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(Credit:
Sony Computer Entertainment of America)

With all that in mind, the good folks over at IGN ran a recent story looking at the “state” of the PS2. And the general conclusion? The PS2 is doing just fine, thank you–even after all these years.

There may be some truth to that interpretation, but at the same time, Sony does indeed have a point, as evidenced by the continued strong performance of its PlayStation 2, a console it has sold more than 140 million units of since launching it in 2000.

The PlayStation 2 has been on the market for nearly nine years, proving there may well be truth to Sony’s claim of a 10-year console life cycle.

“For the time being, the PS2 doesn’t seem to be left in the lurch and seems destined to actually live up to the much-vaunted ‘10-year life cycle’ that Sony keeps talking about,” IGN’s Sam Bishop wrote. “Some developers like Atlus and Sega, are still supporting the system with new, exclusive games like Persona 4 and Yakuza 2, respectively. With no shortage of Guitar Heroes or Maddens, the system’s library isn’t nearly as bleak as one would assume for a console entering the full decade stretch.”

Even now, the PS2 is still selling fairly well, moving 188,000 units in June, just 14.1 percent less than the 219,800
Xbox 360s Microsoft sold in the same period, according to industry analyst the NPD Group.

When Sony argues, as it frequently does these days, that its video game consoles have a 10-year life cycle, critics often assume the company is just trying to make the point that its
PlayStation 3 has many years left in which to become the dominant machine of the current generation.

“The bottom line is that the PS2 is hardly down and out,” Bishop wrote. “It’s a little surprising, really–even to us–that the library has this much steam. Chalk it up to plenty of familiarity with the hardware…,an absolutely epic install base that’s still growing, and the fact that the PS2 is just plain awesome, and you can see why we’re still staring down another monster end of the year.”

The article goes on to make the case that the PS2 still offers a full spectrum of games in all categories, and that with the success of Nintendo’s
Wii, the PS2 is very well positioned as a more casual game machine.

Well, according to Merriam-Webster, perception is “physical sensation interpreted in the light of experience.”

But Dell, well, Dell’s another story. Dell has fallen on hard times lately. Its growth engine has stalled amid stories of executive dysfunction, battery problems, and degradation in tech support. Michael Dell has returned as CEO to fix the mess.

These days the media loves to trash Dell, not because Dell’s a loser, but because it’s a former winner that, as of late, has fallen from grace. That, to the media, seems to be even better than being a loser. A winner that falls off a pedestal (that the media helped put Dell on, mind you) gets lots of eyeballs.

And if that bugs you, well, you only have yourself–actually your eyeballs–to blame.

And while HP’s operating results have been strong in recent quarters, its tech support appears to be subpar. And since that makes HP neither a winner nor a loser–it seems to fall somewhere in the middle–that means no eyeballs. So HP gets a pass.

I’m not a big fan of surveys, so I don’t quote them often. But a recent Consumer Reports survey about PC manufacturers listed Apple as No. 1 in tech support, with Lenovo second, Dell third, and HP dead last. I should also say that Dell came in second in desktops.

I thought the headline should be “Survey says leading PC maker HP dead last in tech support.” But that’s not what happened. The media hailed Apple, trashed Dell, and gave HP a pass.

Eyeballs seem to gravitate to winners and losers. Clearly, Apple’s hot these days, so it’s easy to understand why the media loves Apple. Apple’s a winner.

Horror stories about Dell’s support are all over the blogosphere. Why is that? I mean, why does the media give Dell such a hard time?

As for Dell, it only has to worry about the perception of its customers and shareholders. But what if its customers and shareholders are also influenced by the media? Uh-oh.

Because perception is reality. But aside from being a pithy statement, what does that really mean?

So what is it about the media’s experience that makes them love Apple, ride Dell, and cut HP slack? I guess the media has learned through experience how to get eyeballs. That doesn’t make them bad; it’s just how they get paid by advertisers.

As it turns out, I have a great deal of experience with Dell. And while I think the quality of some of Dell’s computers seems to have declined in recent years, my experience with its tech support has been quite positive. That’s my experience.

So, the next time you read a blog that seems to be “piling on,” remember, that’s just the media doing its job. The media isn’t paid to reflect reality, it’s paid to get eyeballs. And if bloggers perceive that they’ll get eyeballs by dragging Dell through the mud while hoisting Apple on the highest pedestal they can find, well, that’s just what they’ll do.

Maybe it’s our particular infatuation with Apple and its mercurial co-founder, or maybe it’s simply a by-product of the times we live in, where seemingly nothing is out of bounds for public discussion. Whatever the reason, I surely can’t be the only person reacting to the “Is Steve having a cancer relapse” rumor with a fix of frustration and disgust.

Enough already. It’s beyond bad form.

Sideline diagnoses aren’t worth much, and I don’t buy this nonsense that the public has any special rights here. If Jobs no longer can carry out the function of a CEO, he should turn over the reins to a successor. Until then, it’s a private matter for Jobs and his family.

Yesterday, Valleywag speculated about Jobs’ health and this morning Henry Blodget is running his mouth.

“Many readers will consider this post inappropriate,” Blodget began. He should have taken that advice to heart and stopped right there.

Unfortunately for Apple, people remember that the company’s board failed to immediately disclose Jobs’ original cancer diagnosis. (Fortune Magazine reported that the board held onto the news for nine months before disclosing it to shareholders.) So now the rumor mill is churning out speculation aplenty–just in case.

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET News.com)

Truth be told, I did wonder whether Jobs had suffered a relapse when I saw his interview with CNBC yesterday. He looked thin, even gaunt. But last time I checked, neither Apple nor its CEO had issued a health alert.

In the latest, a sales associate in a computer store in Guangzhou apparently charged his new cell phone battery and put the phone into his shirt pocket. It then exploded, severing his neck artery. He bled to death.

This is from a gas station in Redwood City, Calif. Does this include AT&T cell phones?

(Credit: CC Ten Safe Frogs)

And I would like to head to my trusty, if occasionally shifty, AT&T superstore, armed with all the available information that would minimize my chances of being offed while texting sweet nothings and requests for money.

Chinese police have not declared the make of the phone or of its battery. But both Nokia and Motorola have denied links to problem batteries in China, declaring them to be the creation of counterfeiters.

I would very much like to know the chances of such an event occurring in the United States. And I would be very much soothed to have some sense (you know, some odds or at least a semblance of an over/under) whether one brand of cell phone might be more likely to blow up in my face rather than another.

I am extremely sad that an unfortunate employee lost his life because of an apparent cell phone battery malfunction.

I was just wondering whether to finally sacrifice my loyal and beautiful Nokia cell phone for something more contemporary when I discovered that a couple of days ago China experienced its ninth cell phone explosion since 2002.

I cannot believe for a moment that any US cell phone might be prone to such a murderous occurrence, but I regularly read the comments left on the blogs of fine writers such as CNET’s Matt Asay and Don Reisinger and I have been consistently amazed by some of the information that comes out in these forums.

So please, put my mind at rest. It might, at the very least, make AT&T some money. Unless you tell me to change to Sprint or Verizon, of course.

Look, I am the ambassador of the normal, slightly tech-skeptic street person on this site. And, because I know clever technological people read this blog, I would be interested to hear how it is that cell phones can blow people to death.

“Shortly after leaving Xprime, defendant Frost attempted to convert Jardin’s inventions to his own by filing with the USPTO patent applications in the distributed database architecture field, the same subject matter as Jardin’s intellectual property,” according to the complaint. “At Datallegro, defendant Frost used and incorporated Jardin’s intellectual property into Datallegro’s products.”

Microsoft has declined to comment.

Update: As he noted in the comments section, Frost has posted a blog in response to the suit.

Updated, 4:45, with comment from Datallegro CEO Stuart Frost

“After analyzing the claims, we feel strongly that they’re completely without merit and intend to vigorously defend our position,” Frost said. “Given the prior art in this area, we’re also considering asking the Patent Office to re-examine Jardin’s patent.”

Data warehousing software maker Datallegro, which is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft, was hit with a patent infringement lawsuit on Wednesday.

The lawsuit also alleges that Frost attempted to patent Jardin’s technology and also used the technology, for which Jardin has a patent, while at Datallegro.

The suit seeks damages, which it asks to be tripled for willful infringement, as well as temporary and permanent injunctions against Datallegro and Frost.

The suit, filed in federal court in San Diego by Cary Jardin, charges that Datallegro and CEO and founder Stuart Frost, infringed on a patent held by Jardin. The suit alleges that Frost gained access to Jardin’s technology while he was CEO of Xprime, where Jardin worked, in 2003.

Microsoft announced last month that it was acquiring Datallegro, which is based in Orange County, Calif.

If done right, cellulosic ethanol promises to be far better than the current feedstock–corn–from a commercial and environmental standpoint.

Scientists scour the earth for naturally occurring bacteria and other microorganisms and bring them to their lab. There, Mascoma employees try to isolate certain characteristics, such as rapidly metabolizing cellulose.

A commercial-scale plant in Michigan using wood chips as a feedstock is scheduled to be operating in 2012. Eventually, it hopes to make ethanol at $1.50 a gallon, according to company executives.

Click on the image to see a photo gallery of Mascoma’s lab. This image shows how a micro-organism is attracted to cellulose. Mascoma is genetically engineering an organism to metabolize cellulose and make ethanol.

At its core is a staff of brainy Phds with expertise in microbial technology and cellulosic ethanol. But rather than design pharmaceuticals or crop seeds, Mascoma scientists are researching ways to make a cheaper fuel.

Lippert says that its investment in Mascoma and another ethanol company Coskata are meant to accelerate development of cost-effective cellulosic ethanol.

There are many techniques for making cellulosic ethanol, including gasification or multi-step processes that use enzymes and yeasts. But Mascoma is among only a handful pursuing its particular microbial technology path, its scientists say.

The company has a pilot plant that uses wood chips to make ethanol in Rome, New York. Five to 20 metric tons of wood chips or other feedstock yield 100,000 to 500,000 gallons of ethanol per year.

Mascoma’s goal is to streamline the process by genetically engineering a microorganism that can metabolize cellulose and produce ethanol in a single step. That will cut out the need for adding costly enzymes, its scientists say.

There are about 1,700 E85 stations in the U.S. right now, only about 1 percent of the total. To absorb that anticipated boost in ethanol, Mascoma and GM are assuming that there will be construction of more E85 stations and flex-fuel vehicles that can run on gas or E85.

Lippert said GM expects that industrial-scale cellulosic ethanol will begin flowing around 2011. Government mandates are set so that corn ethanol will level off around 2015 to be replaced by “advanced” biofuels, such as cellulosic ethanol.

Making of a supermicrobe

On Friday, Mascoma, which was founded by Dartmouth College professors, hosted a tour of its labs, housed in the Dartmouth Regional Technology Center (up the road from Mascoma Lake).

“There are big hills and little hills,” said Lee Lynd, Mascoma’s co-founder and chief science officer. “In the scheme of things, this is a little hill.”

(Credit:
Mascoma)

Then they genetically combine those traits in a single microorganism to convert pretreated plant matter into ethanol.

“This is within sight. We know how to do the genetic engineering–they are actively working towards that now. So there is some technical development that’s needed but it’s not a miracle we’re waiting for,” Lippert said.

Lynd said the company does not expect problems to arise from its genetically modified organisms. He said that any effects could be tested and that it will be used in a controlled environment.

Ethanol being produced now is blended with gasoline at 10 percent concentration. But for cellulosic ethanol to make a bigger impact on gasoline consumption, there needs to be a build-out of fueling stations for E85, a blend of 85 percent ethanol, Lippert said.

Its part of an industry-wide race to make ethanol from non-food sources, such as wood chips and grasses, at commercial scale.

LEBANON, N.H.–Mascoma is a biotech firm engineering its way into the energy business.

He said Mascoma’s consolidated bioprocessing technology is an attempt at a breakthrough, compared to other processes. But it’s not purely theoretical.

It also announced that investor General Motors’ director of Global Energy Systems, Andreas M. Lippert, has joined Mascoma’s scientific board. GM invested in Mascoma’s $61 million series C round in May of this year, along with refiner Marathon Oil.

BSkyB says it’s going to try and sign other labels up for the service. But this is what Nokia said last year when it announced its Comes With Music plan–essentially a pre-paid subscription for unlimited downloads to certain Nokia phones (the subscription’s added to the price of the phone). And how’s that working out? The service is delayed, EMI’s still holding out (although it might come on board before launch), and there’s nothing about the indie labels and unsigned bands that have helped make MySpace and eMusic and CDBaby.

One more time, just because it's so funny….

It’s so cute when the major labels do this digital thing–they’re sort of like your doddering old uncle who once got a patent for a new kind of horse-and-buggy harness and now sits in the basement tinkering with bridles all day.

Today’s example: the Universal Music Group, the largest of the big four record labels, is teaming up with BSkyB, a U.K. satellite TV network owned by News Corp., to offer a subscription-based music service by the end of this year. I don’t have anything against subscription services: although none of them have been as successful as Apple’s iTunes, which is a pure download service, Rhapsody has some devoted fans. Plus, it sounds like the service will be more akin to eMusic’s subscription-plus-download plan, offering a set number of MP3 downloads for each subscription level. (Pricing and other details have not yet been announced.)

(Credit: @2007 Joel Watson)

But the debate
over subscriptions misses the point. The deal involves only one of the big four record labels. Music listeners don’t know and don’t care about record labels. They know their favorite songs and artists. If the songs aren’t available on one service, they’ll turn to another service–like iTunes or Amazon.com MP3–where they are available.

Meanwhile, over at iTunes, more than 5 billion downloads have been sold.

If the major labels want to create a viable alternative to iTunes, they’ll have to team up first, ideally bringing indies in on the game, then find a distribution channel. Not the other way around.

Buddy Media uses a loyalty program called AceBucks across all its gaming applications, in which players can earn points that they can eventually trade in for real-world goods. Additionally, the company develops branded applications for clients like InStyle magazine, Anheuser-Busch, Priceline.com, and the Huffington Post.

Buddy Media, a New York-based company that operates a number of social-media developer platform applications including Pirates vs. Ninjas, Zombies vs. Werewolves, Pub Darts, and a Sudoku game, announced Tuesday that it has raised $6.5 million in Series B funding in a round led by Softbank Capital.

Lazerow told me that Buddy Media is “even more excited” about its other announcement, the debut of its social-media ad network. The invitation-only network will extend to “premier developers” on Facebook as well as OpenSocial-compatible platforms.

Softbank Capital’s Eric Hippeau and Karin Klein will join Buddy Media’s board of directors.

A number of digital advertising companies, including AdBrite, have launched ad networks for the developer applications that have been flooding social networks for the past year. But Lazerow hopes that BuddyMedia will get a leg up from its history: developing and operating applications itself.

A number of big-name investors like Ron Conway, Greycroft Partners, and the European Founders Fund (which has reportedly put cash behind Facebook) also contributed to the round along with 14 of the company’s Series A investors.

Michael Lazerow, founder and CEO of Buddy Media, told me earlier this week that the company had initially wanted to raise $3 million in its Series B round, but investor interest raised it to $5 million and then finally $6.5 million. Previously, the start-up pulled in $1.7 million in Series A funding in a round led by PayPal founder and Facebook investor Peter Thiel.

Apple spokeswoman Khyati Shah said migration was complete Wednesday night, and as of Thursday morning Me.com should display .Mac users’ mail, calendars, photos. She insisted that the pages were working for her, but said she would check into it.

CNET Reviews’ Elsa Wenzel contributed to this report.

Update: At 11:50 a.m. PDT, the Me.com site was accessible again, though
Mac.com still appears to be down.

The scheduled changeover of users’ .Mac accounts to MobileMe, or .Me accounts, was scheduled for 6 p.m. to midnight PDT Wednesday. The migration was then pushed back to 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.

Update: At 12:30 pm. PDT, Me.com appears to be down again.

The migration of Apple’s .Mac service to the new MobileMe service apparently didn’t go as smoothly as it could have.

This post has been updated. See below.

But Thursday at 11 a.m. PDT, neither service was accessible, at least to several people in San Francisco. Reader Deidre Wyeth also complained that .Mac account photos were inaccessible Thursday, and instead the site redirected to the Apple.com/MobileMe page.

In the meantime, we’ll see if we can find out more. Anyone else having issues reaching their .Mac or .Me accounts? Let us know in the comments.

Webware reader Amy wrote in to let us know one of her favorite
Firefox plug-ins shortText just got updated with a handy new feature. It will now automatically go through any page you’re on and seek out any TinyURLs, converting them to the actual URL so you can see where the page links to.

(Credit:
Shorttext.com)

If you want to accomplish a similar feat, there’s also a bookmarklet called Embiggen, which will do the same thing without you having to install anything. The key difference between the two is that shortText packs in a bundle of other features like letting you write Twitter tweets that are well over the 140 character limit and link all your posts up to a centralized page where you can keep track of replies more easily than on Twitter.

Any TinyURLs on a Twitter post or elsewhere on the Web will automatically be converted with shortText.