Nintendo Releasing New Hardward, The Nintendo 3DS

At E3, Nintendo will be introducing new hardware, the Nintendo 3DS.

In an official release, Nintendo describes the portable as allowing games to be "enjoyed with 3D effects without the need for any special glasses". According to Nintendo, the product will go on sale between April 2010 and March 2011.

The Nintendo 3DS will succeeded the Nintendo DS series and will have backward compatibility for Nintendo DS and DSi games.

In early January, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata gave an interview with Japan's second largest newspaper The Asahi Shimbun in which he apparently said the Nintendo DS successor will have "highly detailed graphics, and it will be necessary to have a sensor with the ability to read the movements of people playing".

Nintendo of America later told Kotaku that the Asahi Shimbun had "misinterpreted" Iwata's remarks. "Mr. Iwata did not make any comments regarding the functions of Nintendo's future hardware systems," Charlie Scibetta, Nintendo of America's senior director of corporate communications told Kotaku. "The answer to the reporter's question was misinterpreted."

The Asahi Shimbun stands by its reporting and issued a statement to Kotaku Japan that read: "The article quoted Nintendo President Satoru Iwata's comment accurately." The actual quote in the article is a fragment of a longer sentence.

At a Nintendo quarterly Q&A, the exec addressed the issue with the Asahi Shimbun, asserting that the reporter stated, "The graphics for the next DS will be highly detailed and it will contain a motion sensor, right?" Iwata claims he then replied, "Those things are naturally being required. But do you think it would sell with just that?" Iwata emphasized that this last part was left completely out.

It appears that the extra element Nintendo believed was necessary to really sell the DS successor is 3D.

Regarding 3D, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has previously stated that Nintendo would need to look into the "possible health effects" of playing video games in 3D for prolonged periods of time.

Facebook Traffic Tops Google For The Week

Facebook topped Google to become the most visited U.S. Web site last week, indicating a shift in how Americans are searching for content.

Web analysis firm Experian Hitwise said Monday that the social networking site surpassed Google to take the No. 1 spot for the week ended March 13.

"It shows content sharing has become a huge driving force online," said Matt Tatham, director of media relations at Hitwise. "People want information from friends they trust, versus the the anonymity of a search engine."

Facebook accounted for 7.07% of U.S. Web traffic that week, while Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) received 7.03%. The study compared only the domains Facebook.com and Google.com -- not, for example, Google-owned sites like Gmail.com.

Though the traffic levels were close, Facebook's year-over-year growth far outpaced Google's that week. The number of visitors to Facebook spiked 185% compared with the same period last year, while Google's traffic climbed just 9%.

"It's definitely a big moment for Facebook, even though they beat by a small margin," Tatham said. "We've seen it coming for quite a long time."
0:00 /2:39Facebook's 6th birthday

Facebook had never before beaten Google over a full weeklong period, though it has been the most visited site on recent holidays: Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Facebook was also the top site on the weekend of March 6-7.

But Tatham noted that when he added up traffic on all Google properties like Google Maps and YouTube, the company's sites comprised 11.03% of visits. Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) was second with 10.98%.

Google.com had been the No. 1 site each week since Sept. 15, 2007, when ironically it passed another social networking site, MySpace.com, in order to take the crown.

Of course, the MySpace connection could be a bad omen for Facebook. MySpace enjoyed dominance on the social networking scene for years until it saw traffic plummet following Facebook's rise.

"By nature, the Web is ever-changing," Tatham said. "The Internet can be a fickle crowd."

Pacquiao Primed For Title Clash Against Clottey

DALLAS, Texas, United States—Manny Pacquiao, who is making his first defense of his WBO title, says he is confident he can maintain his speed and power as he moves up in class to fight bigger and stronger opponents.

This will be the second consecutive true welterweight fight for the Filipino superstar who goes into Saturday's bout as the heavy favorite despite giving away a height and an eight-centimeter (three-inch) reach advantage to Ghana's Joshua Clottey.

Speaking at a pre-fight news conference Wednesday at the new $1.2-billion Cowboys Stadium, Pacquiao insists he is not taking Clottey lightly.

"Clottey is a good fighter," said Pacquiao, who has won 11 consecutive fights. "He is so strong and he is bigger and taller than me.

"I don't want to underestimate this opponent. I am going to do my best and give it a shot."

A crowd of 45,000 is expected for Saturday's fight which will showcase Pacquiao's blazing hand speed and quick footwork against Clottey's strength and ring savvy. It is the first time that a boxing card has been held in the new home of the NFL's Dallas Cowboys.

Pacquiao showed up Wednesday with a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader on each arm before taking the podium to pose for pictures with Clottey.

There was none of the trash talking that is usually associated with fights of this magnitude as both boxers expressed a liking for each other.

"I have trained hard for this fight," said Pacquiao, who captured the welterweight title with a 12-round TKO of Miguel Cotto in November. "I will try my best to put on a good show. I want people to be satisfied with my performance on Saturday."

The 32-year-old Clottey is a native of Ghana. He has 35 victories and just three losses, including a controversial disqualification against Carlos Baldomir in 1999 and a close decision against Antonio Margarito four years ago.

Pacquiao, 50-3-2 with 38 knockouts, is defending his welterweight title on the same date he was expected to face unbeaten American Floyd Mayweather before negotiations broke off over a drug-testing dispute.

Many see Clottey as a fill-in for Mayweather but Clottey insists that he is more than just cannon fodder for Pacquiao.

"I have done everything to train for this fight," Clottey said. "He (Pacquiao) is the best fighter in the world, but I want to see what he can do."

Pacquiao has looked unstoppable in his last three fights and his trainer Freddie Roach predicted Saturday's main event won't go the distance.

"We can stop him in the late rounds," Roach said. "I didn't say a knockout but we can stop him with an accumulation of punches. He (Clottey) has never seen a guy like Manny Pacquiao before and I don't think he will be able to handle it."

Roach said this fight has its own unique characteristics because they are fighting in a gridiron stadium as opposed to the smaller casino venues in Las Vegas that they are accustomed too.

"This will be the biggest crowd we have fought in front of," Roach said. "We have a good game plan. Manny Pacquiao is at the top of his game right now.

"If he sees something in there and wants to test something that is fine. We will take him (Clottey) to the ropes sometimes. We have worked on that because he is a big strong guy.

"We know his characteristics very well."

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones says he is tickled pink to have a boxer with the stature of Pacquiao headline the first fight card at Cowboys Stadium.

"This is the first fight ever in this stadium and to have an individual like Manny Pacquiao fighting here is everything I had hoped would be a part of this stadium," Jones said.

YouTube Extends Automatic Video Captioning

WASHINGTON – YouTube, in a significant development for millions of deaf Internet users, extended automatic caption capability Thursday to all English-language videos on the video-sharing website.

YouTube users have been able to manually add captions to videos since 2008 and in November of last year the site began offering machine-generated captions for about a dozen partner channels.

Hiroto Tokusei, a YouTube product manager, said in a blog post on Thursday that the automatic caption, or auto-caption, feature was now being expanded to all videos on the site in English.

Auto-captioning uses speech-to-text technology to generate subtitles.

"Making video easily accessible is something we're working hard to address at YouTube," said Tokusei, citing studies that predict that over 700 million people worldwide will suffer from hearing impairment by 2015.

The auto-captioning feature will make YouTube videos "more accessible to people who have hearing disabilities or who speak different languages," the YouTube project manager said.

While the auto-caption feature currently only works for videos where English is spoken, Tokusei said users can use Google's automatic translation service to simultaneously translate the captions into 50 other languages.

Auto-captioning in more languages will be added "in the months to come."

The YouTube project manager noted that auto-captioning is not yet perfect and a "clearly spoken audio track" without background noise is needed to create quality captions.

Video owners do have the capability, however, of downloading auto-generated captions, improving their accuracy and then uploading a new version.

One of the chief advocates for captioning capability at YouTube has been Vint Cerf, the Google vice president who has been described as the "Father of the Internet."

Cerf, who is hearing impaired and has been wearing hearing aids since the age of 13, made a personal appearance at the unveiling of the YouTube auto-caption features at Google's Washington offices in November.