Google Voice may not have made it onto the iPhone yet, but the service has still managed to attract more than 1.4 million users.
In a story posted Friday, BusinessWeek is reporting that Google Voice has grown to 1.419 million users, 40 percent–fully 570,000–of whom use the …
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
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People always talk about dog years, or cat years, but what about video game console years?
It’s hard to know what that math is, but one thing is certain: Sony’s PlayStation 2 turned nine years old Wednesday, and it sure feels like the best-selling video game console of all time has been around a whole lot longer than that.
Yet even though we’re already more than three years into the PlayStation 3/Xbox 360/Wii console generation, the PS2 is still going strong. Routinely, month after month, its sales are in six figures–146,000 in September in the United States alone–and there’s no reason to think that the 485 (and counting) developers who have made games for the platform are going to stop any time soon.
The PS2 hit nine years old on Wednesday. What is that in video game years, if dog and cat years are equal to seven human years?
(Credit:
Sony)
In large part, that’s because there’s millions of people for whom the world-beating processing power of the PS3 and the Xbox 360, and the graphics-so-good-you-can-see-beads-of-sweat-on-sports-players-bodies aren’t worth paying several hundred dollars for. For $100, they say, you can get one heck of a good video game playing experience with a PS2.
It “still holds a place in my heart–there’s so many great games with huge amounts of replay value,” said Michael Steavenson, a public relations professional who bought his PS2 around 2001. “I’m not so interested in blazingly fast processing speeds, graphics that make games look like a move or uber-cutting edge hardware stats. If the game is well-designed, fun to play and provides me with a good emotional connection, I’ll play it forever.”
According to Sony, one out of every three U.S. households owns a PS2, and, worldwide, almost 140 million people have one. To date, Americans have bought more than half a billion PS2 games, and all told, nearly 10,000 titles have been released for the platform. Not bad for a machine that has earned the right to be living out its golden years sitting on a porch somewhere, smoking a cigar and grumbling about kids these days.
…
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One of the more interesting debates I have gotten into recently is one regarding the laws of supply and demand (and cost) for movies and music in the current market. It’s an interesting debate mostly because the “guru of FREE!” Mike Masnick is involved, which means that we are in for some truly fun times. When it comes to bending the basic rules of business, Mike is all over it!
Anyway, the favorite theory of the “FREE!” crowd is that infinite distribution means that supply is infinite, and by the basic rules of supply and demand, that means that the price is zero. It’s a pretty simple concept, and it is exactly what the laws of supply and demand state. It is basic economics, first year, almost first week stuff. Nobody debates the math, but I certainly debate the theory.
First up, the infinite supply is based solely on piracy. Basically, the idea is that once music or a movie is released, it will be made digital and spread all over the torrent and other piracy sites, making it infinite, and thus having no market price anymore. This does fit the in the supply and demand model, but it requires that you accept one simple issue: The control and ownership of copyright materials is moot. It’s an amazing blind spot, one that everyone in this movement seems to be forgetting, that at the base of their idea is hundreds of thousands of people obtaining and trading movies and music that they have no legal rights on. It’s like basing an entire economy only on shoplifted goods, or only on what some guy will sell or give you out of the trunk of his car. Call it the “fell off the truck” economy. So we are basically required to suspend the laws of the world, stop calling it piracy and call it advertising, and everything is good. Wow.
Second, the cost difference in distribution of infinite goods versus physical DVDs or CDs isn’t that great. The market price of a DVD has little to do with the packaging, and everything to do with the content itself. Moving from one delivery method to another does not greatly affect the costs of the product. It is very deceptive to say “movies are free because infinite distribution lowers the marginal costs to nothing”, because of (a) the marginal cost (the cost of producing one more unit) is nothing only in piracy, and (b) marginal costs are only part of the full cost of the product. In a full legal download situation, the cost of bandwidth is still an issue, even if it is pennies per gig. There is no zero cost, unless you are operating illegally.
In the end, the major cost of a movie isn’t in the DVD, it’s in the production of the movie. It is clear that there is very strong demand for movies and music, and that the only reason prices would come to zero would be if infinite supply overwhelmed the marketplace. Even then, the infinite supply (piracy) is entirely dependant on the real supply (movies being produced), thus is not truly supply. It is similar to a store losing 10% of it’s inventory to shoplifting, so they reduce all their prices to zero because that is what the market demands. While it may work out in a classroom discussion about the supply and demand system’s extreme limits, reality says that there is no longer term business to be done giving away your sole product.
The current situation is tenable only because there is still a robust market for DVD and music sales, but in the case of music, the worldwide market in dollars is only at the same levels as it was 10 years ago. At some point, the content producers will change their business models, but I sincerely doubt it will be to giving away their candy for free.
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The Edge and Bono perform before 96,000 fans during the U2 360 concert Sunday at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.
(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET)
PASADENA, Calif.–If you were one of the 96,000 people packed into the Rose Bowl Sunday night …
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At NASA Ames Research Center, in Mountain View, Calif., two K10 rovers navigate a lunar-like landscape. The K10 program is designed to help NASA do more advanced surveys and surveillance of the moon, and for the time being, the robots are being deployed in a series of similar environments across …
Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture
That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for iPhone.
OK, that’s probably a little overly dramatic, but the new NASA iPhone app, which was released Friday, is pretty cool.
With NASA’s iPhone app, space geeks can access all kinds of information about their favorite missions….
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The PS3 Slim, the newest iteration of the PlayStation 3, comes with the lowest price ever for the PS3: $299. Because of the price cut, the PS3′s sales rose in August and September, and many people see signs of a resurgence for the console.
(Credit:
Sony)
Is Sony’s …
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Cell phone carriers are notorious for slapping consumers with fees and unexpected charges. But if you look carefully at what you pay for and what you need, you can keep your bill down.
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A scene from the Boston show of U2′s 360 show, what has been called the biggest rock show in history. This Sunday’s show, at the Rose Bowl, in Pasadena, Calif., will be streamed live on YouTube.
(Credit:
U2)
U2 fans who can’t make it to the band’…
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SAN FRANCISCO–An initiative in the works from the nonprofit Internet Archive to centralize the electronic distribution of commercially viable books could upend the publishing industry and declaw Amazon.com, an industry analyst said.
On Monday, the Internet Archive, which among other things has been working for some time to digitize …
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For the first time, the Sony PlayStation 3 was the monthly top-selling video game console, a mark that has been nearly three years in the making for the much-maligned platform.
According to video game analyst NPD, Sony sold 491,800 PS3s in September, beating out Nintendo’s Wii–which moved 462,800 units–and Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which came in last at 352,600 units sold for the month.
The PS3, the newest iteration of Sony’s next-generation video game console, finally won the top slot in a monthly sales report, thanks to the platform’s lowest price ever.
(Credit:
Sony)
For Sony, the news seemed to prove that many would-be PS3 buyers had been waiting for nearly three years to get one of the consoles at a price more in line with what Nintendo and Microsoft charge for their devices.
In August, Sony unveiled the $299 PS3 Slim, which got the platform under the $300 level for the first time. The Wii currently runs for $199, and the lowest-price Xbox goes for the same.
Based on the PS3 price cut, some analysts had been predicting that the console would finally come out on top when NPD released its September numbers. Indeed, Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter was proven right when he suggested that price cuts for all three consoles would most benefit Sony. He even said that he thought it is possible that the PS3 will outsell the Xbox for the rest of the year, which, if true, would be a major blow to Microsoft’s video games group.
Sony would do well to temper any crowing. Its first one-month victory came after nearly three years, and clearly demonstrates that many buyers felt the console was too expensive previously. The PS3 was originally released with a top price of $599.
Still, the September results are big news for Sony and could be a sign that things are finally turning around for the beleaguered PS3. …
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There may be a happy ending after all for owners of Sidekick phones who thought they might have permanently lost contact numbers and other personal information they had put on the gadget.
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AT&T Inc. says Internet access to its iPhone and other cellular device failed for a time Thursday morning in Arkansas.
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Microsoft is getting ready for a November release of new Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, and instant movie and TV show streaming features in Xbox Live.
(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET)
SAN FRANCISCO–At a star-studded E3 press conference last June, Microsoft touted, among other things, a plan to bring Facebook, Twitter, and …
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>New Series Follows Alaska State Troopers> They are the first line of defense in the last frontier. Alaska State Troopers, a new series, premieres tonight at 10P e/p on Nat Geo. Learn more at |
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Starting in mid-2010, new versions of gadgets like cameras, cell phones and computers will be able to talk to each other using Wi-Fi without needing to connect to a wireless network.
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Thanks to a nonprofit called Samasource, refugees in Kenya are starting to find Internet-based work that can pay them triple what they could earn before.
(Credit:
Samasource)
Workers stuck in the world’s largest refugee camp are being given a chance to wield a mouse and keyboard as tools for …
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AT&T Inc. said that it will begin allowing iPhone owners to use Internet calling services on its wireless network.
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Verizon Wireless said Tuesday it will put substantial resources into developing and selling phones that use Google Inc.’s Android software.
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Verizon Wireless said Tuesday it will put substantial resources into developing and selling phones that use Google Inc.’s Android software.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from msnbc.com: Wireless
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access
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Over the last few years, much has been made about the move to “online media”, and that traditional media, from newspapers to radio to television were all doomed as the new wave on online reporters and citizen journalists would take over. Even behemoth CNN has taken to using it’s Ireport setup to take stories submitted by readers / viewers and runs them on their website and sometimes even in broadcast.
However. there are drawbacks to this revolution, and recently Matt Drudge of the Drudgereport.com has been showing why. Since the election of Obama, his site has become one of the shrillest conservative attack sites around, with no attempt made to hide the scorn or contempt that he appears to have for the entire Obama administration. The story titles vary from things like “Rahm it through” to today’s massive whopper of a lie, “World Rejects Obama”. The world did no reject Obama, the Olympic committee didn’t choose Chicago for the Olympics. On that basis, the “world” also rejected 2 other cities and thier leaders. It’s a gross distortion of reality, such an obvious attempt at Obama bashing that it is beyond shame.
All this of course on a day when one of the other most featured stories is the cover of the new Sarah Palin biography, Going Rogue. I can’t imagine that he doesn’t see the irony in that sort of layout.
Online media has a long way to go.
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Stuff Channel
The European Union launched a free satellite navigation network that could help pilots, drivers and blind people by fine-tuning the accuracy of the U.S. GPS to around 2 meters.
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Determined to stop people from texting while driving, the Obama administration plans a campaign similar to past government efforts to discourage drunken driving and encourage the use of seat belts.
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