ExtraTorrent Blog

AMD reached its lowest share price for more than four years last week and, as a result, its market value dropped to around US$5 billion – that’s $400 million less than it paid for ATI in July 2006.

Intel, AMD’s major competitor in the CPU business, has been on a roll for the past 18 months and is now worth around US$162 billion, which makes the chip giant more than 32 times the size of AMD in monetary terms.

Even worse for AMD is that its partner-cum-archrival, Nvidia, has a market cap of around $19 billion, which makes it almost four times as valuable as the struggling platform company.

It’s fair to say things haven’t been going well for AMD since the middle of last year, as its two major rivals launched products that remain largely uncontested even today.

Neither the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 nor the GeForce 8800 GTX have been truly surpassed in terms of performance yet and it’s not going to happen until next year.

There are no two ways about it: the Phenom launch was a disappointment.

This was largely down to the fact that the company found an erratum in the L3 cache Translation Lookup Buffer, which could cause serious system instabilities in certain scenarios and it prevented the company from launching a 2.4GHz Phenom CPU at the eleventh.

Thanks to Bit-tech for this

The beleaguered music industry is beginning to show more enthusiasm for free, advertising-supported business models.

The latest sign: Universal Music Group has agreed to provide its songs to online social network imeem.

Imeem now boasts deals with all four major record companies, including Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI Group, all of which have already inked deals with the social network.

It’s a sharp turnaround from earlier this year, when none of the majors were willing to sign on to imeem’s new ad-supported interactive service.

In fact, Warner sued imeem, arguing that by allowing its members to upload and share MP3s of Warner music, it was infringing on its copyrights.

But in July, Warner dropped its suit and struck a partnership with imeem under which the major label allowed free, full-song streaming of its music in exchange for a cut of imeem’s advertising revenue.

Sony-BMG Music reached a similar deal with imeem in September, followed by EMI in October and now Universal.

A source familiar with the Universal pact said the label is also receiving a small payment each time one of its songs is streamed.

Fueling the shift is the music industry’s continuing struggle with sliding sales of compact discs, which still account for the vast majority of their recorded-music sales.

Revenue from paid music downloads continues to grow, but isn’t close to making up the difference.

Imeem claims to have 19 million users; deals with major labels and leading independent music companies will help it grow that audience further.

Finally some good news!!

Thanks to Forbes, eweek for this. 

Japanese electronics maker says new Portege is the first tablet PC with a backlit LED display. Toshiba announced on Monday the introduction of the Portege M700, a tablet PC which it claims is the first to incorporate a touch screen LED display.

Most laptops and tablet PCs use LCD (liquid crystal) displays, which are generally cheaper to manufacture but are susceptible to glare and awkward viewing angels.

By using LED (light emitting diode) technology, the Portege M700 produces bright image quality even in bright sunshine and from different angels.

The 12.1-inch WXGA display is meant to mirror the layout of a standard piece of paper for tablet fans who like to the ability to manipulate documents through the touch screen interface.

The M700 also uses the Intel Core 2 Duo and the Santa Rosa edition of Centrino. Other features include a DVD SuperMulti Drive, 1.3 megapixel webcam, a shock absorbing design, a spill-resistant keyboard and “sleep-and-charge” USB ports that can charge compatible electronics (cellphones, MP3 players) whether the system is on or off.

The Portege M700 retails for $1,800 (2.2 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM, 160GB drive, Intel GMA).

Thanks to infosync for this.

Christmas time is a great moment to gather with your family, spread the love and also spend loads of money.

And that’s where advertisements come into the play. Microsoft Corp. began on Monday to place advertisements on its U.S. MSN Mobile page, moving into the nascent mobile phone advertising business.

Computer-based Web usage dwarfs mobile Internet use in the United States, but companies like Microsoft, Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. see advertising tied to mobile phones as potentially more lucrative than the $40 billion online advertising market.The company will start with advertisements from Bank of America, Paramount Pictures and Jaguar.

Microsoft already sells mobile phone advertisements in Belgium, France, Spain, Japan and the United Kingdom.

Microsoft’s idea is to offer customers the option to place advertising across a wide range of platforms from the Internet to mobile phones to its Xbox Live online video game service.

Microsoft also plans to bring new features such as astrology and movie ticket buying to its MSN Mobile page. You can’t hide from the advertisements anywhere in these days…

Thanks to Reuters for this.

We have heard that Apple’s new Leopard operating system has already been successfully installed on Windows PCs.

The OSx86 forum has released details of how Windows users can migrate to Apple’s new OS, without investing in new hardware — even though installing Leopard on an PC may be counter to Apple’s terms and conditions.

The forum is offering full instructions on how to install the system, including screenshots of the installation process.

Not all the features of Leopard function with the patch — Wi-Fi, support, for example, is reportedly inoperable.

Historically, Apple’s likely next move will be to track down and act against those behind the hack.

The move to make Leopard work on a PC is just the latest in Apple’s continual struggle with the hacker community.

Also this weekend a crew of hackers unleased Jailbreak ME, an online service iPod touch and iPhone users can navigate to in order to break into these devices in order to install applications on them.

Apple has encountered similar trials each time it releases a new version of its operating system, as PC-using hackers want the OS, but not necessarily the Mac.

Thanks to PC World for this.

I was watching the TV when this software was launched - and like any keen gamer I was fasinated by the look of it - and its capabilities… but I didn’t trust myself to use it - so I didn’t.

This snippet you’ll see below - made me think.

Think I’ll stick with my Sims, its something I can stay in control of

It’s the case of Eros v. Simon. Linda Eros claims that Thomas Simon stole specific computer code to copy products she created and sells in the virtual Second Life world. It is not as absurd as it may seem at first.

(more…)

A few months back when the new AACS was cracked within a few short weeks?

Now the extra copy protection Sony niavly thought would stop rippers, BD+ is supposidly been cracked too.

According to SlySoft, the makers behind AnyDVD state they have succsessfully circumnavigated BD+ and that the ability to rip Blu Ray discs that contain this shiny *new* protection will be included in the next version of AnyDVD.

Thanks to Engadget for this.

Africa needs to embrace wireless broadband as a potential solution to the digital divide.

Chairman of Intel Craig Barrett has said. “It’s cheaper, easier and more efficient to communicate wirelessly,” he told the BBC News website.

Less than 1% of Africans have access to broadband and only 4% use the net.

The International Telecommunications Union has predicted that the Intel-backed Wimax system could become the dominant mobile standard in Africa.

The continent’s geography and political barriers have made it difficult to roll out wired broadband.

There is a shortage of fibre cable links between African countries and very few states have extensive copper wire networks for ADSL broadband.

(more…)

 Nvidia is ready for its next-generation GPU launch. According to sources at graphics card makers, the company plans to launch its GeForce 9 series GPU after the Lunar New Year in February.

The first chip to rollout of in GeForce 9 family will be the D9E, a high-end product that adopts 65nm manufacturing. The new product will also support DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1, revealed the sources.

In addition to the D9E, Nvidia will roll out a mid-range GeForce 9 family product named D9P in June 2008. The new GPU will adopt 55nm processing, the sources pointed out.

Thanks to the DigiTimes for this.

Mozilla announced this week that it is ramping up efforts to bring Internet and software platforms to cell phones, including a mobile version of Firefox.

Mozilla VP of engineering Mike Schroepfer wrote in his official company blog this week that Mozilla is expanding its mobile presence because the time and place are finally right.

“Up until very recently device limitations required writing new mobile browsers from the ground up. Being able to leverage all the investments in the Mozilla platform across both desktops and devices is the right approach,” he said.

Schroepfer announced that Mozilla is adding mobile devices to the tier 1 platform set for Mozilla2, meaning that cell phones and similar products will be treated as “first-class citizens” in future platform decisions.

The company has also planned to increase full-time staff positions in the mobile department.

Most interesting for consumers is the announcement of Mobile Firefox, which will be able to run extensions and other XUL-based applications that make it a much richer experience than traditional stripped mobile browsers of the past.

The Nokia N800 is currently acting as a test phone for Mozilla’s new mobile initiative, with a Mozilla browser available on that handset.

Other manufacturers and mobile operating system platforms are in the works, but Schroepfer says the company has not yet determined its target platforms for mobile applications.

Special thanks to TG Daily for this post :)