Call of Duty: Black Ops is the most pirated game of 2010

Apple sued over privacy breaches

An American man has sued iDevice maker Apple claiming that iPhone and iPad applications can transmit personal information without the consent of the user.

Bloomberg reports that a class action lawsuit was filed last week in federal court in San Jose, California on behalf of Jonathan Lalo of Los Angeles Country. The plantiff claims that the Unique Device Identifiers, which give each device it’s own personal ID that cannot be blocked, changed or deleted, can be manipulated to transmit and track individual usage habits.

”Some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks, including users’ location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation and political views,” according to the complaint.

Apps like Pandora, Paper Toss, the Weather Channel and Dictionary.com are named as co-defendants. If the class-action is granted, users who downloaded the app from December 1 2008 and last week will be able to join the lawsuit.

Apple has yet to respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment, at the time of writing.

Source: Bloomberg.

Research shows people prefer to login than call to keep in touch

Press release:
Waiting for word from a loved one on the road?  Don’t sit by the phone. These days, chances are they’ll keep in touch through social media, according to a survey released by Sheraton Hotels & Resorts, home of “Link@Sheraton experienced with Microsoft.” More than 60% of respondents in the global social media study use social media to stay in touch with family and friends while traveling; more than a third (36%) say they’d rather log on than make a call to share good news.

Social Media = One of Life’s Necessities?

Overall, survey respondents ranked social media somewhere near air and water as a must-have in their lives.  Four-fifths of respondents said they access social networking sites throughout the day, while 39% said they “could not live without” social media sites.  One-third of respondents said they log in multiple times each hour.  Habits barely shift on the road.  One fifth of respondents say that they check social networking sites multiple times throughout the day while traveling.

The global study was conducted by STUDYLOGIC LLC, which surveyed 4,204 people via phone in the U.S., U.K. and China.  Sheraton recently completed the roll-out of its signature offering “Link@Sheraton experienced with Microsoft,” – a technology-driven social hub that keeps travelers connected 24/7 at nearly 400 hotels around the world.

Social Networking Blurs Lines between Business, Pleasure

Careful what you post.  Before meeting a new business contact, more than half of those surveyed check out their new contact’s social networking profiles (54%).  Nearly 60% say they have not hired a candidate based on a negative impression from a social-media profile.  More than half (54%) of respondents say they know someone who has been fired for something said or posted online.

Regardless of pitfalls, social networking’s popularity as a networking tool continues to grow.  More than half of all respondents (56%) agreed about the importance of doing business with people active in social media channels; 55% use online social networking to meet new business contacts and maintain current ones.

And many use social media to mix business and pleasure – literally. More than half of those surveyed have arranged a romantic interlude on the road using social networks, with men more likely to do so (45%) than women (40%).

Fact or Fiction?

Don’t always believe what you read.  Nearly 70% of respondents say they aren’t honest on social networking sites; 27% of those fib “a little,” 21% flat-out “lie,” and 20% admit that their postings are total fabrications.  Women are more inclined to tell little white lies online; men were more likely to be 100% honest (46%) versus their female counterparts (18%).

Who Are People Visiting While on the Road?

More than 50% of all Sheraton guests use the Link@Sheraton during their stay.  Facebook is the most visited site at the Link@Sheraton, with 75% of Link users logging in during their stay. More than 60% of those surveyed (62%) find that social media makes it easier for them to meet people while traveling for work.

Social Media as a Travel Planning Tool: 64% say yes

64% said they use social media to make their travel plans and within the 25-34 year old participant group, the number is even higher; 76% look to popular social media sites to plan their next getaway.

”Along with the bigger shift toward social media from other forms of communication, what the survey drove home for us was that an experience like Link@Sheraton isn’t a luxury for guests, but a necessity,” said Hoyt Harper, SVP and Global Brand Leader for Sheraton Hotels & Resorts. “They expect total connectivity, and that’s what Sheraton’s delivering,”

The Link@Sheraton experienced with Microsoft is a signature component of the Sheraton brand’s $6 billion global effort to enhance the brand and differentiate the guest experience at properties worldwide. The Link@Sheraton’s unique lobby lounge enables today’s travelers to stay connected with instant access to information and technology for work, leisure and social networking. Designed as a social environment, The Link@Sheraton invites guests to interact with each other while they check their email, research local attractions and even print boarding passes using free Wi-Fi and Internet-enabled computer stations.

To extend the experience beyond The Link@Sheraton, the brand’s online community can share their travel experiences, recommendations and more at SheratonBetterWhenShared.com. The Sheraton global community will continue to stir up conversation in Twitter (@SheratonHotels) and Facebook (facebook.com/sheratonhotelsandresorts) with contests, travel ideas and special offers.

RIM thought first iPhone was ‘impossible’

When Steve Jobs took stage in 2007 to unveil the ‘revolutionary’ iPhone to the world, executives at RIM called it bluff saying the device was ‘impossible’ to achieve.

A poster at Shacknews, by the handle of Kentor, claiming to be an ex-employee at RIM, revealed that there was panic among the top dogs of the company when iPhone was first shown. There were several all-hands meeting on Jan 10, 2007, a day after the iPhone was announced. RIM believed that Apple’s wondrous smartphone would not live up to the hype, and that it would an “insanely power hungry processor” to run what was then version 1.0 of iOS (then known as iPhone OS).

”Imagine their surprise [at RIM] when they disassembled an iPhone for the first time and found that the phone was battery with a tiny logic board strapped to it,” he said.

”Coming from a two-way pager background, RIM decided that phones should have two-way push synchronization of pretty much everything that Exchange provided along with a limited WML browser. The general thought was that phones would never have sufficient power density or radios sufficient bandwidth to allow anything more. That was incredibly predictably wrong, but it’s how things went down,” he said.

At the time of writing, the original post on Shacknews has been taken down, although iClarified appeared to have saved a large part of the post.

Source: Electronista.

TheStreet names Microsoft top innovator of 2010

TheStreet believes that Microsoft and its Xbox 360 and Kinect console are the game changer of the year. The website points out that the Xbox 360, Xbox Live and now Kinect have made a tremendous impact on the scene, even more so that other pioneering products like Apple iPad that brought back the sensation to the tablet PC.

“First off, after slimming its Xbox 360 hardware and just about eliminating the “red circle of death” failures that cost gamers hundreds of dollars in console investment, Microsoft snagged the console sales lead from Nintendo’s Wii and has held it for months. Also, after years of taking a back seat to the Wii’s fun little motion controllers and Miis and getting beaten to market by Sony’s PlayStation Move motion device, Microsoft sold 1 million versions of its $150 controller-free Kinect motion-capture device within 10 days of its Nov. 4 release and 2.5 million before the end of November. By all accounts, that should have been a tough sell, considering the console itself goes for as little as $199, but a good concept and great third-party partner products such as Viacom’s infectious Dance Central remind us what Microsoft is capable of when its back is to the wall.”

With initial denial, we had to agree that Xbox Live and Kinect are truly revolutionary products. Xbox Live has ev0lved into an incredible service that now offers music, videos, full retail copies, arcade games, Netflix, and full social networking integration. Although their $50 yearly subscription for multiplayer is still a debatable argument, it did pioneer multiplayer onto consoles and has its competitors still playing catch up.

Kinect may not be wholly realised yet for gaming, but it holds tremendous power with its superb technology to capture motion without any physical interaction with the device. The technology may change the way we interact with interfaces in the future, and the advances made already on the device are only tip of the iceberg.

Source: TheStreet.

MSI R6850 Cyclone Power Edition Review

It’s been 2 months since the launch of the AMD’s 2^nd generation DX11 mid-range graphics cards. Time enough for manufacturers to really get to know Bart, time enough to figure out how to keep it’s head cool. And so MSI’s recently launched R6850 Cyclone Power Edition landed in the Tbreak office and I quickly got to burning testing the card.

There are two key aspects of the R6850 Cyclone, the cooling solution and the subsequent overclock.  Firstly, the huge heatsink up front has massive coils spread around the face of the card, the central fan keeping everything cool as heat is picked up under it and spread to the surrounding fins. Secondly the factory overclock done by MSI which has Core clock set at 860MHz (85MHz over AMD defaults) and 1100MHz Memory (100MHz over AMD defaults). That’s a respectable 11% increase in Core and 10% increase in Memory clock speeds.

One last feature I’d like to touch upon is the fan speed control on the R6850 Cyclone, which is basically a miniscule switch between “Performance/Silence”. I can see many people wanting a better control knob or switch located at a more convenient place, but as you’ll find out later on, this is not exactly a big deal.