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We recently got a look at some hard numbers related to the piracy of Demigod , a new game from Stardock and Gas Powered Games. Now, two weeks later, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell has essentially declared the game a success in spite of the piracy, and reaffirmed the company's stance that intrusive DRM is a bad thing. The game's sales figures seem to bear him out. Quoting: "Yep. Demigod is heavily pirated. And make no mistake, piracy pisses me off. If you're playing a pirated copy right now, if you're one of those people on Hamachi or GameRanger playing a pirated copy and have been for more than a few days, then you should either buy it or accept that you're a thief and quit rationalizing it any other way. The reality that most PC game publishers ignore is that there are people who buy games and people who don't buy games. The focus of a business is to increase its sales. My job, as CEO of Stardock, is not to fight worldwide piracy no matter how much it aggravates me personally. My job is to maximize the sales of my product and service and I do that by focusing on the people who pay my salary — our customers."

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In a world gone mad, this new BlackBerry app makes perfect sense.

Now, if you’re a traveling executive and you happen to be kidnapped, you can set off the spy software on your global positioning system (GPS) enabled BlackBerry that will let your company know your exact location.

New York-based Brickhouse Security has launched this kidnapping safety app for travelers. Dubbed the Executrac mobile GPS tracking software, it is an invisible application that turns any BlackBerry or smart phone into a covert GPS tracker with an emergency panic button.

The $19.95-a-month application is so covert that it can be deployed wirelessly in seconds to thousands of company-owned BlackBerrys unbeknownst to the user, or the user’s kidnappers.

Of course, this app could also be used in an Orwellian way. Employees now have the power to closely monitor employees anywhere in the world. Companies can check in on whether remote employees are really doing their work or not. The company could do this with or without the employees’ knowledge.

The company is recommending the app to journalists and executives who travel to dangerous areas. In such places, Brickhouse says the only chance a remote traveler has is to push a panic button to secretly and send a emergency signal with their exact GPS location to the people they trust to send help. It’s like a safety net for those who otherwise wouldn’t have any other recourse.

The tracking is accurate to within five to 15 meters, and the software starts working within nine seconds of being turned on. Over 24 hours, the app uses less than 15 percent of a BlackBerry’s battery.

This app gets my vote for the oddball mobile app of the day. But a close second was the pimple popping application for the iPhone from Room Candy Games.

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It's now just over a month before Sony's E3 press event and already the rumor mill is aflutter with what the comapny's planning to debut on stage. We've already heard about PSP's apparent makeover, and now comes word from Variety that the PlayStation 3's oft-rumored motion sensing controller will be getting some time on stage. A source from Kombo late last month suggested key third-party develoeprs have already been brought up to speed and asked to implement the functionality into their upcoming titles. Like we said, this isn't the first time we've been down this road, and it's not happened infinitely more times than has, so... take that as you will. Brace yourself, this is only the beginning of the of a flurry of game-related murmurs and speculation in the leadup to next month's conference.

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PlayStation 3 motion-sensing controller to be shown off at E3? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 May 2009 01:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It looks like Barack Obama has an early Supreme Court appointment on his hands: David Souter plans to retire, according to various news reports. Souter was appointed by George H. W. Bush, but leans...

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It looks like Barack Obama has an early Supreme Court appointment on his hands: David Souter plans to retire, according to various news reports. Souter was appointed by George H. W. Bush, but leans...

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Google announced the launch of a new initiative called the Small Business Network in an effort to contribute what it can to the success of small businesses, which are Google's bread and butter.

"It's no secret that small businesses play a key role in Google's success as a company and drive the economy as a whole," says David Fischer, Google's VP of Global Online Sales and Operations. "AdWords, AdSense, Apps – you name it – have all grown because small businesses use them. Because of that, increasing their bottom line is very important to us."

The Small Business Network is designed to promote business-friendly policies at the federal and state levels. Fischer says the company asked itself, "What can we do to help broaden the collective voice of small business both on Capitol Hill and in the states? We want to know about the issues that are important to our small business partners so that we can better invest in their goals and objectives and ultimately, their success."

While Google's intention is to take on a variety of issues, the company is getting started right off the bat with increasing broadband access and preserving an open Internet.

The network takes full advantage of Google's Moderator tool, which allows interested parties to share their thoughts and others to vote them up and down, creating a sense of priority among them. Google is hoping that they will be able to use the Network to help encourage lawmakers to grant funds to ISPs to create broadband access for small businesses around the U.S.

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Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Quicken Online strikes back at upstarts with iPhone app  —  There's been a lot of buzz around personal finance websites like Mint and Wesabe, but finance software maker Intuit has joined the online fray too- and no, not just by sending threatening letters to Mint.

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Mike / Marksonland:
Google Likes To Steal Other's Thunder  —  In the office, Rich and Greg were noting that some of Google's recent announcements had some pretty interesting timing.  To wit:  —  * This past Tuesday, Wolfram Alpha announces its structured data search product.  On the same day, Google announced its new structured data product.

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An anonymous reader writes "Ever wished your iPhone could do more than just play some cool games? How about using it as a spread spectrum transmitter to fly your R/C Toys around, complete with using a Linksys router as a receiver?"

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Whether or not Windows 7 does launch in October as previously suggested, those who have (or plan to get) Release Candidate will be happy to hear that Microsoft won't be pulling the plug until June 1, 2010, well over a year from now and 11 months after its initial expiration date. After that, you're gonna have to fork over the Benjamins for one of the retail SKUs if you wanna keep 7 alive. As for those still living in Redmond's past, the company's also extended the life of XP, at least for OEMs. Companies using the older OS will still be able to install it on netbooks for up to one year after 7's official shape date. Seeing as the new system's likely to have a more expensive licensing fee, it's probably the best move if the company plans on keeping that 96% grip on the netbook OS market.

[Via gadgetmix]

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Windows 7 RC and XP given extensions on life well into 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 May 2009 00:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ninjas and iPhones are a good mix. That’s clear to Axo Studios, which is launching the deliberately ungrammatical game, I am Ninja, on the iPhone today.

The game is based on the Ask a Ninja brand, made famous through wacky video podcasts on the iPod. Those shows, where a ninja (speaking in what I consider to be offensive faux Japanese accents — call me a party pooper) answers questions in a comic and irreverent manner, have drawn millions of viewers on the iPod, the Ask a Ninja web site, and YouTube.

Now the game (here on iTunes) will pick up where the show leaves off, allowing iPhone users to act out their ninja fantasies as they beat up bad guys and perform various stunts. As far as violent and bloody games go, this one is cute. The two-dimensional ninja characters are like something out of South Park, and the sounds are goofy. The main game is dubbed “Confrontation,” with the subtitle “Just another word for killing people.” In it, you kill pirates, zombies and evil ninjas with blow darts. You can upgrade your weapons, such as fire arrows or “Da Bomb,” along the way. You can aim using the iPhone’s accelerometer and shoot by tapping the screen. If you die, a ninja character asks you, “Where did you learn to blow?”

The game has features for show fans, such as a built-in viewer for watching Ask a Ninja videos. There are mini games within the game where you can balance on a pole or shoot arrows at ninjas. YOu can submit your score to the global scoreboard. There’s also a running contest where the top 10 players of the day earn the right to view a secret video.

Hamid Shojaee, chief executive at Axosoft in Scottsdale, Ariz., said his seven-year-old company is a project management software maker that started making iPhone games on the side in January. In February, at the TED conference, met with the Ask a Ninja founders at Beatbox Productions and agreed to make an iPhone game based on the brand. They agreed, as suggested by TED speaker Sylvia Earle, to donate 10 percent of the proceeds to the Deep Search Foundation, a nonprofit headed by Earle whose aim is to save the oceans. The game is called I am Ninja after the theme song of the podcasts.

It took the team of six developers about two months to make the game. If it does well, Shojaee said he may spin out the studio from Axosoft as Axo Studios. This is the studio’s third game. The first one was a frogger clone with a ladybug as the main character. The second was iScream, where you tried to scare someone in a maze. Both were considered experiments, while I am Ninja is a major commercial effort.

The game is selling for $1.99 on iTunes. Here’s a video of Shojaee talking about the features of the game.

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The Internet Watch Foundation, keeper of the UK's child-porn blacklist that's used to block access to offending sites (as well as other innocuous ones), has released some new stats saying that it's seen a reduction in the number of child porn sites in the last year. However, sort of like the group's methodology, the figure has quite a few holes. The figure is apparently based on "domains known to the IWF", which is a fairly subjective, and hardly comprehensive, criteria. Also, given the way that the IWF has blocked the likes of Wikipedia and the Internet Archive, how many sites that aren't actually child-porn sites are included in that number? But perhaps more damning is the rest of the report, which highlights just how ineffective the IWF's blacklist really is at tackling the root of the problem. It's well-established that these sorts of filters don't work, despite the IWF implying it can take credit for reducing the number of child porn sites. The IWF says that less than one percent of the sites can be traced to hosts in the UK, and that a huge portion of the commercial sites it's found can be traced back to just ten domain registrars. This illustrates how non-filter solutions, such as working through these registrars to track down child-porn hosts and producers, promise a more effective solution to the real problem -- the production and sharing of the images. Trying to stop consumption via filters really just masks the issue, despite claims that by cutting off demand, the market will shrink. That might work, if the filters actually worked. The IWF does offer some suggestions for more comprehensive solutions to tackle the problem, but as long as it keeps "Public/private partnership involving service providers working through a system of self-regulation" -- basically its current model of getting ISPs to use its blacklist -- at the top of the list, it seems doomed to ineffectiveness.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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That's right, Windows 7 RC has been given an expiration date far ahead in the mists of time: June 1st, 2010, to be exact. So don't be shy about giving it a whirl. The extra-long lifespan is to...

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Intuit has just released a handy, free iPhone app to accompany its free online financial service, Quicken Online.

Unlike the software version of Quicken, a feature-laden financial management app, Quicken Online and its Quicken Online Mobile companion app (get it here--iTunes store link) are really only designed to help you get a view into your cash flow. The main screen of Quicken Online Mobile shows you how much cash you have access to before your next payday, and it shows how you're doing against any monthly budget numbers you have set up.

You can also add new cash transactions from the app; credit card transactions get picked up automatically when the service connects to your financial institutions for updates.

Glitzy features include a cash position graph that shows up when you rotate the phone to the landscape orientation, and a location-aware ATM finder.

One big advantage of Quicken Online Mobile over competitor Mint (mobile app review) is that Quicken lets you set up a PIN password screen in front of the app, if you wish; Mint relies on you setting up a password on the iPhone itself, which would be fine--unless you like to run your iPhone without a password. (Mint does let you disable access to your iPhone app via your account page on the Mint Web site, though.)

This is a good app for keeping tabs on your cash. So's Mint, security issue aside. If you use either Quicken Online or Mint on the Web and have an iPhone, do be sure to check out their mobile apps.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Peripherals

Mr. Brightside USB keyboard light illuminates your keys, taste in music originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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