Two New Wii Titles Announced

At the ongoing Leipzig convention in Germany, Nintendo hasn’t revealed or confirmed anything as far as their console is concerned in the form of a release date or a price, but they have announced two new titles instead, Mario Strikers Charged (working title) and Battalion Wars 2.

MSC is basically soccer with Mario, while Battalion Wars 2 is a sequel to the GameCube game that was both a shooter and a strategy game. We don’t have a lot on MSC, but here’s what you can expect with BWii (that’s the game’s abbreviation, I did not make that up) -

Drive tanks, command ships, pilot planes and direct your troops into the heart of the action in the return of the popular tactical action game for Wii.3 Online Multiplayer Modes - Assault: Instant Combat, Skirmish: Tactical depth, Co-op: Work with friends. 3 Theatres of War: Combine land, sea and air combat 5 New Naval Units: Battleship, Frigate, Submarine, Dreadnought, Transport. 6 Different Races, 5 Different Environments: With new vehicles for each side.

Sony Ericsson Announces Z610 3G Phone

Sony Ericsson has announced the Z610; a 3G phone with a sleek mirror finish on the front cover giving the phone a jewel-like quality. The Z610 features a 2.0 Megapixel camera and broadband-speed 3G connectivity. It come in three colors - Luster Black, Rose Pink and Airy Blue.

“The unique design of the Z610 is inspired by nature. We have applied a mirror finish and used a hidden display for the first time to achieve the feel of a calm ocean surface” says Eiji Shintani, Art Director, Creative Design Centre, Sony Ericsson. “OLED technology has enabled us to build in a display that doesn’t interrupt the seductive, reflective qualities on the front of the phone.”

When the user receives a call or an SMS or MMS the hidden external display illuminates, giving the effect that the caller-ID information is floating on the face of the phone itself. The phone features a Picture Blog application allows the user to share photographs with friends and family, via an online ‘blogsite’.

The Z610 has a large 2.0 inch screen, and features support for Push Email and RSS feeds that deliver the latest news updates direct to the mobile. It also has support for support for Memory Stick Micro up to 1GB.

Z610 is available in selected markets from Q3 2006.

Toshiba Updates REGZA Line of HDTVs

Toshiba has just updated their REGZA line of LCD HDTVs. The updated Z2000 comes in 47/42/37-inch models that do full 1080p (1920×1080) and 32-inch ones that do 720p native (1366×768). The Z2000 series come with three HDMI ports, two Firewire and three Ethernet ports. They should retail from $5,187 (Rs. 2,43,789) for the 47-inch model and so on.

The C2000 series are 720p “value” versions in 42/37/32-inch and even lower 26/23-inch sizes with just one HDMI port. C2000s will go for $3,458 (Rs 1,62,526) and lower.

The H2000 series are the same as the C2000 series, but with 300 GB hard drives built-in and also an electronic program guide (EPG). 42/37/32-inches will sell from $3,890 (1,82,830) and lower. Z2000 Series: C2000 Series: H2000 Series:

Microsoft Updates IE7 To RC1

In a quiet announcement Microsoft has released the first Release Candidate (RC1) for its newest browser IE7. With this release Microsoft has added a few improvements and squashed the various bugs that were reported by people worldwide who have been utilizing the earlier betas. Microsoft has also added one new feature between IE 7 for Windows XP’s Beta 3. The company has added an auto-uninstall feature. Previous betas are automatically removed when the new RC1 release is made. IE7 7 RC1 for Windows XP also is available in two more languages than its previous test release. Microsoft has added French and Spanish options for the browser. By the time the browser ships it will support 35 languages.

With the release of RC1, I guess the browser can be considered feature complete. Normally an RC1 release marks the end of public betas and the move towards a final release.

For more details check out this blog post on MSDN. You can pick the up the RC1 release here.

Apple Recalls 1.8 Million Batteries

It seems to be raining battery problems. Starting with Dell’s recall of nearly 4.1 million Sony made batteries, Dailytech has just reported that now Apple is recalling 1.8 million batteries.

The batteries being recalled by Apple are also made by Sony. The battery recall programme will not affect the newer Intel-based notebooks. However the 12″ iBook G4, 12″ PowerBook G4 and 15″ PowerBook G4 are all affected. Apple has gone on record to say that at least nine reports of batteries overheating have been received. Not only that, there have been two reports of minor burns and reports of property damage due to the faulty batteries.

For further details on the battery recall programme check out this advisory.

Credit Card Chargeback Trojan Surfaces pudated at: Wednesday August 23rd 2006, 3:15 pm Sophos has warned of a Trojan horse that has been spammed out claiming that the recipient’s credit card has been charged over 125 pounds. The security company received reports of the Troj/Dloadr-AMA Trojan horse, which arrives in a message claiming to come from a company called Cihost, at email gateways across Europe. The malicious emails have the subject line:[paycheck 322082] Credit Card Chargeback The message body reads as follows: Sir, We have received a notice from your card service stating that there was a chargeback made by the owner of the card that you paid for your account with. This is a very serious matter. I have deducted the amount of the chargeback, GBP 102.10, from your account and added our standard fee of GBP 23.95 as well. (You can see your payment details in attachment.) If there was some mistake, please let us know immediately so that we can get this situation resolved. We ask that you have the chargeback removed as soon as possible, as our account has already been debited for the amount in question. If you would prefer to make your payment using a new payment method that would be fine as well (you can use a different credit card or you may send a money order payable to Cihost). This is a time sensitive issue and must be resolved promptly at the request of the card service. Please email the billing team using the Web Administration Panel with information about how you are going to deal with this situation. I thank you for your time and hope to hear from you soon. See your payment details in attachment. Sincerely,Frank J. CornwellCihost Billing Managementhttp://www.cihost.com Attached to the emails is a file called PAYCHECK.ZIP, unpacks to paycheck_322082.exe. Executing this file infects the user’s computer with a Trojan horse that attempts to download further malicious code from the internet. “No-one enjoys paying their credit card bill, but in this case hackers are hoping that users will be so outraged that they are being stung for a purchase they never made that they may rush into opening the attached malicious file,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. “PC users may be more lax about security when it is the contents of their wallet which they think are at risk.”

Microsoft Aims Legal Guns At Cybersquatters updated at: Wednesday August 23rd 2006, 3:30 pm CyberSquatters, or online miscreants who allegedly earn illegal profits from thousands of Web sites, which infringe on a company’s trademarked name, are now being taken to court by Microsoft. This litigation by Microsoft is a first for the IT giant and is aimed at ‘cybersqatters’, stemming from a 1999 law called the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act(ACPA). The lawsuit is designed to target those who registered the largest number of ‘infringing’ domain names, as part of Microsoft’s broader plan to beef up its crackdown on cybersquatters and typosquatters. The company also announced plans to expand its crackdown on resale of such domain names on Internet auction sites. The ACPA subjects anyone who “registers, traffics in or uses a domain name that is identical to, confusingly similar or dilutive of” an existing trademark to up to $100,000 in damages. Earlier this week, Redmond filed three lawsuits in federal court, claiming that cybersquatters have registered hundreds of domain names with the purpose of reaping illegal profits, from sites like WindowsLiveTutorial.com and HaloChamp.com. According to watchdogs with Internet Identity, a company hired by Microsoft several years ago to monitor domain name registrations, on an average, more than 2,000 sites containing Microsoft trademarks are registered in a single day. They estimated that about 75 percent are owned by professional domain name holding corporations and that 90 percent of all registrations occur among those hoping for illegal profits

Microsoft Offers Support to Mozilla updated at: Wednesday August 23rd 2006, 4:00 pm Let’s face it. Microsoft till date has been no friend of the open-source movement. There is enough bad-blood between open source evangelists and Microsoft to fill up pages. However this could be soon changing. In a rather unusual move, Microsoft has issued an open invitation to the Mozilla Corp. to bring both its Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail application into the Windows fold. This rather sporting offer was made by Sam Ramji, director of Microsoft’s Open Source Software Lab, at a posting on the Mozilla development planning newsgroup. He went on to say that the software giant was willing to offer its support in getting Firefox and Thunderbird to run very smoothly on Vista. The offer is for four Mozilla developers to be present at the Windows Vista Readiness ISV Lab. The lab is a four-day event held in Redmond every week through December and provides office space for four people, hardware, VPN access, and communication with product team developers and support staff. While most long time tech readers might find this funny, it is a good sign. This meas that Microsoft is taking its next-gen platform seriously and is willing to even open its doors to organizations it has had acrimonious relationships with at best.

Nokia Launches S60 Firmware Update Site updated at: Wednesday August 23rd 2006, 5:00 pm Great news for Nokia Smartphone users - you can now update the firmware of your S60 phone at home using just the USB cable! Nokia has launched a “Phone Software Update” site that currently offers updates for the Nokia N-Series (N70 and N72, at the moment), 6630, 6680, 6681 and 6682. The Nokia UK site also offers updates for the 6131 over-the-air, which means you don’t need a PC and a USB cable - the update comes in directly to the phone. Newer Series 60 firmwares will also offer a live update-like FOTA (firmware over the air) feature for all N-Series and E-Series devices. I haven’t tried this, (obviously because I have a Samsung phone, but I’ll get my hands on a fumbling N70 and try to revive it with this update soon… Visit the Phone Software Update.

Battlefield: Bad Company announced Wednesday August 23rd 2006, 5:30 pm Breaking away from tradition, Swedish based developer Digital Illusions has announced Battlefield: Bad Company, a brand new single player shooter for the Xbox 360 and the PS3. When I say, breaking away from tradition I meant that this is the first time a Battlefield game will have a sturdy single player campaign, and not some crappy tutorial that can be played offline. Here’s a small heads up from the game’s press release: Battlefield: Bad Company drops gamers behind enemy lines with a squad of renegade soldiers who risk it all on a personal quest for gold and revenge. Featuring a deep, cinematic single-player experience loaded with adventure and dark humor, the game delivers the series’ trademark sandbox gameplay in a universe where nearly everything is destructible. Battlefield: Bad Company also will feature a full suite of the franchise’s trademark multiplayer options with deep gameplay modes designed to take full advantage of the game’s massively destructible environments. The game will also be released for both the PC and the PSP.