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Tom Krazit Year:October 20, 2006 6:11 PM PDT Source Site:newsblog
Larry Ellisons hooking himself up with one of the Bay Areas most downtrodden organizations.
No, not the Union of Laid-off Software Developers. Ellisons company, Oracle, announced a 10-year deal to rename the home of the NBAs Golden State Warriors as the Oracle. The Oakland arena, currently known as the catchy Arena in Oakland, hosts 41 Warriors games a season and numerous concerts and other events throughout the year.
Oracle President Charles Philips must not watch a lot of basketball. "This is a partnership between two major global brands, combining one of the best-known names in technology with one of the best-known names in sports, both with a strong desire to be the best in their prospective industries," he said in a press release on the Warriors Web site Friday.
For those of you ...
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Rafe Needleman Year:October 20, 2006 5:49 PM PDT Source Site:newsblog
I just tried an odd new community tool, MyBlogLog. Its a system that lets you "join" a blog or site, which is cool because you can also see other people who are members of the site. If you happen to see someone you know (a friend, perhaps, or maybe an industry figure or famous person), youll likely want to see what other sites they are members of. (By default, you become a member of a site after youve visited it ten times.) Its a neat social networking tool, and unique in that it requires no action from participants to join sites they develop affiliations with.
MyBlogLog also fosters community by enabling members of site to have their own forum-like conversation about it, on a MySpace-like page thats separate from the blog itself.
But theres an awkward side to MyBlogLog, too: If youre ...
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Tom Krazit Year:October 20, 2006 4:30 PM PDT Source Site:newsblog
Rumors flew this week, prompted by a report on the Inquirer, that Nvidia is considering a plunge into that rare club of x86 CPU companies.
The report claimed that Nvidia, which currently makes graphics chips and chipsets, recently launched a design project to develop their own CPU based on the x86 instruction set that Intel and Advanced Micro Devices processors also use. The thinking is that with AMDs purchase of ATI, and Intels hints about further integration of the PC processor and graphics chip, Nvidia needs to be prepared for an era of integrated designs that would relegate its own discrete graphics chips to a smaller market.
The problem with the theory is that Nvidia doesnt have a license to make x86 CPUs. Intel controls those patents and has cross-licensing agreements in place wi...
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Stephen Shankland Year:October 20, 2006 1:56 PM PDT Source Site:newsblog
IBM has a well-earned reputation for requiring its employees to dress in an unofficial jacket-and-tie uniform. Corporate fashion historians doubtless will be excited to learn that IBM, in a moment of self-reflection, has provided a gallery of dress code examples.
As the decades progress, the ties gradually widen, then grow narrow again. By 1997, Big Blues protocols loosened up enough to allow ties to vanish altogether.
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Andrew Donoghue Year:October 20, 2006 12:36 PM PDT Source Site:newsblog
U.K. IT charity Computer Aid is working with a service organization to provide schools in the developing world with the technology to educate pupils about the spread and prevention of AIDS.
Computer Aid announced on Thursday that it is working with the Berkshire, England-based CfBT Education Trust, to donate 141 PCs, 32 laptops and 43 servers to schools and community organizations in the developing world.
The PCs, donated by CfBT, will go to towns such as Kiberia in Kenya--recognized as the largest slum in Africa and home to some of the most deprived communities in Kenya. One of the groups key projects is the Primary School Action for Better Health (PSABH) HIV education program, which aims to provide teachers and schools with the tools to educate pupils about HIV/AIDS prevention.
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Candace Lombardi Year:October 20, 2006 10:05 AM PDT Source Site:newsblog
Plans to produce Microsofts video game "Halo" as a feature film, have stumbled with Universal and Fox.
The deal fell apart after both studios asked the movies would-be producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh to "significantly reduce their deals," according to Ken Kamins, the representative for both producers, in an interview with Variety.
Microsoft concurred with Kamins characterization of the situation.
"We are disappointed that Universal wanted to significantly renegotiate the financial points of the deal. But the Halo franchise is hugely popular and our goal remains the same--to find a partner that shares our passion and will creatively collaborate with us to best represent the story and spirit of the Halo franchise," a Microsoft representative wrote in an e-mail. "Peter Jackson, Fr...
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Leslie Katz Year:October 20, 2006 10:00 AM PDT Source Site:newsblog
Everyone knows that defending the alternate-history Earth of "Resistance: Fall of Man" from alien invaders or slicing through a horde of enemies in "Genji: Days of the Blade" can make for perspiring palms. Sure, a little sweat might add to the excitement of the game, but it also makes it harder to keep a grip on those ever-important controllers, which can heat up easily due to their heavy power consumption.
Credit: Logitech
Just in time for the release of Sonys PlayStation 3, peripheral maker Logitech has unveiled a PS3 version of its ChillStream controller, which has a built-in fan-based cooling system designed to keep the hands of gamers cool and dry. The fan pushes air in the direction of the users palm and the four fingers most frequently used to slay dragons and engage ...
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Joris Evers Year:October 20, 2006 9:55 AM PDT Source Site:newsblog
A day after Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7, security firms reported the first vulnerability in the final version of the new Web browser. (The beta releases were not bug free, so this would not be the very first IE 7 flaw.)
Microsoft shot back on its Security Response blog. "These reports are technically inaccurate: the issue concerned in these reports is not in Internet Explorer 7 (or any other version) at all," the company said.
Instead, the flaw is in Outlook Express, Microsoft said.
But Secunia, a security monitoring company, maintains that listing the bug as an IE 7 vulnerability is correct.
"The vulnerability is fully exploitable via IE, which is the primary attack vector, if not the only attack vector," Secunia CTO Thomas Kristensen wrote in an e-mail to CNET News.com.
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Caroline McCarthy Year:October 20, 2006 9:53 AM PDT Source Site:newsblog
In a Wednesday interview with political strategist Larry Sabato and Brown University political scientist Wendy Schiller, Fox News conservative commentator (some might say thats a redundancy) Bill OReilly said hes glad President Bush doesnt seem to be an avid blog reader. The state of affairs on political blogs on both the left and right, he thinks, is pretty sordid.
"I have to say President Bush has a much healthier attitude toward this than I do," OReilly observed. "Because if I can get away with it, boy, Id go in with a hand grenade."
Transcript and video here.
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Margaret Kane Year:October 20, 2006 6:21 AM PDT Source Site:newsblog
San Francisco loves high tech. But there may be one thing it loves more: a good protest. And that could be causing problems for plans to offer free Internet access.
EarthLink and Google have been working with the city on a plan to offer free Wi-Fi for residents. But there have been several bureaucratic snags: A Google executive complained to the San Francisco Chronicle that the citys "slow negotiating style" and unreasonable demands are tying up the project.
But bureaucrats arent the only ones causing problems. Blogger Davis Freeberg recounted a recent town hall meeting between the tech execs, city officials and local residents where "local political gadflies seemed to feel that EarthLink and Google providing free Wi-Fi to the citizens was akin to killing kittens because, they ...
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Rafe Needleman Year:October 19, 2006 9:53 PM PDT Source Site:newsblog
I like to hear entrepreneurs pitch their ideas. It have kind of a fetish for it, actually. But I also have a limited attention span, so for me, the shorter the pitch, the better. Thats why Im happy to host the Stirr events whenever I can, because the pitches at these events are limited to 60 seconds. At tonights SF Beta party, the pitches were even shorter: The entrepreneurs had to present their companies as haiku.
I appreciate brevity in a pitch, but in seventeen syllables even clear and practical ideas are reduced to abstraction. Still, it was a hoot to see CEOs try to cram their companies into the short form. Here are their haiku, with a bit of prose commentary on each.
My top pick from this list, by the way, is ShopcastTV.
Meetro:
Looking for new friends?
Chat with neighbors and...
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If you find it rather appalling that a $300 graphics card is on the budget end of things these days -- back in our day that was the price of a next-gen console, now get off our lawn! -- you might be comforted to know that NVIDIAs 320MB 8800 GTS aint no sloucher. Sure, the 500MHz G80 core is stepped down from the 575MHz in the GTX, with the 320MB of memory falling far short of the 768MB in the GTX or even the 640MB in the beefier version of the GTS, but youre still getting a whole lot of DirectX 10 juice for your dollar, relative to the $600+ GTX and $400+ 640MB GTS. If youre still having trouble justifying the price, just google yourself a few Crysis
screenshots -- there wont be any turning back. Be sure to peep the uniformly awkward OEM box art after the break.