New 'Nintendo DSi' Can Download Games, Take Pics, Play Music

Nintendo has just fired the latest salvo in the portable gaming wars.

Although the company's Nintendo DS Lite is still selling like gangbusters, even setting sales records, Nintendo said at a press conference Thursday that it will not wait for its popularity to wane. The Kyoto company will introduce a new model of its two-screened handheld, called Nintendo DSi, this November in Japan.

It's got bigger screens. It comes equipped with a small camera to take pictures. It can play music files. It can store all that content on an SD memory card. But most importantly, it's fully equipped for the digital distribution revolution. Just as Nintendo sells Wii games through its own direct-download store, so too will it begin selling Nintendo DS titles directly to consumers.

Some downloadable DSi software will be free, and some will be priced from $2 to $10, Nintendo said. The company is pursuing a gung-ho strategy to get DSi purchasers online with their handhelds and buying games -- it said it would give a free 1000 Nintendo Points (about $10 in online currency) to each DSi owner through the spring of 2010.

One of the first free applications that users can download from the DSi Shop is a web browser.

What the DSi is not is a brand-new gaming platform. It's a Nintendo DS with significant feature upgrades. While Nintendo has said that it will release software that is only playable on the DSi, it mostly just plays the same games as the current DS Lite.

So if you're not into the upgrades, you don't need to buy one.

There are actually two cameras on the device, one that faces outward (shown right) and one that faces inward, like a MacBook's camera. Nintendo says that the images the cameras snap are 300,000 pixels large, which works out to 640X480 resolution.

DSi can also play back audio, and you can alter the pitch and playback speed of the sound files you're playing.

An SD card slot sits on the right side of the machine, storing all the camera photos, music files, and games that you've added on to the system.

The DSi brings Nintendo's product offering closer to what rival Sony has with its PSP portable system, which has an optional camera attachment, robust media playback functionality, and can download games to Memory Stick media.

What it lacks is a Game Boy Advance game slot. So if you still want to play your old Pokemon games, you'll want to stick with the current DS Lite.

DSi will cost more than the DS Lite -- 18,900 yen, or about $185 -- and debut in Japan on November 1. Nintendo will release it outside Japan in 2009.

Nintendo will hold a U.S. media briefing Thursday morning at 9 a.m. Pacific, where it is expected to provide more details on the U.S. launch plans for DSi.

Images: Nintendo

New 'Nintendo DSi' Can Download Games, Take Pics, Play Music | Game | Life from Wired.com

Sign Up For Your Free Rock Band 2 Tracks

Want those 20 free downloadable tracks that Harmonix promised you when you bought Rock Band 2? They're just a few weeks away.

If you want to get them as soon as possible, you can sign up now. Head to the official site, and you can enter the code on the back of your Rock Band 2 manual. You'll have to fill out a survey and enter your email address -- come on, nothing is free -- and then click a confirmation link in the email they send you.

Once you've done that, all you need to do is sit back and wait for an email with a code that'll let you grab the tracks. While only Xbox 360 owners can do this right now, PlayStation 3 and Wii owners will also be able to enter their codes just as soon as their versions are on store shelves later this year.

Wait: Wii? You mean that Rock Band 2 for Wii will have downloadable tracks? Well, I'll be.

Sign Up For Your Free Rock Band 2 Tracks | Game | Life from Wired.com

AMD: We're well on our way to Shanghai, 45nm CPUs

With the fourth quarter now upon us, the market's gaze has begun to turn full force on AMD and the imminent launch of the company's Shanghai processor. Shanghai, for those of you who haven't been following AMD, is a 45nm die-shrink of the company's Barcelona architecture with a 6MB L3 cache (up from 2MB on Barcelona), improved performance and power characteristics, and an additional set of as-yet-unspecified performance tweaks. On Monday, Ars had a chance to sit down with Patrick Patla, head of AMD's workstation and server division, who offered insight into Shanghai's development process, as well as a few tantalizing details on what we can expect when the new processor ships.

According to Patla, Shanghai will offer 35 percent more performance and 35 percent better power efficiency when compared to Barcelona products. There appears, however, to have been a miscommunication at some point; CNet quotes Patla as saying: "At the same frequency (speed), Shanghai will outperform Barcelona by about 20 percent." When he spoke to Ars, Patla clearly and distinctly emphasized 35 percent improvements in both raw performance and power efficiency when comparing Shanghai to Barcelona. Regardless of which percentage is accurate, the point to take away here is that Shanghai will pack significantly more punch, clock-for-clock, than Barcelona ever managed.

If AMD actually delivers a consistent performance boost at either figure (20 percent or 35 percent) for any type common server workload, it will be a huge achievement. Evolutionary processor designs don't typically deliver this type of speed increase across the board; such unilateral gains are typically reserved for new simultaneous platform refreshes and/or CPU architectural debuts. When questioned on how Shanghai could deliver such improvements over Barcelona while remaining an evolutionary design, AMD emphasized a number of changes the company made back when Shanghai had yet to tape out. In the rush to deliver Barcelona, Patla implied, the company had actually gotten ahead of itself, and wrote finis to the project before it should have. When it came time to build Shanghai, AMD made a conscious decision to step back, take its time, and emphasize design over speed. This slower, more deliberate design process has resulted in a better processor, with Shanghai delivering at the top end of the target specifications AMD had set for it. This is not 2007's Barcelona.

AMD quad-core 45nm die

As for volume production, AMD is executing on that front as well. The company has consistently promised that Shanghai-based servers will ship before the end of the year, and an HP rep was on hand to confirm those plans. Neither company is offering guidance on CPU clockspeeds, but Patla did confirm that AMD will ship midrange 55W TDP processors first, followed by additional 105W parts in the first quarter of 2009. If these upcoming 55W parts actually are mid-range CPUs, it further implies that Shanghai's power consumption has improved dramatically. When Barcelona first launched last September, the Opteron 2347HE ran at 1.9GHz and carried a 68W TDP rating, the 2GHz Opteron 2350 was a 95W part, and the 2.5GHz Opteron 2360SE was rated at 120W.

Barcelona's TDP ratings have improved since last September; a modern 2360SE built on the B3 stepping now draws just 105W. Based on current information, we can expect TDP levels at any given clockspeed to drop significantly—Barcelona's 105W part may be a 90W or even 75W chip when built on 45nm. This in turn opens the door for faster Opterons, though AMD's comments imply that we won't see these high-end parts until after the turn of the year.

For all its strengths, those of you hoping Shanghai will vault Penryn entirely and drop squarely into Nehalem territory may well be disappointed. AMD told Ars this week that Shanghai is explicitly and directly targeted at Intel's quad-core, Penryn-based Harpertown processor. When queried on how the new chip will perform against Dunnington, AMD stated that relative performance between the two should be "good," but didn't indicate any miracles would be forthcoming. As for Nehalem, AMD emphasized the fact that Intel's next-generation processor will initially only be available in single and dual-socket configurations, while it intends to offer Shanghai in 1P, 2P, and 4P systems straight off the launchpad. Read between the lines, and the company is saying: "Don't look at our 1P or 2P performance, because we may well get slaughtered."  AMD also has its own Dunnington competitor in the works, but don't look for the chip anytime soon; Sunnyvale's hexa-core processor won't arrive until Q4 2009.

Conclusion

Unless AMD is flat-out lying, it seems safe to conclude that Shanghai will deliver what Barcelona promised and then some. What's not so clear, unfortunately, is whether or not Shanghai alone can help AMD out of the tremendous hole the company has dug itself. Even assuming that all of the market issues work themselves out, AMD will still be playing catch-up to Intel in a number of market segments. Even with a top-flight Shanghai, AMD's margin for error is now effectively zero.

AMD: We're well on our way to Shanghai, 45nm CPUs

StumbleUpon makes stumbling easier for new users

StumbleUpon, the company that long ago figured out how we all really use the web, announced a handful of new features today designed to offer a test drive for new users, a richer experience for registered users, and better integration for web site owners. The company has had a rocky year, but these new features may be just what StumbleUpon needs to, well, keep from stumbling.

For those who have never used it, StumbleUpon allows users to sign up, specify preferences for a wide range of topics like politics, photography, history, and web development, and then literally "stumble" through sites that other, similar users mark as interesting. Users can pick a specific category or type of media to browse (such as photos and videos), or stick with Stumbling through friends' sites to play it safe. If you're thinking "like Digg, but more fun and no rabid voting or foaming comments," you're not far off.

Bring us your tired, your hungry, your Stumbling

Until today, however, users had to register with StumbleUpon, create a profile, and install an add-on for IE or Firefox just to start Stumbling. If you're a social media pro armed with form-filling tools, this probably isn't an issue, but there are plenty of users out there not willing to sign up for yet another service that, at first glance, may sound like Google on steroids. Toss in the fact that you have to install a new piece of software, and the barrier to entry is raised even further.

Now, new visitors to StumbleUpon.com will not only see a redesigned homepage that highlights popular content and ratings from the community, but they can click a "Start Stumbling" button to launch a JavaScript toolbar at the top of the browser window. No software install is necessary, and this should work in any browser, not just IE and Firefox. This toolbar is a bit less functional than StumbleUpon's browser extension, though, as users can't filter for specific kinds of content or, of course, use any of the service's community advantages. But rating sites and Stumbling for more works perfectly well, offering a slice of the "best of the web" experience that StumbleUpon offers. The rub lies within the pseudo-toolbar's "Save" button: clicking it prompts users for registration to actually save their Stumbling and begin participating in the greater community.

This browser-agnostic tool doesn't work for registered users, though: in fact, if you're logged into the site, you'll never see it. In the coming months, StumbleUpon plans to introduce a similar tool for registered users so they can Stumble from any computer without installing the browser extension. Along with this tool, a redesign for the rest of the site will focus on user profiles and site navigation, as well as the rating and commenting systems.

Stumble right here

The other half of today's announcement is a Partner Program for web site owners to harness StumbleUpon's discovery services and the content its users create. Launched today with two partners—HuffingtonPost and HowStuffWorks—and more on the way, a new "Stumble!" badge that "premier publishers" can add to their site allows visitors to focus StumbleUpon's "show me something else interesting" approach on the current web site. Once invoked, StumbleUpon's aforementioned JavaScript toolbar appears for both registered and unregistered users, with a basic set of rating tools and a "Stumble!" button to keep the good times stumblin' at a specific URL.

After playing with this new tool at the two partner sites that went live with it today, the Stumble badge left us with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it does a good job of bringing the StumbleUpon experience to a specific site, but it also adds more clutter and yet another navigational system that, for all intents and purposes, is just an "I'm feeling lucky" gimmick. In an age where site operators are rolling up their sleeves and building plenty of their own "check out what else we're doing" navigation tools, this Stumble Partner Program could overwhelm users who need a paddle—not a blindfold—when sailing the Internet's seven seas.

That said, StumbleUpon does have a very healthy community and moves its fair share of traffic, so inviting that external community to come have a digital picnic at one's site may not be a bad thing for exposure and pageviews. StumbleUpon's registered user base has steadily increased to 6 million strong, despite eBay putting it up for sale less than two years after acquiring it. By opening its doors, integrating more deeply with external sites, and adopting a "try before you buy register" philosophy, StumbleUpon may very well boost its growth and, subsequently, drive even more traffic.

StumbleUpon makes stumbling easier for new users

Netflix Expands Xbox 360 Streaming Selection, Providing More Movies & TV Shows via Starz

Netflix has "significantly" expanded the number of films and televisions that Xbox 360-owning subscribers will be able to stream through their console this fall.

Under an agreement with Starz Entertainment, Netflix will add roughly 2,500 movies "and other choices," along with a live feed of the Starz TV network, to its library of streaming media. This is done at no extra cost subscribers, with the first 1,000 or so additions already live.

Films covered under the deal include Spider-Man 3, Ratatouille, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Superbad, No Country for Old Men, Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert, along with an as-yet-unaired first full episode of the movie-inspired television drama Crash.

The Xbox 360 will gain Netflix steaming support as part of the fall software update, expected in November. Until then, Netflix subscribers are limited to watching streaming media through their internet browser or specialized set-top box.

Netflix Expands Xbox 360 Streaming Selection, Providing More Movies and TV Shows via Starz - Shacknews

Skype 4.0 beta take 2: Full screen mode now optional

Skype has released a second beta version of Skype 4.0 for Windows. When Skype released version 4.0 beta 1 back in June, the software was widely panned for its new user interface. Sure, the audio and video quality were excellent. But Skype's insistence on using a full-screen interface by default left many users scratching their heads.

After all, Skype is a chat and telephony program, and if you're a multitasker, you might want to have several windows open simultaneously. Skype 4.0 beta 1 made it difficult to do that. While you could reduce the size of the default view, it still takes up a lot of screen real estate.

Skype 4.0 beta 2 addresses this by offering a new Compact View option. In this view, Skype 4.0 looks a lot like Skype 3, with a contact list in one window and your chat, audio, or voice wndow showing up in a second screen.

The new beta also reintroduces contact groups, allowing you to arrange your contacts by category. And it does a better job of notifying you when you've missed a call or message. Notifications are now hard to miss because Skype will show alerts in the Windows taskbar, system tray, and in the program itself.

CNet reports that Skype plans to release at least one more beta version of Skype 4.0 before the final release. That version will include call history, public chats, birthday notifications, and a few other features.

Skype 4.0 beta take 2: Full screen mode now optional - Download Squad

Netflix API open to all: let the developing begin

Good news, developers of the world -- the Netflix API will be open to all starting tomorrow. As of October 1st, absolutely anyone can self-signup by visiting the read link, and while details are a tad sketchy at the moment, it sounds like this could hold some serious promise. The API itself allows access to data for 100,000 movie and TV episode titles, is completely free and (most importantly) allows commercial use. In other words, it's kosher if a bright developer out there somewhere feels like "creating an iPhone app to sell for $0.99 (Netflix's words, not ours)." On the technical side, the API includes a REST API, Javascript API and ATOM feeds, and it also uses OAuth standard security "to allow the subscriber to control which applications can access the service on his or her behalf." It's time to get creative, folks.

Read

Netflix API open to all: let the developing begin - Engadget