two

It's a common dilemma: you have two computers--perhaps one at work, one at home--but only one iPhone, to which you'd like to sync music and other data from both systems. By default, Apple doesn't allow for this scenario in iTunes. When an iPhone is synced with one computer's iTunes library then connected to another's, all music is grayed out and cannot be synced. Other data are also inaccessible. There are a number of solutions to this problem, some easy but fraught with issues, others more complicated but with more pleasing results.

Trick the library One … Read more

Pardon us for not telling you about this last week, but we were pretty busy with all the cell phone news at CES. On Friday, however, Samsung announced that its new TwoStep was coming to U.S. Cellular.

Why the company didn't break the news in Las Vegas, we don't know. Indeed, Samsung's cell phone division had a very quiet week at the show.

Also known as the SCH-r470, the TwoStep offers a slim flip phone design in orange, red, and purple. On the front face you'll find a monochrome display, music controls, and stereo speakers. … Read more

Developers continue to push the envelope on iPhone application development, skirting the bounds of Apple's development guidelines and discovering means for implementing undocumented, pioneering functionality. The latest breakthrough comes from Innerfence software, and is best described by its author: "Go somewhere; do something; come back."

Most iPhone applications offer a one-way street when it comes to accessing other applications' functionality. Click on a URL in Mail, for instance, and you are transported to Safari. In order to get back to Safari though, you need to click the home button then tap the Safari icon again. In other … Read more

Lenovo is apparently planning to unveil a ThinkPad notebook with a dual display.

As much as I'd love to post a photograph of a laptop with two screens, I cannot do so in good conscience. Several sites reporting on the laptop included photos that allegedly came from an IBM site that accidentally published on December 2. But none of those sites list the source of the photo. They also link back to the original IBM page, but a photograph of a laptop with two screens does not appear there.

The story was apparently first reported on NotebookReview.com on … Read more

Video game publisher Take-Two Interactive Software posted a wider quarterly loss on Wednesday and forecast a sharp drop in sales revenue for the current quarter.

For the quarter that ended October 31, the company best known for its Grand Theft Auto franchise reported a net loss of $15 million, or 20 cents a share, compared with a net loss of $7.1 million, or 10 cents a share, a year ago. Revenue increased 11 percent to $323.4 million on the sales strength of its Midnight Club: Los Angeles, NBA 2K9, and Grand Theft Auto IV titles.

The company predicted … Read more

We've already covered Nvidia's news this morning announcing that game makers Electronic Arts and Take Two Interactive have adopted Nvidia's PhysX hardware physics acceleration technology in upcoming titles. A demo video, linked below, highlights a PhysX-enabled demo of the PC version of EA's Mirror's Edge. The video demonstrates the physics accelerated PC version side-by-side with the non-physics accelerated console version.

(The fine print below the video tells us that the frame rate has been slowed to better showcase the added effects.)

As we've said from the time when PhysX was still the property of … Read more

When Take-Two Interactive Software's executive chairman envisions future revenue for the video game industry, he sees microtransactions and downloadable content as the "biggest opportunity" and calls subscription revenue the "holy grail."

"The holy grail is taking a business, already a very large and successful business that's focused on packaged goods...and turning that into a subscription business or a semi subscription business where we have an ongoing relationship with consumers, giving them products that they want," Strauss Zelnick said Thursday at a BMO Capital Markets' conference in New York. "Who's … Read more

Electronic Arts posted a major loss on Thursday. According to the company, it realized a $310 million loss and will be forced to lay off 6 percent of its staff due to worsening financial conditions and bleak outlooks.

Of course, EA, as a public company, blames its results on economic factors and just about everything else, besides what it should really blame: itself. But the problem facing the video game industry isn't unique to EA. Each company in the market is facing the same problems, and they're all forced to blame it on ludicrous reasons.

But as anyone who follows the industry knows, the real reason behind poor performance is the general lack of innovation coming out of developer studios lately.

I don't think there's any debating the fact that innovation in the video game industry is practically nonexistent. Every time I turn around, there's another crappy first-person shooter hitting store shelves with the same basic mechanics and control scheme. Even better, there's always a new sports title out there to whet your appetite. But whatever you do, look past the same player models, and derivative gameplay, and look at the new enhancements made to this year's stadiums!

What a joke.… Read more

Much has been made about Apple's cash. The company, which operates with no debt in its financial structure, is one of the most financially sound organizations in tech, with $24.5 billion in cash on hand, even more cash than Microsoft.

But now that it has all that money, what should it do with it?

Some say Apple should simply hold on to the cash and be prepared for what could be a difficult few years, as the economy continues to feel the pressure of a credit crunch, while others think Apple should start spending while the targets are cheap and do what it can to expand its role in the industry.

I can't help but agree with those in the second camp. Why should Apple, one of the most profitable and powerful companies in the industry, sit on its hands while other companies with strong properties and technologies in their own right need to worry about the future? For the first time in recent memory, tech companies can be acquired for a relatively affordable price, and a company in the position that Apple is in needs to capitalize.

So what can it do? Quite a bit. Instead of spending all its time on cell phones, PMPs, and Macs, maybe Apple should try to become the company that offers products that tag along with you throughout the day. Or maybe Apple should get into the video game business and start solidifying its position in that market. Or maybe Apple should start putting real pressure on Microsoft and build an operating system that not even Ballmer & Co. can match.… Read more