A month ago, the CEO of Activision, Bobby Kotick, complained about the high cost of Sony’s PlayStation 3. Kotick’s threat to Sony, to lower the price of the PS3 or Activision stops making games for the console, is covered here.

Yesterday, in an investor call, Sony CEO Nobuyuki Oneda revealed that manufacturing costs of the PS3 are down by 70%.

Sony reported the company’s first annual loss in 14 years when it released its fiscal first quarter earnings yesterday. Further, the company is projecting over a $1 billion loss through March 2010. Sony may be blaming poor sales on the state of the economy, but people like Bobby Kotick would be sure to argue the price of the PS3 is to blame.

Why does Sony’s PS3 cost so much?

The cost of manufacturing each console is roughly $800. The price to buy a PS3? $399. While it may be the highest priced console against its competitors, Microsoft’s Xbox and the Nintendo Wii, Sony is taking a hit for every PS3 sold.

Sony saw some relief in January when it announced that the cost of manufacturing had dropped by 35% to $450. Though a 70% drop in cost seems to be just what the company needs, which would allow, as rumored, Sony to drop the price of the PS3. But will Sony really want to eat into its new profits, especially after a first quarter in the red and a poor outlook for the rest of the fiscal year?

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Last week, Amazon acquired online shoe store, Zappos, for roughly $900 million. This week, IBM and Sprint decided where to invest some spare change.

IBM Shells Out $1.2 Billion for SPSS

Today, IBM announced its plans to acquire SPSS for $1.2 billion ($50 a share) - a buy that IBM explains will strengthen its Information Agenda initiative, which “helps companies turn information into a strategic asset”.

SPSS, a Chicago-based analytics software specialist, will provide IBM with tools for reducing credit risk, increasing customer loyalty, and detecting and preventing fraud across diverse industries. Financial firms, telecommunications companies, government agencies, and educational institutions have used SPSS software to predict customer behavior and mine historical business data to identify future trends.

IBM also acquired Ounce Labs, a provider of enterprise security testing, today for an undisclosed amount.

Press Release

Virgin Mobile USA Acquired by Sprint Nextel

Looking to strengthen its prepaid business in the wireless market with an “Iconic Consumer Brand” (as indicated by the title of its news release), Sprint Nextel announced that it will acquire Virgin Mobile for $483 million.

Sprint Nextel already owns 13.1 percent of Virgin Mobile and will keep the Virgin Mobile brand. The carrier also announced its plans to put Virgin Mobile CEO Dan Schulan in charge of its prepaid business when the deal closes in fall or early 2010.

Sprint

As reported by Network World, hackers have developed a new, non-traditional form of keylogging, involving nothing more than electrical outlets and cheap lasers. The technique, dubbed ‘Power-Line Exploit,’ is scheduled  to be demonstrated in Las Vegas this month at the Black Hat USA 2009 security conference.

The following from Network World explains the first part of the keylogging technique: “In the power-line exploit, the attacker grabs the keyboard signals that are generated by hitting keys. Because the data wire within the keyboard cable is unshielded, the signals leak into the ground wire in the cable, and from there into the ground wire of the electrical system feeding the computer. Bit streams generated by the keyboards that indicate what keys have been struck create voltage fluctuations in the grounds.”

I know what you’re thinking. You’ll just leave your laptop unplugged, right? You’ll just type away on a fully charged battery with no worries and…WRONG! What did you think the cheap lasers were for?

Network World further explains that, in the case of unplugged laptops, “Attackers point a cheap laser, slightly better than what is used in laser pointers, at a shiny part of a laptop or even an object on the table with the laptop. A receiver is aligned to capture the reflected light beam and the modulations that are caused by the vibrations resulting from striking the keys.”

So next time you’re waiting around in an airport, for instance, shell out some change for a newspaper, or one of those ridiculous, 300+ page Sudoku books to pass the time. Keep your laptop tucked away, or, at the very least, find a damp, dark crevice to crawl into first.

Network World

Yesterday, Google hoped to appeal to businesses by removing the ‘Beta’ label from Google Apps. Hours later, Google dropped a nuclear bomb on Microsoft, via its official blog, by announcing its plans to release a Google Chrome Operating System in the second half of 2010.

Without surprise, Google is aiming to solve problems associated with Microsoft Windows by the release of Google Chrome OS. The following excerpt from Google’s blog entry details some features in the new OS:

“Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.”

Google Chrome will run within a windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. Google Chrome OS will also be open-source, but Google does not clarify whether that means the OS will be free.

So let’s break this down: fast, secure, simple, free?, web-oriented and….possibly everything Windows is not?  Or is Microsoft Windows as synonymous to the OS as Google is synonymous to search? Will Microsoft have the advantage of releasing the new Windows 7 before Google releases Google Chrome OS? More importantly, will the majority of netbook users, Google’s initial target market, already have Windows 7 running before the official release of Google Chrome OS?

Today, Google announced it is finally peeling the ‘Beta’ label off Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and GTalk.

Gmail, one of the leading email services, was launched 5 years ago. Google Apps suite, which includes Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and more, is used by nearly 2 million companies worldwide. Google hopes to make Google Apps more appealing to enterprises, explains Dan Olds, principal analyst with the Gabriel Consulting Group, “Taking the beta tag off of Google Apps is kind of like taking the training wheels off of your kid’s bike. If there were problems, Google could always fall back on the ‘but it’s a beta’ line either explicitly or implicitly. But now that the apps are fully baked they don’t have that excuse anymore and will be held to a higher standard.”

Google also introduced two new features to Gmail for its enterprise customers today: email delegation, which allows administrative assistants to send e-mail on others’ behalf, and an email retention tool that lets companies automatically purge old e-mails after a certain period of time.

Google assures App users that the removal of the ‘Beta’ label in no way means that the company will stop innovating, updating, and adding new features to its Google Apps services.

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Microsoft is warning users of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 of a security hole in Internet Explorer - a serious vulnerability that allows attackers to gain the same user rights as the local user.

The hole is reportedly caused by the interaction of IE and Microsoft Video ActiveX Control. This vulnerability can allow hackers to remotely take control of victims’ machines. User need to do nothing more visit a Web site that has been hacked to get infected. According to security experts, criminals have been attacking the security hole in IE for nearly a week, installing viruses on users who click certain links in spam emails.

Microsoft assures users that its IT professionals are working diligently to develop a security update. Until the company is able to provide a a patch for the security breach, the software giant has suggested that users disable the video software, ActiveX. Instructions for deactivating ActiveX Video Control are available here.

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Nikkei Electronics Asia suggests that the first USB 3.0-enabled PCs will be shipped out to consumers before the end of the 200.

The USB 3.0—officially dubbed SuperSpeed USB—has transfer speeds of 4.8Gbps (10x faster than USB 2.0) and be able to dump a 25GB HD file in about 70 seconds. Like the USB 2.0 USB 3.0 will be backwards compatible with prior USB hardware, but 3.0 hardware will be needed on both ends to achieve the highest transfer speeds.

NEC Electronics became the first to introduce a USB 3.0 controller in May 2009 and began shipping host controller samples just last month. The company is also scheduled to begin manufacturing an expected one million units per month in September. NEC anticipates that, by 2011, 140 million USB 3.0 ready PCs  will ship. Sales are expected to double by the following year.

Expect a new generation of USB flash drives, external hard drives, and other devices to be developed that will make use of the significantly faster transfer speeds.

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