LimeWire scraps plans for legal music downloads
LimeWire, once the world’s most popular P2P client, was officially shut down last month, following a four-year legal battle against the record industry.
A New York federal court issued a permanent injunction against the site, ruling that LimeWire caused a “massive scale of infringement” by intentionally giving users a platform to share millions of unauthorized music tracks.
At its peak, LimeWire was seeing 50 million monthly users.
Today, the company has sent out a memo scrapping their longstanding plans to open a new legal music download store, meaning there is literally nothing left of the company.
The current LimeWire store will also shut on December 31st, and the company will not accept any new payments, effective immediately.
Developer paying $1000 to first person who can root Google TV
Developer Howard Harte has offered a $1000 reward to the first person who can show him how to root a Google TV device, allowing him to install third-party apps.
The only other catch is that the hack must be available before Google officially adds third-party support.
With the ability to root, Harte will port his Better Terminal Emulator Pro Android app to the Google TV.
PlayStation Move sales hit 4.1 million
Sony has sold 4.1 million Move motion control systems since launch in September.
The company says today that worldwide sales passed 4 million this week thanks to strong holiday demand.
“The milestone was reached in just two months since its release in September for North America, Europe/PAL territories and Asia, and 1 month since the release in October for Japan,” added Sony.
“The number not only shows clear success of the launch of the new motion sensing controller but also indicates positive momentum going in to the holiday season and to the year 2011.”
Move is supported by 25 games.
Over the holiday, Microsoft announced it had sold 2.5 million Kinect motion control systems since launch this month.
Mozilla exec goes off on Apple, Google, Microsoft over ‘evil’ Firefox plugins
Mozilla’s senior exec Asa Dotzler has gone off on Google, Apple and Microsoft this week, ranting on the “evils” of their plugins which install in Firefox without asking the user permission.
Microsoft Kinect sales hit 2.5 million
Microsoft has announced today that strong Thanksgiving week demand has led to strong sales of the Kinect motion control system.
The software giant says sales have now hit 2.5 million worldwide since launch on November 4th.
Adds Don Mattrick, president of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft:
“We are thrilled about the consumer response to Kinect, and are working hard with our retail and manufacturing partners to expedite production and shipments of Kinect to restock shelves as fast as possible to keep up with demand. With sales already exceeding two and a half million units in just 25 days, we are on pace to reach our forecast of 5 million units sold to consumers this holiday.”
Kinect is available in 38 countries.
Kinect hacked to control original Super Mario Bros. game
One gamer, under the alias ‘Yankeyan’ has posted a video this week showing himself playing the original Super Mario Bros. game using Microsoft’s new Kinect motion control system.
Says Yankeyan:
“I programmed it to recognize my motions and passed the virtual button presses to the NES emulator. I could have placed a simulated keypad right in front of me that I can press with my hands, but I thought full body gestures were more in the spirit of Kinect. Of course, Mario isn’t designed to be played like this, so this is really really hard.”
He isn’t kidding when he says the game is tough, with simple gestures like jumping taking a few tries, but it is definitely an incredible feat.
Microsoft’s Kinect was released earlier this month to much fanfare.
How popularity on Facebook and Twitter helped predict the election
It appears that how popular you are on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter actually had a real world effect on the November elections in the United States.
Candidates with more “likes” on Facebook won 71 percent of the time in the Senate elections while candidates with more Twitter followers won 74 percent of the time.
Facebook said that in 77 of the 118 races it followed in the Senate and the House, the winner had more “likes” than the opponent did.
If you had double the amount of “likes,” the average margin of victory was 3.9 percent.
There also seemed to be a correlation to money raised and spent, as one big spender, Jeff Greene of Florida, spent $24 million and did not even win his primary. The primary winner, Kendrick Meek, had 24,000 “likes” on Facebook to Greene’s lowly 644.
Of course, social networking popularity did not help a few high profile candidates like “I am not a witch” Christine O’Donnell, who was very popular on Twitter and Facebook but got crushed in the election by 17 percent. Meg Whitman, the billionaire, spent the most money and had the third highest amount of Facebook likes but still lost the California governor race.
Says ABC News: “[Social media] provides information about comparisons…trends and changes could be informative on the subset of people on it. You get more information out of it if you respect limitations. If you try to get too much, you get nothing.”
Acer unveils Android device with massive screen
Acer has unveiled its latest Android device this week, a smartphone with a massive 4.8-inch display and 1024×480 resolution.
The device runs on Android 2.2 Froyo, a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, and 8MP camera with AF and LED flash and a front-facing 2MP camera, as well.
Acer’s unnamed device will also have HSDPA 14.4Mbps support, WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, DLNA streaming, 6-axis motion sensing, and an HDMI-out port.
Chrome OS still expected to launch next month
Despite their note that Chrome OS would not be available on any hardware in 2010, the search giant has said today that the operating system may still launch next month, in a limited software beta.
The company would “not go into details” on when or in what condition the operating system will launch, but it does confirm a public release is scheduled for this year.
Bugs in the software have dwindled, and a pre-release build is in the works.
The operating system will work on all PCs and tablets, but is designed to run best on netbooks.
Google Chrome OS should see a full release in the Q1 2011.
For a more in-depth look into Chrome OS, check our earlier article: Google Chrome OS
DVDFab releases Blu-ray 3D-to-3D video ripper
DVDFab has released the first Blu-ray 3D-to-3D video ripper today, making the software available for $50.
Making the software more notable is the fact that it will not require any other utility to tip or convert the video.
The company says the software can do the following:
-Rip any Blu-ray 3D to 3D video. Blu-ray 3D Ripper can remove all known AACS copy protections, all known BD+ copy protections including newest 3D BD+, region code, BD-Live, UOPs, MKB V18 and MKB V19, so any Blu-ray 3D content can be ripped. And the output 3D video can be AVI, MP4, WMV, or MKV, and can be played on 3D display devices.
-Support side-by-side 3D. Blu-ray 3D Ripper supports side-by-side 3D format — a current popular format for 3D content transmission, which has been already used by some cable TV providers.
3D type can be left/right or top/bottom, 50% or 100%. The 3D type can be left/right (side by side) or top/bottom to meet different requirements from different display devices; and the video frame size can be full (100%) or half (50%) according to your specific need.
-Output 1080p video or 720p video. For original 1080p video, the output can be 1080p, or converted to 720p, the choice is yours.
-Free decoder supports H.264 MVC completely. Blu-ray 3D Ripper supports H.264 MVC standard completely, and especially designed a corresponding decoder offered to users for free. No need to pay for any H.264 MVC decoder on the market.
-Freely edit and customize. You can set video and audio format such as bit rate, frame resolution, aspect ratio, volume size, etc.; select your favorite audio and subpicture streams; crop active video region manually or automatically; remove black bars that may be present on your display device; and so on.
[More]>>
