Brandon Dimmel

The market for free music is thinning faster than a middle-aged hairline. Yeah, bad joke, but for the owners of Kazaa -- and now Limewire -- there is very little to laugh about these days. Just a week after big guns in the music industry forced ... (former) peer-to-peer file sharing giant Kazaa to pay up $100 million and go legal, it appears that the conglomeration is now ready to feast on the ultra-popular Limewire. Hot on the heels of the legal deconstruction of Kazaa, Sony BMG, EMI, Universal Music, and Warner Music Group brought the war to Lime Wire LLC on Friday. In partnership with the MPAA ... (view more)

The good news for AMD keeps coming: just days after the announcement that it will acquire major graphics card producer ATI , it has also been reported that the first batch of AMD-powered Dell systems are not far off. The development takes a ... significant chunk out of AMD's processing chip competitor Intel, which has in the past skipped along merrily, hand-in-hand with Dell. Much like the reasons behind AMD's surprising acquisition of ATI, Dell is changing its strategy -- and allegiances -- in order to revive itself. In recent months, competition from HP, Gateway, and others have slowed Dell ... (view more)

Last November, Microsoft faced intense criticism upon the release of its Xbox 360 console. Many die-hard Xbox "fanboys" -- gamers dedicated to Bill Gates' wares -- were unable to purchase the system due to massive production shortages. Those with ... their eye on the industry recognized a ridiculousness in Microsoft's pitiful attempt to attract Japanese gamers (who typically flock to Nintendo and Sony events) when the North American market was starving for more Xbox 360s. The end result? Millions in lost business on this side of the Pacific and thousands of 360s gathering dust in Japanese game ... (view more)

It has been a bittersweet day for America Online. On the same morning the company announces that it has beaten industry giants Microsoft and Google in launching the first online storage system, the company has at the same time admitted that it must ... lay off 5,000 employees. The cuts represent nearly a quarter of the AOL's manpower, and are part of a massive restructuring effort across all of its international offices. The hardest hit branches may be those located in Europe, as rumours abound that the entire United Kingdom arm of AOL could be severed. In desperation to regain some of its once- ... (view more)

As Nintendo faces both scrutiny for its admittedly fragile DS Lite and applause for shipping its 20 millionth unit, Sony is doing its damndest to keep up. Provided with a golden PR opportunity as Nintendo scrambles to cover itself over an ... approximate 400,000 faulty portable units, Sony is announcing a slew of new features for the Playstation Portable (PSP), in hopes that it can increase shipments. When it launched the PSP in North America on March 24, 2005, many insiders -- including yours truly -- saw the system's power and Sony's third-party support as a dynamic that simply could not fail. ... (view more)

Intel's Core 2 Duo microprocessor launched this past week, and the event was appropriately sensational for the chip's highly anticipated release. In what might be considered the most significant occurence in Intel's history, a glitzy show with the ... theme "believe the hype" whipped anxious techies into a fury at the company's Santa Clara headquarters. And, according to many insiders, Intel's chip actually lives up to its billing. The 2 Duo features some massive spikes in speed while at the same time managing to significantly decrease power consumption. In comparison with its previous chips, ... (view more)

Despite the fact that, for the most part, Nintendo wares are designed with children in mind, Nintendo is today admitting that many of its new DS Lite handhelds are susceptible to cracking. That's right, the company that has produced consoles -- like ... the N64 and SNES -- that appear able to withstand a living room atomic bomb is telling consumers that its newest product is, well, fragile. The problem lies with some faulty cases, leading Nintendo to assure its DS Lite purchasers that the problem is simply cosmetic, and will not directly affect its gaming performance. Furthermore, according to ... (view more)

As if gaming didn't already receive enough bad press, now it appears geese have joined senators and right-wing conservatives in a torch-waving mob: ready to storm industry giants like Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. In a recent (and somewhat strange) ... study, an American professor reached the conclusion that video games were responsible for the decline in the attendance of U.S. national parks. According to University of Illinois researcher and assistant professor Oliver Pergams, sedentary use of home entertainment is on the rise, and such a phenomenal increase is, well, somehow interesting when ... (view more)

It appears as though a rather clever imitation of Google's toolbar download is infecting thousands of innocent users with a Trojan horse. Looking almost exactly like the original Google downloads page, those who request files from the imitation site ... are finding their systems loaded with W32.Ranky.FW. The Trojan turns any unlucky PC into a raving automaton, spreading itself by simply requesting recipients of spam emails to follow a suggested link. The problem was first discovered by online rent-a-cops at Surfcontrol, who have since declared that the Trojan horse program is far from perfect in ... (view more)

It seems Microsoft is nabbing software pirates the old fashioned way. Despite its much-publicized release of the anti-piracy program WGA ( Windows Genuine Advantage ), Microsoft has successfully nabbed 26 software pirates through "secret shopping." ... Secret shopping is the practice of sending a company representative -- dressed like the average citizen -- into retail businesses in the hopes of nabbing shoplifters, or in this case software pirates. Microsoft actually purchased random software and then tested its legitimacy. The Redmond-based company also used its "rat" phone line -- 1- ... (view more)