HartleySpurlock.com

As a closet Nintendo fanboy, I still kick myself to this day for thinking the Wii was not going to be a big deal, and that I didn’t need to buy that Nintendo stock.

Its hard to believe that the Wii would be a bigger deal than the NES that came out here in America almost 24 years ago.

Global sales of Nintendo’s Wii console have passed 50 million, the company’s boss Satoru Iwata has said.

The Wii is now the fastest-selling games console in history, surpassing the PlayStation 2.

Mr Iwata also said that Nintendo’s handheld DS console had shipped 100m units around the world.

“Almost no one expected them to reach the current level of mainstream acceptance. It’s even beyond what we possibly hoped for,” Mr Iwata said.

“The market has expanded as video games have been accepted by more consumers than ever before,” the Nintendo president, told the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

“It’s a cliche but it’s not just the 18-year-old kid, it’s the mom on the train, it’s the high-school girl after she’s done with her homework, everyone plays games. “

via BBC NEWS

Depending on the price structure, this could be a good thing, and bring some much needed features. Of course the simplicity of Twitter is part of what makes it so great. What do you think?

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says the San Francisco start-up is watching the outside initiatives closely as it prepares to launch its own fee-based services this year, but doesn’t view them as competition. “We want to work with those companies that are already making an effort,” he says.

Mr. Stone says Twitter recently hired a product manager to oversee the development of commercial accounts. The accounts would offer users more features in exchange for a fee, but Mr. Stone says Twitter hasn’t set a launch date for them.

via Wall Street Journal.

Ron Paul says capitalism didn’t fail, it was never given a chance.

Nintendo just announced at the 09 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco that they have a new Zelda game coming out called The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. Will add photos and the video as soon as its publically released, or a blogger whos actually there posts it.

via twitter/twitscoop

UPDATE: Here’s the trailer.

So I will most likely be changing providers soon. I think it would be a good chance to pirate some music and threaten leaving AT&T over one of these letters from the online media gestapo.

Cicconi told attendees of the Leadership Music Digital Summit that the notices are part of a “trial.” AT&T wants to test customer reaction, he said. Whether AT&T included any warnings that repeat offenders would see their service suspended or terminated is still unclear. Music industry sources said AT&T told managers at the top labels the trial letter would include strong language about the consequences of illegal conduct, but would stop short of mentioning service interruptions.

via CNET News

The casing is near completion. I personally can’t wait for non-dev units of this to come out. For those who haven’t seen this handheld before, its got some great specs. The previously released dev units were just the boards and the screen. The OSS community has been creating some great programs to use with this when its commercially launched. Here’s the specs for you nerds:

• ARM® Cortex™-A8 600Mhz+ CPU running Linux
• 430-MHz TMS320C64x+™ DSP Core
• PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 ES compliant 3D hardware
• 800×480 4.3″ 16.7 million colours touchscreen LCD
• Wifi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth & High Speed USB 2.0 Host
• Dual SDHC card slots & SVideo TV output
• Dual Analogue and Digital gaming controls
• 43 button QWERTY and numeric keypad
• Around 10+ Hours battery life

via OpenPandora.org

The expanded snippets was sorely needed. The improved algorithm was probably needed considering how many people who use Google, have no idea how to use it properly. Even with this update I’m sure I will still be using boolean searches.

Today we’re rolling out two new improvements to Google search. The first offers an expanded list of useful related searches and the second is the addition of longer search result descriptions — both of which help guide users more effectively to the information they need.

More and better search refinements

Starting today, we’re deploying a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search, and one of its first applications lets us offer you even more useful related searches (the terms found at the bottom, and sometimes at the top, of the search results page).

For example, if you search for [principles of physics], our algorithms understand that “angular momentum,” “special relativity,” “big bang” and “quantum mechanic” are related terms that could help you find what you need.

Longer snippets

When you enter a longer query, with more than three words, regular-length snippets may not give you enough information and context. In these situations, we now increase the number of lines in the snippet to provide more information and show more of the words you typed in the context of the page.

via Official Google Blog

We don’t know how a wiki works, or how a website is ran. So let’s just raid the guy who’s listed in the whois.

Shortly after 9pm on Monday the 24th of March 2009, seven police officers in Dresden and four in Jena searched the homes of Theodor Reppe, who holds the domain registration for ‘wikileaks.de’. According to the search protocol the reason for the search is “distribution of pornographic material” and “discovery of evidence”. Police claim the raid was initiated due to Mr. Reppe’s position as the Wikileaks.de domain owner….

….Mr Reppe is maintainer of one of the most popular German Tor-proxy servers (morphium.info) and is not involved in the Wikileaks project other than sponsoring the German domain registration and mirroring a collection of US Congressional Research Service reports.

via Wikileaks.
via @wikileaks

Does there really need to be federal insurance for NBFI’s? Sounds to me its just an easy way for the Government to pick up financial institutes on the cheap. If the need should ever arise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, welcomed a proposal from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to give the Treasury the authority to unwind large, nonbank financial institutions that have become insolvent.

Pelosi said that the proposal, raised by Geithner in testimony before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday, would “help us move forward in a positive way.”

The idea has been floating around for some time, and had been previously endorsed by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the financial services panel.

But Pelosi’s explicit endorsement of the proposed expansion of the Treasury’s regulatory powers, is significant in its chances of success.

The plan would involve significant extra powers for the Treasury to move into firms that are insolvent or on the verge of failure and ensure they unwind orderly. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has the authority to act similarly with banks that fail, but no such regulatory authority exists for nonbank financial institutions.

A key part of any overhaul of the financial regulatory landscape will involve ensuring that another American International Group-type situation not be allowed to occur. The federal government has had to pump in more than $170 billion into AIG to ensure that it didn’t fall into bankruptcy and cause chaos to global financial markets.

-By Corey Boles, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-6601; corey.boles@dowjones.com

via WSJ.com

Last time they were blocked was due to a pro-Tibetan video. I’m surprised they allow YouTube at all. Seems they probably found ANOTHER video.

Of course I feel this is probably just China’s way of saying Google hasn’t paid them enough money for access yet.

Access to Google Inc.’s YouTube service was blocked by Chinese authorities, as the video-sharing site continues to wrestle with governments offended by some of its content.

A YouTube spokesman said as of Tuesday evening it hadn’t been contacted by the Chinese government and was working to restore the service, which had been disrupted for more than 24 hours.

The site has been temporarily censored in at least a dozen countries, according to YouTube, including Turkey, where a ban remains in effect. Such incidents are buffeting YouTube’s attempts to expand into new markets, particularly China, home to the world’s largest number of Internet users—nearly 300 million, according to the government.

via WSJ.com.