Author: Serkadis

If your fondest arcade memories are of playing gratuitously violent games without your parents knowing, then Microsoft’s Game Room probably won’t give you the sense of nostalgia you’re looking for. According to a Microsoft representative, there are no plans to carry Mature or even Teen rated titles in the feature.

“Games available for download within ‘Game Room’ will carry either E or E10+ ratings,” this representative said to GamerBytes (via Kotaku). “We currently have no plans to feature titles of those [higher Teen and Mature] ratings.”

The reasoning behind this is where things get a little tricky, though. Originally, GamerBytes reported that Microsoft elected to get an ESRB rating for the Game Room feature itself, rather than have to rate every title that will launch within it. As such, they limited themselves to E and E10+ games only, and will have to continue to do so for every new game released for Game Room. The logic here is this will save Microsoft tons of money in ESRB rating fees since they supposedly wouldn’t have to rate future games for the service.

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A new development in the Amazon vs. Macmillan fiasco. Amazon just posted an announcement indicating that will be “capitulating” to Macmillan by selling the publishers’ books for their desired prices.

Macmillan is trying to price their e-books at $15, while Amazon prices e-books at $9.99. Macmillan’s CEO John Sargent said that unless Amazon sets the price of new e-books to $15, the publisher will distribute new books to Amazon when they are released. On Friday, Amazon basically banned titles, both paper and digital, published by Macmillan by refusing to directly sell them. And Macmillan took out an ad in the Publishers Marketplace magazine protesting the tactics being used by Amazon regarding pricing.

Amazon is now giving into Macmillan’s demands because of the publisher’s monopoly over its titles. In a passive aggressive manner, Amazon says that readers will decide whether its reasonable to pay $14.99 for e-books. And that other publishers will compete by offering their books and lower prices.

Here is Amazon’s announcement:

Dear Customers:

Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!

Thank you for being a customer.

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I sat down with Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week to talk about his business.

Brightcove isn’t the sexiest startup out there. They’re a video platform – giving websites the tools they need to host and stream video, for a fee ranging from $100/month to “six figures per year” for the largest customers. For the most part users never see the Brightcove brand. And Allaire is just fine with that. He just wants happy customers.

The company launched in 2005, has raised just over $90 million in venture capital, and is approaching profitability, he says. Allaire says he wants to build a public company, and is happy being based in Boston.

Brightcove competes with newer upstarts like Ooyala, although Allaire says Brightcove remains the strongest company in its space. Another competitor, Maven Networks, was acquired by Yahoo in 2008 for around $160 million. The product was unceremoniously shut down by Yahoo a year later. Allaire says they picked up most of Maven’s customers.

You can see the full interview above. And don’t miss the outtake at the end of the video where Allaire gives some free tech support to a customer. Time Inc. reporter Barbara Kiviat was having some issues uploading a video.

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The "Truth in Motion: The U.S. Ski Team’s Road to Vancouver" commissioned by Audi will be available as a free download, exclusively on the iTunes Store in both HD and SD versions. Olympics and sports enthusiasts alike will be able to enjoy the documentary on their Mac or PC, iPhone, iPod with video and on a TV with Apple TV.

The documentary is centered around how the American athletes prepared for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. Some of the athletes qualified for the competition a… (read more)

Zac Efron is set take over the role of Peter Parker in the next Spider Man feature, a well-placed source at Universal Pictures blabbed to Britain’s Daily Star on Sunday.

The High School Musical sweetheart will replace Tobey Maguire, 34, in the fourth blockbuster movie, due to start shooting later this year and scheduled to hit cinemas in 2012, according to the new report.

Universal stunned film fans late last year when the studio announced that it was firing the cast of the megabucks franchise and working on a script that would send Spidey back to high school. Producers of the Spider-Man franchise believe 22-year-old Zac –who has a huge teen following thanks to work with Disney — will bring a new, younger fanbase to the Spider-Man series.

According to the report, producers are also said to be considering reuniting Zac with his High School Musical co-star — and real-life girlfriend — Vanessa Hudgens in Spidey 4. The 21-year-old brunette is tipped to replace Kirsten Dunst as Mary-Jane Watson.

A Florida woman was so upset and agitated after arguing with her boyfriend over the new season of American Idol, she stabbed him.

Police in St. Petersburg have arrested Cynthia Bettis-Ware, 52, on charges of first-degree attempted murder after she stabbed live-in love Kevin Johnson, 47, before scalding him with a cup of hot chocolate, police spokeswoman Jennifer Dawkins told The St. Petersburg Times. The nearly-fatal attack took place at the Empress Motel on Martin Luther King Street, where the couple had been living.

Cops said the couple was watching American Idol on Tuesday night when they began arguing over something that happened on the show. That’s when Johnson changed the channel to stop the argument, before retiring to bed. Johnson woke up a short time later and saw Bettis-Ware wielding a 10-inch butcher knife.

Cops said she stabbed him five times in the back and twice in the chest, before severely burning Johnson with a mug of hot cocoa.

Filed under: Chicago Auto Show, Motorsports, Event Alert

Just like January equals Detroit, February means Chicago for auto show lovers. The major players will again descend upon McCormick Place in the Windy City, along the banks of the still-frozen Lake Michigan. Other auto shows in February include the Canadian International AutoShow in Toronto, plus regional shows in Philadelphia and Syracuse. Hot Rodders have the Sacramento Autorama to look forward to, while classic car aficionados have Boca Raton and The Desert Classic in La Quinta to get the Concours d’ Elegance season going.

The American motorsports season kicked off yesterday with the Rolex 24 at Daytona, but other series will kick it into gear in February. The Bud Shootout signals the return of bump-drafts as NASCAR starts the 2010 season with this all-star lead-in to Daytona, and drag racing action explodes back onto the scene with the 50th Annual Winternationals in Pomona. Meanwhile, Formula 1 and ALMS teams are busy practicing, getting ready for their season openers in March.

Besides those automotive events, there’s Valentine’s Day and the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver to keep non-car people occupied in February. If none of those events appeal to you, check out our Google Calendar after the jump for even more listings, all with detailed info and links. And please don’t forget to use the comments to add or modify listings.

Continue reading Event Alert: February 2010 Calendar of Automotive Events

Event Alert: February 2010 Calendar of Automotive Events originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Matthew Delorey was a 26-year old with a business plan: selling hacked cable modems. This is the sort of business that a budding entrepreneur should probably keep on the down-low, or at least limit to those tiny text ads at the back of magazines where satellite descramblers are sold, but that’s no way to rake in the cash.

That’s why Delorey, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, posted ads on Craigslist and then—rather incredibly—put up YouTube videos with names like “Massmodz.com How to Get Free Internet Free Cable Internet Comcast or any Cable ISP—100% works.”

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Google is continuing to kill off support for Internet Explorer 6 in its services; the search giant has announced that two more of its Web properties will stop supporting IE6 as of March 1. “Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers,” a blog post on the Official Google Enterprise Blog begins to explain. “We’re also going to begin phasing out our support, starting with Google Docs and Google Sites. As a result you may find that from March 1 key functionality within these products — as well as new Docs and Sites features — won’t work properly in older browsers.” Older browsers, according to Google, include anything prior to IE7, Firefox 3.0, Chrome 4.0, and Safari 3.0.

Although one might think this is a reaction to the Internet Explorer’s vulnerabilities notably exploited in the recent series of Chinese-based attacks against Google and 30 other tech companies, which Microsoft has since patched, the truth is Google has already done this with many of its other products. Google’s Orkut and YouTube started phasing out IE6 support about six months ago and Google has been using Gmail to convert IE6 users to Chrome for over a year.

Google’s stance on IE6 varies from Microsoft’s because the search giant does not need to support Windows XP, the operating system with which IE6 first shipped, as long as Microsoft (which will support XP and IE6 until April 8, 2014). Google can thus pull IE6 support on its many Web properties and urge users to upgrade. Microsoft, on the other hand, which has stated time and time again that it wants to see IE6 disappear as much as anyone else, won’t force anyone to upgrade (though it’s worth noting that the software giant’s Office Web Apps won’t support IE6 either, just like Google Docs). Instead, it says the decision is ultimately up to the user, touting IE8’s many features over IE6, particularly in the area of security, in an attempt to push users to upgrade. IE6 ended 2009 with a market share of 20.99 percent.

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Namco Bandai has announced that Dead to Rights: Retribution, the reboot of sorts for their canine-friendly action game series last seen in 2005, will release on April 13 (via Eurogamer).

Retribution was first announced back in February of 2009, and really, hasn’t been seen very much since. We know the game will once again star the unfortunately Flintstones-esque named Jack Slate, a canine officer who fights crime with his loyal dog Shadow. Retribution will also feature deeper hand-to-hand combat, and entire levels where the player controls Shadow directly.

We last got a look at Retribution way back in May of last year, so it’ll be interesting to see how this reboot shaped up. It’ll be released on both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and evidently there will be pre-order bonuses including a “MadWorld-style” graphic filter called “noir mode,” and exclusive dog camouflage for Shadow.

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Last September, YourVersion took the stage at TechCrunch50 as the DemoPit People’s Choice winner, after receiving the most votes from conference attendees. The startup’s goal is fairly simple: to help you find content that you’re interested in, in real time. And now it’s bringing its application to the iPhone. You can download the free app here.

The app is pretty straightforward. First, you enter some topics that you’re interested in. Every time you launch the app, you’ll be presented with a list of these topics. Clicking on one will bring you to a list of recent blog posts, tweets, and other content that contains those topic keywords. You can also filter through this content by source, allowing you to see only content from Twitter, news sites, and so on. If you’ve already set up an account on the YourVersion website, you can sync that with the app (any items you bookmark or share from the app will be reflected on the site as well).

Of course, there are plenty of other applications out there that let you search for news stories by keyword. YourVersion tries to go a step further than basic keyword matching by adding some intelligence to its story recommendations. In the current version, the app will track all of its users’ attention data, which includes the stories they’ve click on, shared, given thumbs up/down to, and a handful of other metrics. YourVersion then uses this data to generate a weekly Email digest, which includes the week’s top stories from each of your YourVersion topics (it will omit any stories that you’ve already read).

This is only the first step, though. In the next month or so, the site plans to roll out a feature to both its website and the iPhone application that will use this attention data to enhance the “Discover page” (the section of the app that presents you with recent stories), so that you don’t have to wait til the end of the week to get smarter recommendations.

YourVersion still has a lot of work to do — in its current form, there isn’t much to differentiate it from the countless feed readers and news apps already out there.  The app needs to implement more robust algorithms that can provide story recommendations that are both more timely and accurate than its competitors’.

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It was quite the week for Apple, first with its best-ever earnings and then the launch of the iPad. While Apple didn’t create this category of device, it did answer the fundamental question of why this form factor needs to exist. The meta lesson is that the story told is as important as the hardware, software and services being sold — and while everyone may not be convinced, I do think Apple will win over the majority of a skeptical audience with high expectations. But there’s also four important lessons that Apple taught the market this week, as it enters a space that’s been mostly a failure.

1. Define what your product does. The first thing Apple did was answer that question immediately and then define what the product needed to do. Apple explained what capabilities need to be in the this class of device and then went on to show how each of those features not only worked but were optimized for the iPad. That’s something we’ve seen lacking in this category to date.

2. Leverage what you’ve done before. I believe the iPad is likely to do well with consumers as it leverages Apple’s previous successes with the iPod and the iPhone. At the base level, that’s compatibility and synchronization with iTunes as well as backward compatibility with existing applications. That’s important — as a user I can use my existing content library and my application collection. It also means that iPad has 140,000-plus applications at launch. But it’s more than that. Apple is not only leveraging its ecosystem of devices and software, it’s leveraging the lessons it spent a decade teaching consumers. Apple taught its market about MP3 players, digital music, smartphones, capacitive multitouch screens and mobile apps. It can now go directly to selling the form factor, as well as new features such as productivity and e-books.

Continue reading Entelligence: Lessons from the iPad launch

Entelligence: Lessons from the iPad launch originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The new Bosch antilock braking system (ABS) for motorcycles recently received the German ADAC ‘Gelber Engel’ (yellow angel) award, for its great road-safety potential. The ‘ABS9 base’ variant weighs just 0.7 kilograms, and is half the size and weight of the previous generation. According to Bosch, this is the most compact system in the market.

Its design is also cost-effective, which is important if it is to be used widely in all motorcycles with hydraulic brake systems. The motorc… (read more)

[Welcome Dotty Oliver, and Host Warwick Sabin.] [As a courtesy to our guests, please keep comments to the book.  Please take other conversations to a previous thread. – bev]

Mistress of the Misunderstood

Here in Arkansas, we know Dotty Oliver as the brave, smart, fun and irreverent woman who published the Arkansas Free Press, which started around the time Bill Clinton became president in 1993 and lasted until 2008.

The Free Press (known locally as the FREEP) was the very alternative free weekly newspaper in Little Rock, as opposed to the Arkansas Times, which was merely the alternative free weekly newspaper.  Those of you who believe that liberal, uninhibited expression doesn’t exist in the South would have had your preconceptions significantly altered by a brief confrontation with the FREEP.

Of course, Dotty Oliver was not the typical Southern girl.  She left her Little Rock high school to enroll in an all-male trade school, and shortly thereafter moved to Los Angeles in 1968 and joined the psychedelic scene there.  Back in Arkansas a couple of years later, she lived in a commune with the band Black Oak Arkansas.  All of these experiences gave her a rich template to draw from for her writing, which has been called “a cross between Gloria Steinem and Hunter S. Thompson with a hint of Mark Twain thrown in for good measure.”

The glory years of the FREEP coincided with the long gubernatorial administration (1996-2007) of Mike Huckabee, and many of Dotty’s columns and stories collected in “Mistress of the Misunderstood” concern him.

Dotty’s column on July 7, 1999 begins: “On June 23rd, I received a knock at the door.  It was a lawsuit being delivered for Gov. Mike Huckabee suing me for allegedly printing malicious lies.”

Instead of being intimidated, Dotty goes on to discuss the Christian Coalition, the war on drugs, the media, and women’s rights, before finally concluding: “So Gov. Huckabee, what is the real reason you are suing me?  Is it because I say what I’m thinking in my columns and it’s offensive to you and the Republican Party?”

It is that kind of honesty, openness, fearlessness and free-thinking that Dotty brings to all of the topics in “Mistress of the Misunderstood,” whether it is pop culture, politics, human rights, or sex.

You don’t have to be from Arkansas to appreciate or understand this book.  In fact, considering that we brought you Bill Clinton, Mike Huckabee, and a long list of associated phenomena, you might find this book surprisingly helpful and enlightening.

At the very least, you will find it fresh, entertaining and exciting, as Dotty’s writing and perspective is a product of her turbulent and unusual life.

Apparently all is not well in e-book land. In an unusual move, publisher Macmillan took out an ad in the Publishers Marketplace magazine protesting the tactics being used by Amazon regarding pricing. The issue is Macmillan is trying to price at $9.99, and Amazon is trying to lock the lowest price at $15 per title.

The negotiations have been going on for over a year, and finally came to a head on Friday when Amazon pretty much banned titles published by Macmillan by refusing to directly sell them. Macmillan took the fight public when he paid for an ad in the industry paper, the Publishers Lunch:

“Under the agency model, we will sell the digital editions of our books to consumers through our retailers. Our retailers will act as our agents and will take a 30% commission (the standard split today for many digital media businesses). The price will be set the price for each book individually. Our plan is to price the digital edition of most adult trade books in a price range from $14.99 to $5.99. At first release, concurrent with a hardcover, most titles will be priced between $14.99 and $12.99. E books will almost always appear day on date with the physical edition. Pricing will be dynamic over time.”

[via Mediabistro]

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Filed under: Other Events

In the course of Apple Events, there comes a time as FCC approvals draw near, and announcements hang in the balance, that the store goes down and a great hush goes through the land. It is a time of great reflection and contemplation as each of us stands with ‘bated breath, anticipating the technology shortly to debut.

Who are we kidding?

Can’twaitcan’twait! Puppies! Rainbows! Unicorns! Tablets! Are you as excited as we are? Is the iPad going to be ready for pre-orders? Maybe this is *it*?

Let us know in the comments.

TUAWThe store is DOWN originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 14:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron has reportedly broken up with actor Stuart Townsend, her partner of nine years.

A rep for the couple has refused to comment on the split reports, but Stuart and Charlize have not been seen together publicly since attending the AFI FEST 2009 screening of The Road at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles last November.

The 34-year-old Hollywood actress is now reportedly living in their main home in the Hollywood Hills, while Stuart has moved his belongings into their beach house, a source spilled to Britain’s The Mail on Sunday this week.

Theron – who first met Townsend on the set of the 2001 film Trapped – has told friends she split from the Irish star after a trip to Mexico in December. She has since stopped wearing an antique commitment ring he once gave to her.

“Stuart is gutted but Charlize said that she realized during the Mexican holiday the relationship was over. They had become more like brother and sister than lovers. It was she who ended it,” says a pal. “She loved Stuart but their relationship ran its course. He is heartbroken but she is insisting it is over. Charlize was surprised the story hadn’t come out yet. But she didn’t confirm it because she wanted to break the news in her own time.”

In a recent interview, Stuart admitted that he considers Charlize his wife, even though the two never legally married. He said, “We consider ourselves husband and wife. We love each other and want to spend the rest of our lives together.”

Final Fantasy XIII has been a long time coming, and no doubt part of that is because it’s the first big PlayStation 3 game for Square Enix. But as it turns out, there’s another reason for the long wait: It started its development life on the PlayStation 2.

“Final Fantasy XIII was originally meant to be a PS2 title, but we had to switch systems due to the arrival of the PS3,” said producer Yoshinori Kitase to the Dutch version of Official PlayStation Magazine (as translated by FinalFantasy-XIII.net, via VG247). “That cost us about one and a half years and was constantly a case of trial and error.”

So what did this ill-fated PS2 version of Final Fantasy XIII look like? Thanks to a book covering all things FFXIII recently released in Japan called “Scenario and Battle Ultimania,” we can see for ourselves — it provided screenshots from what were apparently two different builds with wildly different graphical styles, and FinalFantasy-XIII.net again comes through with a few (very blurry) scans. Check out two shots below of the versions of FFXIII that were not to be.

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With the release of a batch of Halo: Reach screenshots came the usual amount of obsessive fan analysis, which in turn produced a lot of intriguing rumors — a lot of intriguing rumors that are turning out to be wrong. In Bungie’s latest weekly update, they engaged in a round of “Halo: Reach Mythbusters,” shooting down some of the bigger rumors floating around the net. And the biggest: that Halo: Reach would use Natal motion controls.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the targeting reticule — typically in the middle of the screen for a first-person shooter — is mysteriously off to the left, leading many to wonder if it’s because you can aim the reticule independently using some form of motion controls. The answer is much less elaborate: “Truth be told, it’s just a good ole fashioned bug. Bug #15163 to be exact,” Bungie writes. “Halo: Reach is NOT a Natal title and is being developed expressly with the traditional Xbox 360 controller in mind.”

This screenshot alone created a couple of other rumors, including that the HUD will in fact be yellow (evidently it won’t), and more intriguingly, that a portion of the screen was pixelated (area is circled in the image above) because Bungie was hiding something super top secret. Here we will quote Bungie’s explanation in full, because it’s the sort of awesomely jerk-ish behavior we really respect:

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