Microsoft sends flowers to IE6 funeral

‘Thanks for the good times…’

By Cade Metz in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Applications, 5th March 2010 19:13 GMT

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Microsoft sent flowers to last night’s IE6 funeral, thanking the browser for “all the good times.”

The nine-year-old IE6 was laid to rest yesterday in Denver, Colorado, after suffering a “workplace injury” at the offices of a certain search giant in Mountain View, California. Mourners unable to attend were asked to send flowers, and Redmond’s Internet Explorer team was among those who did so.

“Thanks for the good times IE6, see you all @ MIX when we show a little piece of IE Heaven,” read the card, a reference to this month’s MIX tradeshow in Las Vegas, where the company is expected to announce the arrival of a new browser, Internet Explorer 9.

“We want to give thanks to Internet Explorer 6 for its service for nearly a decade,” one of Microsoft’s IE6 mourners tells The Reg. “Internet Explorer 6 was built for a different world, a different time. While some customers may grieve the loss of Internet Explorer 6, we will continue to support it in its afterlife as we promised to do.”

As funeral organizers put it, Internet Explorer 6 is survived “by son Internet Explorer Seven, and grand-daughter Internet Explorer Eight,” with IE9 on the way.

“We understand the loss our customers feel when moving away from such a familiar aspect of their lives. With time’s passing, comes new life, and we encourage people to turn to Internet Explorer 8. Internet Explorer 8 is the modern browser for today’s online world – with rich built-in security and surfing tools that make it easy, fast and safe for customers everywhere.”

It should be noted that Internet Explorer 6 continues to drive nearly 20 per cent of all web access from beyond the grave. ®

just gotta love it, but when is this really gonna happen.

In a series of swiftly developing events, it appears that the Chief Technical Officer of Infinity Ward, the studio behind the record-breaking blockbuster game Modern Warfare 2, has been fired by parent company Activision. Though the lucrative series will no doubt continue at Activision’s behest, Infinity Ward’s contributions have always been of a higher quality and so the series’ reputation is now at stake.

According to a report published by Activision on March 1, 2010, the company was “concluding an internal human resources inquiry into breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward,” which would “involve the departure of key personnel and litigation.”

The absence of those key personnel will be a concern to those who have been following the Call of Duty games, and in particular Infinity Ward’s contributions which have provided the backbone for the seies.

Since coming up with 2003’s Call of Duty, Infinity Ward developed three further associated titles: Call of Duty 2 (2005), Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007), and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009). The rest, including 2010’s expected iteration, were handled by other developers.

Review aggregation sites such as Metacritic or Game Rankings show that Infinity Ward’s games routinely scored higher than their franchise counterparts. Though other games in the series sold well, they were unable to emulate the stratospheric success so far enjoyed by Infinity Ward.

Modern Warfare 2 was the best-selling game in both North America and Europe for 2009, despite its November release, and the fastest grossing video game of all time after making $310 million in one day, $550 million in five days, and $1 billion by January 2010.

Jason West, the company’s now ex-CTO, was said to have met with Activision on Monday morning accompanied by fellow studio head and Chief Creative Officer Vincent Zampella. However, neither returned to the company’s offices in Encino, California.

Instead, Jason updated personal profiles on social and business networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn respectively, both confirming that he was no longer holding a position at Infinity Ward. Zampella later did the same with his own LinkedIn profile.

Meanwhile, employees reported that several minders from a security firm had turned up at the offices, but were refusing to explain their presence outside the building.

It is thought that over the last few months, a good number of studio employees had become agitated by the prospect of solely developing for the Call of Duty series.

Though it’s not known what lies ahead for West or his colleague, he is no stranger to forming breakaway companies. Infinity Ward itself was set up after his previous company were taken over by Electronic Arts, another publisher known for its emphasis on franchise development.

wow now that a blow, internal human resources inquiry into breaches of contract and insubordination, mmmmmm i wonder what happened there then.

No-tags Google Analytics Integration: Pion Lite from Atomic Labs

Tuesday, March 02, 2010 | 10:35 AM

We occasionally see a particularly inspiring integration with Google Analytics. Our latest source of inspiration comes from a product called Pion Lite by Atomic Labs. Pion Lite collects your traffic data and populates your Google Analytics reports — without using Google Analytics page tags. Atomic Labs offers Pion Lite free to Google Analytics users.

Pion Lite passively “listens” to all of the network traffic between web servers and visitors. This approach reduces the overhead traditionally required to capture visitor data with page tags, and also provides complete data about site visitors including those using mobile devices and RSS readers.

Pion collects analytics information within a website’s data center and removes all personally identifiable information (such as visitor cookies and IP addresses) before sending the data to Google Analytics. This new, privacy-friendly approach to web analytics data capture gives marketers the information they need without the risk of privacy violations.

Pion 3.0 includes a new setup wizard that makes it easy for new users to get up and running with Google Analytics by just answering a few questions. Pion talks directly with Google Analytics to populate your reports, offers customizable data capture, real-time data processing and integration, and supports advanced Google Analytics features such as custom variables and events, ecommerce and campaign tracking.

If you’re attending SMX on Wednesday, you’ll have a chance to learn about Pion Lite in person. Atomic Labs CEO Mike Dickey and Phil Mui, Google Analytics Senior Product Manager, will be giving back-to-back presentations at the SMX Expo starting at 1:20pm on Wednesday, March 3rd.

200 Russian tanks found abandoned in forest

The Russian army is embroiled in an embarrassing scandal after 200 of its tanks were found abandoned near a forest in central Russia, unguarded and unlocked.

By Andrew Osborn in Moscow
Published: 2:18PM GMT 28 Feb 2010

The tanks have been sitting in the forest for almost four months covered in snow Photo: LIFE NEWS

A news website near the city of Yekaterinburg posted a video of the forgotten tanks showing passers-by clambering inside the vehicles and playing with empty ammunition belts. The only items that seemed to be missing were live rounds and the keys to the tanks’ ignitions.

“There are tanks all over the forest, abandoned,” an unnamed reporter on the video says. “If you need one, come and get it.”

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Locals in a nearby village said the tanks had been sitting there for almost four months covered in snow. The armoured vehicles were identified as a mixture of T-80 and T-72 battle tanks, the workhorses of the Russian army.

“We were shocked,” Pavel L, a local, told Russian media. “It is like you can sit behind the wheel, start up the engine and drive off and nobody would notice!”

A military spokesman claimed the tanks were in fact being guarded by special patrols and were in the process of being dispatched to a military base. But military prosecutors appeared sceptical about his claims and opened an official investigation. Wary of further bad publicity, the army has urgently begun relocating the tanks.

The scandal comes days after one of Russia’s top military commanders suggested the country did not need half of its 20,000 tanks and might scrap many older models. Tanks played an important role in the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, with Russia capturing dozens of Georgian tanks in the short conflict.

brilliant, it would have been funny if someone had hot wired one of these bad boys and taken it for a spin really.

Google welcomes Picnik

3/01/2010 12:42:00 PM

(Cross-posted from the Google Photos Blog)

More than ever before, people are sharing and storing their photos online. But until recently, you had to edit your photos using client software on your computer. Today, we’re excited to announce that Google has acquired Picnik, one of the first sites to bring photo editing to the cloud. Using Picnik, you can crop, do touch-ups and add cool effects to your photos, all without leaving your web browser.

We’re not announcing any significant changes to Picnik today, though we’ll be working hard on integration and new features. As well, we’d like to continue supporting all existing Picnik partners so that users will continue to be able to add their photos from other photo sharing sites, make edits in the cloud and then save and share to all relevant networks.

We’re very impressed with the Picnik team and the product they’ve created, and we’re excited to welcome them to Google. We’re looking forward to collaborating closely with them to improve the online photo editing experience on the web. In the meantime, we encourage you to head to Picnik, import some of your photos from Picasa Web Albums, Flickr or Facebook and try your hand at photo editing in the cloud!

Posted by Brian Axe, Product Management Director

seems like an interesting product to me ive never used it myself but as i have photos already in my Picasa web albums i might just sign up and take a look at what its all about.