Call of Duty: Black Ops is the most pirated game

Call of Duty: Black Ops has been the fastest selling video games of all time, but that also racks the title a good spot in Jack Sparrow’s territory. The FPS game is now one of the most downloaded games, illegally.

TorrentFreak, a BitTorrent news site reports a scary 4.2 million download for Black Ops. That’s a very big number considering that the game has only been out not so long ago, and already beaten Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (3.96 million downloads), Mafia II, and Mass Effect 2 to take the notorious throne.

Thieves who own an Xbox 360 did their share in Black Ops stealing, downloading that console version 930,000 times, according to TorrentFreak’s numbers. Dante’s Inferno wound up being the most downloaded Xbox 360 game, with Super Mario Galaxy 2 sitting atop the most pirated list on for Wii owners. Well, the good thing is Black Ops is winning at nearly every corner.

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NFC chip with embedded flash memory from Samsung

Looks like NFC chip will indeed go quite big in 2011, as Samsung announced that its new near field communications (NFC) chip now comes with embedded flash memory for next-generation smartphones. Fancy a Galaxy S2 with Gingerbread and NFC? Mass production of the NFC is slated for the first quarter of 2011, so we should be able to see these NFC chips being used in smartphones launched during 2011, at least the third quarter.

The new Samsung NFC chip adopts flash for the embedded memory which allows device designers to easily to upgrade software or firmware. Samsung also provides a software protocol stack and technology services for antenna design and tuning. Through such features and support, designers can reduce their product’s time-to-market, the vendor said.

Samsung claimed it developed this NFC chip to have minimal power consumption in both active and stand-by mode. With a 20% decrease in power consumption, Samsung’s NFC chip remains active for mobile payment even without battery power. But if you look at the current NFC chip in the Google Nexus S, switching it on full time does little to the lifespan of the battery that it’s totally insignificant. The PN544 NFC chip from NXP that is used in Google’s Nexus S runs at an insignificant 50 micro amps and 35 milliamps when briefly interacting with a tag. If you deduct 20-percent from that, which we assume is the benchmark of current NFC chip’s power consumption then 40 micro amps is definitely insignificant to the battery’s consumption.

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Three versions of iPad 2 for 2011?

Not sizes, but features at least. Currently there are two versions of iPad being released, a WiFi-only and a WiFi + 3G. Now, sources close to industry stated that Apple will be adding CDMA into that lineup. That means we’ll see iPad 2 in Wi-Fi, UMTS, and CDMA. Apple will ship about 500,000-530,000 units to channels in January with shipment ratio of Wi-Fi, UMTS and CDMA models at 3:4:3, according to industry sources, citing upstream component makers.

“The sources pointed out that about 60-65% of current iPad shipments are 3G models, indicating that consumers prefer models that are able to connect to the Internet all the time, therefore Apple is aiming to work even more closely with telecom carriers by offering more wireless solutions for iPad 2 to satisfy market demand.”

Besides adding CDMA, the source also stated Apple working on improving the glass panel of the iPad 2 for better anti-smudge and anti-reflective treatments, to probably give a fight against Kindle and gain ahead in the tablet market. How about considering Gorilla Glass, Apple?

“Since Apple’s upstream supply chain is estimated to ship about 16 million iPads in 2010, the sources expects about 2-3 million iPad units of inventory will remain in the channel rolling over into 2011. Since Apple will gradually stop the production of iPad after January and launch iPad 2 by the end of the first quarter or the beginning of the second, the remaining iPad inventory should be able to satisfy demand during that period of time.”

Now, what about the capacity memory options? If Apple keeps up with the 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB options, that’s about nine versions of iPad 2 to be manufactured.

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Mika Hakkinen stumbles on old rival while driving

During this frosty and jolly season, Mercedes Benz has aired an advertisement to promote their new 4Matic all-wheel drive system for those that ‘race’ in the snowy mountains. You know, sometimes senior citizens like to have some fun too. Apparently Mika Hakkinen was driving down a snowy mountain road in an E350 wagon when he comes upon a very classical old SL, but it’s not moving fast enough. Once he found a chance to overtake the slowpoke, he was greeted with a very familiar face, but surprisingly Mika couldn’t recognize him, as only referring him to ‘a typical Sunday driver’.



Apparently there are two versions of the ad. The first is an international audience target, with Mika Hakkinen, a ‘Sunday driver’, and a very pretty lady. You might not know her, but Susie Stoddart is Mercedes’s DTM driver from Scotland. The second version apparently only aired in Germany, having the cute lady replaced by an old man. But this is no old man. Beckenbauer might not be known worldwide, but apparently every kid and adult in Germany knows him as the “Pele” of Germany, since football in Germany is so much bigger than Formula One.



Well, all I know is, this ad deserves a part two, where the two old geezers pit with the young lady (or the other old geezer if you’re a Dutch) down the mountains, snow rally style! By the way, if only Beckenbauer gives Mika the international finger flip, then that’ll make this the ad of the year!

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Apple wants to ship 65 million iPads in 2011

Yes, that’s a very massive number. Though they didn’t really mention if that’s the original iPad or the new iPad as nobody mentioned about it, and the size are still the same. There’s also no mention of what type of panel are Apple ordering. Digitimes receives this number from the amount of LCD orders Cupertino ordered. Insiders has said that LG Display is asked to ship about 35 million of the tablet’s displays, but the original iPad’s sales was not that promising due to LG unable to cope with the massive demand. So for 2011 Samsung and Chimei Innolux are said to contribute some to Apple. Besides the 35 million from LG Display, each of the other two companies is said to deliver about 15 million of their own to Apple. Over-confidence and over-commitment from Apple?

Apple shipped about 16.76 million iPads in 2010, which is the first year the popular tablet is introduced. November alone saw 2.7 million iPad displays for Apple from LG and Samsung. These numbers are not constructive but it’s still a good estimation. Compared to the 65 million that Apple requested, this is still a very big bump.

Then again, the iPad’s introduction to foreign countries was rather slow, as Apple had to establish a market in every country. Seeing the trend of the iPhone when it was launched and compared it to the iPhone’s current market, Apple is probably trying to avoid having short supply cutting sales down. Apple is also famous for ordering large chunk of flash memory which will pull down prices significantly when buying in extremely huge bulk. It’s also a fail-safe strategy to avoid surprise defect of a certain component from a specific manufacturers, which is common in the industry.

If the estimates are close to Apple’s actual shipping goals, it could help the iPad lead the tablet market for longer than thought. Analyst guesses have had Apple shipping roughly 40 million iPads in 2011, and delivering almost two thirds more could keep it the market leader if Android and BlackBerry PlayBook tablets don’t keep pace.

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NFC chip with embedded flash memory from Samsung

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Periodic table of sports cars

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