Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts

Why dinosaurs grew so large?

imageWhen actually declared extinct 65 million years ago due to a meteor strike that hit the earth, the dinosaurs left a mystery related to giant size. Now, researchers found one of the reasons behind the massive growth of the extinct animals.


As reported by the Daily Mail (12/6), researchers have discovered a fact in which the majority of ancient dinosaur blood have 'warm'.

'Warm' Circulatory system allows dinosaurs to grow larger without having to consume large amounts of food in a short time.


The study included 21 samples from various types of dinosaurs, such as predatory dinosaurs, long neck, until the bird dinosaurs. Not to forget other animals such as mammals, birds, fish, lizards, snakes, and crocodiles are also included for comparison.


Researchers then evaluated the metabolic processes of each species using a formula consisting of body weight, bone density, growing up to speed by the discovery of available fossils.


From the results of the researched data can be inferred if the dinosaurs are basically not included in the group of warm-blooded animals like humans and mammals, or cold-blooded animals like lizards and fish. Dinosaurs are considered to be in between the two, in other words, these giants have warm blood.


This theory is in line with the assumption of biologists from the University of New Mexico, John Grady, who said that if the dinosaurs did not have to warm-blooded or cold, but can be 'in the middle'. This also explains the existence of other species: giant white shark, turtle shell back, and tuna are known not warm-blooded or cold-blooded animals.

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Facebook : Rent a movie

Facebook: Rent a movieIf you were searching for something added advantageous to absorb Facebook credits on than basic trinkets for some game, Warner has an idea: all those movies you said you "liked."

 

Starting today it is testing out a plan to hire movies appropriate on their corresponding pages for 30 Facebook credits / $3 each. The aboriginal one on accouter is The Dark Knight (again?) which should be reside afterwards today, with added accessible to hire or acquirement in the future. there's no chat on resolution or added features, but at the amount we're bold SD only. Full data are in the columnist absolution afterwards the break, but the rentals accept the accepted 48-hour VOD window and can be paused/resumed artlessly by logging aback into Facebook. In its accepted state, we agnosticism Netflix, Amazon and the blow accept annihilation to anguish about as far as competition, but maybe Warner thinks it can snag a few bucks from artlessly authoritative abiding there's a buy button of some affectionate apprehension our assorted identities in as abounding places as possible.

Via: Engadget 

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BMW moves into the scooter market

BMW-Scooter While the European motorcycle industry is in crisis due to dramatically falling sales, BMW is moving in the opposite direction thanks to its loftier perspective of the mobility (as opposed to motorcycle) industry. After years concentrating on larger capacity two wheelers, it is moving into the scooter field.

Having already shown an electric version of its ultra-safe C1 scooter, plus several MINI scooter concepts in recent weeks, BMW Motorrad yesterday unveiled a maxi scooter concept. Two premium scooters will be derived from the concept vehicle in the near future and there’s also an electric version being investigated.

BMW Motorrad’s Concept C study (C stands for Commuter), is yet again embarking on a new path and demonstrating a fascinating mobility option for the future. Here, C stands for "commuter". Particularly in view of the traffic development in urban areas, it presents the prospect of an innovative, sporty big scooter for the future premium segment.

BMW-Scooter-2

For many years, scooter segment riders were looked down upon by regular motorcyclists, and it was only when Suzuki kicked off the maxiscooter craze with a lively 400cc engine just over a decade ago that the scooter form factor got some respect.

The feet-forward riding position of the scooter offers a combination of the relaxed “chopper” riding position, but with protection from the weather and somewhat greater protection in an accident.

With plenty of storage space, full instrumentation, plus the excellent suspension and running gear of the maxi-scooter, and the form factor becomes a desirable and practical alternative to the motorcycle, particularly for extended commuting purposes.

BMW-Scooter-3

It was however, the performance of subsequent maxi-scooters which earned them respect at the stoplight GP and a legitimate place in motorcycling.. Yamaha followed Suzuki’s 1999 Burgman 400 with a 40 horsepower 500cc T-Max in 2000, then Honda trumped that with the 50 bhp Silver Wing 600 twin, then in 2002, Suzuki raised the bar further with the Burgman 650.

The Burgman 650’s CVT transmission gets it off the line very quickly and one of the many memorable moments motorcycling has given me was blowing away an “outlaw” on his much larger bad-ass Harley sportster at the stoplight. He was so embarrassed that he rode straight through the next lights (they were red) rather than face the scooter a second time.

In more recent times, the scooter form factor has gained even more power in the form of the Gilera GP 800, an 850cc 75bhp 90 degree V-twin motor with a top speed of more than 120mph.

BMW Motorrad appears set to go straight to the top of the performance scale in the maxi-scooter area, notifying its intention of “combining in these scooters the outstanding handling of the motorcycle with the particular agility and conceptual comfort of the scooter for the maximum experience of dynamic riding.”

More: gizmag.com

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First YouTube Video EVER Celebrates Its 5th Anniversary

First-youtube-video It's been a landmark week: we celebrated the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill, and the 20th anniversary of the Hubble Telescope.

April 23 marks a lesser known, but nonetheless important, event: the fifth anniversary of the first video uploaded to YouTube.

YouTube was founded February 14, 2005, but the first video to hit the site--a 19 second clip of YouTube cofounder Jawed Karim at the San Diego zoo--didn't come until April 23, 2005.

Check out the first-ever YouTube video below, then we want to hear from you: What is your favorite YouTube video ever? And why?

From : huffingtonpost.com

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Google (finally) pays bounties for Chrome bug reports Up to $1,337

Chrome-bug Google will begin paying bounties as high as $1,337 to researchers who privately report high-severity security bugs in its Chrome browser and Chromium open-source project.

The "experimental new incentive," which Google announced Thursday, is for external researchers only.

It addresses a key complaint among many researchers that the security of far too many applications is built on the backs of people who receive no compensation for the countless hours they spend discovering and reporting critical vulnerabilities.

"It's a step in the right direction because it's compensating security researchers for their time in looking for vulnerabilities," said Dino Dai Zovi, a researcher who last year launched a campaign with the rallying cry "No more free bugs". "A lot of companies treat vulnerabilities as accidental discoveries, which is really not the case."

From : theregister

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Charge: Man drugged girls for porn videos

captured_Image.png A Missouri man acknowledged drugging young girls and posing them for pictures to be posted on the Internet but denies he did anything wrong, prosecutors said.

An FBI search of James Phillip Edwards' Kansas City, Mo., home and computer disclosed a date-rape video file showing three girls being given ice cream.

Drinks allegedly laced with Ambien, a sedative used to treat insomnia, and another file called "Phil's kindergarten class ages 4-7" -- described as a collage of photographs showing five girls apparently asleep -- the Kansas City Star reported Thursday.

Edwards, 60, was indicted on charges of advertising, possessing and attempting to distribute child pornography, court records showed.

Edwards' wife of 22 years, who requested anonymity, refused to say how her husband knew the girls, saying she wanted to protect the girls' privacy.

Edwards had told investigators he did not believe he had done anything wrong.

"(Edwards') view is that society places arbitrary lines (as in age restrictions) around sexual conduct, with which he doesn't agree," assistant U.S. Attorney Katharine Fincham said. "By his own admission, the defendant has been a danger to the community, unchecked, for years."

Edwards was being held without bond.

From : United Press International

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Facebook Now Has 30,000 Servers

Facebook Server How many servers does Facebook have? For some time now, the stock answer has been “more than 10,000 servers,” a number the company began using in April 2008. Facebook has continued to use that number, even as it has soared past 300 million users and dramatically expanded its data center space.

We now have an update: Facebook has 30,000 servers supporting its operations. That number comes from Jeff Rothschild, the vice president of technology at Facebook, who discussed the company’s infrastructure in a presentation last week at UC San Diego (link via High Scalability).

“Today we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 servers,” Rothschild said during the Q&A session following his talk, adding that the number ”will be different today than it was yesterday” because Facebook is adding capacity on a daily basis.  

That places Facebook among the largest Internet companies that have publicly discussed their server counts, but still well behind hosting providers Rackspace, 1&1 Internet and OVH, which each house more than 50,000 servers in their data centers. See Who Has The Most Web Servers for more date on the largest infrastructures.

20,000 Servers In 18 Months
It also suggests that Facebook has added about 20,000 servers since early 2008, which explains why it borrowed $100 million in May 2008 to fund server purchases. 

Rothschild also shared some huge numbers associated with Facebook’s photo storage operation, which now stores 80 billion images (20 billion images, each in four sizes). Rothschild said the real challenge isn’t storage, but delivery. ”We serve up 600,000 photos a second,” he said.

From : datacenterknowledge.com

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Schmidt: "Android Adoption Is About To Explode"

Google Android to be Explode During Google's third quarter earnings conference call today, one message came out loud and clear: Google's mobile strategy is starting to pay off. "Android adoption is about to explode," declared CEO Eric Schmidt, explaining that all the "necessary conditions" are set for growth: There are now 12 Android phones out there (most recently the Motorola Cliq) across 32 carriers in 26 countries.

The whole Android strategy, of course, is to offer an low-cost, fully-featured, open-source OS and hand that to the cell phone manufacturers so that they can concentrate more on designing desirable hardware. And what does Google get out of all that? More mobile searches, which could be one of its biggest sources of growth in the coming years.

Already, Google is teasing at what may be in store. During the call, Google executive mentioned at least three times that mobile searches on Google were up 30 percent from the second quarter. Of course, they wouldn't say how many total mobile searches there were or what percentage of all searches they represent (probably still a very small subset), but they are very bullish about the company's mobile prospects.

In response to a question about how material mobile searches are to Google, CFO Patrick Pichette replied:

Again, we don't give the detail numbers. On a quarter over quarter basis, mobile searches grew 30% on Google. It tells you something about the mobile space, the smartphones, and how they are transformative. They are basically transforming how people live on a mobile basis. If we move forward the adoption of these mobile phones by lowering the cost because it is open source, think of how many searches [that will produce]. 

From : washingtonpost.com

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Facebook ensnared in two social networking patent disputes

Facebook Patent Two companies are taking social networking heavyweight Facebook to court over claims that Facebook's website infringes on patents related to personal pages and establishing human relationships. Tele-Publishing Inc, a Boston-based company known for providing personals services to newspapers since the 1980s, is accusing Facebook of violating its patent on "providing a personal page."

Meanwhile, Japan-based Mekiki Co Ltd is suing Facebook for infringing on three of its US patents for a "human relationships registering system."The popular social networking site is facing software patent infringement claims from two less well known companies. A Boston-based company says Facebook infringes on its patent for making a profile page, while a Japanese company says Facebook infringes on its patents for tracking relationship between people. Both suits leave us questioning why the USPTO continues to award patents for software in the first place.

From : Ars technica

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Firefox 3.7, now with Windows 7 jumplist support

Firefox Jumplist Now that Windows 7 is just weeks away from hitting retail shelves, more and more applications are beginning to take advantage of the new shell integration features.

A while back, Google added jumplist support to Google Chrome. Just days ago, a build offering the same functionality finally appeared on Mozilla's Tryserver.

Yes, Firefox fans, you now have the opportunity to test jumplist support in Firefox, as long as you're o.k. with running a Minefield build. As you can see in the image above, the feature is fairly basic right now. In addition to the default Windows 7 "pinned" area, Firefox maintains a list of frequently visited site and allows you to open a new tab or window. I'd like to see a list of recent sites and private browsing added to the list.

You'll find the installer for Windows here. After about 24 hours with the tweaked build, I don't find it to be any less stable than the Minefield nightly. Tried the build out yourself? Share your thoughts in the comments!

From : DownloadSquad

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Facebook strips down to Lite site

Facebook Lite The world's biggest social networking site has launched a slimmed-down version for people with slow or poor internet connections.

Facebook has said the Lite site will be faster and simpler because it offers fewer services than the main site.

Initially it is meant to support users in developing countries and where bandwidth constraints make the current version too slow to use.

At the moment it is only available in India and the US.

The company said around 70% of its more than 250 million users were from outside America. Countries in Southeast Asia and Europe are seeing a massive increase in growth where fast internet connections are more common.

News that Facebook was testing the Lite site was first leaked in August.

'Twitter-like'

The options on Facebook Lite are limited to letting users write on their wall, post photos and videos, view events and browse other people's profiles. There are no apps or special boxes.

"It appears, at a quick glance, to be a better site for Facebook newbies or for anyone who finds the current site overwhelming and noisy," said Rafe Needleman at technology website Cnet.

"The new layout feels almost Twitter-like."

Terence O'Brien at Switched.com gave the slimmed-down version of what he called "ol' blue" the thumbs-up because it "strips away distractions".

"The simple site loads noticeably faster, is easier to navigate, and is much easier on the eyes thanks to the lack of people sending you 'virtual booze' or asking you to join their 'vampire fraternity'.

"The new layout seems like a direct challenge to Twitter, which can attribute much of its success to is simplicity and portability," said Mr O'Brien.

More : news.bbc.co.uk

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Google offices ablaze after rooftop barbecue goes wrong

Google Officces Ablaze A blaze broke out at Google's British headquarters today, when a rooftop barbecue got out of control.

The blaze broke out on the roof patio of the company's London offices at lunchtime, the fire brigade said.

Around 5,000 Google staff and employees from other firms based in the six-floor building were evacuated.

Within minutes nearby workers had posted pictures of the blaze on the social networking website Twitter.

A spokesman from Google said: 'We have free food for staff at our offices and today was a barbecue day. We were having a barbecue on the patio where the fire started, but we're waiting to hear from the firefighters whether the two are linked.'

Firefighters were called just before 2pm to Victoria in south west London and spent two hours bringing it under control.

A spokesman for the London Fire Brigade said: 'We attended a six-storey building on Buckingham Palace Road. We had four fire engines in attendance with 20 fire fighters.

'A small patio area on the fifth floor was alight.'

He said there would be an investigation once the fire was put out.

The Google spokesman added: 'There was no serious damaged to the building and thankfully no one was hurt. We're all back in the offices now.'

The internet giant has developed a reputation for being one of the world's most employee-friendly businesses.

In its world HQ in California, staff have access to volleyball courts, swimming pools video games, ping pong, pinball machines and even a baby grand piano.

The only people found wearing suits and ties are visiting businessmen, 'Googlers' wear jeans, t-shirts, sweaters and on occasion some even show up in pyjama bottoms.

Other perks include free haircuts, dry cleaning and laundry, child care, car services and five onsite doctors available for employee check-ups; all free of charge.

From : dailymail

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Studios Sue to Stop Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay Sues By Hollywood Studios Pirate Bay makes it easy for users to download copies of shows like "Desperate Housewives" and movies like "Gran Torino."

Millions of users have already taken advantage of Pirate Bay's directory of titles, and there is little that the service's operators could to do prevent those people from continuing to share illegally downloaded content.

However, legal action could force the operators to take technical steps to make it harder to share new files in the future, says Monique Wadsted, a Stockholm-based lawyer representing the Motion Picture Association. "What we want is to make them stop," she said.The major Hollywood studios requested that a Swedish civil court impose an injunction against the operators of file-sharing service Pirate Bay.

The studios are seeking to stop Pirate Bay's operators and its Internet-service provider from making copyrighted movies and TV shows easily available on the Internet. The studios are also asking for an unspecified fine.

Earlier this year, the studios won a victory in criminal court against Pirate Bay's operators for aiding copyright infringement. The litigation highlights the rapidly changing future of the service, which was sold last month to Global Gaming Factory X AB, the Swedish software company. The purchase is pending Global Gaming stockholder approval late next month.

More : wsj.com

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ATI to launch DirectX 11 GPUs in seven weeks

Ati DirectX 11 GPU For the past week and a half, we've been hearing rumors citing various dates for the launch of AMD's DirectX 11 graphics cards… ranging from GDC in China to newly invented delays that would push the launch window in to November.

However, all of these rumors are false, given that AMD has firmed its "Cinema 3.0/DirectX 11" launch. As tradition goes, the North American launch will happen in seven weeks in San Francisco on a very special place indeed - but we're not at liberty to say where the event will take place. All we can say is that it will be someplace that neither Intel nor nVidia would even remember.

ATI will catapult not one, but rather a complete DirectX 11 line-up into the orbit, ranging from $50 to the high end parts in their respective three-figure pricing brackets. Just like the Radeon 4000 series, consisting out of 4400, 4500, 4600, 4700 and 4800 parts, the new Radeon series will consist out of entry-level [Hemlock], mainstream [Cedar, Redwood], performance [Juniper] and high-end part [Cypress]. When it comes to codenames, you'll notice that all of these parts have codenames from plants, with some belonging into the same family [Cedar, Juniper, Redwood] Note that not all of these parts will be launched on the same day. Some parts might have to wait until Holiday season to get them in OEM-level numbers, but all in all - this is the strongest line-up ATI had in years. We might even dare to say strongest line-up ever from any GPU manufacturer.

According to information we have at hand, initial rumors about the names and specs proved true - these parts bring DirectX 11 compliancy from top to the bottom, and if you want to play upcoming DirectX 11 games [so far, there are six confirmed DX11 titles launching this year] in a budget less than $500, you have no other choice but to go ATI.

From : brightsideofnews.com

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ESPN reporter secretly videotaped nude in hotel

ESPN reporter Erin Andrews was secretly videotaped in the nude while she was alone in a hotel room and the video was posted on the Internet, her attorney said.

The blurry, five-minute video shows Andrews standing in front of a hotel room mirror. It's unknown when or where it was shot.

Andrews' attorney, Marshall Grossman, confirmed Tuesday that the video posted on the Internet shows the 31-year-old reporter. He said she decided to confirm it "to put an end to rumor and speculation and to put the perpetrator and those who are complicit on notice that they act at their peril."

Andrews plans to seek criminal charges and file civil lawsuits against the person who shot the video and anyone who publishes the material, Grossman said.

"While alone in the privacy of her hotel room, Erin Andrews was surreptitiously videotaped without her knowledge or consent," Grossman said in an earlier statement. "She was the victim of a crime and is taking action to protect herself and help ensure that others are not similarly violated in the future."

Andrews has covered hockey, college football, college basketball and Major League Baseball for the network since 2004, often as a sideline reporter during games.

A former dance team member at the University of Florida, Andrews was something of an Internet sensation even before the video's circulation. She has been referred to as "Erin Pageviews" because of the traffic that video clips and photos of her generate, and Playboy magazine named her "sexiest sportscaster" in both 2008 and 2009.

She last appeared on the network as part of its ESPY Awards broadcast on Sunday, and is scheduled to be off until September, when she will be covering college football, ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz said.

"Erin has been grievously wronged here," Krulewitz said. "Our people and resources are in full support of her as she deals with this abhorrent act."

It was not clear when the video first appeared on the Internet. Most of the links to it had been removed by Tuesday.

Several TV networks and newspapers aired brief clips or printed screen grabs of it Tuesday. Grossman responded to an e-mail question about whether he plans to go after those outlets by reiterating his statement that Andrews plans to seek civil charges against "anyone who has published the material."

He would not say what law enforcement agencies might be investigating.

ESPN is based in Bristol, but Connecticut State Police were not involved in an investigation into the video, said Lt. J. Paul Vance, a department spokesman. Vance said investigations into Internet crimes often begin in the victim's home state or wherever the video was shot, if that can be determined.

Quoted From : AP

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"While alone in the privacy of her hotel room, Erin Andrews was surreptitiously videotaped without her knowledge or consent. She was the victim of a crime and is taking action to protect herself and help ensure that others are not similarly violated in the future. Although the perpetrator or perpetrators of this criminal act have not yet been identified, when they are identified she intends to bring both civil and criminal charges against them and against anyone who has published the material. We request respect of Erin's privacy at this time, while she and her representatives are working with the authorities."

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US State Dept. workers beg Clinton for Firefox

US State Department workers have begged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to let them use Firefox.

"Can you please let the staff use an alternative web browser called Firefox?" worker bee Jim Finkle asked Clinton during Friday's State Department town hall meeting.

"I just moved to the State Department from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and was surprised that State doesn’t use this browser. It was approved for the entire intelligence community, so I don’t understand why State can’t use it. It’s a much safer program."

Presumably, the State Department is using Microsoft's Internet Explorer. And we wouldn't be surprised if it's still mired in the eight-year-old IE6. The only thing that moves slower than Orange is a US government agency. But the State Department has yet to respond to our questions about its Firefox-less browsing mandate.

Finkle's fellow workers responded to his Firefox request with applause. While Clinton responded with bewilderment. "Well, apparently, there’s a lot of support for this suggestion. I don’t know the answer. Pat, do you know the answer?" she said, turning to under Secretary Pat Kennedy.

"The answer is, at the moment: It’s an expense question," Kennedy said. Then someone in the audience pointed out that Firefox is free.

"Nothing is free," Kennedy responded. "It’s a question of the resources to manage multiple systems. It is something we’re looking at...It has to be administered. The patches have to be loaded. It may seem small, but when you’re running a worldwide operation and trying to push, as the Secretary rightly said, out FOBs [for remote log-ins] and other devices, you’re caught in the terrible bind of triage of trying to get the most out that you can, but knowing you can’t do everything at once."

Clinton then told her staff to have a look through their closets. "The more money we can save on stuff that is not cutting edge, the more resources we’ll have to shift to do things that will give us more tools," she said.

"[That reminds] me of what I occasionally sometimes do, which I call shopping in my closet, which means opening doors and seeing what I actually already have, which I really suggest to everybody, because it’s quite enlightening. And so when you go to the store and you buy, let’s say, peanut butter and you don’t realize you’ve got two jars already at the back of the shelf – I mean, that sounds simplistic, but help us save money on stuff that we shouldn’t be wasting money on, and give us the chance to manage our resources to do more things like Firefox, okay?"

If the State Department buys less peanut butter, Clinton may even let them use Facebook. During a state department town hall meeting earlier this year, a bigwig at the US embassy in Mexico City told Clinton that the social networking site is a great way to prevent solipsistic stupid people from entering the country.

From : The Register

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Pirate Bay founders get rich in jail

Pirate Bay Founder Get Rich A little-known Swedish software firm has snapped up file-sharing website The Pirate Bay with the hope of turning the source of legal controversy into a money-spinner that appeals to both users and content providers.

Global Gaming Factory X AB, which operates Internet cafes and provides software, said Tuesday that it had agreed to buy Pirate Bay for 60 million Swedish crowns ($7.7 million).

The website made world headlines in April when the three Swedish founders and a financial backer were each sentenced to one year in jail and ordered to pay a combined $3.6 million in damages for breaching copyright law with the free downloading site, which was one of the biggest sites of its kind on the Internet.

Swedish News Agency TT cited one of the founders, Peter Sunde, as saying that the money would not go directly to him or any of the others sentenced in April.

Sunde told TT that the money would be placed in a company outside Swedish borders and it would be used for Internet projects other than downloading sites.

Pirate Bay could not be immediately reached for comment.

Global Gaming said it believed the website was a viable business with its plans for a new, legal business model.

"We would like to introduce (business) models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site," the company said in a statement.

USERS AS EARNERS

Global Gaming Chief Executive Hans Pandeya told a news conference that the revamped website would generate money via advertising, supplying storage space and helping telecom operators optimize Internet traffic.

He also said users would be able to earn money by supplying storage space, which would encourage people to use the site.

"That's what is interesting. If you can earn money by file-sharing, it's no big deal to pay for what you download," Pandeya said.

Analysts were unimpressed by the move, comparing it to Napster, an online file-sharing site that quickly lost popularity after it started to charge its users.

"It looks like they are going to Napsterize it," said Leigh Ellis, intellectual property partner at Gillhams Solicitors.

Mark Mulligan, vice president at research firm Forrester, said that many of Pirate Bay's around 20 million users would move on to other free downloading options.

More : reuters.com

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Coming Soon: Facebook Usernames

From the beginning of Facebook, people have used their real names to share and connect with the people they know. This authenticity helps to create a trusted environment because you know the identity of the people and things on Facebook.

The one place, though, where your identity wasn't reflected was in the Web address for your profile or the Facebook Pages you administer. The URL was just a randomly assigned number like "id=592952074." That soon will change.

We're planning to offer Facebook usernames to make it easier for people to find and connect with you. When your friends, family members or co-workers visit your profile or Pages on Facebook, they will be able to enter your username as part of the URL in their browser. This way people will have an easy-to-remember way to find you. We expect to offer even more ways to use your Facebook username in the future.

Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names. Your username will have the same privacy setting as your profile name in Search, and you can always edit your search privacy settings here.

Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you'll be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/. You'll also see a notice on your home page with instructions for obtaining your username at that time.

Source : blog.facebook.com

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E3: Final Fantasy XIV Online Announced for the PlayStation 3 and PC

Final Fantasy XIV Online games are among the most profitable genres of videogames on the market as they can squeeze profit from their loyal fans by using a big number of ways, from subscription fees to unique content or items.

That is why when Square Enix revealed a few years ago Final Fantasy XI Online, the first MMO take on a Final Fantasy game from the company, it became extremely popular. Recently, the Japanese company, in order to heal Sony's wounds after revealing that Final Fantasy XIII would be coming to both its PS3 and its archrival the Xbox 360, revealed Final Fantasy XIV Online.

But even though it will be console exclusive for the PlayStation 3, the online game will also appear on the PC, in order to bank in on the massive number of MMO players using that platform for their online gaming needs.

Set in the magical realm of Eorzea, Final Fantasy XIV promises to take players on a truly spectacular journey, some adventures and quests in order to transform them into heroes. Sadly, no concrete information about gameplay, story or other such things has been offered but the game has already been pegged for a worldwide release in 2010, and it will come with language support for Japanese, English, French and German players, guaranteeing a large fan base.

Out of the staff that is working on the game we find the producer of Final Fantasy XI Hiromichi Tanaka, as well as the director of the same title, Nobuaki Komoto. The art of the game will be handled by Final Fantasy XII Art director Akihiko Yoshida.

Overall, Final Fantasy XIV seems to be a very interesting take on the online JRPG genre, one which, if we take into account the large popularity that its MMO predecessor FF XI has been enjoying, will go on to be a best seller.

As quoted from : softpedia.com

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Facebook raises $200 million from Russian Internet firm

Thats amazing, i need to setup a Facebook acc too..

Facebook Inc. said Tuesday it has raised $200 million from a Russian Internet firm in a deal that values the online social-networking service at roughly two-thirds the amount set when Microsoft Corp. came on board as an investor in late 2007.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook said Digital Sky Technologies will take a 1.96% ownership stake that values it at $10 billion. Microsoft's /quotes/nls/msft (MSFT 20.34, +0.59, +2.99%) $240 million investment in Facebook less than two years ago, for a 1.6% ownership stake, implied a valuation of $15 billion. See full story.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, in a conference call with reporters, cited external economic conditions for the difference in valuations, in addition to the more complete partnership implied in the Microsoft deal.

"We did the Microsoft investment ... at the absolute peak of the market," Zuckerberg said. "That was a year and a half ago, and the world was in a pretty different place at the time."

In addition, Zuckerberg said, Microsoft's investment "was just one piece" of a deal that also involved developing online advertising formats. "Relative to the economic conditions for when the Microsoft deal happened... we feel really good about the progress we've made," the CEO said.

Zuckerberg said Facebook is in no urgent need of the new money. He said the company expects 70% annual revenue growth, and to become "cash flow positive" in 2010.

Founded in 2005, Facebook is expected to pull in some $230 million in revenue this year, compared with an estimated $210 million last year, according to research firm eMarketer. As a private company, Facebook doesn't disclose financial results.

In addition to its current investment, Digital Sky has also agreed to acquire as much as $100 million worth of common shares from current and former Facebook employees looking to liquidate some of their holdings in the company.

Facebook has long been searching for a way to allow employees to cash in on their equity, in lieu of a sale of the company or an initial public offering of its stock -- both an unlikely prospect any time in the near future. Late last year, Facebook delayed a plan to allow employees to sell a limited number of shares, citing the economic environment. See story about Facebook's delayed employee share sale.

Digital Sky Chief Executive Yuri Milner said that the purchase of Facebook employee shares "will happen in the next few months," but offered no further details.

Digital Sky, with offices in Moscow and London, focuses on Internet investments in the Russian and Eastern European markets, and says it has poured more than $1 billion into over 30 companies since 2005.

Facebook said Digital Sky will not receive a seat on the company's board as part of the investment.

"I have my own business to run," Milner said.

According to media reports, Facebook has been shopping around for some time to raise additional funding. The soaring popularity of its social-networking service has resulted in more than 200 million users, boosting the costs of its infrastructure such as data centers.

Zuckerberg said the company doesn't have "any specific plans to talk about" in terms of putting its new round of funding to work.

Source : marketwatch.com

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