Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The company that operates World of Warcraft in China, The9, has told the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) that it will go bankrupt unless the game's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, is approved by the regulator.
Reports last week claimed that The9 was having trouble getting the game past the regulators. A substantial sum was paid the the game's developers, Blizzard Entertainment, in April last year to secure the license, and without the sale of the expansion The9 will not be able to recover the cost. An article on JLM Pacific Epoch reports GAPP has said that the issue lies with the game's unhealthy content, which was the same problem faced by WoW's first expansion, The Burning Crusade. This resulted in a delay while the game had to be redesigned to remove some of the scarier aspects, namely covering exposed bones on skeletons and replacing corpses with graves.
*~*~*
There has been something of an outpouring of bile directed at NBC for its decision to change the name of the Sci-Fi channel to Syfy.
"Syf" is the Polish word for "total bloody mess." (It seems to have its roots in the lesions of syphilis.) And "Syfy" would be, well, the plural.
The Sci-Fi channel doesn't actually present all that much programming that might strictly be defined as science fiction.
However, I suspect that somewhere beyond the arguments for wanting a name the channel can trademark is an argument that the phrase "science fiction" has become a little old.
*~*~*
With DS sales continuing their astronomical climb and people still snagging Wii consoles off of shelves faster than you can say: "Your princess is in another castle," Nintendo's doing pretty well for itself in these difficult economic times. It's doing even better today on news that the lawsuit filed against it two years ago by Fenner Investments has been dismissed. The suit alleged that Nintendo inappropriately infringed on a 1998 patent relating to the monitoring of the position of analog joysticks in the Wii and GameCube.
*~*~*
After getting an earful from disgruntled testers of its revamped home page, Yahoo is working on a new incarnation that will dramatically speed up access to e-mail.
The new home page, code-named Metro and due to launch later this year, will let users customize what they see and install a range of applications. But upon beginning "bucket testing" last September, in which different subsets of Yahoo users are involuntarily presented with variations of the new home page, Yahoo found out it was making it too difficult for people to continue with their accustomed practice of dropping by the page to scan for changes, said Burke Calligan, senior director product management for Yahoo front doors, in an interview at Yahoo headquarters here.
In particular, people were incensed that it took too many mouse clicks to glance at their e-mail inbox. But changes are coming to fix that, Calligan said.
"We have moderately addressed it in this round and we're going to radically address it in upcoming testing," Calligan said. "We've rethought the flow and design based on feedback we've gotten from users. I think users will...feel much better about it."
Reports last week claimed that The9 was having trouble getting the game past the regulators. A substantial sum was paid the the game's developers, Blizzard Entertainment, in April last year to secure the license, and without the sale of the expansion The9 will not be able to recover the cost. An article on JLM Pacific Epoch reports GAPP has said that the issue lies with the game's unhealthy content, which was the same problem faced by WoW's first expansion, The Burning Crusade. This resulted in a delay while the game had to be redesigned to remove some of the scarier aspects, namely covering exposed bones on skeletons and replacing corpses with graves.
*~*~*
There has been something of an outpouring of bile directed at NBC for its decision to change the name of the Sci-Fi channel to Syfy."Syf" is the Polish word for "total bloody mess." (It seems to have its roots in the lesions of syphilis.) And "Syfy" would be, well, the plural.
The Sci-Fi channel doesn't actually present all that much programming that might strictly be defined as science fiction.
However, I suspect that somewhere beyond the arguments for wanting a name the channel can trademark is an argument that the phrase "science fiction" has become a little old.
*~*~*
With DS sales continuing their astronomical climb and people still snagging Wii consoles off of shelves faster than you can say: "Your princess is in another castle," Nintendo's doing pretty well for itself in these difficult economic times. It's doing even better today on news that the lawsuit filed against it two years ago by Fenner Investments has been dismissed. The suit alleged that Nintendo inappropriately infringed on a 1998 patent relating to the monitoring of the position of analog joysticks in the Wii and GameCube.
*~*~*
After getting an earful from disgruntled testers of its revamped home page, Yahoo is working on a new incarnation that will dramatically speed up access to e-mail.
The new home page, code-named Metro and due to launch later this year, will let users customize what they see and install a range of applications. But upon beginning "bucket testing" last September, in which different subsets of Yahoo users are involuntarily presented with variations of the new home page, Yahoo found out it was making it too difficult for people to continue with their accustomed practice of dropping by the page to scan for changes, said Burke Calligan, senior director product management for Yahoo front doors, in an interview at Yahoo headquarters here.
In particular, people were incensed that it took too many mouse clicks to glance at their e-mail inbox. But changes are coming to fix that, Calligan said.
"We have moderately addressed it in this round and we're going to radically address it in upcoming testing," Calligan said. "We've rethought the flow and design based on feedback we've gotten from users. I think users will...feel much better about it."
Labels: nintendo, sci fi, WoW, yahoo
Friday, January 16, 2009
Yahoo! has designed a Widget Engine that allows TV viewers to access a wide range of information, all from the convenience of their TV screen. During CES last week, Yahoo! showcased the weather widget on a Sharp widget-enabled television.The Widget Channel was created by Yahoo! and Intel and can work on televisions as well as LCD TV/DVD combinations.
WebTV is nothing new, but as far as I know it hasn't become a huge thing. I mean people still prefer surfing on their laptops or desktops, right? You can do that while you're watching TV. But if you could just have a sidebar widget on the TV then you've opened multitasking up o a whole new level. And so now instead of being called WebTV it has been named ConnectedTV by some.
Since the Connected TV will be controlled with just a handy remote control, rather than the set top box and keyboard, and will have many new features to it, is it more likely that the concept will appeal to users this time around?
TV Widgets will be installed in a handful of broadband-capable high-definition televisions and set-top boxes made by Samsung Electronics, Sony (SNE), VIZIO, and LG Electronics, slated to ship in the spring.
If anything this shows how Yahoo! is boldy moving forward in rebuilding their own business foundation.
[Screenshot from Samsung Connected TV demo]
Labels: connected tv, yahoo
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
It wasn't too long ago I was writing about the Yahoo webtop. Well, now they're putting themselves out there for 3rd party developers in regards to their address book capabilities.Yahoo is releasing an Address Book API today that will give 3rd-party developers access Yahoo users' contact lists without the traditional, but primitive, method of page scraping.
Chris Yeh, the head of the Yahoo developer network, considers this release the second major "proof point" of Yahoo's Open Services (YOS) campaign, which kicked off at the Web 2.0 Expo in March.
"With Yahoo! Address Book, individuals not only have the ability to update, access and store their contact information from anywhere in the world, but they can also take advantage of value-added services integrated into Yahoo! Address Book, such as Yahoo! Maps and Yahoo! Mail."
Say it with me, YA-HOOOOOOOO!
Labels: open source, yahoo
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
One of the best side effects of using Facebook is knowing when your contacts' birthdays are - but you only see them if you log in. The Facebook application fbCal is out to fix that. Once you install it on Facebook, fbCal creates an iCal file for your Facebook contacts' birthdays as well as Facebook events.And in another fun geeky news:
As Web and desktop applications merge, Yahoo doesn't want to be left out of the Webtop party. That's especially true as Adobe Air and Google Gears apps begin to gain some traction. It turns out that for the past year Yahoo has been working on BrowserPlus, a browser plugin that lets developers add desktop-like features to the browser, including the ability to drag-and-drop items from the desktop onto the browser, manipulate Web images (crop, rotate, etc.), and receive desktop notifications. It works with Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer, on both Windows and Mac OS X.
Labels: calendar, Facebook, webtops, yahoo
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