The search engines that power our journey through the internet know a lot about us - from the operating system and browser we use, to the kinds of websites we typically visit.
As Google comes under scrutiny over its privacy policies in Europe, our technology editor looks at the information that search engines and web services firms record about us.
The websites I visit most frequently include the BBC News website, Wikipedia, Microsoft, Apple and Cnet, while Pirate Bay, the World Time Clock and RFID and wi-fi are among my most searched for terms in the last 30 days.
I know this because Google tells me so. As a Google account holder, and because I asked it to, the computer giant records how I use the internet whenever I am logged into its service.
The data is quite detailed: it shows that I do most of my search engine queries between 11am and noon, but also that I am still busy online through most evenings.
It tells me the products I have searched for, the news items, the video clips, the images and even the maps I have looked at.
If anyone were to look at this information, they would have a comprehensive idea of my lifestyle, my interests and potentially even my movements - Google records that I searched for the location of a hairdressers in Richmond last week.
Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN probably know a lot about me too. I am frequently logged into their services, and while I don't use their search engines, both firms know some personal details because I had to provide them when I registered.
And this is what worries some privacy experts. They want to ensure that this information remains private and is not abused in any way.
The simplest method used by websites to track behaviour is a cookie. These small files are stored on your computer each time you use the net and note the details of the computer that accesses a web page.
Each cookie contain an anonymous unique identifier related to the computer you are using.
Why do firms like Yahoo and Google collect this information?
At the simplest level, the firms track our web usage so they can optimise our experience in the future.
Cookies store preferences, such as language settings, and can also tell websites the proceeding website we were looking at and site we go to next.
These files can be switched off in a browser but that does mean that many web services will fail to work properly or will not work at all.
Yahoo, Google and Microsoft also use web beacons, a tiny electronic image on a web page, which helps them analyse a user's behaviour online.
These firms make money online by targeting advertising to users when a search is performed or alongside their web products.
For advertisers, the attraction of the online space is being able to talk directly to customers whom they know are interested in their products or product area.
But who else gets to see or use this personal information? Is my web history, or information about which adverts I look at, being handed over to third parties?
'Never transfer'
Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, says: "No third parties are given access to a Google's user's web history.
"We will never transfer to third parties, including advertisers, any personally identifiable information about our users - that includes IP addresses and account details."
Yahoo and MSN's privacy policies also say they do not disclose personal information to third parties without user consent.
Search engines are able to serve up targeted adverts to users not because they know who each user is by name, but because search engines and web services are engineered to interpret what information we are seeking online.
Personal information
Yahoo combines non-identifiable personal data from account holders, with the web history from using Yahoo websites and services to create a detailed, yet anonymous, profile of a user. That data is then used to serve targeted adverts.
Google does not utilise a user's web surface history to target adverts unless the user has signed up to its personalised web search system.
And it only stores personal information when it has asked a user's opinion.
Mr Fleischer says: "It should always be an opt in if the service proposes to collect sensitive personal information, such as health information.
"If it is doing something routine, then an opt out is fine, such as downloading cookies to a machine."
Mr Fleischer explains: "If you are a user of personalised search - which is an opt-in service - we could take into account your web browsing history from the past to provide more relevant search results.
"The advertisers would be bidding against those more relevant search results."
So does it matter if that information about us is anonymised?
Mr Fleischer believes that it is inevitable that more and more data will exist about us in cyberspace but does not think that will mean our right to privacy is compromised.
"More and more of these services will offer choice about how to use them.
"I am speculating here, but I would expect that people will be able to say how they want to use services, whether in an identifiable capacity or under a pseudonym.
"There are all kinds of different levels of transparency you can choose to represent different parts of your lives. Over time people will become much more sophisticated about how they use all this online data about themselves."
He adds: "We are in a transition generation right now. As individuals and society we need to learn new ways to deal with wanting to be identifiable, wanting to be anonymous and if we want to be pseudonymous.
"Technology companies will build tools for people to do this. It will become a very natural part of our lives within five years."
Clash of the titans?
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Apple chief executive Steve Jobs have appeared on stage together for the first time in more than two decades.
Billed as a public "conversation" between two giants of the computer industry, the event at the All Things Digital conference, hugely anticipated by technology buffs, was seen as a long overdue opportunity for two of the greatest pioneers in the industry to go head to head.
But would they re-live old feuds or shuffle uncomfortably in their seats if touchy subjects cropped up?
It was not to be. The question and answer session at the D: All Things Digital conference, turned out to be more of a love-in between old pals.
The pair reminisced about how their respective businesses had grown over the years.
Asked what Gates' contribution to computing had been, Jobs said: "Bill built the first software company before anybody in our industry knew what software was, and that was huge."
Returning the compliment, Gates said Jobs' development of the Apple II computer in 1977 "was an incredibly empowering phenomenon."
Changed little
Apart from a few wrinkles and receding hair, both Gates and Jobs seem to have changed little over the years - especially in the style department. Jobs, the showman, appeared unshaven in his trademark black turtleneck, jeans and trainers.
The more reserved Gates wore a striped, button-down shirt, slacks and black shoes.
Perhaps the most uncomfortable moment for the Microsoft chairman was when Apple's current series of TV ads was introduced into the discussion.
The Mac vs PC commercials portray the PC as a somewhat portly and decidedly inept character.
Jobs, rather unconvincingly, said the point of the ads was not to be mean, rather for the guys to like each other.
Grimacing somewhat, Gates defended the PC character:
"His mother loves him."
Asked to describe their visions of the future, Gates said in five years time, people would not depend on a single computer. They would have multiple devices, such as a tablet with "voice and ink", along with "a phone, a pocket-sized device".
Jobs predicted an "explosion" of what he described as "post-PC devices", such as the iPod.
He said such devices represented "a clean slate" that lacked the legacy of many applications and are more focused.
"But you have to temper it, because you have users who don't want a car with six wheels," he added.
The event also generated some quick-witted humour. Asked to define the greatest misunderstanding in their relationship, Steve Jobs said: "We've kept our marriage secret for over a decade now."
Responding to a question from the audience about his charitable work, the Microsoft chairman said developing the PC had led him to create his charitable foundation to benefit people "who haven't had technology, including medicine, working for them".
The discussion ended with Gates predicting that things that are currently the stuff of science fiction will, eventually, come true.
It was session that clearly inspired the audience of computer professionals and enthusiasts.
"I thought it was a moment of distilled history," said Nina Lytton, a computer consultant.
"It telescoped their experience as friends, partners, competitors and creative problem solvers over a 30-year period."
Arthur Ceria, who works for a start-up company in San Francisco, described the conversation as "inspiring and historical".
"You had two of the biggest figures in Silicon Valley coming together and giving us their insight... here they are as myth and gods and the audience was there to witness that."
"They have such a respect for one another and it was visible."
Online and offline worlds merge
Google has launched a tool designed to make it easier for computer users to use online applications offline.
One of the key limitations of web services such as e-mail, word processing and calendars, is that they require a net connection to function.
Gears allows access to online data and applications inside the web browser when offline.
The tool was launched at Google's global developer day, with 5,000 coders attending seminars worldwide.
Google Gears is an open source plug-in for browsers, which the firm hopes will lead to the creation of new web standards.
The firm wants many of the people attending its developers conference to use the Gears tools, which are free to use, to adapt their own applications for offline usage.
Using Gears, online data that is usually held on web servers can be stored offline on an individual's computer, and then synchronised when the user logs back on to the web.
'Fills gap'
Chris Prince, the engineer leading the Gears project, told the conference in London: "We want a seamless experience between offline and online."
"This fills a gap for us," said Jeff Huber, a vice president of engineering at Google. "The internet is great, but you can't always be plugged in to it."
Initially, Google's RSS feed reader application - for reading news and blogs - will work offline, but the company plans to add other programmes, Mr Huber said.
He said Google's e-mail, calendar, word processing and spreadsheet programmes were logical candidates for offline access.
Gears works in most of the leading web browsers, such as Firefox and Internet Explorer, and will soon work with Safari and Opera.
"With Google Gears we're tackling a key limitation of the browser in order to make it a stronger platform for deploying all types of applications and enabling a better user experience in the cloud," Google chairman Eric Schmidt said in a statement.
He added: "We believe strongly in the power of the community to stretch this new technology to the limits of what's possible and ultimately emerge with an open standard that benefits everyone."
Brendan Eich, chief technology officer at Mozilla corporation, the organisation behind the Firefox browser, said: "This announcement is a significant step forward for web applications."
Cautious note
Some commentators have seen the move as a strike at Microsoft's dominance in the area of productivity applications.
But Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg struck a more cautious note about the new technology.
Writing in his blog, he said: "Folks are missing the point.
"Yes, offline functionality is required but it isn't in itself a game changer. A word processor with less functionality than WordPad isn't going to upset anyone's business model, online or off."
Google also used the conference to announce Google Mapplets, a tool giving developers the power to customise Google maps with mini-applications.
News stories, weather, housing prices, and crime figures could be combined with maps to provide a more geographical representation of data.
Speaking at the London-based conference, Ed Parsons, Google's geospatial technologist, said the firm wanted developers to help build a "geo-web".
Tiscali e-mail 'hit' by spammers
Spammers have knocked out the e-mail service for many of the customers of internet service provider (ISP) Tiscali, the firm has said.
Users e-mails have not been delivered to their intended recipients as other ISPs block e-mail traffic from Tiscali.
Tiscali has not said how many of its 1.8m UK customers are affected by the outage which started eight days ago.
It said engineers were "taking urgent action" to block spammers using its e-mail service to send messages.
A statement on the Tiscali website read: "We have been targeted by spammers using our service, which in turn has meant other ISPs have taken measures to block mail sent by Tiscali. This is not affecting all delivery addresses. Some mail continues to be delivered as normal."
The ISP said it was currently installing new hardware and updating its spam filters.
"This work will be complete today. It is likely to take seven to 10 days for these changes to take full effect across receiving e-mail providers."
But some spam experts have expressed surprise that Tiscali has said its current problems are the result of spammers.
"There have been major problems in the past," said Richard Cox of Spamhaus, a not-for-profit organisation of IT professionals that tracks spammers and publishes free real time databases of offending addresses used by many big businesses and ISPS.
"Spamhaus is certainly not seeing anything that would justify major blocking, unless it is being targeted at one or two specific networks."
The organisation uses a network of anonymous e-mail addresses to "trap" spam.
"These are on most spammers lists so as soon as spam starts hitting those traps we know its happening," he explained.
Spamhaus does not use services such as hotmail, Yahoo or AOL for their spam traps so if these alone were being targeted they would not appear on the Spamhaus radar.
Mr Cox speculated that the problem could be the result of a technical failure at Tiscali, something the ISP denies.
Tiscali advises customers sending important mail to use an alternative free email service.Coping with death on the web
It increasingly acts as an outlet for mourning in developed societies but how far can the internet intrude on a very private experience?
Some may regard the idea of messaging condolences to someone electronically as inappropriate but to those growing up on Facebook and MySpace it is becoming second nature.
When sudden, violent death visits a college or school as it did at Virginia Tech on 16 April, it can turn social networking sites into channels of breaking news, and transform personal pages into makeshift memorials.
Facebook criticised journalists for violating the privacy of its users' profiles and memorial sites to glean information about the massacre.
Responses to the fatal stabbing of a 13-year-old schoolboy in Vancouver, Canada, this month prompted different concerns.
Among the Facebook memorials was a forum which named and discussed the chief suspect, a juvenile, just as police were withholding details for legal reasons.
Just how private are the personal spaces of the social networking sites when tragedy strikes?
Privacy through obscurity
"This idea that if you set up a memorial site within Facebook it will be private is a bit of a misconception," says Alfred Hermida, journalism professor at the School of Journalism of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
"A lot of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are almost seen by their members as 'their space' but they are actually very public forums," he told the BBC News website.
When Facebook launched three years ago, it was a site only college students could join but it is "now essentially open to anybody with an e-mail account", he notes.
It and other social networking sites are private spaces only as long as their users are not making the news themselves - on the principle of "privacy through obscurity".
"But when something like Virginia Tech happens, you will have information professionals going in to forage and they will find you and you will be propelled into the foreground," Prof Hermida says.
For adolescents, he adds, social networking websites have become "almost like the new playground" but they often fail to appreciate the legal issues involved in an event like the Vancouver stabbing.
"Instead of going to the shopping mall or the gaming arcade they will go online and will say things there as if they are chatting in the playground with friends," he says.
"But once you have written down something online, that actually has legal repercussions beyond just you and your friends on that forum."
Mourning online
Since its launch in March, the website iraqmemorial.org has provided a platform for relatives or loved ones of US soldiers killed in Iraq to talk to camera about their bereavement.
They appear as one-minute talking heads, and their intimate recollections of people killed in action or driven to suicide by their experiences make for both a poignant online memorial and a powerful anti-war message.
In the aftermath of tragedy, going online to leave a tribute, swap messages or blog about your feelings is a positive emotional factor, according to Prof Douglas Davies, director of the death and life studies centre at Durham University.
"In a crisis situation, action is one of the very few things people have as a coping mechanism and in one sense it almost does not matter what the activity is," he told the BBC News website.
But he believes that online messages provide weak triggers for emotional response compared with physical interaction.
"That element which we often see at funerals and memorial services would, I suspect, be absent in the privacy of someone's face-to-face relationship with their monitor," he says.
'Death-style' choices
As author of A Brief History of Death, Prof Davies has noted the progress of mortality though the internet.
Death, he says, has literally gone online in the form of web cameras installed in crematoria or funeral videos shared with distant relatives in some cultures.
In China, there have been moves to encourage people to remember their dead through internet sites rather than actual grave visits.
Asked if he sees a time when funerals are wholly conducted over the internet, Prof Davies points to the "very clear marginalisation of the dead and of death" in the US, a "society committed to life and living".
"In some parts of America, they have memorial services rather than actual funerals for the majority of people so there is a sense that the coffin is becoming less visible," he says.
However, he does not expect immediate family, at least, to stop attending funerals and cremations simply because "people need people at times of crisis".
"Emotion is as much a product of the social context as it is of the interior, private thoughts of a person, and you need the group to trigger that," he says.
Meanwhile the internet will continue to act as a valuable tool for communicating grief, the professor says, adding:
"In a world where many people's lifestyles are related to the internet it would be natural to expect elements of their death-style to be tied up with the web - otherwise life would be so very fragmented for them."
Music site Last.fm bought by CBS
Social music site Last.fm has been bought by US media giant CBS Corporation for $280m (£140m), the largest-ever UK Web 2.0 acquisition.
The online network was founded in the UK five years ago and it now has more than 15 million active users.
It allows users to connect with other listeners with similar music tastes, to custom-build their own radio stations and to watch music video-clips.
Last.fm founding member Martin Stiksel said it was an "exciting opportunity".
As part of the deal, Last.fm's managing team will remain in place and the site will maintain its own separate identity.
Mr Stiksel said: "This move will really support us to get every track ever recorded and every music video ever made onto Last.fm.
"With a strong partner like CBS, this is now within our reach."
Dot.com boom
CBS Corporation has business interests in TV, web and radio.
CBS radio is the largest radio group in the United States, with 179 stations in the top 50 markets covering news, rock, country and urban music.
The firm's president and CEO Leslie Moonves said: "Last.fm is one of the fastest growing online communities out there."
He said Last.fm's strength in building communities around music and syndicating content was "central to CBS".
He added: "Their demographics also play perfectly to CBS's goal to attract younger viewers and listeners across our businesses."
CBS is not the first major player to purchase up-and-coming websites for millions or even billions of dollars, prompting what some have called the second dot.com boom.
In 2005 Rupert Murdoch's News Corp snapped up social networking site MySpace for $580m (£290m). And last year, search engine Google paid $165bn (£82bn) for video site YouTube.
Mr Stiksel said Last.fm would retain an independent identity.
He said CBS was buying "great technology and a very vibrant, active community".
"They want to move from a content company to an audience company giving the audiences control and learning from this and that's why Last.fm was their choice," he added.
Mr Stiksel said he did not think that users would feel disappointed that a mainstream media firm had bought the site.
"When we said revolution we mean that - we put the users in charge. CBS gets this.
"They understand that consuming media is changing, the patterns are changing."
Online network
As part of the acquisition, the Last.fm management team, including founders Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel and Richard Jones, will continue to independently run the online network
Mr Stiksel said the deal proved that Web 2.0 companies did not have to be in the United States to succeed.
"Being in London has helped us; it's the best place to do things with music full stop. It's the place that leads the world."
The three founders will now be among the most successful - and potentially wealthy - Web 2.0 pioneers in the world.
Mr Stiksel said: "The success of the site is the most important thing. With a strong partner we can add the features we always dreamed about."Microsoft unveils table computer
Microsoft has unveiled a new touch-sensitive coffee table-shaped computer called "Surface".
Designed to do away with the need for a traditional mouse and keyboard, users can instead use their fingers to operate the computer.
Also designed to interact with mobile phones placed on the surface, Microsoft says it will initially sell the unit to corporate customers.
These will include hotels, casinos, phone stores and restaurants.
So-called "multi-touch" interfaces - which allow the user to "gesture" with several fingers at once to manipulate data, rather than relying on a mouse and menus - have been making waves in tech circles for some time.
One of the most hotly-awaited examples is Apple's iPhone, which is scheduled to be released in June.
'Multi-billion dollar category'
With a 30-inch screen, Surface will initially sell for between $5,000 and $10,000 (£2,525-£5,050).
However, Microsoft said it aimed to produce cheaper versions for homes within three to five years.
"We see this as a multibillion dollar category, and we envision a time when surface computing technologies will be pervasive, from tabletops and counters to the hallway mirror," said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.
Microsoft has had a mixed record recently with new consumer products.
While its Xbox games console has been a success, its Zune music player continues to lag far behind Apple's iPod.
Home Page
EU sets new digital media rules
European ministers have agreed on new rules for television and on-demand video on the internet, allowing more advertising and "product placement".
The European Commission says the new version of the 1989 "TV Without Frontiers" directive will make the EU's audiovisual market more competitive.
Viewers will have to be informed when product placement - putting a sponsor's product in a TV show - takes place.
The practice will remain banned from children's and news programmes.
The new package also features the country-of-origin principle, meaning that broadcasters are governed by the rules of their home country, even if their programmes are transmitted in other states with different rules.
That principle was left out of the final version of the commission's Services Directive - dealing with service industries across the EU - after months of heated debate.
'Less regulation'
The new Audiovisual Media Services Directive is due to take effect by the end of this year. It has now been backed by the commission, the European Parliament and the member states' governments.
It still allows countries some flexibility to set stricter national rules. The UK's Creative Industries Minister Shaun Woodward welcomed the deal, saying it avoided too much regulation and would lead to more television and online services.
Broadcasters will remain limited to 12 minutes of advertising per hour, but the directive scraps the current limit of three hours per day of advertising.
EU Media Commissioner Viviane Reding said the new legislation "brings Europe's audiovisual policies into the 21st Century, providing a welcome shot in the arm to industry".
"It promises less regulation, better financing for European content and higher visibility to Europe's key values, cultural diversity and the protection of minors," she added.
The European Commission says the new version of the 1989 "TV Without Frontiers" directive will make the EU's audiovisual market more competitive.
Viewers will have to be informed when product placement - putting a sponsor's product in a TV show - takes place.
The practice will remain banned from children's and news programmes.
The new package also features the country-of-origin principle, meaning that broadcasters are governed by the rules of their home country, even if their programmes are transmitted in other states with different rules.
That principle was left out of the final version of the commission's Services Directive - dealing with service industries across the EU - after months of heated debate.
'Less regulation'
The new Audiovisual Media Services Directive is due to take effect by the end of this year. It has now been backed by the commission, the European Parliament and the member states' governments.
It still allows countries some flexibility to set stricter national rules. The UK's Creative Industries Minister Shaun Woodward welcomed the deal, saying it avoided too much regulation and would lead to more television and online services.
Broadcasters will remain limited to 12 minutes of advertising per hour, but the directive scraps the current limit of three hours per day of advertising.
EU Media Commissioner Viviane Reding said the new legislation "brings Europe's audiovisual policies into the 21st Century, providing a welcome shot in the arm to industry".
"It promises less regulation, better financing for European content and higher visibility to Europe's key values, cultural diversity and the protection of minors," she added.
Move to create less clumsy robots
The race to create more human-like robots stepped up a gear this week as scientists in Spain set about building an artificial cerebellum.
The end-game of the two-year project is to implant the man-made cerebellum in a robot to make movements and interaction with humans more natural.
The cerebellum is the part of the brain that controls motor functions.
Researchers hope that the work might also yield clues to treat cognitive diseases such as Parkinson's.
The research, being undertaken at the Department of Architecture and Computing Technology at the University of Granada, is part of a wider European project dubbed Sensopac
Greater subtlety
Sensopac brings together electronic engineers, physicists and neuroscientists from a range of universities including Edinburgh, Israel and Paris with groups such as the German Aerospace Centre. It has 6.5m euros of funding from the European Commission.
Its target is to incorporate the cerebellum into a robot designed by the German Aerospace Centre in two year's time.
The work at the University of Granada is concentrating on the design of microchips that incorporate a full neuronal system, emulating the way the cerebellum interacts with the human nervous system.
Implanting the man-made cerebellum in a robot would allow it to manipulate and interact with other objects with far greater subtlety than industrial robots can currently manage, said researcher Professor Eduardo Ros Vidal, who is co-ordinating work at the University of Granada.
"Although robots are increasingly more important to our society and have more advanced technology, they cannot yet do certain tasks like those carried out by mammals," he said.
"We have been talking about humanoids for years but we do not yet see them on the street or use the unlimited possibilities they offer us," he added.
One use of such robots would be as home-helps for disabled people.
Interacting robots
The next stage of the Sensopac project is to develop an artificial skin for robots, making them look more human-like as well as being information-sensitive in the same way as human skin is.
This system is being developed by the German Aerospace Centre in collaboration with other research groups.
The ambitious project is just one of many attempts to create more human-like robots.
Another European research project - dubbed Feelix Growing - has been given 2.3m euros to develop robots that can learn from humans and respond socially and emotionally.
The medical community is making huge strides in the use of man-made parts for failures in the human brain. Last year US scientists implanted a sensor in a paralysed man's brain that has enabled him to control objects by using his thoughts alone.
The fast pace of current robotics research has prompted deeper questions about how androids would be integrated into human society.
Some have called for a code of ethics for robots while others question how humans will cope in the face of machine intelligence.HP Printer Chief: "We could inkjet anything"
This interview is a composite, culled from both a conversation between Mark Anderson and Vyomesh Joshi, and from the subsequent round-table discussion between a handful of attendees immediately afterwards, at the Future in Review 2007 conference. Read the full report from the FiRE conference here.
PC Magazine: How has your business changed?
Joshi: Over the last 22 years we built a printer business, now we need to shift to a printing business. Just like phones, they started in the kitchen, but today you don't make money on phones.
We are focusing on pages. From a page point of view, 48 trillion are printed a year. Now we measure our market share in pages, and we are less than 2 percent. When you start thinking about pages, we have a tremendous opportunity.
A lot of the focus has been how you convert atoms into bits and virtualization. No one is talking about how you convert bits into atoms. Bits into paper. It's not just from printer to printing, but how to convert bits into atoms, print into paper, print into DVD. Our core competency could make it a very big business opportunity. Not in the creation or the distribution business, but in the content consumption model.
What about the user-generated revolution in content?
Joshi: There's an empowerment to the consumer to create the content. In broadcast, the editor of the newspaper was deciding what mass consumption should be. Now the consumption drives the creativity. They can share, add, mash it up, and then share that content in various forms. Every camera sold today is digital. People are taking lots of pictures. We are finding that they are repurposing, sharing, adding, and then presenting it in a book form. We are seeing printed books, photo finishing, home printing growing exponentially. Creating a lot of content, video, books, news, combining user created content with professional content, mash it up print on DVD, on paper. In our view it is really popular.
So there's less paper printed, more looking online?
Joshi: In 1984 we were promised the paperless office. And in 2006 we are using ten times more paper. The information explosion is big, but more viewing leads to more printing. We think 54 trillion pages a year will be printed soon.
There is a limit to where you can take the hardware, the important part is to figure out what customers are doing. What we are doing is building a very simple UI. To design something simple is very hard. Pages will move on the web, content creation is digital, consumption is where analog is. The user interface is all software. Look at Snapfish [owned by HP]; it is the best user interface for photos.
What about video?
Joshi: I think the whole concept of instant gratification and short films is to tell a story. Go back to anthropology. Why do we take pictures? The real core reason? It is to tell a story. Now with digital, the kids are telling the story; they tell it to communicate to friends.
But that's not what's happening now. Instead of telling a story, I want to show you that I'm having fun at the party. It's really just saying hello, more like social positioning.
Joshi: Think about Facebook, why is it so popular? It's the community. The human element is sharing, making sure you are being heard. New technologies are just a better way of telling the story, a better way of being heard. We have to connect back to the physical world.
Any new imaging devices coming up?
Joshi: There's Halo (HP's high end video conferencing system). With Halo you want to start at a very high end, and do away with the need to travel. I could be in Israel, you could be in San Diego, and we can meet. The technology is there, you could create that kind of experience. Moore's law as applied to these technologies means we will go from enterprise customer to mid-market to small/medium business to consumer. Instead of sharing pictures, you can have a conversation with grandma and family. You can come home and say hello. That's going to be real. The important part for us is to design the interface, and then have zero latency. At HP, Halo rooms are used by engineers and marketers.
When will Halo show up at home?
Joshi: Let's talk about Moore's Law. After mainframes were invented, how long did it take to get to the PC, 20-30 years? Now you could do it [in the home]. We'll see. It's all fundamentally about technology learning curves and engineers. We'll figure out how to make it happen. I remember the days when we were working on ink jets. The Fujix printer to print photos was a $30,000 machine. We did it for $500. Now you can print for 49 dollars.
This was 1995, when we looked at Fujix. We introduced our first ink jet for the home for $500 in 1997. It was all about learning curves and cost. With Halo, will it be a public network or private network. Once things are invented, things will come down, it's a natural law. The scale will help you from a cost structure perspective, and the learning curve will help you from cost structure too.
A lot of interesting things are happening with ink jet technology, including DNA sequencing. Are you going to be part of these markets?
Joshi: We want to be part of supplying the technology. It's a long lead item, we don't think that's the kind of business we want to be in. Inkjet is nanotechnology. We developed a pump that accurately delivers nanoliters and we make a half billion of them a year. It's high volume, high production. Instead of ink, put in a drug and use it for drug delivery, or DNA sequencing. You can use it for all kinds of stuff. Our core competency is in making a pump to accurately deliver liquid. We are very interested in supplying the technology, but commercializing that and go to market is far away from our core. Continued...
What about 3D printing?Joshi: We have done it in the lab, layer after layer, to create a prototype. It is a very interesting application. The main issue is strength of material. Make sure that the structure and chemistry are right. We could jet anything. We need to figure out how we want to create the right type of material.
Are there other uses for lasers in the home?
Joshi: There are interesting applications at a micro level, where you combine technologies. We will see transparent electronics, and a lot of interesting things.
What about Kodak's technology, they claim to deliver pages at half the price.
Joshi: Kodak says they are half the price on photos only, not black and white. You will find that claim is not really valid. What do customers print in the home? Seventy percent of it is black and white. Kodak has patent issues. The problem is going to be any kind of business you want to build, it has to be a real business model. Look at Dell, they started (in printers) three years ago, and still can't make money.
What about the Memjet technology?
Joshi: It's very interesting; they are claiming they have a prototype of one. It takes years to commercialize the technology. We always love competition; it gives us a wakeup call.
How are you addressing the problems of color calibration?
Joshi: The first thing we are doing in the high end of printing is putting spectral stuff in the printer, intelligence inside the printer. We introduced this at PMA. Talk to (famous photographer) Douglas Kirkland, he believes that inkjet is better than silver halide. The prints we do on inkjets will last for 200 years… The current spectrofilter is very expensive; we are convinced that it will come down in price.
What about large format printing, will it ever go into the home?
Joshi: We have printers that are 64 inches wide. Our break even point is... the same cost as a screen printer right now. We just introduced a 64-inch wide printer that is four times faster. We are finding that the whole signage market is ready for transformation. It's all done on Sytex now, but it is more of a service play, people will order a poster. The problem (with home) is size, it's not about the ease of use. Our problem is whether it will fit into the home and the furniture.
Every screen printer in the world in five years will be replaced with our technology, for sign printing and more. We are going to get many new pages, books, magazines printed.
What's next for your division?
Joshi: While we are very successful, I want to transform our business, it's not about the means, it's about the end. It could be making DVDs, printing, or viewing. Build on our core competency, and move our organization. Print 2.0, this is where we want to go. Everyone claims atoms to bits, no one is claiming bits to atoms. That's where we can have a long-term charter.
I always learn that things can come from places you don't expect [VJ tells a story of the engineer in Corvallis that came up with the LightScribe technology, and how it became a product]… You have to pay attention. Who would think we'd print our boarding passes three years ago. I wish I was the inventor of that, but I'm not. I do believe that the new user needs are going to be choice, control and convenience. We were focused too much on speeds and feeds.
Number one in my mind is quality, then reliability. Our brand is based on that.
Source: PCMag
Microsoft Zune Passes 1 Million Mark
Microsoft Corp. has beaten its goal of shipping over a million Zune digital music players by June, according to a newspaper report.
Robbie Bach [cq], the president of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division said it has already passed the million mark, during an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle published Monday. The Zune has a 10 percent market share in the hard-disk-based music player category, he added.
"It's a good start. It's not an overwhelming start. I'm not going to pretend it's some gigantic move," he was quoted by the newspaper as saying.
The million unit figure bests Apple. It took the iPod 14 months to reach 600,000 shipments, but it was much earlier in the game than the Zune, when the market for digital music players wasn't so hot. Apple has likely sold around 25 million iPods over the same time it has taken the Zune to reach its goal, according to financial analysts.
Microsoft has a lot more work to do with the Zune. Despite a better-than-expected start, it's far behind the iPod both in terms of number of users and popularity.
Apple sold 10.55 million iPods during the three months ending March 31, and announced it had sold its 100 millionth on April 9th of this year. The company has also generated enthusiasm for the device through over 4,000 accessories made for the iPod, including stereo hook ups in more than 70 percent of 2007-model U.S. cars and a deal with Nike Inc. to use iPods with certain running shoes that collect workout information.
The company also has its new iPhone coming out soon, a product Bach indicated Microsoft will not compete against directly with a Zune phone, according to the Chronicle report. Microsoft will continue to work with handset makers to provide software used in different styles of mobile phones, because mobiles are deeply personal devices, he said.
"In the phone space, we're very comfortable with the model we've chosen...We work with handset manufacturers and operators to produce that web of offerings, while still producing the same consistent software so people can get done what they need to get done regardless of which phone they choose," he reportedly said.
Source: PC World
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Robbie Bach [cq], the president of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division said it has already passed the million mark, during an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle published Monday. The Zune has a 10 percent market share in the hard-disk-based music player category, he added.
"It's a good start. It's not an overwhelming start. I'm not going to pretend it's some gigantic move," he was quoted by the newspaper as saying.
The million unit figure bests Apple. It took the iPod 14 months to reach 600,000 shipments, but it was much earlier in the game than the Zune, when the market for digital music players wasn't so hot. Apple has likely sold around 25 million iPods over the same time it has taken the Zune to reach its goal, according to financial analysts.
Microsoft has a lot more work to do with the Zune. Despite a better-than-expected start, it's far behind the iPod both in terms of number of users and popularity.
Apple sold 10.55 million iPods during the three months ending March 31, and announced it had sold its 100 millionth on April 9th of this year. The company has also generated enthusiasm for the device through over 4,000 accessories made for the iPod, including stereo hook ups in more than 70 percent of 2007-model U.S. cars and a deal with Nike Inc. to use iPods with certain running shoes that collect workout information.
The company also has its new iPhone coming out soon, a product Bach indicated Microsoft will not compete against directly with a Zune phone, according to the Chronicle report. Microsoft will continue to work with handset makers to provide software used in different styles of mobile phones, because mobiles are deeply personal devices, he said.
"In the phone space, we're very comfortable with the model we've chosen...We work with handset manufacturers and operators to produce that web of offerings, while still producing the same consistent software so people can get done what they need to get done regardless of which phone they choose," he reportedly said.
Source: PC World
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Hong Kong cracks down on spam
HONG KONG (AFP) - Hong Kong spammers will face big fines and a long jail terms under a new law to control unsolicited advertising, officials said Monday.
A new ordinance in the southern Chinese city will regulate all messages sent by electronic means that advertise or promote goods or services, including faxes, emails, SMS text and pre-recorded voice messages.
Violators could be fined up to one million Hong Kong dollars (128,000 US) and face up to five years in jail.
Deputy Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology Marion Lai said the ordinance will be implemented in two phases, with the first phase coming into effect Friday.
The measure bans messages to addresses obtained through a "dictionary" or "brute force" attacks, which automatically generate possible recipients, or through software which searches the Internet for addresses.
Those who hack into computers to send commercial messages will face up to 10 years imprisonment, she said.
The ban includes pre-recorded voice messages to telephones with calling line identification withheld, Lai said.
A new ordinance in the southern Chinese city will regulate all messages sent by electronic means that advertise or promote goods or services, including faxes, emails, SMS text and pre-recorded voice messages.
Violators could be fined up to one million Hong Kong dollars (128,000 US) and face up to five years in jail.
Deputy Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology Marion Lai said the ordinance will be implemented in two phases, with the first phase coming into effect Friday.
The measure bans messages to addresses obtained through a "dictionary" or "brute force" attacks, which automatically generate possible recipients, or through software which searches the Internet for addresses.
Those who hack into computers to send commercial messages will face up to 10 years imprisonment, she said.
The ban includes pre-recorded voice messages to telephones with calling line identification withheld, Lai said.
Sony scores with new PS3
(Fortune Magazine) -- Sony's New PlayStation 3 lives up to the hype.
Despite the delays, the shortages, the unprecedented high price - $599 for the premium 60-gigabyte model, assuming you can find one - and the small number of available high-definition games that take advantage of its powerful new Cell processor, the PS3 sets new standards not just for video game play but also for multimedia entertainment in the digital era.
t also reaffirms that Sony (Charts) is still at the top of its game when it comes to designing advanced technology in stylish packages. Sleek and gleaming black, it blends in with the most sophisticated of living-room home-theater systems, which sets it apart from the alien designs of its two main competitors, the Microsoft (Charts) Xbox 360 and the new Nintendo (Charts) Wii.
In the ongoing DVD format war, it also gives a huge boost to Sony's push to make the Blu-ray Disc the dominant standard for high-definition DVD players and movie titles (over rival HD-DVD), since the PS3 becomes, for now, the least expensive Blu-ray player on the market.
That said, the big questions - which third-generation video game console is best and which one will most delight you or your kids this holiday season - are still open to debate.
The Xbox 360 has a full year's headstart on the PS3 and Wii, which means it has more third-generation games available for it, and Microsoft has recently added new bells and whistles like an optional HD-DVD player and full-length movie and TV downloads in high-definition.
The Wii can't match the PS3 or the Xbox 360 in terms of realistic graphics or movie playback, but it is significantly cheaper ($250), has its own set of innovative technologies and will appeal to families whose idea of fun does not necessarily entail eviscerating alien monsters.
In terms of technical firepower, the PS3 and the Xbox 360 appear to be in a dead heat. The Xbox 360 excels at online game play and has millions of Xbox Live customers already. Sony's PS3 online game network had not yet been switched on at the time of this writing.
Technical propellerheads argue over which system, Sony's or Microsoft's, is the most advanced. In my view, Sony's Cell processor and its integrated Blu-ray DVD drive are superior to the Xbox 360's PowerPC chip and optional HD-DVD drive.
It will take software developers a long time to harness the full power of the Cell chip and the greater capacity of the Blu-ray Disc, so Sony's technical advantage over the Xbox 360 won't be apparent immediately.
Sony had claimed that the PS3 was backward-compatible with all games - some 16,000 in total - written for the previous PlayStation and PS2 game consoles. It turns out that not all older games will play properly on the new system, but most will.
Sony has endured what Elizabeth II once called an annus horribilis, a year of misery, what with exploding batteries, imploding profits and all the PS3-related delays, supply problems and griping over high prices. But Sony's engineers and designers have reason to be proud: The PS3 is well worth the money and well worth waiting for.
Bringing politics to the people
The imminent arrival of Gordon Brown as leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister by acclamation seems to have prompted an outpouring of speculation on the future of the British political system.
Recognising, perhaps, that Brown will be far closer to Blair in his policies than many of his followers would wish, the debate has moved up a level to address the processes, structures and operations of our flawed democracy.
And in a reflection of the changed times in which we live, much of the discussion is taking place online instead of in the traditional smoke-filled rooms or on the editorial pages of our finer newspapers.
Anthony Barnett, who founded Charter 88 nearly twenty years ago and has consistently argued for a written constitution, has seized on hints that the incoming PM may be receptive to a new constitutional settlement and launched OurKingdom to explore 'the destiny of Britain'.
Serious thinkers such as David Wilcox use their blogs to badger our representatives to think more carefully about the opportunities for collaboration, participation and transparency that network-based tools can generate.
Direct democracy
Elsewhere, political blogs like those from the New Statesman, Spectator and Daily Telegraph jostle for position with the more independent efforts of Iain Dale and Paul Linford.
And now the Centre for Policy Studies has leapt into the fray with Open Politics, the first in a series of pamphlets published in association with Direct Democracy, a group of Tory politicians and activists who want to bring power to the people under the banner of 'localism'.
Open Politics makes interesting reading, even if the principle of localism which they claim as their own is rather close to the well-known European Union idea of 'subsidiarity', dressed up so as not to frighten the eurosceptics in their party.
One of the key failures it identifies is that 'the Government retains its monopoly of policy', and it makes a strong case for some form of direct democracy so that anyone with sufficient support could have a direct influence on the legislature instead of having to persuade the government of their case.
The suggestion is that this could be done through a petition which, if it gained enough support, would be included in the Queen's Speech as a 'People's Bill' to be debated and voted on in Parliament.
It's an interesting idea, not least because the success of the Downing Street e-Petitions site has already shown that there is a massive appetite for this form of electronic engagement.
There are over three thousand petitions and 2.1 million people have signed at least one of them.
Open source politics
The petitions mechanism seems to be robust and workable, and because it was written by mySociety, the charitable project that builds socially useful software, it could easily be copied and used by other groups including MPs themselves.
In fact there would be nothing to stop a group of activists creating a 'People's Bill' website, gathering ideas and support and then trying to persuade a willing MP to introduce their most popular plan as a Private Member's Bill in Parliament in a practical demonstration of how the mechanism would work.
The specific policies in the pamphlet are less important than the fact that it starts from an assumption that the Internet is just there, part of the environment within which politics takes place.
It discusses the challenges the network creates for current political practice but sees these as an opportunity: if YouTube is out there, why not use it to give candidates a way to advertise themselves for selection? If Web fundraising works, why not use it to solve the party fundraising problem?
The Tories have been thinking about networked politics for a while now.
Back in March shadow chancellor George Osborne gave an intriguing speech in which he called for 'open source politics' and pointed to the growing importance of social network sites in political organising.
That importance continues to grow, for example in the Protect Freedom of Information group on FaceBook, which has provided a focus for discussion and action to ensure that MPs do not exempt themselves from scrutiny under the cover of a mistaken belief that their constituency correspondence could be published.
There are many other politically-oriented groups and networks on FaceBook and elsewhere.
IT disasters
In his speech Osborne expressed a belief in the power of technology to "help transform society for the better by giving individuals more freedom, more choice and ultimately more power".
But he also accepted that "technological change isn't always easy to deal with because it so often disrupts the established way of doing things."
He is right, and we should also remember that applying technology is far from a guaranteed solution.
We have seen too often how government-backed IT projects can go horribly wrong, and the ongoing chaos surrounding the NHS Connecting for Health project should be warning enough against blithe optimism.
Nor should we act as if the network is universally available.
In 1994 I helped my then MP, Anne Campbell, to build her website and set up an email system for constituency correspondence. At the time it was a sensible use of her time and effort because Cambridge was one of the most-wired cities in the UK if not the world, but just having an email address did not mean that she stopped reading letters or taking phone calls.
But we can surely now begin to think about the way we organise society and the ways in which political power is exercised on the assumption that the network is here and can be used. Not by everyone, not all the time, but to a sufficient degree to make it a core part of the political process just as the telephone and television are.Page
Designing mobiles for the world
Jan Chipchase tours the world looking at how people use mobile phones in their everyday lives and, more broadly, how people live.
"This is my office, my workspace," he says, pointing to a map of the world.
In the last 12 months he has visited 15 countries, carrying out eight full-scale research projects.
Mr Chipchase's focus is on the uses to which people put their phones; where they keep them, how they answer them, and a million other details about our relationships with these devices that have helped shape our world
On the street, in homes, in the office, in pockets, handbags, at the marketplace, and in the community - Mr Chipchase tries to put mobile phone use into the context of the culture and landscape he is in.
His research has included looking at home battery charging services in rural Uganda, street charging in Kampala, how illiterate people use a mobile and more recently where we keep our phones.
From city bankers to shantytown dwellers, and from hip teens to octogenarian SMS fiends, no use of a phone is too trivial; no detail of a person's life too insignificant.
"I specialise in human behavioural research. It often starts with a very simple question like 'what do people carry?'.
'Secret stuff'
"This is interesting to Nokia because we want to put things in people's pockets - something of value.
"If you can understand one element of that value then you can understand people's motivation."
Mr Chipchase takes a team into different countries around the world - designers, psychologists - to look at people's lives in different contexts.
"I want to understand what people do and why, and pretty much in every context. We want to know the secret stuff as well.
But why would Nokia pay someone like Mr Chipchase to travel the world and to have all of those experiences? Where's the value in that?
"It's an important question. We do this research work to inform and inspire the design stage. To bring designers into the field so they know whom they are designing for.
"Often designers are designing phones for markets they have little experience of - so we want to bring the world to them and them to the world."
Mr Chipchase works three to 15 years ahead of the market. His team carries out research using a method called convergent validity - it is not quantative scientific work but qualitative.
Human behaviour
"We deal with informed opinion. If we do our jobs exceptionally well, then it is very informed opinion."
So where is mobile phone design heading? Will they get ever smaller, perhaps becoming part of our clothes rather than as a single unit?
Mr Chipchase says the important consideration is how people behave, not what the latest technology can do.
"It's about what to design and when to design, because human behaviour changes very slowly; technology changes very quickly.
"If I can understand why, for example, a lady in north east China carries her phone on her left wrist, then we can understand others' motivations."
He adds: "It's also about what not to do with design. We have lots of assumptions about the world around us - Nokia is no different. "If we want to remain relevant in all these markets we need to know how our assumptions differ form other people's."
To date, Mr Chipchase has had two patents granted based on his work and a further 25 are currently being considered.
By 2009 more than four billion people in the world - out of a population of 6.3 billion - are expected to have a mobile phone connection in their lives.
"The challenge for a company like Nokia is to sell products to all these markets - all of which have different needs.
"We want to meet the needs people have, rather than just putting technology out into the market place."
Mr Chipchase and his team employ a number of techniques - from shadowing people's lives, talking to as many local people as possible and documenting their lives in different contexts.
"I spend a lot of my time looking into people's bags and handbags - with their permission, of course.
"There's a whole load of stuff in life that is worth documenting. You see it every day but don't even notice."
Younger person
He adds: "We spend time as much time as possible being in the places that people do what they do. The mobile phone is used from when you get up in the morning and is often the last thing you interact with at night."
He has studied the mobile use of low-income manual workers in China, and spoken to blind people who are experts in using a phone and not having to rely on a screen.
"If we were to try and design a user interface for someone who is not looking at the screen, someone walking along and wanting to get a phone number, then a blind person is the ideal person to speak with."
Typically, Mr Chipchase is to be found discovering people and cities on a bicycle or on the back of a motorbike.
"I buy a lot of bicycles. I have huge time pressures when in these places and I want to engage with the local population as much as possible.
"I find buying a bicycle is a great way to stay in touch with people. We give the bicycles away at end of the study."
The hardest part of his job is not the jetlag, dealing with bureaucracy or coping with different languages, explains Mr Chipcase.
"The question is how can we do our job as a large corporation and show people we interact with sufficient respect."
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"This is my office, my workspace," he says, pointing to a map of the world.
In the last 12 months he has visited 15 countries, carrying out eight full-scale research projects.
Mr Chipchase's focus is on the uses to which people put their phones; where they keep them, how they answer them, and a million other details about our relationships with these devices that have helped shape our world
On the street, in homes, in the office, in pockets, handbags, at the marketplace, and in the community - Mr Chipchase tries to put mobile phone use into the context of the culture and landscape he is in.
His research has included looking at home battery charging services in rural Uganda, street charging in Kampala, how illiterate people use a mobile and more recently where we keep our phones.
From city bankers to shantytown dwellers, and from hip teens to octogenarian SMS fiends, no use of a phone is too trivial; no detail of a person's life too insignificant.
"I specialise in human behavioural research. It often starts with a very simple question like 'what do people carry?'.
'Secret stuff'
"This is interesting to Nokia because we want to put things in people's pockets - something of value.
"If you can understand one element of that value then you can understand people's motivation."
Mr Chipchase takes a team into different countries around the world - designers, psychologists - to look at people's lives in different contexts.
"I want to understand what people do and why, and pretty much in every context. We want to know the secret stuff as well.
But why would Nokia pay someone like Mr Chipchase to travel the world and to have all of those experiences? Where's the value in that?
"It's an important question. We do this research work to inform and inspire the design stage. To bring designers into the field so they know whom they are designing for.
"Often designers are designing phones for markets they have little experience of - so we want to bring the world to them and them to the world."
Mr Chipchase works three to 15 years ahead of the market. His team carries out research using a method called convergent validity - it is not quantative scientific work but qualitative.
Human behaviour
"We deal with informed opinion. If we do our jobs exceptionally well, then it is very informed opinion."
So where is mobile phone design heading? Will they get ever smaller, perhaps becoming part of our clothes rather than as a single unit?
Mr Chipchase says the important consideration is how people behave, not what the latest technology can do.
"It's about what to design and when to design, because human behaviour changes very slowly; technology changes very quickly.
"If I can understand why, for example, a lady in north east China carries her phone on her left wrist, then we can understand others' motivations."
He adds: "It's also about what not to do with design. We have lots of assumptions about the world around us - Nokia is no different. "If we want to remain relevant in all these markets we need to know how our assumptions differ form other people's."
To date, Mr Chipchase has had two patents granted based on his work and a further 25 are currently being considered.
By 2009 more than four billion people in the world - out of a population of 6.3 billion - are expected to have a mobile phone connection in their lives.
"The challenge for a company like Nokia is to sell products to all these markets - all of which have different needs.
"We want to meet the needs people have, rather than just putting technology out into the market place."
Mr Chipchase and his team employ a number of techniques - from shadowing people's lives, talking to as many local people as possible and documenting their lives in different contexts.
"I spend a lot of my time looking into people's bags and handbags - with their permission, of course.
"There's a whole load of stuff in life that is worth documenting. You see it every day but don't even notice."
Younger person
He adds: "We spend time as much time as possible being in the places that people do what they do. The mobile phone is used from when you get up in the morning and is often the last thing you interact with at night."
He has studied the mobile use of low-income manual workers in China, and spoken to blind people who are experts in using a phone and not having to rely on a screen.
"If we were to try and design a user interface for someone who is not looking at the screen, someone walking along and wanting to get a phone number, then a blind person is the ideal person to speak with."
Typically, Mr Chipchase is to be found discovering people and cities on a bicycle or on the back of a motorbike.
"I buy a lot of bicycles. I have huge time pressures when in these places and I want to engage with the local population as much as possible.
"I find buying a bicycle is a great way to stay in touch with people. We give the bicycles away at end of the study."
The hardest part of his job is not the jetlag, dealing with bureaucracy or coping with different languages, explains Mr Chipcase.
"The question is how can we do our job as a large corporation and show people we interact with sufficient respect."
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Millions of Addresses and Thousands of Sites, All Leading to One
THINK you have a good handle on the Internet economy? Try this one.
What Internet business has raised $120 million in financing in the last year, owns 725,000 Web sites, and has as its chief executive the former head of Primedia and International Data Group?
If you guessed NameMedia, a privately held owner and developer of Web sites based in Waltham, Mass., you take the prize. Otherwise, consider reading on.
According to Kelly P. Conlin, the chief executive of NameMedia, the company’s business is best seen as an online property developer.
“What we’ve wanted to do, quietly, is amass the largest real estate position on the Internet, which we feel we have,” Mr. Conlin said.
Some of those properties, he said, are the equivalent of “oceanfront” sites, or high-value addresses like Photography.com or DailyHoroscope.com that NameMedia will populate with relevant editorial content. Those who type in any of NameMedia’s other 6,000 or so photography-related Internet addresses, like photographyproducts.com, will land on Photography.com.
The business is a far cry from the days of cybersquatting, where speculators bought up names of businesses to which they had no legitimate claim, but it does represent a vindication of sorts for many who bought hundreds or thousands of random Web address names on the hope that one day they would be worth something.
Analysts suggest that NameMedia and its competitors could represent the next wave of Internet initial public offerings, while also providing a peek at a significant change in what people see when they stumble onto obscure Web properties.
Behind this suddenly active business category — which includes companies like iREIT in Houston, Marchex in Seattle, and Demand Media in Santa Monica, Calif. — is the recognition that not all Internet users turn to a search engine when they are confused about where to find something online. Rather, 5 percent to 10 percent of people will simply type in a name that sounds as if it might suit their needs.
The so-called direct search or direct navigation approach is seldom fruitful for users, nor has it been particularly profitable for owners of the sites that they visit. An obscure Web address may have four or so visitors a month, and perhaps half will click on an ad.
“But if you have hundreds of thousands of those, it adds up,” Mr. Conlin said. “It’s an inside-out way of creating volume.”
Mr. Conlin said that the properties in his portfolio, which includes about 1.4 million Internet addresses that independent owners have placed on NameMedia’s network of sites, attracts about 60 million monthly visitors. NameMedia will choose which ads to place on those sites, and will collect some of the revenue.
For other sites not likely to be sought by hobbyists, like CellularPlans.com or CareerGuide.com, NameMedia fills the home page with links that users would otherwise see if they typed the same search Web address into a Yahoo or Google search box. The search engines pay NameMedia a commission whenever someone clicks on the links.
NameMedia, which began in 1999 as YesDirect, was reintroduced in May 2006 with an undisclosed amount of equity financing from Highland Capital Partners and Summit Partners, two Boston venture capital groups, and more than $100 million in debt financing from Goldman Sachs. The company used part of that money to buy the portfolios of dozens of domain-name consolidators.
To decide which of those sites to develop and which to fill with search engine ads, NameMedia hired Hugh O’Neill, who previously oversaw $30 billion worth of financial derivatives for Sun Life Financial. Mr. O’Neill uses, among other things, the expected number of clicks and the value of the ads in a category to calculate the future value of a domain name.
If a prospective buyer is interested in a site that appears on NameMedia’s network, the transaction is conducted on one of the company’s marketplace sites, like BuyDomains.com or Afternic.com, and NameMedia collects a commission.
So far the company’s strategy is paying off, Mr. Conlin said, with company revenue doubling last year, to $60 million.
Youssef Squali, an analyst with the investment firm Jefferies & Company, said NameMedia faces stiff competition, “but I see these guys as the front-runner.” Among other things, Mr. Squali said the profit margin at NameMedia was 40 percent — a number that other industry executives said fairly represents the category over all.
“They’re paying nothing to acquire a customer,” he said. “I think the next wave of I.P.O.’s will be around this area.”
The direct navigation market attracted more than $800 million in ads last year, which publishers largely shared with Google and Yahoo. That figure could reach $1.1 billion in 2007, said Jordan Rohan, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets.
Site owners understand they can earn more ad dollars if their sites display more than text ads. The question, however, is how to fill the more valuable sites with content without hiring teams of writers, video producers or others.
Executives have found interesting workarounds. Marchex, for instance, will reintroduce in June its roughly 100,000 sites, using proprietary technology that automatically pulls relevant content from sites outside the Marchex network, and shares with those sites any ad revenues that result. Marchex also announced that the Latin American Channels division of Fox Broadcasting would provide videos for more than 100 Spanish-language sites in the Marchex network.
IREIT, likewise, recently struck a deal with RealNetworks to distribute that company’s online games on its game-related Web sites. According to Craig Snyder, the chief executive of iREIT, online publishers are happy to find a way to distribute their content to more people, and thereby increase their revenues.
“It’s become harder and harder for them to gain audience share,” he said.
NameMedia recently finished building technology where visitors to niche sites — say, one on 1957 Mustangs — will be presented with links to other sites with similar images. The links will be between sites within the NameMedia network, but Mr. Conlin said that an unnamed Internet photo-sharing service with more than five million monthly users would soon join.
“It’ll be a thinking person’s social network,” Mr. Conlin said. “The community becomes the content.”
In Fierce Competition, Google Finds Novel Ways to Feed Hiring Machine
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — On a spring Saturday, about 90 students from Stanford and as many from the University of California, Berkeley, converged on Google’s corporate campus for a day of spirited team competition over mind-bending puzzles, Lego building problems and video games.
It was called the Google Games, a convivial way for the mostly computer science and engineering students to renew the Stanford-Berkeley rivalry. But behind the fun was a serious corporate recruiting event that underscores a rivalry no less intense: the tug of war for talent between Google and its competitors.
As much of the high-tech industry is enjoying a renewed boom, the competition for top recruits in engineering and other fields is as intense as ever. Companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo frequently find themselves going after the same candidates or recruiting in one another’s backyards. At the same time, they are running up against a myriad of start-up companies across Silicon Valley that have been pumped up with venture capital in recent years.
To lure talent, these companies have expanded their recruiting arsenal far beyond the traditional job fair to include a growing number of events like technology lectures, cocktail parties, pizza parties, treasure hunts and programming contests, dubbed “code jams” or “hack days.” Much like the Google Games, these are no-pressure recruiting occasions meant to create excitement around their companies and impress potential recruits as young as college freshmen.
“It comes down to just getting them introduced to our culture, showing them that, hey, being part of Google could be a lot of fun,” said Ken Krieger, a Google engineer who had volunteered to supervise the Lego-building contest.
Google, more than any other company, looms large in this latest chapter of Silicon Valley’s talent wars.
The company has been vacuuming talent wherever it can find it to keep fueling its torrid growth. Its work force has roughly doubled every year for the last several years, to more than 12,200 at the end of March. Google is now adding about 500 workers each month. Its Web site lists nearly 800 open positions in the San Francisco Bay Area alone.
If Google is hungry for top talent, the class of 2007 seems to think that a Google job offer is a prized commodity. Stories about Google’s notoriously tough and sometimes off-putting recruiting process continue to surface. Even so, the company was considered the most desirable employer for all undergraduates this year, and for the first time, it edged out the blue-chip consulting firm McKinsey & Company as the most desirable employer among M.B.A.’s, a position McKinsey had held for the last 12 years, according to surveys conducted by Universum, a research firm.
“Being in an environment where you are going to learn a lot is the most important thing to me,” said Alice Yu-shan Chang, one of hundreds of recruits who are graduating this year and heading for Google.
Ms. Chang, who is finishing master’s degrees in computer science and management science at Stanford, was sought by both Microsoft and Google, as well as eBay and Oracle. She said Microsoft had done what it could to find the right group for her, first at its headquarters in Redmond, Wash., and then, upon learning that she did not want to leave the Bay Area, at its Mountain View campus, not far from Google’s. She received phone calls from company vice presidents and met face-to-face with one of them.
“With Google, you don’t have that much face time with high-up people,” she said. But there was some wining and dining on the part of Google, which Ms. Chang would not discuss in detail because she had signed a nondisclosure agreement. Eventually, Google won, in part because it had agreed to permit Ms. Chang to rotate positions every six months in the first year and half, and because, for her, it was a better cultural fit.
“There are a lot of young people there who are very creative,” Ms. Chang, 25, said. Many of her peers at Microsoft would have been in their 30s and 40s “and more family oriented,” she said.
In the last two years, Google has expanded its university recruiting programs to nearly 200 campuses from about 70. But the ubiquity of its events has ruffled some feathers. Max Levchin, the chief executive of Slide, a technology start-up in San Francisco, said he used to have good luck recruiting from his alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, by going there in midyear and persuading computer-science students to defer graduation and join him in Silicon Valley. “Now all I hear about is Google holding a puzzle hunt this, or Google campus pizza that,” Mr. Levchin said in an e-mail interview. Chief executives at other start-ups had similar frustrations.
Stanford does not keep an official tally of where its students go, and even informal numbers are not in for the class of 2007. But an unscientific, voluntary check of students run by the university’s career center showed that Stanford had funneled more of its graduates to Google than to any other employer in the last three years.
While playing down the rivalry with Microsoft, which is hiring at an even faster rate than Google, albeit into a company nearly six times as large, Google has not shied away from bringing the competition for talent to Microsoft’s door. Google has more openings in the Seattle area than anywhere else in the country other than California and New York.
“I think it’s unlikely that you’ll see us back up a truck to their parking lot,” Google’s director for staffing programs, Judy Gilbert, said. “We have done a lot of things to engage with the local talent in an appropriate way.”
As an example, Ms. Gilbert, a former recruiter for McKinsey, pointed to a lecture this year at Google by Kaifu Lee, the president of Google Greater China, which was intended to appeal to the “large community of Chinese ex-pats” in the Seattle area. Mr. Lee used to head Microsoft’s research organization in China. After Google hired him in 2005, Microsoft sued Google and Mr. Lee, accusing him of violating a noncompete agreement and misusing inside information. The lawsuit was later settled.
Google’s efforts notwithstanding, Microsoft and Yahoo say they are able to hire the candidates they need.
“Our competition is really the market for top talent, not a specific company,” said Scott Pitarsky, Microsoft’s general manager for talent acquisition.
Similarly, Yahoo, which held a hack day at its campus that was attended by about 500 programmers, as well as smaller ones elsewhere, said its recruiting strategies were working. The company also opened a research center at Berkeley in part to attract student interns.
“Dozens of people have come from the labs into Yahoo,” said Bradley Horowitz, vice president for product strategy at Yahoo.
All three companies say their toughest recruiting challenges come from start-ups, who snap up people like Nitay Joffe.
Mr. Joffe, who had summer internships at Google for the last two years, expected to go to work there. But before Mr. Joffe, a recent computer engineering graduate of the University of California, San Diego, accepted a job, a friend suggested he check out a San Francisco start-up, Powerset, which is trying to build a rival search engine.
“Powerset had everything that Google had in terms of what I was looking for — smart people, interesting projects, great amenities,” Mr. Joffe said. Powerset also had one thing Google could not offer: the potential to strike it rich with the Internet equivalent of a lottery ticket.
“When you get a stock option at 5 cents and it goes to $50 ...,” Mr. Joffe said, before his voice trailed off. With Google’s shares hovering around $480, it no longer offers the same potential. “Google isn’t going to $4,000,” said Mr. Joffe, who began working at Powerset recently.
For every recruit who gets away, Google hopes many more enter its pipeline of potential employees at events like the Google Games.
“We never say, ‘Come work for us,’ ” said Ronner Lee, who is in charge of Google’s university programs at Berkeley. “If they like what they see here and they want to approach us with questions, that’s great.”
If the goal was to impress this crowd, it did not hurt that the games were held inside one of Google’s cafeterias, where the food is free, healthful and plentiful. Or that students were picked up at their campuses by Google’s free shuttles, which are outfitted with wireless Internet access. Or that many of the puzzles were created by the No. 2 Sudoku player in the world, who, by the way, happens to work at Google.
David Nguyen, a doctoral student at Berkeley who went to Google for the games, said the company clearly understands its target audience. “This is exactly the kind of person they want,” Mr. Nguyen said, “someone who is going to work and solve problems on a Saturday and enjoy it.”
Microsoft Xbox 360™ Premium Console
The Xbox 360
Microsoft's jump into the world of gaming was big news for numerous reasons. First of all, it had been a long time since an American company had been successful in the console market and many doubted that MS could pull it off. Several buyouts later, things were looking up for the Xbox as it zoomed past the legendary Nintendo's Gamecube console in sales with it's superior quantity of features and games. With such success it was inevitable that they would try their luck once again by developing a new console for the next generation. This next generation is now, and the Xbox 360 is upon us. Is Microsoft's new console worth picking up, or should we wait for the Playstation 3 and Wii? Read on to find out.
Microsoft has released the Xbox 360 in two separate packages; Pro and Core. I went with the Premium system at launch, but I feel it necessary to outline what comes with both packages.
What's included in the Core Package:
• Xbox 360 Console
• One Wired Controller
• A/V Cables and AC Adapter
Price: $299
What's included in the Pro Package:
• Xbox 360 Console
• One Wireless Controller
• 20 Gigabyte Harddrive
• Xbox 360 Headset
• HD-AV Cables and AC Adapter
Price: $399
Which One Is Best For You?
The Pro Package, hands down, is the one to look for. In order to save your progress in any game you'll need a harddrive (included in the Pro pack) or memory card, and this alone will run you about $40. This means that the Core Pack along with a memory card will cost $340. When it all comes down to it, you would only save $60 at best, and it's just not worth it. The Pro Pack is just the better deal, and in my opinion it was a bad idea for Microsoft to release two different packs like this. Thankfully those stuck with the Core pack can purchase everything included in the Pro separately, but it will run you a pretty penny. The harddrive alone costs $99, and with this in mind it's not difficult to see why the Pro pack is the better choice. With the system's pricing out of the way, it's time to move on to console itself.
The Xbox 360 Console
The console itself is a definite step up in design from the original Xbox. Whereas Microsoft's first console looks a bit bland, the 360 looks cutting edge and high tech. MS decided to ditch the black and green combo of their original console and instead replace black with white. This is very pleasing to me, as it brings back fond memories of the Dreamcast. The system itself is reminiscent of a PC tower with concaved sides. Microsoft was apparently paying attention last round, as the Xbox 360's default laying position (or at least the one it's always advertised in) is vertical, just like the PS2. As far as the console's aesthetics go, I'd have to say that it's one of the more attractive looking consoles yet.
The front of the unit features two memory card slots, an infared reciever, the disc tray, and a rather large glowing power button which is used to indicate several system processes. Personally I would rather have more memory card slots, especially when more party games hit the console, but I guess this isn't a very big problem at the moment or even in the near future. The console features three USB ports which are used for numerous peripherals such as Controllers and portable media devices. These ports are almost becoming a necessity for modern day consoles, and it gives the option for some pretty cool peripherals to be developed later on.
One of the Xbox 360's best aspects is it's backwards compatibility with games from the original Xbox. The only problem with this is the fact that not all games are supported (though the majority of good ones are), and you can take advantage of this feature only if you have the harddrive. Microsoft is continually updating support for this though, and I imagine that almost every Xbox game will be compatible one day. What's more is the fact that you can still use Xbox Live for these older games, so it's almost useless to own the original Xbox now.
Although the harddrive was standard on the Xbox (quite a few games used it in innovative ways) that's not the case with the 360. The little peripheral fits on the top section of the console (and adds only a tiny amount of bulk to the unit) and is used for storing multimedia and your gamercard. It's like having a massive memory card, but it's a much better deal. What's cool is the fact that you can remove it easily and simply plug it into another Xbox 360 console. This means that you can carry your stored data on the go, which was the only reason to even have memory cards with the original Xbox. The memory cards are pretty lame when compared to the harddrive, especially when you compare the amount of storage space (64 megabytes vs. 20 gigabytes) to price ($40 vs. $100). The memory cards would be more useful if they were cheaper, even if you had to cut down the amount of storage space they contain.
One of the big console elements which Microsoft spent a considerable amount of time hyping each person's gaming individuality. One of the main ideas MS is supporting this with is the use of faceplates which go on the front of the console. Both Core and Pro packages come with the standard white one, however, you can buy or acquire a variety of different faceplates with different designs. To put it bluntly; this is pretty gimmicky, but it's not that bad of an idea. I'm not out to make a fashion statement with my Xbox 360, and so I don't really dig the whole angle, though I can kinda see how some people might.
One of the cool aspects to the console is the system Dashboard. This is the chosen interface for browsing the various features of the console, and it's pretty darn spiffy if you ask me. Through it you can load up games, access media, access the various features of Xbox Live, and change your system settings. It's certainly handy for all of these purposes, and with it I'd say Microsoft has been the big innovator when it comes to interface. What's cool is the fact that you can access this from the standout center button (Xbox Guide button) on the 360 gamepad.
With all that good stuff out of the way I still feel that the console is still a little too big. I guess it's to be expected given it's considerable leap in technology, but I still wish that MS had been able to size it down even more. The option to place the console vertically is a definite plus and does manage to save some space. While it's laying on it's side the console feels just about as large as the original Xbox, give or take a few inches from all sides, and the 360 is a bit more skinny. Size was one of the major complaints with the original Xbox, and I'm really surprised that this wasn't properly dealt with especially in an age where technology is shrinking down. What's absolutely terrible though is the gigantic power cord the system uses, which is a major inconvenience for my setup. Who knows, maybe I've just been spoiled by the Gamecube and slimline PS2.
The Controller
It was quite obvious that Microsoft used the basic design of the Dreamcast controller when developing the original Xbox console. Thankfully they've since thrown their designs out the window. The Xbox 360 controller is based off of the Xbox's remodelled 'S' design, but they've managed to improve it. It's certainly much lighter at least. The wired and wireless controllers are the same in design, and come standard with two analog sticks, a d-pad, four face buttons, and a start and back button. The big change is in the black and white buttons, which are conspicuously missing. Replacing them are two standard shoulder buttons which accompany the two triggers. The most noticeable button on the entire pad though is the Xbox Guide button, which can toggle the Dashboard and even turn the console off.
The Xbox 360 is easily one of the more comfortable pads I've laid my hands on. While not terribly original (the Xbox Guide button is the only thing that can be qualified as such) it's as if MS took the best aspects of several controllers and successfully combined them. I'm more than satisfied with this pad, especially because you can plug into and use it on a PC. The only real beef I have with the setup is the fact that you can only plug three wired controllers in at once, due to the lack of more USB slots. Either way, well done MS!
Now You're Playing With Power
I'd rather play games than numbers, and in all honesty, I'm not very tech-savvy. I will tell you that the Xbox 360 is the most powerful console ever released so far, and it uses three separate but strong processors. It seems that the Xbox 360 is on par with top of the line PCs. The games so far have featured millions of polygons in every detail, and the lighting effects in some are truly out of this world. I have no idea what bump mapping, real mapping, or even pixel shading is, but I can tell you that the Xbox 360 offers a noticeable leap in progression from the original Xbox console. Things only get better once you plug into a TV with high definition support. Most of the games look very nice, and I'd be surprised if PS3 games looked noticeably better.
With that said, the visuals for the Xbox 360 definitely look to be the smallest step up from generation to generation. I imagine that in a few generations there won't be any more graphical progression left to make; everything will be too lifelike. I'm beginning to miss the days of reading 'bits' to tell exactly how powerful a console is. Either way, I can't wait to see how second and third generation 360 titles will look and play.
Format Wars: Microsoft Sits This One Out?
Blu-ray and HD-DVD are warring over the top spot for next generation storage formats, and with all of Sony's talks of the PS3 making use of the ultra dense Blu-Ray it was expected that MS would go the way of HD-DVD. Some will be very disappointed to hear that MS has taken the safe route and gone with standard DVD9 which doesn't store nearly as much data as the next gen formats, but there are several benefits to this. Firstly, HD-DVD would have driven the console's costs way up, and secondly, games might have become even more expensive than they are now. Microsoft is however, planning to release an add-on HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360 at a later date. Never fear, they aren't pulling a Sega CD here, as games will still be exclusively packaged on DVD9s, and the add-on will be for high definition movies only.
And yes, the Xbox 360 can play standard DVD movies right out of the box without any add-ons or attachments.
Xbox 360: The Multimedia Powerhouse?
With this console Microsoft is attempting to steal the thunder from your home media center, and with relative success. You can store music and photos on the harddrive or memory card with the option to make playlists and photo slideshows out of them. What's more is the fact that you can share media via a wireless network if you have the correct peripheral. I haven't yet tried this out, but it sounds like a cool enough feature.
As far as the system's audio capabilities go, all who lay ears are in for a treat. The Xbox 360 has fantastic audio capabilities and features several different possible channels (more than all the consoles last generation) for sound effects and music. This makes the system very complex as far as audio goes. The Xbox 360 also supports many options for audio; everything up to 5.1 Digital Surround. I personally only have a stereo setup so I can't take full advantage of this feature. One thing that MS has upgraded is the custom soundtrack support. You can now play your own ripped music during any game. I think this is the best of the new features personally.
Microsoft seems convinced that next generation will be all about HD video, but I (along with almost everyone I know) couldn't care less about the feature. With that said, the Xbox 360 does indeed support it, but you need the special HD AV cables for it. These come included in the Pro pack, but you can also buy them separately. These cables come with a small switch which enables you to select between the two outputs, meaning they can be used for both. I've seen a few games running in HD, and I must say that I'm not entirely impressed. It seems like too little for so much money.
Xbox Live: 360-ified
Microsoft introduced to the world their premium online service last generation, and they've brought it back, but with several upgrades. Xbox Live will not only allow you to play games with other players online, but it now allows you to chat, download demos/movies and now you can even access what Microsoft refers to as 'Live Arcade'. Each Xbox 360 console comes standard with a Silver membership, which gives you access to the Live Marketplace and Live Arcade, but the Gold membership is what you'll really need in order to play online. A Gold membership card will run you $49.99 for a year.
Personally I've always thought that Xbox Live's fees were too much. I've always been a big fan of free online. Sure, Xbox Live is a fantastic online service, but come on. After buying a $300-$400 console the last thing you want to do is shell out another fifty bucks to take advantage of what the system is originally advertised to do. Currently the Xbox 360 is lacking a killer online game, and some may find Xbox Live not worth the price. What's even worse is the fact that some developers will undoubtedly add on their own charges to play their online games (specifically content rich MMORPGS), which results in we the consumers being overcharged.
Microsoft Points are one of the new features of the online service. These are specifically for the Live Marketplace and Live Arcade, and are used to buy either additional content or to purchase arcade games. It's admittedly a cool idea, and some of the stuff is even free, but it feels weird to be paying real world money to buy these points in order to acquire additional content for games. This isn't a feature that I like to make much use of, although I have broken down a few times for the Live Arcade. What can I say, Geometry Wars has me. What's cool about the points is the fact that you can acquire them through special cards from stores instead of being forced to buy them online. Still it's lame that you have to pay for them, as I would much rather they be earned through playing the games.
Live Arcade can be absolutely addicting. At the cost of MS points you can download and install several titles. These range from old classics like Pacman and Joust to newly designed games such as the now infamous Geometry Wars and Astropop. The only downfall to Live Arcade is that new games aren't added as often as I'd like them to be, but it's still a pretty neat idea. It's a heck of a lot better way to spend your points than buying content for pre-existing games, in my opinion.
The Games
This is easily the weakest aspect of the system, but I'll be a little forgiving seeing as how the console hasn't been out for a very long time. The Xbox 360 has a lot of 3rd party support, which is definitely a good thing. Developers right now seem mostly content with porting current generation games over to the 360 with only minor graphical updates, but this will change as we move more into the next generation. Besides that, Microsoft has a fairly strong line-up of first and second party developers hard at work to bring you excellent games.
As with the original Xbox, the 360 seems aimed at the edgier mature market. This is evident in the abundance of first person shooters on the console this early in it's lifespan. What's odd is the fact that Halo 3 wasn't in line for the console's launch, but rest assured that it'll be here in the coming years. Also adding to the mature demographic is the plethora of sports and racing games available for the system. The Xbox 360 is a two genre horse though, as nothing else is adequately supported on the console as of yet. Fighting fans have Dead or Alive 4 and Rumble Roses to keep them busy until more developers step up. Other genres such as platformers are also poorly represented, with Kameo being the big premiere title.
RPGs were the big problem area for the original Xbox, and as of right now, that's still the case. What sucks is that this is my favorite genre. Elder Scrolls IV is the only choice for RPGers at the moment, but I personally am not a fan of it. Thanks to a couple quick deals Microsoft has full support of Mistwalker (ex-Squaresoft team) who is in the works with several RPGs, along with Final Fantasy XI coming from Square-Enix themself. Tri-Ace has also committed to making an exclusive RPG for the 360. Although there are several other RPGs on the way, in all honesty they aren't looking too hot. You've gotta give Microsoft points for trying though.
Top Five Games Currently Out
Here are my five favorite games which are currently available for the console.
#5. - Madden 2006
Released: Launch
Although I'm not a huge fan of football games, the Xbox 360 lacks a large library. This is the reason the game has made my list, but it's actually a pretty solid showing for Madden's first next gen outing. I certainly don't regret renting it from Gamefly. Admittedly, there are some missing elements to the game, but overall it's still a lot of fun. This is one of the games that really shows the difference in leaps between this generation and the last one.
#4. - Top Spin 2
Released: March 2006
This is yet another sports game I played through rental, and it's quite a bit of fun. I missed out on the original Top Spin which appeared on the Xbox console, and now I see what I had been missing. Among the various options included are the ability to create your own player, play through a career, or even challenge players online. Fans of tennis looking for next generation graphics should get nice and cozy with this title.
#3. - Ridge Racer VI
Released: Launch
I'm a bit new to the whole Ridge Racer world, but I'll tell you one thing; I like my racers nice and arcadey. I can't stand racing simulators where you have to build you cars and whatnot, I want to jump right into a race. Ridge Racer VI lets me do just that. Most are turned off by this racer's weird sliding and braking physics, but it just adds to the excitement in my opinion. Brakes will only hold you back!
#2. - Kameo: Elements of Power
Released: Launch
Kameo is a title that has been long in the making. Originally shown for the Gamecube at the system's first E3, Kameo Elements of Power has quite some history behind it. First thought to be a Pokemon clone, it actually turned out to be a very fun and diverse platformer from Rareware. This is the first decent new game the developer has come out with since Perfect Dark on the N64, and while they're not still entirely back yet this was the perfect launch title for the 360.
#1. - Condemned: Criminal Origins
Released: Launch
As Sega's first job as publisher on this new console, Condemned is absolutely terrific. In this day and age I was beginning to lose faith that a first person shooter could be horrifying, but Condemned has come along and turned me into a holy man. The game pits you as an investigator as you enter numerous dark environments battling against hundreds of lunatics using whatever you can get your hands on. In my opinion, this is as of this point, the definitive first person shooter on the console.
My Five Most Anticipated Upcoming Games
You can't really make an educated buying decision without knowing what's in the pipeline, and so here's a list of the five games I'm most looking forward to.
#5. - Phantasy Star Universe
Expected Release Date: October 2006
In one of the smartest moves Sega has made in a long time, they've decided to bring the deep and anticipated massively multiplayer online RPG out on the Xbox 360. As a single player game it's supposedly going to be as deep as the classic Phantasy Star games, but we'll have to wait and see if that holds to be true. The Xbox 360 version is expected to be a port of the PS2 one, but it will probably feature a plethora of graphical updates. I can't wait to get my hands on it, as this is the version I'll probably end up getting.
#4. - Alone in the Dark
Expected Release Date: Sometime in 2006
How many Alone in the Dark games have been released, like five? Either way, I've never gotten my hands on one but I plan to change this very soon. This game will supposedly be very action packed and scary at the same time. Seeing as how the original Alone in the Dark pretty much started the survival horror revolution I don't doubt it will follow through with it's claims.
#3. - Resident Evil 5
Expected Release Date: Unknown
Resident Evil will hit a Microsoft console for the first time ever with this installment. Resident Evil 5 looks to go back to the series roots by featuring *gasp!* the undead! Not a whole lot is known about this game except for it's oceanside setting in which you'll shoot the crap out of zombies. It's Resident Evil, so you know it'll be good. This game will be released simultaneously on the PS3 and Xbox 360, but it's not known if the two versions will be much different from one another. Unless Sony fixes it's boomerang controller I'll probably be going with this version.
#2. - Lost Odyssey
Expected Release Date: Sometime in 2007
This is one of the newly formed developer, Mistwalker's big new RPGs. Because it's headed by the creator of Final Fantasy I'm expecting many big things from this one. From what I've heard, the game will make use of a generation system, which may involve either your character aging or having children. Lost Odyssey is a traditional RPG, and because I'm such a fan of the genre, I couldn't very well leave it off of this list.
#1. - Blue Dragon
Expected Release Date: Unknown
This is Mistwalker's second Xbox 360 game in development, and it's also my most anticipated of the entire upcoming library. Not only is this one also headed by the creator of Final Fantasy, but Akira Toriyama himself is doing the character designs for this cartooney RPG. Although it's giving off a Pokemon-ish vibe at the moment (collecting monsters and transforming into them for battle) it still looks absolutely amazing. I can't wait.
My Overall Recommendation
The Xbox 360 is the first venture into the next generation. If you absolutely cannot wait then I'd say go ahead, but keep in mind that a price drop is expected to happen near the launch of the PS3 and Wii (formerly known as the Revolution) consoles. This is an expensive system, but despite the price I can't recommend settling for anything less than the Pro pack. I was definitely upset when I first learned that some Xbox 360 games cost up to $60, but I guess that's the price you pay for next generation gaming.
Although the library isn't so hot yet there's plenty in the pipeline to keep you interested even in the face of imminent PS3 and Wii. At this point there's very little indication that the Xbox 360 will be significantly different from the original Xbox, as far as it's game line-up is concerned. With that in mind it's best to recommend this console to fans of the original Xbox, or just to those who want to get the jump on the next generation of gaming. I recommend it with a four star rating, although I feel that may be a bit too forgiving at this point, but the rating goes with the knowledge of what's to come for the system.
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