Singapore Fiber, Nintendo 3D, Twitter Location, Facebook Credits, Web Lawyers

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Singapore Fiber, Nintendo 3D, Twitter Location, Facebook Credits, Web Lawyers

Singapore could soon get complete fiber optic infrastructure 'so fast that it would enable the contents of a DVD to be downloaded in only a few seconds.'

The New York Times is reporting that telecom analysts Pyramid Research 'expects the revenue of Singapore telecommunication operators to rise to $5.1 billion by 2014 from $3.8 billion in 2009.'
The new network is stimulated by an investment of about $700 million from the government, the Times said, adding that Japan and Hong Kong 'have been leading the way,' in government investment in such networks, with 'private companies already offering speeds as high as one gigabit per second, or 1,000 megabits per second -- many times as fast as the 35 megabits per second required for streaming high-definition video.'

Yes it all sounds wonderful, but its benefits still aren't crystal-clear to all. 'Nobody's sure what's going to happen,' said Neil Montefiore, CEO of StarHub, which offers mobile, Internet and cable television services, speaking to attendees on the opening day of Singapore's CommunicAsia telecommunications exhibition, as reported by industry observer Sumner Lemon.
Read more here.
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Now this is good news - getting to play 3-D video games without those dorky-looking special glasses.
Agence France-Presse is reporting that Nintendo has unveiled DS handheld videogame system "that lets people play in 3-D without using special glasses."
They quote Nintendo chief executive Satoru Iwata saying 'I can't wait for you to try this,' as they report "he held a 3DS above his head at a press conference in the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles on the opening day of the Electronic Entertainment Expo."
Industry observer Nigel Kendall got to take it for a test drive, and notes that after a quick ten-minute session backstage at E3, "I have to say I was impressed."
The 3.5 inch screen "has remarkable definition, and the 3D effect is subtly different from that found on TV sets," he says: "The depth of the picture seems to lie inside the screen, rather than jumping out of it, but the effect on distances and the feeling of reality is remarkable."
Read more here.
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Oh joy. More ways for Twitter to insinuate itself into our national consciousness.
Industry observer Mikael Ricknas is reporting that Twitter 'has announced the addition of Places on twitter.com andmobile.twitter.com, letting users tag their messages with their location, the company said in a blog post on Monday.'
Get ready, folks: Twitter is rolling out Places to users in 65 countries around the world, according to the blog post., as Ricknas say: 'Users should keep an eye out for the 'Add your location' link.'
We're wondering if that might not be overload. InformationWeek notes that this week Twitter 'combated site availability issues 'resulting from the failed enhancement of a new approach to timeline caching',' and that users also 'reported incorrect tweet counts and bursts of elevated errors.'
Read more here.
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Boy, invent a new currency and people are going to complain.
It's not exactly a new form of money, the last one of those was airlines' "miles," but as The Wall Street Journal reports, Facebook "has been rolling out its own currency, to be used by members to buy virtual goods in games and other applications."
Who can't like that? If it aids and abets FarmVille in any way we won't like it, but right now game developers say "the new monetary system comes with high fees and creates competition for developers who have their own virtual payment methods," the Journal says.
Not everybody's twitterpated, though. Slate's SmartMoney reports that "other game developers couldn't be happier with the arrangement. Peter Relan, chairman and co-founder of CrowdStar, told the Journal that sales of his virtual goods, "which range in price from 50 cents for a rainbow-colored cat to $129 for a mystery box containing a dragon," have doubled since he made Facebook Credits a payment option."
Read more here.
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On Facebook just today a friend of ours was complaining about doing her taxes. "I'd better not get audited," she wrote, "I had to make up some stuff. I am like SO DEAD if I'm audited."
That wasn't a smart move. Neither is making up stuff on your taxes.
More and more people are watching Facebook to see what sorts of things get shared. As The Wall Street Journal reported, "soon after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sank in April," -- was it really that long ago? And the presidential administration still hasn't done anything except pose for photo ops? -- "Parker Waichman Alonso turned to the Web in pursuit of law clients."
The New York-based plaintiffs' firm "set up Web sites with names like bigspills.com, oilspillclaims.com and oil-rig-explosions.com, and it filled them with news related to the disaster and invitations for visitors to provide their names and contact information."
Does such trolling work? Better than you might expect: "More than 1,000 people have now completed the forms on the sites, and Parker Waichman, which has 23 lawyers, has filed about a dozen suits related to the oil disaster."
Read more here.


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