ABI Research predicts 59 million WiMax users worldwide by 2015, about 15 percent less than an earlier forecast.



WiMAX - ABI Research - Telecommunications - Business - Equipment

The gaming industry had its worst August in the US since 1996 this year, but Microsoft has much to be proud of, with both the best-selling hardware and software. That's not to say the PlayStation 3 is in bad shape, as NPD Analyst Anita Frazier points the PS3 "has now enjoyed 13 consecutive months of year-over year hardware sales increases and that momentum is reflected in the content and accessories categories as well."

Let's take a look at the hardware sales:

Data source: NPD Group

Madden did some big numbers in August, and the gap between the sales on the 360 and PS3 shows just how much ground Sony has made up in the past year. Nintendo continues to put a good number of first-party titles on the board.

1. Madden NFL 11 on Xbox 360 with 920,000
2. Madden NFL 11 on PS3 with 893,600
3. Super Mario Galaxy 2 on Wii with 124,600
4. Mafia 2 on Xbox 360 with 121,600
5. New Super Mario Bros. on Nintendo DS with 110,400
6. New Super Mario Bros. on Nintendo Wii
7. Mafia 2 on PS3
8. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox 360
9. NCAA Football 11 on Xbox 360
10. Wii Fit Plus on Wii

Things should look very similar next month, when Microsoft releases the sure-to-explode Halo: Reach to retail, along with a new version of the Xbox 360. Sony has the Move and its accompanying games to look forward to as well. Nintendo? Price drops on the DS line of hardware are coming, but don't expect much more sales momentum until the 3DS is released.

Read the comments on this post

Buzzed browser races rivals for JavaScript crown

Mozilla has released preview builds of Firefox 4 that include JägerMonkey, the new JavaScript engine extension designed to outpace rival engines from the likes of Google and Opera.…

The Omni Group has updated OmniFocus, its flexible task and project manager, adding a number of organization, sharing, and sync updates.



Omni Group - OmniFocus - IPhone - Apple - Project Management

Twenty years after Luc Besson unleashed La Femme Nikita on an unsuspecting world, the female street-punk-turned-assassin is still kicking. A look at new TV show Nikita and its predecessors.

Smule's I Am T-Pain app gained immense popularity last year for letting iPhone users emulate rapper T-Pain's trademark auto-tune vocal styling. Rather than let...



IPhone - Smule - I Am T-Pain - T-Pain - Medicine

Detractors say Google's new "instant" search technology is both a security risk and a distraction for the company.



Google - Google Instant - Search - Search Engines - Companies

AT&T touts network improvements under hail of criticism fiercewireless.com
Qualcomm studying use of MediaFLO technology to mitigate network traffic fiercebroadbandwireless.com
'Internet censorship is trade barrier', says Google exec theregister.co.uk
Internet video: broadband service provider threat or opportunity? fiercetelecom.com
Broadband Update: A call to support "Network neutrality" examiner.com
Jailbreakers find hole in Apple's iOS 4.1 just hours after release broadbandgenie.co.uk
No Verizon, not antenna, is iPhone 4's big problem msnbc.com
Mobilicity Sues Rogers Wireless Over Competition Law cellular-news.com
Acer: Apple products are "mutant viruses" electronista.com
Windows Phone 7 launching 11 October pocket-lint.com
read comment(s)

Just as products based on ARM's much anticipated Cortex A9 are finally poised to hit the market, the company has announced yet another, even higher-end core design: the A15. Codenamed "Eagle," the A15 architecture is ostensibly aimed at netbooks and tablets, but a look at the spec sheet leaves no doubt that ARM is absolutely gunning for the server market that Intel and AMD currently dominate. Indeed, even going by what little ARM has revealed about the A15, it's very hard to imagine this thing in a smartphone when it launches at 32nm in 2012 or 2013. This is a laptop and server part, and ARM will use it to take the fight to x86.

Read the comments on this post

Apple may have released a set of guidelines for getting into its App Store, but the parameters for what'll get an app rejected remain as murky as ever.



Apple - AppStore - IOS - Macintosh - Apple II

Mozilla has shipped a new pre-release build of Firefox 4 with its latest JavaScript technology, JaegerMonkey, baked in.

Threatening job losses or reduced investment if regulators do X (X being anything from new consumer protections to price controls) has been a staple in the incumbent telecom lobbyist playbook for years. The threats are never actually tied to reality, and in fact the data used to push these memes is often completely made up by paid PR magicians. Still, that doesn't seem to matter in Washington DC -- and according to The Hill, ISPs are headed to Congress next week to again threaten job cuts if faced with net neutrality rules:The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) will fly in the leaders of more than 15 companies to meet with House Commerce committee leaders, including Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rick Boucher (D-Va.), and FCC commissioners. The CEOs will come from companies such as AltaCom, Tellabs and Alcatel-Lucent, among others, according to Danielle Coffey, vice president of government affairs at TIA.The problem is, carriers have already been cutting CAPEX and slashing jobs for a variety of reasons, none of which have a damn thing to do with net neutrality or even regulatory actions. In fact, outside of a few vague regulatory threats about high wireless bills and ETFs, the FCC has been a marginally-impotent entity in the telecom sector, completely unwilling to make tough decisions that could truly impact carrier economics.

All the same, AT&T and Verizon have already frozen their next-gen broadband deployments for several reasons, including the sour economy, their hope of cashing in on USF "reform" and broadband stimulus, and the simple fact they continually place short-term investor satisfaction above long-term company health. They've also been busily slashing tens of thousands of jobs, predominately thanks to the slow but steady death of the landline.

These fairly myopic job loss predictions never bother to include the potential jobs saved by protecting an Internet that isn't dominated by the nation's wealthiest carriers (AT&T, Verizon), striking prioritization deals with the nations' wealthiest ad and content empires (Google). It's not entirely clear how these kinds of threats keep working for companies who are continually slashing jobs and CAPEX; perhaps that's just one of the mysteries of our time.
read comment(s)

This year's Intel Developer's Forum will cover some of the emerging (and newly emerged) innovations that will drive computer technology through 2011 and beyond. Here's a look at what some of the hottest developments might be.

In today's tweet of the day, an iPhone developer makes an astute observation about the contradictory nature of Apple's new App Store guidelines.

Security vendors are warning of a mass-mailing worm that links to a malicious screensaver file.



Agriculture - Computer worm - Screensaver - Worms - Security

An operator of upscale hotels and resorts under such widely-known names as Marriott, Sheraton and Westin.



Travel and Tourism - Westin Hotels - Lodging - Asia - Hotels and Motels

Welds BigTable to file system 'Colossus'

Exclusive Google Caffeine — the remodeled search infrastructure rolled out across Google's worldwide data center network earlier this year — is not based on MapReduce, the distributed number-crunching platform that famously underpins the company's previous indexing system. As the likes of Yahoo!, Facebook, and Microsoft work to duplicate MapReduce through the open source Hadoop project, Google is moving on.…

Revised app adds two new widgets to Android's home screen, thereby making it easier for users to access Google Voice's inbox and settings.



Google - GoogleVoice - Mobile phone - Android - Searching