News for Friday, 8 December 2006

The huge success of the Wii, the new Nintendo game console, is a good combination between the innovative Wii remote as well as the game play, giving players access to a new 3D freedom.
Of course to play, you have to move your arms in many directions, circles, mimicking smashing, punching or slicing. Well being full immerse in the action, some players have dropped the remote which ended up in the TV screen as shown below

Immediately to prevent further problems, Nintendo has published a document explaining how to use the remote and safely tight it to your hand.

The reason we are mentioning it is linked to the availability of a Mac-compatible driver for the Wii remote, allowing you t o use the "Wiimote" with your Mac: http://blog.hiroaki.jp
So be careful, and ensure not that you can not hit anything or any person while playing.

Buffalo announced the availability of the first 5.25" HD-DVD drive. This is too our knowledge, the first device dedicated to computers to be able to play this blue laser-based DVD format. It can also play standard CDs and DVDs.
However, it does NOT have any burning capabilities, what ever media you consider!
Even if its price (300$) might appear rather cheap, it does not offer much besides providing the ability to play HD-DVD on a computer. BD burners are already available for week now, and one can find different types of BD media to burn data on.
The future of HD-DVD as an alternative to BD as the future default optical drive for computer market seems to be rather dark.

Intel has demoed a mobile system based on its new wireless network chipset called the Intel® WiMAX Connection 2300. This chip should be installed in the next generation mobile architecture (Santa-Rosa) and would give wireless access via many different protocols:

- WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e-2005)
- Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n) including MIMO
- high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) 3G (GSM 3G+)

This chipset should appears in notebook for S1 2007, and one can expect to see it integrated in Apple notebooks, providing a real "nomad" experience for the user (only missing satellite connection).

NTT DoCoMo and Mitsubishi have launched a recall for 1.3 million mobile phone batteries manufactured by Sanyo.
In some conditions (following a shock, such as dropping down a mobile phone), electrodes damaged, and as a consequence a fire can be ignited in the worst scenario. So far 18 reports have been collected.
In the problem seems to be different than for the notebook battery recall (over 10 millions units), it appears quite obvious that such high capacity batteries should be produced according to state-of-the-art procedures, and at the end it might be much cheaper to have them manufactured in Europe or America, than in low-cost countries.
[update]
Interesting supplementary information from one or our readers, Isidore:

The problem with conventional lithium ion/cobalt oxide cells is that once they overheat due to a short circuit caused by a manufacturing fault or mechanical damage, they catch fire and generate oxygen internally, so they are impossible to put out. There is an alternative technology based on lithium ion/phosphate, which is much safer, although there is a small penalty in terms of energy density.

If Microsoft did not really openly communicate about the Zune immediately after its launch, to our point of view, it is clearly because results are below expectation. They have now changed their strategy, and according to Bryan Lee, corporate vice president for Microsoft's entertainment group, regarding the beginning of the Zune: "We think that's actually pretty awesome". They expect to sell 1 million Zune by ... June 2007! So, it would imply that Redmond's Giant expect to sell 1 million of its digital music player within 8 months... in comparison, Apple has sold 39 millions iPods (all models included) over the last 12 months, ending in September 2006 (so not taking into accounts Christmas 2006 sales).
When using Amazon ranking list for evaluating if a product is popular, the Zune is now 70th...
Of course, Microsoft will bring price done in order to attract more consumers. But third-party manufacturers might not be super motivated to launch accessories for the Zune ("Made for the Zune", but there are almost no Zune on the market)... and Universal CEO probably stopped dreaming about multi millions US$ income, based on the 1$/Zune...
Yep, success of a product is not only linked to its price or its raw specs.