Blizzard introduces new Battle.net Account

Blizzard, his portal Battle.net renew. Who will a Blizzard game to
play, a Battle.net account. This applies not only for future games
such as Starcraft II and Diablo III, but also for the popular World of
Warcraft.

The U.S. developer Blizzard Entertainment Battle.net would revitalize.
The portal is now used for online play old games like Blizzard
Warcraft III, Diablo II and Starcraft. Blizzard wants the potential of
the portal, however, expand and make mandatory registration to
Battle.net to anyone having a game of the developer plays. This
obligation applies not only to all future games from the studio, but
also to the MMO World of Warcraft, the current draw of the developer.

The new options that will provide Battle.net Blizzard would not
release too much. But the company says that the communication between
account holders will be improved, even if they play different games.
How this work will, however, is unknown.

The Battle.net account data will in future serve as login information
for all Blizzard games. Even World of Warcraft players, who now have
nothing to do with Battle.net, will therefore in future have to create
an account to the MMO to login. Who various WoW accounts, they must
combine in a single Battle.net account. After logging can be set with
any WoW account is played.

It is striking that the existing Blizzard Battle.net players of
Warcraft III, Diablo II and Starcraft in its present form late
survival. Who only plays these old games, then the transition to the
new version is not it. Who both old and new games to play the old
games will be a separate account for the classic version of the site
continue. In this version of Battle.net, players can organize matches
against each other and the ranking of players kept.

Yahoo! Appoints Elisa Steele as Chief Marketing

Yahoo! Inc. announced that Elisa Steele has joined the company as
chief marketing officer, effective today. Steele is responsible for
Yahoo!'s brand, its global marketing strategy and its marketing
functions including brand marketing, audience marketing, corporate
communications, insights, policy and privacy, community affairs, and
related central teams. She reports to Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz.

"The Yahoo! brand is one of our most valuable and strategic assets,
and Elisa is charged with unlocking its potential globally. Elisa has
an outstanding track record in leading global marketing, branding, and
communications teams, and we're excited to welcome her to Yahoo!'s
executive staff," said Bartz. "Yahoo!'s marketing strategy and teams
have become decentralized over time – hiring Elisa in the CMO role
will quickly mobilize our plan to integrate the function globally and
more effectively represent the Yahoo! brand."

Prior to joining Yahoo!, Steele was senior vice president of corporate
marketing at NetApp, where she led the company's global brand strategy
including global communications, corporate relations, and integrated
marketing functions. Her work at NetApp included strategically
repositioning the brand in the category and a major global relaunch.

Before NetApp, Steele led Sun's integrated marketing and merchandising
organization, where she was responsible for global go-to-market
initiatives, campaign execution, events, online marketing, and
installed base marketing. Steele also led several other marketing
functions at Sun. Her professional experience also includes management
positions at iPlanet eCommerce Solutions, JavaSoft, and AT&T.

"I'm excited to join the team and help unleash the incredible power of
the Yahoo! brand," said Steele. "I look forward to working closely
with Carol and the entire organization to help renew the company's
focus on its customers and to reassert the brand's relevance around
the world."

Steele holds a master of business administration degree from San
Francisco State University and a bachelor of business administration
degree from the University of New Hampshire.

Nokia drops N73 model from gaming service

Nokia has dropped plans to add its gaming service to the older, but
very successful N73 model, a spokesman for the top cellphone maker
said on Monday.

Nokia promised last year to "soon" add the gaming service to the
world's most sold smartphone, but has now decided not to because of
the phone's limited computing power. Nokia has sold about 20 million
N73s.

Nokia's mobile gaming push has encountered major challenges over the
years, with consumers shunning its dedicated gaming phones, and with
its new online gaming service, opened last year, yet to move beyond a
niche audience.

Social Web sites face transparency questions.

Yelp.com prides itself on being a site where people can write reviews
about pretty much anything and connect with similarly critical peers.
Yet as the site grows, some of the businesses scrutinized on Yelp are
turning the tables and griping about the company itself.

Properly balancing the interests of various constituencies — and
retaining their loyalty, perhaps through improved channels of
communications — will prove key to whether the sites can grow into
vibrant, moneymaking operations for years to come.

Many sites have expanded so fast that explanations about what they are
doing often come late — after their users have had plenty of time to
air complaints. Facebook has felt such growing pains, and now Yelp is,
too.

One big gripe from businesses that get reviewed on Yelp is that they
don't quite get how it works.

For instance, some wonder why users' reviews can seemingly
mysteriously disappear from Yelp's pages about a business.

This irks Leslie Tagorda, owner of a San Francisco-based Web design
company, Flair-Designs. She has noticed reviews vanish from the
Flair-Designs page on Yelp over the past two years. This worries her
because the more reviews she has, the more calls she gets from
potential clients, she said.

When she first noticed reviews disappearing, Tagorda contacted clients
who had written the comments, to see whether they had deleted them.
They said they had not.

She e-mailed Yelp and was directed to the business owners' section of
the site. Not satisfied, she aired her issues by writing a review of
Yelp itself on Yelp's business page, giving the site two out of a
possible five stars.

She wrote that although she likes using Yelp as a consumer, as a
business owner "Yelp just about `sucks it.'"

At last she got a more personal message from Yelp's chief executive
and co-founder, Jeremy Stoppelman. He explained that consumer reviews
may be removed by an automated program that is designed to filter out
reviews the site considers untrustworthy, such as sniping that a
pizzeria owner might write about a competitor.

Tagorda was satisfied with Stoppelman's response but still wanted people to

XFX introduces first Radeon HD-Powered 4000

Following its recent collaboration with AMD, XFX introduced its first
Radeon™ HD-powered 4000 series cards in India. XFX Radeon™ HD-powered
4000 series includes HD 4870, 4850, 4650 and 4350 graphic cards,
adding to its impressive line of extreme performance graphics cards.

"Multimedia enthusiasts and gamers in India, crave for the best
graphics performance for a realistic experience. At AMD, we strive to
bring the best graphics performance and thus a thrilling experience to
gamers and multimedia enthusiasts through the ATI graphics technology.
We are very excited that XFX has decided to bring ATI Radeon™ 4000
series based graphic cards." said Mr. Patric Wong, Director of
Graphics business, Asia-pacific region, AMD.

Introducing the latest series Mr. Sunny Narain, VP - Regional Sales,
Asia Pacific, XFX said, "XFX is a major player in the Graphics
Industry and is known as a Graphics Master. Earlier this year, lets
just say - The Graphics Master had acquired a new skill 'ATI'. And
ever since our worldwide launch earlier this year, we have been
noticing an ongoing demand from our partners in India for XFX ATI
series. In order to fulfill this demand and to provide a complete
solution, we are going to offer ATI's award winning ATI Radeon™ HD
4000 series in India."

Excited about this new series, Mr. Sunny Narain further added, "XFX
fans in India can expect to have a range available from us, starting
from the mainstream 4350 all the way to the very new and upcoming
4890. This series will be equipped with features like Unified Video
Decoder 2 for Blu-ray™ and HD Video, DX10.1 support, ATI Stream
Technology and lots more. Undoubtedly, these will be offered with all
the features that XFX is known for".

Viasat Selects NDS Progressive Download

The leading provider of technology solutions for digital pay-TV, today
announced that Viasat, a leading digital satellite pay-TV operator
serving Scandinavia and the Baltic region, has extended its
long-standing relationship with NDS with the addition of NDS'
Progressive Download (PDL) technology to the ViasatPlusHD hybrid DVR.

The ViasatOnDemand HD service, represents another successful
deployment of NDS' PDL technology. This premium service offers
ViasatPlusHD subscribers the ability to download a movie or series via
their broadband internet connection to watch immediately or store to
view later. NDS PDL technology delivers uninterrupted viewing by
removing the buffering problems associated with slow broadband
download speeds.

NDS PDL technology offers service providers a cost-effective way to
deliver IP content over lower bandwidth connections while maintaining
a quality of service matching that of traditional VOD. It uses the
available bandwidth to download content to the DVR's hard drive; once
enough content is cached, then the viewer can start playback without
interruption, and any remaining content is downloaded in background
mode. Progressive Download also reduces the need for service providers
to deploy expensive VOD servers and the high specification networks
normally required for HD content delivery.

Viasat already relies on NDS VideoGuard conditional access (CA),
MediaHighway middleware, XTV DVR technology, and a customised
electronic programme guide (EPG) which supports nine languages to
secure and power its HD pay-TV service. Viasat Broadcasting is the
largest business within Modern Times Group (MTG AB), an international
media group based in Sweden.

Dell will not enter into the smartphone market

As announced some time ago, Dell had intention to enter the smartphone
market, and various rumors, that they wanted the first smartphone was
released in September 2009 but now everything seems smooth.

Indeed, Shaw Wu, of Kaufman Bros. analyst said that Dell has produced
two devices with Android, and the other one with Windows Mobile to
different mobile operators, but have not shown an interest in the
products.

The reason, again according to the explanations of Wu, is the great
gap between the proposed devices and smartphones offered by
competitors such as HTC, Samsung, Nokia, etc. But despite this, Dell
will continue to work to enter the mobile market.

More precisely, we assumed that the Texan firm hand to put the
portfolio and buy some company that already has experience in the
field.