Latest news

In a podcast ahead of the Global Investment Conference in London, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown singled out the games industry in the region as one of its most successful sectors. The games industry in the UK is "leading the way" in Europe, according to Brown. "We're leading the way in creative industries: by far the biggest producer of computer games in Europe," he said.

"And we're leading the way in digital communications. In a country with only one per cent of the world's population, more than a third of all internet traffic is routed through UK servers." TIGA, a trade association that represents the games industry in the UK, did not miss the opportunity to use the prime minister's comments to lobby on behalf of the industry.

"We warmly welcome Prime Minster Gordon Brown's comments and urge him to act quickly to introduce a Games Tax Relief as outlined by TIGA2, for the UK games development industry in the coming Budget," said TIGA CEO Richard Wilson.

Intel Corporation has revealed that it too was hit by a sophisticated cyberattack in January 2010, around the same time that Google Inc. publicly announced that its services were the target of an attack from China. Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy stressed that there was no current link between the two attacks. "The only connection is timing," Mulloy said.

However, the company did point out the similarity to the attack on Google in its annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. As many as 30 targets were involved in a sophisticated attack in January, and researchers claim to be closing in on those responsible as they follow the trail back to the source of the events.

One freelance security researcher with links to the Chinese government is suspected of authoring the code used against Google at least, and a trail allegedly leads back to two schools in the country. The Chinese government, and both schools, deny and dismiss both charges.

According to a survey conducted by Nielsen Games, U.S. consumers spend about 4.9 percent of their budgets for home entertainment content during a month on video game titles. Buyers of video game titles spend more than non-gaming households on products such as Blu-ray/DVD titles, music and other things.

In households with "active buyers" of video games, the share for gaming expenditure rises to 9.3 percent.

Nielsen said that the research shows the share spent on video games comes at the expense of particularly traditional media, such as magazines, books and newspapers. Regular home TV packages also are of less priority on "active gaming" households.

Compared to other forms of home entertainment, the category for videogames beats print media at 4.2 percent, premium TV packages at 4.1 percent and Blu-ray/DVD title purchases at 3.5 percent. It should come as no shock that music stands at 2.8 percent.

The games industry took a hammering in the second half of 2009 in particularly due to the recession straining consumer spending.

Publishing giant Macmillan has announced today the launch of it's own DynamicBooks software platform, allowing professors to edit digital textbooks without approval of the original author.

The instructors can add or delete text, re-arrange chapters, and add their own media and charts, using a simple online authoring tool.

The digital textbooks will go up for sale via dynamicbooks.com and through college book stores, and will be quite significantly cheaper then their print counterparts. For example, the New York Times shows the book "Psychology," which has MSRP of $135, but retails for about $120 at most big book stores. The DynamicBooks version will retail for $48.76 and can be viewed on computers and the iPhone.

Android and iPad support is expected soon.

Due to a dispute over the DVD release plans of Tim Burton's new Alice in Wonderland movie, Odeon movie theaters in the UK, Ireland and Italy will not screen the film. Walt Disney Pictures has decided to release the movie on DVD only 12 weeks after it is shown in theaters, instead of the usual 17 weeks.

Odean theaters in Germany, Austria, Spain and Portugal will show Alice in Wonderland however, as there is a longer gap between theatrical and DVD release in those countries. The company said it is worried that Disney's decision to reduce the gap to 12 weeks will "inevitably set a new benchmark" making the 12 week gap more common.

Other cinema chains in Britain have also cried foul about the 12 week gap to the DVD release, but so far no others have chosen to boycott the movie in the region. Odeon said that it had invested "considerable sums of money" in digital projection equipment to display 3D movies and a shorter window to screen films undermines that investment.

The Cineworld chain announced last week that it reached a "satisfactory compromise" with Disney and so would be screening the movie in 150 of its screens in Britain.

Intel Corporation and a group of 24 venture capital firms have announced an investment plan for companies in the United States. Venture capital firms including Advanced Technology Ventures, Braemar Energy Ventures and Bridgescale Partners will invest $3.5 billion in companies that develop promising technology in the United States.

Intel President Paul Otellini said that the firm would cough up $200 million itself toward the plan. "The members of this alliance have committed to invest $3.5 billion in promising clean technology, information technology and biotechnology companies over approximately two years," Otellini said in a speech at the Brookings Institution think tank.

Additionally, Intel also announced plans for it and other companies to double their hiring of college graduates in the country, creating more than 10,500 new jobs. Otellini estimated the total annual paychecks would total more than $1 billion.

The companies that have vowed to take on more college graduates are..

• Adobe Systems Inc.
• Autodesk Inc
• Broadcom Corp
• CDW LLC CDW.UL
• Cisco Systems Inc.
• Dell Inc.
• eBay Inc
• EMC Corp
• General Electric Co
• Google Inc
• Hewlett-Packard Co
• Intel Corporation
• Liberty Mutual Group
• Marvell Technology Group Ltd
• Marvell Semiconductor
• Microsoft Corp
• Yahoo Inc

Grow Up Australia is a campaign group in support of an '18' rating for video games in the country, which is the only developer first-world country to not have such a rating. The group's campaign has gathered 16,055 signatures which will be delivered to the Attorney General's Department.

EB Games strongly supports the campaign, and displayed posters in all of its 250+ Australian stores encouraging supporters to sign the online petition.

The Attorney General's Department had asked for public opinions, for or against the issue, back in December 2009, and until February 28, members of the public have their chance to give an opinion on it.

"Support for the introduction of the R18+ rating has been overwhelming with ninety-nine percent of the submissions made through the website in favour of the change," said Aaron John Percival, one of the founders of Grow up Australia.

Google Inc. has reportedly resumed talks with Chinese officials on the issue of Internet censorship in the country. Google threatened last month to exit the country rather than bow to government censorship policies that force it to filter search results. The company's change of heart came after a cyberattack, sourced in China, and aimed at the company's valuable source code as well as the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

The U.S. Government got itself involved in the situation in the following weeks, with President Barack Obama saying he was troubled by the attacks and was seeking answers from the Chinese government. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also covered the topic in a general speech about the affect Internet censorship can have on states.

Researchers now believe a Chinese freelance security consultant with ties to the Chinese government was the author of the code used in attacks against Google and 30 other companies. The trail apparently leads back to computers at two schools in the country. Both the schools and the Chinese government deny the claims.

Since Google's ultimatum, the search giant has continued serving filtered results to Internet users in the country and has not commented on discussions with officials.

After the lawsuit over Harriton High School's alleged webcam surveillance triggered an FBI investigation, you would hope school officials would come clean about what they characterize as completely legitimate security activities. Yet Lower Merion School District's response to parents seems to raise more questions than it answers.

In a statement on the district's website, Superintendent Dr. Christopher W. McGinley seems to imply it was against school policy for students to take the laptops home. He wrote "this feature was limited to taking a still image of the computer user and an image of the desktop in order to help locate the reported missing, lost, or stolen computer (this includes tracking down a loaner computer that, against regulations, might be taken off campus)."

A FAQ on the district's website clearly states that laptops may be taken off campus as long as the student has paid for the optional insurance offered by the district.

A group of TV and music industry personalities have written a letter to members of parliament in the UK urging them to vote in favor of anti-piracy measures outlined in the Digital Economy Bill. Signatories include Simon Cowell, author Sir Terry Pratchett, Tim Bevan, Stephen Garrett and Paul Greengrass. Bevan is co-chairman of Working Title Films, Garrett is a leading TV producer and Greengrass is director of movies such as United 93 and two Bourne titles.

One of the clauses in the Digital Economy Bill would punish file sharers by cutting their access to the Internet. Internet Service Providers (ISP) fiercely oppose the plan, saying that it is not their job to police the Internet or spy on their customers. "Britain is admired for its creativity and its sense of fair play," the letter to MPs reads, adding that the country's artists "contribute more than 7% to the UK economy".

"The digital economy bill.... will ensure that British creators, entertainment companies, and the 1.8 million people who work in and around the cultural sector are respected and rewarded in the future as they have been in the past," it states.

Gartner research said on Tuesday that it expects sales of mobile handsets to rebound in 2010 after declining in 2009 for the first time in eight years. The firm expects handset sales to increase more strongly than expected as economies recover from the global recession that cut into the consumer electronics market. Handset vendors are also upping competition by pushing cheaper smartphones to entice consumers.

The market declined 1 percent in 2009. Market leader Nokia Corp. had expected growth of about 10 percent for 2010, but Gartner is more optimistic, predicting a rise of about 11-13 percent this year in the sector.

"The economy seems to be stabilizing more into a recovery trend than we forecast back in December," Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi said. "Sales will return to low-double-digit growth, but competition will continue to put a strain on vendors' margins."

Cheaper model smartphones will grow about 46 percent from 172.4 million units sold in 2009, according to Gartner research. The enormous growth in volume will be driven by falling prices for smartphones and competitive deals from network operators.

According to a Facebook post, Best Buy will begin offering the Motorola Devour for $99 starting February 25th, alongside price drops of the Droid and the Droid Eris.

With activation and 2-year agreement, the Devour will cost $99, the Droid will drop to $99, and the Droid Eris will be free.

Reads the post:

"We lowered our prices on the Droid Eris by HTC to Free, DROID by Motorola to $99.99, and on February 25th are introducing the MOTOROLA DEVOUR™ with MOTOBLUR™ at $99.99. Pricing requires 2 year activation. Activation and termination fees apply. Handsets may vary by store. See store for details."

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has written to over 100 firms and organizations warning about a widespread, on-going data breach due to misuse of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing software. The FTC did not specify who it contacted, but said it included public and private institutions including schools and companies that employee as few as 8 people to others than employ tens of thousands.

The FTC said that sensitive data about customers and employees had been shared from computer networks to virtually anybody in the world connected to the Internet and P2P file-sharing networks. "Unfortunately, companies and institutions of all sizes are vulnerable to serious P2P-related breaches, placing consumers' sensitive information at risk," FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz said.

These types of data breaches are serious because of their potential to facilitate identify theft or fraud. "For example, we found health-related information, financial records, and driver's license and social security numbers -- the kind of information that could lead to identity theft," Leibowitz said.

A UK government proposal to charge citizens with fixed phone lines a levy of 50p per month in order to fund broadband plans in the Digital Economy Bill has been condemned as "unfair" by members of parliament. The Business Innovation and Skills Committee said that most affected by the new levy would not benefit from the ultra-fast broadband services the government is pushing.

The government says that upgrading its broadband networks is the best way to drive further investment, maintaining that such measures are vial to the UK's economic growth. "We believe that a 50p levy placed on fixed telecommunication lines is an ill-directed charge," the committee asserts. "It will place a disproportionate cost on a majority who will not, or are unable to, reap the benefits of that charge."

Also included in the broadband plans is a goal to provide a minimum of 2Mbps Internet anywhere in Britain by 2012. The committee does agree with this part of the goal in principal, although it criticizes the government for not being more specific. Broadband speeds vary for customers throughout the day, and can also vary based on the distance between a home and an exchange.

TiVo Inc. has reached out to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over concerns that the use of Switched Digital Video (SDV) technology by Cable providers will destroy its business. While traditional cable infrastructure delivers all available channels at once to subscribers' receivers, SDV will deliver only the channels currently being accessed.

The benefits of SDV are obvious; savings in bandwidth for one and the possibility of setting up systems with multiple times the channels currently being offered to subscribers. The system requires a receiver to send an upstream signal to a cable headend to request a signal be sent down the cable; a TiVo box cannot do this and relies on infrastructure that allows it to simply lock on to the available signals.

In a nutshell, this means that a TiVo box cannot change a channel on a SDV-based system, whereas a provider-issued box can. TiVo attacks the industry in a filing with the FCC on the issue, pointing out that TiVo is the "only major competitive entrant left standing" in the DVR space. It attributes this position to Cable's historical reluctance to open networks to third-party hardware, as opposed to natural free-market forces.