Earlier this month we reported that Microsoft’s Xbox 360 got a massive bump in sales thanks to the new 250GB version available in certain parts of the globe. Overall though, the last 12 months has seen the Microsoft console lose out heavily to the PlayStation 3 in sales, with the Sony product outselling it by four million units worldwide.

The figures mark a huge turnaround from this time last year, when the 360 outsold the PS3 by 1.5 million units in the preceding 12 months. The full figures show that Microsoft sold 10.3 million consoles in its last financial year, which ended June 30. However, Sony confirmed yesterday that it sold 14.3 million PlayStation 3s in the same period, pushing the machine’s total sales to 38.1 million. Continue Reading

‘Zombie cookies’ may sound like a combination of dough, chocolate chips and some undead flesh but instead they are actually copies of supposedly deleted browser cookies; and today they are the focus of a major legal case in the US.

The term "zombie cookie" was coined after the issue of traditional browser cookies being undeleted by Flash was brought to light in 2009.

A legal challenge has been launched across the Atlantic against a number of websites – including Hulu, MTV, and Myspace – claiming that they were engaged in “covert surveillance” of users. The site are said to have used a Quantcast Flash application to restore deleted text files used by web browsers to store user data, or ‘cookies’ as they’re more commonly known. Continue Reading

According to new figures, AMD has overtaken Nvidia for graphics chip shipments. The numbers from Mercury Research show that in the second quarter of 2010 AMD’s ATI graphics unit took 51% of the standalone, or ‘discrete’ graphics chip market compared to Nvidia’s share of almost 49%.

A good 12 months for AMD evidently.

Mercury Research tracks graphics chip shipments globally, and when looking at their figures from this time last year it shows that AMD has boosted its share of the market greatly over 12 months. At the same point in 2009 Nvidia had about 59% of sales and AMD just under 41%. Continue Reading

Facebook has denied that anything untoward has happened to 100 million user accounts after it was claimed that private details of one fifth of the site’s users had been made available in a downloadable file on Pirate Bay.

The file that’s causing a lot of headlines today.

It was widely reported this morning that campaigners who wanted to highlight the “terrifying” privacy policies of Facebook had made the file – which contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user’s profiles, plus their names and unique ID – freely available online. In reality though, nothing of any great magnitude has happened to 20% of the Facebook population at all. Continue Reading

Sky has confirmed it will launch Sky 3D later this year. The channel will be Europe’s first 3D TV channel and will beam into thousands of homes across Ireland on 1 October this year.

Bertie Ahern enjoys 3D TV coverage in between the odd pint of Bass.

A press release from the company tells how 3D TV demonstrations will be available in 13 Sky shops across the country over the coming weeks (full list below). The channel is very excited about showing the overblown nonsense that is Ryder Cup in three dimensions, while 3D movies like ‘Bolt’ and ‘Monster vs. Aliens’ will also get their “international 3D TV debuts” on the channel as well. Continue Reading

A 23 year-old hacker responsible for a botnet that has infected millions of computers worldwide has been arrested in Slovenia. While his real name was not revealed, the man in question is known as ‘Iserdo’ and he is believed to have written the programme behind the mariposa virus, also known as ‘butterfly’.

The butterfly botnet (hey, you try and get a picture of a botnet) has infected nearly 13 million computers.

The botnet, one of the world’s largest, was dismantled earlier this year after infecting 12.7 million computers. It was designed to steal personal financial details and was also found in the PCs of banks and major companies.

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There’s taking the urine, and then there’s taking the urine, sticking it in robots and calling it research. Yes, a team at the Bristol Robotics Lab are looking into the use of pee as the fuel for Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs), which can use bacterial cultures to break down food and other substances in order to create power for robots.

I hope that robot washed its hands.

The team responsible has previously developed the EcoBot-III (also known as the ‘Bread-Bot’), a robot which can power itself by digesting waste, and now they want to build a similar model powered by urine. Continue Reading

Not usually a source of scurrilous rumours, the Wall Street Journal has reported that Google has held talks with several gaming companies over the possibility of creating a viable social networking alternative to Facebook.

Playdom, Zynga and Electronic Arts-owned Playfish have all held talks with Google according to well placed sources.

While starting from scratch against a company with 500 million registered users seems like folly, the short but colourful history of social networks tend to prove that people get sick of one site as soon as something better (or generally easier to use) comes along. Whether Google and the collected brains trust of Playdom, Zynga and Electronic Arts-owned Playfish can create something to challenge Mark Zuckerberg (or that woodchip salesman who claims to own 84% of Facebook) is another matter.

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Samsung Mobile Display’s partnership with HTC to provide AMOLED panels for its smartphones may be getting a little bit shaky. It’s been announced that before the end of the year HTC will start to use Sony-developed Super LCD (SLCD) panels for 3.7-inch screens on its smartphones

HTC has confirmed it with integrate SLCDs on certain devices, beginning with the Desire.

A DigiTimes report comments that Samsung Mobile Display (SMD) has been under fire of late as the supply of AMOLED panels have been running short of demand, leaving HTC with the easy decision to diversify its panel sources. The Taiwan-based mobile giants are also reportedly considering IPX panels from LG Display (LGD).

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Teenagers who claim that parents just don’t understand them – in between playing The Smiths or Avenged Sevenfold at ridiculously high levels and reading ‘Catcher in the Rye’ (can I fit in any more clichés… probably) – will wake up today slightly jealous of the teens of the Chongqing province in south-west China.

It’s not often that western kids would envy their Chinese counterparts but Chongqing has just passed a law banning adults from searching their children’s computers or indeed their phones.

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Comic Con in San Diego – which is generally focused on the movie business – has gradually built up a more important place in the games industry as well. Among the myriad of announcements at this year’s convention, two in particular caught our eye though. One news tidbit from from BioWare and a very exciting joint statement from Capcom and Namco.

The latter referred to an agreement between the game publishers, to combine Namco’s classic ‘Tekken’ title and Capcom’s ‘Street Fighter’ series into two new games – ‘Tekken X Street Fighter’ and, you guessed it, ‘Street Fighter X Tekken’. Continue Reading

Apple is facing yet more embarrassment this morning as some of its customers are threatening lawsuits over a Mac Mini price debacle.

The Mac Mini is at the centre of Apple's latest blunder.

Last Friday, Apple’s online store priced its Mac Mini with 8GB DRAM at about €480, a massive drop from the original price of around €1,135. The price quoted for the mini desktop is believed to have been a mistake, though customers across the globe took advantage of the error and placed their orders. Continue Reading