Ubisoft’s Your Shape is the first game to use a camera designed specifically for Nintendo’s Wii console.
At a media briefing earlier today in San Francisco, Ubisoft’s PR senior manager Chris Norris (in the video below) went into more details about the game:
Your Shape start shipping on Nov. 24 for $70 and includes the camera peripheral;
The Ubisoft camera is manufactured by French-company Guillemot and is the very first one available for the Wii console. Ubisoft convinced Nintendo to open up the Wii’s USB port;
Ubisoft will release more games using that said a bit more on how the use of the camera for future game, and not just for fitness. Expect some action game too!;
The underlying motion tracking technology used in the game was designed by Ubisoft’s Barcelona studio;
The camera scans the player’s body and creates a 3D model of it, assesses their fitness level, suggests a personalized workout routine based on the player’s fitness level and ultimate goals, projects the player’s image onto the TV next to Jenny McCarthy’s avatar in real time during the workout, and provides guidance at the same time.
With Ubisoft’s webcam, Nintendo is finally catching up to Sony’s Playstation Eye and ahead of Microsoft’s own motion sensing technology, Project Natal, coming next year.
CEO and founder Michael Dell in a conversation with Wall Street Journal San Francisco deputy bureau chief Don Clark at the Churchill Club
Update: Added the section when Michael Dell confirmed the launch.
At a Churchill Club event tonight, Michael Dell confirmed to me that he plans to launch a smartphone in the U.S. next year.
The computer maker has been rumoured to announce a deal to bring its Android-powered smartphone to AT&T sometime in the future. It is clear now that it will happen probably in the first months of next year.
This summer, Dell launched its mini 3i smartphone with China Mobile, which runs a custom version of Google’s Android software called oPhone OS. However, for the U.S. version, I expect Dell to take a more “classic” Android version and make minor user interface and service tweaks.
The upcoming smartphone launch in the U.S. will come 3-years after Michael Dell hired Motorola’s handset chief Ron Garriques to lead the Texas-company consumer business.
Follows a short video of Garriques I shot last year when I visited Dell’s headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, and in which he explains that Dell is indeed very keen in launching consumer devices – beyond just PCs and laptops – such as smartphones, music players, etc.
And the section when I asked Michael Dell about the launch of the Dell smartphone in the U.S.:
On the heels of yesterday’s Intel briefing, AMD is touring Silicon Valley this week to talk about its own strategy and vision ahead of the Windows 7 launch, due on Oct. 22.
Although most of the information is still under wraps until AMD’s own Sept. 10 event, we caught up with worldwide marketing vice-president Leslie Sobon at AMD’s headquarters in Sunnyvale where she was keen to point out some of the work the chip designer did to optimise its upcoming notebook and desktop platforms to support Windows 7 high-end graphics capabilities aka DirectX 11.
“We’ll have the first DirectX 11 games enabled on our graphics cards. You’re not going to see that from Intel… or nVidia either… It’s all about the compute shader… The first pieces of what comes out for DirectX 11 is in the gaming side but it actually translates even into entertainment and video visual quality,” explains Sobon.
Consumers don’t care about the processor
During our conversation, Sobon also commented on the complexity consumers are facing when choosing a new computer.
“Mainstream consumers don’t care about the processor in their system. They care about whether or not they can watch Hulu HD or if the Flip camera video actually runs on their PC. They don’t care if it’s a Turion, or an Athlon or a Core i5… they didn’t care for many many years,” explained Sobon.
AMD will support GPU overclocking
On overclocking – which is a way to increase the speed/frequency/clock of individual PC components like the CPU or the memory -, the AMD executive confirmed the chip designer’s commitment to continue offering a wide range of options for PC enthusiasts to boost or “overclock” every part of their computers, including soon the graphics processor (GPU)!
“What aren’t we doing to help overclockers. We’ve got the chipset that enables it, AMD overdrive that lets you optimise at your heart’s content on the platform side, as well as on the CPU side… We have the overclocking record,” adds Sobon.
For more on AMD plans, we’ll have to wait Sept. 10th!
FriendFeed has a simpler and lighter user experience than Facebook, says FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor
Jackpot for social sharing site FriendFeed, as neighbour Facebook said today it acquired the 12-persons, less than 2-year old company for – according to the Wall Street Journal – an amazing $50 million in both cash and stock-options.
It so happened that late last week we talked to FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor about his company at the Lunch 2.0 event hosted by Kosmix; and that one of the questions that came out was how his service is different from Facebook:
“We’ve just optimized the experience to be a little simpler [than Facebook]. We’re not a full-fledged social network: you don’t put your relationship status, you don’t get to list your mom, your dad, your sister and every single one of your friends. It’s a very simple model. You just subscribe to the people you’re interested in and you get a stream of what they’re sharing and you can comment on it. It’s very lightweight,” told Taylor.
FriendFeed wants to use your friends to filter your information
Another feature that Taylor mentioned – and I wished Facebook had – was email integration. Yes, that old email thing. “So everytime my mom posts something, it’s sent to me by email and I can comment by just replying to the email. It sort of fits in the workflows of our users, so they don’t need to change their behaviour. They don’t need to go to FriendFeed.com every single day… they can just treat it like a mailing list!,” added Taylor.
On Twitter, Taylor thinks that FriendFeed is a lot more richer as users can attach and share virtually anything like photos and videos, while not sacrificing the real-time aspect of the service.
Another thing that came out was the already international stature of FriendFeed:
The site is already translated in 12 languages by professional translators;
64% of the users come from outside the U.S.;
Finally, FriendFeed’s vision is to use your friends to help you filter the ever growing growth of information you’re receiving from the Internet. “The product that really works well for people, isn’t there yet. We’re trying to develop it, I think we’ve done some interesting things but we have a lot to do,” explained Taylor.
As of revenue model, which is frankly less important now as the startup integrates inside Facebook, Taylor mentioned advertising of course but inside your friend’s feed.
Here’s a video excerpt of our conversation with FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor:
Kaspersky Lab confirms launch of anti-malware product for Mac by year-end
As the urban legend goes, Macs are just less vulnerable to viruses, malware and other various cyber attacks that usually plague Windows users.
And in large part, the status quo is mostly respected with some notorious exceptions however; like Apple recommending to run an antivirus software (from Intego, McAfee or Symantec) last November (Apple erased the note from its site a few days later), the “exploit” against Safari last March or the latest Mac OS X release that patches several vulnerabilities found in the Apple operating system.
MacOS X has a lot of vulnerabilities: FUD or not?
Should that make me feel less secure while working on my MacBook? Not really; which made Kaspersky Lab marketing manager Peter Beardmore grin when we met last week while touring Silicon Valley.
“The Mac today is far more vulnerable than people think it is. Percentage-wise a lot of Macs are not protected at all, meaning there’s an inherent vulnerability associated with that… The vulnerabilities are there and we can cite chapter and verse if you’re interested but there’s a lot of vulnerabilities out there,” said Beardmore.
Beardmore confirmed that Kaspersky will release a Mac version of its security suite later this year. So his remarks have been taken with a grain of salt as it’s hard to know if this is to build up the scare prior to the product launch or an actually real concern.
Follows a video excerpt of our conversation with Beardmore on the future Mac product. More on Kaspersky plans in later posts.
At a media roundtable on virtualisation, enterprise customers expressed skepticism on the benefits of desktop virtualisation
Desktop virtualisation is not catching up to the hype yet as enterprise customers are just not seeing as much benefits to it than server virtualisation or even cloud computing.
For Dell’s Enterprise division CTO Paul Prince that I met today at a roundtable on virtualisation, along with VMware CTO Steve Herrod and some enterprise customers, the management of virtualisation is the hot topic du jour for enterprise IT users.
Follows a video excerpt of my conversation with Prince on:
His role as CTO for Dell’s enterprise division, which includes also overseeing CPU technologies for the entire company. Not surprising as Prince was an executive at Intel prior to joining Dell;
The need to manage virtual resources including storage, networking, high-availability…;
Dell Consulting’s role in advising IT customers. “Our competitors are all about helping customers think their problem is so big they need the help to solve it, in our case we tend to focus more on helping our customers to understand that made no be as complicated as they thought. Help them to get over the hump and start doing it;”
Desktop virtualisation and why enterprises are not seeing yet the benefit in deploying it. “It’s clearly a learning curve for customers to get to understand the benefit of desktop virtualisation and start deploying it;”
The need to plan carefully before deploying virtual machines to avoid VM sprawl;
How enterprises can save 50% to 2 to 3 times by deploying virtualisation;
The issue of software licensing and how choosing a more expensive but more flexible version (like Windows Data Center edition) can help enterprises save money in their deployment of virtualisation;
And finally on Dell’s own IT department, a VMware “shop.”
Benioff pokes fun at former mentor Oracle CEO Larry Ellison on his cloud computing vision
Benioff will always be Benioff, even sick like he was today at GigaOM’s Structure 09 conference.
Asked by Om Malik about Oracle’s CEO “flip-flop” cloud computing strategy, the Salesforce.com CEO and co-founder just couldn’t help ridicule his former mentor, Larry Ellison.
“6 months ago he said it’s ridiculous and made some very caustic remarks which is not very much like him and then he said something very Zen in a kind of very spiritual or mentor way…
the key to cloud computing, the key… grasshopper… to on-demand is on premise. And the key to on-premise is on-demand. And you can not have on-demand without on-premise, and you can not have on-premise without on-demand.
It was very Zen. It was like hitting a new level of enlightenment when I heard of it. This guy’s got it. On-demand is on-premise and yet on-premise is on-demand.
And if you can understand that then you’ll know why cloud computing is what it is.”
So here it go. The secret of cloud computing. Now study that… grasshopper
And for your amusement, here’s the video clip where Benioff explained Oracle’s cloud vision!
Intel Nehalem EX servers will not ship until earlier next year. For early adopters, it'll be a forklift upgrade.
Earlier today, Intel gave a preview of its upcoming high-end server chip dubbed “Nehalem EX” to a small group of journalists and analysts in San Francisco.
The 8-cores Nehalem-EX chip will be in production later this year and for sale in systems in early next year.
In launching the Nehalem EX, Intel will finally have a worthy competitor to AMD’s Opteron chip for the high-end server market (4 processors/sockets or more); Intel is currently shipping an appalling 6-cores server chip (Xeon 7400) that is no match, even for Opteron’s quad-core Shanghai processor.
“With Nehalem EX, Intel has aggressively attack the constraint on performance of the previous chips, including the amount of memory bandwith, memory capacity, cache, QPI links… This is going to be a really powerful chip when it comes out. There’s no doubt in my mind that AMD’s dominance of the 4P and above space will be seriously challenged by the Nehalem EX,” explains Insight64 analyst Nathan Brookwood.
But until early next year, AMD has the upper-hand on the high-end server market and knows it.
“The equivalent to their Nehalem EX and Dunnington processors are our Opteron 8000 series processors in 2009 and in 2010, it will be our 6000 series (Magny-Cours) processors.
The thing you need to remember is that we offer processors for 4-socket servers and higher that have direct connect architecture today. Intel customers are still forced to leverage their Dunnington processors for 4-socket and higher that uses a front-side bus to access memory which tends to be more inefficient in multi-socket servers.
When we launch our six-core Istanbul processors next month, they will be available in 2P, 4P and 8P configurations. If you want Direct Connect Architecture with an Intel solution in 4P and higher, you are forced to wait until their Nehalem EX part is available [next year!],” said Phil Hughes, an AMD spokesman.
Intel’s Nehalem EX is a “forklift” upgrade
With Nehalem EX, Intel is partially moving away from using buffered memory – which consumes more power and costs more than standard memory – by adopting DDR3 memory and integrating the “buffers” on the motherboard; still making it a more complex solution, which could potentially affect memory performance.
“The devil will be in the details and how Intel is implementing this,” added Brookwood who thinks Intel will have a hard time to convince customers to do a “forklift” upgrade to Nehalem EX from their current Xeon systems.
Here’s a video excerpt of our conversation with Boyd Davis, the general manager of Intel’s server platforms group marketing who conducted this morning briefing, and where he talks about Intel’s VT Flex Migration feaure which lets customers run virtual machines on Xeon servers (Core2 and Nehalem), despite their architecture differences.
IBM on the power of Intel’s Nehalem EX
And for Alex Yost, IBM’s vice president for System x (IBM’s x86 servers) and BladeCenter, Nehalem EX servers will be the most powerful X86 servers, bar none.
Finally, here’s Yost’s presentation at the Nehalem EX briefing:
G.E.'s holographic discs could be the technology after Blu-ray
Yesterday General Electric said it successfully developed a digital storage technology that will allow standard-size discs to hold the equivalent of 100 DVDs or about 20 single-layer Blu-ray discs.
G.E.’s holographic discs could hold 500 gigabytes of data, when Blu-ray stores 25-gigabyte to 50-gigabyte, and a standard DVD holds 5 gigabytes.
When this next-generation disc comes in 2011 or 2012, G.E. expects it will cost less than 10 cents a gigabyte. When Blu-ray was introduced in late 2006, a 25-gigabyte disc cost nearly $1 a gigabyte, and is about half that now.
Furthermore, as a reader pointed out, the $2,700 player price tag will also have to come down to the $200-$300 level before the technology gets any mass-market traction.
But for storage expert Tom Coughlin, of Atascadero, Calif.-analyst firm Coughlin Associates, 500 gigabytes might just not be enough with ultra-HD and 3D coming to your home soon.
Tom Coughlin is an expert in digital storage and organiser of the Creative Storage conference
Follows, Coughlin’s take on G.E.’s technology:
I think G.E.’s holographics will be useful for high resolution video content. For instance the ultra-HD format being promoted by NHK in Japan would have 8k resolution requiring about 16 times the storage capacity of a Blu-ray. Combined with 3D this could require at least 500 GB and possibly more.
The argument for physical distribution is that for high resolution content it will remain cheaper and faster to buy a disc than download the content.
Too costly for consumers
However, regarding the price I think it must ultimately be less than 10 cents a GB to be popular. At 10 cents a disc a 500 GB disk would cost $50 and I don’t think consumers would pay that price. I think the price of a disc must be less than $10 in volume (without any cost for the content). Note that Blu-ray has had to quickly discount their prices to increase demand for the new format.
But a higher capacity physical format at the right price point could be very attractive for future high resolution content distribution.
AMD's processor aware audience lives in blogs, Facebook, Friendster, Twitter...
Getting consumers excited by a microprocessor’s higher speed, lower power or bigger cache, is no small feat.
Complementing its traditional marketing campaigns (server, desktop and graphics), AMD is more recently leveraging social media tools to reach out to a more techie audience it calls “processor aware.”
“The most important audience for us is the people we call the processor aware, the people who understand the processor decision. But that doesn’t mean the consumers are not necessarily important. It just means the consumer is really the audience for some of our customers,” explains AMD’s chief marketing officer, Nigel Dessau.
To engage with this “processor aware” audience, and in other words “be part of the conversation,” AMD has adopted tools such as blogs, Twitter, Friendfeed or Facebook. “Because that’s where they live,” adds Dessau.
Here’s a video excerpt of my conversation with Dessau on this topic:
Can anyone @IBM fix the WiFi network at #IOD11 ? It's been terrible for the past 2 days and everybody I talked just can't stand it anymore 6 months ago
Ubisoft’s Your Shape is the first game to use a camera designed specifically for Nintendo’s Wii console.
Posted by TechPulse 360 
