This week, Blizzard Gets The Cold Shoulder, the courts take side in The RIAA Tenenbaums and OMG my BFF Jail.
The normal person who was having a bad day or didn't like themselves would just be sad, angry or depressed. The normal person would maybe post a Facebook status about it or even keep a journal and write these feels of sorrow down.
Research in Motion, makers of BlackBerry phones, has been having a little trouble figuring out where they go next. They used to be the most popular device for business and email, but have quickly been losing ground to the iPhone, Android and Palm phones that have all understood better what communication should look like and feel like on a modern mobile device.
It was an astonishing 48 days of nonstop advertising from Microsoft, Sharp and Verizon for their newest media baby, the Kin One and Kin Two. At the end of the 48 days, however, Microsoft has pulled the plug on its project citing poor sales. With over 2 years of development and million and millions of dollars in marketing, how could Microsoft kill its creation in just 6 weeks?
We have spoken about creative online gaming solutions many times over the 3 years we have been here at PLuGHiTz Live! From BringIt to Virgin Games to OnLive, there have been a lof of ideas. This week, I am going to revive the OnLive topic because their service is getting closer to being a full reality.
If you've slowly become interested in Star Wars: The Old Republic by way of my shoving information down your throats, or if you were already following the game before I brought it to your attention, I have some great news for you. This week BioWare finally stated that "testing has begun" for TOR and that if we were invited to partake in testing we would have received emails and should be able to access the game immediately. They also stated that if you didn't get into beta on the first wave of invites, you needn't worry because there will be several other invitation waves hitting us in the near future.
One of my favorite aspects of posting on forums is the anonymity behind it all. So if I have something to say about a particular thread i can use my alternate account or something to put in my honest two cents in. Blizzard however doesn't or rather didn't think that I should have that privilege. For those of you that have been on a public forum before I am sure you are familiar with terms like flame wars, or trolls ect, and keeping those terms in mind, is how Blizzard came up with the Real ID system.
Google's Street View cars are back up and running and will be going to town in Ireland, Norway, South Africa and Sweden next week, after Google finally explained its processes to the respective countries' regulators. All of the WiFi collection equipment have been stripped out of all the cars globally, which included all hardware and software.
This week, more evidence came to light that RIAA is crazy as another judge, this time in the Joel Tenenbaum case, found that the ordered $675,000 fine for copyright infringement was just a little too much for an individual to pay. The fine has since been reduced to a tenth of that, or $67,500. U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner has decided the original amount was "unconstitutionally excessive", furthering showing that judges aren't happy with the damage amounts that juries are allowed to set under the current federal law.