American Airlines sues Google over keywords

Yes, another week, another tech lawsuit – this time it’s American Airlines suing Google for its keyword ad placement. American Airlines alleges that Google sells sponsored links on top and to the right of search pages that, according to American Airlines, dilutes the company’s good name and confuses the public.

American Airlines filed the massive 55-page complaint in the Northern US District Court of Texas and demands a jury trial. If it wins, the airline wants an injunction, treble damages and money to conduct a “corrective advertising campaign”.

In Google’s “AdWords” program, the company sells pay per click ads that are triggered by keywords. These ads are set along the sides and top of the search engine page and are distinctly marked as “Sponsored Links”. So a person searching for Los Angeles airline flights could get American Airlines in the center search window, but also Southwest and other airlines in the right side of the screen. Regular search engine placement is determined by Google and cannot be purchased, however many online companies attempt to boost their rankings by using search engine optimization techniques (SEO).

While Google believes the sponsored section of the search windows is distinct enough for consumers, American Airlines believes differently. According to the complaint, the airline thinks the links allows competitors to grab business from American and that they also violate trademark laws by confusing and diluting the American Airlines name. “They seek a free ride on the reputation and goodwill of another’s brand,” said American Airlines in the complaint.

A quick Google search of American Airlines currently brings up a set of sponsored links (the ones you see on the right side of the search screen) by Cheap Air Tickets and CheapnHotels. American Airlines has purchased the most prominent sponsored link location at the top center of the search window.

Google has faced similar lawsuits in the past, most notably from the GEICO auto insurance group in 2004. In that case, a federal judge ruled that the search engine company could continue selling Sponsored Links triggered by search terms.

Canon introduces EOS 40D digital SLR

With 6.5 FPS continuous shooting, a new auto focus feature and a 10.1 MP sensor, Canon's latest DSLR camera is ready to hit the market.

Canon's EOS 40D, the successor to the EOS 30D, takes significant advances over the previous model with new technology that Canon introduced earlier this year. For example, the 40D incorporates Canon's DIGIC III processor, which allows for nearly instantaneous camera boot-up and advanced color rendering.

Additionally, the 40D maintains image quality of up to ISO 1600 and a burst rate of 6.5 frames per second. According to Canon, the camera can handle up to 75 large JPEGs without pause.

The camera also uses a new auto focus system. The new platform has nine AF points, each of which can focus on horizontal and vertical planes. There's also a new button that enables auto focus immediately.

The 40D has a three inch LCD screen for image previewing, complete with grid overlays and a real-time histogram to simulate the exposure of the picture.

Canon also today launched the Wireless File Transmitter WFT-E3. Compatible with the 40D, the WFT-E3 lets users transfer pictures wirelessly to rmote FTP servers. Additionally, when connected to a GPS device, the image is tagged with its precise location.

40,000 MP3 files in your pocket

Samsung is getting more aggressive in the hard drive market: The company today announced a new 160 GB drive in a 1.8" form factor – which is often used in compact notebooks and some portable audio and video players such as the video iPod.

According to the manufacturer, the 4200 rpm Spinpoint N2 drive is targeting mainly consumer applications such as portable media players and hard drive-based camcorders (which typically top out at 60 GB today). The 2-disk, 160 GB drive has enough room to carry about 40,000 MP3 files or about 100 HD movies.

Samsung did not say when the new drives will be available and how much they will cost.

The hard drive industry is on fire these days, answering the apparent competition from flash-based solid state disk (SSD) drives, which are expected to hit capacities of 128 GB this year. Samsung is one of the key drivers in the SSD segment, but is becoming a more visible player in the hard drive market as well.

EA sends out four games for Macs

Delivering on its promise to bring more games to the Apple computer platform, Electronic Arts today shipped four new Mac titles.

Two of the titles, Need For Speed Carbon and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, will be available to consumers tomorrow. The other two, Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars and Battlefield 2142, will be held until their August 28 release date.

All four titles were released on the PC within the last year.

EA announced in June that it would begin bringing more titles to the Mac. However, the four titles announced today encountered delays beyond what EA originally expected.

EA also pledged to release Madden NFL 08 simultaneously on the PC and Mac. The Mac version is nowhere to be found. The same promise was made about Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08, which is slated to come out later this month.

Initially, the new games will be exclusive to the Apple Store and Apple.com, while EA and Apple try to attain additional retail partners.

Paramount, Dreamworks go HD DVD

The HD DVD camp today received an exclusivity commitment from two major movie studios – a welcome commitment the group needs in its battle against Blu-ray.

According to the announcement, Paramount and Dreamworks will publish home videos in HD DVD only, including titles from Paramount Pictures, Dreamworks Pictures, Dreamworks Animation Paramount Vantage, Nickelodeon Movies and MTV Films. The program will begin with the release of Blades of Glory on August 28, followed by Transformers and Shrek the Third.

Today’s announcement does not include films directed by Steven Spielberg as his films are not exclusive to either format.

The HD DVD group said that its format has "emerged as the most affordable way for consumers to watch their movies in high definition" and "offers consumers the chance to personalize the movie-watching experience, to interact with their movies and even to connect with a community of other fans."

Treatment for Internet addiction suggested

Is your computer mouse your first thought when you get up in the morning? Are you obsessed with email, MySpace or YouTube? A psychiatrist said that such behavior should be put on the same level with other extreme addictive disorders and be treated as such.

According to Dr. Pinhas Dannon, a psychiatrist from Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine, says that Internet addiction should be taken seriously and grouped together with gambling, sex addiction, and kleptomania. In a new report, he describes Internet addiction as a "pathological condition that can lead to anxiety and severe depression."

Internet addiction is currently classified by mental health professionals as an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), a mild to severe mental health condition that results in an urge to engage in ritualistic thoughts and behavior, such as excessive hand-washing or, in the case of the Internet, Web surfing. This, however, needs to change, Dannon claims. “Internet addiction is not manifesting itself as an ‘urge.’ It’s more than that. It’s a deep ‘craving.’ And if we don’t make the change in the way we classify Internet addiction, we won’t be able to treat it in the proper way,” he said.

According to the psychiatrist, especially teenagers and empty nesters are at risk to suffer from Internet addiction disorder. Diagnosis of form this condition may be difficult, he said, but stated that it will reveal itself through loss of sleep, anxiety when not online, isolation from family and peer groups, loss of work, and periods of deep depression.

Dannon believes that Internet addiction can be treated effectively, if it is viewed as any other extreme addiction. This treatment, he suggests would include medication such as Serotonin blockers and Naltrexone, which are typically used in cases of kleptomania and pathological gambling.

According to Dr. Dannon, Internet addiction is an "inevitable" product of modernization: “They are just like anyone else who is addicted to coffee, exercise, or talking on their cellular phone. As the times change, so do our addictions,” he said.

Wii movie playback unlocked

Video converting specialist X-OOM Software has released a new application that allows users to format movies that will playback on the Wii without modifying the console.

X-OOM Movies On Wii takes virtually any video format and coverts it into a unique format that, according to the software publisher, can be played back on the Wii if the video is saved to an SD card. The Wii has an SD card reader and a "photo viewing" channel on the main menu.

There are existing console modification kits that allow the Wii to play back DVD movies. However, by modding the console it becomes vulnerable to inoperability and the warranty is voided. Nintendo has so far announced no plans to bring any sort of video playback to the Wii.

The software program also contains various basic video editing features. Currently it is available in the UL for £20 ($40).

Software bug took Skype out

Skype today provided a few more information pieces about the reasons behind its massive network outage last week.

According to the company, the network outage was initially caused by a "massive restart of [its] user’s computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they rebooted after receiving a routine software update." That high number of reboots was followed by an equally high number of log-in requests, which resulted in what Skype calls a "chain reaction."

On the Skype blog, a company representative wrote that this event revealed a "previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm" which prevented Skype's "self-healing function from working quickly."

"The issue has now been identified explicitly within Skype," the representative wrote. "Skype has now identified and already introduced a number of improvements to its software to ensure that our users will not be similarly affected in the unlikely possibility of this combination of events recurring."

The company said that there were no malicious activities that impacted Skype.

Tilera announces 64-core processor

Silicon Valley startup Tilera today announced the Tile64, a processor with 64 programmable cores that, according to the company, houses ten times the performance and 30 times the power efficiency of Intel's dual-core Xeon processors.

Intel may be getting tired of hearing about products performing better than its dual-core processors targeting server and embedded, as the company describes dual-core processors, at least when it comes to performance, as last year's product. However, when there's a company claiming that it can beat Intel's last year's product by a factor of 10x and 30x, depending on discipline, it's certainly worth a look.

The Tile64 is a RISC-based processor clocked between 600 MHz and 1 GHz aiming for integration in embedded applications such as routers, switches, appliances, video conferencing systems and set-top boxes. Its manufacturer claims that the CPU solves a critical problem in multi-core scaling and opens the door to hundreds or even thousands of cores using this new architecture.

Other than for example Intel's Core architecture, which is expected to soon be running into a bottleneck caused by its centralized bus architecture (which acts as communication node between all cores), Tilera's cores can exchange data with all other cores through a "mesh" architecture. Each of the 64 tiles consists of a CPU unit, a cache unit and a switch, which can send information into four directions to neighboring "tiles". Each tile has a bandwidth of 500 Gb/s, with the Tile64's aggregate bandwidth topping out at 32 Tb/s.

Besides the fact that Tilera claims that it has untangled a data traffic mess that otherwise would have surrounded a central bus, the company has come up with an interesting and flexible cache architecture for the tiles, each of which is able to act as a fully functioning system that can run an operating system. Each tile integrates two 8 KB L1 caches (8 KB iL1, 8 KB dL1) as well as a 64 KB L2 cache. There is no L3 cache per se, but if required by the application, a software developer can utilize all L1 and L2 caches as one 5 MB L3 cache.

The result is a claimed performance that is ten times what a dual-core Xeon offers, while performance per watt is exceeding the Xeon by 30x. The manufacturer states that each tile consumes a maximum of 300 mWatt, which translates into a maximum power consumption of 19.2 watts per Tile64 chip. Still, there is enough horsepower to encode eight parallel standard definition video streams at 2 Mb/s per stream, two high definition 720p streams at 7 Mb/s each or one 1080p video stream at 20 Mb/s.

According to Tilera, programmers can get their application up and running on Tile64 "very quickly", while they mentioned that "fine-tuning" will optimize the software's performance.

Tilera said that the processor is available now. For a new entry into the market, Tilera priced its product with confidence: 10K-tray pricing is set at $435 for each Tile64 – which appears cheap, if it can replace ten Xeon processors. But in a real world environment, the processor is priced against a quad-core Xeon 5345 (2.33 GHz, 8 MB L2 cache), which currently sells for a 1K tray price of $455.

Initial customers using the processor in upcoming products include 3Com, Top Layer, Codian and GoBackTV.

Of course, every time a new processor company comes around, there is the question if there is really enough room for another player – in this case, a market where heavyweights such as Intel and Texas Instruments battle for market shares. Other than PA Semi, a relatively new microprocessor company that does not build its processor, but licenses its technology, Tilera is actually manufacturing the Tile64, which is reminiscent of the rise and fall of Transmeta.

If you have been around in this industry for some time, then you may remember that Transmeta was in "stealth mode" from 1997-2000 and reason for media reports mainly because of one famous employee, Linux inventor Linus Torvalds. Transmeta launched with great fanfare in January 2000, but never got a foot on the ground and today is struggling to survive with revenues from licensing its LongRun2 technology to companies such as NEC.

Companies such as Tilera are exposed to the problems that broke Transmeta's neck in CPU manufacturing: Microprocessor buyers today, for example, expect a track record of reliability that new companies cannot offer, buyers expect a support system, extensive manufacturing capabilities, a long-term roadmap that reveals what can be expected in terms of performance and feature set. Transmeta never made it much further than a presence in Asian markets, a few sub-notebooks on these shores as well as exotic computing solutions such as desktop clusters. Tilera, however, believes that it is competing in a different and "aggressively adopting" multi-core market in which it has the performance edge (which Transmeta never had).

During our briefing with Tilera, chief technology officer Anant Agarwal told us that he believes that the company has solved a "huge problem" of multi-core architectures and therefore has a substantial advantage: "We know how to get to hundreds of cores. This means that we are way ahead of the competition."

Playstation 3 kills HD DVD

Just a few months ago, the high-definition arena looked like we were in for a lengthy battle between Blu-ray and HD DVD. That impression surely has changed: Blu-ray is capturing the market where it counts – movie sales, which apparently are driven by Playstations making their way into the market. Will the game console break HD DVD's neck?

Well, let’s look at the market we have today.

From a general perspective, HD DVD seems to have all the pieces of the puzzle in its favor and it has a strategy that makes common sense. HD DVD (consumer electronics) players are less expensive than Blu-ray players, suggesting the technology should be adopted faster than the pricey rival. The group behind HD DVD is also pushing much more to bring new interactive features to the format.

The strategy has worked somewhat: When looking at standalone CE players, HD DVD has sold countlessly more units. Yet, some how the format continues to be trampled upon by Blu-ray in terms of movie sales. The latest estimate found Blu-ray movies outselling HD DVD by a factor of 2:1.

So, despite the fact that HD isn't quite mainstream yet, are these early numbers significant? Can it really be that a group of early adopting gamers with a console widely panned for its lack of games has dynamically shifted the home video format war? We here believe it did.

There was doubt earlier this year whether the PS3 could deliver an edge for Blu-ray or not. Now it turns out that Sony had its bet right and it looks like the PS3 could decide the format war much earlier than anticipated. HD DVD has become the struggling format that is losing supporters left and right these days.

It's a timely discussion because we're now in the very beginning stages of seeing more clues who could emerge as a winner. Target, Blockbuster, and other small chains have already cast their votes for Blu-ray, deciding not to devote retail space to HD DVD. For the average consumer, this says Blu-ray is the next format. There is no other choice. This is crucial because the long-term acceptance of a format relies heavily on the average consumer.

Movie Studio support also appears to be shifting with Disney being the latest to heavily invest into the format.

Recently revealed advantages of Blu-ray in movie sales are pretty substantial for a format war just one year in the making. However, Toshiba says standalone HD DVD players are outselling standalone Blu-ray players by a margin of four to one. That disparity raises a lot of questions, most of which can be answered with two words - Playstation 3.

According to a study commissioned by Sony in June, 72% of Playstation 3 owners have purchased a Blu-ray disc movie, and 87% said they intend to buy one in the next 12 months. Of those who said they watch BD movies on their PS3 frequently, 82% said Blu-ray is their preferred movie format.

There's some confusion about whether PS3 owners do actually make use of the console's ability to play Blu-ray movies. In stark contrast to the Sony survey, NPD released a study this week that found that 40% of next-gen gamers didn't even know the PS3 had a Blu-ray player.

However, the NPD survey included owners of any next-gen system, meaning the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360. It also included participants as young as six years old. This undoubtedly includes people who don't even care about high definition content. For die-hard PS3 fans, though, it seems there isn't even a question. They appreciate the Blu-ray functionality and probably don't even look at HD DVD.

However, HD DVD has always been ahead of the game in terms of interactive features. Some HD DVD titles can now access the Internet to download exclusive content. Users can also view picture-in-picture features for things like video commentary, storyboard comparisons, and street map overlays for car chase sequences. This is all exclusive to HD DVD. Meanwhile, there's a huge collection of Blu-ray movies that don't even have an interactive menu screen comparable to DVD.

There's no question in my mind that HD DVD is a fundamentally better product. If it were up to the true videophiles to decide, it probably would be gaining a lot more traction. However, for the first time in a heated format war, the core audience is not the video enthusiast group that's deciding. It's the much wider audience of video gamers. Even though the PS3 is the slowest-selling next-gen console, it still accounts for over three million Blu-ray players. That's a number HD DVD can't even dream of yet.

Because of the accessibility of it for people who are just barely curious of next-gen DVD formats, Blu-ray has gained steam - so much steam in fact that it has already left HD DVD in the dust.

So, what's next for HD DVD?

We believe, if the HD DVD group wants to keep any chance at a comeback is to pull back the hundreds of millions of dollars it currently pours into promotional campaigns and invest into a sweet spot in the hardware market instead.

The sales of the bare bones drive for the Xbox 360 certainly have been rather disappointing when compared to the Blu-ray/PS3 combination. The format already essentially lost its shot at adoption within a game console. Even big-name exclusive titles like The Matrix haven't really caused much of a stir for HD DVD.

So, aside from just sitting around and waiting, hoping for consumers to look its way, the only thing I can see is that HD DVD needs to expand on its other platforms. Bringing a killer app in the form of an HD DVD-based computer game, standard iuntegration into the Xbox, landing a partnership with TiVo to bring an HD DVD player to the high-definition TiVo box, or even incorporating built-in HD DVD players into a wide variety of HDTVs all could create more awareness for the format.

The clock is ticking, though, and HD DVD simply cannot just wait until the mainstream crowd decides they want to move into high definition. From today's view the battle could be decided much earlier – by video gamers. There's a lot of ground to cover, thanks mainly to Sony's foresight in combining Blu-ray with the PS3.

Yes, we also had our doubts whether Blu-ray was a good move or not. But as it looks right now, Sony got it right and the PS3 investment may pay off big time.

DriveSavers dispels common hard drive recovery myths

Freezing or hitting failed hard drives don’t work and can actually increase the damage, according to DriveSavers representatives. Known for successfully recovering data from thousands of drives a month, DriveSavers engineers have seen everything from burnt laptops to hairspray cemented floppy disks. Not wanting to pay for professional recovery, some people resort to urban legends that may sound good at first, but according to the company have no scientific basis for working.

We spoke with John Christopher, DriveSavers’ Director of PR at the SIGGRAPH convention in San Diego California. The average recover costs around $1700 and DriveSavers handles between 1300 and 1500 hard drives a month with a 90% success rate, according to Christopher. The success rate is phenomenal considering that many customers will often make thing worse before sending their drives to the company.

“Customers always do more harm. You’ve got one copy, one chance… why mess around?” said Christopher.

Hard drive head crashes and mechanical failures comprise approximately 60% of DriveSavers’ hard drive recoveries and many computer geeks have heard about freezing the drive to shrink the platters. Basically you pop the hard drive in the freezer overnight and in the morning you quickly attach it to the computer and grab all the data. The theory is that the platters will shrink while cold and become “unstuck” from the drive head or casing, but according to Christopher this is bogus.

“If anyone got it to work, it was pure luck, I can’t find any reasons why it would work and my clean room guys have never gotten it to work,” Christopher told us. He added that water can condense on the hard drive platters after it has been take out of the freezer. “Then you get water spots which is really bad,” he said.

Another myth is you can hit the hard drive when it is spinning up to force it back into working order. “Some people try smacking it on the side while the drive powers up,” said Christopher. That too doesn’t work he said.

And it doesn’t end there because some customers have tried buying identical drives on eBay and then replacing the platters in their bathrooms. “They think that their bathrooms are cleaner,” Christopher told us.

So what’s the craziest data recovery the company has ever done? Christopher said that was a loaded question because most of the drives come with unbelievable stories. The company handles drives that have been burnt in fires, drowned in floods and has even recovered the contents of a PowerBook that sunk in the Amazon River.

Christopher does remember one of the first recoveries which was a student’s only copy of her thesis from a floppy disk.

“She put the disk in her purse and sat down at a bench. She heard a hissing sound which was a Aquanet hairspray can discharging all over her floppy.”

Despite having a sticky cemented disk, DriveSavers fully recovered the document.

Speaking of floppies, the company still receives floppies for recovery. Christopher told us that people even send in ancient 20 to 30 MB RLL/MFM formatted hard drives.

Drive recovery procedures are constantly changing and Christopher told us that increasing drive capacities are making things somewhat more difficult for his engineers. One example is that people are buying computers with a terabyte or more of storage, but that space is actually spanned across two or more drives. This is a big danger is one of the drives dies and takes out the whole array.

“These computer companies don’t say that the drives are spanned. So now the customer has no clue and says ‘I didn’t know I had four drives’”

Incidentally, a very satisfied DriveSavers customer walked up to us during the interview and told us how the company saved his 160 GB hard drive. Jacob Pollack said he first took his drive to an Apple store and their reps botched the job.

“My drive had very important media files and the Apple store just reformatted my drive,” Pollack said. He added that the reps eventually referred him to DriveSavers.

GPS rival to integrate tech for global search and rescue system

Representatives of the Galileo project, Europe's effort to establish a civil global positioning system, have presented an ambitious plan to equip its satellites with a future worldwide search and rescue technology to be able to locate and communicate with individuals in emergency situations anywhere on the globe.

The new project was announced as part of the recent annual Joint Committee Meeting of COSPAS-SARSAT, an international initiative focused on a satellite system for search and rescue. Galileo representatives confirmed that their future satellite system will be equipped with transponders to relay distress signals to search and rescue organizations, as a key technology of MEOSAR (Medium Earth Orbit Search And Rescue), a future worldwide search and rescue satellite system.

What is fascinating about the Galileo system is that it promises to overcome many of the limitations satellite-based rescue systems have today.

COSPAS-SARSAT currently operates a total 12 satellites. Five "Geosar" geostationary satellites orbit in 1000 km altitude: These satellites remain fixed relative to the position of the Earth and have a relatively poor coverage of the polar regions. This deficiency is somewhat covered by seven low-Earth orbit (850 km altitude) "Leosar" satellites circling the Earth around the poles. The major downside of today's system, which went into operation almost 25 years ago on September 10, 1982, is that there can be a substantial delay in relaying distress signals, which currently can be received through beacons at 121.5 MHz and 406 MHz.

The system cannot monitor the complete surface of the Earth at any given moment and depends on a satellite passing a distress signal overhead. In addition, the satellites cannot relay a distress signal to the ground at any given time, but rather have to store the location of the emergency and send it to a base station once there is one in reach. COSPAS-SARSAT says that it can take up to one hour until a signal is received and sent back to the ground.

Also, distress signals need to have a direct line of sight to the satellites, which may not be possible in some situations, especially in accident situations where individuals are trapped in a deep valley and the surrounding terrain obscures the view to the satellite.

Galileo promises to solve these problems, providing a global coverage with about 20 – 30 satellites in medium-Earth orbit. The project promises that the system will be able to monitor even polar regions; the capability of multiple viewing angles is expected to tackle the problem of terrain blocking.

The Galileo search and rescue component will also provide a basic communication component that is absent in the current Geosar and Leosar system. While the "Forward Link Alert Service" is promised to be fully backward compatible with the current operational COSPAS-SARSAT components and interoperable with all other planned MEOSAR elements, detects activated distress beacons and notifies the appropriate rescue body, there is a second feature, called "Return Link Service". This component will allow the satellite to send a return message to the emergency beacon and let individuals know that their distress signal has been received and help is on its way.

Galileo representatives said that four satellites with search and rescue transponders will be used to demonstrate the Galileo MEOSAR services.

Activist group recommends more control over search privacy

Public policy organization The Center For Democracy & Technology (CDT) has released a report calling for an overhaul of search engine privacy policies.

Once a completely non-glamorous tool for finding content on the Internet, search engines have become the backbone for e-commerce, online advertising, and digital privacy concerns. A few snafus and an increasing desire for privacy have caused giants like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo to come under intense scrutiny.

Each of the three big sites has modified or announced plans to modify its privacy policy within the past year, but activists say there's still more work to do. Google and Microsoft, for example, plan to keep track of IP addresses that use their respective search engine for 18 months. Yahoo will keep this information for 13 months. Individual search terms on all three sites will remain in Google's history indefinitely, but will not link the searches to individual users after the user information is deleted.

As part of the report, CDT says search engines need to develop "new standards and policies that take privacy into account from the beginning."

CDT wants the government to step in because it says search sites cannot be trusted. "No amount of seul-regulation in the search privacy space can replace the need for a comprehensive federal privacy law to protect consumers from bad actotrs," writes the organization.

For the most part, CDT says long-term privacy is secured by all of the big search engines, as they delete unique identifiers to prevent linking search terms back to specific users. It's the short term that becomes worriesome, claims the organization.

Specifically, it says, search-based advertising must be closely monitored. CDT calls for search engines to offer more choices for how their data is stored and used, and that user privacy needs to come first before advertising revenue. This becomes more glaringly important when sharing data between multiple sites, owned by the same company, opens up new concerns.

"As it becomes possible to tie more and more information back to an individual user account, users should control the correlation of their account information with records of their online activities," writes CDT in its report.

Halo 3 hits one million pre-orders in record time

Microsoft's ultimate cash cow for the Xbox 360, Halo 3 has eclipsed one million pre-orders more than six weeks before the game is scheduled to be released.

The software giant announced today that it reached the one million pre-order milestone, counting all orders for Halo 3, Halo 3: Limited Edition, and Halo 3: Legendary Edition. The two special editions contain a bonus disc and physical Halo memorabilia. The $130 Legenday Edition also includes a Spartan Mjolnir Mark VI helmet and a second bonus disc. The Limited Edition title is priced at $70, with the standard version going for the standard Xbox 360 price of $60.

A million pre-orders for a video game is a rare occurrence, and Microsoft says Halo 3 has reached that mark faster than any other video game.

Halo 3, easily poised to be the top seller for the Xbox 360 this holiday season, is supposedly the final installment in the Halo series, which put Microsoft on the map with the original Xbox.

A huge promotional campaign will put Halo 3 on brand names around the country, including Burger King packaging, 7-Eleven Slurpees, and even a special edition Halo 3 G6 GXP street car from Pontiac.

The game is set to debut on September 25.

Fujitsu marching towards terabyte hard drives for notebooks

Fujitsu announced that it has developed a basic read/write capability of ideally ordered alumina nanoholes on a 2.5” magnetic disk on the way to achieve a recording density of 1 Tb per square inch.

According to a press release, Fujitsu claims to be first to have created an ordered alumina nanohole patterns, including a flying head on a rotating disk. The fabrication process uses perpendicular magnetic recording at a density of 100 nm pitch nanoholes, which is supported currently available head technology, the company said. The pitch is significantly wider than the 25 nm pitch that was announced by the company earlier this year and that is expected to be necessary to achieve a recording density of 1 Tb per square inch.

“Fujitsu is the first company to demonstrate read/write signals in individual ideally ordered alumina nanohole using a flying head for measurement," said David James, vice president, advanced product engineering, Fujitsu Computer Products of America, in a prepared statement. With the growing demand for hard drives with high capacities, especially in small form factors, one Tb per square inch would enable potential storage capacities of up to 1.2 TB on a 2-platter 2.5" drive. We expect this breakthrough to provide revolutionary changes for various IT and consumer applications.”

Fujitsu did not say when this technology will be available, however, it could provide the industry enough headroom for one more decade before the looming switch to a completely new hard drive technology may be necessary. Currently mass produced hard drives achieve densities of up to 205 Gb per square inch in Seagate's single-platter 3.5" desktop drive. Samsung recently announced a 3-platter 1 TB drive which records data at 241 Gb per square inch. At the time 1 Tb per square inch will be reached, 3.5" drives, could record data at 1.33 TB per platter and translate into 4-disk drives with more than 5 TB capacity.

Blu-ray, HD DVD topple VHS sales

High definition discs became the second most popular video medium in the first half of 2007, officially overtaking legacy format VHS.

According to a research piece from trade publication Video Business, sales of Blu-ray Discs and HD DVDs combined in the first half of 2007 beat VHS. During the last six months of 2006, the now-archaic format was still edging out the high definition newcomers.

By 2005%, VHS's market share in the home video market had fallen to around 15%, and has continued to fall ever since. Blu-ray and HD DVD overtaking the dying format was more or less expected, but through the end of 2006 the high-def competitors were still behind.

With the highly contentious battle between Blu-ray, fronted by Sony, and HD DVD, backed mainly by Toshiba and Universal, there was mounting concern that wary consumers would back off of both until a winner was decided.

However, both formats have already made significant marks in the home video market. Blu-ray's Casino Royale reached 100,000 units shipped in March, beating the 11 months it took DVD to reach that milestone. Meanwhile, HD DVD took a hold with the first high definition disc box set to be on Amazon.com's list of top five DVDs with the documentary series Planet Earth.

Warner's short-titled "300" is the most recent newsmaker, selling 250,000 copies on Blu-ray and HD DVD in a single week.

It's still a long way before the two formats really begin to chip into DVD, though. By comparison, over five million copies of the DVD version of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest were sold in its first 24 hours.

Blockbuster to buy Movielink

Though Blockbuster has flip-flopped on the idea of digital downloads in the past, it has now reportedly entered the market with a confirmed deal to acquire Movielink.

The AP reports that Blockbuster has finalized a deal to purchase the online video download site. At first, the rental chain will keep Movielink separate and run it as a standalone operation, but will eventually integrate it as part of Blockbuster Online.

Early this year, speculation of an acquisition rose when Blockbuster began preliminary talks with Movielink. Plans fell through, though, until Blockbuster named a new CEO a couple months ago, who expressed a greater interest in a stake of the online video market.

Blockbuster, which still has a logo in the shape of a VHS tape, went through enormous struggles with the transition to DVD and cheaper online alternatives. At one point it changed its nationwide rental policies three times in less than one year.

Blockbuster's main competitor is Netflix, an online rental service that began offering digital downloads earlier this year. However, the leader in the on-demand video market is the Xbox 360, which has a vast selection of movies and TV shows available on a "rental download" basis, where users have 24 hours to watch a purchased piece of content. It also offers more high definition video than any other digital download service.

Movielink is laced with DRM security, so much so that it has been widely panned by consumers and has failed to gain any more than a modicum of success. Its prices are also not competitive with services offered by iTunes and the Xbox 360, leaving consumers to pay more money for content that's more restricted. The online video site is owned by a conglomerate of movie studios who created it in 2002 as a legal outlet to combat illegal video sharing.

By 2006, however, there were significantly more sources offering video downloads legally, and movie studios became much more interested in digital downloads operated by third parties. In May 2006, Business Week reported that the five studios who invested in Movielink (MGM, Paramount, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros) were looking to sell the site. Blockbuster was the first to officially announce an interest in purchasing it.

Blockbuster will pay for the acquisition in cash, but exact financial terms were not disclosed.

Study: Gamers unaware, don't care about additional game console features

A new study shows that most gamers just want to play games and don't really care about all the extra expensive goodies packed into the multimedia consoles, according to a new survey from research group NPD.

Some of the most fundamental, basic features of the next-gen consoles went unknown by the 6,260 surveyed console owners in the US. For example, only 30% knew that the Xbox 360 has the ability to produce high definition graphics. Sony has done somewhat better in making that point with the PS3, but the NPD survey showed that one in two people were not even aware of the PS3's HD functionality.

Only 40% were aware of the PS3's built-in Blu-ray Disc player, and only 20% said they had watched a BD movie in the last 10 times they powered up their console.

The survey, which included people aged six to 44, also came back with only 37% knowing that the PS3 was backwards compatible with Playstation and PS2 titles. 50% were unaware of the multimedia features on Sony's portable system, the PSP, according to the survey results.

It also showed that handheld gamers are more likely to play online games on the Nintendo DS than on the PSP, and on the console side the most common online platform is the Xbox 360.

"To make headway in this 'next-gen' race, manufacturers still need to be primarily concerned with the quality and entertainment value of the games themselves," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

Xbox 360 Pro gets new HDMI port

Along with a cheaper price, customers who purchase a new Xbox 360 Pro will get to make use of a newly implanted HDMI port, previously exclusive to the top tier Xbox 360 Elite.

Microsoft has begun shipping the new version of the $350 console to retailers. Customers will be able to differentiate the new console from older stock by an HDMI logo printed on the Xbox 360 box.

"Retailers are gradually introducing HDMI-enabled Xbox 360s into the channel to meet demand," said a Microsoft representative, according to Gamespot.

When it launched in November 2005, the Xbox 360's only high definition output capability was through component video cables. Since then, HDMI (high definition multimedia interface) technology has grown in popularity among HD enthusiasts for its combined audio/video functionality and its ability to produce the highest video output, 1080p. HDMI first came to the Microsoft console with the addition of the Xbox 360 Elite, a third console SKU (stock keeping unit) with a larger hard drive than previous versions of the system, along with an HDMI port.

The addition of more sophisticated hardware comes almost immediately after Microsoft lowered the price of the console by $50. In 2005 the software giant was reportedly losing more than $125 per console but has continuously worked on bringing its manufacturing cost down.

Defcon 2007 – Mayhem, mystery and marriage

This year’s recently completed Defcon convention started off with a bang and ended on a tender note. Almost 7000 people attended the convention and one of those was an “undercover” reporter from NBC Dateline. I put undercover in quotes because she wasn’t very good at staying hidden and was discovered even before setting foot at the Riviera Hotel.

All the Dateline drama happened on Friday, the first day of Defcon, and you can read all about it in this article . While this was the highlight of the convention, Defcon had several other notable happenings.

The Mystery Box challenge is a yearly contest that has attendees trying to break into a hardened-steel box. Protected by multiple sensors and locks, the box withstood attacks for 22.5 hours before a team of 20 finally broke in. During the contest, participants complained loudly about the deviousness of all the protections and called the boxes’ creator, “LoST”, a “very sick” man.

The Defconbots contest is another yearly contest that makes teams build automated guns that can shoot down paper targets. Teams modified plastic-pellet firing airsoft guns into robotic guns that automatically tracked white colored targets. Utah-based Team Octopi – the same team that won lost year – won this year’s contest by shooting 20 targets in 16.6 seconds. During the awards ceremony, the team told the audience that they knew nothing about computer vision when they started two years ago.

Defcon ended with some happy tears this year as two federal agents were married on stage in front of thousands of hackers. The Riviera’s minister presided over the ceremony and told the audience that he would love to do a group wedding for next year – that is if enough people are interested.

It’s interesting how the relationship between feds and attendees have changed in the past few years that I’ve been attending Defcon. Before 9/11 the feds were treated with a healthy bit of suspicion and a fed wedding would have never occurred back in the old days of Defcon. Some of the suspicion still exists today, but the feds have really tried to reach out to the community by conducting panels, answering questions and even offering jobs.