Global Internet Traffic Increases: Recession hasn’t slowed

This past year has seen the biggest economic downturn ever, however that said it seems that Internet traffic has not suffered, in-fact over the last year the growth in Internet traffic between mid 2008 and mid 2009 was greater than the previous years (according to Telegeography).
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New Creative Speakers: T6160 and T3130

Speaker experts Creative have just announced two new speaker sets to their current lineup. They are the T6160 and T3130 and both are designed to be used for a computer setup, each coming with superb sound quality and features.

As reported from SlashGear, the Creative T6160 features 5.1 surround sound channels, a 30W output and a 20W subwoofer, meaning that these speakers are gonna churn out some serious bass during use.

The T3130 however, differs slightly by offering a 2.1 channel set up with a 10W output and 15W subwoofer. Both models will be able to be controlled wirelessly, thanks to the included remote.

The speakers are set to retail in the UK and Singapore first, ranging from $60-100. A U.S release is likely, but no details have been made as of yet. We’ll keep you updated.

Nokia Siemens Networks strengthens StarHub’s HSPA+ service

StarHub, the Singapore operator is now in a position to offer its subscribers an improved mobile broadband experience. StarHub has now expanded its 3G core network; users will now notice that data speeds have been increased offering smoother mobile surfing. Read more

Crunchpad Tablet PC: Release Date and Specs

Fusion Garage and Techcrunch are hoping to have the world’s first PC tablet, Crunchpad, ready for release by November, just in time for the holiday season. The company gave The Straits Times the chance to have a look at a fully working model, who were able to have a look at how well it performs as well as study its specs list. Read more

Apple iPhone 3GS has now launched in Singapore

An article appeared yesterday on IntoMobile showing how popular the launch of the iPhone 3GS was in Singapore, initial estimations thought that perhaps 1,500 to 2,000 customers would gather around SingTel’s headquarters. Read more

Sony PlayStation Games on a cell phone

Have you ever thought how long its going to be until you can get the enjoyment of playing all the greatest Playstation games on your very own cell phone? Well think no more because Sony Ericsson revealed their very own phone that can at the Red Dot Museum in Singapore.

Sony Ericsson wanted to use Playstation as their brand name for the PSP phone but they were denied permission by Sony. Read more

IPhone OS 3.0 release hours away: are you clicking update?

Are you one of the people who keep clicking ‘Check for Update’ in Apple iTunes, only to get the message ‘this version of the iPhone software (2.2.1) is current version’. How disappointing?

Well Engadget are reporting that it could be hours before the iPhone OS 3.0 update is released. So it seems you can keep clicking all you want, but you wont get it any quicker. Read more

Nokia Ovi Store Live

Engadget have just been informed that the Nokia Ovi Store is now live. The wait is now over as Nokia have now flicked the switch and made the Ovi Store available to the rest of the world, and not just Australia, Singapore and Ireland. Read more

Optus HTC Dream: Looking like the G1

We have been waiting for some time now to get some photos of the new HTC (TPE:2498) Dream Smartphone, which is heading for the Optus network in Australia and SingTel network in Singapore. Thankfully, TB Tech have managed to get hold of some photos, yes, you guessed it, it is just like the G1. Read more

Palm Pre Worldwide Releases

The Palm (NASDAQ:PALM) Pre Smartphone has been getting a lot of attention of late, and in recent days the new handset has been showing up on a number of Palm’s International websites. This shows that we are not that long from its official launch. Read more

RIM: BlackBerry Bold 9000 launches in Philippines

The RIM Blackberry Bold 9000 has now launched in the Philippines, and Research in Motion are hoping that the handset will go down a storm, like it did when it was launched in Hong Kong and Singapore.

What makes the Blackberry Bold 9000 Read more

GNGWC 2008 and representatives of east-south Asia

Representatives from each country for a global game competition, GNGWC 2008, have been selected for the past few weeks and some countries are still having preliminaries. On September 6, Southeast Asian representatives have been selected for Atlantica, ShotOnline and Navy Field in a preliminary round held in Polytech University, Singapore Read more

Equinix to Host Regional Peering Forum on September 19 2008

SINGAPORE, Sept. 18 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ — Equinix, Inc. (NASDAQ:EQIX) , the leading global provider of network-neutral data centers and Internet exchange services, today announced that it is hosting the Regional Peering Forum 2008, featuring speakers from network and content industry leaders including Microsoft, TRUE Internet Gateway and Globe Telecom. The forum will take place at the MGM GRAND Macau on September 19, 2008 Read more

Nissan Technology Square: driving meets innovation

Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. and PT. Nissan Motor Indonesia will present the “NISSAN TECHNOLOGY SQUARE” event at the Kelapa Gading Mall in Jakarta, Indonesia. The public automotive technologies showcase opens today and runs through August 25.

Indonesia is the second market where we hold this event. After completing its run in Indonesia, the Nissan Technology Square will visit several cities in multiple markets, including Singapore, Malaysia and India, etc Read more

Philips to brighten first ever Formula One night race

Philips today announced that its lighting projectors have been selected by Valerio Maioli S.p.A., the Italian consultant company appointed by Singapore GP Pte Ltd., to light up the first ever Formula One™ night race on 28 September 2008 in Singapore.

The go-ahead was given to Singapore to stage the first night race after the International Automobile Federation (FIA) agreed that Valerio Maioli’s design satisfied strict criteria concerning safety Read more

HP, Intel and Yahoo! Create Global Cloud Computing Research Test Bed

HP, Intel Corporation and Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) today announced the creation of a global, multi-data center, open source test bed for the advancement of cloud computing research and education. The goal of the initiative is to promote open collaboration among industry, academia and governments by removing the financial and logistical barriers to research in data-intensive, Internet-scale computing.

The HP, Intel and Yahoo! Cloud Computing Test Bed will provide a globally distributed, Internet-scale testing environment designed to encourage research on the software, data center management and hardware issues associated with cloud computing at a larger scale than ever before Read more

2009 MAZDA Details: CX-9, MAZDA6, CX-7, MAZDA5, RX-8 & More

MAZDA6 Sports Sedan - The 2009 MAZDA6 is all new, and built specifically for the North American market. Lessons learned from the first MAZDA6 and Mazda’s newer successful vehicles - especially the Mazda CX-7 and award-winning CX-9 - encouraged a clean-sheet approach to building the best mid-size sports sedan the US market has ever experienced.

All efforts have been focused on a single four-door sedan bodystyle offered in two basic series: the MAZDA6 i powered by a 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine and the MAZDA6 s powered by a 3.7-liter V-6. The lineup also includes a comprehensive choice of equipment levels, interior colors and distinct interior trims Read more

Aero Shooting Game Aeronauts: official service starts in September

Aeronauts has been conducting a CBT and is being served to users in approx 200 countries through base servers all around the world including Tokyo, Singapore, LA, London, Frankfurt, etc., which resolved the issue regarding the subject of whether or not the game will stimulate user access.

A program developer, Jeein Kim of JCE publishing developing team, stated the following popular facts regarding Aeronaut: (1) piloting an airplane is what anyone would like to do, even though the control in the air is not familiar to them, (2) the tutorial mode for users and the advanced mouse control of the game will assist the user, and (3) the team match above level 4, will ensure that the user becomes more familiar to controlling the game.

Now is time for a better service operating system for the game. We talked to Jeein Kim about the future service plan of Aeronauts.

What is “Aeronauts” in brief? In short, Aeronauts is a ‘dynamic flying action’ game. That’s exactly what the game is. You can see all the game features from the tutorial, which contains various missions so as to make users understand the feeling of flying and controls in Aeronauts. Once establishing the fundamentals of the game through the tutorial, the user can enjoy more dynamic flying actions in the real game environment. For example, an enemy flight will pass right before you or you pass an enemy with accurate controlling to catch them at a shooting distance, which gives you more thrills in these air matches.

What is the feature of “Aeronauts”? Once you reach level 4, you can make a team and join a battle, which will give you access to the real features Aeronauts. The team match allows up to 3 on 3 battles. The higher the level, the more features for flying and more attack weapons are accessible. At these levels, users will feel sweat in their hands, even feeling the adrenalin coming out! I am also like these users.

Instead of fighting against enemies, there are other game modes like catching NPC or collecting balloons, etc.

What were some of the good and bad user feedback received during a global service? Mostly we received good comments on the game. There were also great feedbacks from overseas game related forums or communities. In general, we were told that the feeling of flying or the mandatory components for flying are dynamic and great, and there was a high level of satisfaction regarding the game stories, world aspects and even on plane designs.

On the other hand, some negative comments were made regarding the slow process of some story lines in episodes and the lack of planes at times. We are planning to address these issues with future patches.

Is there any differences with some of game features in Korea where the service started first, with the game features being served through a GSP? There was no user mentioning the dizziness during the game when accessed through a GSP. In fact, Korea was the first place for serving Aeronauts. But, there were some comments on dizziness when playing the game in Korea.

The eyesight was initially developed to follow the mouse pointer, and that the flying screen was applied to the mouse immediately, which we believe, caused dizziness to some gamers. Thus, we made the changing speed of the screen a little bit slower when chasing the target to solve this problem. The results now have been very successful. For example, there are no uncomfortable issues regarding the eyesight when turning the mouse to control the plane and the movement of the plane on the screen has become smoother.

How about a strategy to overseas marketing through a GSP? Recently there are many users from Germany, France, and Brazil via the GNG (Game and Game) site. Through this, users from other countries can enjoy the game through a GSP service. But it depends on the Internet infrastructures of each country as to whether the game service will go smoothly or not. We are currently focusing on network issues and/or language packages for the overseas market.

We also believe that content updates are also very important. Current contents are around level 30 and the update status is about 70%.

How will you solve the localizing issue in a GSP? Content language packs are an important factor, but the Aeronauts content is not limited to a specific area. As such, we don’t believe that particular localizing will be a huge issue in Aeronauts, as the structure of the game is not limited to certain countries.

Lastly, what are the future plans for Aeronauts? We are trying to get feedback from our users about the recent update version, so that we can then reflect their opinions to further updates for the game. The most important issue at this point is developing new contents and making a reliable service. We are planning to open the official service of the game in mid September of this year.

GNGWC 2008: Game and Game World Championship starts in Europe

The international game contest, GNGWC, sponsored by KIPA, has been held for 3 years for the purpose of globalization of Korean online games. In this year, 4 Korean games, including ShotOnline (by OnNet), Atlantica (by NDoors), SilkroadOnline (by JoyMax), and Navy Field (by SDEnternet), have been chosen for official games. The online preliminary contests will start in July, the local final contests will be in 6 countries all around the world, and the final match will be in Korea in November.

GNGWC has become a source to find out great online games developed by medium or small sized Korean game companies, and to help them distribute the products to overseas by their own capacities in the short period of time.

Korea was the number one in the online game industries on the basis of world class IT infrastructures and game developments. But other countries such as China getting into the business lately have been improved rapidly, and Korea’s overseas marketing with licensing through local publishers has met the limitation causing its market decrease. At this moment, KIPA’s GNGWC has become the window for Korean game companies to prove their superior products internationally.

KIPA and its official sponsor KT Corporation (CEO: Jungsu NAM) established base servers in 6 different countries considering their online infrastructures in order to support localization and marketing of the games for GNGWC. This year in GNGWC, based on the administration know-how regarding international game contests, contests will be held in 6 countries, which is one more country compared to last year.

In GNGWC 2007, about 120 gamers through online preliminary contests and the local final contests all around the world competed. The official games of last year such as Lunia (by Allm), BombNDash (by Innodis), and Navy Field (by SDEnternet) have been contracted for overseas services through GNGWC 2007. As a result, those companies reached significant marketing achievements, i.e. increasing the number of new users, etc.

GNGWC 2008 will start with online preliminary contests in July, with subsequent local final contests in Europe (Leipzig, Germany), Southeast Asia (Singapore), North America (San Francisco, U.S.A.), Korea (Yongin), South America (Sang Paulo, Brazil), and Japan (Tokyo), and the final contest will be in Korea in November.

Taekmin KWON from the Digital Contents Business Group of KIPA said “Korean online game industries are currently depressed, and we need the entry for global market as soon as possible. And GNGWC will be the suitable marketing means”, and added “We will try to foster the domestic e-sports contests using foreign games for professional gamers, will try to encourage public users with Korean online games through the GNGWC.”

For more information about the GNGWC, please refer to the official KIPA website.

CGI Star Wars games heading to Nintendo Wii and DS

This is one for Star Wars fans that own a Nintendo Wii or DS; the new CGI Star Wars games will be heading to the popular Wii games console and also DS portable gaming system this holiday season. This information has come from “departing LucasArts employees” telling all that they know.

The game for the Nintendo DS is said to be titled “Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Jedi Alliance” and this game will see the DS stylus help two Jedi battle against the Imperial army, portable gamers will be able to experience the full power of The Force and is said to be miles better than the 2006’s Star Wars: Lethal Alliance.

The Nintendo Wii will also get a taste of Star Wars and this version of the game will obviously include many extra features thanks to the amazing control system of the Wii. The game will be called “Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Lightsaber Duels” and as the name describes, it will include some Lightsaber Dueling with the interactivity of the Wii. Some gamers would have bought a Nintendo Wii just for this upcoming Star Wars game and the intuitive Wii-remote motion controls that will immerse you in the Star Wars universe.

These two games are said to be one of the most exciting Star Wars adventures yet and project lead for LucasArts Singapore, Feargus Carroll said “Working on The Clone Wars chapter of the Star Wars Saga has been an exciting endeavor for everyone here at LucasArts”. Did you buy your Nintendo Wii with getting this game in mind?

We will update you when we get more information or a chance of a hands-on with the Nintendo Wii version of the game.

Source: Read

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