Facebook Poll Asking to Kill Obama
The US Secret Service is trying to identify the people who launched an online poll at Facebook asking whether US President Barack Obama should be assassinated.Facebook on Monday shut down the user-generated poll, which was titled "Should Obama be killed?" and offered answer choices of yes, no, maybe, and "If he cuts my health care."
"Once we found out about it, we worked with Facebook to have it removed," Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley told.
"We are certainly investigating; just like we would with any threat case."
More than 750 Facebook users had reportedly cast votes by the time the poll was extract from the wildly popular online social networking community.
"This is sick and sad," a Facebook user with the screen name Cocoa Fly said in a posting as the poll fueled passionate online exchanges at the website.
This poll was created over the weekend using a third-party application that lets users conduct their own surveys, according to Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt.
Facebook had to shut down the program to get rid of the Obama poll since surveys using the software were controlled by the outside developer.
The application will remain disabled until the developer assures Facebook that the controversial survey has been removed and there are policies and procedures for handling such concerns in the future, according to Schnitt.
Nintendo Wii Price will be $199 this Sunday
Rumours that the Wii will drop $50 on 27 Sep'09 are looking confirmed. An internal memo from an anonymous Best Buy tipster backs-up the claim, and says Nintendo will make things official this Friday.When you think about, it's amazing that the Wii has motored along for three years at $250. But it's clear that Nintendo has to do something. The 120GB PS3 Slim is $300, the 120GB Xbox 360 Elite is $250 with rebates, and 250GB bundles for both are strongly rumored to be around the corner. Check out the confirmation.
I hope many of you now thinking of buying the cheap Wii game, don't you?
Apple sold 50 Million iPhones/iPod Touch Devices
Apple’s Steve Jobs appeared on stage today to say that the company has sold 30 million iPhones to date. Later in the presentation, SVP of product marketing Philip Schiller confirmed that they have sold 20 million iPod Touches. That’s a total of 50 million devices that have access to the iTunes App Store, which has more than 75,000 applications. In all, users have downloaded 1.8 billion applications from Apple.Schiller took the opportunity to knock the competition when it comes to gaming and entertainment titles on the iPhone OS compared to the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS. Schiller said the PSP has 607 titles, the Nintendo DS has 3,680 titles and the iPhone has an overwhelming 21,178.
The number of iPhone and iPod device users are still a fraction of Apple’s overall iTunes users. Today, Job said iTunes is now in 23 countries and that there’s 100 million accounts that are connected to credit cards.
With scale rapidly making the iPhone and iPod Touch one of developers’ favorite platforms to build applications for, the next conundrum is merchandising. With the new iPhone and iPod Touch 3.1 software upgrade, Apple has made that even better. Now in addition to such App Store categories as “New” and “What’s hot,” there’s a new category called “Genius.” It uses the same technology that delivers song recommendations to people in iTunes, but it gives app recommendations based on what you have previously downloaded. For instance, if you liked a golf app, then maybe EA’s Madden would also appeals to you.
PS3 new 3D mode coming in 2010 to all existing games
A video of Wipeout HD being played in 3D, with some schmuck wearing 3D glasses and babbling on about how much fun he's having. Especially for something like Wipeout HD, whose neon-infused tracks make for an almost too convenient example of rapidly approaching vanishing points, we'd say 3D could really be a quasi-"killer app" for consoles going forward -- especially if those fancy new motion controllers don't catch on for Microsoft and Sony.In many ways, 3D just seems to make more sense in a video game than for a movie, and the whole problem of finding content to deliver in the format has already been solved: a software update for the PS3 sometime in 2010 will enable it to provide a 3D viewing experience to "all" existing games on the system. We're sure there will be some exceptions, but it sounds very promising. The console itself pumps out a quite regular signal over HDMI, which the TV syncs up with your 3D glasses. A 200Hz TV, for instance, alternates 1080p frames, with 100Hz for each eye.
