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NEW YORK (AP) - Following in the footsteps of Nintendo’s popular “Wii
Fit,” the video game publisher known for the “Madden” football
games is jumping into fitness software targeted mostly at women.
Electronic Arts Inc. announced a new line, EA Sports Active, that runs on
the Nintendo Wii console and aims to complement, not compete with, Nintendo’s “WiiFit” exercise
title.
Peter Moore, president of EA Sports, called the new brand, whose first title
launches next March, a “somewhat radical departure from the normal game
experiences we provide customers.”
EA’s sports audience has been mostly young men, who have flocked to football,
soccer, basketball and hockey titles to make the company the world’s
dominant player in sports video games.
But to stay competitive with rivals such as Activision Blizzard Inc., whose
success with games like “World of Warcraft” and “Rock Band” seems
to be weathering the recession, EA needs to continue to expand its audience.
The company’s new brand seeks to take advantage of the popularity of the
Nintendo console and of exercise games. While the “Wii Fit” is already
enormously popular, Moore, a former physical-education teacher, said EA’s
sports software will run people through an exercise routine with a more Western
approach than the Japanese company’s product.
“
Wii Fit” includes activities like running, skiing as well as yoga, and
it emphasizes balance as well as fitness. EA’s products will include
exercises like running and lunges, as well as simulations of sports such as
tennis.
The games use straps to attach the Wii’s controller and “nanchuk” attachment
to a player’s body, so the fitness routines can be performed without
holding the controls. It also includes a resistance band.
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KNOXVILLE, TN (AP) - How fast is the new supercomputer at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory? If everyone in the world performed one mathematical calculation
per second, it would take 650 years to do what this machine can do in one day.
That makes the $100 million computer, nicknamed “Jaguar” by scientists,
the fastest in the world for unclassified scientific research. At more than
1 quadrillion mathematical calculations per second, it is about 55,000 times
faster
than your typical PC.
Only one other supercomputer is faster, and it’s devoted to classified
research on nuclear weapons at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Global climate change, space matter that can’t be seen, and alternative
energy - everything from improved gasoline combustion to fusion - are some
of the subjects Jaguar will be used to research.
In June, Jaguar, a Cray Inc. system, was rated fifth-fastest in the world
by researchers who track the 500 top supercomputers. The Oak Ridge lab, a Department
of Energy facility, announced that it had upgraded Jaguar since then, and achieved
its four-year goal of 1 quadrillion calculations per second - or 1 “petaflop” -
six months ahead of schedule.
Jaguar recently achieved sustained performance of more than 1.3 petaflops
while churning out calculations on superconductivity and has hit a peak speed
of
1.64 petaflops, the lab said.
It is still undergoing final trials but should be ready for research by January.
Thomas Zacharia, Oak Ridge’s associate director for computing, anticipates
a waiting list of proposals and near full-time operation when the computer
begins work. All users must share their results with the broader scientific
community.
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SEATTLE (AP) - The U.S. military, with help from Seattle startup Delve Networks,
has launched a video-sharing Web site for troops, their families and supporters,
a year and a half after restricting access to YouTube and other video sites.
TroopTube, as the new site is called, lets people register as members of
one of the branches of the armed forces, family, civilian Defense Department
employees
or supporters. Members can upload personal videos from anywhere with an Internet
connection, but a Pentagon employee screens each for taste, copyright violations
and national security issues.
Part of Delve’s work was to build speedy tools for approving and sorting
incoming videos. Its technology also crunches video files into several sizes
and automatically plays the one that best suits viewers’ Internet connection
speeds.
But the startup’s real forte is making sure site searches turn up the best
video results. Delve’s system turns a video’s sound into a text transcript.
It pares unimportant words like “this” and “that,” then
compares what’s left against a massive database of words commonly uttered
in proximity to each other, collected from crawling hundreds of millions of
Web pages.
The result: Even if speech recognition software trips on the one word someone
is searching for, there’s a good chance Delve can still deliver relevant
results.
In May 2007, the Defense Department banned employees and soldiers from accessing
sites including YouTube and MySpace, citing security and bandwidth issues.
Delve Chief Executive Alex Castro called TroopTube a “retention tool” aimed
at a generation of soldiers who bring laptops to the front lines.
“
A lot of people are excited in the company to be doing something for the people
who make sacrifices,” said Castro, his eyes tearing. “We’re
proud of this.”
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DECATUR, GA (AP) - Mayor William Floyd pulled up to a parking space, dialed
a number into his cell phone and watched as two hours of paid time flashed
on the
meter in front of his car.
And with that, the Atlanta suburb launched one of the nation’s first
pay-by-phone parking systems, part of a strategy designed to encourage more
turnover and ultimately
more revenue.
Decatur ramped up its efforts with the pay-by-cell system, which let drivers
call a local number plastered on each meter. After entering the parking space
number, they get a text message with a Web site address to create an account
using a credit card. Once an account is created, drivers can just call the
number each time to draw down their account.
To entice drivers to use the system, the city is offering the first two hours
of pay-by-cell parking for free. After that, it will charge cell phone users
an additional 25-cent transaction fee.
About 50 of Decatur’s 385 meters are outfitted with the pay-by-cell equipment,
which costs an estimated $200 per meter. It also lets drivers pay the old-fashioned
way using change.
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