SILICON POWER

SILICON POWER’ s first step to enhance the Branding image: expanding the channels in Taiwan

May 7, 2009(Taipei, Taiwan) The World leading SSD manufacture company, Silicon Power, today announce it will decide to expand it’s channel in Taiwan along with the recognition from consumer in Japan. To build up the long term relationship with partners through various tactics to create the win win situation, Silicon Power will cooperate with all major channels in Taiwan, including Carrefour, Far Eastern Geant, Tatung 3C, TKEC, rainbow3C and so on. They covered from 3C channel stores to super market stores. To celebrate the announcement of its channel strategy, Silicon Power will also launch the “channel spring promotion program”. Hope can attract more consumers to make a success in the first hit through the promotion event.

For Silicon Power, 2009 is the very important mile stone to enhance its company branding around the world. Silicon Power won the success in Japan market and keeps cultivating its branding image with the experience in Japan more proactively. First, Silicon Power will show the commitments to gather more reliable partners and distributors in Taiwan. Second, Silicon Power will extend more on line channels to reach more consumers. To open more new business opportunity, we take step by step approach to create the win-win situation for the long term relationship, also to win the strong branding image over the next year.

'News games' put public in charge of hot topics

This Flash game based on the infamous incident last winter in which an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at former U.S. president George W. Bush has spawned at least seven so-called 'news games.' Other topics that have inspired such games include the swine flu, the water landing of US Airways flight 1549, the British financial bailout and more.

(Credit: Flashgressive)

Here's a conundrum: when the world is deep into hysteria over a potential pandemic like the swine flu, how does someone who wants to poke fun at the problem do so?

For Jude Gomilla and Immad Akhund, the answer was a single sleepless night about 10 days ago during which the two San Francisco entrepreneurs built what has become a massively popular Flash game called Swinefighters.

In Swinefighters, players--dressed as giant-syringe-wielding and mask-wearing doctors--are tasked with killing off rogue viruses in the form of sneering pigs. Each time you hit a pig with the syringe, it is wiped out, and the goal is to do that as many times as possible in 20 seconds. And because the game presents a running total of all the pig-like viruses killed by everyone who has played the game, we know that in total, Swinefighters have destroyed nearly 14.5 million viruses since the game's launch.

Swinefighter players have 'destroyed' nearly 15 million viruses. The game's creators argue that because the present tips from the CDC on how to combat swine flu, that their game serves an educational purpose.

(Credit: HeyZap)

Swinefighter is hardly the only game of its kind. In fact, in the last few months, there's been a proliferation of what some call "news games," little Flash-based exercises that are based on the very latest mega-stories sweeping the globe. Among the targets of these titles' satirical eye have been things like the George W. Bush shoe-throwing incident, the water landing of US Airways flight 1549, the British financial bailout, and even Britney Spears' haircut. And next up is a game that is expected to be released in a few days parodying the Bernard Madoff scandal in which players can manage their own Ponzi scheme.

Controversial? Or not?
And while some may find such premises beyond objectionable, those making the games--not surprisingly--don't think they're crossing any social taboos.

"To me, it's a bit strange, because some people see these games as controversial," said Gomilla, "when usually the point is a positive one. Most are expressing something that users want to be. They want to be the heroes of landing the plane, or they want to beat the virus, but they can't (personally) make political decisions. (So) in a sily way, they can go and vent their frustrations in the game."

Others feel that those who are up in arms are missing the point, or overreacting. After all, no one was ever harmed by a flying digital shoe.

"We were quite surprised at the level of controversy (our game) created," said Louise Doherty, of Fubra, which currently publishes Sock and Awe, one of at least seven games devoted to the Bush shoe-throwing incident. It's only a bit of fun, but we had hundreds of emails telling us that we were evil, that we should close the site (and) that no matter what Bush had done, 'no one deserves to have shoes thrown at them.' They're virtual shoes. Even the real shoe that was thrown didn't hit him."

Of course, there are different ways of approaching delicate subjects, and the people behind some of these games have chosen different ways to have fun with the subject matter. In both Hero on the Hudson and Double Bird Strike, for example, players must try to land an airplane that has had its engines knocked out by birds.

But in Hero on the Hudson, if you don't handle the rapidly descending plane properly, it crashes into the water. To Dominic Tocci, the creator of Double Bird Strike, that's not the best way to confront the potentially impolitic nature of a game based on a well-publicized airplane accident.

"Some topics are a little delicate, but it's all in how you present them," said Tocci. "For example, when I designed Double Bird Strike, I intentionally made it so that crashing the plane was impossible."

Tocci's attempts at political correctness aside, not everyone would agree that making play out of a near disaster is funny, or useful, even if players don't have to actually see the plane crash. And not everyone would agree with Tocci's assessment of what's fair game and what's not.

A game that is about to be released leverages the attention that Bernard Madoff has generated and tasks players with managing their own Ponzi scheme.

(Credit: Cellufun)

"Personally, if I think a game idea is in poor taste, I won't make it," Tocci said. "Of course, there will always be someone out there who might get offended by something I made, but you can't please everyone."

One such group might be fans of Britney Spears or those who feel for the personal travails the pop superstar has gone through in recent years. Yet Tocci took Spears' dramatics head-on with his first news game, Britney Wigged Out, in which players have to try to place a wig on the head of a bobbing and weaving Spears caricature.

Money to be made
But there's no denying that these projects, most of which are created by individuals or small teams, are resonating with the Internet public. And that can be profitable.

Doherty's Fubra bought Sock and Awe from its original creator on eBay for more than $8,000, but said ads on the game earned the money back in just 48 hours. And Tocci said his creations earn money from royalties paid by the casual games sites that host the titles.

Not everyone is trying to profit though. Gomilla said that he and his partner decided not to attach ads to Swinefighter because of the sensitive nature of the game. But he suggested he wouldn't have a problem making money off of less controversial topics.

Flash games like these have been around almost as long as Flash itself. But in the past, they've tended to center on harmless fare like throwing things at penguins. And while they've managed to spread far and wide, it's likely they haven't done so with the urgency of the news games. And that has to do with the fact that these new titles, like so many other Web-based projects these days, can spread like wildfire on social-networking services like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.

That leads to staggering numbers like the 14.5 million viruses tackled in Swinefighter and the 93.5 million shoes tossed at Bush in Sock and Awe alone. Tocci's Double Bird Strike has been played more than 400,000 times.

The games are also coming faster these days because the tools available make it possible for someone with even rudimentary skills to make something like Swinefighter in an evening.

To Sree Sreenivasan, the dean of student affairs and a professor at the Columbia University School of Journalism, things like news games and other Web phenomena prove that there's little point in trying to understand people's sensibilities or taste. After all, he points out, someone might post a video on YouTube of their grandmother's funeral only to have others' mocking responses to the video catch viral fire.

"On the Internet, you've lost control of this stuff," Sreenivasan said. "It would be nice if everything on the Internet had redeeming value, but I don't think that's possible."

News game creators like Gomilla and Doherty, however, think their offerings do present some social value, even as they poke fun at topics that make some people very nervous.

Gomilla, for example, points out that Swinefighters features advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how to combat things like swine flu. And Doherty indicated that while she might have little sympathy for Bush having had to dodge flying shoes, she cared about the fate of the Iraqi journalist who threw the footwear at the president.

"When it became clear that reporter Muntadar al-Zaidi could be in serious trouble as a result of his actions we decided to display news about his arrest and charges on the site so people would be kept aware of his plight," Doherty said. "People that were visiting the site to play the game and laugh were also getting news that they may not have seen otherwise."

News games as education
In fact, Doherty said that the educational value of these games can outstrip even what respected government institutions offer the public.

"It's a shame the innovation (of providing CDC advice about swine flu in Swinefighters) was left to two entrepreneurs," said Doherty. "It would have been great if the World Health Organization had realized they could use a game to raise awareness about preventing swine flu."

Sreenivasan, too, recognizes that the creators of news games have the time and energy on their hands to move a lot faster than traditional organizations.

"I think (news games) can be engaging and helpful," Sreenivasan said, "and that's why you see some news organizations trying to do this. The problem is when breaking news happens, structured organizations don't have the time or work flow (to act), whereas someone working alone in the basement" does."

Nvidia posts loss as inventory eases

On Thursday, Nvidia reported a first-quarter loss, as revenue fell 42 percent from last year. But the graphics chipmaker said inventory was easing.

The company announced a net loss of $201.3 million, or 37 cents a share. Last year in the same period, the company posted a profit of $176.8 million, or 30 cents a share.

Revenue was $664.2 million, down from $1.15 billion for the same period last year. This was better than the analysts' average estimate of $534.4 million, however.

Adjusted net loss was 9 cents a share. Analysts had expected a loss of 10 cents a share, according to Reuters estimates.

"We made good progress managing expenses and significantly reducing inventory," said Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia, in a statement. Inventory decreased from 144 to 64 days sequentially. Revenue grew 38 percent sequentially from the previous quarter.

Boom times for prepaid cell phone operators

repaid wireless providers are scooping up subscribers as cash strapped consumers downgrade to lower cost cell phone service.

First quarter earnings reports from MetroPCS Communications and Leap Wireless on Thursday provided further evidence that consumers are flocking toward no-contract, unlimited prepaid services. These carriers, which operate primarily in smaller urban areas, each reported they had nearly doubled their subscription rate compared to a year ago.

MetroPCS said its new subscriber additions increase 51 percent compared to the same quarter a year earlier. In total it added 684,000 new subscribers, bringing its customer base to 6 million. This was the third quarter in a row in which the company had a record breaking increase in subscribers.

Leap Wireless, which sells its service under the Cricket brand, also had a big quarter, increasing subscribership by 40 percent compared to the same quarter a year earlier. In total, the company added 493,000 new customers, ending the quarter with 4.3 million wireless subscribers. A year ago, Leap ended the first quarter with 3.1 million customers.

MetroPCS increased revenue 20 percent to $795.3 million and posted earnings of $44 million.

Leap actually posted a wider first quarter loss, mostly due to the company's expansion into new markets, such as Chicago and Philadelphia. The company lost $47.4 million, or 74 cents a share, compared a loss of $16.9 million, or 28 cents a share, in the first quarter of 2008. Revenue increased 25 percent to $587 million.

All of this news comes just days after Sprint Nextel reported huge subscriber gains in its prepaid service from its subsidiary Boost Mobile. Boost added about 764,000 customers to its service.

What all three services have in common is that they offer low-cost, prepaid plans with all-you-can-eat voice, text messaging, and Web browsing. The Boost Unlimited service, which launched in January, costs only $50 a month. And MetroPCs's and Leap's services are in the same neighborhood.

Based on these strong subscriber numbers, it appears that consumers are looking for more affordable cell phone plans. This is likely a direct result of the ailing economy, which has resulted in high unemployment throughout the country.

While it's true that cell phone service has become essential for most Americans, that doesn't mean consumers are willing to pay a lot of money for it. And as finances tighten, people are looking to reduce their monthly expenses by finding cheaper options for phone service. Prepaid service plans, which allow customers to pay in advance for service without signing a contract, provide a good alternative. And now the low-cost unlimited plans make it an easy choice even for wireless subscribers that talk and text a lot.

MetroPCS and Leap Wireless have each been offering their low-cost prepaid unlimited plans for quite some time, but as these carriers move into bigger markets, such as Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York, they are putting pressure on other wireless operators to match or beat their prices.

Sprint's Boost was the first to answer that challenge with its $50 unlimited plan. Virgin Mobile followed with its own all-you-can-eat plan for $50 a month. And T-Mobile USA, owned by Deutsche Telekom, is also getting more aggressive with its prepaid cell phone plans.

The question now is whether the two biggest cell phone companies, AT&T and Verizon Wireless, which make millions of dollars in profits from postpaid subscribers, will also go after the prepaid market. And if they don't, will they slash prices on their postpaid contract service plans? AT&T is already rumored to be considering lowering the price of its iPhone service plan by $10 when the new iPhone comes out this summer.

Is Lala's DRM new way to lock up music?

Michael Robertson, the gadfly of digital music, is once again pestering rivals about their business practices.

Robertson--the controversial founder of MP3.com, Linspire, andMP3tunes.com--has accused Lala, of attempting to transfer control of its users music to the recording labels.

Robertson claimed last month on his personal blog that Lala had developed an "insidious new plot" to entice music fans to upload music to the company's servers, and then trap the music there by embedding digital rights management into the servers. This would enable Lala and the big music labels to exercise greater control over the tunes. He compared Lala's digital-locker service to a "roach motel," where songs check in but they can't check out.

Robertson's accusations generated little attention, possibly because he operates a competing site, MP3tunes.com. Both companies enable customers to store their music in digital lockers, and one competitor badmouthing another won't stop the presses. But with regard to his accusations about Lala and DRM, the best support for the claims comes from Lala.

Robertson directed CNET News to a patent owned by Lala called Network Based Digital Rights Management System. In the document, Lala describes the invention it patented.

"The system also allows for the 'revoking' of ownership of digital media. For example, if a user is known to have illegally shared a file, the copyright owner may choose to revoke their ownership."--Lala said in a patent document

"A network-based DRM system manages digital media assets stored in the network," Lala wrote. "The system provides consumers with access to the digital media from any device connected to an electronic network such as the Internet, while enforcing the intended uses by the copyright owners.

"The Web restricted nature of the offering," Lala wrote elsewhere in the filing, "means that the digital assets are at all times controlled by the system and thus result in minimal piracy."

The patent proves Lala is trying to develop a new type of DRM, according to Robertson. Instead of wrapping individual songs in DRM, Lala's plan calls for a network to act as a fortress that surrounds an entire music ecosystem. Lala CEO Geoff Ralston confirmed that Lala filed the patent but denied the company is trying to wrest control away from users.

"It's a patent around Web Songs," Ralston said.

Web Songs are one of the cornerstones of the company's latest business model. Lala, which scrapped two prior models, now offers three main features: MP3s unprotected by DRM can be purchased and download for rates comparable to iTunes. A second option offers users unlimited, ad-free streaming access to music they already own. The way this works is users allow Lala to scan their hard drives and preserve a list of the songs the person owns. Lala's system will then stream it's own copies of the songs to the user.This way users don't have to worry about losing their music to hard-drive meltdowns or misplaced music players.

Lala's last feature allows users to listen to streaming music--they don't already own--for 10 cents per song. Lala calls these Web Songs. One of the ways Web Songs are different than MP3s is they can't be downloaded to a portable device.

"A Web song by definition has a limited set of rights associated with it," Ralston said. "One right you don't have is the right to take it with you. It's not a portable song. Another right you don't have is to copy it. Everything has limited rights, even an MP3. You're not allowed to take an MP3, copy it and sell it."

Does DRM have some value?
Lala says Web songs offer users a chance to obtain streaming access to a song for the price of a grocery store gum drop. If customers later want to upgrade and buy an MP3 version of the tune, the dime is counted against the price of the download. To offer inexpensive Web songs in such a way, Ralston said that Lala had to promise the major recording companies to protect their music from piracy.

Michael Robertson found Lala's DRM patent and says it proves company is taking orders from record labels.

(Credit: Michael Robertson)

That makes sense. The problem is, however, the patent isn't restricted to Web songs, as Ralston said. In Lala's patent, under a section titled Overview of Present Invention, the company lists the many applications of its invention. Here, Lala describes the company's digital locker system exactly.

The patent indicates that Lala's DRM invention is designed to lock down music that its users already own. Lala's system doesn't allow users to listen to their own music via anything but a Web browser and the songs cannot be downloaded. Ralston argues that people can do all these things with the original music files they own.

But if Lala's users own music the company stores, why does Lala restrict it this way? Are these restrictions rooted in some technology limitation or do the major labels require them?

"We're trying to provide a way so that users can have more access to their music than they had in the past," Ralston said. "Look at the iPhone. I can't easily throw brand-new graphic cards into it. It's all closed up. But it's a much better consumer proposition. We're not acting as an agent of the record companies in any way except that we resell their goods. There's nothing nefarious there at all. We repackaged some stuff that we think provides a better consumer proposition."

Music sales have been falling for years and piracy is at least one of the main causes. Nonetheless, the four top record labels over the past year have appeared to give up on DRM as a piracy-busting strategy. This trend culminated in January when Apple announced it would strip DRM from the entire iTunes library. So, why then is Lala attempting to come up with a new DRM scheme?

In the patent, the company offers some clues.

Lala notes that DRM produced by Microsoft and Apple "suffered from lack of interoperability caused by competitive and licensing issues." Most DRM, Lala points out, can also be cracked or broken. Lala says in the patent that its DRM approach avoids these issues.

"A network-based approach protects against rampant piracy," Lala wrote. "By delivering the product directly from the network, only authorized users and devices can access the media. Access by users and devices is controlled on the Web and can be constantly adapted to changing technologies and market pressures."

Robertson claims that network DRM is simply the latest attempt by the recording industry to jerk control of music away from consumers. He said what may be most alarming about Lala's system is its potential to snatch away someone's songs.

"The system also allows for the 'revoking' of ownership of digital media," Lala wrote in the patent. "For example, if a user is known to have illegally shared a file, the copyright owner may choose to revoke their ownership of the digital media in the system, limiting the rights of such user to the media."

When asked about this, Lala's CEO was unapologetic.

"Is it controversial that a store has the right to terminate someone that steals from them?" he asked.

Intel and Novell take aim at Android with Moblin

Google's still-nascent efforts to dominate the mobile market, already reeling from Apple's surging iPhoneplatform, were dealt another blow on Thursday when Intel and Novell announced that they will collaborate to promote Intel's Moblin operating system, a rival Linux distribution for mobile devices.

Whereas Google is initially targeting smartphones with Android (though an Android-based Netbook has apparently been released), Intel is targeting Moblin at Netbooks.

Additionally, Android and Moblin aren't simply two different Linux distributions, in the way that Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server are. Android and Moblin use Linux in different ways, as Dirk Hohndel, Intel's chief Linux and open source technologist, suggested to me:

Moblin is Linux for mobile devices, (and its) first focus is on Netbooks. Android is an (operating system) for phones that uses a Linux kernel...very different.

Novell's Justin Steinman, vice president of solution and product marketing, said in a follow-up conversation:

Moblin 2.0 is the first open-source Linux software stack and technology framework designed from the ground up for the Netbook device type. Essentially, Moblin plans to start at the Netbook layer of the stack, and then work its way down to the smaller mobile devices. Given Novell's strength in delivering desktops based on Linux, it made sense for us to collaborate closely with Intel to deliver the optimal user experience on Netbooks.

Given Apple's rising dominance in smartphones and Symbian's lingering power in other mobile devices, this seems like a smart, strategic move. The Netbook market is still wide open, with Apple currently disdaining to enter it and Microsoft bleeding cash to hold its ground against Linux.

Though Ubuntu made the first forays for Linux in the Netbook market, could it be Novell and Intel that end up dominating it?

Maybe. Maybe not. The one sure thing, at least for now, is that Microsoft may win the short-term Netbook war, but it still needs a long-term, winning game plan for mobile.

The mobile market is fascinating because it is uprooting long-held beliefs about how and where to compete in software. Intel, Google, and Apple, each fiercely contending for dominance, share a common strategy: they're investing in the operating system but planning to make their money elsewhere (Atom chips, in Intel's case; advertising and revenue-sharing with application vendors, in Google's; hardware and revenue-sharing with application vendors, in Apple's).

Such strategies stand in stark contrast to Microsoft, which persists in trying to monetize its mobile Windows platform.

Small wonder, then, that Microsoft is losing the mobile battle. It's fighting with the wrong ammunition.

Back to Google. While it seems clear that Intel's Moblin initiative is an attempt to fend off Google's looming Android threat, there's probably enough time for Intel and Novell to stake out a strong position in Netbooks that Google will struggle to overcome.

Regardless, the one player left out in the cold in all this activity is Microsoft. Google, Novell, Intel, and Apple are each putting hefty resources into winning the mobile market, but doing so in a way that undermines Microsoft's traditional approach of licensing only the software. Microsoft's Xbox experience suggests that it can do hardware right, but will it be able to catch up if it starts chasing its competition?