Results tagged “internet”

Last week Wired Magazine journalists Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff boldly proclaimed "the web is dead." Anderson and Wolff quickly pointed out the internet is very much alive, but the web (i.e. traditional web browsers) are quickly falling out of use. The duo highlighted the rise of devices that utilize apps in order to access the internet such as smart phones, tablets, and current generation video game consoles. The pair also noted that internet access via apps means larger companies ultimately control more content and the internet is slowly becoming a closed platform. If you're rolling your eyes at the notion of the web being dead Evan Hansen, another Wired Magazine journalist is inclined agree. In a "not so fast!" rebuttal Hansen argued how the web is very much alive.

If you own a smartphone bandwidth caps may or may not be a daily part of life depending on your provider. Thanks to the success of the iPhone and its various data-consuming apps AT&T has imposed bandwidth limits on its users. Recently the Android has become quite successful and is even outselling the iPhone. Android users also consume more data than iPhone users. With that said it should come as no surprise to learn that cellphone carriers (the ones selling the Android anyway) will soon impose bandwidth limits on their users.

With the rise of the internet and devices that allow people to do multiple things at once multi-tasking is all the rage. Many people consider themselves to be great multi-taskers as they juggle a variety of similar tasks at the same time. A recent UK study suggest what many people who don't multi-task knew all along, it's not really possible for most people to do two very similar things at once and to do them well. Changing gears, internet slang is nothing new. Yet many places like courtrooms are unfamiliar with popular internet slang, which makes for interesting witness questioning among older lawyers and judges.

While we're on the subject of courts, if the group behind the PSJailbreak hack releases a USB dongle powered with software that allows gamers to hack their PS3s is successful they could face the legal wrath of Sony. Unlike other current gen consoles and handhelds the PS3 has not been hacked. If PSJailbreak has their way all of that could change, if the unreleased hack is indeed real-- and it probably is. At a price of $150 dollars the hack maybe limited in popularity, or it may simply be pirated shortly after it hits the market. Now that would be ironic.

In other PlayStation news, if you ever wanted to know what happened to games downloaded for free through PlayStation Plus after a subscription expires the answer is pretty simple. Users are either offered the choice to renew their PS Plus subscription, buy the full version of the game, while some PS1 games simply continue to work despite being expired. In more interesting news Mass Effect 2 is arriving on the PS3 in January. The PS3 version promises to be loaded with hours of extra content, most likely in the form of included DLC. The only downside would be the inability for PS3 users to import their original Mass Effect save data into ME2, which effectively means a player has to start from scratch. The original game was published in part by Microsoft Game Studios (making it a 360 exclusive) while the sequel was published by EA. At least PS3 owners can probably look forward to Mass Effect 3 on the PS3 and the ability to import save files.

Switching back to the issue of piracy, a few manga creators expressed their opinions about those who illegally upload their work. Much of it may be a joke but the frustration is definitely there.

As promised here is that late Geek News Roundup that should have been posted a week ago. You can expect part 2 either tomorrow or on Wednesday, depending on how much time I have between my two jobs to make a Treasure Hunter post.


Since iPhone's inception tech savvy users have been jailbreaking their phones. The practice allows users to run virtually any application on their phone including apps not authorized by Apple. Users can also unlock their phones thus allowing the iPhone to run on another carrier's network. Apple declared the process of jailbreaking a phone to be unlawful, although it was never clear if the process was actually illegal. Jailbreaking does however void the warranty and Apple also claimed the practice of jailbreaking violated copyright law. On July 26th federal regulators disagreed and declared the practice legal under fair use laws. Despite the ruling jailbreaking an iPhone still voids the warranty and users could be on their own if unauthorized software damages the phone, or compromises the phone's security. Additionally, Apple may not be able to legally go after users who jailbreak their phones but the company could still disable the phones with a software update.

Changing gears slightly it should come as no surprise to an internet savvy user that Asia has some the highest broadband speeds around. The BBC has compiled a list of countries and cities with some of the fastest broadband speeds on average, South Korea led the way. Also not surprising is the fact that the US isn't among the top 20 countries. Ouch.

Seventeen years after acquiring Miramax Films, Disney sold the film studio to private equity investors for $660 million dollars. Miramax was best known for making Pulp Fiction, The Queen, and Good Will Hunting, yet the studio was never a perfect match for Disney's family-friendly image. Even with new owners various Miramax projects are still in production and the film studio's newest movie, The Switch is expected to arrive in theaters on August 20th. Readers of this blog may actually be more interested in Universal Picture's upcoming movie, Scott Pilgrim vs The World. Comic Con attendees were actually treated to an early premier of the film.

It took several years but Sony is finally gaining serious momentum as sales have increased in the past year. The company is still operating at a loss but the bleeding of cash has significantly slowed. Compared to a net income loss of $426 million and an operating loss $422 million, a net income gain of $295 million and an operating loss of $43 million is a vast improvement. Not all Japanese video game companies can say the same, especially Capcom as the company's net income decreased by 90 percent and operating income fell by 72 percent. Geoff mentioned Capcom's woes a little while ago and it should be interesting to see if the company learns from its mistakes.

Expect this week's news roundup to be posted soon!

The ASUS WL-330gE is small, about the size of a deck of cards. Check it out in comparison to a 360 controller.

Last week's news roundup was a bust due to my yearly Otakon trip. Fortunately, things are back on track and the roundup is actually a little early this week.

On July 21st the Halo franchise reached its tenth year of existence. The original Halo was released in 2001 for Xbox, but development for the game actually began in 1999. Granted, there are much older video game franchises around and Halo is relatively new in comparison, but those ten years really flew by. Given the success of Halo the series could easily be milked for another ten years, perhaps to the dismay of some fans. But if Halo isn't your style of gaming franchise at least there's another Shin Megami Tensei game slated for release on the DS. I'd be shocked if this game didn't get an eventual North American release date.

What could be better than watching The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien? Watching Conan O'Brien and Andy Richter visit Bang Zoom! Entertainment to do some hilarious voiceover work for Manga Entertainment. Who knew that parts of a movie as serious as Ghost in the Shell could be interpreted by Conan and Andy in such an amusing way? I doubt much work got done in the offices of Bang Zoom! on that particular day. In other anime related news the acquisition of live-action film rights continue. On Wednesday Convergence Entertainment acquired the rights to a live-action Gungrave film. In theory a live-action Gungrave movie could work. Personally, I'm cautiously optimistic but I actually haven't seen the series or played the PS2 game.

If Google is to be believed the future of mobile devices and computer software in general lies in web-based applications. In the future native programs (ie software that must be installed on a hard drive) may mostly be done away with. While web-based applications sound promising, I find myself rather skeptical of needing to run most or all of my programs on the web. Frequent interruptions, addiction withdrawal, and Murphy's law all come to mind.

The 40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing was also last week. It was one small step for a man, one huge leap for mankind, and the beginning of NASA's decline. I'm also certain the phrase "It isn't in the budget" is a common utterance at the NASA of today.  But hey, in a few years we'll at least have the new James Webb Space Telescope.

I'd like to begin this week's news roundup on a very cool and very geeky note. Hitoshi Takahashi is a 60-year-old Japanese man with an interesting hobby. He spent the last 11 years building a giant beetle robot (pictured above) in his garage. In fact, this robot named the Kabutom RX-03 is Takahashi's third such creation as well as his largest. Just the knowledge that the robot can be controlled from the cockpit makes the anime nerd within me scream "Tachikoma."

In news closer to home, Time Warner's plan to test internet usage bandwidth caps in certain cities has come to a grinding halt amid public backlash. Time Warner claims the move is temporary as it educates consumers on the plan. The idea of ridiculously low bandwidth caps aren't dead yet, but this is a much welcome blow to TW and others companies eager to see the plan succeed. On the illegal file sharing front there is doubt that TW is at least happy to see the Swedish courts return a guilty verdict for the founders of the popular bit torrent site, The Pirate Bay. Never mind that site itself is still up and even if it were shut down tomorrow there are dozens, if not hundreds, of other file sharing sites out there.

Unlike Time Warner's bandwidth caps, Mandalay's plans to create a live-action Full Metal Panic! movie may be dead in the water. In an interview with MTV Zac Efron noted that he isn't likely to be involved with the project and that the project isn't likely to happen. Could last week's sudden announcement be a coincidence, or does it have anything to do with Dragonball Evolution's dismal ticket sales? Either way it's too early to tell, but if a lot of Hollywood live-action anime adapations are shelved because of DBE's disappointing profits it wouldn't be surprising.

The gamers who fear Microsoft's extended warranty won't cover the "E74" errors that occur on their Xbox 360s can rest a little easier. Last week MS announced its warranty now covers the errors and will issue refunds to those forced to previously pay out of pocket. While the news is welcome, a console free of crippling hardware failures would be nice to have. Meanwhile, in Japan PS3 and PSP owners can look forward to buying Final Fantasy VII International on PSN for just $14.99. Considering that many RPG fans are still waiting for games like Xenogears to be released domestically, I highly doubt we'll see FFVII anytime soon. Then again, FFVII has the amazing ability to defy logic, so perhaps it'll be the one exception. Still, I doubt it. In the meantime, the DSi has already sold 435,000 units in its first week of release. The real question is how long Nintendo will plan to sell the DSi and the DS Lite side by side.



Image courtesy of AltJapan.

Today it became official, FUNimation has acquired the rights to Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. FUNimation's acquisition should come as no surprise given how much they paid for the right to distribute the original FMA series. More importantly, FUNimation has also acquired the rights to stream free subtitled episodes of FMA: Brotherhood on its official website just days after the Japanese broadcast. The episodes will air in Japan on Sundays and will be shown on FUNimation's website on Thursdays. The Japanese premier is April 5th and the official sub will be shown on April 9th starting at 10am.

With this latest announcement it appears that anime distributors are making good on their promises to quickly stream popular anime series. Still, it is likely that some versions of unofficial fansubs will still appear on the internet. But in many respects fans are getting exactly what they've demanded from the industry over the years. Hopefully more anime distributors will follow the model put forward by FUNimation and Viz.