Electronic Arts created the game specifically for female teens and pre-teens, or tweens, a demographic often overlooked by video game publishers.

In the United States, 38 percent of all gamers are female, according to the Entertainment Software Association.

“We knew this was an amazing audience to go after and to take what (tween girls) love — fashion, music, dancing — and create a video game for these girls to show their self-expression,” said John Buchanan, marketing director for EA’s Casual Entertainment division.

Girls — and boys too — can choose their own character and customize its name, hairstyle and outfit for their performance. They then pick music from a playlist of Top 40 pop songs, including hits from Britney Spears, Leona Lewis and Kanye West.

Unlike other popular music games such as “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero,” players of the new game dictate how their character — or avatar — moves on screen.

The game includes a microphone that measures players’ vocal fluctuations. The motion-sensing Wii controller records their dance moves.

EA says the game promotes “self-expression, creativity, and empowerment for girls worldwide,” but some female gamers say “Boogie SuperStar” is yet another girl-targeted video game based on unflattering stereotypes.

“I don’t think anything using pop-stars with ‘issues’ that revolve around scandals can create any kind of positive self-empowerment,” said Didi Cardoso, managing editor of Grrlgamer.com, a video game review web site produced by women.

Cardoso said many girl-targeted video games on the market center around themes such as cooking, pets, makeup, fashion or babies. Sandlot Games’ “Cake Mania” game, for example, challenges players to help the main character bake as many cakes as she can to save her grandparents’ bakery from closure.

French video game publisher Ubisoft Entertainment SA developed its “Imagine” line just for tween girls. Yet some of the line’s titles perpetuate the well-worn themes, such as “Fashion Designer,” “Animal Doctor,” and “Babyz,” a game where girls face babysitting obstacles.

Another upcoming girl-targeted game for the Wii, Sega’s “Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek,” will also be released in October 2008 with “Boogie SuperStar.”

Analysts and critics in the gaming industry say both “Boogie SuperStar” and “Nancy Drew” Wii games are a positive step for video game publishers and will help double their consumer base.

“If you can provide a form of entertainment for members of the whole house, you’re well positioned,” said Michael Hickey, a video game analyst at Janco Partners.

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“Earnings have peaked in the second quarter,” said James Kim, an analyst at Lehman Brothers. “Demand to replace TVs with flat-screen models is still there, but fewer consumers are buying large-size TVs because of the weak economy.”

Analysts had widely expected a downturn to hit the sector at the end of the year, but they say that slowdown could come sooner and lead to a longer-than-expected slump.

Taiwan’s top LCD makers, AU Optronics Corp (2409.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (3009.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), are considering cutting output to stabilize prices, the Commercial Times reported this week.

Drastic investment cuts last year helped the LCD industry enjoy strong earnings in the first half of this year, as tight supply kept pricing stable at a time when sales are usually slow.

But demand from the United States and Europe has slowed due to the weakening economy, although smaller sizes remain popular in emerging markets such as China.

And even in China, recent disasters such as heavy winter snow and the May earthquake have hurt sales and disappointed some who had expected the entire nation to snap up sleek LCD TVs ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

LG Display (LPL.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the world’s second-biggest LCD panel maker, is forecast to report next Wednesday a 752 billion won ($725 million) net profit in the second quarter to June 30, according to 10 analysts surveyed by Reuters.

That would mark a sharp increase from 228 billion won earned in the year-earlier period and higher than 717 billion won in the first quarter.

Second-quarter sales are expected to come in at 4.38 trillion won, up from 3.36 trillion won a year earlier, according to Reuters Estimates.

The company’s average panel price likely fell about 5 percent in the second quarter from January-March, analysts said. Average panel prices fell 2.6 percent in the first quarter.

LG Display trails domestic rival Samsung Electronics Co (005930.KS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) but ranks ahead of AU (AUO.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the world’s No. 3.

AU is expected to post on July 24 a second-quarter net profit of T$24.61 billion ($810 million), up sharply from T$5.99 billion a year ago, according to Reuters Estimates. The estimate is lower than T$26.99 billion earned in the previous quarter.

Smaller Taiwanese maker Chi Mei is set to report on July 31 a T$14.99 billion net profit for the April-June quarter against T$3.39 billion a year earlier, Reuters Estimates showed. Chi Mei posted T$15.29 billion in net profit in the first quarter.

FALLING PRICES

Reflecting weaker demand, LCD panel prices began sliding in June and analysts say inventory is building up.

“Key clients such as Dell (DELL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Acer (2353.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) stopped making new orders in June,” said Lee Min-hee, an analyst at Dongbu Securities. “Price falls will be even deeper in July.”

Further weighing on the sector’s outlook, some nine new production lines from leading LCD makers in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan are scheduled to start operating next year.

“The industry downturn should continue over the next year,” Lehman’s Kim said.

Research firm iSuppli expects the market for large-sized LCD panels, used in TVs, monitors and notebook computers, to grow 19.9 percent this year to $88.9 billion, but the forecast is far slower than a 37.5 percent increase in 2007.

Meanwhile, LG Display is expected to more than double its net profit in 2008 to 2.94 trillion won, Reuters Estimates showed. While the figures are still positive, they could very well be revised down as concerns grow over the second-half performance.

Shares in LG Display, worth about $13 billion in market value, fell 11.8 percent in the second quarter against a 1.7 percent loss in the broader market as the industry’s outlook dims.

antena3.ro

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Judge Louis Stanton of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered Google on Tuesday to turn over as evidence a database with usernames of YouTube viewers, what videos they watched when, and users’ computer addresses.

Privacy activists from the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a blog post the order “threatens to expose deeply private information” and violated the Video Privacy Protection Act, a 1988 federal law passed after Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork’s video rental habits were revealed.

Representatives of both companies said they were looking to work out how to comply with the court order to share video data while ensuring personally identifiable information is secure.

Viacom responded in a statement that it needs the data to demonstrate video piracy patterns that are the heart of its case against YouTube. But it sought to diffuse privacy fears, saying it had no interest in identifying individual users.

“Viacom has not asked for and will not be obtaining any personally identifiable information of any user,” Viacom said.

“Any information that we or our outside advisors obtain … will be used exclusively for the purpose of proving our case against YouTube and Google (and) will be handled subject to a court protective order and in a highly confidential manner.”

Google senior litigation counsel Catherine Lacavera said her company was looking to resolve the issue quickly in a way that balanced Viacom and other plaintiffs’ need for evidence in the case while “carving out some space for user privacy.”

Lacavera said her company was pleased the court’s decision had put limits on evidence discovery, including refusing to allow Viacom access to YouTube’s search technology or to users’ private videos on the site.

But the Google attorney called on Viacom to allow YouTube to anonymize user data — in other words, redact rows of data containing usernames or unique computer Internet addresses.

In closed-door hearings ahead of the ruling, Google attorneys had argued against turning over such data without eliminating personally identifiable information.

“We are disappointed the court granted Viacom’s overreaching demand for viewing history,” she said. “We will ask Viacom to respect users’ privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs before producing them under the court’s order.”

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Google will also preserve for six months access logs of users being investigated for illegal conduct.

Google said it was the first such agreement that the company had signed and the firm believes it is the first internationally. Alexandre Hohagen, president of Google in Brazil, told a congressional committee, “It’s an historic day not only for Brazil but for the Internet in the entire world.”

Initially, Google had refused to work with prosecutors, saying it was subject only to U.S. laws, said Prosecutor Sergio Suiama. The company denied this, saying it had always been willing to cooperate with Brazilian authorities.

Brazilian prosecutors say 90 percent of illegal Internet content being investigated in Brazil involves Orkut. The site has 60 million users, half of them in Brazil.

Of 624 investigations by federal prosecutors in Sao Paulo state through the end of last year into human rights crimes on the Internet, 420 involved child pornography on Orkut.

“Orkut was lawless,” said Suiama.

The accord was signed during a session of a congressional inquiry into paedophilia and follows legal battles since 2006.

Under the deal, public prosecution withdrew a lawsuit against Google, a company spokesman said.

The committee, which under Brazilian law has some police and judicial powers, ordered the investigation of 18,000 Orkut photo albums accused of harbouring child pornography.

Google has more than a 60 percent share of the Web search market, according to industry figures.

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The talks are preliminary and unlikely to result in a deal with Yahoo, the paper said.

The Journal said that two weeks ago, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer called Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock to suggest they meet to discuss a new idea involving other partners.

The meeting was subsequently canceled by Microsoft, which Yahoo took as a sign that Ballmer’s efforts to find a partner have so far failed, the paper said.

Neither Microsoft, Yahoo, Time Warner nor News Corp were immediately available for comment.

Yahoo rejected a $47.5 billion takeover offer by Microsoft, and earlier this week questioned whether the software maker was ever serious about a full-scale merger. However, Yahoo remains open to discussing any proposal from Microsoft, the paper said.

In the meantime, Yahoo investor Carl Icahn is running a slate of directors to replace Yahoo’s board and has called for the removal of Chief Executive Jerry Yang ahead of the company’s annual shareholder meeting to be held in Silicon Valley on August 1.

The activist shareholder has said the company should still offer to sell itself, though Microsoft has said it is no longer interested in a full buyout.

However, representatives for Microsoft have in recent days, met with Icahn to encourage him to press his proxy contest as a way to keep pressure on Yahoo to enter into a deal that would lift its share price, the paper said, citing people familiar with the matter.

In electronic trading before the Nasdaq open, Yahoo shares rose about 6 percent, or $1.30, to $21.50. On Tuesday the stock closed at $20.20, its lowest session-ending level since January 31, the day before Microsoft first made public its offer to buy Yahoo.

Microsoft shares were little changed, up 2 cents at $26.89 on volume of just 400 shares. Microsoft shares closed Tuesday at $26.87, their lowest closing level since March 2007. In a volatile session, the stock had dropped to as low as $23.19, its lowest in nearly two years.

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The companies, which had been locked in the patents battle in the English courts for the past few years, are, however, still slugging it out in the United States.

The two companies did not give any financial details of the settlement.

In July 2005, Nokia filed a complaint asking the High Court in London to declare that 31 European patents of InterDigital were not essential to the UMTS mobile technology standards.

In December 2006, InterDigital sued Nokia in the English High Court on UMTS 3G standard.

InterDigital also filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission in August 2007, saying that Nokia was engaged in unfair trade practice involving two InterDigital patents related to certain 3G handsets and components.

InterDigital is also involved in a patent dispute with Samsung Electronics (005930.KS: Quote, Profile, Research).

Shares of InterDigital rose $1.49 to $25.86 in afternoon trade on Nasdaq.

reuters.com

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But makers need to clear hurdles such as cutting production costs and maximizing screen size in order to see an adoption in a wider range of applications.

Samsung SDI, which produces small-sized AM-OLED screens used in handheld devices, said in a filing with the local exchange that it would invest 551.8 billion won ($528.6 million) until mid-2009 to expand its AM-OLED output.

When the investment is completed, its production capacity will reach 9 million units a month in 2-inch screen terms, compared with 1.5 million currently, the company said.

Other makers are also moving fast to launch OLED products and build scale. Japan’s Sony Corp (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) last November started selling small-sized TVs using OLED technology and Toshiba Corp (6502.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) plans to ship small-to-medium-size OLED screens for mobile devices in the autumn.

Last week, Japan’s Sankei Shimbun daily reported Matsushita Electric Industrial Co (6752.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) is finalizing plans to mass-produce 37-inch OLED TVs in three years.

Market researcher iSuppli said in May it expected global shipments of AM-OLED panels to nearly quadruple in 2008 to 10.2 million units, with revenue reaching $225 million.

Shares in Samsung SDI ended up 0.12 percent at 83,600 won, outperforming the wider market’s 0.57 percent loss.

reuters.com

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Before now Rhapsody, jointly owned by Real Networks Inc and Viacom Inc’s MTV Networks, had focused on a subscription service, allowing unlimited song streaming for $13 to $15 a month, rather than selling downloads.

But Rhapsody Vice President Neil Smith said the fact the service has not been compatible with Apple Inc’s top-selling iPod digital player has limited Rhapsody’s reach.

“We’re no longer competing with the iPod,” Smith said. “We’re embracing it.”

Rhapsody also will be the music store back-end to MTV’s music Web sites and iLike, one of the most widely used music applications on social networking site Facebook.

Rhapsody will be available on mobile phones via the Verizon Wireless VCAST Music service. Buyers of a song over-the-air directly from phones also will be able to download that song to their computer. Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Group Plc.

Rhapsody executives describe the strategy as “Music Without Limits.” They said it would be backed by a marketing blitz worth up to $50 million in media space over the next year in part by leveraging co-parent MTV’s TV networks and Web sites.

CHALLENGERS

Rhapsody is the latest player to challenge iTunes’s 70 percent-plus market share of U.S. digital music sales.

Last month digital music service Napster Inc launched an MP3 store. Both Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Amazon.com Inc launched stores last year.

None of the new stores has made much of a dent on Apple’s lead. Early this year iTunes became the biggest music retailer in the United States. It has sold more than 5 billion songs since it launched in 2003.

Its success has been due partly to a seamless interface between iTunes and the iPod and because it provides a good user experience, said analyst David Card of Jupiter Research.

The new digital MP3 stores have been made possible because the four major record groups last year started to experiment with allowing retailers to sell music without digital rights management (DRM) software to prevent illegal sharing of music.

Analysts believe the move by Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI Group will help open the market for retailers and music companies.

“I think we’ll see retailers begin to compete the way they usually compete with pricing, merchandising and promotions, rather than due to some arbitrary technology,” Card said.

reuters.com

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Top-level domain names, or TLDs, refer to Internet name suffixes, such as the ubiquitous .com, .net and .org, among others. Currently, there are more than 200 TLDs, which also include the two-character country codes used by websites, such as Britain’s .uk.

“This is a historic resolution,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of Icann’s board. “It’s going to make a big difference to how the Internet looks and works.”

Icann officials said some technical issues for the new system must still be worked out, but it could be reviewing the first applications for new TLDs as early as next spring. The application fee is expected to cost more than $100,000.

Under the new system, individuals, companies or groups could apply to have any string of letters established as a domain name. It could be a vanity name, for example — .smith — or a category name like .sports or .perfume. A company could also change its domain to reflect its brand, so Apple.com could become Apple.mac, for instance.

Straightforward applications will be approved quickly, officials said. A review process would be undertaken for controversial strings, such as those that infringe on existing trademarks, or appear to be too similar to existing TLDs, or raise moral objections.

Icann adopted the new rules after a meeting in Paris.

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No longer the world’s richest man — he has been topped by investor Warren Buffett and Mexico’s telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim — Gates says great wealth brings with it great responsibility.

The 52-year-old, whose boyish looks seem at odds with his graying hair, will leave behind a life’s work developing software to devote energy to finding new vaccines or to micro-finance projects in the developing world.

As Microsoft’s biggest shareholder, Gates will remain chairman and work on special technology projects. His 8.7 percent stake in Microsoft is worth about $23 billion.

Gates first programmed a computer at 13, creating a class scheduling system for his Seattle high school. As he gained more experience, he realized the potential that software held to change how humans worked, played and communicated.

“When I was 19, I caught sight of the future and based my career on what I saw. I turned out to have been right,” Gates wrote in his 1995 book “The Road Ahead.”

Gates realized at an early stage of the PC revolution that software would be more important than hardware. Working with boyhood friend Paul Allen, Gates founded Microsoft, naming the company for its mission of providing microcomputer software.

PRIVILEGED UPBRINGING

Gates was born October 28, 1955, the second of three children in a prominent Seattle family. His father, William Henry Gates Jr., was a partner at one of the city’s most powerful law firms, while his late mother, Mary, was an active charity fund-raiser and University of Washington regent.

He was introduced to computers at the exclusive Lakeside Preparatory School, where the teen prodigy began programming in BASIC computer language on a primitive ASR-33 Teletype unit.

It was at Lakeside that Gates met Allen, a student two years his senior who shared his fascination with computers.

“Of course, in those days we were just goofing around, or so we thought,” Gates recalled in “The Road Ahead.”

During his two years at Harvard, Gates devoted much of his time to programming marathons and all-night poker sessions before dropping out to work on software for the Altair, a clunky desktop computer that cost $400 in kit form.

Also at Harvard, Gates became friends with an ebullient Detroit native who shared his love of math and cynical humor. Gates eventually talked that classmate, current CEO Steve Ballmer, into leaving business school to join Microsoft.

Gates dropped out of Harvard and relocated with Allen to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they established Microsoft.

Their big break came in 1980 when Gates and his carelessly dressed young colleagues signed an agreement to build the operating system that became known as MS-DOS for International Business Machines Corp’s new personal computer.

In a critical blunder by IBM, Microsoft was allowed to license the operating system to others, spawning an industry of “IBM-compatible” machines dependent on Microsoft software.

“His legacy has to be as one of the shrewdest businessmen and technologist of the 20th century,” said Michael Cusumano, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management.

Microsoft went public in 1986 in one of the most celebrated offerings of its time. By the next year, the soaring stock made Gates, at age 31, the youngest self-made billionaire.

Overseeing Microsoft’s steady growth, he became known as a bare-knuckles businessman and manager, sometimes dismissing a suggestion as “the stupidest thing I have ever heard.”

Microsoft grew to dominate its industry and became the target of a landmark antitrust case, which it fought every step of the way before eventually settling with U.S. prosecutors.

Rob Helm, director of research at independent research firm Directions of Microsoft, said Gates will go down as one of the great businessmen in history like John D. Rockefeller — for better or for worse.

“He’s never going to be necessarily a widely admired figure, but someone who created an activity that came to represent a chunk of the American economy.”

reuters.com

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