Friday, November 6, 2009

Rocketfish Rapid Fire Wireless Controller for PS3 Review

Specifications
The Rocketfish Rapid Fire Wireless Controller for PS3 has dual rumble motors that bring ruble effects back to compatible game titles. The controller also uses an altered joystick configuration compared to the stock PS3 controllers. Wireless connectivity is via Bluetooth and the controller is SIXAXIS compatible and has a rapid-fire button. Charging is done via an included 9-foot USB cable.

In Use
The Rocketfish Rapid Fire Wireless Controller for PS3 is one of the better aftermarket controllers for the PS3.

....

Perhaps the best feature of the controller is its price. Best Buy sells the Rocketfish Rapid Fire Wireless Controller for PS3 for $47.99 making it cheaper than factory Sony controllers. The rumble effects aren’t that powerful, which is likely to be a battery saving measure. That said the rumble effects are welcome after playing with original PS3 controllers lacking that feature.

Lincoln man donates $1M to NET drive

Lincoln technology entrepreneur Steve Kiene primed a new phase of an NET fundraising drive Thursday with a $1 million donation.

Kiene is vice president of engineering for Internap Network Services Corp., an Atlanta company, but he and his crew operate in Lincoln at the Terminal Building.

Internap manages, delivers and helps makes online content pay for commercial customers. Kiene also teaches at the Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

His donation launched the public phase of the Inspire Nebraska fundraising campaign for the NET Foundations for Television and Radio.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Smartphone Landscape to Change Dramatically in Asia

from CNBC stock blog:

>>But how is the smartphone market in Asia right now?

Bertrand Bidaud, managing vice president at Gartner Group shared his view with CNBC Asia.

“The smartphone sector is very concentrated,” he says. "Right now Nokia, Sony and Blackberry own around 70% of the market. But because this market is growing so fast and is resisting quite well in terms of price pressure, it is attracting interest from all the other players like LG, and Samsung."

...

“So this landscape is going to change very dramatically in the next few quarters,” Bidaud says.

“We expect in five years the smartphone segment to grow three times, whereas the overall mobile segment to grow by 50 percent.” Bidaud concludes, “So it’s going to grow much much faster than the rest of the industry.”

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

LG Goes After Apple In Decision To Invest In Smartphones

LG Electronics CEO Yong Nam said going forward as the third-largest handset maker invests more heavily in smartphones it will no longer see *Nokia* and *Sony Ericsson* as its main competition, but rather Apple , Research In Motion and Palm . The CEO made the statements at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, reports Reuters.

Nam said "we are investing heavily" at the moment in smartphones. "We're not yet there but we'll get there."

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Stereotactic radiotherapy stops lung cancer from growing in frail patients

Stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) stopped the growth of cancer at its original site in the lung for three years among nearly 98 percent of patients with early non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who are unable to have the cancer surgically removed, according to an updated three-year study presented November 2, 2009, at the 51st Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). The study also shows that more than half (56 percent) of these patients lived for three years after diagnosis, while 48 percent survived for three years after cancer treatment with no sign of the disease returning. Researchers also found that despite the high potency of treatment, less than 20 percent of these extremely frail patients experienced a serious decline in their health status. This finding was better than researchers expected and is similar to the risks for healthier patients to undergo radical surgery.

Stereotactic body radiation therapy is a specialized type of external beam radiation therapy that pinpoints high doses of radiation directly on the cancer in a shorter amount of time than traditional treatments. Cancer centers often call the treatments by the brand names of the manufacturers, including Axesse, CyberKnife, Gamma Knife, Novalis, Primatom, Synergy, X- Knife, TomoTherapy and Trilogy. Treatment in the study was delivered in 1½ to 2 weeks, instead of a typical period of 6 to 8 weeks.

Equinix to speak and exhibit at Asia Pacific Financial Information Conference 2009 in Hong Kong

Equinix to speak and exhibit at Asia Pacific Financial Information Conference 2009 in Hong Kong

November 3-4 2009, booth 9, JW Marriott Hotel Hong Kong

Hong Kong. – November 2, 2009 – Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), a provider of global data center services, today announced that it will be speaking and exhibiting at the Asia Pacific Financial Information Conference (APFIC) 2009 in Hong Kong. Taking place between November 3- 4 2009 at the JW Marriott Hotel Hong Kong, the two-day conference provides the largest platform in Asia Pacific for senior market data and reference data professionals from leading financial institutions in the region to gather and discuss about key challenges facing the industry.

The rapidly evolving market landscape of Asia Pacific is driving financial participants’ growing demand for improved data availability and accessibility. Coupled with the industry trend of globalization and fragmentation, financial community participants with next generation trading requirements are increasingly looking to advance forward with a global and flexible trading infrastructure capable of supporting rich data feeds with low latency across the globe.

Equinix Financial eXchange provides proximity solutions to the world’s top ten financial centers. Offering ultra-low latency connections directly to exchanges, trading partners, market data sources and matching engines around the world, Equinix Financial eXchange is a leading high-performance, global financial services hub where the financial community can directly interconnect with access to the broadest choice of connectivity options inside any one of our 45 International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers around the globe.

David Wilkinson, Equinix’s Senior Director of Business Development for Asia Pacific will be speaking as a panelist on both days of the conference, namely the panel discussion on “Alternative Markets: Choice, Diversity, and Fragmentation” on November 3rd at 4:15pm and the panel discussion on “The Data Demand of Advanced Trading Strategies” on November 4th at 11:00am. Equinix Asia Pacific representatives will also be at booth 9 during the exhibition to discuss how Equinix Financial eXchange is empowering customers in the region to realize and exceed their trading strategies.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Ramius' Stake Increased to 14.6%

IMMERSION CORP
Reported by
RAMIUS ADVISORS LLC

1. Sole power to vote or direct vote: 0
2. Shared power to vote or direct vote: 4,090,000
3. Sole power to dispose or direct the disposition: 0
4. Shared power to dispose or direct the disposition: 4,090,000

percentage: approx 14.6%

World's first heart surgery using radiation

from the Telegraph:

Michael Kilby, 67, was told he may only live until Christmas after doctors found a tumour inside the right chamber of his heart larger than a golf ball. It was so big it was blocking the blood flow and he was dying.

After conventional surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, his last option was to try revolutionary surgery involving highly focused radiation as a 'scalpel' to cut away the tumour inside his beating heart.

Now just 10 days later he is planning a five month trip to Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand and America with his wife, Licette Gus.

The treatment is the first time the radiation scalpel, called the Cyberknife, has been used in heart surgery and doctors are confident that it could lead to new treatments for other heart conditions.

...

But then in a third blow, he began suffering severe breathlessness and a scan found a large tumour had formed inside his heart.

Surgeons at the private Harley Street Clinic in London first carried out emergency open heart surgery to try and take out as much as they could, but the tumour had burrowed into the muscle of the heart and it could not all be safely removed.

Conventional radiotherapy and chemotherapy failed and the tumour began to grow again within just six weeks.

When Mr Kilby, a retired businessman from Moreton in Marsh, Glouchestershire, was about to give up and accept his fate, it was suggested he try the Cyberknife.

The technique had never been used on the heart before and because the operation was experimental Mr Kilby's health insurance would not cover it.

...

Nick Plowman, clinical oncologist, said: "This was an absolutely unique case. The tumour was taking up so much of the ventricle that the heart was failing in front of us. There was nowhere else to go with his treatment.

"The tumour has shrunk significantly and I expect it to shrink further in the coming weeks. It is great."

Dr John Coltart, consultant cardiologist at the Harley Street Clinic, in London, said: "Three months ago his prognosis was terrible, now he may live for a good while yet. No one had ever done this before, it was a bit of innovative thinking to give this gentleman a chance.

"All our expectations have been realised."

Dr Coltart said tumours inside the heart are extremely rare and it seems that the Cyberknife may now be the preferable way to treat them because the radiation can be targeted to such a degree that there is minimal damage to the heart muscle.

He said such tumours inside the heart are extremely rare, with probably only 40 or 50 found each year in Britain, with few being operable.

Dr Coltart said as well as opening possibilities for other heart tumours to be treated, the Cyberknife could be used in future to treat arrythymia, where the heart beats erratically or fast.

Normally a fine wire is passed into the heart to destroy the tiny piece of heart muscle that is causing the abnormal electrical pulse, but the Cyberknife could also be used to do this in a less invasive procedure, Dr Coltart said.