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In a recent interview, Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) SVP of publisher relations admitted that the company’s slim and digital-download-only PSPgo device did “confuse” consumers and “the higher price point didn’t help matters”.

Speaking to online trade publication Industry Gamers, SCEA’s Rob Dyer tried to reiterate the reasoning behind the new game device. “We wanted to find a way to give the consumers what they want, so if they didn’t want to go to a retailer they could stay at home and download [content]. And we were hoping really to eliminate the piracy issue,” he said.

However, he also noted, “Did the PSPgo confuse [consumers]? Yeah, I think the higher price point didn’t help matters any either.” Dyer went on to say that Sony will do work to help better educate consumers about the handheld.

The device, which is smaller than previous PSP models, has no UMD slot, and is priced at a barrier-worthy $250, drew a lot of criticism from gaming consumers. Many simply did not understand what the value of the new device was.

However, Sony remains committed to the PSPgo. With its built-in 16GB of storage, Bluetooth compatibility, and the ability to create save states in any game, there are differentiating features that make it worth a second look.
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The supplies of MacBook Pro laptops are more limited than usual and, according to an analyst, this could mean that Apple is going to update the MacBook Pro line of computers. An updated MacBook Pro would probably include a new processor from Intel that would boost battery life and overall performance. The new MacBook Pro could ship by June, if not sooner.

The analyst says that Macs in general do not need to be refreshed because they are doing so well, but a refresh of the MacBook Pro would keep Apple products new and exciting.

Apple last updated the MacBook Pro in June 2009. Currently, the cheapest MacBook Pro has a lot in common with the MacBook, which was updated in October 2009. To preserve the MacBook Pro’s higher pricing, Apple needs to differentiate between the two models by giving more advanced features to the MacBook Pro.

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No it has got nothing to do with Big Brother, Orwell’s that is, but Fujitsu is bringing the role of Officer of Continuous Improvement to an Enterprise near you.

Forget the clipboard and half rimmed glasses this is an idea that screams of logic. But is it that different to what is already offered by outsourcing service providers.

Fujitsu seems to have won a fair set of deals in recent months. Could this be partly down to the integration of Fujitsu’s businesses worldwide.

I recently met Fujitsu and they were telling me that its global presence combined with its local flexibility and skills has put it in a strong position. You know, large and stable and small and flexible in on. Or as the company itself outs it “global presence local touch.”

It has recently won deals with the Department of Work (DWP) and Pensions, the Home Office, the London Council and the Highland council. The DWP as we know was a big one.

But is it just a case of low cost labour offshore and strong presences in Europe?

It actually talks a lot about its approach to outsourcing as being its strength as well as some of the mentality it inherits from its homeland of Japan.

It said that every contract outsourcing signed will inlude a Fujitsu worker with the title Officer of Continuous Improvement. Apparently this idea has its origins in Japan and involves individuals taking responsibility for specific things to drive improvements. Fujitsu said this is not a service manager or a products manager but someone that will continuously come up with ideas to improve performance.

The example Fujitsu gave me about how this can work was interesting:

Fujitsu said one company was getting lots of calls to the IT help desk. This was costing a lot of money so the Officer of Continuous Improvement looked closer. It turned out that the rollerballs on traditional mice were getting dirty for reasons related to the customers line of business. So workers were having trouble using computers.

So Fujitsu bought every staff member an optical mouse out of its own pocket. The rationale was the cost of the help-desk went down, because there were less calls, and the customer was happy because many of the problems ended.

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According to a recent job posting on Apple’s website, the company is looking to expand its iPhone OS to work on other devices. Those platforms will also be powered by a similar processor to the A4, Apple’s own processor that is going to be used in the iPad.

Apple is looking for a full-time engineering manager to oversee “platform bring-up,” with the Core Platform team, part of Apple’s Core OS group. Such a manager would be responsible for low-level architecture, hardware drivers, firmware, and platform security for iPhone OS on “a range of hardware platforms, including iPhone & iPod.” The manager will also coordinate the software team with hardware and custom silicon teams in developing and prototyping new platforms.

Candidates for the position are expected to have experience with kernel, driver, and firmware development for Unix-based systems as well as an understanding of system-on-a-chip design. Experience with ARM-based SoC’s is preferred, of course—that’s the platform currently used in the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, as well as Apple’s Time Capsule base station (among others).

TiPB suggests that Apple should massage iPhone OS to power a future revision of the Apple TV—though it already runs an OS X derivative, so perhaps they are merely suggesting making the UI more iPhone-like and capable of multitouch input. (We still prefer using the Remote iPhone app, however). It would be nice, though, if Apple offered Apple TV apps that let users access other online content like Netflix or Hulu. Computerworld also speculates that Apple may move its custom chips and iPhone OS upward to products like a future MacBook Air, Mac mini, or even a lower-power, ARM-based server.

Regardless of what specific products result from the effort, it only makes sense for Apple to leverage the architecture as widely as possible given the investment the company has made in developing Mac OS X and iPhone OS. When Steve Jobs revealed that Apple was moving to x86 processors after years of using PowerPC, he said that OS X was always intended to be “platform independent.”
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As the rivalry escalates between Apple and Adobe, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a meeting with Wall Street Journal employees that running Flash on the iPad would reduce the battery life from 10 hours to 1.5 hours.

According to AppleInsider, in the meeting Jobs claimed Flash is a “CPU hog” and called it “old technology”. The meeting was held in order to show WSJ editors the device and convince them to bring a digital version of the newspaper to the iPad. Jobs allegedy said, “we don’t spend a lot of energy on old technology” and compared the application to other technologies that Apple stopped using, including floppy disc drives and the CD, which Apple replaced with iPod and iTunes.

But a number of bloggers argue that Flash wouldn’t decrease the iPad’s battery capacity by 85%. One writer at TechCrunch called Jobs’ remarks “plainly inflammatory” and said that if Apple wanted to fix the bugs and security issues in Flash that Jobs has commented on in the past, they would find a way.

But Jobs maintains that HTML5 is the way of the future, and it doesn’t seem likely that Apple will embrace Flash on the iPad or iPhone at any point in the near future. A number of major publishers seem to be going along with Apple, and the New York Times and Wired magazine have both shown off interactive iPad apps that don’t use Flash.

One story on AppleInsider claims that the iPad doesn’t need Flash to be successful. But other people, including those at Gizmodo, think that although Jobs has referred to the axing of Flash as “trivial”, it isn’t and HTML5 isn’t widely used or advanced enough to entitle it to take over from Flash, especially because  HTML5 doesn’t work well on outmoded browsers, primarily Internet Explorer.

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Big Blue has dished out the beta version of a Firefox add-on developed by the company, designed to record the web activity of a user so that they can be automatically viewed or printed out by other people as tutorials.

The software, which was developed by IBM’s Almaden Research Center, is called the CoScripter Reusable History add-on and is aimed at reducing the browser time spent on repetitive procedures such as logging into a company’s intranet site or filling out familiar forms.

According to a official statement released by the company, the CoScripter Firefox add-on is designed in such a way that it will people to publish the logs of a users online activity that would help people with certain procedures, such as making travel reservations, registering for a seminar or a tutorial showing how to collect and analyse data.
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