News Headlines
AP - Repressive regimes have stepped up efforts to censor the Internet and jail dissidents, Reporters Without Borders said in a study out Thursday.
AP - Federal regulators are pledging rigorous reviews of Comcast Corp.'s proposed purchase of NBC Universal to ensure that it would not stifle competition or harm consumers.
AP - VeriSign Inc., whose technology is key to allowing Internet users to access Web sites with names ending in ".com" and ".net," plans to spend more than $300 million over the next decade to upgrade its systems.
AP - U.S. retail sales of video games declined 15 percent in February, hurt in part by an ongoing decline in sales of music games and lower sales of the Wii system.
AP - Twitter can now let the world automatically know your whereabouts as well as your thoughts and activities.
AP - Sony has a new message for Nintendo Wii gamers: Come join us.
Reuters - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Thursday launched a broadband test service to help consumers clock the speed of their Internet.
PC World - Microsoft's Xbox 360 outsold Nintendo's Wii in February to claim the top spot in the U.S. monthly sales ranking for the first time in more than two years, analyst group NPD said Thursday. Overall the industry had a poor month with total sales down 15 percent from February last year.
NewsFactor - Verizon Wireless hopes to debut its first 4G smartphone in the middle of next year, months earlier than planned, a company executive revealed Wednesday. The new handset will debut about three to six months after its Long-Term Evolution network launches, Verizon Wireless CTO Anthony Melone told The Wall Street Journal.
AP - Lawyers for legendary music producer Phil Spector have asked an appellate court to throw out his second-degree murder conviction on grounds of judicial error and prosecutorial misconduct.
AP - The top-selling video games in the U.S. in February, by number of copies sold, according to NPD Group:
Macworld.com - If you're looking to be first in line to pre-order Apple's new iPad, then set your alarm, because Steve Jobs's latest creation is available for pre-order in the U.S. early on Friday, March 12: 5:30 a.m. Pacific Time or 8:30 a.m. for those of us on the East coast.
AP - THE GAMES: Video game software sales dropped 15 percent in February compared to a year ago to $624.4 million. "Bioshock 2" from Take 2 Interactive, which launched in February, and "New Super Mario Bros." from Nintendo were the top two sellers.
AP - RadiSys Corp., a maker of servers that support wireless phone networks, said Thursday it acquired privately held Pactolus Communications Software Co. Terms were not disclosed.
PC World - A security researcher has published exploit code for the latest Internet Explorer zero-day flaw on the Web and Microsoft is warning that more attacks against the unpatched vulnerability can be expected in-the-wild. One thing seems to be more apparent with each passing Internet Explorer (IE) vulnerability: its time to upgrade the Web browser.
PC World - $200 tablet PCs have been something of a pipe dream. There was the Crunchpad, which was supposed to be $200, but that didn’t last very long, coming out as the $400 Joo Joo. If what Freescale showed off at Mobile World Congress becomes reality, though, the dream may finally come true.
Macworld.com - On Wednesday, Firemint was honored with four awards from handheld gaming Website Pocket Gamer at a ceremony held at the annual Game Developers Conference. The company behind Flight Control () and Real Racing () has few titles on the iPhone market—virtually every one has become a mega-hit.