Category: News

There may be some glitches here and there, but that’s certainly not stopping gamers from getting hold of Borderlands — or at least trying to. Reports…

Get ready to get your worlds turned upside down as Namco Bandai announced Inversion for both the PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles. It’s a “whirlwind journey …

So let’s say you need a new clock. Sure, you could go spend $19.99 (or less) and just go buy one, but wouldn’t it be more fun to bust out the CNC machine and build one yourself? Alan Parekh of Hacked Gadgets thought it would be, and he just happened to have a new CNC machine lying around.

Alan cut the gears on his CNC router, used a micro-controller and a step motor, and created a pretty cool wall clock. He explains how he did it fairly well in the video, but his site has even more detailed instructions.

[via Make]

There have been a few reports lately claiming that file sharing is decreasing. Often, the “explanation” is that more people are switching to streaming services. But that doesn’t seem to make much sense, given that the streaming services are still greatly limited and have their own share of problems. And, indeed, it looks like at least some of these reports are being misinterpreted. The most recent story that got a bunch of headlines claiming that P2P was “dying”? Turns out that it’s all relative. What the report actually said was that P2P file sharing is growing less fast. So it has a smaller overall marketshare — but in terms of absolute numbers? It’s still growing. However, given the size of the “market,” that’s not too surprising. It’s pretty saturated.

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If you’re one of those folks still praying for that time when Splinter Cell: Conviction heads to the PS3 even if it’s a “true Microsoft exclusive”, th…

The Fable 3 announcement had creator Peter Molyneux saying he was throwing away the “foundation stone” of RPGs. Yeah, I thought, you’ve been saying that kind of thing for 20 years now buddy. Show me the money. And in a pleasant surprise, it looks like he may actually be doing that; he confirmed today that the game will use the Natal motion controller, which makes him probably the technology’s biggest on-the-record developer. He already hinted that this was the case, but now it seems that Microsoft is giving the go-ahead for making official announcements.

I can only speculate on the variety of sordid acts you’ll be performing with this thing. Dancing to impress the villagers? Throwing bottles at dragons? Impregnating your wife? The possibilities, I’m sure Molyneux will tell you, are many and various.

Hollywood producer Adrian Askarieh divulged some juicy information on the coming Kane & Lynch: Dead Men (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC) movie. It’s …

It’s nigh on a few hours before the Windows 7 launch and things are heating up in the big city. Folks are lining up at the Windows store, children are quieter and more attentive in school, and the troubles of the world – global warming, terrorists, the economy – are on hold. We are waiting for a miracle and when it comes it will rhyme with ‘dindows’ and end with ‘7′

How happy are you about Windows 7? Like how totally happy?

Joking aside, I’ve been using a Windows 7 machine for almost a month now and I’m quite impressed with the stability and usability. I’m genuinely excited. Not excited enough to buy into it right now, but sooner or later we’ll all be using it somewhere. Microsoft is a juggernaut and no amount of snark can change that.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Yesterday, I excitedly preordered Barnes & Noble’s “Nook” ebook reader. Today, I cancelled the order — and I’m none to happy about it. Why can’t Barnes & Noble learn from its past mistakes? The bookseller’s digital titles are way overpriced — at least compared to Amazon (Sony charges even more than both booksellers for many titles).

Quick examples — and more will come later in this post: Twilight by Stephanie Meyer: $6.59 from Amazon; $8.79 from B&N. Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep?: $8.38 from Amazon; $11.20 from B&N. (Sony charges $9.89 for the first and $9 for the second.)

Barnes & Noble has been down this sordid path before. Ten years ago, B&N was an early ebook pioneer, opening a store using Microsoft Reader technology. But the bookseller had the pricing all wrong, asking the same price for digital — for which there was no printing or distribution costs — as hardcover books. That’s right, and the ebooks came with onerous DRM that made sharing titles nearly impossible.

For years, I criticized B&N and other ebook sellers for overpricing that stalled adoption. Eventually, Barnes & Noble closed its ebook store. Here’s the epitaph I wrote in September 2003 on the now defunct Microsoft Monitor Weblog once run by JupiterResearch (Forrester Research has absorbed the analyst firm):

This morning I received a notice from Barnes & Noble.com informing that as of today, the company would no longer offer ebooks online. Customers like me have 90 days to retrieve titles from their online Microsoft Library; 90 days from purchase for Adobe ebook customers.

I purchased my first Microsoft Reader ebook about four years ago, and, unless I am mistaken, from Barnes & Noble.com. The company offered an excellent ebook library and facilities for downloading titles. I will sorely miss the service. The larger question is what Barnes & Noble.com’s exit means for the larger ebook market. Maybe I’m a nut, but I find reading an ebook on my HP iPaq handheld to be quite enjoyable.

Still, publishers could have done more to make the price of titles more appealing. Who wants to pay 25 bucks for a new ebook, the same as the hardcover price? That hardcover book has associated printing and distribution costs that shouldn’t affect ebook pricing. The hardcover can be passed around among family members or borrowed by the neighbor across the street. The ebook version is much less portable, so why charge so much?

I don’t see the ebook market as dead, but Barnes & Noble.com’s bowing out of the market isn’t a good sign. I remember when the bookseller championed for good writers without big-name publishers or offered print-on-demand services that could revive out-of-print editions. Maybe we’re just not a nation of leisure readers anymore, which would be the sadest commentary on this development yet.

Four years would pass before Amazon showed enough cunning and courage to release the Kindle reader and reasonably priced ebooks. Kindle has got to be the ugliest ebook reader on the planet. It’s styling matches what I imagine an Amazon warehouse to look like. But the ebooks are priced to sell, and that’s the appeal. Price matters — a principle Amazon has long and successfully practiced. Apple applied the principle to iTunes Music Store in 2003, by offering 99-cent singles. Kindle reader isn’t the revolution so much as Kindle book pricing. Why doesn’t Barnes & Noble get that?

Pricing turned me away from an ebook reader that is really exciting (more on the device in a few paragraphs). Some more comparisons:

• 1776 by David McCullough: $9.99 from Amazon; $14.40 from B&N
• Michael Crichton’s State of Fear: $7.99 from Amazon; $11.99 from B&N
• Wisdom of Our Fathers: Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons by Tim Russert: $9.99 from Amazon; $11.16 from B&N
• Robert J. Sawyer’s Flash Forward: $7.85 from Amazon; $9.99 from B&N
• Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System — and Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin: $9.99 from Amazon; $14.99 from B&N.

In my searches, I only found a few a newer or popular titles were Amazon and B&N matched prices, such as Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol or The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares. But the for majority of my searches, Amazon titles cost considerably less than those from Barnes & Noble. My searches were random, and some I abandoned because Amazon had many ebook titles not available from Barnes & Noble.

I’m not quibbling pennies here. Barnes & Noble pricing is as much as 50 percent more than Amazon. I found few instances where the difference was less than 10 percent. Barnes & Noble may not be asking as much as it did during its 1999-2003 foray into ebooks, but pricing is way too high — particularly for a bookseller playing catchup. Amazon has got an early mass-market ebook lead. Competitive ebook pricing would be crucial to winning over people to Nook.

Barnes & Noble appears to be betting on the device as the bigger draw. No question, Nook is cool. It’s well designed, competitively priced and likely more extensible because of the Android operating system. From the broadest strategy perspective, Barnes & Noble is preparing an ebook and content publishing platform as much as a simple digital book reader. That’s impressive.

But can the device be enough when ebook pricing is so much higher? For me, the answer is no. I suspect that many other potential buyers will balk at higher pricing, too. I ask you, Betanews readers, to offer your opinions in comments. Is Barnes & Noble asking too much? Are you even interested in ebooks (I ask mainly because of DRM)?

In fairness, Barnes & Noble learned a few lessons from its past ebook selling mistakes, and these are worth observing. The first effort came from the Barnes & Noble.com Website, at a time when fewer people were online. The new strategy looks to leverage the physical stores, which makes sense. For example, Nook will be sold at Barnes & Noble stores. Something else: The bookseller is addressing longstanding criticisms of onerous DRM by allowing customers to lend their ebooks for as long as 14 days.

The difference between Kindle and Nook is the difference between the approach of a real bookseller versus a warehouser. Barnes & Noble is trying to anticipate the needs of the reading customer. Use of physical stores and ebook lending are great examples of Barnes & Noble leveraging its strengths and anticipating what its customers want. But do those needs include paying as much as 50 percent more for ebooks than Amazon? You tell me. That’s what comments are for.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009

UPS recently asked us to create a series of three videos, where we try to explain some of the stuff we talk about here on Techdirt in under two minutes, using a white board. You can check out the first video here, where I attempt to give a quick visual explanation of the economics of abundance. It’s a complicated topic — so narrowing it down to less than a minute obviously involves simplifying some of the concepts greatly, but it should kick off a fun discussion.

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A cartridge that supplies Bluetooth functionality to the DS? Why, you ask? Well, I asked the same question when I saw this, and there is no certain answer. But the fact is that the DS is a versatile, well-documented device that is used for more than just playing games. Putting Bluetooth functionality in there just makes it that much more useful.

How about a wireless headset for your DS? Or maybe streaming homebrew ROMs from your computer? The implications of this device are staggering. Well, that’s a bit of an overstatement. It might be handy for some, let’s just leave it at that.

[via Hack a Day]

TerraCycle, the company that makes household items out of recycled bottles and other gear, is now making speakers made out of chip bags and candy wrappers. Their Universal Speakers won’t win any awards for clarity but they don’t require any batteries and connect straight to any music player.

TerraCycle transforms candy wrappers into music blasters with their newest upcycled product, Universal Speakers

Trenton, NJ – TerraCycle, the company that keeps your garden looking great with its organic worm poop fertilizer, has partnered with Merkury Innovations, a leader in the consumer electronics accessory business, to bring something new and exciting to its current line of eco-friendly products; upcycled universal speakers. These foldable speakers have a 3.5mm universal plug and they do not require any batteries so there is less hassle and, more importantly, less waste.

Additionally, as with all of TerraCycle’s products, the speakers will be made from waste, such as Frito Lay chip bags and Mars candy wrappers. Through upcycling, the process by which items typically seen as garbage are instead repurposed as valuable raw materials and transformed into new, useable consumer products, TerraCycle expects to help divert over 3,000 tons of candy wrapper waste from being dumped into landfills.

TerraCycle receives material for upcycling through its various Brigade programs in which different organizations, elementary schools, and individuals across the country collect their wrapper waste and then send it in to TerraCycle. Terracycle donates two cents to a charity of the collectors choice for each piece of waste. So far, over 5 million used chip bags have been collected in only one year.

Most polls show that a majority of Americans want a health care overhaul to include a public option — a government insurance program that competes with private insurers.

So it might seem logical that Senate Democrats, with their 60-vote majority, would include a public option in the bill that’s headed for the Senate floor. But no decision has been made yet, because it’s not clear how many Democrats would back a public option.

Earlier this month, Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and 29 Democratic colleagues sent a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is leading the effort to blend the bills of two committees — the Finance Committee and the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

The HELP Committee’s bill includes a public option, while the Finance Committee’s does not.

Sanders and the others, who make up half of the Democratic caucus, want any bill Reid sends to the full Senate to include a public option.

“This is an overwhelmingly Democratic bill,” Sanders says. “How, if you are the Democratic Party presenting your bill, do you say no to over 80 percent of the people in your own party, and expect there to be grass-roots support for real health care reform?”

But centrist Democrat Mary Landrieu of Louisiana says, “I’m not for a government-run national taxpayer subsidized plan, and never will be.”

Landrieu says it makes no sense to create a third government health care program when Medicare and Medicaid are already headed for insolvency.

Still, Landrieu sounds as if she could eventually be persuaded to back some form of a public option.

“In some states at the end of the line, they don’t believe they’re going to have the kind of choice that we think consumers and businesses need,” Landrieu says. “If the costs are still too high, then perhaps a fallback or a trigger, but something that is on a level playing field.”

Another Democratic holdout has been Arkansas’ Blanche Lincoln. She voted against including a public option in the Finance Committee’s bill.

She faces a potentially difficult re-election bid next year, and hesitates when asked whether she’d vote for a health care bill that has a public option.

“It all depends on how it’s gonna be written,” Lincoln says. “I think the most important thing we can do is provide choice and competition, and that’s gonna help us bring down the price and make sure everybody’s got good options.”

But Lincoln says she has ruled out a government-funded and a government-operated plan.

Max Baucus, the Democrat who chairs the Finance Committee, also voted against putting a public option in his panel’s bill. Asked Tuesday whether the bill the Senate takes up should have such an option, Baucus said his aim is to get legislation that passes.

“What provisions help push it over the goal line should be in,” Baucus adds. “Provisions that don’t allow us to get 60 votes should not be in.”

Other Democratic senators say the only public option they’re interested in would be run by each state.

Among those holdouts is Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, “It makes a lot more sense to me to have the states involved in this than not to have them involved, and try to do it all at the national level.”

And then there’s Connecticut independent Joe Lieberman, a member of the Democratic caucus who opposes a public option. Lieberman says he’s inclined to vote with his caucus against any GOP filibuster aimed at blocking a health care bill with a public option from coming to the Senate floor, “because our country needs health insurance reform,” he says. “But if I decide in the end the bill that is about to leave the Senate is gonna do more harm than good, then I won’t vote for cloture at that point.”

In other words, Lieberman might be willing to help Republicans filibuster a health care bill when it comes up for a final vote.

Further complicating matters is Illinois Democrat Roland Burris, who says he won’t vote for a health care bill unless it does have a public option.

“If it doesn’t have a public option, it’s not a bill,” Burris says. “It’s not going to solve any problems. If it doesn’t have that, it isn’t gonna help anybody but the insurance companies.”

However Democratic leader Reid decides on a public option, he’ll have his work cut out finding 59 other senators to back him up.

Last summer I was privileged to join President Obama, then Senator Obama, on his second visit to Israel. I followed him as he studied each wall at Yad Vashem.  I looked on from a distance as he slipped a personal prayer into the stones of the Western Wall, the Kotel.  I witnessed the courage and endurance of the citizens of Sderot and touched the remnants of the countless Hamas rockets that are their ever-present terror. 

This week, I am back in Israel representing the Administration at a conference hosted by President Peres and meeting with key Israeli and Palestinian leaders.  

I carried a message from our President about a vision of the world that lies within our grasp — if we have the courage to seize it. 

The right place to start is with a common vision—not of some distant future but of the world we seek for our children and our grandchildren.  Our view of that world is rooted in a truth that my nation has long held to be self-evident: and that is that all people are created equal—of equal worth, of equal consequence, and with equal rights.

This is a belief that’s deeply rooted in the American experience, but it’s also one with universal power. We cannot afford to write off vast swathes of the world as somehow marginal or irrelevant or doomed. We wouldn’t tolerate it for our own children, and we shouldn’t accept it for someone else’s. The belief that we all matter equally carries powerful implications. It means that no child should be left to drown in conflict and despair. It means that, in a moral sense, all of our fates are bound together.

But this bedrock belief in human equality and human dignity also has powerful geopolitical implications in our interconnected age. It drives us toward a foreign policy that is principled and pragmatic—one that recognizes not only the moral claim placed upon us by our common humanity, but also the strategic realities that we face in our interlinked world. Today, transnational security threats such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation, pandemics, and climate change can cross borders as freely as a storm. So the days when we could view our own interests in isolation are over. The days when we could focus on our own security and prosperity without regard for that of others are past. More and more, our fates are bound closer together. More and more, we live in a world where we rise and fall together, where zero-sum politics no longer fit today’s hard realities, where what’s good for others is often good for us.

A realistic view of the world thus requires an ambitious approach to the world. We must tackle the great problems that we face together. We must find cooperative solutions to challenges that pay no heed to borders. We must think strategically rather than just acting tactically. And we must recognize that there is a growing sphere where our interests and our values converge.

[Ed. Note: Click here to read the full speech delivered by Ambassador Rice at the Israeli Presidential Conference 2009, Facing Tomorrow, Jerusalem]

Susan E. Rice is the United States Ambassador to the United Nations

A few different people have sent in the news that some more well known singers are saying that the industry is overreacting to the issue of file sharing. Sky News talked to three top female singers, Shakira, Norah Jones and Nelly Furtado, and found they all recognized that it was pretty much the natural state of the market, and it helped gain more exposure:

“I like what’s going on because I feel closer to the fans and the people who appreciate the music. It’s the democratisation of music in a way, and music is a gift. That’s what it should be, a gift.” — Shakira

“If people hear it I’m happy. I’m not going to say go and steal my album, but you know I think its great that young people who don’t have a lot of money can listen to music and be exposed to new things.” — Norah Jones

“If you love music you’re going to make it anyway. You’ll find an audience, and you may not make like millions of dollars but you’ll make enough to have a house and a family and a car.” — Nelly Furtado

Looks like more and more musicians are realizing that fighting file sharing doesn’t make sense, but learning to embrace it has tremendous benefits. Maybe, one of these days, the record labels will figure this out as well.

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Take a bunch of junk, pile it up, and shine a light on it. 
Incredible shadow art created from junk. Go here.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

WIthin hours of one another, Microsoft and Google announced that their respective search engines would begin indexing tweets from popular microblogging service Twitter.

Microsoft was first on the scene, when Redmond’s President of Online Services Division Qi Lu announced the beta of Bing.com/twitter had opened at the Web 2.0 summit today. The beta provides a real-time index of tweets, and the ability to rank tweets according to its relevance.

“If you want to keep an eye on [a] topic, you can just watch the Tweets roll in. Or, click on ‘See more Tweets about…’ to go to a page full of Tweets. On that page, you can change the ordering to ‘Best Match.’ Here we arrange Tweets differently. If someone has a lot of followers, his/her Tweet may get ranked higher. If a tweet is exactly the same as other Tweets, it will get ranked lower,” Paul Yiu of the Bing Social Search Team blogged this morning.

Then, Google’s Vice President of Search and User Experience Marissa Mayer followed up with a quick and casual announcement that, oh yeah, Google can do that too.

Mayer is also expected to give a presentation at the Web 2.0 summit where more details are sure to be disclosed. But Bing has fully beaten Google to the punch, since the Mountain View, CA search giant doesn’t actually have a product to show for its agreement with Twitter yet. Mayer said, “We look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months.”

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009