Für Fans von Blockbuster-Games war 2011 ein Killer-Jahr. Die Game-Redaktion von 20 Minuten Online verrät, bei welchen Spielen ihre Partnerinnen die Nebenrolle spielten.
Gerüchte um Urlaubssperren bei Apple-Zulieferern heizen die Spekulationen um das neue iPad an. Laut chinesischen Medien könnte es bereits im Februar kommen - auch als Mini-Ausgabe.
Die italienische Wettbewerbsbehörde hat Apple zu einer Geldbusse verdonnert. Das Unternehmen habe die Kunden mit seinen Angaben zur Garantie in die Irre geführt.
45 Millionen Views, Tendenz steigend: Der mit Abstand meistgeschaute Werbe-Clip 2011 auf YouTube kommt aus dem Hause Volkswagen.
Die Social-Network-Seite Facebook ist in Vietnam unerwünscht, ihr Gründer Mark Zuckerberg aber willkommen. In seinem Weihnachtsurlaub übte sich der 27-Jährige im Büffel-Reiten.
Das mobile Fernsehen geht in die nächste Runde: Neu können 38 Sender rund um die Uhr auf dem iPhone und dem iPad angeschaut werden - Recording inklusive, auch ohne Internetzugang.
Ob ultrabrutaler Shooter oder herziges Tierspiel: Zu Weihnachten werden Game-Entwickler festlich und bauen versteckte Gags in die Spiele ein. Wir zeigen die besten.
James Bond würde vor Neid erblassen: Der «Smart Baby Monitor» ist das perfekte Überwachungsgerät. Es lässt sich über das iPhone steuern - egal wo man sich gerade befindet.
Das IT-Jahr stand im Zeichen des an Krebs gestorbenen Apple-Übervaters Steve Jobs. 2011 brachte aber auch überraschende Kooperationen und einen Supercomputer, der (fast) alle an die Wand spielte.
Anonymous-Aktivisten haben 4000 Kreditkartendaten und streng geheime Kundenlisten entwendet. Die Online-Aktivisten wollten eine Million Dollar abzweigen und als Weihnachtsspenden verteilen.
Gehackte Game-Netzwerke, Datenschnüffeleien und massenhaft Fortsetzungen altbekannter Games: Die Spielindustrie hat ihre Unschuld definitiv verloren.
Apple will vor Gericht ein europaweites Verkaufsverbot für das überarbeitete Galaxy-Tablet erwirken. Doch die zuständige deutsche Richterin winkt ab.
In den USA ist der Selbstmord-Knopf auf Facebook Tatsache. Das Warnsystem könnte auch in der Schweiz hilfreich sein. Denn beim Thema Suizid ist etwas zu tun immer besser als nichts zu tun.
Der verstorbene Apple-Gründer erhält knapp drei Monate nach seinem Tod einen der wichtigsten Preise der Musikindustrie - für die Erfindung des iPod.
Das Angebot an Online-Sendern ist riesig, doch die Schweizer sind Online-Radio-Muffel. Dies zeigt die erste umfassende Studie zum Webradio-Konsum.
Der Firefox-Entwickler Mozilla hat seine wichtigste Einnahmequelle gesichert. Google bleibt die Standard-Suche für Hunderte Millionen Firefox-Nutzer rund um den Globus.
Die Swisscom investiert mehrere hundert Millionen ins Handy-Netz. An stark frequentierten Orten wird die Kapazität ausgebaut. Der UMTS-Nachfolger LTE steht vor der Tür.
Lichtschwert oder Feuerkugel? Wagen wir einen Vergleich zwischen dem Rollenspiel-Veteranen «World of Warcraft» und dem vielversprechenden Herausforderer «Star Wars The Old Repulic».
Der Computerkonzern lehnt sich mit vielversprechenden Prognosen aus dem Fenster. Demnach steuern wir das Handy schon bald mit Gedankenkraft und müssen uns kein einziges Passwort mehr merken.
Wenn Japaner vor Elektronikläden campieren, muss eine neue Spielkonsole im Anmarsch sein. Für Sonys portable Playstation Vita standen sich in Tokio Hunderte Gamer die Füsse platt.
astroengine writes "Although we have an entire universe to seek out the proverbial alien needle in a haystack, perhaps looking in our own backyard would be a good place to start. That's the conclusions reached by Paul Davies and Robert Wagner of Arizona State University, anyway. The pair have published a paper in the journal Acta Astronautica detailing how SETI could carry out a low-cost crowdsourcing program (a la SETI@Home) to scour the lunar surface for alien artifacts, thereby gaining clues on whether intelligent aliens are out there and whether they've paid the solar system a visit in the moon's recent history."
New submitter FSWKU writes "Courtesy of Penny-Arcade, Paul Christoforo of Ocean Marketing provides a perfect example of what not to do when interacting with customers, especially if you are doing so on behalf of another company. There's name dropping, an ego trip worthy of Charlie Sheen, and even what appears to be a promise to commit libel. Other outlets are already picking up the story and running with it, and an examination of Ocean Marketing's website has generated accusations of plagiarism."
jrepin writes "There is a problem with proprietary, closed software, which makes Rick Falkvinge, the founder of the first Pirate Party, a bit uneasy: 'We get a serious democratic deficit when the citizens are not able to inspect if the computers running the country's administrations are actually doing what they claim to be doing, doing all that and something else invisibly on top, doing the wrong thing in the wrong way at the wrong time, or doing nothing at all. ... In the debate around the American Stop Online Piracy Act, American legislators have demonstrated a clear capability and willingness to interfere with the technical operations of American products, when doing so furthers American political interests regardless of the policy situation in the customer’s country."
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's weak share in the mobile phone market can be attributed to its mishandling of industry politics, not inferior technology or features, according to ex-Windows Phone evangelist Charlie Kindel. Microsoft's traditional strategy of going over the heads of hardware vendors to meet the needs of consumers and application developers does not work in the phone market, says Kindel, where the handset makers and carriers have the biggest say in determining the winners (Apple is an exception). Not everybody agrees with Kindel's analysis. Old-timers may remember Kindel, who recently resigned from Microsoft, from his days as developer relations guru for COM/OLE/Active-X."
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Here's a good article about how playing politics with science puts our country at risk — a review of Shawn Otto's book Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America. Today's policy-makers, Otto shows, are increasingly unwilling to pursue many of the remedies science presents. They take one of two routes: deny the science, or pretend the problems don't exist."
smitty777 writes "The two washing machine sized satellites from the GRAIL program (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory) launched in September are set to enter lunar orbit this weekend. As can be seen from this nifty infographic, the probes will monitor the gravitational field from orbit via the precise distance measurements of microwaves passing between the two satellites. From the article: 'The twin spacecrafts are named Grail-A and Grail-B. Grail-A will enter the moon's orbit on New Year's Eve, Grail-B will follow on New Year's Day. "The purpose of the GRAIL mission is to obtain gravity data on the Moon. And with that data, the scientists are able to determine the structure of the lunar interior, from crust to core," said David Lehman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.' This is similar to the earlier GRACE project, which not only helped map out the gravity field of the Earth, but also helped map drought conditions in the U.S."
Velcroman1 writes "Generally, at the end of the year, predictions stream forth as to how this or that new technology will transform the world in the next 12 months. Just before Christmas, IBM announced computerized mind reading was just around the corner — sometime after 2017, that is. But on the whole, experts and analysts don't see a whole lot of innovation coming out of the U.S. anytime soon. Instead, they see sluggishness. 'We'll have to wait for consumer spending to go up before the 'flying surfboard' arrives,' said Chris Stephenson, co-founder of Seattle consulting firm ARRYVE. 'Bigger innovation labs and companies are holding back on numerous innovations until they can properly monetize them.'"
It's a rumor that goes back years (here's one example from this summer) that Apple is planning to produce dedicated TV sets branded with its own name; the main question seems to be when. DigiTimes (hat tip to CNet) is reporting that component-maker sources say that Apple has begun the process by ordering parts that hint at an offering next year of Apple TV sets (as opposed to Apple TV) in 32" and 37".
First time accepted submitter nzyank writes "The other day I bravely (foolishly?) volunteered to conduct a video game development workshop at my boys' HS. This in Smallsville, Vermont with an average graduating class size of about 20. The idea is to meet once a week and actually create a game, start to finish. It will be open to would-be programmers, designers, artists, etc. I worked on a bunch of AAA titles back in the '90s, but I'm pretty much out of touch nowadays and I'm trying to figure out the best approach. The requirements are that it has to be one of either Windows/XBox or Android, since those are the platforms that I am current on. It has to be relatively simple for the kids to get up and running quickly, and it needs to be as close to free as possible. Teaching them to use stuff like Blender, C#, C++, Java, XNA, OpenGL and the Android SDK is probably a bit much. I was thinking of something like the Torque Engine, but they want $1000 for an academic license, which is never going to happen. I simply don't know what's out there nowadays and could really use some suggestions."
cswilly writes with the news that China's satellite navigation system, called Beidou, has been successfully activated. "With ten satellites now, 16 in 2012, and 35 in 2020, China is making damn sure they are independent of the U.S. military's lock on GPS. According to the article, 'Beidou, or 'Big Dipper,' would cover most parts of the Asia Pacific by next year and then the world by 2020.'" The BBC also has slightly more detailed coverage.
ananyo writes "Strange fossils from Doushantuo in China, have turned out to be 570-million-year-old snapshots of an organism caught in the act of reproducing. Researchers have used three-dimensional X-ray scanning techniques to see that the fossils contain nuclei-like structures — and one even has the dumb-bell shape of a modern nucleus about to replicate. The fossils have divided palaeontologists for over a decade. It now seems likely they are fossils of creatures similar to modern single-celled microorganisms called mesomycetozoeans that are neither animals nor bacteria."
K7DAN writes "The AP reports that Mexico's drug cartels have built their own sophisticated two-way radio communications system using computer-controlled linked and local repeaters on mountain tops, walkie-talkies, mobile transceivers and and base stations. The solar powered system covers vast areas of Mexico that are unserved by cellular phone network and has the advantage of being more difficult to trace." This article adds much more substance about the technology than was included in the report several weeks ago of the seizure of thousands of this network's components; from the description in this article, the earlier headline overstated the case by saying that the network had therefore been "shut down."
QwkHyenA writes "I've recently cancelled my Linux Magazine subscription because they went paperless. I know, I'm a heartless geek and should be 'shunned,' but I enjoy the unplugged sensation of reading paper periodicals. What sort of magazines are out there that still are delivered via USPS that will scratch my Engineering, Coder, System Administrator and 3D Printer itch?"
As new submitter kulnor writes, "Hexagon, a cold war secret project around spy satellites to monitor USSR was declassified last September." kulnor excerpts from the AP story as carried by Yahoo, outlining how more than 1,000 people in and around Danbury, CT kept mum about the nature of their employment: "'For more than a decade they toiled in the strange, boxy-looking building on the hill above the municipal airport, the building with no windows (except in the cafeteria), the building filled with secrets. They wore protective white jumpsuits, and had to walk through air-shower chambers before entering the sanitized 'cleanroom' where the equipment was stored. They spoke in code.' As more and more WWII and cold war secrets are declassified, we learn about amazing technological feats involving hundreds of people working in secrecy. I wonder what will emerge in a few decades around modern IT, the Internet, hacks, and the like." Every time I visit Oak Ridge, TN, I am amazed by the same phenomenon of successful large-scale secrecy.