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Hit by an industry-wide downturn that means they lose money on every chip they make, three Asian DRAM (dynamic RAM) makers have begun talks on bringing their companies together under a single group.

Japan’s Elpida Memory has recently begun talks with Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor and ProMOS Technologies over bringing the companies together, a spokeswoman for Elpida said late Friday. The companies are not looking at a complete merger but possibly coming together under a single group company, she said, declining to provide further details.

Since 2006, Elpida has run a DRAM manufacturing joint venture with Powerchip called Rexchip Electronics. Earlier in December it said it would raise its stake in Rexchip from 48.8 percent to 52.2 percent to provide Powerchip with some much-needed cash. At the time they said the deal would be done by the end of March 2009.

Now, though, the two companies appear to have bigger plans.

DRAM is used as the main memory inside personal computers and a surplus in production has put pressure on all makers of the product.

The market is highly cyclical and manufacturers, which are used to ups and downs, typically run through the downturns and make money when demand jumps back and prices increase. However, with the global economy worsening, there’s no sign of an increase in demand to pull prices out of their current trough. To make matters worse the credit crunch has made it much more difficult for chip makers to borrow money.

Earlier this month the German state of Saxony came to the rescue of DRAM-maker Qimonda with plans to offer a €150 million (US$203 million) loan on the condition that the company’s majority stock holder, Infineon Technologies, matches the investment. The Taiwanese government also said it would help the country’s five major chip makers.

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We’ve seen some pretty low tricks when it comes to giving what appears to be a gaming console to a junior, but we’re pleading — nay, insisting — that you don’t ever buy in on either of these in an attempt to pull the wool over a kiddo’s eyes. Straight from a shady warehouse in China comes Rodisson Technologies’ totally ridiculous Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 clones, both of which can only play 8-bit titles. The worst part, however, isn’t the complete lack of effort in knocking these systems off with any level of pride; rather, it’s the 10,000 item minimum order quantity. Thanks, but no thanks.

[Via technabob]

Read – RDC Xbox 360
Read – RDC PlayStation 3

Filed under: Gaming

Keepin’ it real fake, part CLXXIII: 8-bit Xbox 360 / PS3 consoles only serve to dash dreams originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Dec 2008 04:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As performance reasserts its prominence and features become less of the driving force behind browsers, I find myself looking at the list of inactive extensions in Firefox with jaundiced eyes. It’s been months since I’ve added a new extension, but the ones I still have I use regularly, and several are actually new to me for this year.

Cooliris, formerly known as PicLens, turns photos and videos into moving walls of imagery.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Part of the problem with add-ons is that they’re such a personal, subjective thing. What do you need? Why do you need it? One of my favorites is a minor, tiny thing, but it saves me so much time that I have trouble when I use browsers without it. Dragdropupload gives you the ability to drag a file from your desktop into any text field in a Web page. Lightweight but extremely effective, if you e-mail a lot of attachments, this should quickly become a massive time saver.

I use it at work to drag images into form fields that then upload them to the CNET servers. Instead of having to navigate that obnoxious folder tree, I just drag the file and drop it into the appropriate field.

One of the problems with Dragdropupload is that sometimes Firefox updates break it, and it takes me a while to bring it back to life. There are two user-end solutions to solve that conundrum, but both are somewhat risky. Using either Nightly Tester Tools or MR Tech Toolkit, you can use the override compatibility feature to force Firefox to recognize outdated extensions. However, as I’ve noted before, this greatly increases the chance of having Firefox crash on you.

Nightly Tester Tools can revitalize dead extensions…for a price.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

I wouldn’t recommend doing this unless you can’t find the same feature replicated elsewhere. I used to force compatibility with AutoCopy, another tiny little extension that introduces Linux-style compatibility to Firefox. Since I do a lot of cutting and pasting, AutoCopy and its multiple clipboards and automatic functionality make it a must-have for me. The mileage you can get out of it may vary with use, of course.

I have one frivolous extension installed: Cooliris. For compatible Web sites such as Flickr, YouTube, and Amazon, it introduces a bit of a futuristic vibe to browsing the Web. Your display turns into a full-screen wall of images, smoothly zooming in and out. It makes me wish that we all had Minority Report-style interfaces to work from instead of these comparatively-clunky mice.

Session Manager offers in-depth tools for saving and restoring sessions.

(Credit: Session Manager)

The last new-to-me add-on that I still use is Session Manager. Besides resurrecting crashed browsing sessions, it also lets you save current ones and keep them for later. You can configure how the sessions are named, change the default saved-sessions’ location, encrypt saved-session data, and configure how post data gets saved, even from encrypted Web sites. Since each session file created by Firefox includes text data, cookies, and history, as well as tabs, being able to recreate all that information effortlessly is incredibly helpful and shouldn’t be underestimated.

If you’ve got an extension that you’ve discovered in the past year and can’t imagine how you got by without it, tell me in the comments below.

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patiwat writes “Newly installed Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s first act was to send a spam SMS to tens of millions of Thai cell phone subscribers. The message, signed ‘Your PM,’ urged people to help him solve the Thai political crisis and respond with their postal code at a charge of 3 baht (10 US cents). The new premier was criticized for violating privacy regulations.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Arn / MacRumors:

Multi-Touch Swipe Gestures for iPhone Keyboard  —  Despite the Christmas holiday, the U.S. Patent Office continues to be churning away and has revealed this interesting new patent application from Apple called Swipe Gestures for Touch Screen Keyboards.  The patent application is authored by Wayne Westerman.

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For early adopters who have already taken delivery of their shiny new Cowon S9, they’ve already sucked down one firmware update to fix some of the more obvious issues. Now, there’s round number two (v2.06) to endure. The company has loosed the second firmware update for its just birthed PMP, with this one adding JPG album art support (for files with the .jpg extension) and fixing a bug that occasionally caused a system reboot after the “remove hardware from PC” message appeared. Most notable, however, is the new inclusion of Bluetooth speaker support, meaning that this device can now stream tunes to BT-enabled sound systems sans cabling or any other black magic. Tap the read link to get your download a-goin’.

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Cowon S9 firmware update adds Bluetooth speaker support originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Dec 2008 23:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The idea of a white Christmas may seem magical for many of us, but Science Daily asks you to “spare a thought for a team of scientists forgoing the festive season to take part in a novel campaign being carried out in one of the most inhospitable regions on Earth to support ESA’s CryoSat mission.” Plenty of people cooped up in the upside-down parts seem to find good ways to amuse themselves; I am especially fond of this introduction to Condition One weather, and Cops McMurdo. If anyone is reading this down there, I hope you’re having a nice holiday.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Nintendo will start offering video in their Wii console soon. We can only hope that this announcement means that some kind of massive storage accessory is coming. However, there’s no much info so…

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Yesterday, I wrote up my 10 favorite iPhone apps of 2008 with a note that I wasn’t including any games on the list because there were far too many good ones and they should probably get their own list. Today, I bring you that list.

This was a tough one to narrow down to 10, I have nearly 40 games that I keep on my iPhone right now, and I wouldn’t keep anything on there that I don’t enjoy playing. Just as with yesterday’s list, it’s important to note that these are my 10 favorite games on the iPhone and not necessarily what I think are the 10 best, because that’s something that’s simply too hard to rate with so many different kinds of games out there in the App Store.

I think it’s also worth noting that while on yesterday’s app list almost all of the apps I chose were free, on the games list only one of them (Aurora Feint) is really free — and it was just free to get users addicted so they could release paid sequels. Half of the games on this list are $4.99 or over, which once again says to me that there’s a future for higher priced quality apps in the App Store.

Counting down:

10. Booty Blocks — A recently released game in the vein of Tetris, although I like it more than actual Tetris for the iPhone because it’s a bit different and has some flare. The game’s pirate theme (hence the “booty” in the title) makes for some nice graphics and a fun musical score. Booty Blocks also allows you to use the iPhone’s touch screen and accelerometer to move pieces around. You can even move them after they’ve been placed. The game is $1.99. [iTunes Link]

9. Pop — When the App Store first launched over the summer, a few developers came out with games that simply involved popping bubbles on the screen. Those were fun for about 10 minutes. Pop takes what was fun about those games and turns it into a real game, with strategy. You are still trying to pop bubbles, but you’re doing so in a set period of time and there are certain bubbles you want to pop more than others. It’s very addicting. The game is $4.99, but there’s also a lite version, which is free. [iTunes Link]

8. Fieldrunners — It’s a tower defense game for the iPhone, but it has better graphics than its main competitor, TapDefense. Of course, TapDefense is free, while Fieldrunners is $4.99, but Fieldrunners is more addicting to me because it plays a bit faster as well. Still, when I sit down to play it, I find it hard to stop in under 30 minutes. The upcoming version 1.2 from developers Subatomic Studios also promises new towers. The game is $4.99. [iTunes Link]

7. Tap Tap Dance — It’s a tough call whether to include Tap Tap Revenge or Tap Tap Dance, but I went with the latter simply because while I think Tap Tap Revenge is a pretty nice Guitar Hero port for the iPhone, Tap Tap Dance is more like Dance Dance Revolution, but different because you use your hands and the iPhone’s accelerometer. The music, from the likes of Daft Punk and The Chemical Brother is good and make this game very addicting. The game is $4.99. [iTunes Link]

6. Aurora Feint: The Beginning — This was probably the first iPhone game that I was really addicted to. It’s a puzzle game not unlike Tetris, but it adds in an element of a role playing. As you progress through levels, you buy power-ups and new equipment to help you in later rounds. The game also smartly uses the accelerometer, making you rotate the device to break certain blocks ups. (The developers have also since released a few sequels.) The game is free. [iTunes Link]

5. I Love Katamari – It may surprise some people to see this game on the list because there were some serious bugs that hampered gameplay when Namco first launched the game on the iPhone. But I’m happy to report that those have all been ironed out with an update and now the game runs very smoothly. A game like Katamari just seems perfect for the iPhone and iPod touch with their accelerometers, so I’m glad it works now. The game is $7.99. [iTunes Link]

4. Enigmo — The first game I actually paid money for on the iPhone that I still play to this day. I like it because it reminds me of the classic game Lemmings, but it’s different because it’s all about using the iPhone’s touch screen to manipulate drops of water (and sometimes fire) to reach their endpoint goals. The game is currently $1.99 — which is a good deal because I paid $9.99 for it back when it was released. [iTunes Link]

3. SimCity — It’s another game with bugs (there are some serious load time issues), but when you get past those, it’s pretty remarkable how well EA was able to take a pretty complex game, basically SimCity 3000, and put it on the iPhone. It’s just as much of a time suck on the iPhone as it was on the computer — I’ve sat down and played it for several hours at a time without realizing it. And once you get used to the touch controls, it’s amazing how well they work. The game is $9.99. [iTunes Link]

2. Frenzic — There may not be a more addicting original game on the iPhone. The key to Frenzic is that it’s fast-paced — if you think it’s really easy at first, just wait till you progress. While the game isn’t as complex as some of the others on this list, it’s the one game I turn to if I have a few minutes to kill and want to play something really quick. Plus the game is only $1.99 right now — a must-buy. [iTunes Link]

1. Rolando — I’ve already written about why I think it’s the first truly great iPhone game, and based on the amount of press coverage and praise it’s gotten, I’m sure many of you agree now. Rolando is a great game because it was built to use all of the things the iPhone and iPod touch have to offer. It uses the touch screen, multi-touch, the accelerometer and has the great iSave feature which lets you exit the game at any point and have your position saved just in case you get, you know, a call, on what is after all your cell phone. Rolando will be the proof that well crafted, iPhone-specific higher-priced games can succeed. It sets a new standard. The game is $9.99. [iTunes Link]

Honorable Mentions: Amateur Surgeon, Antimatter, BurnBall, Centipede, Dactyl, de Blob, Deep Green, Dizzy Bee (1 and 2), Dr. Awesome, Lego Batman, Maze Finger, Monopoly, Scrabble, Sudoku, Topple and Trace.

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A nasty rumor had been making the rounds about Intel, something along the lines of it wouldn’t sell its Atom CPUs to netbook vendors without its 945 chipset in tow. If true, the move would essentially act to block graphical entrants such as NVIDIA from making a move into the netbook GPU space. An unnamed Intel spokesman chimed in on the whispers today by outrightly denying the claims, telling InternetNews that “there is nothing preventing vendors from using [NVIDIA's] Ion platform; [Intel] sells Atom as a standalone processor, or as a package with chipset.” ‘Course, it’s not like Intel hasn’t pulled similar tricks before, and to say that the chip maker’s relationship with NVIDIA has been dysphoric is understating things dramatically. Still, it sounds as if the company’s in the clear here, but we’re still waiting to see a wicked Atom + Ion combo in a shipping product before we believe the hatchet is entirely buried.

Filed under: Laptops

Intel put the kibosh on anti-Ion hubbub, welcomes standalone Atom sales originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Dec 2008 19:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WASHINGTON (AP) ??? A proposal to create hundreds of new Internet domain names as alternatives to “.com” has suffered a setback as a key U.S. government agency warned that the plan might not benefit consumers or promote competition.

The Internet’s key oversight body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, had planned to start accepting bids for new Internet suffixes early next year in what would be the first major overhaul of a decades-old addressing system.

But in a letter sent to ICANN last week, a top Commerce Department official, Meredith Baker, said it wasn’t clear “whether the potential consumer benefits outweigh the potential costs.” Baker heads the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

The NTIA letter argues that before introducing new domain names, ICANN needs to ensure that the plan would not jeopardize the stability and security of the Internet addressing system. And it says ICANN needs to examine whether companies operating the new domain name registries would have too much market power, including the power to raise domain name prices, and whether there should be more competition in the renewal of domain names.

Michael Palage, an adjunct fellow with the free-market think tank Progress & Freedom Foundation, said consumer protection is a top concern of trademark holders, including many big corporations, which often buy up multiple Internet addresses containing their company names to safeguard their brands, avoid consumer confusion and head off cybersquatters, phishing attacks and fraud.

Addressing concerns that ICANN could censor some controversial domain names, the NTIA letter also directs the organization to focus on technical functions related to the managing the Internet addressing system and “not on matters more appropriately addressed by governments, such as adjudication of morality, public order and community objections.”

In June, ICANN approved new guidelines to make it easier for organizations and groups to propose and obtain new suffixes that could cover locations such as “.nyc” and “.berlin” or industries such as “.bank.” The organization now is crafting the specifics and had invited outside groups, including NTIA, to comment.

Although the U.S. cannot technically dictate ICANN policy, it has significant sway over the organization since ICANN handles administration of the domain name system under a contract with the U.S. government. As a result, ICANN cannot add any new domain names without U.S. approval.

It’s unclear, though, whether the NTIA’s criticisms would derail ICANN’s plan given the upcoming change in administration, said Milton Mueller, a Syracuse University professor who is a member of a group representing universities and other non-commercial domain name users.

Still, the NTIA letter does mark the latest evolution in the relationship between ICANN and the U.S. government, which took steps to hand off technical coordination of Internet addressing system to the organization in the late 1990s.

While ICANN has been seeking to assert its independence in the face of international concerns that it remains an instrument of the U.S. government, the U.S. still wants to make sure that as ICANN’s oversight role grows it doesn’t take actions that might threaten the stability and security of the Internet or the interests of business and consumers, Palage said.

ICANN did not respond to a request for comment.

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The giving souls over at Engadget HD aren’t done yet, as they’ve got a VUDU movie set-top-box awaiting a new owner. If your unwrapping ceremony this morning wasn’t all gumdrops and lollipops like you had hoped, there’s hardly a better way to remedy the situation than to bring home an on-demand movie box. Head on over and drop your name in the hat — Kris Kringle just might have a little somethin’ (more) for ya.

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Engadget HD’s Holiday Giveaway: win a VUDU movie set-top-box! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Dec 2008 18:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BOSTON (AP) — GateHouse Media Inc. filed a copyright infringement lawsuit Monday against the parent company of The Boston Globe, claiming the newspaper’s new community Web sites use online material from GateHouse without permission.

In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Boston against The New York Times Co., GateHouse claimed Boston.com violated copyright and trademark laws by “reproducing, displaying and distributing” its newspaper headlines and original material published on its “Wicked Local” Web sites.

GateHouse, one of the nation’s largest publishers of community newspapers, alleges in the lawsuit that Boston.com offers links that send readers directly to “Wicked Local” stories — bypassing ads posted on home pages that help fund the operation.

GateHouse says it set up electronic security measures to prevent users with a certain Boston.com address from scrapping content off its Web sites.

Still, GateHouse alleges, Boston.com intentionally circumvented those measures.

Based in New York’s Rochester suburb of Fairport, GateHouse Media owns 97 daily newspapers, 400 other publications and 260 related Web sites reaching more than 10 million people in 21 states. Its Massachusetts publications include The Patriot Ledger, The Enterprise, the Newton TAB and the Daily News Tribune of Waltham.

Last month, Boston.com launched three “Your Town” community Web sites that cover the cities of Newton, Waltham and Needham. The Globe said that the three were the first in a series of “hyperlocal” Web sites to be launched.

GateHouse, however, claims that the New York Times Co. unit is building community-oriented sites that rely on the work of GateHouse journalists.

New York Times Co. spokeswoman Catherine Mathis, however, dismissed GateHouse Media’s claims as “without merit,” adding that the company believes it will prevail in the case.

“Boston.com’s local pages, like hundreds of other news sites, aggregate headlines and snippets of relevant stories published on the Web,” Mathis said in a statement. “Far from being illegal or improper, this practice of linking to sites is common and is familiar to anyone who has searched the Web.”

The lawsuit alleges that Boston.com displays copyrighted content from GateHouse publications, The Boston Globe and other blogs in a way that creates a false impression that it has been licensed, authorized and endorsed to use the content.

People who click on Boston.com links are taken without notification to the “Wicked Local” report, increasing the potential for confusion on the source of the original report, according to the complaint.

The company is seeking an injunction against Boston.com, together with compensatory and punitive damages.

Dan Kennedy, an assistant journalism professor at Northeastern University who also runs the Media Nation blog that is tracking the lawsuit, said the case could have national implications because it could settle questions on how much content one news organization can use from another.

“What the Globe is doing is what everybody says newspapers should be doing,” said Kennedy, referring to aggregating content like Google News.

Kennedy, however, said the Boston.com model is different since it puts up advertising, unlike Google News.

GateHouse, he said, can make an argument that Boston.com is profiting from GateHouse journalism.

“It will be interesting to see the outcome,” Kennedy said. “This is one of the most important stories about the newspaper business right now.”

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Kevin C. Tofel / jkOnTheRun:

Sony’s Netbook “fits in a pocket”, Might Not Fit Netbook Category  —  Actually, Sony has this “P-series” VAIO on their notebook section in the SonyStyle store, so maybe netbook isn’t the right term.  Just ask Psion, if you don’t believe me.  Eagle-eye reader Jose was browsing Sony’s online storefront …

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There’s no doubt about it—working sucks. I can only hope that my weekly gadget lists helped you avoid doing your job for a few minutes at least. Here are ten of the best installments.
•10…

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