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

Creative has announced that it’s launching new software for motherboards to give gamers better sound quality with onboard audio solutions. A company statement tells how the new Sound Blaster X-Fi MB2 software suite – a “powerful audio platform equipped with cutting-edge audio technologies” – will enhance onboard PC audio “to even greater echelons”. Greater echelons? That’s nearly as bombastic as the ‘Thor’ trailer from Comic Con. Nearly.

The new software studio will first appear on Asus mainboards including the ROG Rampage III.

Anyway, all this is achieved via features such as THX TruStudio Pro audio technology (which “creates unprecedented levels of audio realism, adds dynamics and punch to every gunshot, explosion and gaming sound”) and Creative EAX Advanced HD 5.0. The latter of which features “state-of-the-art multi-environment rendering and reverb modelling, delivering an amazingly realistic and immersive 3D gaming experience”. 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.

Continue Reading

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

SanDisk obviously thinks that good things come in bloody tiny packages if the company’s new USB flash drive range – the Cruzer Blade series – is anything to go by.

The Cruzer Blade – great name and good value. If you don’t lose the tiny yoke.

How small is it? Well, it’s about the size of a paper clip and weighs about the same as a penny. 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.

Continue Reading

Apple has announced an update to its iMac line, with Intel Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 processors up to 3.6GHz plus new graphics including the ATI Radeon HD 5750. The range is now available with dual-core Core i3 and Core i5 chips and quad-core Core i5 and Core i7 processors.

The 27-inch iMac has the option of a 256GB SSD as a primary or secondary drive. The iMac SSD supports up to 215MB/s data transfer rates for faster startup and application launch times. An SD card slot on the iMac now supports the SDXC format to handle the latest high-capacity storage cards.

Full specs are as follows…

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This week over on Komplett.ie we have a mahooosive TV sale, yes you heard us, mahooosive. There are price drops of up to €140 on some models with the sale spreading across 32-, 40- and 42-inch LCD and LED offerings from Samsung, Philips and Sony. We decided to take a closer look at what’s available in the sale, starting with a variety of 32-inch models, and where better to start but with the lowest price on offer – the very nifty Samsung LE32B450 4 Series LCD-TV for only €349.

The Samsung LE32B450 4 Series LCD-TV: "great level of depth in the pictures with some subtle shading".

Samsung LE32B450 – 32″ 4 Series LCD-TV

Called a “perfect blend of style, performance and value” by one review, this 32-inch model is down from €399 to €349 for this week’s sale. This Samsung model has ports and connectivity both in the rear and the left side of the unit, while in terms of picture and sound the LCD-TV-Reviews rundown of its merits says: Continue Reading