Interested in the Fight Night Round 4 DLC we posted about recently? The game’s been around for quite a while now, but having new fighters and new game…
Author: Serkadis
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Capcom: Don’t blame games for society’s ills
Acts of violence, reckless driving, poor health – the list goes on. These things have long been blamed on video games, prompting restriction, censor…
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Who will succeed Mullaly at Ford? It’s never too early to start handicapping
Filed under: Hirings/Firings/Layoffs, Ford
When Alan Mulally arrived at Ford Motor Company three years ago, the Blue Oval was in bad shape. New product wasn’t exactly pouring in and the company’s cash hoard was steadily shrinking. And word on the street is that the corporate culture at Ford was in as much trouble as the product lineup, making change difficult. Now in 2009, it appears Mulally has done the near impossible, turning around Ford’s product lineup while supposedly positively altering FoMoCo’s corporate culture.
For all of Mulally’s success, there is one problem: he’s 64 and can’t continue to run the company forever. And although Mulally has given no signals of separating from Ford any time soon, industry insiders are already speculating on who will become his successor. The four names that continue to come up are Ford Americas President Mark Fields, global marketing boss Jim Farley, manufacturing whiz Joe Heinrich and Ford Europe savior Lewis Booth.
The Detroit Free Press feels the early money is on Fields. The Harvard grad has been with Ford for 20 years, and he’s lead some high profile success stories. He turned around Mazda and is currently piloting Ford North America in the midst of what appears to be a substantial product renaissance. Farley has an advantage in that he came to Ford from Toyota/Lexus and is seen by many as a real up and comer.
By many accounts, Heinrich is a bit of a manufacturing genius. The Harvard Business grad came from General Motors, where he became the company’s youngest ever Plant Manager at age 29. Booth has the longest resume and arguably the most examples of success. He appears to have consistently met and exceeded expectations everywhere he has been, including Mazda, Ford Asia Pacific and Ford South Africa. Booth is different from his fellow executives in that he is the only one who isn’t in his 40s.
We have no earthly idea who would become the next head of Ford, and we’re guessing that we’re at least a couple years away from finding out. We’re OK with that, because this Mulally guy appears to know what he’s doing.
[Source: Detroit Free Press | Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty]
Who will succeed Mullaly at Ford? It’s never too early to start handicapping originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Raging Blasts of free DLC coming to Dragon Ball: Raging Blast
Raging blast is right. Namco Bandai is rolling out a dozen custom character packs for the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Dragon Ball: Raging Blast, to b…
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Pie Guy: Web Apps as Viable Alternatives
Pie Guy is an excellent little game that’s causing a small stir among developers. The game has completely bypassed the App Store and is available to download, right now, as a Web App.
It’s a cute 8-bit-era game with deliciously retro graphics that clones Pacman with a pie-themed twist. Eat the pies, don’t get caught by the cooks, and try to beat your high-score. The game can be installed for free simply by visiting http://mrgan.com/pieguy/ on your iPhone’s browser.
The surprising thing is that all of this was achieved without the App Store. I’ve never come across an iPhone web app that feels so much like a native app. From the install process, to the icon and graphics, the attention to detail is impressive.
Admittedly, Pie Guy is no Rolando, but nevertheless it’s just the sort of 99 cent app I’d expect to find riding high in the App Store charts. Except it’s not in the App Store — Pie Guy is free from the constraints and anguish of Apple approvals and it’s just as polished and professional as we’d expect, but perhaps rarely find, from a native premium app.
What’s amazing is seeing what has been achieved without the App Store. A great user experience and a great product, all without running natively. Plus, it even works offline, despite being a web app. It’s worth noting though Pie Guy is iPhone 3GS only, the app apparently takes advantage of the significant improvements Apple made to WebKit performance on the device.
Of course, iPhone web apps are nothing new. Way back when, before the glorious mess that is the App Store, Jobs announced that developing on iPhone was effectively as simple as creating a web site.
After a rather disgruntled reaction from the dev community, and much purported rushing on Apple’s part, we ended up with the App Store. The very notion of web apps, on the other hand, seemed to get tossed aside in the free-for-all gold-rush that ensued.
Many months later, attention is beginning to swing back around to the untapped potential of web apps. It may be that developers are looking for a route to take their concepts to users without running the rejection gauntlet that is Apple’s app approval process. However, it’s also likely that developers want to take advantage of those handy WebKit performance improvements on the 3GS.
Earlier this week on Twitter, David Kaneda, a WebKit developer, claimed, “I could write a pretty competitive Tweetie clone, pretty quickly.” Loren Brichter, developer of iPhone Twitter-client Tweetie, promptly responded by saying, “I dare you.” What resulted from the ensuing exchange was a coder battle that may go some way in illustrating the real potential of WebKit, with Kaneda already producing promising results.
In the meantime though, users are caught between a somewhat chaotic App Store and a predominantly lackluster selection of web apps. There’s clearly room for improvement in both arenas and it’ll be interesting to see what developers manage to squeeze out of WebKit in the coming months.
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RED THURSDAY: European Markets Turn Into A Bloodbath
The European markets turned into a total debacle today. The Dubai default, and its effect on European banks, is the most-cited reason.
WSJ: European shares recorded their biggest one-day drop since April on Thursday, with banks leading a broad tumble for markets amid
worries about exposure to Dubai debt.The pan-European Dow Jones Stoxx 600 index closed down 3.3% at 239.85, a level not seen since early November.
The U.K. FTSE 100 index closed down 3.2% at 5194.13, the French CAC-40 index ended down 3.4% at 3679.23 and the German DAX index closed down 3.3% at 5614.17.
Enjoy the rest of the day off, and for the sake of the economy, please base your shopping decisions based on how rich you thought you were Wednesday, thank you very much.
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Just How Scroomed Are HSBC And Standard Chartered On Dubai’s Default?
Backdrop
Many investors have asked about HSBC/STAN exposure to Dubai World (a leading government-linked property developer/holding company) and its affiliates, amidst Nov 26 press reports of Dubai World’s request for a creditor standstill agreement on its c.US$59bn debts (source: Bloomberg). Both HSBC and STAN have declined to comment on individual firm exposures.
Read the whole thing at Zero Hedge >>
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Happy Thanksgiving! Autoblog is grateful for…
Click above to find out what the Autoblog team is thankful forAfter reading our list, tell us what you’re thankful for in the comments.[Source Image: Road Fun | CC 2.0]
Happy Thanksgiving! Autoblog is grateful for… originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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MOG All Access Music Streaming Service to Launch on December 2
Music-streaming services aren’t exactly anything new, but it’s taken a few years to get to the point where they could really change the game. Despite not making too much money and even some services shutting down, there seems to be an endless stream of new products to take their places. One that has been generating some amount of hype lately is MOG All Access coming from the MOG music blogging network. The service is now set to launch on December 2 and it looks like it may be a worthy competitor for Spotify, which is yet to launch in the US. The service has been shaping up for the past couple of months and, by the looks of it, will be one of the top streaming services out there. It has all the best features from other services, but it also has several interesting, new tools. The player is web-based and allows users to play any song in the catalogue, which looks to be extensive, as it has support from all the major labels, add them to their library, playlists, and so on, all the usual things.
It also has an interesting radio feature, not exactly something completely new, but with a couple of twists. It starts out as a radio station that plays songs just from the artist the users select. The users can jump to any song in the queue but, if they want a little diversity, they can start up s… (read more)
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Nolan North assures there will be an Uncharted 3
Naughty Dog may still be providing post-launch support for Uncharted 2, but that’s not gonna stop people from wanting an Uncharted 3. One great game …
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Bell Samsung Omnia 2 reviewed
MobileSyrup have published their review of the Samsung Omnia 2 for the Bell Canadian carrier.
They concluded:
The Omnia II is a massive improvement from the original Omnia that Samsung launched last year. This could be that they’ve made some positive changes such as the increased screen size, put in Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional and fundamentally make a classier looking product. Not that this fact be a decision maker when you’re looking to purchase it, but the Omnia II is also the device that’s the “Official Mobile Device of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games”.
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The only downside I found with the Omnia II is that it catches a great deal of fingerprints, so make sure you carry a cloth around with you or simply get a case for it.
The Samsung Omnia 2 will be coming to Verizon on the 2nd December. Read more at MobileSyrup here.
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US Futures Plunge 2% On Dubai Default News
What, you thought the market was closed today? Ha.
Futures are tanking hard, perhaps as a result of an impending blowup in Dubai. It seems that at least one former bubble wasn’t reflated by the great global pumping.
Each index is down in the range of 2%.
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No Flash on Your iPhone? How About Silverlight, Instead?
It’s been a double-edged sword, this no-Flash-on-the-iPhone business. On the one hand, we don’t get the complete Internet. On the other hand, the web pages we do get are less likely to crash or drag-along at a snail’s pace. And really, who wants to see yet another “Smack the monkey” banner ad?
Just as we bemoaned the lack of MMS functionality, some of us complain endlessly about the absence of Flash support on the iPhone. But following a demonstration at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference, it looks like we may see that software giant’s Flash competitor, Silverlight, appearing on the iPhone in the not too distant future.
Reporting for Betanews.com, Scott Fulton writes:
It was an impressive demonstration, once they got it working: H.264 video streaming wirelessly (and slowly, at least during the caching sequence) using Microsoft’s Silverlight video streaming, to an Apple iPhone… You’d think Apple would have stood firm against Microsoft at least as aggressively as it has against Adobe, if not more so. How did this happen? We asked Microsoft User Experience Platform Manager Brian Goldfarb last week at PDC 2009, and the answer was a huge surprise…followed by some caveats. But it contained these four amazing words: “We worked with Apple.”
OK, quick recap for those of you who don’t know what Silverlight is all about. Silverlight was launched by Microsoft in 2007, and provides a toolset developers can leverage to build rich multimedia and interactivity into websites. In this sense, it’s like Adobe’s venerable Flash. But unlike Flash, Silverlight content is based on a flavor of XML which means…well, it all gets very nerdy from here on in, so I’ll stop there. The take-home message is that, for the most part, Silverlight is a more modern, powerful and less crash-tastic alternative to Flash. It’s also more standards-compliant than Flash, depending on who you get to build your Silverlight web apps, and that matters a lot in an age when more and more of what we do happens in the browser. (Before I get flamed in the comments, please note — I didn’t say Silverlight is standards compliant — it’s just less horrible than Flash. And yes, I do realize that’s hardly a ringing endorsement.)
It’s precisely the browser technology in the iPhone that helped make Silverlight video streaming a possibility. Brian Goldfarb told Betanews:
“The promise of Silverlight is that it’s a cross-device, cross-browser, cross-platform solution, and it works the same on Macs as it does on Windows. The iPhone is a unique scenario. We talked to our customers…and they said, ‘Look, we just need to get our content there, and it’s mainly in the media space like broadcasting, and we want to put it on the iPhone.’ They have a great solution for that; if you’re surfing the Web, and hit YouTube and hit ‘Play,’ it’ll play your video because [Apple] created an environment where they can safely play media, and they’re comfortable with that.
Goldfarb is talking about the native YouTube app found on every iPhone. The YouTube app sorta helps, but usually only for YouTube-hosted video. Want to play videos hosted elsewhere? Good luck. Some H.264 QuickTime-encoded videos will play, but as you likely already know, it’s all a bit hit-and-miss.
“So we’ve worked with Apple to create a server-side based solution […] and what we’re doing is taking content that’s encoded for smooth streaming and enabling the content owner to say, ‘I want to enable the iPhone.’ The server will dynamically make the content work – same content, same point of origin – on the iPhone. We do this with the HTML 5 tag, in many ways.”
And there’s the magic bullet right there. Silverlight works because (in conjunction with Microsoft’s Internet Information Services technology found on Windows Servers) it exploits HTML 5’s native video support — and Mobile Safari is a decent HTML 5-compatible browser. All the video encoding trickery is taking place on the remote server; it identifies when an iPhone is requesting a video stream and bundles it into a format the device can handle.
Silverlight-powered streaming video on an iPhone – image from Betanews.com
Although Goldfarb says Microsoft “worked with Apple,” he elaborated on the degree of that collaboration. Turns out, it wasn’t a lot; ”We did all the work. We just made sure Apple was comfortable with it.”
Could this represent a potential lesson to learn for Adobe? Despite the enormous market penetration of the Flash player technology (Adobe claims 99.7 percent of browsers are capable of displaying Flash content) it’s widely criticised for being an antiquated, less-than-optimal platform for delivering multimedia. (Except, it seems, in L.A. Have you noticed how many Hollywood Studios doggedly insist on building their movie websites entirely in Flash?)
Who would have thought that the best solution, and lead runner in the race to provide non-YouTube video streaming for the iPhone, would be Microsoft? There’s something about that which is almost… poetic.
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Facebook May Make Its Virtual Currency Mandatory for Third-Party Apps
Virtual currency is moving serious amounts of money these days and some of the most lucrative businesses, social gaming companies, have taken advantage of the huge potential audience social networks provide and the number of possible ways to promote their products to gain huge user numbers. Facebook, the preferred platform for these companies, has been offering its own virtual currency, Credits, for a while now, but most have shunned this option in favor of implementing their own currencies, a much more lucrative alternative. This, though, may be coming to an end if rumors coming from InsideFacebook, that Facebook is considering making Credits mandatory for third-party developers, turn out to be true. This move makes a lot of sense for Facebook, the social network is currently in track to make north of $500 million this year, while companies making money from the apps on the site easily generate well beyond that in revenue. It’s understandable that Facebook wants a piece of that as it currently makes the majority of its revenue from advertising. Its own Gift Shop, which currently uses Credits, is expected to only bring in about $75 million this year.
The real interesting part isn’t necessarily the fact that it will impose the use of Credits, but the cut the social networks takes fr… (read more)
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Sony whips out Black Friday bundles
Tomorrow is Black Friday, and you know what that means! Stores are gonna be packed and your wallet won’t be. Sony’s not gonna miss out on the buying…
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China Pledges to Reduce its Carbon Intensity by 40-45% by the Year 2020, Compared With 2005 Levels
2009Nov26: China pledges to reduce its carbon intensity (amount of CO2 emitted for each unit of GDP), by 40-45% by the year 2020, compared with 2005 levels (New York Times).
Reference: New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/science/earth/27climate.html
Image Description: Members of the audience applaud as President Barack Obama addresses the town hall meeting with future Chinese leaders at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum in Shanghai, China. November 16, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza). Image Location: White House.gov http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/photogallery/november-2009-photo-day Image Permission: This file is in the public domain because it was created by a U.S. government employee.
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ALMS champs Highcroft to run updated LMP2 Acura in 2010
Filed under: Motorsports, Acura
Highcroft Racing Acura ARX-02a – click above for high-res image gallery2010 is bringing some changes to the class lineup in the American Le Mans Series, and defending LMP1 champions Highcroft Racing are adjusting. The new structure will combine the former P1 and P2 classes at all races except for Sebring and Petit Le Mans. As a result, Highcroft will campaign a new evolution of Acura’s original ARX-01 P2 car dubbed 01c. Highcroft has been part of the Acura ALMS program since its inception in 2006 and is slated to continue in 2010 as the lead development squad.
According to Highcroft spokesman Paul Ryan, the team plans to run only the 01c in 2010, and at this point, only one car is confirmed. If the team can line up sufficient sponsorship, a second 01c may be added to the program.
ALMS spokesman Bob Dickinson has informed Autoblog that the final technical rules for 2010 are still being ironed out by sanctioning body IMSA, but in all likelihood, existing P1 and P2 cars will run together in a common class with weight and restrictor adjustments for equivalency.
At this time, we also don’t know the fate of the other two Acura teams, de Ferran Motorsports and Fernandez Racing – or the ARX-02a. The last we heard, Fernandez is still looking for 2010 funding and may end up dropping out while de Ferran previously announced an expansion into IndyCar for 2010. Given Gil de Ferran’s longstanding relationship with Honda, we would expect to see an ARX-01c in de Ferran colors next season. For its part, Honda Performance Development couldn’t tell us anything about Acura’s 2010 plans beyond what Highcroft has already announced. According to HPD spokesman T.E. McHale, plans are still being finalized and an announcement is planned for early December,
[Source: American Le Mans Series]
Photos Copyright (C)2009 Sam Abuelsamid / Weblogs, Inc.ALMS champs Highcroft to run updated LMP2 Acura in 2010 originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Crime Doesn’t Pay, Except When You’re Rick Rollin’
iPhone Malware has been getting an awful lot of coverage lately, hasn’t it? I’m sorry to add to it, but sophos.com reports that the author of the Ikee iPhone worm has (somewhat predictably) earned himself a nice new job for his troubles.
Ashley Towns is twenty one years of age, Australian, sports a fair bit of lip-and-nose-metalware and is also the latest employee of mogeneration, a company that specializes in iPhone application development.
The Ikee worm was widely reported as the world’s first iPhone worm. It affected only iPhones that had been jailbroken, replacing their wallpaper with an image of 80s pop sensation Rick Astley and the headline text “Ikee is never going to give you up.” (Whether that makes it malicious or not depends entirely on your opinion of that coiffed crooner.)
While Ikee didn’t do anything too nasty, an understanding of the precise security weakness the worm exploited was shared quickly on the Internet via widespread reporting in the tech press. Only a matter of days later, the Duh worm (also known as Ikee.B) was found in the Netherlands. Researchers discovered the Duh worm was based largely on Ikee, exploiting the same weak-password method; however this variant of Ikee was much more sinister, acquiring iPhone owners’ online banking information.
Of course, Towns’ can’t be held responsible for the Duh worm, but would Ikee.B have existed if not for Ikee? Didn’t Towns open the door for opportunistic malware authors looking for a way to take advantage of less diligent iPhone jailbreakers? Furthermore, is it appropriate he has been rewarded for his actions?
It’s that age-old argument; should malware authors be punished with heavy fines and jail sentences, or should they be gainfully employed by security companies, where their mad programming skillz can be used to benefit society?
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Gracias Thanks by Pat Mora, illustrated by John Parra, translation by Adriana Domínguez
One of my dearest friends in all the world starts making gratitude lists when all the STUFF that needs to get done starts keeping her up at night … the list is so endless, that she eventually falls into a most grateful slumber. That the gratitude goes on and on couldn’t be more calming …The latest title from the prolific Pat Mora is this delightful bilingual gem about all the big and tiny ways that we can be grateful. A little boy thanks the loyal sun that will keep greeting him every morning until he grows a long, white beard. To the ladybug that lands on his finger to the bees that didn’t sting him, he gives thanks. To his Abuelita who sneaks him a gift, to his friend Billy who shares his books, to his little brother whose mashed peas-projectile makes him laugh, he gives thanks. And at the end of the day, he remembers to thank his old pajamas that will keep his slumber oh so soft, and the hidden cricket that will serenade him all along the way to sweet dreams.
So tell me … could I have found a better title to share today? We all need regular reminders for all the endless blessings in our lives … and oh so much better to count those thankful moments than smelly boring sheep any night, right?
Readers: Children
Published: 2009
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Happy Thanksgiving
The staff and I are taking the day off to honor the holiday, but I didn’t want to let the opportunity slip by without extending my gratitude to you, the MDA community. To all our readers, I want to say thank you for your incredible enthusiasm and involvement (in the comment boards, in the forum, and in spreading the word about the site and book). It’s been a truly amazing and transformative year here at Mark’s Daily Apple, and I hope it’s been a successful and enjoyable journey for you as well. Of course, I realize that not everyone is in holiday mode today. Actually, MDA had visitors from 189 countries worldwide last month – Australia to Sweden, India to Brazil, Canada to Hong Kong, and on goes the list. Nonetheless, I hope you all have much to be grateful for today. Happy Thanksgiving – and best wishes – to everyone out there!Get Free Health Tips, Recipes and Workouts Delivered to Your Inbox
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