New Zealand Geek - news page 53

Facebook claims it has been ripped off by a German social networking site.

AFP reports that Facebook filed a civil suit in a Californian court last week in an attempt to stop German language site StudiVZ from mimicking its layout.
July 24, 2008

It's getting harder for New Zealand companies to make the transition to the international marketplace with a general vacuum of assistance and support back home.

Government funding programmes such as New Zealand Trade and Enterprise seem to be of little help to the average tech start-up, as their criteria are generally firmly based on export potential. (Although I do know of circumstances where great people in NZTE have assisted, and in these cases their funding has made a transformational difference.)
July 24, 2008

PS3 PG

Pros: The quiz show that put Trivial Pursuit back in the cupboard is back, now in Blu-ray high definition and with a massive online component. Dripping cheese like a fast-food fix, Buzz is again voiced by Aussie soap star Jason Donovan and comes with a set of four wireless controllers (although PS2 buzzers still work). Immensely popular on PS2, Buzz ships with a massive 5000 questions on disc. More   can be downloaded, and players can set up their own quizzes and make them available to friends or everyone through the PlayStation network. Questions on music, movies and TV, knowledge, sports and lifestyle, or the Channel Hopper option, a combo of all five.
July 24, 2008

New Zealand's fledgling "supercomputing" data processing industry could receive a boost through a research partnership between Sun Microsystems and Otago University.

Otago has been named as the first university outside of the US to join Sun's OpenSPARC (scalable processor architecture) network of research centres which includes Carnegie Mellon and Stanford Universities.
July 24, 2008

Amazon.com, the world's largest internet retailer, is expected to announce profit rose as online shoppers bought more flat-screen televisions and video-game players and a weaker dollar boosted overseas sales.

Second-quarter net income may have risen 43 per cent to US$111.6 million ($147.2 million), or 26c a share, the average estimate of 15 analysts in a Bloomberg survey. A year earlier, Seattle-based Amazon had net income of US$78 million, or 19c.
July 24, 2008

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Advertising via mobile devices took a step forward this week when the company behind the first attempt to push a TV-style ad out to local mobile users declared its campaign a success.
July 24, 2008

Experienced start-up entrepreneur Greg Cross offers some lessons learned in a career marked by hundreds of nos and a few yesses. In this first column in the series, he looks at the reasons why relationships matter when it comes to raising capital.

The most logical place to start this would probably have been to talk about your plan to raise capital. Like most things in life, being clear about your goals and having a plan to achieve it is pretty much the only way to maximise your chances of success. But I want to leave this key subject and the all-important related elements for later instalments.
July 24, 2008

You've probably heard of Google Analytics, the free, web-based application that has upped the ante for everyone interested in analysing their web traffic.

A common misconception is that because Google Analytics is free it's not as powerful as its paid counterparts. However, it actually began its existence as Urchin on Demand, a US$495 per month subscription package, until Urchin Software was bought by Google in 2005.
July 24, 2008

SEATTLE - Microsoft said the executive in charge of its Windows and web operations is leaving the company.

Kevin Johnson had served since 2005 as president of Microsoft's platforms and services division, which included the Windows operating system and Windows Live programs such as web email and instant messaging. The division also included online advertising, search and Microsoft's MSN sites.
July 24, 2008

A Maori language version of the Google homepage and search interface has been launched, coinciding with Te Wiki o te Reo Maori.

Potaua Biasiny-Tule has worked on the demanding project translating nearly 9000 words into Maori.
July 24, 2008

Early in his career Steve Lowe was a Post Office engineer in the pre-Telecom era. After time overseas working in senior technology roles - most recently as Asia Pacific vice- president for AT&T - he returned to New Zealand this year to head up the local business of Alcatel Lucent, the company building Telecom's new cellular network and working on its next-generation fixed-line network. Lowe spoke to Simon Hendery about what brought him back to New Zealand and his strategy for driving Alcatel Lucent in an environment where IT and communications infrastructure has become a hot political issue.

What prompted your move back to New Zealand?
July 24, 2008

LOS ANGELES - Watchmen is already getting a prequel - and the film's not out until next year.

Warner Bros. announced that it will release an episodic downloadable video game developed by Deadline Games that will prequel next year's big-screen adaptation of the Watchmen graphic novel pegged to the film's March debut. Another game that will take place following the first game will be released later in 2009 at the same time as the Watchmen DVD.
July 24, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO - Google is taking the wraps off an internet encyclopedia designed to give people a chance to show off - and profit from - their expertise on any topic.

The service, dubbed "knol" in reference to a unit of knowledge, had been limited to an invitation-only audience of contributors and readers for the past seven months.
July 24, 2008

NEW YORK - Sony, Samsung and other consumer-electronics heavyweights are uniting to support a technology that could send high-definition video signals wirelessly from a single set-top box to screens around the home.

The consortium is an important development in the race to create a definitive way to replace tangles of video cables, but doesn't end it - both Sony and Samsung also are supporting a competing technology.
July 24, 2008

BRITAIN - Internet users could face an annual charge of up to 30 pounds (NZ$80) to download music, under plans to be unveiled today that aim to tackle illegal file-sharing.

Ministers are backing proposals that would enable millions of broadband users to pay an annual levy which would allow them to copy as much - previously illegal - music from the internet as they wanted.
July 24, 2008