November was a good month for GameStop, as the retailer has announced sales for its new games were up 15 percent. We contacted GameStop to get some clarification on the vague 15 percent figure and VP Chris Olivera said this was compared to November 2008.

It's not that tough to gather how the company upped its profits. Aside from a massive used games sale, the company also offered some sweet Black Friday console bundles and a week-long sale on new games -- all of which managed to get folks in the store, spending cash.

GameStop: New game sales up 15 percent in Nov. 2009 originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read More... [Source: Joystiq [PlayStation]]

Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Green Culture, Hydrogen

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is working on revising its Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Program for 2015 and beyond. During a meeting last Thursday, members of advocacy group Plug In America delivered testimony at CARB's hearing and asked the regulatory agency to shift its focus from hydrogen vehicles to plug-in electric cars.

Specifically, according to PIA's new blog "In the Driver's Seat Plug," (in an entry written by former ABG blogger Marc Geller), PIA president Dan Davids said CARB had made good achievements in the past, "but faulted the agency for skewed priorities and reliance on unreliable information and projections." Those skewed priorities include favoring H₂ over plug-ins by 75 to 25 percent, based on PIA's calculations, which doesn't mesh with CARB's stated ""technology neutrality." Before the meeting, PIA issued a statement saying that CARB should push for plug-in vehicles because they will "deliver greenhouse gas reductions five years earlier than fuel cell vehicles." Read their entire statement after the jump.

[Source: Plug In America]

Continue reading Plug In America calls on CARB to put H₂ funds into plug-in vehicles

Plug In America calls on CARB to put H₂ funds into plug-in vehicles originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 09:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read More... [Source: Autoblog Green]

As promised, Sunsoft's brought Blaster Master to the Virtual Console -- though we think the impact is somewhat dulled by the quantity of other games available for download this week. There's a total of 11 different games available, so head past the break for the full list.

Continue reading NintendoWare weekly: Bejeweled, Blaster Master, Earthworm Jim 2

NintendoWare weekly: Bejeweled, Blaster Master, Earthworm Jim 2 originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read More... [Source: Joystiq [Nintendo]]

Filed under: Accessories, Hardware, iPhone

While Square, the new venture from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey that adds a credit card swipe reader to the headphone port of an unsuspecting iPhone or other smartphones, was busy demoing at Le Web, one of the heavyweights of the payment processing market was busy prepping an announcement of its own. Earlier this week, VeriFone announced PAYware Mobile, a combination iPhone/iPod touch app and swipe card reader that will enable merchants to accept and process credit cards on the move.

The widget is scheduled to ship in January and will be free with a 2-year contract with VeriFone (no word on the pricing plans yet the Los Angeles Times notes that users will pay an activation fee of $49, a monthly fee of $15 and a per-transaction charge of 17 cents). The reader is supposed to encrypt credit card data in hardware so that the iPhone never sees the raw card number, and the app will capture signatures using a stylus (at least that's how it's illustrated now). Check out the video above for a brief demo.

It should be very interesting to see how these two hybrid solutions make their moves into the payment ecosystem. Square seems to be aiming at more ad-hoc usage (artists, coffeehouses, etc.) for people who don't have merchant accounts, but VeriFone is all about big retail. Room for everyone! TechCrunch happened to catch a reaction interview with Dorsey today, it's worth a look.

[via Engadget]

TUAWAccept credit card payments on your iPhone? Then there were two originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read More... [Source: The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)]

Filed under: Odds and ends, iPhone

Not wanting to feel left out of the festival of updates for GPS apps, AT&T has given AT&T Navigator [iTunes link] some new features that are sure to please people who use the app.

Here's what's new:

• Full landscape view integration
• Enhanced iPod controls with the ability to search through your songs, artists, etc. from within the app
• Inclusion of AT&T Wi-Fi Hotspots in the POI listings
• Seamless blending of navigation prompts and music for easy listening

The app itself is free, but you have to sign up for a U.S. $9.99/month subscription or get a $69.99 annual subscription. You can see some more details on the upgrade and watch a video of the Navigator in action here.

One nice feature of the app is you can just sign up for a month to take you through holiday travel, and then drop your subscription. Unlike many of the GPS apps for the iPhone, this app requires a cellular signal, because all the maps and info are streamed in over the network.

TUAWAT&T Navigator for iPhone updated originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 12 Dec 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read More... [Source: The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)]

Although the FCC has recently realized that CableCARD is a failure, it'll be years before anything changes; and even when things do change, the cable industry is probably going to support it for years to come. So we are still happy to see that Panasonic is continuing to try to push tru2way into more homes. Currently only available in Comcast areas of Chicago, Denver and Atlanta; Panasonic plans to add Boston to that list. The interesting twist here is that apparently Panasonic has given up on HDTVs with tru2way built in, and is instead pushing a set-back solution. Basically it would be a box designed to attach to the back of a Panasonic TV and presumably require it's own power but only one connection to the TV via HDMI. Then it would work just like the function was built into the TV -- this kind of defeats the purpose of tru2way, but it is better than a traditional set-top box sitting under the TV with its own remote. The problem is the set-back box doesn't have an analog tuner, which crazy enough is a FCC requirement, so Panasonic is also asking the FCC to waive this requirement, and honestly this is one waiver we would agree needs to be granted.

Panasonic to make Boston the fourth tru2way market originally appeared on Engadget HD on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read More... [Source: Engadget HD]

UMID may have jumped the gun a bit when it let the world know that its M2 was already in development months before the M1 had even hit retail. Other than a glimpse at IDF we haven't seen much from the thing, but Onkyo seems to have grabbed the rights to create its own, called the BX. It definitely shares the same design as the M2, but its 1.2GHz Atom Z515 processor is 400MHz down on what the M2 is expected (or at least hoped) to ship with. There's 512MB of memory on tap, a 32GB SSD, and a 4.8-inch 1024 x 600 LCD upon which Windows XP is lovingly applied. Impressive specs, but at an impressive price -- ¥64,800, or about $730. We'll keep our netbooks, thanks.

UMID's M2 becomes Onkyo's BX, beats it to market originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 09:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read More... [Source: Engadget]