General Gaming Article |
- Adobe Flash Video/Ads Coming To iOS
- AT&T Files A Response To The DOJ, Claims They Just Don’t Get It
- Microsoft Follows Google’s Lead With Online Services Downtime
- Proposed Bill Could Impose Stiff Fines on Companies With Lax Online Security
- The Founder of the E-Book Has Died
- Indie Developer tinyBuild Can’t Beat Piracy, Tries Humiliation Instead
| Adobe Flash Video/Ads Coming To iOS Posted: 11 Sep 2011 11:04 AM PDT
According to the Adobe press release, Flash Media Server 4.5 will negate the need for content producers to support multiple video wrappers, and will take care of the conversion process for them when faced with an iOS version of Safari. The Flash Media Server will convert the video, and eventually flash advertisements on the fly, stream the resulting output to users transparently. Since the heavy lifting will be done by Adobe servers, this means iOS users will get to enjoy all the benefits of Flash, without the CPU and battery sucking resources that usually comes along with it. This news will no doubt come as a welcome change for iOS customers who have struggled to work around these issues for years, but is likely to ignite a bit of jealousy from competing platforms who are stuck decoding Flash the old fashioned way. It's likely that Adobe plans to roll this service out to all platforms eventually, but it makes sense to start with one and add support as they go. It's a smart move by Adobe to try and slow the adoption of HTML5, but it hard to imagine even with this, they will halt it completely. (IMG Credit: DigitalTrends.com) |
| AT&T Files A Response To The DOJ, Claims They Just Don’t Get It Posted: 11 Sep 2011 10:08 AM PDT
According to AT&T, T-Mobile has been bleeding customers for years now, and it's German parent company was unlikely to continue investing in it. To counter these claims, AT&T claims its spent over $30 billion over the last two years in attempts to strengthen up its network, but is struggling to keep up with market demand. Does AT&T have you convinced? Or did the thought of AT&T's executive team trembling in fear of the mighty Metro PCS have you rolling your eyes in disgust? The DOJ hearing gets underway on September 21st , but you can sound off early in the comments below. |
| Microsoft Follows Google’s Lead With Online Services Downtime Posted: 11 Sep 2011 09:51 AM PDT
Problems with cloud computing is expected these days, however the downtime with Office 365 so soon after launch is a bit of a black eye for the Redmond based software giant eagerly trying to convert clients over to the new platform. Microsoft blamed the downtime on a DNS issue which prevented some of its service domains from resolving properly. The company has attempted to downplay the impact on customers, and though we agree the outage was brief, they need to do better to convince enterprises they are worth the subscription fee. |
| Proposed Bill Could Impose Stiff Fines on Companies With Lax Online Security Posted: 11 Sep 2011 08:40 AM PDT
"The goal of the proposed law is essentially to hold accountable the companies and entities that store personal information and personal data and to deter data breaches," Senator Blumenthal said in a phone interview. "While looking at past data breaches, I've been struck with how many are preventable." The new bill is called "The Personal Data Protection and Breach Accountability Act of 2011", and is the result of intense debate by Congress over how to force companies to do a better job protecting consumers who shop online. The bill itself targets companies that store data for more than 10,000 people, and set out specific guidelines for how to store critical information such as passwords and credit cards. "The Sony data breach has became a poster child of why we need this law," he said. "We were working on this legislation well before that data breach occurred, but Sony is a good example of why this law should exist." |
| The Founder of the E-Book Has Died Posted: 11 Sep 2011 07:53 AM PDT
According to his obituary posted on the Project Gutenberg website, Hart worked as an adjunct professor at the Unversity of Illnois for most of his career, but digitizing public works was always his passion. "I get little notes in the email, saying 'Hey! I just (found) Project Gutenberg, and this is great stuff," Hart told WILL radio in Urbana in a 2003 interview. "You get people that (it) just tickles their fancy, and they just read and read and read, and they're so happy about it." The first several dozen works added to the Gutenberg archive were hand typed by Hart and others, which as you can imagine, wasn't the most efficient way to do the job. "This mission is, as much as possible, to encourage all those who are interested in making eBooks and helping to give them away," Hart wrote on the project's website, then later noted: "Project Gutenberg is not in the business of establishing standards." To close out we'll simply say if you haven't checked out Project Gutenberg for your next book we highly recommend you take a peak. You might be surprised at just how many amazing books you can download legally these days without spending a dime. |
| Indie Developer tinyBuild Can’t Beat Piracy, Tries Humiliation Instead Posted: 11 Sep 2011 07:25 AM PDT
Startup development studio tinyBuildGames knew their highly anticipated new platformer No Time To Explain would eventually hit the Pirate Bay whether they liked it or not, so they made it available themselves on day one, with one catch. Those willing to steal food directly out of the mouths of this starving indie developer would be forced to play the entire game wearing, and interacting with NPC's sporting pirate hats. "We thought it'd be funny to leak a pirate version ourselves which is literally all about pirates and pirate hats," Lead Developer Alex Nichiporchik told TorrentFreak. "I mean, some people are going to torrent it either way, we might as well make something funny out of it." "With indie game development, the whole motto is to constantly update the game for free to the userbase. For pirated versions this makes things really confusing with version tracking, so we were more comfortable with making a joke out of it and so that people who appreciate it could buy the game and thus help us do more dumb stuff," Alex said. If Ubisoft switched out the always online requirement for pirate hats, would that solve the piracy issue on the PC? |
Apple has gone to war with just about anyone who dares to compete with its iOS lineup, suing where possible and spreading FUD when they can't. Before the lawyers ever threw the first punch however, there was the original rivalry, Apple vs. Adobe. Many analysts believed that Steve Job's unwillingness to embrace flash would be the death of the platform, but amazingly, it thrived. HTML5 video spread across the web like wildfire, starting with YouTube, and moving to just about every content creation site worth visiting. Adobe put up a brave front, but has finally thrown in the towel, and 
To say that AT&T is disappointed with the Department of Justice's decision to try and block it's proposed merger with T-Mobile is a bit of an understatement. The company lashed out this week in a 
No matter where you choose to do your cloud computing these days, September is off to a rough start. First Google Doc's is knocked offline for 
Sony executives bowed down before the Japanese and international press earlier this year to tell everyone "we're sorry", but for those of us wondering if our credit card numbers were being sold off on the seedier parts of the web, somehow "we're sorry", just didn't cut it. 
While many of us might consider e-books to be a relatively new phenomena, in reality they have existed almost as long as the Internet itself. Public domain junkies have no doubt made at least one or more visit to the Project Gutenberg archives, but what they probably don't realize is that the movement to digitize public works under this name has been around since 1971. Why the history lesson you ask? Well, it seemed appropriate to reflect on the history of e-books today following the news that the founder of Project Gutenberg, Michael S. Hart, 
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