The market for graphics add-in boards (AIBs) proved anything but impervious to the downward pull of fourth quarter's economic collapse, according to a new report from market analysts at Jon Peddie Research. Markets in every corner of the economy – and every corner of the globe – contracted, and the AIB market was no exception. But that's really an understatement, as the AIB market took a substantially bigger beating than the closely related markets for PCs and workstations, as OEMs and the channel curtailed new orders and ran down inventories.

If there were many holiday buyers out shopping for a game card among the several new high-performance price-competitive offerings from market leaders Nvidia and AMD, well the results didn't show it. The grim numbers for the quarter read as follows: 15.2 million units shipped, representing a 42.7% decline (year-over-year), accounting for $2.5 billion in revenue, reflecting a similar 43.8% decline in revenue.

The Nintendo DS series has become the fastest-selling home game console ever, Nintendo claims. Unit sales reached 100 million as of March 6, 2009, just four years and three months since its release on November 21, 2004.

From the beginning, consumers around the world responded to the novel software options available on Nintendo DS. This is reflected by the fact that as of Dec. 31, 2008, there were 83 DS titles whose global shipment exceeded 1 million. Seven of these titles topped 10 million. Experiences like Nintendogs and the Brain Age series began a paradigm shift for the industry, as video games grew beyond the traditional audience of young men to include girls, adult men and women – and even seniors. Traditional games like New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart DS keep people coming back for more. Nintendo DS games demonstrate an “evergreen” quality: They frequently remain in the top-selling lists, months – or even years – after their launch. The system continues to expand into new territory with titles such as those in the Personal Trainer series.

Companies and celebrities ranging from Arsenal football club to actress Scarlett Johansson filed a record number of “cybersquatting” cases in 2008 to stop others from profiting from their famous names, brands and events, a United Nations agency said on Sunday. Web sites in dispute in 2008 included references to Madrid's 2016 Olympics bid, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), Yale University, Research in Motion's Blackberry as well as Arsenal and Johansson, and company names such as eBay, Google and Nestle.

The founder of the World Wide Web said on Friday the names system had become mired in politics and commercial games. “It would have been interesting to look at systems that didn't involve domains,” Tim Berners-Lee, who drafted a proposal 20 years ago that led to the Web, told an anniversary celebration. Gurry said his U.N. agency was working with ICANN, a not-for-profit corporation based in California, on “pre- and post-delegation procedures” to check the proposed new suffixes and help avoid future litigation.

Nvidia has recently decided to cancel plans to host Nvision 2009 in order to reduce costs, according to the company. NVISION 08 was a three-day mega-event for professionals and enthusiasts. Thousands of engineers, designers, developers, researchers, artists, enthusiasts, gamers, film makers, business professionals, and consumers from around the world attended, but so did protesters. I remember taking pictures of the signs in the bathrooms last year. The event seemed to be a success though, so it is a shame to see it swept under the rug this year. Long live the memories of the booth babes and keynote speakers.

Nvidia originally planned to hold Nvision in the third quarter, but the economic decline has reduced the number of attendees considering visiting the show, Nvidia said. The chipmaker added that it will still host several smaller forums in the fall.

Oh, brother. Hot on the heels of some mildly good news from Advanced Micro Devices comes yet another downer. Just to give you a bit of background before we dive in, AMD just recently closed a deal that spun off its manufacturing into a newly formed company that was eventually coined GlobalFoundries, Inc. Being the logical thinkers that they are, the suits at AMD simply assumed that any licensing agreements it had with Intel would be automatically passed over and made valid with its new spin-off. And that’s where

We’re writing to let you all know that we have just posted a new article at HotHardware in which we evaluate the features and performance of the Maxtor Central Axis Business Edition NAS Server. The Maxtor Central Axis Business Edition is more than just an updated version of the Maxtor Central Axis. The previous version featured 1TB of storage capacity, while the new version supports up to 2TB. The Maxtor Central Axis Business Edition includes two user-swappable, 1TB hard drives and the device supports RAID 0

What are the chances that you are reading this right now on a mobile device, such as mobile phone, nettbook, or MID? According to comScore, that likelihood is roughly twice as great as it was this same time last year. More than twice as many people used their mobile devices to access “news and information on the Internet” on a daily basis in January 2009 than did in January 2008. In January 2008, about 10.8-million people used their mobile devices on a daily basis to access online news and information. Only

With digital cameras and mobile phones using Flash memory there is still a need for an easy and quick way to transfer files from the device to your PC for storage and touch-up. SanDisk introduced the ImageMate Multi-Card USB 2.0 Reader/Writer last month and today we bring your our thoughts after spending some time with the device.

Way back in July of 2008, it was a feature request: an iPhone “remote” app to control Boxee. And now, after weeks of App Store review (no kidding; check the submission date on the app) the Boxee remote app is live in the App Store, for the excellent price of free. Boxee does categorize the remote as “very basic,” but they’re taking suggestions, so expect more releases (with hopefully, less time in the approval process) as time goes on. Here’s what they say in their press release on the new app: the boxee remote

We’ve always been more of  Robotech fans ourselves, but to many, the Gundam is the iconic anime giant mecha. As April 7th, 2009 is the 30th anniversary of the first anime series about Mobile Suits, Mobile Suit Gundam, an 18-meter (59-foot) Gundam statue will be built in Tokyo’s Odaiba’s Shiokaze Park this July. By the way, according to this site, it should actually be 18.5-meters tall to be life-size. The statue will be part of the “Mobile Suit Gundam 30th Anniversary Project.” It will stay up for only