With a sliding economy video games are starting to prove their staying power. Many economist thought that this would happen, but since the video game industry is failry young it has not seen an economy down fall such as this.

The good news: video games, consoles and game accessories hit $1.12 billion in May, a 37 percent rise over the same month last year, driven by the chart-topping “Grand Theft Auto” video game.  Even though the up trend is pushed by a video game, there was an increase in sales in hardware as well.

The video game industry is hoping to make $21 to $23 billion dollars this year, despite a weak economy.

Built to last and to not disappoint, many cell phone upgrades are now going to the Blackberry.

The BlackBerry Curve 8330 is no different. This model - like other Blackberry’s - has a strong customer fan base.  People often act like the Blackberry is the best thing that has ever happened to them, not so with the iPhone. The slow processor lack of third party software, leave iPhone users disgruntled.

The next round of Balckberry’s are just around the corner. Soon the BlackBerry Bold will be released. Same ole blackberry, but with a  faster processor and a larger screen. Good luck dragging a blackberry user away from that!

Until iPhone supports popular software like Outlook, Blackberry with continue to blow iPhone out of the water.

When is the media going to stop? Before Obama had won the Democratic slot, the media was announcing that he was definitely the winner. What? They can’t decide that? But, they did. No matter what would or could have happened pat the point of all the major news papers have decided who would run for the Democratic party. IO wonder if they are going to decide for Obama who his running VP will be?

The media has too tight of a hold on the US. We should count ourselves lucky since we do have media access from other places and the government does not control everything we see, read, and hear. However, this does not give the media the right to say certain decisions have been made when they have not. The media needs to report the truth - it is their duty - and not jump the gun.

What do you think:

Does the media really control us? Do they push decisions to be final before they really are? Do you think the media needs to have more rules and regulations?

Record increases in fuel prices and concerns about global warming are again directing attention to electricity powered vehicles. Other main alternative solution offered to those concerns, biofuels, is currently taking flak because they are perceived to have contributed to the world food crisis.

Main problems holding back the battery powered vehicles are, the time it takes to recharge the battery and the limited range of the vehicles developed so far, such as EV1 from General Motors. Hybrid vehicles offering a combination of battery power and internal combustion are more popular. However their battery powered range is much smaller; the most successful hybrid, Toyota Prius, can barely make 1 mile on battery alone.

That is why researchers around the world are working hard to improve the technology.

They are increasingly turning to lithium ion batteries. This type of battery made the recent success of the mobile devices possible. They are light weight, and retain full capacity till completely depleted, instead of deteriorating with each recharge as with most other types of batteries.

Nickel-metal-hydride batteries, already in use in Prius, offer durability and better energy density for now. But they are heavy and most researchers think that lithium ion batteries will overtake them in low cost and energy capacity. While currently expensive, large lithium ion batteries may become cheaper once mass production starts and economies of scale kick in.

Some researchers are working on replacing expensive cobalt in lithium ion batteries with other substances like manganese and iron phosphate, though they have not been completely successful in getting the same efficacy as cobalt so far.

Lithium ion batteries are kept back by other reasons; a tendency to explode when over charged or over heated. Larger the battery, larger the potential explosion will be; not very good for vehicles. Getting over this problem is a major focus of research.

In any case here is reason to be hopeful; most experts expect efforts to make batteries competitive with internal combustion to be successful in the not too distant future.

There is no doubt about the success of the Wikipedia, the user generated online encyclopedia. It has the largest number of articles, now close to ten million, and what is more, they are generally reliable. No other encyclopedia can match that.

However that very success is creating problems, or at least perceived to be creating problems.

Should Wikipedia try to include articles on every thing? Even on trivial matters, of interest to handful of people? For example, do we really need a detailed “biography” of obscure cartoon character? Especially when wikipedia biographies of people who had real influence on world such as certain historical personages are so spare? Some people argue that this “trivialization” lowers the Wikipedia’s overall reputation.

On the other hand, reducing the number of trivial articles as an editorial policy will not necessarily increase the number of substantive articles. A question we should ask is whether having trivial articles do any real harm? Maybe not, in fact contrary may be the truth. When people are allowed to create articles on subjects that interest them, including “trivial” ones, they are likely to create articles with substance as well. After all it is the users who generate the content and their interests should be catered to.

Another objection to deletion of so called trivial articles concerns the value judgment implied. Who will decide what is trivial and what is not? At present an “elite” group of most active users are given that power and they follow a complicated procedure when deciding to delete articles. This seems to be leading to lot of bureaucratic wrangling. As with any bureaucracy, all these procedures and rules increase the power of people who know how to play the system.

That Wikipedia of all things, has started going in that road is regrettable, in my personal opinion. Please let users in general decide.

Removable, portable, and rewritable, all around multi functional, USB Flash Drives which came into widespread use in late 1990s and 2000 have proved to be one of the most useful and versatile products in the modern world. Their power and capabilities have also grown with time.

Their increasing capability has allowed them to be used for variety of purposes; personal data storage and transport, backup, assist system administration and security, execute applications without installing into computer, software demonstration and marketing, boot device, increase system memory, are some of the uses that comes to mind. Their versatility is ever expanding. For instance, some of them now have sound output capability so can act as music players.

First flash drives had only 64MB of memory. Now on the other hand USB flash drives are touching 32GB. This will only increase as more of the recent breakthroughs in technology are incorporated into memory chip production.

These days flash drives are capable of sustaining 1 million plus rewrites and can retain their data for over ten years. In addition, you can obtain USB memory card readers that allow the memory to be removed from the drive separately, thus allowing even more flexibility of purpose.

Others portable storage methods such as floppy disks, or rewritable CD-ROMs, suffer greatly in comparison to flash drives. Unlike USB flash drives they are large, slow, have less storage capacity, have limited rewriting capacity, or have moving parts (so are unreliable). In most cases, they suffer from all these faults at once.

In fact, word “drive” is misleading since USB flash drives do not have any moving parts. The word was used because they appear as such in operating system interface.

Flash memory chip is placed on a circuit board that is encased in plastic, rubber or metal covering. This makes it very sturdy. This also allows for customization of the appearance of USB flash drives; it can look like a key tag, a pen or many other things.

Data is accessed by computer or other gadgets like MP3 players through the USB port. USB port also supplies the power required.

There are no signs that the growth in Digital Home Networking will slow down anytime soon. It is likely that more attention will be directed to this market in the coming years as home networks become increasingly common.

Home Media servers sit at the center for the home network. As such, Home Media Server market is driven by the digital home networking market. Data from all the main server makers in Taiwan and South Korea, who manufacture the servers for such companies as HP, IBM, Dell, and Sun Microsystems, indicate that the market growing fast. Similarly several companies have sprung up in mainland China to serve the same market.

Industry experts have predicted that demand for basic media servers will grow by over 60% by 2010, while demand for advanced media servers is expected to grow by close to 60% by then.

Such media servers have to be seamlessly interoperable with a variety of other devices that comes into contact with home network. In addition given ever evolving nature of digital media formats, they have to support software that can handle variety of such formats. Content providers have also demanded that some content protection mechanisms against piracy be built into these servers. Enhanced security against unauthorized use and break-ins is also paramount. Another feature that may have demand is the ability to create backups and carry out maintenance through remote login, so that the servers can be maintained by remote service providers.

A manufacturers’ alliance called Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) sets the general guidelines for future direction of the home media servers.

Some of the new Home Media Players, Home Theatre Systems, and other such devices, do have some server capability built into them. However this is not expected to retard the demand for dedicated Home Media Servers on the long run.

To conclude, all the signs indicate that we can expect lot of market driven innovation and increasing ease of use in Digital Home Networking.

Yes, you heard me right. A breakthrough in technology is likely to increase the storage capacity of electronic devices like MP3 players by a factor of almost hundred and fifty thousand. As I always say more the better!

Currently a state of the art player will hold about forty thousand songs. To make another comparison today’s best 3.5 inch hard drives can hold about one terabyte of data. But if promise of this discovery holds true, 500 terabyte disks are on the horizon.

Key discovery is a switch the size of a molecule or fraction of a nanometer. This allows the stored data to be retrieved ands stored without increasing the size of the gadget using the storage. Switch consists of two banks of molecules placed 0.32 of a nanometer apart from each other on a carbon or gold plane. This in theory allows for 1 billion transistors to be placed on a single microchip.

Discovery published in respected scientific journal Nature Nanotechnology was made by Lee Cronin and Malcolm Kadodwala, chemistry professors at Glasgow University in UK, assisted by researchers at Daresbury Laboratory, Warrington, UK, which houses Synchrotron, a huge radiation source.

Utility of this breakthrough will of course extend well beyond their possible use in music players to all electronic devices. Everyone will get more power and storage.

This is also radical in that it there is no need for fragile silicon, the staple semi conducting material in all modern chips. It may be possible for these switches to be planted on plastic, since they work with carbon, thus allowing greater flexibility to the whole field.

When is the media going to stop? Before Obama had won the Democratic slot, the media was announcing that he was definitely the winner. What? They can’t decide that? But, they did. No matter what would or could have happened pat the point of all the major news papers have decided who would run for the Democratic party. IO wonder if they are going to decide for Obama who his running VP will be?

The media has too tight of a hold on the US. We shoudl count ourseleves lucky since we do have media access from other places and the goverment does not control everything we see, read, and hear. However, this does not give the media the right to say certain decisions have been made when they have not. The media needs to report the truth - it is their duty - and not jump the gun.

What do you think:

Does the media really control us? Do they push decisions to be final before they really are? Do you think the media needs to have more rules and regulations?