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Wielding the executioner's axe for Ellison

Comment It's going to be a long time before Oracle can take on the likes of HP and IBM for the IT-market crown. But before he retires, you can bet Larry Ellison's last billion bucks that he most surely wants to become the dominant systems supplier in the data center.…

Free On-Demand Webcast - Virtualizing the Hard Stuff

Google revamped its iconic search site Wednesday, unveiling what it calls Instant Search, which loads search results as soon as you finish typing a word, packing your screen quickly with results as soon as you start with the 'd' in dog.

There's an easier way to test laser pointers for leaking harmful infrared light: Use an infrared thermometer.

Mozilla has released a fifth beta for its Firefox 4 browser, adding hardware acceleration in Windows, a new audio API and support for a new security protocol.

Drops 60s psychedelia API

Mozilla has released a fifth Firefox 4 beta, offering graphics hardware acceleration on Windows and a new API that lets site developers code pages that visually display audio data inside the browser.…

When infringement is big business

A copyright enforcement service has filed a lawsuit seeking $150,000 from Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle for posting two newspaper articles without authorization.…

New research confirms that alcohol can be beneficial to your health. In fact, abstaining from alcohol increases your risk of dying.

A journalist captured in Afghanistan told the world he was still alive over the weekend by tweeting with a prison guard's cellphone. This remarkable tale about a tweet kicks off a new meme here at Gadget Lab that we're calling Tweet of the Day.

A federal appeals court is ruling the government may obtain cell-site information mobile phone carriers retain on their customers without a probable-cause warrant under the Fourth Amendment. Cell-site location information, which carriers usually retain for about 18 months, identifies the cell tower to which the customer was connected at the beginning of a call and at the end of the call.

Most flash photos — even those shot with your new, fancy $500 camera — look like junk. But you can create amazing images using a flash if you know a few tricks.

BP spilled $3.6m in Gulf spin campaign

Following its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, BP went from spending about $57,000 a month on Google search ads to an enormous $3.6m outlay for the month of June alone, according to a report citing internal Google documents.…

HP 'idiots' threaten Oracle relationship, says Larry

Updated Hewlett-Packard has sued disgraced former chief executive Mark Hurd in an effort to stop him joining Oracle.…

Free On-Demand Webcast - Virtualizing the Hard Stuff

Get out your telescopes! Two small asteroids will come within moon-distance of Earth Wednesday.

6,671 travelers searched (so far)

Privacy advocates have sued the Obama administration over its practice of seizing laptops, cell phones, and other devices at US borders and copying their contents even when the owner isn't suspected of wrongdoing.…

The Eastern European practice of speleotherapy claims salt air helps breathing issues, which leads to patients lining the halls of subterranean caves.

An Obama administration policy allowing U.S. border officials to seize and search laptops, smartphones and other electronic devices for any reason is being challenged as unconstitutional.

Foundem claims 'diversionary straw man tactics'

Foundem — the UK-based vertical search outfit involved in antitrust investigations of Google in both Texas and the European Union — has responded to Google's account of the Texas probe, accusing the Mountain View search giant of "diversionary 'straw man' tactics."…

We have been fascinated by virtual goods ever since reading more pieces of furniture were sold online in Korea in socnets like Cyworld than in real life. You may also recall that a number of companies experimented with virtual goods in 2nd Life (c'mon, you can't have forgotten 2006 - unless you were one of those 2nd Life marketeers ). Anyway, hey ho we are off again.

.....some large companies are testing whether they can raise awareness of their brands — and sell more actual goods — by creating and offering their own pretend merchandise. Volvo Cars of North America, the clothing retailer H&M and MTV Networks are among the diverse brands entering the market for virtual goods — the make-believe items offered on social-networking games, smartphone apps or fantasy Internet sites.

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So far, the virtual goods market largely consists of micro-purchases. Consumers typically pay $1 to $3 while playing games like FarmVille or Mafia Wars, both created by the social-gaming company Zynga, to get a jump on game rivals. Users also can give a gift, like flowers, or build a collection of items — just as collectors do in real life.

Those impulses will be worth nearly $2 billion in revenue or more this year, according to ThinkEquity, a financial research firm in San Francisco. Its analyst for new media and games, Atul Bagga, said his research found that the market could reach $2.6 billion next year.

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To succeed, “branded virtual goods have to be identifiable and have a real world relevance,” said Ravi Mehta, vice president for products at Viximo, a social gaming platform provider. “They are driven by the relevance to the purchaser. Paris Hilton has people who buy her virtual goods because they are fans and want to identify with her, her hair, her place in pop culture.”
I think he is actually serious about Paris Hilton.....

Actually, we've been arguing for a while that this is the best model for Facebook, but whether people will buy virtual trainers etc on SocNets any more than they did(n't) on 2nd Life is still an open question. Those "decorate your own room" socnets have largely passe'd away. All the evidence is that virtual goods are bought in pursuit of another (typically game based) objective, not "real world relevance" - unless maybe they can be converted into free drinks, like 4square mayoralties at Starbucks.

I await with fascination to see if Nike will be selling under-armour gear on World of Warcraft, and Wilkinson Sword will sell...... but I think this is far more likely to be more akin to the 2nd Life experience, as corporate clumsiness leads to egg on faces and rivers running with red ink.....

Still, as these goods cost nothing to make and distribute, they could be the last hurrah of Freeconomics

Clearly, some of us make bad decisions with our gadgets. But even without having to live down a mobile phone-fueled tirade of Mel Gibson proportions, many of us have sought forgiveness for our gadget-enabled sins through a ritual purge: a day without gadgets.

Kindle online game player?

Amazon has poached one of the brains behind Microsoft's fabulously successful Xbox and Xbox Live, hinting at a rival cloud-based gaming strategy.…