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When it first came out, the main thing that drew me to the Nintendo Wii was its potential for first-person shooter (FPS) games. Finally, here was a console on which I could play a "Metroid Prime" game despite my infirmity By my infirmity, I mean my inability to play an FPS game with any degree of skill or finesse without the aid of some sort of mot...

During the recent Hollywood writers' strike, Joss Whedon found the cure for all his sudden downtime. The man who gave us "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Firefly" created a genre-busting musical about a mad doctor with a bad case of evil-mastermind-wannabe inferiority complex And the only place to fill this prescription for cult horror-comedy? The I...

Among other things, the top percentile of the global brand name identities also affect what's pulling the strings of the world's stock exchanges, and when they sneeze, a shiver triggers throughout the globe, altering the wealth of national economies. The fact that markets shoot up or down when customers of the world respond en masse to their dazzling offering, either jumping for joy or taking a momentary pause, proves their influence on global moods of the economy...

Online poker is becoming more and more popular in Germany. As a result, the country's strict legal restrictions on gambling are under pressure, and Germany may soon have to open its protected markets to private online poker providers. Currently, private online poker operations violate the new German Interstate Lottery Treaty, in force since Januar...

On my blog, I have been writing about my experience with my new computer: an iMac. In addition to the usual functional comparisons, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the whole cultural difference between the Windows world and the Apple world. As a longtime user of Windows, I felt I knew and understood that platform pretty well and the jolt of cutting over cold turkey was both surprising and refreshing...

The other day I was visiting a partner company and asked if they had wireless Internet access I could use. The IT guy said they had not installed a wireless network due to security concerns, so instead he let me plug into the network to get access to a Web site I needed for our discussion. I don't believe he saw the irony in that decision. It's am...

At its E3 press event, Sony Computer Entertainment of America opened up a new platform for its PlayStation Store on the PlayStation Network -- a movie and TV show download service. It wasn't announced at the end of the event to create some big closer, and it wasn't accompanied by a bombastic demo like some of the upcoming games the company preview...

Officials have arrested a city of San Francisco IT network administrator for locking up a multimillion-dollar city computer system, according to several reports stemming from a press conference with San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris. The employee, Terry Childs, 43, is accused of improperly tampering with computer systems and causing a denial of service, effectively locking out other top city administrators from the critical network.

Intel has received the Food and Drug Administration's clearance to market Health Guide, an in-home device that lets healthcare providers monitor a patient's vital signs via the Internet. It also provides interactive tools such as video conferencing and e-mail to facilitate communication and education outreach. Health Guide can connect to specific ...

Nintendo made news at the E3 Media & Business Summit Tuesday with additions to its Wii video game console The game maker debuted a new accessory for gamers to enhance the sensitivity of its Wii Remote as well as a bevy of games, some of which add new functionality to the Balance Board and another that offers a different community experience....

Viacom and Google have agreed to keep the personal information of YouTube users private, even as Viacom gears up for the next stage of litigation in its copyright infringement lawsuit against Google Google will provide user data to Viacom, but redact information that can be used to make personal identifications....

Microsoft added another capability to the Xbox 360's stable of entertainment functions Monday in a partnership with Netflix that will allow users to watch streaming movies and TV shows through the Internet-connected video game console The feature, which will launch this fall, will be available to Xbox Live Gold members who are also Netflix subscrib...

Intel marked the fifth anniversary of its Centrino line Tuesday with the launch of Centrino 2 platform for notebook PCs. The chipmaker will offer the platform with a range of five new Intel Core 2 Duo processors and later this quarter, the company will release a quad-core version of the platform The processor, chipset and wireless combo offers user...

In the case of Tiffany vs. eBay, a U.S. district judge has presented the e-commerce giant with the best gift it could get in this litigious, digital age: a victory in a four-year-old trademark protection lawsuit Judge Richard Sullivan of New York found that eBay's process of vetting suspected counterfeit items is sufficient and that Tiffany bears m...

Things are looking rocky for Yahoo after the latest round in its back-and-forth battle with Microsoft. The war of words took an ugly turn when Yahoo announced over the weekend that it had received and rejected a new Microsoft offer for a search-only purchase. Now, Microsoft is telling its side of the story, and one thing's for sure: The two tales definitely don't match up...

The Web continues to play a central role in affecting radical, disruptive change in the music industry as musicians latch on to the latest Web 2.0 tools and bypass traditional producers and distributors. High Street music and video chains -- all the rage not that long ago -- seem to be closing outlets as quickly as they once opened them This techno...

Microsoft held its Worldwide Partner Conference last week, and Sonoma Partners' Mike Snyder summed up the event's highlights "Once again, Microsoft CRM was a featured product at the conference! Microsoft sells thousands of products, but CRM gets plenty of attention," he wrote. "During the opening keynote on Tuesday, there was just one product demo:...

Many LinuxInsider readers are probably familiar with, or at least aware of, OpenMoko's FreeRunner -- the new Linux-based cell phone. This smartphone uses the Linux kernel along with various other free and open source software packages, including X.org Server with Matchbox window manager. These tools will be familiar to users of the original OpenMoko developer's phone that came out last summer, the Neo1973, or the OLPC XO-1 laptop before it ran Windows XP.

HP and Sony have collaborated on the creation of a next-generation digital audio tape (DAT) format, the two companies announced Tuesday. Aimed at small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) as well as enterprises with remote locations, the upcoming DAT 320 format provides improved performance and capacity over existing DAT drives, including the curre...

Adeona may have been the goddess of safe returns, but if a group of computer science professors and graduate students get their wish, they'll be viewed as the patron saints of secure laptop computer data, thanks to their new open source software service named after the Roman deity Also, for those who worship at the altar of bargains, Adeona may ind...