Hard Lines iPhone Review

Hard Lines iPhone Review

Posted on 26th Jun 2011 at 10:44 by David Hing with 1 comments

Back when mobile phones were still thought of as a new idea, Nokia's 3210 was highly sought after in many circles for its built in version of the highly addictive game Snake. Fast forward a decade, and Hard Lines is attempting to be a worthy successor to that classic title.

The mechanics of Hard Lines are simple. With simple directional strokes of your finger, you steer a line around the screen towards randomly spawning markers, accruing points while avoiding other lines that enter from the sides of the screen.

Slick and neatly designed, Hard Lines is clearly influenced by the Light Cycles from Tron, yet it doesn't limit itself to that one style of play; there are several variations. In some modes, you gain points by getting opposing lines to crash into you or the walls; in others you race against the clock, or just try to last for as long as possible. There are also some good bonuses, such as the occasional power up that enables you to crash through any other competing lines without killing yourself.


The gameplay is occasionally made overly complicated, however, via the addition of dialogue that bikes may utter in the middle of a match. This appears as a single line of text and, while it's often funny, it's usually just a distraction that obscures your view.

Aside from this, though, the balancing is beautiful and the game manages to be both punishing and forgiving at once. Each line is only a single pixel wide, for example, but you only need to pass near an item on the screen to collect it, avoiding any frustrating situations where you might end up circling it forever. Not only this, but the very narrow nature of your line means the game can afford to throw a lot of competing lines at you at any one time. In particular, the Gauntlet mode continually spawns large numbers of other lines rapidly, resulting in an intense session that's highly satisfying when it goes your way.

Verdict: Hard Lines is a well designed, easily controlled, multifaceted version of Snake with enough new material and creativity behind it to stop it being called a straightforward clone.

Hard Lines is available from the AppStore for 59p / 99c.

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Behind N.Y. Gay Marriage, an Unlikely Mix of Forces

Over tuna and turkey sandwiches, the advisers explained that New York?s Democratic governor was determined to legalize same-sex marriage and would deliver every possible Senate vote from his own party.

Would the donors win over the deciding Senate Republicans? It sounded improbable: top Republican moneymen helping a Democratic rival with one of his biggest legislative goals.

But the donors in the room ? the billionaire Paul Singer, whose son is gay, joined by the hedge fund managers Cliff Asness and Daniel Loeb ? had the influence and the money to insulate nervous senators from conservative backlash if they supported the marriage measure. And they were inclined to see the issue as one of personal freedom, consistent with their more libertarian views.

Within days, the wealthy Republicans sent back word: They were on board. Each of them cut six-figure checks to the lobbying campaign that eventually totaled more than $1 million.

Steve Cohen, the No. 2 in Mr. Cuomo?s office and a participant in the meeting, began to see a path to victory, telling a colleague, ?This might actually happen.?

The story of how same-sex marriage became legal in New York is about shifting public sentiment and individual lawmakers moved by emotional appeals from gay couples who wish to be wed.

But, behind the scenes, it was really about a Republican Party reckoning with a profoundly changing power dynamic, where Wall Street donors and gay-rights advocates demonstrated more might and muscle than a Roman Catholic hierarchy and an ineffective opposition.

And it was about a Democratic governor, himself a Catholic, who used the force of his personality and relentlessly strategic mind to persuade conflicted lawmakers to take a historic leap.

?I can help you,? Mr. Cuomo assured them in dozens of telephone calls and meetings, at times pledging to deploy his record-high popularity across the state to protect them in their districts. ?I am more of an asset than the vote will be a liability.?

Over the last several weeks, dozens of lawmakers, strategists and advocates described the closed-door meetings and tactical decisions that led to approval of same-sex marriage in New York, about two years after it was rejected by the Legislature. This account is based on those interviews, most of which were granted on the condition of anonymity to describe conversations that were intended to be confidential.

?I Have to Do This?

Mr. Cuomo was diplomatic but candid with gay-rights advocates in early March when he summoned them to the Capitol?s Red Room, a ceremonial chamber with stained-glass windows and wood-paneled walls.

The advocates had contributed to the defeat of same-sex marriage in 2009, he told them, with their rampant infighting and disorganization. He had seen it firsthand, as attorney general, when organizers had given him wildly divergent advice about which senators to lobby and when, sometimes in bewildering back-to-back telephone calls. ?You can either focus on the goal, or we can spend a lot of time competing and destroying ourselves,? the governor said.

This time around, the lobbying had to be done the Cuomo way: with meticulous, top-down coordination. ?I will be personally involved,? he said.

The gay-rights advocates agreed, or at least acquiesced. Five groups pushing for same-sex marriage merged into a single coalition, hired a prominent consultant with ties to Mr. Cuomo?s office, Jennifer Cunningham, and gave themselves a new name: New Yorkers United for Marriage.

Those who veered from the script faced swift reprimand. When Assemblyman Daniel J. O?Donnell, an openly gay Democrat from Manhattan, introduced a same-sex marriage bill in May without first alerting the governor?s office, he was upbraided by Mr. Cohen. ?What do you think you?re doing?? the governor?s aide barked over the phone.

Danny Hakim contributed reporting.

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PCI-SIG proposes external PCIe cable standard

The PCI Special Interest Group has revealed plans to develop an external version of PCI Express to rival the likes of eSATA, USB 3.0, and Intel?s new Thunderbolt interconnect. The standard would be based on PCIe 3.0 technology, which will offer potential transfer speeds of up to 32Gbps, a significant boost from the PCIe 2.1 spec that's widely used today in PCs (internally) for connecting graphics cards, sound cards, and even solid-state drives.

Thunderbolt currently offers 10Gbps transfers, but Intel says it can scale up to 100Gbps in the future. With those speeds, USB 3.0 is already looking outdated, but then again it's the only standard gaining some traction.

Previously known as Light Peak, Thunderbolt was launched back in February using copper cabling instead of fiber optics as initially planned, and so far only Apple has adopted it for its latest MacBook Pro and iMac refreshes. Meanwhile, eSATA has seen a mild adoption in notebooks but its use is more limited compared both Thunderbolt and USB.

The initial proposal for external PCI Express 3.0 suggests using copper wires, with a maximum transfer distance of 3 meters, and the ability to support up to 20W of power delivery. That's double the 10W of power provided by Thunderbolt, and would be enough for external hard drives and other devices to run without the need for a separate power source -- though external graphics cards would certainly need one.

PCIe cables will be faster, cheaper, and thinner than Thunderbolt, but less functional, since the latter can be daisy-chained and carry DisplayPort data while external PCI Express cannot. The proposed standard is still in its early stages and won't be commercialized until at least mid-2013, so there's plenty of time for USB and Thunderbolt to battle it out.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/44408-pci-sig-proposes-external-pcie-cable-standard.html

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Cheaper High-Efficiency Solar Panels

Chinese solar-panel manufacturer Suntech Power has developed a new process for making silicon wafers for solar cells that could cut the cost of solar power by 10 to 20 percent.

The most efficient silicon solar cells use wafers consisting of a single crystal of silicon. When made by the new process, these high-quality "monocrystalline" wafers cost about the same as  lower-quality multicrystalline wafers, or potentially half as much as monocrystalline wafers made by conventional processes. (Wafer cost is only part of the cost of solar power, which is why a process that may cost half as much only reduces the overall cost by 10 to 20 percent.)

The idea underlying the process was patented more than 20 years ago but never commercially developed by the patent owners. The patents expired about three years ago, and several companies?JA Solar, LDK Solar, and Renesola, in addition to Suntech?recently announced that they had succeeded in making the process work.

Stuart Wenham, Suntech's CTO, described the advance at a solar conference this week in Seattle, and said the company has already started selling solar panels made using the process.

This news may spell trouble for businesses in the United States and elsewhere hoping to commercialize new thin-film solar technologies. In theory, thin-film technology is cheaper per watt than silicon technology. But its makers have found it hard to compete with Chinese makers of conventional silicon solar panels, which have steadily cut costs in part by improving manufacturing techniques and in part because government support has allowed them to scale up production quickly.

Making high-quality monocrystalline wafers ordinarily involves heating silicon to over 1,400 ° C (higher than its melting point), and then dipping a seed crystal into the melt. An ingot from which the wafers will be cut is formed by gradually pulling the seed up as the silicon crystallizes around it. This happens over the course of one to two days, during which time the pool of silicon must be kept hot?which takes a lot of energy. Both the energy consumption and the slow rate of production make the process expensive. Making multicrystalline ingots is faster and less energy-intensive?the silicon is melted and then cooled. There is no need to keep the silicon hot, saving energy, but cells made from these materials are much less efficient.

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Gaming 27 - The PlayStation Ryvita

50 days of Lulz: The life and times of LulzSec

It?s been a whirlwind few months for LulzSecurity (LulzSec), bursting onto the tech scene with the high-profile hacks of US TV network Fox, moving on to compound Japanese electronics giant Sony, taunting its detractors as they sought to expose row after row of SQL database entries in high-profile government and agency websites.

On Saturday, LulzSec announced on Twitter that after 50 days of ?anarchic lulz? it was to cease operations, dropping its largest collection of compromised data in torrent file posted to The Pirate Bay. The 457.84MB download contained information including AOL internal data, AT&T internal data and the ?FBI being silly? among its contents.

In 50 days, the group dominated headlines of nearly every print and online news agency across the world, distanced itself from the arrest of Ryan Cleary by the Metropolitan Police and antagonized whoever it could, simply ?for the lulz?. With each day, we got to know more about the group; what its motivations were, how it was able to steal so much data and the identities of its members were supposedly revealed on a number of occasions.

With the group now apparently disbanded, here?s a look back at 50 days of LulzSec?s exploits.

X-Factor, Fox and PBS

On May 7, LulzSecurity emerged on Twitter, registering the @LulzSec username. Posting its first tweet, the group detailed the compromise of Fox.com with the message:

?FOX.COM HACKED! # MySQL version: (5.1.47-log) running on 10.96.57.102 (www.fox.com) #Fox #hacked ?> #XFACTOR <??

Ironically, we reported news of the attack five days before LulzSec announced its haul, not knowing at the time who was behind the hack that was designed to expose details of applicants to The X Factor. The group didn?t have its own website at the time, so it took to the world?s most well-known torrent hosting website The Pirate Bay to release hundreds of thousands of names, email addresses, telephone numbers and street addresses of people wanting a shot at becoming the next big star.

In its first day, the group was happy to have amassed 50 followers, little did it know that it would be a drop in the ocean compared to now many followers it would accumulate in the days that followed.

Three days passed between The X Factor leak and its next big release, Fox.com?s ?innerworkings? and a database drop of Fox?s sales database. During this time, ?The Lulz Boat? was coined, ASCII art was drawn up, UK ATM details released and the group highlighted the password used by the Vice President of Fox.

On May 12, LulzSec announced it was contemplating creating its own website to host its releases and give it a proper presence on the web, predicting at the time that Twitter might not take kindly to the LulzSec Twitter account. As the next two days passed, the group released more Fox user credentials, teasing that it had data from an FBI affiliate and then announced that LulzSec had three people maintaining its Twitter account.

It was all quiet on the LulzSec front until it would become one of a long list of attackers that leaked Sony?s details, compromising databases hosted by Sony Japan and releasing them on Pastebin.

LulzSec finally got the press coverage it craved when it posted a seemingly innocuous link on its Twitter feed, linking to US TV network PBS. The tweet ?http://www.pbs.org/lulz/ Oh shit, what just happened @PBS?? linked to a newly created page on the PBS domain but its decision to create a fake news article stating that ?2Pac still alive in New Zealand? thrust the group into the spotlight, with every technology and online news outlet linking to the hack and LulzSec?s announcements.

The group had gained access to PBS?s internal hosts, its database list, staff database, authors database, pressroom users database, stations database and MySQL users database ? which, at the time was its biggest overall haul of company-wide data. It was believed that the group took action after the network aired a show which was seen to paint whistleblowing website WikiLeaks in a bad light.

To make things worse, LulzSec adopted the theme-song from the Love Boat, all the while soliciting for Bitcoin donations.

LulzSec Enemies, LulzSecurity.com and More Sony ?Ownage?

With more high-profile hacks, LulzSec found itself the target of other members of the Internet (in)-security scene, most notably @th3j35t3r, an attacker (or group of attackers) which was hellbent on exposing the identities of LulzSec members. Realizing that this was the case, LulzSec immediately began DDOS?ing the IRC servers used by th3j35t3r and also servers used by hacking magazine 2600.

On June 2, LulzSec released what it referred to as ?Sownage?, a complete dump of Sony Pictures? codes, coupons and user databases, stating that it had released details on ?1,000,000 users? personal information, including passwords, email addresses, home addresses, dates of birth, and all Sony opt-in data associated with their accounts?.

The following day, the group announced it had hacked Nintendo but did not release data stolen in the attack. However, a more notable release was issued the same day, an attack on InfraGard Atlanta?s user database, a company that was affiliated with the FBI.

The group issued a press release to accompany the hack, stating:

?It has come to our unfortunate attention that NATO and our good friend Barrack Osama-Llama 24th-century Obama have recently upped the stakes with regard to hacking.

They now treat hacking as an act of war. So, we just hacked an FBI-affiliated website (InfraGard, specifically the Atlanta chapter) and leaked its user base. We also took complete control over the site and defaced it, check it out if it?s still up: http://infragardatlanta.org/.?

Details emerged that the companies? owner Karim Hijazi asked LulzSec to help him ?eliminate [his] competitors?, which the group didn?t take kindly to. The group decided to release nearly 1,000 of Hijazi?s personal emails, as well as the IRC log where he spoke with the group.

At the beginning of June, LulzSec started releasing details of its exploits on LulzSecurity.com, presenting a united presence for its releases, making sure that copycats where unable to utilize Pastebin to piggyback of its name.

On June 6, the group crossed the 75,000 Twitter followers milestone:

Compromising The NHS, The Senate And Getting The Taiwan News Treatment

June 9 saw LulzSec admit it had managed to infiltrate the servers of the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK, but in a move away from its typical policy, the group decided to email NHS administrators and alert them to security holes in their online portal.

This gained LulzSec more press coverage, helping to boost the group?s Twitter following to above 100,000 followers.

This is a two page report, please click the button below to read the article in its entirety or to read the second page.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/media/2011/06/26/50-days-of-lulz-the-life-and-times-of-lulzsec/

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Behind N.Y. Gay Marriage, an Unlikely Mix of Forces

Over tuna and turkey sandwiches, the advisers explained that New York?s Democratic governor was determined to legalize same-sex marriage and would deliver every possible Senate vote from his own party.

Would the donors win over the deciding Senate Republicans? It sounded improbable: top Republican moneymen helping a Democratic rival with one of his biggest legislative goals.

But the donors in the room ? the billionaire Paul Singer, whose son is gay, joined by the hedge fund managers Cliff Asness and Daniel Loeb ? had the influence and the money to insulate nervous senators from conservative backlash if they supported the marriage measure. And they were inclined to see the issue as one of personal freedom, consistent with their more libertarian views.

Within days, the wealthy Republicans sent back word: They were on board. Each of them cut six-figure checks to the lobbying campaign that eventually totaled more than $1 million.

Steve Cohen, the No. 2 in Mr. Cuomo?s office and a participant in the meeting, began to see a path to victory, telling a colleague, ?This might actually happen.?

The story of how same-sex marriage became legal in New York is about shifting public sentiment and individual lawmakers moved by emotional appeals from gay couples who wish to be wed.

But, behind the scenes, it was really about a Republican Party reckoning with a profoundly changing power dynamic, where Wall Street donors and gay-rights advocates demonstrated more might and muscle than a Roman Catholic hierarchy and an ineffective opposition.

And it was about a Democratic governor, himself a Catholic, who used the force of his personality and relentlessly strategic mind to persuade conflicted lawmakers to take a historic leap.

?I can help you,? Mr. Cuomo assured them in dozens of telephone calls and meetings, at times pledging to deploy his record-high popularity across the state to protect them in their districts. ?I am more of an asset than the vote will be a liability.?

Over the last several weeks, dozens of lawmakers, strategists and advocates described the closed-door meetings and tactical decisions that led to approval of same-sex marriage in New York, about two years after it was rejected by the Legislature. This account is based on those interviews, most of which were granted on the condition of anonymity to describe conversations that were intended to be confidential.

?I Have to Do This?

Mr. Cuomo was diplomatic but candid with gay-rights advocates in early March when he summoned them to the Capitol?s Red Room, a ceremonial chamber with stained-glass windows and wood-paneled walls.

The advocates had contributed to the defeat of same-sex marriage in 2009, he told them, with their rampant infighting and disorganization. He had seen it firsthand, as attorney general, when organizers had given him wildly divergent advice about which senators to lobby and when, sometimes in bewildering back-to-back telephone calls. ?You can either focus on the goal, or we can spend a lot of time competing and destroying ourselves,? the governor said.

This time around, the lobbying had to be done the Cuomo way: with meticulous, top-down coordination. ?I will be personally involved,? he said.

The gay-rights advocates agreed, or at least acquiesced. Five groups pushing for same-sex marriage merged into a single coalition, hired a prominent consultant with ties to Mr. Cuomo?s office, Jennifer Cunningham, and gave themselves a new name: New Yorkers United for Marriage.

Those who veered from the script faced swift reprimand. When Assemblyman Daniel J. O?Donnell, an openly gay Democrat from Manhattan, introduced a same-sex marriage bill in May without first alerting the governor?s office, he was upbraided by Mr. Cohen. ?What do you think you?re doing?? the governor?s aide barked over the phone.

Danny Hakim contributed reporting.

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Nokia?s ex-employees are building Finland?s future

The Next Web was in Helsinki last week, and we delved deep into the startup scene that?s bubbling across the Finnish capital.

We started at Aalto Venture Garage, a seed accelerator and co-working space for hackers and startups, touching base with a number of the fledgling businesses.

It was there that we met GigsWiz, a social ticketing company that?s just announced a partnership with The Human League. And then there was ThingLink, an image-tagging service that had just launched a cool new rich media tagging feature.

Founded in 2003, it would be difficult to argue that Rovio Mobile is a startup. And when we visited the plush offices of the Angry Birds creators near central Helsinki, it certainly didn?t look like a startup either. But Angry Birds has taken the world by storm since it was launched in 2009, and today it?s notching up a cool million downloads each day. It?s the recent global success of this game that makes Rovio feel a lot like a startup, in terms of the buzz and excitement going on around the brand. We even got a sneak peek at the forthcoming Angry Birds Cook Book. Cool.

At the other end of the scale, there?s Nokia. The global communications giant is headquartered in Espoo, a neighboring city to Helsinki, though the cities are so close together they do feel like one and the same. And this is where our Nokia story begins.

Nokia in brief

Cityman

Nokia was founded in 1865, when telegraphy was about as cool as communications got. Back then, telegraphy was pretty cool though. Without dwelling too much on Nokia?s distant history, it actually started life as a paper manufacturer, before evolving through various industries over the decades and it wasn?t until the 1960s that the corporation really started to get involved in telecommunications. Fast-forward to 1987 and Nokia launched the first handheld mobile phone for Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) Networks ? it was bulky, but it was a classic.

Nokia has grown into the world?s largest mobile phone manufacturer, with over 132,000 employees in 120 countries and recording sales in more than 150 countries. In 2010, Nokia secured revenue of ?42bn, with an operating profit of ?2 billion. So you can probably understand the effect that Nokia has had on the Finnish economy. In fact, the company is very much part of the fabric of Finland, and Finns are immensely proud of the company?s global footprint.

Nokia: on the slide?

But Nokia has been hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons of late.

In the past fortnight alone, the company lost a 3G patent case to IPCom, and it announced it was closing many of its online stores across Europe. Throw into the mix the big news that the company is gradually shifting towards the land of Microsoft, and you could be forgiven for concluding that Nokia is a company in decline.

Indeed, it?s the latter of these examples that has had many people

ElopBalmer

speculating on the company?s future. Back in February, Nokia announced a ?broad strategic partnership? with Microsoft meaning that, in the first instance, it would be adopting the Windows operating system. Symbian isn?t dead yet, but it will be within five years.

And Nokia is also using its partnership with Microsoft to help revive its Navteq mapping system in the mobile advertising sphere. The plan, it seems, is to combine the mobile-location and commerce-services sides of the business with Navteq into a single unit. Nokia?s CEO Stephen Elop said:

?We will provide next generation social-location applications and commerce to differentiate Nokia.?

But why doesn?t Microsoft just go ahead and buy Nokia?s mobile phone business altogether and focus on research and development? Well, that?s exactly what has been rumored and these rumors keep arising, even though it has been stated categorically on a number of occasions that suggestions of a takeover are completely baseless.

Indeed, it?s clear that Microsoft won?t be buying Nokia, certainly not in the foreseeable future. It makes no sense ? why would they acquire Nokia so soon after announcing a ?strategic partnership??

But there?s no denying something isn?t right at Nokia Towers. Nokia is losing its mobile phone market share, though it is still the largest maker by volume of handsets, selling about 124m each quarter. And there has been staff cuts in Finland too, there was a big round of cuts back in 2008/2009, plus there?s been at least 500 this year alone at the last count, whilst it has also been losing key staff to competitors.

So what effect will all this have on the Finnish economy? I went out to see what life after Nokia would look like.

Life after Nokia

I spoke with Juhani Polkko, a marketing and media technology entrepreneur, who is currently VP of Marketing at a Nordic advertising technology company called Freespee. He?s also a former Nokia employee, so he was in a good position to share his thoughts on what?s happening at Nokia and the knock-on effect this could have on the Finnish economy.

Polkko was Country Manager, Nordic, at Nokia Interactive Advertising for the twelve months up to May 2009. I asked him what the consensus on the Nokia situation was:

?There are mixed feelings. I expect Nokia to turn it around and it will definitely stay in business, whether that will be independently I?m not sure, but things need to change. I?m very proud of the success Nokia had throughout the 90s, and it was a major driver of the Finnish economy.?

As for Polkko?s role at Nokia, the business unit that he was part off hit what he called a ?speed bump?, and the downturn in the economy meant that Nokia pulled the plug on the unit. Polkko was offered new roles elsewhere in the company, but he chose to move on. He says:

?When I left the company, about 1,500 others left during that spring, across five locations in Finland. That?s when the decline started, when the whole European economy hit the speed bump.?

When Polkko left Nokia, he spent six months doing some consultancy work before starting at Freespee. And he still has his own consulting company too, which advises startups such as PremiumFanPage, XIHA Life, Whitevector, 46elks and Offerium, the latter of which was recently acquired by media company Sanoma.

I asked Polkko if people are concerned about Nokia?s recent ?decline??

?I think the company?s been in decline for two years, so these latest developments really are nothing new. Sure, people have been concerned, but a lot of other people with a wider picture of the economy are being forced into being entrepreneurs and working for smaller companies.?

So could it be that Nokia?s ?restructuring?, for want of a better word, could be a good thing for the Finnish economy?

?It?s too early to say, but there are signs that the economy could benefit?, says Polkko.

Nokia: a brain-drain?

Certainly, I heard from a few people I met on my trip to Helsinki say that Nokia has traditionally taken a lot of the talent out of the market ? it?s a brain-drain. I?m not necessarily saying that?s a bad thing ? Nokia has had a monumentally positive effect on the country and its economy. But when one company becomes the focal point for all the talent, it?s easy to see how it can lead to stagnation elsewhere.

So using that position as a starting point, it goes without saying that Nokia?s downsizing should in fact be a good thing for the country overall.

Peter Vesterbacka of Angy Birds fame was recently quoted as saying that the freeing-up of Nokia?s talent was one of the best situations ever. ?We?re finally getting out of that cycle, where everything revolves around Nokia,? he said.

I looked at some of the other fledgling companies in Finland and it seems that ex-Nokians are everywhere.

HeiaHeia

HeiaHeia is a social web service providing a fun way to keep fit. HeiaHeia lets you keep track of all kinds of activities, with over 350 different sports already supported.

HeiaHeia

Olli Oksanen is co-founder and ?Product Guy? at HeiaHeia, having launched the company in 2009 following a ten-year stint at Nokia. Ivan Kuznetsov is another co-founder and is Lead Developer at the startup, having worked at Nokia in various roles for over six years.

I asked Oksanen why he left Nokia. It seems that ten years in one company is a long time, and he felt the need to move on and try his hand at being an entrepreneur. Plus, Nokia had been reorganizing quite a bit since 2007, and he felt that he was wasting his time moving from one reorganization to another.

But during the financial downturn, it seems that Nokia?s voluntary resignation scheme proved a pivotal point in Oksanen?s ? and many employees? ? future aspirations. Oksanen said:

?Anybody could resign and get a decent-sized ?golden handshake?. This was an ideal situation for people wanting to start their own businesses and a very humane approach from a big company towards its employees.?

So it seems that Nokia?s plight to cut costs could work out very well for the Finnish economy. But how will Nokia?s restructuring impact on Finland in the long run? Oksanen says:

?This one is a double-edged sword: Nokia has been ?too big for Finland? in many ways for a long time. The Finnish economy would be stronger and more resistant to risks with several mid-sized companies in different industries vs. one giant in one industry. So the question is, what can we do with the resources freeing up from Nokia??

Oksanen tells me that there?s an ?unprecedented entrepreneurial drive? going on in Finland at the moment, and it seems the country could be on the verge of becoming a major startup hub, with entrepreneurs emerging from all backgrounds. And there seems to be a shift in the traditional ?fear of failing? culture that has sometimes blighted startups in the past.

?We have a first generation of successful serial entrepreneurs in the IT industry, we have lots of startups in different phases, from ex-Nokians and others alike and an amazing startup culture being bred by students from the Aalto university. One cultural barrier which seems to be breaking in Finland right now is the fear of failure: at least the entrepreneurs I know have an (in this case healthy) ?Auditioning to Idols? attitude towards failing ? if you fail, you?ll try something else, and do not care too much about what anyone else might think.?

So the fear factor is going, and this could be key to the Finnish startup scene?s continued growth. Failure is a necessary part of success and many entrepreneurs encounter at least a few failures before they hit upon a winning formula.

Wantlet

Wantlet has a tagline that says: ?Know what your friends want and discover deals for products you want.? It?s a service for you to connect to other people by wanting things, and you can share lists of your wants with friends or family.

Wantlet

Kristian Luoma is VP, Product Management, at Wantlet, and he worked at Nokia for five years in various roles. CTO, Petri Liimatta, also worked at Nokia for five years, part of which was as a sub-contractor.

Both Luoma and Liimatta left Nokia ?round about the same time, and I asked them why:

?A great opportunity called, first and foremost. We discovered a great idea that just needed to be done, so we jumped on board this startup  and just went for it. Also, we were both obviously excited to be working on something slightly smaller than we were used to at Nokia. In Nokia?s scale, whatever needed to be done had to be the biggest in the world and cater for billions. One of the luxuries startups have is being able to start narrow and widen the value proposition over time. Agility was important too ? literally we can decide in the morning how to make the product better for our users ? where as in a bigger machinery, changes take more time.?

In terms of where Nokia is heading and the company?s downsizing, Luoma was very positive about the impact this could have on the Finnish economy:

?For the region, as a lot of talent is released from Nokia, these changes will likely be the best thing that have happened in years. Now there?s a lot of buzz in the grass-roots and new ventures are starting.?

Luoma also noted that because everything has been so Nokia-centric in Finland, this has had a tendency to stifle other innovations:

?You could argue that is one of the reasons why Sweden, for example, has been so many years ahead of Finland in Internet-business development. For companies starting, it was simpler to start subcontracting business over product businesses. Now, we?ll have to think again ? which is only healthy. Early signs indicate that a lot of Finnish startups will be creating life-changing companies.?

There is an overwhelming sense of positivity surrounding the startup scene in Finland, and there is a real entrepreneurial spirit emanating across the country.

Besides HeiaHeia and Wantlet, there are countless other startups being driven forward by ex-Nokians, as we?ll see here.

Uplause

Uplause was founded in 2009 and it proclaims to be ?The world leader in developing social games for big crowds.?

Veli-pekka Marin and Heikki Aura are two of the three company co-founders, and each held a number of positions at Nokia over a ten year period. Both were in senior roles before leaving in 2009 to launch Uplause. And Chief Operating Officer, Markus Heikkila, also worked at Nokia for around ten years too.

I asked Marin why he left Nokia, and he said:

?I felt I needed new challenges and wanted to start something on my own. The last couple of years I had been creating a few business concepts with my friends so those were kind of ready to be taken forward when I left Nokia. Nokia was a great experience for me, almost like an ?international business school?. I had about 7 different jobs, many of them global, so I really got to understand international business, mobile and high tech and where it is going. This gave me a lot of self confidence to start up my own business and aim for global markets. ?

Marin also believes that Nokia?s restructuring is likely to have a positive impact on Finland overall:

?There is a huge amount of talented people who can now pursue their ?crazy? ideas, something that was not possible at Nokia.?

And there?s more?

Fambit is a social time-management tool ? a shared calendar for everybody ? that uses the tagline ?organize your life?. Fambit was founded in Helsinki in the spring of 2009 by two senior experts in Internet and mobile communications. Pertti Kasanen worked in several senior roles at Nokia over a four year period to 2009, and Markku Ranta worked there for around 15 years in various roles.

Mobile Brain Bank is a Finnish non-profit organization running a network which joins the skills of experienced individuals who have left a safe corporate career behind. It was founded in 2009 to help encourage people leaving Nokia to launch their own mobile startups. It has around 1,500 people in its network today, and it will be launching an online service later this year where application developer entrepreneurs and startups can offer their skills to SMEs and corporate customers.

Petra Söderling, Chair of the Board of Directors at Mobile Brain Bank, tells me that there are ?tens if not hundreds? of ex-Nokians who have gone on to form their own companies. In particular, from the round of job cuts that took place at Nokia in 2008/2009.

And Hanna Manninen, founder of Finnish PR firm in2PR, directed me towards a plethora of startups with former Nokia employees at the helm, such as Marko Anderson/Futureful, Jos Schuurmans/Cluetail, Kari Laurila/Newelo & Bjong, Heikki Ailinpieti/Saagatec, JP Salmenkaita/Osumus Recommendations, Harri Honko/GreyCrunch, Yasin Hamed/Sfonge, Oliver Bremer/Founder2be and Risto Suoranta/Notava, to name but a few.

Nokia and the future of Finland

Nokia isn?t going the way of the dodo any day soon. Nokia is still a massive company and it?s likely that it could actually regain a lot of the ground it has lost to rivals, but it will need to change. Veli-Pekka Marin from Uplause said:

?Dramatic changes are hard to execute when you have a strong market position. It often happens that companies only change through crisis. This is what Nokia faces now and I think there is an excellent opportunity to make the right change, as it is being forced to do so.?

But if Nokia ever did sell a big part of its business, there would need to be a whole lot of ?Rovio?-type companies on standby to fill the void. The drive to renew the economy needs to start now, and from the look of things, there seems to be plenty going on in Finland to ensure it continues to prosper far into the future.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/eu/2011/06/26/nokias-ex-employees-are-building-finlands-future/

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What?s inside LulzSec?s final data dump

As we reported earlier, LulzSec says that it has bowed out of the limelight for good after fifty days of headline-grabbing hacking of corporate and governmental targets. Along with its final statement, it released a data dump including a wide range of information. We?ve downloaded it, so what?s inside?

We?re not going into details here, simply providing an overview of what LulzSec has released.

AOL: While you may have been secretly hoping for some juicy memos akin to The AOL Way, what we actually have is a text file that begins: ?The purpose of this document is to provide the AOL Network Engineering Staff, Management and any other pertinent persons a detailed review, analysis and recommended ?best practices? document for the implementation of layer 4 through 7 switching configurations.? ? it?s an incredibly technical document.

AT&T: A large .rar archive includes a huge number of internal documents related to AT&T?s LTE rollout. It includes meeting memos, emails, media reports, PDFs, Powerpoint presentations and more.

Battlefield Heroes: This text file appears to be a list of account details for over 550,000 users of social game Battlefield Heroes.

FBI Being Silly: This text file includes the output of a URL on the FBI website. We?ll admit to not knowing the technical significance of why this is ?silly? as yet.

Hackforums.net: This appears to be 200,000 user details for Hackforums.net in a .csv file.

Nato-bookshop.org: Similarly, this appears to be 220,000 user logins for a NATO online bookshop (the URL currently redirects to the main NATO site).

Evidence that LulzSec hacked the US Navy website: An image is included showing the phrase ?Pablo Escobar AntiSec? inserted multiple times on a list of Navy salary grades.

Office networks of corporations: A text file seemingly listing IP numbers of  internal Corporate networks, including Disney, EMI and Universal.

Email login details supposedly for a number of private investigators: Self-explanatory.

User login details for ?Random gaming forums?: It?s unclear which forums.

?Silly routers?: A list of IP numbers for routers with passwords set to either ?root? or ?admin?.

So there we go ? that?s our first parse through. No doubt any significant information within the dump will be explored in more depth as it is uncovered.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/industry/2011/06/26/whats-inside-lulzsecs-final-data-dump/

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The Old Republic: All I Want is the Cutscenes

The Old Republic: All I Want is the Cutscenes

Posted on 13th Jun 2011 at 07:29 by Clive Webster with 24 comments

The latest trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic has been released and it?s freaking awesome. This follows previous cut-scene and video releases that have been similarly impressive, engaging and enjoyable. However, with the game looking a bit duff, I?m wondering if Electronic Arts, Bioware and LucasArts could be persuaded into releasing a cut-scene-only version? I?d happily pay to watch a short film made from them.



If you?re not sure what I?m on about, have a look at the Star Wars: The Old Republic intro cinematic (watch it in fullscreen mode) above, then the other trailers (not the gameplay videos) and come back.

See what I mean? They?re much more reminiscent of the original trilogy than the rubbish prequel films. There?s a focus on people that you readily recognise and empathise with overcoming obstacles; the classic setup for injecting drama and interest into a scene or story. Furthermore, there?s absolutely no mention of trade disputes, midi-sodding-chlorians or annoying lizard-rabbits.

In fact, some of the intros' cinematic characters are really close to those of Episodes IV to VI. There?s a dependable droid that happily receives rushed instructions, and it?s on a ship with dingy, circular corridors and laser-cannon pods. Then there?s the pilot of this ship ? he?s instantly introduced as a likeable yet roguish smuggler, and his attire hardly suggests otherwise. He even seems to steal Han?s dialogue: his is the fastest ship in the fleet, even though it might not look like much. All we need is a co-pilot with a shaving phobia and we?re done.

But who cares if Bioware is borrowing heavily from the source material to produce something this fun? Arguably, the mistake that George Lucas made with his prequels was refusing to follow his own conventions. We wanted a bit more of the same please, not some confused reinterpretation of the Universe we?d spent the last however many years discussing in detail.

So when the ?trader? ship blasts through the Imperial turbo laser, rushes through its guts, and then hits its hyperdrive, we?re cheering on the crew. When the Jedi master Force-pulls the second lightsaber to him, we?re given a moment to consider the great duel that?s about to ensue.

Even the cutting and pacing between the personal fight between Jedi and Sith and the action on the not-Millenium Falcon is so reminiscent of The Empire Strikes Back that it can?t fail to make Star Wars fans happy. The trailer even conveys emotion brilliantly ? Malcus exudes rage as he stalks towards the Jedi master and bats away his defence, while you can read the thoughts of his Padawan perfectly well after his death.

So please, can we just have the cinematics to watch, and leave the MMO to WoW deserters? Please?

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