Sony Corp is bringing baseball to America's living rooms on its PlayStation 3 video game console

Sony Corp is bringing baseball to America’s living rooms on its PlayStation 3 video game console, ratcheting up the competition in the race to become the digital hub of the home.Sony not only ups the ante in its rivalry with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console, but also positions itself as something of a challenger to cable companies and satellite television providers that have long been broadcasting sports to viewers in the United States.”This is one of the biggest deals we’re bringing to the PS3, and it won’t be the last one, there’s lots of conversations going on,” said Peter Dille, senior vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment America.

Sony, which has an installed base of 12 million PS3 consoles in the United States, will offer games in high-definition through Major League Baseball’s MLB.TV, an Internet subscription service that is already available on computers and smartphones.MLB charges $25 a month, or $120 a year, for a premium subscription.Sony designed a custom interface for the offering, and users can scroll through live-streaming or archived games. The PS3 provides the functionality of a digital video recorder, allowing viewers to pause, fast-forward and rewind, and to jump to a particular inning in any game on the schedule.

However, users will not be able to watch live games of teams in their local market, which are subject to local blackout rules.PS3 users will need to be subscribers to the free PlayStation Network (PSN) to access MLB.TV. PSN has 20 million members in North America.

Sony and Microsoft have been duking it out to control entertainment in the living room beyond games, offering movies, shows and videos through their subscriber networks, PSN and Xbox Live.Both offer streaming movies through Netflix, and have been hunting for deals that can help transform their gaming consoles into one-stop-shops for content.”We’re excited about bringing MLB onto the console this is something you can’t find on any other console,” Dille said.

In Europe, Microsoft has struck deals with Vivendi unit Canal Plus and British pay-TV broadcaster BSkyB to provide content through the console, including soccer matches.Sony’s PS3 has trailed Nintendo’s Wii, the market leader, and the Xbox in the U.S. market, although the PS3 has generated momentum since a price cut to $299 last year.MLB.TV is also available on the Roku set-top box and through media provider Boxee.(Reuters)

Google has took Intel and Sony to do project called Google TV

Google actually extraordinary. Engine giant searchers continues presenting innovative technology could enjoyed users worldwide.
Like santosamaru quotation from New York Times, March 31 2010, Google has took Intel and Sony to do project called Google TV. What is it?

Google TV is TV tissue walked with operating system Android and browsers Google Chrome. This TV displays ads from Google ads, and offers tens thousand applications third parties embedded on app-store supplied.

Interestingly, specially from sides users is they could perform personalization and enhance experiences watching with applications third parties, like on Smartphone. LANGUAGE simplicity, Google TV represents set TV appended with chip processor and software intelligent. More precisely, Google and partner planning to make aircraft television who use processor Atom, could connected into network, uses Android and application third party. To explores shop existing applications therein, users could wear browsers Chrome.

Due believe with open standards, Google plans opened platform their television on party developer third. They also will provide variants Android opensource who strengthen TV free. Estimated This will fishing creativity developer applications and consumers will enjoy televisi like smart phone.

As supplementary triumvirate also been assigning Logitech for make device supplementary like remote intelligent and keyboard. Seeing step taken, Google seems trying wherever possible presenting their ad in family room and sell as possible viewers on advertisers.

The LG Shine II

LG Shine II

The LG Shine II doesn’t mess with success. The first LG Shine was a best-seller on AT&T thanks to its high-end metallic body and solid call quality. Aside from a few minor improvements, the Shine II is virtually the same as the first model, with the same main benefit—it looks and feels good. It’s a good choice for AT&T subscribers looking for a basic, reliable, and classy voice phone.

Design and Call Quality
The Shine II measures 4.2 by 2.0 by 0.5 inches and weighs 4.4 ounces. The Shine’s brushed-aluminum housing makes it heavy but durable. Just like my old RAZR V3, I’d expect the Shine II to hold up nicely over time. It also looks great, and the cool blue backlighting enhanced the look further. The slider mechanism felt smooth and satisfying.

The 2.2-inch LCD has 240-by-320-pixel resolution. A new five-way control pad features a prominent, raised center button. The button, left, and right keys were fine, but the up and down keys were very small and stiff. Large-enough Send, End, and Back keys sit above an otherwise cramped, recessed keypad. Dialing numbers was tough with one hand.

As a quad-band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and dual-band HSDPA (850/1900 MHz) phone, the Shine II works on AT&T’s 3G network and on 2G EDGE networks overseas. Voice calls sounded loud, clear, and crisp, with a slightly trebly tone in the earpiece. Callers on the other end couldn’t distinguish between the Shine II and a BlackBerry Bold 9700 (also on AT&T); both sounded excellent. Calls sounded fine through a Plantronics Voyager Pro Bluetooth headset. The speakerphone went pretty loud, but sounded harsh and distorted at top volume. Battery life was on the short side, at 3 hours and 46 minutes of talk time.

User Interface, Apps, and Multimedia
The Shine II’s UI looks sharp and is well designed. The Shine II was very responsive to key presses. The stiff control pad wasn’t ideal for gaming, and the Shine II’s sluggish Java benchmark results mean you should stick to 2D titles. The Opera-powered Web browser was surprisingly good, offering mobile and landscape views. The browser delivers accurate renderings of desktop HTML pages, but the tiny screen is an impediment.

The Shine hooks into AT&T Mobile e-mail for Yahoo, Windows Live, and AOL accounts, but not Gmail. A basic IM client offers AIM, Yahoo, and Windows Live support but not Google Talk. Either way, with only a numeric keypad, this isn’t a messaging phone. (If you want a keyboard, the excellent Pantech Impact beckons, and even costs $20 less.) It also works with AT&T Navigator (powered by TeleNav) for voice-enabled, turn-by-turn GPS directions.

The Shine II’s music player includes an adjustable EQ, ringtone creator, and music recognition software. There’s 102MB of free onboard storage. A microSD card slot sits underneath the battery cover, but not under the battery; my 16GB SanDisk card worked fine. The proprietary headphone jack is a disappointment, and there are no wired earbuds in the box. Thankfully, the Shine II now supports stereo Bluetooth. Music tracks sounded very bassy over Motorola S9-HDs, even with the Shine II’s custom EQ off; LG seems to have hardwired in a bass boost. Tiny album art thumbnails displayed when available. Standalone 3GP and MP4 videos played very smoothly in landscape mode, though the video player was sluggish and clumsy to operate. Streamed CNN videos played smoothly for about 10 seconds before freezing and timing out on several attempts.

Camera and Conclusions
The 2-megapixel camera includes an LED flash and auto-focus. A built-in image editor resizes, crops, and rotates photos, and features some basic effects. Test photos looked OK, with a little noise but decent resolution in shadowy areas, and a slightly soft, grayish focus outdoors. Shutter speeds were just under one second. Recorded 320-by-240 videos had good color balance, but were too jerky at 10 frames per second.

The LG Shine II is a good handset, but I’d like to see its price come down. Otherwise, it runs into headwinds on AT&T’s lineup as better phones get discounted. The $99 Sony Ericsson c905a is a vertical slider like the LG Shine II, but it has a vastly more powerful 8.1-megapixel camera with face detection. The $149 Samsung Mythic SGH-a897, our current Editors’ Choice for AT&T feature phones, offers mobile TV, a high-resolution touch screen, and plenty of music and video features.

Neither of those phones have the Shine II’s aluminum-chic design, though. For thousands of folks to date, that has been enough to seal the deal—and it likely will be enough once again with the Shine II.

The VAIO VPC-L117FX/B looks like it could be a Sony Bravia HDTV

Sony VAIO VPC L117FX B

Among the all in one all-in-one desktop PC, the Sony VAIO VPC-L117FX/B ($2,000 list) is certainly one of the best looking. It has the look of a 24-inch HDTV, an intentional design choice. Inside that sexy shell is the heart of a power user’s PC: quad-core Intel processor, 6GB of memory, 1TB hard drive, Blu-ray burner, and a decent Nvidia graphics card. Placement in the kitchen, den, home office, and living room come to mind, but like its Sony VAIO all in one predecessors, it will even work in the most design critical room in the house: the bedroom.

Design
The VAIO VPC-L117FX/B looks like it could be a Sony Bravia HDTV. That is one of its greatest strengths, since it can blend in anywhere a smaller (20- to 36-inch) HDTV fits. It can even replace a TV in the bedroom, since it has a built-in Blu-ray drive, ATSC tuner, and HDMI-in ports. Viewing Blu-ray videos on the VAIO give you that “view through a window” effect that makes it seem like the action is happening on the other side of the display glass. We tested the system with films made before (Coming to America, The Warriors) and after the advent of CGI (Star Trek, Mission Impossible II). All of the films looked great. The picture is vivid, accurate, and noise-free. The HDMI-in port lets you connect a game system like a Sony Playstation 3 or a set-top box like the one from you cable TV company. The built-in tuner grabs over the air HDTV signals and displays them in Windows 7’s built-in Media Center interface. There’s a slot built into the base of the unit, so you can stow the wireless keyboard out of the way when you’re not using it, and the keyboard and mouse can easily reach a bed or couch 10 to 15 feet away. The system is wall mountable with a kit you can buy separately.

The all-in-one comes with five USB ports, a FireWire/i.Link port, and that 24-inch 1,920 by 1,080 resolution screen (which is true 1080p HD). This is truly a power-users’ system, and it better be one for $2,000. The system also comes with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and an IR remote control so you can work almost completely wireless.

Features
The system’s touchscreen is responsive, though it takes a few seconds for your finger to learn exactly where to point to get the screen to recognize your commands. The HP TouchSmart systems are a little more forgiving with finger placement, but both the Sony and HP all in one PC’s screens are multi-touch enabled and can use standard Windows 7 touch command functions like swipe, flick, pinch, and rotate. The system’s quad-core processor makes the Sony VPC-L117FX/B just a little more responsive than the TouchSmart 600, but you’re unlikely to notice the difference unless you have the two side by side. Aside from the usual Windows 7 apps, the VAIO VPC-L117FX/B comes with VAIO Media Gallery, a unified multimedia viewing interface that lets you quickly view all your music, photos, and videos on a variety of formats, including neat calendar-organized formats. This serves a range of users from the “messy but organized” types to the obsessive compulsives that have to have their photos organized by time stamps. Media Gallery allows you to group photos arbitrarily or via searchable criteria; then you can create a quick slideshow with a couple of touches, then export to VAIO Movie Story. VAIO Movie Story is a quick way to create well, if not edited, then concatenated home movie made of your pictures, clips from your digital camera, and clips from your cell phone. Movie Story can either use music you choose, or it will check the videos with an algorithm and automatically suggest or add music. You can then burn the resulting movie to DVD or Blu-ray disc, save the file in a variety of media formats (including MPEG-2, MP4, etc.), or export your file to a Sony Media device like a PSP or a Mylo. I’d like to see an integrated export to iTunes/iPod or better yet an export to Facebook or Youtube, but you could of course do that manually after you create a file.

The VAIO VPC-L117FX/B comes with Google’s Chrome as its default browser, but like all Windows 7 PCs, it also comes with Internet Explorer 8. I found that touch navigation works better in IE8, since I couldn’t scroll slowly in Chrome—it only recognized flick commands like page forward/back and page up/down. Scrolling up and down in IE8 using finger gestures was smooth and worked as expected. I’m sure Google will improve the interface over time, but for now IE8 is the better touch-enabled browser on the VAIO.

Aside from the useful software above, there’s very little in the way of bloatware on the VAIO VPC-L117FX/B. There’s a copy of Microsoft Works, which is useful. Then there’s an installer for a 60-day trial of Microsoft Office, which is the right way to both satisfy Microsoft’s agreements with Sony, and to avoid the dreaded “pre-installed Office” syndrome. Likewise, there’s a link to Quicken’s Website for offers on QuickBooks and Quicken, but you have to download and install them. Believe me, this is a good thing. You don’t have to install Office or Quickbooks unless you want to, so there’s nothing to clean up and therefore no stray .DLL files or leftover detritus to muck up your hard drive. If there’s any drawback to the Sony VAIO Media software, it’s that it’s not as modular as HP’s TouchSmart interface, with its widgets and iPod Touch-style apps. On the other hand, VAIO Media Gallery and Movie Story are some of the most intuitive and easiest to use pack-in multimedia apps outside of Apple’s iLife (iMovie, iDVD, etc.).

Performance
The VAIO VPC-L117FX/B’s performance is very good, thanks to its Intel Core 2 Quad 8400S processor and Nvidia GeForce GT 240M graphics, though it’s tied for the class leader in only one of our standard benchmark tests. The VAIO is speedy at the PhotoShop CS4 test with a class-leading 1 minute 39 seconds, tied with the Gateway One ZX6810-01. It’s also only one second behind the Gateway FX6810-01 at the Windows Media Encoder test (43 seconds), which makes the VAIO VPC-L117FX/B an excellent choice for the multimedia enthusiast. It’s other scores are competitive in the field of multimedia all in one desktops, including the dual-core powered Apple iMac 27-inch (Core 2 Duo), Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 (3011-4BU), and the Editor’s Choice HP TouchSmart 600-1055 PC. The VAIO VPC-L117FX/B can be used for light gaming: it played World in Conflict at a smooth 39 frames per second (fps), but is a little too slow playing Crysis at our standard settings (30fps). If you push the quality levels and/or resolution down you can likely get a playable frame rate in Crysis. The GPU does help with programs like Microsoft’s Virtual Earth and HD video playback from the web.

As a high-end all-in-one desktop PC, the Sony VAIO VPC-L117FX/B is a little pricey at about $2,000, but you can just about rationalize the added expense if you consider the system has one of the best quality screens in the business, Blu-ray burner (as opposed to just a player for the Lenovo A600 and HP TouchSmart 600), and its looks more like an HDTV than a PC, unlike the iMac, Gateway One, Lenovo IdeaCentre, and HP TouchSmart. That said, these other four are a lot less expensive, especially in the case of the Gateway One and Lenovo A600 (both $1,399 list). The Gateway One is the performance leader overall, with a speedy Solid State Drive (SSD) helping its quad-core processor take five wins out of the seven benchmark tests. However, the Editor’s Choice winning HP TouchSmart 600-1055 has the most polished implementation of touch technology in Windows 7, along with the best bang for the buck ($1,599 list) out of all the multimedia all in ones. The Sony VAIO VPC-L117FX/B is a “better quality” choice if you’re willing to spend the bucks, but you’d have to be a individual who’s really hard to please to justify an almost $500 price premium.

YouTube's top 2009 videos feature eclectic cast

YouTube's

SAN FRANCISCO  The year’s biggest hits on the Internet’s top video channel were anchored by an improbable singing sensation, a groggy boy nursing a sore mouth, a bride and groom dancing down the wedding aisle, supernatural heartthrobs and roller-skating babies.
The eclectic cast of characters starring in YouTube’s most-watched videos of 2009 served as a reminder of the quirky appeal of a Web site that accepts about 20 hours of new video every minute.The list released Wednesday marks the first time that YouTube has ranked its most-watched videos in any year since its 2005 inception.

YouTube’s 2009 star was Susan Boyle, the frumpy Scottish woman who mesmerized the world with a heartwarming rendition of “I Dreamed A Dream” on a British talent show in April.Boyle, now 48, ended up taking second place in that competition, but no one came close to outshining her on YouTube. Her “Britain’s Got Talent” videos attracted more than 120 million views worldwide.

That was more than the next three most-watched videos combined, according to YouTube.The second spot, with more than 37 million views, was held by “David After Dentist,” which featured a 7-year-old boy recovering from some dental work that left him feeling disoriented and wondering if he would ever feel normal again.

Third place went to “JK Wedding Entrance Dance,” which captured an elaborate routine orchestrated by Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz – flanked by their bridesmaids and groomsmen – just before their July marriage.

It attracted more than 33 million views and turned into a prime example of YouTube’s moneymaking potential after Sony claimed its rights to a Chris Brown song, “Forever,” that provided the dance’s soundtrack.

A link placed by the video helped drive more sales of the song. Sony also shared in revenue from ads shown by the video.YouTube itself hasn’t said whether it’s profitable yet. The site, acquired by Google for $1.76 billion in 2006, now shows ads alongside about 1 billion videos per week.

Commercials rounded out YouTube’s top five videos for the year. A movie trailer for “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” attracted 31 million views, helped by co-stars, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, who have had teen girls swooning over them. Pattinson plays a vampire and Lautner takes a turn as a werewolf involved in a love triangle.

Evian water soaked up 27 million views with three different versions of a clip featuring diaper-wearing babies performing roller-skating stunts to a hip-hop beat.YouTube compiled a separate list of the year’s most popular studio-produced music videos. Rapper Pitbull’s “I Know You Want Me” was the category’s top draw with more than 82 million views, trailed by two music videos by teen star Miley Cyrus, “The Climb” (more than 64 million views) and “Party In The USA” (more than 54 million views).

Michael Jackson, whose shocking June 25 death made him the most searched subject on Google this year, also left his mark on YouTube in 2009. His name topped YouTube searches during the months of June and July and his 27-year-old music video, “Beat It,” logged more than 25 million views.

Gran Turismo 5 that Sony had on display at this year's Tokyo Game Show

Gran Turismo 5

When we last took a seat behind the wheel in Gran Turismo 5, we were playing the demo that Sony had on display at this year’s Tokyo Game Show. It was an interesting setup: Attendees had the chance to play the game from within an actual car while using a Logitech steering wheel peripheral. Fast forward a couple months, and we’ve just had another look at Gran Turismo 5 at a Sony event in New York City. While the demo is the same as what we saw at TGS–sans the full car, unfortunately–spending a bit more time with the game has given us the opportunity to pick up on some subtleties we missed last time. And by that, we mean we smashed cars into a wall at full speed to further test the new damage model. But let’s not nitpick, shall we?

First, let’s talk about where we were racing. The track in this demo is the Tokyo r246 circuit, a winding bundle of urban streets guiding you past a series of nondescript office buildings and verdant parks. According to a Sony rep, this track features an Easter egg of sorts: One of the buildings along the side of the track is Sony Computer’s Japanese headquarters. It was an interesting factoid, but we were more interested in the cars. More specifically, we had our eyes set on how those cars show damage–a feature new to the series.
http://www.youtube.com/v/oXtbXy5vO70&rel=0&fs=1
The conclusion we came away with is that the damage depicted in GT5 focuses more on the gradual wear and tear of a car rather than a sudden, catastrophic loss of parts after a huge wreck. Here’s an example: We took our Subaru Impreza WRX and bumped into a wall at a pretty solid speed. Rather than witnessing the crunch of shattering headlights and other debris, the front fender of our car began to sag on one side, dangling further down as we traded paint with more cars in front of us. We thought that was the extent of it, but at the next sharp turn, we noticed that the doors on our car wouldn’t latch shut anymore, comically popping open and closed depending on the momentum of the car.

This is the sort of damage you can expect from the vehicles in GT5. You’re not going to see significant chunks of the car go missing, but you will see an authentic level of wear and tear like paint scuffs that occur only on the spots where you hit a wall or parts of the exterior that gradually separate from your car as your reckless driving jostles out the few screws holding them together.

It would certainly be cool to see a smashed windshield after a massive head-on collision, but the simple fact of the matter is that Polyphony Digital is more focused on attention to detail rather than spectacle. That, combined with the restrictions that auto manufacturers place on what sort of damage can be shown in their vehicles (smoke and fire is a big no-no) means you won’t see any huge wrecks. But no matter where you stand, it’s hard to argue against the fact that the damage that is in the game is done well.

It’s also worth noting that the damage model will be a little different depending on whether you’re in a production car or a racing car. We tested out a Subaru Impreza WRX equipped for WRC events and a stock Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG. The Subaru showed more pronounced damage than the Mercedes, though the latter was hardly flawless when we were finished taking it on our impromptu demolition derby. The reason for this relates to the concerns of the auto manufacturers in the game. They’re more open to showing heavy damage on cars that you’d never see out on the road, while those cars you can go and buy at a dealer are going to be scaled back a bit. It’s not exactly an ideal concession in terms of consistency, but it’s hard to say how much of an impact this will have on the overall experience until we see how it works in the context of the full game.

All that being said, Gran Turismo 5 is still a driving game–not a crashing game. So it’s nice to see that the driving model in GT5 is just as tight as ever. Little details like the way the camera angles downward when you perform a sharp brake from the cockpit view highlighted our experience. The distinction between the light and grippy Subaru and the V8-powered SLS AMG was easily discernible, as well as provided a much different experience.

The 2010 World Cup is going 3-D.Sony Corp

sony corp

The 2010 World Cup is going 3-D.Sony Corp. said Friday it has signed a deal with FIFA, the international football governing body, to record up to 25 World Cup games in 3-D – a technology that gives viewers an illusion of depth on the screen.The Japanese electronics and entertainment company is one of several electronics makers planning or working on 3-D technology for TVs and movies. Sony makes 3-D capable video cameras, and plans to sell 3-D TVs for homes next year.People wear special glasses to see 3-D footage because the illusion of dimension is created by sending different images to the left and the right eye, although manufacturers are working on upgrades that will show 3-D without glasses.Chief Executive Howard Stringer expressed his enthusiasm for watching a soccer game in 3-D in an interview this week.”I thought that was very cool,” he said at Tokyo headquarters.

Most 3-D releases so far have been animation films but the feature is gradually spreading to other genres, such as the soon-to-be-released sci-fi epic “Avatar.”Stringer said sports was definitely one area 3-D could display its strengths.He also said he wanted to see “thoughtful” movies someday being made in 3-D. He ruled out Michael Jackson videos and the next “Spider-Man” movie as 3-D possibilities.

For now, 3-D video of the World Cup in South Africa won’t be shown in TV broadcast for homes, according to Sony, which makes Bravia TVs, Walkman portable players and PlayStation 3 game consoles.They will be shown at Sony booths at FIFA events in Berlin, London, Mexico City, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Rome and Sydney in June and July. Highlights will be shown in Sony showrooms, and a video version will be sold through Sony Pictures.”It’s a great opportunity to get people to experience 3-D firsthand,” said Sony spokesman Atsuo Omagari.