New 'Call of Duty' blasts last year's sales record (AP) : Technet

New 'Call of Duty' blasts last year's sales record (AP)
Cisco's shortfall an omen for rest of tech world (AP)
Companies yank cord on residential phone books (AP)
More evidence of revamped Nexus phone spotted (Ben Patterson)
Don’t hold your breath for stand-alone 3-D Blu-ray of ‘Avatar’ (Ben Patterson)
Leaked Target Black Friday ad includes $298 40-inch TV, $99 Blu-ray player (Digital Trends)
Remains of the Day: Itâ€™s on like Genghis Khan? (Macworld)
Google (Investor's Business Daily)
TV Execs: Social Media Influence Still Anecdotal (PC World)
Which games would gaming icons bring to a deserted island? (Digital Trends)
Facebook vs. Google and the Battle for Identity on the Web [OP-ED] (Mashable)
Developer wants iPad to work like video game consoles, iPhones like controllers (Appolicious)
Cloud Execs: Traditional Vendors Slow Adoption (PC World)
Apple Updates Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server (NewsFactor)
Zombie Virus Infecting Phones in China Costs You $300,000 a Day (PC World)
Google Releases Data Cleanser (PC World)
Newsweek and Daily Beast agree merger: report (Reuters)

New 'Call of Duty' blasts last year's sales record (AP)

Posted: 11 Nov 2010 04:25 PM PST

By BARBARA ORTUTAY, AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay, Ap Technology Writer – Thu Nov 11, 7:25 pm ET

NEW YORK – "Call of Duty: Black Ops" blasted entertainment records this week by raking in $360 million in its first 24 hours on sale, a dramatic and lucrative indication that video games have cemented their place as mainstream entertainment on a par with movies, books and music.

For the hordes of devoted fans who waited at midnight Monday to get their hands on the military shooter, this is hardly a surprise. For them, popping the new "Call of Duty" into a game console is the equivalent of turning on the TV to watch the Super Bowl or sitting back with a tub of popcorn to watch the latest blockbuster movie.

But while movies happen at you, video games allow the user to affect the story's outcome. That hands-on experience and interactions with other players fit the emerging social-media era where consumers demand a voice in whatever they do.

Across two years, with a budget well in the tens of millions of dollars, the developers of "Black Ops" created a world that immerses players in Cold War-era battles with settings ranging from 1960s Cuba to Vietnam and the Soviet Union.

Its intricate graphics and details — down to the gruesome sound a knife makes when pulled from an enemy's neck — are amplified in players' homes through big-screen TV sets and powerful speakers.

In one mission, which takes place with John F. Kennedy in the White House before the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, players must shoot their way through Havana to assassinate a young Fidel Castro.

Cuba state-run media has leveled harsh criticism at the game, calling it "doubly perverse" by glorifying assassination and stimulating "sociopathic attitudes in North American children and adolescents."

"What the United States couldn't accomplish in more than 50 years, they are now trying to do virtually," said an article on Cubadebate, a state-run news website.

Though game developers see their creations as art, not everyone agrees. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments over a California law that seeks to ban the sale of ultra-violent video games to minors. Parents' groups and politicians say games should be regulated like firearms and tobacco rather than like books and movies, which are protected by the First Amendment. A ruling is expected next year.

Many liken these games to movies — and it's an apt comparison. Along with the hyper-realistic cinematic scenery and surprise plot twists, there are well-known actors — including Gary Oldman, Ed Harris and Sam Worthington — lending their voices to the game's main characters. Also, the motion-capture technology used to track actors' bodies is the same that was used in "Avatar."

Activision Blizzard Inc. sold 5.6 million units the day "Call of Duty" went on sale, according to the company. Its predecessor, "Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2," sold 4.7 million copies in 24 hours to reap $310 million on its first day of sale last year. Within a week, it made $550 million.

"Not too many years back it would have been unfathomable that the biggest entertainment launch would be a video game two years in a row," said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing.

No longer. Today, such games as "Call of Duty," "Grand Theft Auto" and "Halo" all fit into the blockbuster category, and with each sequel they only get bigger. Production budgets for these games rival those of big-screen movies, as does the marketing push behind them.

"You are delivering not just a gaming experience but a cinematic experience as well," Hirshberg said. "The characters are emerging as the protagonists of the story."

The video game audience has expanded considerably in the last five years, reaching women, young children and even senior centers. But the people who flock to "Call of Duty" and other shooters are still primarily young men, just not as young as some would think. The average U.S. game player is 34 years old, according to the Entertainment Software Association.

A big part of the appeal of "Call of Duty" is its multiplayer feature, meaning gamers can fight against someone across the country or on the other side of the world.

"Everyone thinks that games are these solitary things," said Patrick Markey, a Villanova University professor who studies video games. "But now, hooked up to the Internet, it's friends and strangers we are playing with."

"Black Ops" went on sale Tuesday in North America and the U.K. It costs $60 and works on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 gaming consoles, and PCs. With that cost, games have an easier time setting dollar sales records than much less expensive movies or music.

The latest "Call of Duty" game broke records set by its predecessor a year ago. The $360 million in North American and U.K. sales on the first day is higher than any other form of entertainment — even beating box office sales of top movies in those markets over the entire opening weekend.

The game is rated M for mature — meaning it's not meant for kids under 17. It's bloody, to be sure, but new media professor Charles Palmer says that's not the main appeal.

"It's the challenge," said Palmer, who teaches at the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology. "It's one of those areas that thrills and excites people."

Sports games, such as "Madden," from Electronic Arts, are also popular, as are music simulators such as "Guitar Hero." But shooters in the style of "Call of Duty" continue to be the most popular.

"There is a DNA-level curiosity about and attraction to battle," Hirshberg said. "That has been a staple of the entertainment industry — movies, television, books and fiction — forever. And the same is true for video games. 'Call of Duty" has delivered perhaps the gold standard experience of battle."

Cisco's shortfall an omen for rest of tech world (AP)

Posted: 11 Nov 2010 03:08 PM PST

By JORDAN ROBERTSON, AP Technology Writer Jordan Robertson, Ap Technology Writer – Thu Nov 11, 6:08 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – A gloomy outlook from Cisco Systems Inc. is shaking some investors' faith in the strength of the technology industry's recovery.

Corporations have loosened their purse strings after slashing their budgets. Some governments have poured money into stimulus-fueled technology projects. Consumers are starting to snap up cell phones and gadgets again after backing off in the past few quarters.

But Cisco revealed severe slowdowns in spending by state and local governments in the U.S. and by governments in Japan and Europe. That has investors worried that other companies will show similar trends when they report their next earnings.

Cisco is a soothsayer of sorts for the technology world because it is the world's No. 1 maker of computer networking equipment, and its quarterly results lag others' by a month, meaning it includes an extra month of sales that most other companies haven't reported yet.

Cisco's stock got clobbered Thursday, and investors lopped off a sixth of Cisco's market value, annihilating $23 billion in shareholder wealth. The sell-off drove the tech-laden Nasdaq down, too.

Shaw Wu, an analyst with Kaufman Bros., said Cisco's results raise concerns about the level of information-technology spending in the months ahead.

"The economic environment is still very difficult," he said. "Unemployment remains high. That hasn't been solved."

He added that "one quarter is too early to call a trend, but it definitely raises a red flag."

Cisco's results Wednesday provided buzzkill for an industry that has become accustomed to signs that a strong, broad recovery in technology spending is under way. The market's reaction was so forceful because the trends Cisco has spotted contradict the sentiment expressed by other technology heavyweights.

Many other companies have raised their guidance recently. Intel Corp., EMC Corp., Xerox Corp. and IBM Corp. all offered reassuring signs about their respective industries and painted the picture of a slow but steady rise in companies' willingness to pay for new computers, equipment and services.

Then along came Cisco, whose networking products help manage the flow of Internet and other data traffic and are critical parts of the backbone of the Internet. Cisco is now calling for revenue for the November-January period to rise just 3 percent to 5 percent, less than half the growth rate that analysts expected.

One reason for the shortfall in state and local government spending is that costs are being cut to balance budgets. That process has taken longer in government than in corporations, which clamp down on spending almost instantly when times get tough. Cisco also had some trouble selling to Internet services providers because of lingering constraints in their budgets for capital investments. The kinks there weren't as much of a surprise as the scale of the weakness in government spending, though.

Jeff Kvaal, an analyst with Barclays Capital, wrote in a note to clients that Cisco's shares are likely to stay under pressure until it becomes clearer how much of its troubles are being caused by its losses in market share rather than macroeconomic problems — namely lowered spending by governments. He noted that Cisco's tone about public sector spending is a change from the company's message at a meeting with analysts in September.

It's not surprising that governments are cutting their budgets given pressures to slash deficits. But the size of Cisco's exposure to the downturn, as well as the sudden emergence of state and local governments as key players with the ability to swing results for a company the size of Cisco, triggered widespread worry about other companies' exposure to the same pressures.

Most companies don't break out how much business they get from state and local governments, compared with the federal government. It's generally lumped into a category of public sector spending, if it's broken out at all, so the effect on other companies might not be immediately clear when they report their results.

Two technology heavyweights slated to report their earnings in the next few weeks are Dell Inc., which reports next Thursday, and Hewlett-Packard Co., which reports Nov. 22.

Cisco shares fell $3.97, or 16 percent, to close Thursday at $20.52. Dell fell 56 cents, or 3.9 percent, to $13.93, and HP shares lost $1.06, or 2.4 percent, to $43.10. Shares in IBM, EMC and Xerox each fell by about 1 percent, while Intel rose nearly 1 percent to $21.21.

A particular worry was Cisco's acknowledgement that orders from state governments in the U.S. have been cut nearly in half in the latest quarter compared with the previous one.

Jayson Noland, an analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co., said he hadn't heard worries from Cisco resellers about the strength of those orders prior to Cisco's earnings report Wednesday for the fiscal first quarter. He noted that federal spending has remained strong, but that it now appears that states and municipalities are imposing the same kind of deep cuts that corporations imposed at the start of the recession.

"When something goes wrong in the corporate world, they lock it up quickly," he said in an interview. "I don't feel like state and local governments really act until it's the 11th hour."

The cuts are likely to spill over into other sectors beyond technology, he added. While some portion of Cisco's weaker-than-expected guidance can be chalked up to company-specific problems — such as apparent losses in market share for cable set-top boxes, which represents a small fraction of Cisco's total business — Noland said the results paint a troubling picture for other technology companies.

"Cisco is big enough, and that miss was bad enough, that it's hard to argue that it's just company-specific," he said.

Companies yank cord on residential phone books (AP)

Posted: 11 Nov 2010 11:06 AM PST

By MICHAEL FELBERBAUM, AP Business Writer Michael Felberbaum, Ap Business Writer – Thu Nov 11, 2:06 pm ET

RICHMOND, Va. – What's black and white and read all over? Not the white pages, which is why regulators have begun granting telecommunications companies the go-ahead to stop mass-printing residential phone books, a musty fixture of Americans' kitchen counters, refrigerator tops and junk drawers.

In the past month alone, New York, Florida and Pennsylvania approved Verizon Communications Inc.'s request to quit distributing residential white pages. Residents in Virginia have until Nov. 19 to provide comments on a similar request pending with state regulators.

Telephone companies argue that most consumers now check the Internet rather than flip through pages when they want to reach out and touch someone.

"Anybody who doesn't have access to some kind of online way to look things up now is probably too old to be able to read the print in the white pages anyway," joked Robert Thompson, a pop culture professor at Syracuse University.

Phone companies note that eliminating residential white pages would reduce environmental impact by using less paper and ink. It also can't hurt their bottom lines to cut out the cost of a service that rarely gets used and generates little beyond nostalgia.

The first telephone directory was issued in February 1878 — a single page that covered 50 customers in New Haven, Conn. That sheet grew into a book that became virtually a household appliance, listing numbers for neighbors, friends and colleagues, not to mention countless potential victims of prank calls.

Fewer people rely on paper directories for a variety of reasons: more people rely solely on cell phones, whose numbers typically aren't included in the listings; more listings are available online; and mobile phones and caller ID systems on land lines can store a large number of frequently called numbers.

The number of traditional land lines has been declining for the better part of the decade, and now are being disconnected at a rate of nearly 10 percent each year, according to company financial reports.

And a survey conducted for SuperMedia Inc. by Gallup shows that between 2005 and 2008, the percentage of households relying on stand-alone residential white pages fell from 25 percent to 11 percent. Dallas-based SuperMedia, which publishes Verizon's telephone directories, has instead focused on its yellow pages and paid advertising listings, and their online equivalents.

Unlike the residential white pages, the business directories printed on yellow pages are doing fine, at least according to the Yellow Pages Association. The industry trade group claims more half the people in the U.S. still let their fingers do the walking every month, and that 550 million residential and business directories are still printed every year.

As for the white pages, Steve Keschl can attest to the declining interest. As a doorman at an Upper East Side condo building since 1960, the 84-year-old has watched tenants' fading reaction to the annual delivery of New York City's white pages book — which incidentally weighs in around 3 pounds, 9 ounces, or a little more than a dozen iPhones.

These days, the books "sit here pretty long," said Keschl, who added that even he rarely uses the directory anymore. "Sometimes they take them, sometimes they don't."

While New York and other cities still have stand-alone white pages, many of the thousands of phone directories across the country include residential white pages, yellow business listings and blue government pages. Where they no longer have to print the white pages, publishers will simply slim down their combined books.

Verizon and AT&T Inc. — the two largest land line players — and others have requested exemptions from state requirements to distribute residential phone books in paper form. The directories would be available on the Internet, printed upon request or provided on CD.

"You probably have a better chance of finding a name quicker if you can just search for it in a database than try to look it up in the white pages," said Link Hoewing, Verizon's vice president of Internet and technology policy.

Since 2007, states that have granted permission to quit printing residential listings or that have requests pending include: Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

New York-based Verizon's plan is to seek regulatory approval in all 12 states where it operates land line telephone service. In total, the savings could top 17,000 tons of paper annually throughout Verizon's service areas, the company said.

The company and its printer, which uses the Verizon brand name in lieu of payment for publishing the white pages, would not provide any estimates on the cost of printing the directories or how much money would be saved by discontinuing them.

[Related: 7 hot careers that pay well]

Regulators in New York approved Verizon's request Oct. 14. There, the company estimates it will save about 3,575 tons of paper per year and conserve the energy associated with printing, binding and distributing the directories. The company's August request with Virginia regulators is estimated to save about 1,640 tons of paper annually.

Verizon plans to continue to deliver directories that contain business and governmental listings along with the consumer guide information provided in white pages directories, but the residential listings would only be available by request.

Dallas-based AT&T did not respond to repeated messages from The Associated Press seeking comment for this story.

According to filings with state regulators, AT&T said in places where it has been permitted to provide the white pages on demand, only about 2 percent of customers have requested a copy.

The residential phone book "no longer provides the same utility it once did," AT&T told Missouri regulators, who approved the company's petition for the state's larger metropolitan areas. "The vast majority of customers neither need nor use these often quite large, bound paper directories."

If the white pages are nearing their end, then Emily Goodmann hopes the directories would be archived for historical, genealogical or sociological purposes.

"The telephone directory stands as the original sort of information network that not only worked as kind of a social network in a sense, but it served as one of the first information resources," said Goodmann, a doctoral student at Northwestern University who is writing her dissertation on the history of phone books as information technology. "It's sort of heartbreaking ... even though these books are essentially made to be destroyed."

___

Associated Press writers Samantha Gross and Peter Svensson in New York contributed to this report.

___

Online:

AT&T: http://www.corp.att.com/directory/

Verizon: http://www.verizon.com/whitepages

Yellow Pages Association: http://www.ypassociation.org/

More evidence of revamped Nexus phone spotted (Ben Patterson)

Posted: 11 Nov 2010 11:49 AM PST

By Ben Patterson ben Patterson – Thu Nov 11, 2:49 pm ET

Those on the lookout for the rumored follow-up to Google's Nexus One handset got fresh grist for the mill Thursday: Best Buy posted—and promptly pulled—a link to the "Nexus S" on its website, and a purported photo of the phone leaked just a few hours later. Let the sleuthing begin!

Exhibit A: The errant Best Buy link, a screenshot of which was snapped by the alert bloggers at Phandroid before the incriminating URL was pulled offline.

The promo text for the now-yanked link read: "Pure Google—The Nexus S. Available only a Best Buy this holiday season."

A broken image next to the "Pre-order now" link (which was itself broken) contained "alt" text that said "Nexus S for T Mobile," leading Phandroid to conclude that the so-called Nexus S could be on tap for T-Mobileâ€"the same carrier that took on the original Nexus One at the beginning of the year.

Not long after the first leak, Engadget found something fishy on Best Buy's Mobile Magazine site: a promo image featuring an as-yet-unannounced Android phone with a front-facing camera, along with some interface details hinting that the phone is running on Android 2.3 "Gingerbread"—a version of Android that isn't even out yet.

Engadget even unearthed an FCC filing for what it believes to be the mystery device, before finally dredging up the coup de grace: a snapshot of what Engadget claims is the Nexus S itself, albeit with a dark screen.

The Nexus chatter began in earnest late last month, after bloggers for Android and Me claimed they'd heard word that a Samsung-built sequel to the original Nexus One phone was in the works.

Gizmodo added fuel to the fire by publishing hearsay hands-on details of the new Nexus. Gizmodo's spy claimed that the phone resembled Samsung's recent line of Galaxy S handsets, complete with a 4-inch Super AMOLED display and a front-facing camera.

A few bloggers pegged a Samsung mobile event this past Monday in New York for a possible Nexus S coming-out party, but the only handset that was revealed at the briefing was the dual-display Samsung Continuum for Verizon.

Released back in January, the original, HTC-manufactured Nexus One was touted as a "pure" Google phone built without interference from carriers.

Google hoped to break the mold with the Nexus One by selling the handset itself online, but Google ended the experiment after consumers failed to cozy up to the device. That said, the Nexus One ended up being a hit with developers looking to test their Android-based applications on the phone.

So, is there in fact a new Nexus S developer phone to go along with the release of Android 2.3 Gingerbread (which could be just days away)? Stay tuned.

Phandroid: The Nexus S is Real, Would've Been Headed for T-Mobile First

Engadget: This is the Nexus S

— Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.

Follow me on Twitter!

Don’t hold your breath for stand-alone 3-D Blu-ray of ‘Avatar’ (Ben Patterson)

Posted: 11 Nov 2010 09:45 AM PST

By Ben Patterson ben Patterson – Thu Nov 11, 12:45 pm ET

Almost a year after its theatrical debut, "Avatar" is due to arrive December 1 as a 3-D Blu-ray disc, but only if you buy a Panasonic 3-D TV to go along with it—and according to the movie's producer, it could be a long time before you can order the 3-D Blu-ray of James Cameron's blockbuster on its own.

"Avatar" producer Jon Landau says that the 3-D Blu-ray for "Avatar" will eventually become available as a stand-alone disc, but only once there are more viewers out there with 3-D TVs in their living rooms.

"We were ahead of the curve on DVD with 'Titanic' and we don't want to make that mistake again," Landau recently told HollywoodinHiDef.com owner Scott Hettrick. Landau added that when "Titanic" was initially released on DVD, in 1999, DVD players were only in about 500,000 U.S. households, resulting in "disappointing" sales.

There's already a best-selling Blu-ray disc of "Avatar" on the market, and the predictable "extended collector's edition" (chock-full of extras missing from the initial bare-bones release) is due next week—but those discs are the 2-D version of the movie.

Of course, 3-D in your den isn't just a matter of having a 3-D Blu-ray player—or a PlayStation 3, now that the console's been updated to play 3-D Blu-ray discs.

You'll also need a 3-D-capable TV set (not to mention pricey 3-D glasses), and according to industry analysts, sales have been (unsurprisingly) on the slow side.

Bundling the 3-D Blu-ray of "Avatar" with Panasonic 3-D TVs—and only Panasonic 3-D TVs, given that this is an exclusive deal—could be a "great way" to jump-start the number of 3-D TV sets in U.S. homes, Landau argues.

But as Hollywood in HiDef's Hettrick points out, there's a "chicken-or-egg" phenomenon at work here. After all, part of the reason that 3-D TV sales have been so slow is that there's so little 3-D content to watch.

Indeed, home video executives are touting next Tuesday as "Blu-ray 3-D Day" because 10 more 3-D Blu-ray discs—including "Clash of the Titans," "The Polar Express," "A Christmas Carol" and IMAX titles like "Deep Sea 3D" and "Space Station 3D"—will be hitting the market (along with one racy 3-D video, "Erotek Dimensions 3D"), Variety reports.

By the end of the year, the number of 3-D Blu-ray movies available is expected to hit a grant total of ... 24, or 36 if you count the movies that are bundled with TVs (like "Avatar").

So, when will James Cameron & Co. decide that there are enough 3-D TV and Blu-ray owners out there to justify a stand-alone release of the 3-D "Avatar" Blu-ray? Hard to say, although Hettrick notes that Panasonic's exclusivity deal with 20th Century Fox might last as long as a year.

Hollywood in HiDef: "Avatar" Blu-ray 3D details

— Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.

Follow me on Twitter!

Leaked Target Black Friday ad includes $298 40-inch TV, $99 Blu-ray player (Digital Trends)

Posted: 11 Nov 2010 05:56 PM PST

Molly McHugh Molly Mchugh – Thu Nov 11, 8:56 pm ET

Black Friday is rapidly approaching, with only two weeks for businesses nationwide to win consumers’ first go at holiday shopping. Gottadeal reported an especially tempting offer Target will be running on November 26.

If you're brave enough face the crowds, the retailer will be offering hugely discounted HDTVs and electronics. The chain is offering other sales items as well, but is rumored to be focusing the more outstanding deals on tech gifts. Here are some of the specifics the leaked memo reportedly mentions:

40-inch Westinghouse 1080p LCD HDTV (regularly $550) will be $298.
Wii bundle: Wii Fit balance board and Wii Fit Plus for $67
TomTom GPS with lifetime traffic updates for $79
8GB iPod Nano for $145 (comes with $15 gift card)
8GB iPod Touch for $225 (comes with $30 gift card)
Sony wireless Blu-ray player for $99
4GB Xbox 360 for $200 (with $50 gift card)
$4 DVDs
Canon SX120 10MP digital camera for $129
Nikon S205 12MP digital camera for $79.99
Dance Central for Xbox 360 Kinect for $49.99 (with $10 gift card)
Sony PS3 160GB Bundle with game and Blu-ray movie for $299.99

Target spokeswoman Jessica Carlson would not comment on the ad, only saying that the official word on all Black Friday sale specials will be released online November 24.

Remains of the Day: Itâ€™s on like Genghis Khan? (Macworld)

Posted: 11 Nov 2010 04:30 PM PST

Dan Moren Dan Moren – Thu Nov 11, 7:30 pm ET

The New York Times gives its stamp of approval to e-books, Steve Jobs dials 'D' for 'developer,' and Nintendo trademarks a classic catchphrase. The remainders for Thursday, November 11, 2010 are the first links of the rest of your life.

New York Times to launch bestseller list for e-books in early 2011 (Engadget)

Starting next year, The New York Times will begin publishing a bestseller list for e-books, or, as I prefer to think of it, "titles about to be most pirated."

How to get AirPrint working on Mac OS 10.6.5 (9 to 5 Mac)

If you're feeling brave, 9 to 5 Mac has instructions for supposedly enabling the missing printer-sharing part of AirPrint, using files from a pre-release of 10.6.5. You know, if you're really desperate to kill trees.

A zombie keyboard, an app-store rejection, a call from Steve Jobs and the Economy-for-iPad app (Cascade Software Corporation)

Steve Jobs calls an iOS app developer out of the blue after the guy's app is rejected for using a private API to work around a bug. Frankly, if it were me, I would have insisted upon verifying Steve's identity with a little FaceTime.

Rare original 'Apple-1' computer sold by Steve Jobs from his parents' garage goes on sale for £150,000 (Daily Mail)

Speaking of Jobs, you could own one of the very first Apple computers sold from his very own parents' garage. All you need is $241,815 to buy it at auction. Then you can put it next to your iPhone on your desk and weep at how much more powerful it is.

Nintendo seeks to trademark 'On like Donkey Kong' (CNN)

Fine, but I'm filing a trademark for "You're going to be sorry-o like Mario."

Google (Investor's Business Daily)

Posted: 11 Nov 2010 03:33 PM PST

– Thu Nov 11, 6:33 pm ET

Google (NMS:GOOG) was started with an outperform rating at Macquarie Equities, which said its search ad business will grow above industry rates, with emerging mobile services beginning to show potential.

TV Execs: Social Media Influence Still Anecdotal (PC World)

Posted: 11 Nov 2010 05:40 PM PST

Joab Jackson Joab Jackson – Thu Nov 11, 8:40 pm ET

While the television industry now considers social media involvement a necessity, the benefits of establishing a presence on Twitter, Facebook and other services haven't really been shown to include improved show ratings, according to a panel of television marketing executives at the Digital Hollywood conference in New York.

Nonetheless, social media seems to generate buzz for some television shows and may be valuable in non-quantifiable ways. And, at least for a few of the panelists, it also raises questions about the validity of traditional television ratings systems.

"If we can't actually create a direct correlation between social TV and ratings, we see what it is doing in a lot of other ways,"said Gayle Weiswasser, vice president of social media for the Discovery Channel. "Time will tell what the statistical impact is, but anecdotally it's pretty strong."

People tend to see social media as a conduit for letting television networks know the shows they like. But social network buzz around a show thus far seems to have little bearing on the show's Nielsen ratings for television, said Christy Tanner, the general manager of TVguide.com.

And in some cases, listening too closely to social media buzz can be harmful, suggested Michael Learmonth, the digital editor of Ad Age magazine. He pointed to how CBS brought back a show it had formerly cancelled, called "Jericho," based on the fervent response to its cancellation on the message boards, only to have the show not do well on its second outing.

"That was a case of them listening a little too hard to a rabid minority," he said.

The most prominent rating service, Nielsen Media Research, offers a list of the most widely watched television shows in the U.S., gathering data from a statistical sample of U.S. homes. The Nielsen ratings are widely used among television networks as the definitive guide to what shows are popular. They also influence advertising rates.

"We have all kinds of data points on popularity now that are divergent from what Nielsen would say the top shows are in America," Tanner said. The most popular show pages on the TVGuide.com site rarely correspond with Nielsen's top-rated shows. For instance, the most popular pages on TVGuide.com are "Criminal Minds" and "The Vampire Diaries," neither of which are strong showers on the Nielsen ratings.

"I can't say what I make of it, but it is a fascinating set of data," she said.

Whatever the merits of social media for the television industry, the networks consider it a necessity. Within the past few years almost every network has set up an office of some sort for social media, Tanner said.

She noted that in August 2010, TVGuide.com asked 10,000 of its users if they updated their Facebook status while watching television. About three-quarters said they did, up from 39 percent a year ago. "It shows a big shift in behavior," Tanner said.

A network must have a social media strategy of some sort for a new show, said Chad Stoller, an executive vice president with Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn (BBDO), an advertising agency that counts HBO among its clients. If a show is any good then some people will like it and other people will not like it, and conversation between the two camps will ensue in some Internet outlet.

In other words, the show will have social media presence, with or without the network's help. "You always have a community that you're going to touch and you want to warm that community up," he said.

For HBO's Blu-ray release of season two of the "True Blood" vampire show, BBDO built a downloadable app that could, with the user's permission, temporarily take over a user's Facebook account, changing the user's profile photo to one of a vampire and automatically posting scenes on the user's wall that the user watched more than once.

Whatever its influence on Nielsen, social networking has shown to have an effect in other, perhaps more indirect ways. For the second season of the show "The Real Housewives of New Jersey," the Bravo Network streamed live video from a premier party through the UStream video service.

"It became their biggest television premier event on UStream, and it was also our biggest Monday night premier," said Mari Ghuneim, a vice president of digital media for the Brave cable channel.

The social media impact seems to work best for quirky shows with a small but devoted audience, rather than the popular shows aimed at the large audiences, said Greg March, director of digital media for Wieden+Kennedy. But perhaps social media is changing altogether the notion of what is a massively popular show and what is a niche show.

"There is no possible way that Nielsen ratings are truly capturing what people are watching on television," Tanner said. "The measurement systems we have in place are seriously inadequate."

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

Which games would gaming icons bring to a deserted island? (Digital Trends)

Posted: 11 Nov 2010 08:20 PM PST

Marc Saltzman Marc Saltzman – 59 mins ago

Many a music fan has played this game – you’re sitting around with your friends at a pub or perhaps on a long road trip – and the conversation turns to what three albums you’d bring to a deserted island.

Well, what about video games? Yes, assuming there’s a console or computer, television – oh, and a little ‘ol thing called electricity – what three games of yesteryear or today would you toss in your suitcase (presuming, of course, you knew you were going there)?

Well, Digital Trends thought it would be interesting if we turned to a handful of video game luminaries of our time to ask what three titles they’d bring to a deserted isle, and why.

We caught up with eight famous game designers to find out their picks. Here are their responses – in their own words.

Warren Spector

Cliff Bleszinski

Todd Howard

Tim Willits

Will Wright

Alex Rigopulos

Ed Boon

Shinji Mikami

Also let us know in the comments section which three games you would pick if stranded on a deserted island.

Warren Spector, Junction Point Studios

Best known for: System Shock, Deus Ex, Disney Epic Mickey

The scary thing is, I think about this a lot.

1. Number one would be Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past for the NES [Nintendo Entertainment System]. While it plays the same way exactly the same way every time you play, it’s a game I play every year to refresh myself and cleanse my palette, as it’s an elegant little jewel of a game. Because I play it over and over again so I might as well bring it to the island.

2. Second game would probably be Diablo 2, because it’s still on my hard drive – that’s rare for a game of that vintage and yes, I still play it. This influential game is different every time you play, provides replayability in a very thrilling package, and it defines quality in every way.

3. My third game would be Tetris because infinite replayability — we’ve all played it on every platform that has ever existed and it’s still so state of the art. There’s lots of imitators, so why not the original. If you’re going to be stuck on an island, Tetris would provide endless amount of fun, which is what you need.

Oh, and if there’s an Internet connection, I’d bring World of Warcraft as I’d want a MMO [massively multiplayer online game], even though I’m not an MMO guy, as it means I’ve got contact with people.

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