Archive for November, 2008

National Geographic Video Games to be Created

November 19, 2008 at 12:39 pm · Filed under News and Current Affairs ·Tagged , ,

The National Geographic, best known for their informative nature shows on cable and on magazine, has announced to create video games.

A unit of the nonprofit National Geographic Society, the Nationa Geographic Ventures, is set to work with graphic and game developers to make its games that will be available for PCs, consoles and even handheld devices.

Paul Levine, a National Geographic executive who is set to be the head of the new gamed division of the network, said that “Our content is extremely well-suited for a global gaming audience.” And these games will be based on the shows that were made on the channel, ranging its content and themes accross all National Geographic’s properties and scope.

The first video game is “Herod’s Lost Tomb,” a very simple game of puzzles and hidden objects, is now available for computers and the iPhone. This is based on a television show about King Herod.

With regard to the distribution of these games for consoles like the Wii and the PlayStation 3, the network is now working with Namco Bandai Games America and Sony Computer Entertainment.

Levine added that Namco Bandai’s “National Geographic: Panda” for the handheld Nintendo DS, plays something like “Nintendogs,” the 2005 virtual pet game that had you taking care of a puppy, and the aptly named “Zoo Tycoon” that puts you in charge of a zoo, will be available this month.

But just like other games, Levine makes sure that these would offer “entertainment with substance.” He also added “They are games, first and foremost.”

Other titles set to be released include “Rain Forests” and “Greencity,” slated for next year from National Geographic, as well as “National Geographic: Africa,” available next month from Sony.

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Friendster Down for Days

November 17, 2008 at 4:16 pm · Filed under News and Current Affairs ·Tagged , , ,

One of the most famous social networking site, Friendster, has been down for a few days last week. The technical team has released a statement that this is due to outages in the main office of the social networking site.

Read my full account in my other blog: The Human Side of Technology.

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Google ends Partnership with Yahoo!

November 14, 2008 at 5:40 pm · Filed under News and Current Affairs ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Earlier this month, Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. has scapped their partnership with each other.

Yahoo!Yahoo has agreed last June to show Google search advertisement on their search results pages. This was Yahoo’s move after it ended its partnership with Microsoft under their takeover bid of $47.5 billion less than a month before that. It was also speculated that the internet giant will have problems without the partnership with even one of these companies.

With the partnership that has ended, Yahoo is once again on a shaky ground, starting from scratch and having difficulties managing its remaining shares and liabilities. And these adjustments take drastic effects. California based Yahoo has announced that it would be laying 10% of its workforce.

Due to this event, Yahoo is taking the option to make deals with Microsoft again. It was last spring that Google and Microsoft took bids against each other for a Yahoo share and Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang bets with Google’s deal. It is said also that as of this moment, Yahoo is in negotiations with a $13 billion trade, barely compared to Microsoft’s previous offer of $33 billion.

“To this day, I believe the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo,” Yang said last November 5.

An analyst for JP Morgan,Imran Khan, said he believes it would be better for Yahoo to sell its search operations to Microsoft, the idea that was previously proposed this spring but Yahoo rejected. The result should have been more savings for Yahoo, plus it would have greater focus on display ad business.

Khan also wrote in his recent research notes that “We think continued investment in search, at the expense of display investment, has given competitors the opportunity to bite into Yahoo’s leading display ad market share.”

Despite Microsoft’s claim that it does not need Yahoo to beat California based Google, industry watchers and software makers still think it would be more interesting if Microsoft considers Yahoo’s offer again.

An analyst for the independent research group Directions on Microsoft, Matt Rosoff, said Microsoft has no plans in buying the whole of yahoo. That is also the pointed reason why the talks before failed.

“At this point, given how the online ad market has changed and how the overall economy has changed, they might just wait for Yahoo’s situation to get worse,” Rosoff added. Microsoft has also announced that they will observe and wait to “see what happens to Google and their revenue. Perhaps Google won’t look like a threat, and Internet advertising won’t quite look like such a good business.”

Another step for Yahoo was making a partnership with Time Warner’s AOL. Although that does not guarantee anything. Yahoo’s potential gains from an AOL acquisition are unclear, but one cannot deny the possibilities if these two would come up with an aggrement. Also, the acquisition of AOL would give Microsoft more reasons to take advantage of Yahoo’s situation.

Fingers are still crossed, and Yahoo is doing its best to catch up with Google.

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Research Links Violence in Reality and in Video Games

November 13, 2008 at 2:20 pm · Filed under News and Current Affairs ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

According to a new research, playing of violent video games show increase on physical aggression among children and teenagers months afterward.

ManHunt Video Game

Image from ManHunt

The study, which was published earlier this month in the journal Pediatrics, examines the content of the games, how often they are played and how behaviors later the school year has proved to be more aggressive. This was composed of three longitudinal studies, two from Japan and one from United States of America.

Lead author Craig A. Anderson, a psychology professor at Iowa State University and director of its Center for the Study of Violence, said that this was the first US research to look at this issue. He also cited that he chose to collaborate with Japanese researchers because video games there are very popular, yet the crime rate is low (infact, many would give Japan as an example that violent games are not harmful). Yet the studies show the exact oposite thing.

“When you find consistent effects across two very different cultures, you’re looking at a pretty powerful phenomenon. One can no longer claim this is somehow a uniquely American phenomenon. This is a general phenomenon that occurs across cultures,” Anderson said.

Image from Counter-Strike

Counter-Strike Image

The study on United States focused on 364 children whose ages ranged from 9 to 12 in Minnesota, while the research on Japan studied more than 1,200 youths aging 12 to 18. “We now have conclusive evidence that playing violent video games has harmful effects on children and adolescents,” Anderson added.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, which publishes the study appears this month, now recognizes violence in media as a significant health risk to children and adolescents and recommends limiting screen time including television, computers and video games to one to two hours a day. They are now on the process of revising its recommendations on media violence, and expects to issue a new statement in four to six months, a spokeswoman said.

“A healthy, normal, nonviolent child or adolescent who has no other risk factors for high aggression or violence is not going to become a school shooter simply because they play five hours or 10 hours a week of these violent video games,” Anderson said. Extreme forms of violence, as he descibed, “almost always occur when there is a convergence of multiple risk factors.”

The new study also noted that about 90% of American homes, with children ages 8 to 16, plays video games. And it also noted that right now, boys play them with an average of 16 to 18 hours a week.

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Google Freezing Anti-Obama Bloggers’ Accounts?

November 12, 2008 at 1:14 pm · Filed under News and Current Affairs ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Anti-Obama Democrat bloggers who opposed in his nomination for the presidency suspects that Obama’s supporters, along with the assistance from Google, have incorrectly flagged their blogs as spam sites by Blogger.

Google says that the blocking of seven blogs for five days last month was an automated response from a spam filter. It is known that Blogger is a hosting service that Google owned since 2003.

But the owners of the blogs believe that Web surfers who are supporters of Obama actually took advantage of the loophole in the system. The loophole that is meant is that Blogger’s system allows readers to report spam blogs.

Carissa Snedeker, who blogs BlueLyon, one of those that were frozen, said that “It appears that [Blogger's] policy can be manipulated by people determined to shut down the free exchange of ideas.” She also added that “The conclusion that many of us came to was that we were specifically targeted by some over-enthusiastic Obama supporters.”

Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of the tech site SearchEngineLand.com, also took notice of the case. “It’s unusual — I’ve never heard of similar blogs of the same nature being shut down like that,” he said. He also expects more blogs to get shut down if there had been a concerted effort to stop anti-Obama sites. “I think that there’s something weird, in general, that all these were shut down,” he added, “but why, exactly, is uncertain.”

Google, upon their press release, wrote that, “We believe this may have been caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the ‘Just Say No Deal’ network of [anti-Obama] blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam,” referring to the seven blogs which opposes Barack Obama’s candidacy. Blogger has quarantined thses seven anti-Obama blogs on June 25 while it conducted a review for five days, making it impossible for the bloggers to write posts on the joint weekend event held by both parties of Obama and Hilary Clinton.

GeekLove said she felt silenced by the freeze. She wrote on her site, Come a Long Way, that “Blogger’s ‘guilty until proven innocent’ approach is appalling.”

Google also wrote that “We have restored posting rights to the affected blogs and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression.” The press release also addresses the issue saying that Google is “constantly evaluating [our] policies and technology to reduce the number of false positives caught by our spam filters.”

However, the bloggers are unsatisfied with Google’s gestures. Snedeker wrote in her blog that “How’s about a little benefit of the doubt for the next set of bloggers that get caught in your ‘automated spam detection’ maze?”

The other affected blogs are Hillary or Bust, McCain Democrats, NObama Blog, The Political Lizard and Reflections in Tyme.

As a result of the issue, all seven bloggers opened accounts with WordPress, a rival blog-hosting site, hoping to avoid such problems.

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Obama Google Results get Hacked

November 10, 2008 at 2:47 pm · Filed under News and Current Affairs ·Tagged , , , , ,

After the last presidential election, hacker have bought their way to the top of the Google results pages by buying keyword searches sweeping through Barack Obama’s election victory.

For most of the day last November 5 and 6, searches involving the keyword Obama generated a sponsored link which read “Download Now” at the top of the results pages. And users who click in this link would reach a website infected with malicious software, in which security experts confirmed that it could compromise PC user’s security.

Graham Cluley, the senior technology consultant of Sophos, a online security company, said that “[the website] is infected with a malicious i-frame,in which the code then downloads further malware onto your PC, including something called Mal/Pdfex-B. Ultimately this code is designed to compromise your computer and allow hackers to have remote control over your PC.”

The trend before was hackers using the keywords for terrorist attacks to gain access to pertinent information of the users like banking password and credit cards. But lately, security companies has noticed that the surge recently proves that they make use of Obama’s name as a bait.

“We are also seeing a major malicious spam campaign featuring Obama at the moment, which points to a malware download,” Cluley added. “We’re gathering information about that right now.”

The links were removed immediately, but Google remains to make no comments on individual adverts.

A spokesperson said that “It’s difficult to talk about security without giving away what we do. We do have a very sophisticated manual and automatic system for removing adverts that may be suspicious.”

By this time, these links has already been removed.

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Detention of Malaysian Blogger, Unlawful

November 7, 2008 at 12:24 pm · Filed under News and Current Affairs ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Raja Petra Kamaruddin, arrested Sept. 12 for allegedly causing racial tensions, was released from detention with the ruling that his lawyer, Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, saying that his arrest was allowing indefinite incarceration and was unlawful.

Raja Petra is the editor of an anti-government news Web site was arrested because the home minister acted outside his powers, the lawyer said. Shah Alam High Court Justice Syed Ahmad Helmy Syed Ahmad ordered his relaese from detention.

Malik Imtiaz said that the ruling was “a historic ruling and definitely a wonderful step in terms of civil liberties in Malaysia.” He then quoted the judge who said that the grounds for the arrest that was given in the court was very insufficient.

It is known that the The ISA allows the government to detain anyone for an initial two-year period without any charges and can be extended indefinitely.

Accused of threatening public security and causing racial tension by publishing writings on his highly popular site, Malaysia Today, Raja Petra, was taken to court later Friday to be formally set free.

Raja Petra is also on trial in a separate case, having been accused of sedition by implying that Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak was involved in the murder of a Mongolian woman, in which Raja Petra denies the allegation.

The Internal Security Act was used against communist insurgents from British Colonial Days. Independent Malaysia’s postcolonial government has kept the act and used it sparingly against political dissidents. Other groups and oppositions have called to disband the law, which is ignored by the government.

Raja Petra’s arrest triggered widespread protests by civil society groups, lawyers and other online commentators.

The government estimates there are more than 700 Malaysians who blog on social and political issues.

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Obama Won Presidential Seat

November 5, 2008 at 6:35 pm · Filed under News and Current Affairs ·Tagged , , ,

Just an update, United States of America has chosen its new president that will be seated next year late January. Democratic Candidate Barack Obama went out victorious against Republican Candidate John McCain, taking, as of this moment when this article was written, 349 electoral votes against 163 votes for the latter. Obama has already made his victory speech while McCain has pledged his support on the newly elected president.

For more information and for the detailed report, go ahead and visit CNN.

My congratulations to Obama and wishing him the best of luck…

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McCain and Obama’s battle for my vote…

November 4, 2008 at 5:06 pm · Filed under My Point of View ·Tagged , , , ,

The US election is approaching so fast, yet many Americans are still undecided on who shall they vote for the Presidential seat. Would it be Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain or Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama? [except if you are voting for other independent candidates]

Before tackling who would win my vote, lets take a brief look at both candidates career history and their qualifications to be the next President of the United States of America.

As far as education is concerned, Obama, 47, has superior experiences than McCain, 72. The former graduated in Harvard Law School with a distinction of Magna Cum Laude, while the latter has been a graduate of United States Naval Academy and the National War College. Although McCain is known for his remark “I never got good grade” when ask about his school standing, he did perform a good standing on the academy, earning over 100 demerits each year.

However, with their political career, McCain has more experiences. He has been a senator of the country since 1987, and had been a member of the House of Representatives from 1983 until 1987. He has been the chairman for the Committee on Indian Affairs from 1995 to 1997 and from 2005 until 2007 and a member of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation from 1995 to 2001 and from 2003 until 2005. Obama, on the other hand, has been a senator only since 2005 and has been a senator of Illinois State Senate from 1997 until 2004.

Now, who deserves my vote?

McCain may have the experiences and the qualification to be the next president, however I believe that America, United States in particular, needs a change on how the government should be handled and how the presidential office to be run. Yup, Therefore, my vote goes to Obama. He may not show it on his profile, but I believe that he has enough political and leadership experiences. Not only that he displays a chance of change on the governments priorities and focus, one cannot deny the promise of progress through the fresh and realistic ideas of this young but very influential lawyer. Infact, Time recently has named him the most influential man today. He has also made and given the people strong initiatives and platforms that not only will bring change but will help the United States to elevate from its current crisis now. Another of my basis is that Obama points out the importance of the pople under the middle class that they are very important and that they should be given the attention and the programs to improve their current status.

Too bad, I am not able to vote because of the fact that I am not a citizen of the United States of America, but if given a chance, I would do so accordingly with my beliefs above.

There, yadda!

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Other Planets May Have Life!

November 3, 2008 at 1:45 pm · Filed under Technological Innovations ·Tagged , , ,

Scientist and Astronomers has believed that there is only a part that is near to a star could have life. It is called the “habitual zone“. It is the zone where there would be enough heat to sustain life and to maintain water on its surface, which as we all know, needed to support life.

However, a new study has found that it is possible that this zone is not fixed. Some of the planets we assume to be too cold, could after all support life.

It has been found that some planets, evolve to the sun in a non-circular basis and in an elongated path, and as it moves closer to the star, it’s stretching decreases, forming a path that is more likely of that of a habitual planet. It was also found out that when a planet’s orbit is oblong, the stretching changes are great, causing it to warm the surface of the planet. This process is called tidal heating.

Researcher Brian Jackson of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory said that “It’s basically the same effect as when you bend a paper clip, and it gets hot inside.”

Jackson and his colleagues also made a computer model that showed that the changes on the habitual zone could actually be a reason for the planet to harbor life.

Although this fact may not be present for our very own solar system, It is very much possible that there is life outside of earth on other stars.

Due to the limitations of today’s technology, it is very hard to confirm this theory. But this, so far, was the best fact that there may indeed be life outside our solar system.

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