Nintendo went on a domain shopping spree recently, grabbing a few domain names related to Wii games (like rhythmheavenwii.com and kirbywii.com) as well as a lot of domain names related to Wii U, referencing things like New Super Mario Bros. Mii and several unannounced games and items like “Wii Zapper U,” “Wii Fit U,” “Wii Party U,” Wii U Balance Board, and even “Wii Music U,” most with variations like “Wii U Music.” All redirect to nintendo.com at the moment. Check the full list after the break, as reported by Nintendo World Report. Read more…

What a busy month for hackers this is! Epic and Bethesda are the latest victims of wave of cyber-crime that has so far seen data stolen from a number of games company sites, including Sony Online Entertainment, Nintendo, Eidos and Codemasters.

A post on the Bethblog yesterday revealed that the game publisher’s site and forums had suffered “an unlawful intrusion” that resulted in the theft of an undisclosed number of forum and website passwords and email addresses.

On Friday, Epic sites also experienced downtime in the aftermath of a similar attack that compromised a number of forum accounts. Thankfully, both companies report that no credit card information was stolen. Other companies have been less fortunate.

Epic founder Tim Sweeney released a statement in the wake of Friday’s attack confirming that the “Epic Games web sites and forums were recently hacked. Read more…

Ever since MOL bought over Friendster some years ago, we’ve been hearing whispers about their plans to turn the once mighty social networking site into a – *gasp* – social gaming networking site. What that means no one will ever know, but what we do know is that a Beta version of the revamped Friendster has surfaced on the interwebs. Located at http://beta.friendster.com, entry to the website requires an access code that can only be obtained from an existing Beta user.

Interestingly enough, you can also access the Friendster Beta site from Facebook too via https://apps.facebook.com/friendster-neutron/.

Read more…

In the world of internet marketing, having a successful Facebook page has become one of the key metrics. Besides being easy to track, maintain and update, social media gurus have a wealth of tools readily available to generate endless pages of numbers to justify a brand’s investment online.

Facebook has stressed that they will never charge money to access their site, be it for your personal page, or a business/brand page. But just how much does it cost to create a Facebook page in the first place? We have a few Facebook pages and we’re glad that it didn’t cost a cent to develop, apart from some people’s basic monthly salary. However, according to local alternative news sites like Malaysiakini and Free Malaysia Today, it costs close to RM300,000 (pictured above). Read more…

Last week 4G WiMAX service providers P1 became Malaysia and Southeast Asia’s first operator to join the ranks of the Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI) to champion TD-LTE technology. The GTI is a platform formed to create value for stakeholders across the TD-LTE ecosystem and dive early adoption of TD-LTE technology. For the uninitiated, LTE is the next evolution of 4G technology that promises to deliver wireless speeds of up to 1Gbps. Market intelligence firm Maravedis reported that by the end of 2011, there will be approximately 40 countries represented by 110 operators with 2.5 to 2.6GHz spectrum allocation for TD-LTE. P1 is one of nine Malaysian companies allocated the 2.6GHz spectrum as announced in 2010.

Michael Lai, CEO of P1 explained, “For any technology to be cutting edge, there has to have mass adoption. The GTI consists of founding members who are heavyweights namely China Mobile, Bharti Airtel, Softbank Mobile, Clearwire and Vodafone Group. These operators collectively have a market potential of over half the world’s population. With its global scale, TD-LTE will also bring the widest selection and most cost effective high performance consumer devices like modems, routers, smart phones and tablets.”

To date, the total 20 members of GTI are Aero2-Poland, Belltell-Philippines, Bharti Airtel-India, China Mobile-China, Clearwire-USA, Datame-Finland, E-Plus – Germany,  FarEastone-Taiwan, FITEL-Taiwan, Korea Telecom-Korea, Omantel-Oman, Nextwave-USA, P1-Malaysia, Smoltelecom-Russia, SoftBank-Japan, Tatung Infocomm-Taiwan, Vividwireless-Australia,  Vodafone-UK, Voentelecom-Russia and Woosh-New Zealand.

SOURCE via Lowyat.NET

Yea, TM (both Streamyx and Unifi) and Maxis have started blocking those site listed by MCMC last night at 7pm. P1 WiMAX has also blocked these sites as of this morning. Maxis have implemented a DNS block that sends queries to the 10 websites to the localhost IP. At time of writing, the remaining ISPs namely Jaring, DiGi, Celcom, YES and Time have not implemented any blocks.

The current DNS block implemented by these ISP’s can be circumvented in a variety of ways as we’ve tested ourselves. Whether more stringent blocking methods will be implemented in the days to come remains to be seen.

More info at Lowyat.NET

Nokia is expected to suffer a major blow this quarter as Nomura analysts said that the company will lose its rank as largest smartphone manufacturer this quarter. For the first time in 15 years, Nokia will drop below competitors: Samsung will take the lead, followed by Apple and Nokia, Nomura said.

Nokia maintains that it will be launching Windows Phone 7 devices later this year, but the company has been criticized that it virtually destroyed its current sales potential by telling consumers that it will phase its Symbian operating system out. All current Nokia phones have, at least as far as platform support is concerned, little to no value. Nokia’s credibility is badly damaged these days and its sales appear to be in a free fall, as the company is not even providing a business outlook anymore. However, Microsoft will depend on Nokia to make Windows Phone 7 a success.

IDC mentioned in early May that Samsung had surpassed in mobile phone sales in Western Europe during the first quarter of this year. However, if Nomura’s forecast is correct, it now seems as if Nokia loses its global leadership in the fastest growing segment of the cell phone market.

SOURCE via Reuters