Clouds Lab

SAN FRANCISCO – Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the company’s much-anticipated iPad tablet computer Wednesday, calling it a new third category of mobile device that is neither smart phone nor laptop, but something in between. The iPad will start at $499, a price tag far below the $1,000 that some analysts were expecting. But Apple must still persuade recession-weary consumers who already have other devices to open their wallets yet again. Apple plans to begin selling the iPad in two months. Jobs said the device would be useful for reading books, playing games or watching video, describing it as “so much more intimate than a laptop and so much more capable than a smart phone.” The half-inch-thick iPad is larger than the company’s popular iPhone but similar in design. It weighs 1.5 pounds and has a touch screen that is 9.7 inches diagonally. It comes with 16, 32 or 64 gigabytes of flash memory storage, and has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity built in. Jobs said the device has a battery that lasts 10 hours and can sit for a month on standby without needing a charge.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Clandestine efforts by some countries to create alternative versions of the Internet for political ends could put the Web at risk, the man responsible for organizing the network told AFP Wednesday. Rod Beckstrom, the CEO of ICANN — the firm which oversees how the Internet is organized — said unnamed nations had tried to create parallel networks, but he expressed confidence they would eventually stick with the global-used original. “It has been done,” said Beckstrom. “We don’t speculate about who is doing it, it is really their private business.” Beckstrom heads the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a California-based firm which controls a master list of domain names and IP addresses known as “the root,” which is crucial to all Internet use. The blogosphere has been awash with accusations that China and Russia are developing alternative Internet roots, which would mean requests would bypass the ICANN system.”People want to test their own capabilities to do these things and update their root zone files,” said Beckstrom. “Some are concerned maybe for security reasons and some want to have alternatives in case any regional problems might arise and others might have political objectives.”Stressing ICANN’s goal was “to keep everyone talking at the same table,” Beckstrom admitted problems would arise if countries duplicate top level domains — like .com, .cn or .net — with new Web addresses.

TOKYO (AFP) – Nintendo Co. said Thursday a Wii price cut and the popularity of new games had helped to reinvigorate sales of the hit video game console over the crucial year-end shopping season. Nintendo has been seeking to reverse a decline in sales of the Wii, which has easily outsold Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 since its launch in 2006 but has been struggling recently due to a lack of new games. Wii sales got a boost over the crucial year-end season from the launch of the latest title in the “Super Mario Bros.” series for the Wii, as well as “Wii Sports Resort,” Nintendo said. “These strong software titles, coupled with the price reduction on Wii hardware and other factors, combined to drive sales of Wii hardware strongly in the holiday season,” a company statement said. But due to weak sales earlier in 2009, Nintendo’s net profit fell 9.4 percent to 192.6 billion yen (2.1 billion dollars) in the nine months to December from a year earlier as revenue fell 23 percent to 1.18 trillion yen.Nintendo, which competes with Sony and Microsoft in the multi-billion dollar video game industry, sold 17.05 million Wii machines worldwide in the nine-month period, down from 20.52 million a year earlier.

TONINA, Mexico – Mexican archaeologists have found an 1,100-year-old tomb from the twilight of the Maya civilization that they hope may shed light on what happened to the once-glorious culture. Archaeologist Juan Yadeun said the tomb, and ceramics from another culture found in it, may reveal who occupied the Maya site of Tonina in southern Chiapas state after the culture’s Classic period began fading. Many experts have pointed to internal warfare between Mayan city states, or environmental degradation, as possible causes of the Maya’s downfall starting around A.D. 820. But Yadeun, who oversees the Tonina site for Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, said artifacts from the Toltec culture found in the tomb may point to another explanation. He said the tomb dates to between A.D. 840 and 900.