Retailers hope last week’s start to the holiday shopping season translates into a busy buying season online, which is officially to kick off on Monday. Retailers are busy hosting special offers. ComScore, research firm online has projected sales online may exceed $700 million on Monday.
ShopperTrak RCT Corp, which tracks total sales at almost 50,000 retail outlets, reported on Sunday that sales on Friday and Saturday saw a rise of 7.2 percent compared to the same 2 day period a year ago.
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The unique Smart Surface Mounting Technology from Samsung squeezes features within a slim form. The U600 phone from Samsung comes with a thinness of 10.9 mm, with a 3.3 mega-pixel camera for ultra sharp images. The U600 mobile phone from Samsung is the replacement for Samsung D900 and is the first of second generation Ultra phones to hit the market, thereby also making it the slimmest phone available.
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According to a study release on Friday, Chinese Internet users seem to depend on their web experiences, and see web as a key to socializing and sharing opinions compared to their U.S counterparts.
The study was conducted by InterActiveCorp (IACI.O) and advertising agency JWT, part of the WPP group. The survey was conducted in the age group of 16-25 years old both in U.S and China which showed that about 42 percent of Chinese users said they felt addicted to Web use compared to 18 percent of users in U.S.
The survey was conducted online in November, in English and Chinese. The study distinguished that about 10 percent of Chinese population used internet, with a higher proportion of them living in major cities.
Almost 25 percent of Chinese population held a view saying it was unable for them to spend more than a day without internet compared to 12 percent in U.S. About 76 percent of Chinese users said Web helped them in making new friends where as less than third of Americans said internet contributed to their social life.
The study also revealed that about three quarters of Chinese users were free to do and say things through internet which could not be possible in the real world, compared to 32 percent of users in U.S.
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Activision Inc, the maker of “Guitar Hero”, has been sued by “The Romantics”, saying that the video game has intruded on the band’s rights by featuring a sound alike recording of “What I Like About You”, the 1980 hit.
The case was filed on Tuesday in the U.S District Court in Detroit and was seeking unnamed impairment.
The song is one of the 30 songs featured on “Guitar Hero”. For the Romantics, Copyright claim hasn’t been the issue so far. The attorney’s say that Activision had been given the rights to use “what I Like About You” thereby allowing to record a cover version.
By creating an imitation like the Romantics, the Cali-based company intruded on the group’s rights. The band is seeking a ban that could take the game off the stores.
Activision refused to take calls from Newspaper agencies for comments regarding the matter.
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The U.N food aid agency has called on film makers to help it raise the awareness of hunger and bring the reality of poverty to the “You Tube” followers.
A contest was launched on Wednesday by the World Food Program (WFP) for 60 second video that geared at creating a buzz in the online community about global hunger.
The WFP communications director Nancy Roman said that for those among them who did day-in, day-out backbreaking work of getting food to hungry people, it was sometimes discouraging how people understood that hunger killed a child every five seconds. The agency has posted its own video which is available at its site www.youtube.com/hungerbytes. Towards the end of the video, a message goes on saying, in about 850 million people go to bed hungry every night.
The five best films are likely to be posted on WFP’s YouTube site, with an overall winner receiving a trip to one of the relief operations. WFP said that filmmakers had a better chance of winning if they get play on networking sites like Facebook or Myspace before the competition’s deadline on July 2008.
This isn’t the first time WFP has come up with an awareness programme using computer technology. Earlier in 2005 it launched a video game in which players could plan and distribute food drops to the people in need.
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Sony BMG Music Entertainment has come down to a licensing deal with Yahoo Inc that could make way for people to upload files with music, the companies said on Tuesday.
Yahoo said that the financial terms of the deal were not revealed. The agreement calls Sony to receive a cut of advertising revenue. The deal covers giving out of music videos through Yahoo player applications that users can place on other sites.
This agreement marks that Yahoo has reached a deal with a major recording company over licensing content in user created videos. Sony BMG is a joint venture of Sony Corporation and Bertelsmann.
The deal reflects the recognition of user created videos, which includes copyrighted content. Sony BMG also reached a similar deal with Google Inc last year. The agreement included Google subsidiary YouTube.
Major media and Internet companies issued a set of guidelines last month which required web portals that hosted user generated videos. Earlier, Yahoo said that it was deploying video identification and filtering technology early next year.
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Sony Corporation on Monday lowered the fees it was charging for a software development kit for the PS3 console in order to get more designers to do video games for the machine.
The company said that it would strengthen its backup support in order to make new games for the PS3. The console comes with a Blu-ray disc player and a processor, is Sony’s new product in years. Sales look no good for Sony because of high prices and lack of games.
Although PS2 dominated the gaming market, PS3 has had a hard time against rivals like Nintendo. The console has succeeded in getting players by offering games that use handheld device for the remote control.
Sony has sold about 5.5 million PS3 consoles world over, Sony’s spokesperson said. The console went on sale late last year in U.S and Japan.
PS3 has not been able to compete with Xbox. Microsoft has sold about 13 million Xbox 360 devices from the last two years. Xbox has also slashed it prices in Japan from ¥39,795 to ¥34,800.
Sony’s PS3 sales beat the Wii from Nintendo for the first time this month between Nov 5 to Nov 11, with 55,924 PS3 machines sold vs. 34,546 Wii’s. Sony’s chief executive said that last week sales in the U.S doubled after the price cut.
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Flickr, Yahoo Inc’s online photo-sharing site has planned to offer this week, a set of mapping features that makes it easier to find photos based on their location. Flickr will uncover a way for web users to browse photos from tens of millions of geographically located photos loaded to its site, flickr.
A service called “Places”, finds the latest hot-spots on the global map for photo contributions.
A senior director of product management at Flickr told that it was a new way to browse to know what was happening the world over.
Flickr’s service “Places” also allows users to search more than 100,000 geographic places in order to find photos that can get attention. Most of the global cities, countries as well as regions have their own quality pages.
Flickr drives in about 40 million monthly visits and there are about 2 billion photos that are stored on the site over the past three and half years. Almost 2-3 million photos are uploaded daily, categorized by users according to location.
The global map view lets users to see photos by theme. By clicking a category tag lets them to select photos, also giving a glimpse of what other users find interesting.
Places pages for about 100,000 locations including some local information such as weather and location’s current time. The senior director of product management at Flickr said that the site was adding in about 5000 new location pages every week.
The feature is mainly focused to give more local appeal to users, also attract travelers who seek to go beyond photos of landmarks and to places they plan to visit.
Flickr presently offers places in 8 languages- English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Korean, and Chinese.
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Americans think they help the earth when they recycle their electronic gadgets like computers, cell phones etc. But in reality, they contribute to the global trade in electronic trash that pollutes the environment overseas.
The latest figures show that in about 50-75 percent of the 300,000 tons of electronic trash collected for recycling in the U.S each year ends up overseas. Workers from various countries like China, Nigeria use hammers, and their hands to extract metals, and other recyclables exposing them. This endangers workers.
Jim Puckett of the Basel Action Network said that it was being recycled in a horrific way. He said that they were preserving own environment while contaminating the rest of the world.
Recycling industry officials say that the gear most likely to be shipped abroad is collected at free recycling drives. Officials say that companies, cities and counties hire the cheapest firms and do not question on what is the outcome of the thrown away equipments.
The problem can get poorer. According to the Environment Protection Agency data almost 2 million tons of electronics discarded by Americans annually goes to landfills. Activists say that states are banning wastes from landfills, which could drive more waste into the recycling stream in the near future.
Many claim that they export items which are used for reuse in poor nations. Recently in Hong Kong customs officials were tipped off by environmentalists for the same reason. They found out containers which had old electronic equipments discarded by Americans.China has banned the import of electronic waste.
John Bekiaris, chief executive of San Francisco-based HMR USA Inc said that people were getting away with exporting electronic waste. People who wanted to dispose their electronics needed to do an inspection of the vendors they used.
Fortune Sky USA, a subsidiary of a Chinese company was shipping containers. Recently General Manager of Fortune Sky told his company thought that it was buying and shipping used computers, not old monitors and was trying to get its money back. Fortune Sky, exports used computers to China, Malaysia and other Asian countries.
The General Manager of Fortune Sky said that there was a huge market for secondhand computers. He continued saying that if the equipments could still be used, then it was good for everybody and it could not cause pollution.
Puckett of Basel Action Network said that reuse was a new excuse, which was a passport to export. Activists were complaining that exporters don’t check the items to make sure they work before sending it overseas. On the other end, at customs the goods don’t get checked.
In 2007, Hong Kong authorities returned in about 80 containers of electronic waste which included 20 from US. The authorities at Hong Kong’s Environmental Protection Department said it was impossible for them to check every container that was imported to Hong Kong.
In the US, exporting electronic waste isn’t illegal, but US does bar the export of monitors with cathode rays, but authorities in the US lack resources to check most containers.
Electronic makers should take back their products and recycle them. Such laws may help in making products that are easier to recycle and can contain few dangerous materials.
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