on this, but a spokesman confirms that Google is right now partnering with almost almost all the carriers and manufactures to get Google search and other Google applications into their devices and networks. Some sources even say that Google is working on a Google phone! with all Google softwares in it.

What do you think? Is this all true? I think it is!

"Zango ignores decision and continues spreading adware"

2007-08-01T17:39:00.000+02:00

According to Ben Edelman, spyware expert Zango is still sneakily spreading unwanted adware on the computers of internet users. This is despite of the decision with the FTC, when Zango promised not to spread unwanted adware anymore.

Zango, earlier known as 180solutions, has been more often on the news because of spreading unwanted adware into computers by putting them in third party softwares and then hindering the users with A LOT of pop-ups. These programs were difficult to detect and remove, so it took a lot of effort to clean up the PC again.

Zango paid 3 million dollars and made clear that it would only spread adware with the user's permission. According to Edelman Zango absolutely stick to this decision. Zango makes it difficult for users(by camouflage) to see they have the option not to install the adware.

I remember I also have had problems with 180solutions(former Zango). I'm sure you have too! Let me know your experience with Zango!

Amazon EC2 lets users sell software

2007-08-01T17:08:00.000+02:00

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, a virtual computing environment that's part of Amazon Web Services, now allows developers to sell software as a service, the company said Tuesday.

EC2 users begin by creating an Amazon Machine Image (AMI), which contains applications, libraries, data and configuration settings, or by using a pre-packaged, pre-configured file system template.

After uploading the appropriate software to Amazon S3, Amazon's online storage service, and configuring it for network access and security, the user's virtual machine is ready to go. Each virtual machine delivers performance equivalent to a system with a 1.7Ghz x86 processor, 1.75Gbytes of RAM, 160Gbytes of local disk, and 250Mbs of network bandwidth, according to Amazon.

With Amazon's new Paid AMI Support, EC2 users can become a software or application service provider, selling access to their particular server configuration. So rather than selling, say, blogging software that users have to download to a home computer then upload to a Web server and install, a software developer might create and deploy a Paid AMI that builds some profit into Amazon EC2's base price of 10 cents per instance-hour consumed, 10 cents per Gbyte of data in, and 18 cents per Gbyte out, plus Amazon S3 storage and request charges.

"For example, A Ruby on Rails Developer can now configure the entire stack (Nginx, Apache, Mongrel, MySQL and all the open source goodies that 'simply works'), set its price, say 15 cents/hour and 12 cents/Gbyte-up and 21 cents/Gbyte-down and fire away," said Jinesh Varia, an Amazon Web Services evangelist, on the AWS blog. "While Amazon EC2 gets the same old traditional 10 cents/hour, 10 cents/Gbyte-up and 18 cents/Gbyte-down, the developer (AMI-creator) gets the difference (in this case, 5 cents/hour, 2 cents/Gbyte-up, 3 cents/Gbyte-down) credited back to his account from [whoever] instantiates that image."

Some of the currently available AMIs include Journyx Timesheet (Fedora 4-PostgreSQL 8.2-Apache1.3) with S3 backup, Fedora Core with Drupal 5.1, Movable Type 4.0 Beta, Ubuntu Feisty 7.04 and Ruby on Rails, and Virtualmin + Webmin on Fedora 4.

The Paid AMI service requires the Amazon EC2 API Command Line Tools (v 1.2-11797 or higher).

Youtube not going to block uploads

2007-08-01T11:26:00.000+02:00

According to Ricardo Reyes from Google, Youtube's copyright filter will not block any uploads on Youtube.com. Instead of that videos with copyright will be removed on request of the owner.

According to Google this would suffice to stick to Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Google will keep up the database with the hashes of the videos that may not be uploaded on Youtube. The videos containing these hashes will then be automatically removed.

Before this people thought videos with copyright will be denied when uploading!

Source: InfoWorld

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots video interview

2007-07-31T13:46:00.000+02:00

Here is a new interview about MGS4 giving you more details about the game:

Click here for a HD version.

Interview video Metal Gear Solid Online

2007-07-31T13:40:00.000+02:00

Here is the first interview about Metal Gear Solid Online:

Click here for a HD version of the video.

Investors put millions of euros in a news site

2007-07-31T12:56:00.000+02:00

The website Nowpublic.com gets 10.6 million euros from different different investors. With this investment they hope to be the biggest news site in the world.

Nowpublic gets taken of by 100,000 citizen journalists from 140 different countries and 3,600 different cities. Nowpublic announces that it id going to expand his partnership with Associated Press. Nowpublic is right now working with AP in Seattle, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Chicago.

Merril Brown from Nowpublic says that this financing will help them be the biggest online news publisher in the world. "And we are going to reach that with more people at the right place and the right moment."

Update: 119658 members in 3932 cities.

Gates: Google no threat on the mobile software market

2007-07-31T12:26:00.000+02:00

Microsoft founder, Bill Gates thinks Google is not a threat on the mobile software market for smartphones.

Gates doesn't see Google as a competitor on the software market for mobile phones, where Microsoft has a market share of 10%. In a interview with The New York Times, Bill Gates says he thinks it's unlikely that Google will steal Microsoft's market share on this market.

According to The New York Times, Google is preparing to enter the market of mobile phones with it's own software and a couple of services they have introduced. Gates:"How many products that Google has introduced are profitable?". "They have introduced about 30 products and only one of them in profitable."

What do you think? Do you agree with Bill Gates? Or do you think Google will also be successful on the mobile phones market? I'd like to hear it from you.