After months of testing and two years since the sequels, the persistent virtual reality of “The Matrix Online” is available for U.S. gamers.

A brief reintroduction for those still scratching their heads after “The Matrix Revolutions”: When we last saw Neo, aka The One, he made a truce with the evil machines and saved the last bastion of humanity in the underground city of Zion.

A revised Matrix was formed after the renegade, replicating Agent Smith was defeated, and we saw the machines carting off Neo’s corpse to points unknown. Did he die? And what about all those people still unwittingly serving as batteries for the machines?

That’s just part of the murky mystery in “The Matrix Online,” where players can choose to ally with the Machines, the Exiles or residents of Zion for control of the new system.

“The Matrix Online” is PC only, costing $50 plus a $15 monthly subscription fee.

Source: AP

Google Inc. took a step into the Web analytics market late on Monday by announcing an agreement to buy Urchin Software Corp.

San Diego-based Urchin sells analytic tools for measuring user experiences, tracking marketing performance and improving content on the Web. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Google announced that it plans to offer the acquired tools to both Web site operators and marketers, but the company did not say whether it will provide the Web analytics feature for free as it has done with tools from many of its past acquisitions.

Urchin sells Web analytics to thousands of popular Web sites, including those run by Fortune 500 enterprises. It offers its tools both as a hosted service and as software. It also sells through Web-hosting providers.

Google did not say whether it will maintain Urchin’s current offerings or fold them completely into Google products, and company officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

Source: eWeek

America Online has announced a new blogging service for teenagers.

Red Blogs, which AOL unveiled Tuesday, allows teenagers and parents to select the level of privacy they want for their online diaries; a private blog can be kept locked. A semiprivate blog is locked to all but those who are invited to read it. And a public blog allows access to anybody on the Net.

However, blogs of younger teenagers, those between 13 and 15, will be locked from general public viewing. Similarly, with semiprivate blogs, parents must approve the list of people invited to read the journals of younger teenagers.

When AOL asked teenagers in a survey who they were more likely to share their feelings with–parents or a blog–parents narrowly won out, 51 percent to 49 percent, the company said.

Still, most teenagers, 84 percent, said they would not like to share their blog with just anyone on the Web–hence, the varying privacy levels AOL is offering.

Source: News.com

Legal fears have led to the organisers of a competition to create the first in-the-wild virus to infect Mac OS to halt the event. DVForge, which builds Apple accessories, was offering a $25,000 prize to the first person to create such a virus - so far, none have bene detected in the wild.

The firm put up the cash - which would have gone to the first person to infect two G5 PowerMac computers running Mac OS X 10.3 connected to the internet without firewalls or antivirus protection - in response to a warning from Symantec that the Apple OS would come under increasing attack from viruses. Jack Campbell, chief executive at DVForge, said: “I have taken the difficult decision to cancel our contest. I have been convinced that there may be legal issues stemming from such a contest, beyond those determined by our own legal counsel prior to announcing the contest.”

Source: Neowin

Toshiba has developed a Lithium-Ion battery capable of being charged to 80 per cent of its full capacity in under 60 seconds. Filling it up takes just “a few more minutes”, the company boasted today.

Toshiba ‘one-minute charge’ Li-ion batteryThat’s considerably faster than today’s Li-ion rechargeables which can take 1-4 hours to reach 80 per cent capacity, and even longer to fill completely.

Toshiba also claimed the new cell offers a greater longevity than today’s Li-ion batteries, losing only one per cent of its capacity after 1000 charge cycles, according to the results of its own charge-discharge testing.

Source: The Register