Nintendo Co. Ltd.’s new Wii video game console, considered the underdog in the console wars because it lacks the high-definition graphics and multimedia features of its rivals, is stealing the show at this week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show.

The wait to try out the Wii at E3 pushed past four hours on Thursday afternoon, while the wait for hands-on time with Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3 was barely 30 minutes. Both consoles will hit the market later this year, though the Wii is expected to cost much less than rival consoles.

The Wii (pronounced “we”) uses a motion-sensor enabled controller that looks like a TV remote and allows users to direct action on the screen by wielding it like a sword or swinging it like a baseball bat, tennis racket or golf club.

“It’s basically a whole different thing from anything I’ve seen before,” said Josef Faulkner, who had been waiting in line for three hours to get his hands on Wii. He still had an hour to go. “This is definitely the biggest thing here.”

Source: Reuters

A panel of experts broke down many of the key issues surrounding AJAX—including security, tooling, support for devices and, not a small question, what will Microsoft do—at the AJAX Experience conference here May 10.

A panel of 10 Asynchronous JavaScript and XML experts, including the two moderators, Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith, who are co-founders of Ajaxian.com, which is helping to put on the conference, took questions from the audience for an hour.

Security ranked among the chief concerns among the audience, with some questioning whether reports that AJAX opens users to security problems are true.

Source: eWeek

China’s biggest Internet search engine Baidu has launched a self-censoring online encyclopedia modelled on the US-based website
Wikipedia, which is blocked by Beijing.

Entries on Baidupedia, the new service from Nasdaq-listed Baidu.com launched last month, are heavily self-censored to avoid offending the Chinese government.

Searches conducted on Thursday for the banned spiritual movement “Falungong” or for “Dalai Lama” — in both Chinese and English — yielded no results but generated the message: “The page cannot be displayed.”

Source: AFP

The Internet governing body’s decision to reject a new .xxx Internet domain for porn sites is a clear case of U.S. political interference in the Web’s governance, the European Commission said on Thursday.

The EU executive said the decision underscored the need to make ICANN independent quickly, following unsuccessful demands last year by a group of countries including the EU to make ICANN fully independent.

“We see here a first clear case of political interference in ICANN,” said Martin Selmayr, spokesman for EU Information Society and Media Commissioner, Viviane Reding.

Source: Reuters

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today furthered its support for the AJAX community by launching two new comprehensive online resources for AJAX application development as well as Project jMaki ( can be found on java.net, at http://ajax.dev.java.net.), an open source JavaScript Wrapper Framework for the Java Platform.

Today Sun has launched two new developer Web portals: developers.sun.com/ajax and java.sun.com/javascript. The first site (developers.sun.com/ajax) is the most complete resource for AJAX
development at Sun. It includes everything developers need to get started with building AJAX applications today, including technical articles, code samples, blueprints, components, development tools, and runtime solutions.
The second site (java.sun.com/javascript) provides developers with everything they need to use JavaScript and Java together effectively, including directions on how Sun is working to embed JavaScript directly in the Java Platform. JavaScript can be used for a variety of functions, whether for AJAX-enabled applications, simple scripting on the client, or serverside scripting.

A new proposal in Congress would force anyone who possesses electronic personal data to report “major” security breaches to federal authorities before alerting consumers–or face hefty fines and even imprisonment.

The 11-page House of Representatives bill aims to deter identity thieves and dismantle cybercrime operations, such as phishing scams, that swipe personal information.

Source: News.com

People who bombard innocent victims with a blizzard of unsolicited “spam” e-mails are breaking the law and could face up to five years in jail, London’s High Court ruled on Thursday.

In a test case that puts spammers in the same league as people who send computer viruses, two judges said that these cyber-spammers could be prosecuted for their activities under the 1990 Computer Misuse Act.

Source: Reuters

Yahoo Inc. said on Thursday it was seeking the government’s help in urging China to allow more media freedom, after reports linking information it gave to Chinese authorities with the jailing of a dissident.

Last month, the Internet media company was cited in a Chinese court decision to jail an Internet writer for 10 years for subversion in 2003 — the fourth such case to surface implicating Yahoo.

Yahoo Chairman and Chief Executive Terry Semel, speaking at an event, said it had no choice but to comply with local laws and did not have the power to change Chinese policy.

Source: Reuters

The video game industry’s annual trade show in Los Angeles opened its doors to its exhibitors on Wednesday with organizers ordering women staffing the booths to cover up or face a $5,000 fine.

Banned are nudity, partial nudity, bikini bottoms or any sexually explicit or provocative conduct, according to the handbook from The Entertainment Software Association, or ESA, which owns and operates the E3 Expo.

models received a warning from show organizers for showing too much skin.

Source: Reuters

Microsoft Corp. sided with rival Nintendo Co. Ltd. on Wednesday in the fight to unseat video game leader Sony Corp., saying many consumers will choose to buy both of their machines for the price of one PlayStation 3.

“Tell me why you would buy a $600 PS3?” Peter Moore, a Microsoft vice president, said in an interview. “People are going to buy two (machines.) They’re going to buy an Xbox and they’re going to buy a Wii … for the price of one PS3.”

Source: Reuters

A car that can anticipate a side-on impact and subtly alter its body shape to absorb the force of the crash is being developed by researchers in Germany.

The car will use hood-mounted cameras and radar to spot a vehicle on course for a side-on collision. Once it realises an impact is imminent it will activate a shape-shifting metal in the door. This reinforces the bond between door and frame, which is normally a weak spot, and distributes the force of the blow more safely.

Source: New Scientist Tech

Adobe Systems on Thursday will debut technology intended to make AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) programming easier for Web designers.

The company will offer a free pre-release version of an AJAX framework called Spry. The Spry framework is HTML-centric and features a JavaScript library specifically oriented to Web designers, said Jennifer Taylor, senior product manager for Adobe’s Dreamweaver products. Developed at Adobe Labs, the pre-release features data capabilities to incorporate XML into HTML documents using technologies such as HTML, Cascading Style Sheets, and a minimal amount of JavaScript.

Spry lets Web designers create AJAX-enabled Web pages without having to learn new languages or adopt a full programming model, Taylor said. “It’s very lightweight and flexible,” Taylor said. The framework can be used with Dreamweaver or any other Web authoring tool, according to Adobe.

Source: InfoWorld