EDA logged strongest Q2 growth in 10 years
The EDA sector achieved its highest level of year-to-year growth in any second quarter in the past 10 years, continuing to benefit from a typical sales lag on the heels of a huge bounce-back 2010 for the semiconductor industry, according to the EDA Consortium (EDAC). EDA revenue, including intellectual property, hit $1.438 billion in the second quarter, an increase of 17.6 percent compared to the second quarter of 2010, EDAC said. But while the 17.6 percent annual growth was the highest in a second quarter in over a decade, sales declined sequentially 0.6 percent compared to the first quarter, according to the report by EDAC's market statistics service. In the past 10 years, only two quarters have shown stronger growth in EDA revenue, the fourth quarter of 2006 and the fourth quarter of 2010, according to EDAC.
EE Times

Xbox 360 to launch new TV and film services
Microsoft has launched a new bid to make the Xbox 360 gaming console a comprehensive home entertainment device by adding new TV and film services including the BBC iPlayer, LoveFilm and Channels 4 and 5. The services, which will launch by Christmas, will also integrate with the console’s Kinect controller, meaning that users can control their television through gesture or voice. Nintendo’s rival Wii console has included the iPlayer for some time, but Xbox has previously run into wrangles with the BBC because it charges some users for access to its Xbox Live services, which have traditionally hosted on-demand, paid for digital content.
Telegraph

Amazon Kindle Fire keeps racking up preorders
Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet continues to sell at a brisk pace, though it remains to be seen whether the gadget will match the torrid pace that Apple's iPad set. In the six days after the first day of preorder sales, the Kindle Fire has been selling at a rate of about 20,000 units a day, according to eDataSource, a market research firm. This follows an eDataSource report on Monday that said Amazon sold an estimated 95,000 Kindle Fires on the first day of preordering. The Kindle Fire was announced on September 28, and Amazon began taking preorders the same day. Over six days that comes to a total of about 215,000, according to Carter Nicholas, CEO of eDataSource, in a phone interview Wednesday. (95,000 sold on the first day plus 20,000 units a day for six days).
CNET

Mixing network traffic types on Ethernet
Expert Clinic Is Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) a panacea for the difficulties inherent in running separate storage and general networks? FCoE is not taking off and, indeed, there have been articles published that suggest it may die before it arrives. Let's look again at the idea of mixing general networking traffic and storage networking traffic. Is it, can it, be a recipe for success or a path to disaster? Are we trying to mix different kinds of road traffic or converging road and rail, when combining general and storage traffic on one network? Tony Lock of Freeform Dynamics thinks this mixing can be done but needs a lot of careful preparation and monitoring. It won't work 'out of the box."
The Register

Is Sony closing in on takeover of Sony Ericsson?
Sony is nearing a deal to purchase Ericsson's 50 percent share of the Sony Ericsson joint venture, The Wall Street Journal is reporting today. The deal--which could cost more than a billion dollars--is fragile, according to the report. Mumblings of Sony taking complete control of or abandoning the partnership has been a reoccurring rumour throughout the last several years. Sony Ericsson has struggled to remain a success in recent times, and has posted many quarters of declining sales as the company shifted product strategies. Sony Ericsson only held an 11 percent market share of Android phones last quarter, according to its most recent financial results. The company also sold 7.6 million devices compared to the 11 million it sold the same quarter last year. While Sony Ericsson has floundered, competitors Apple and Samsung have absolutely dominated sales and mindshare among consumers. With the deal, "Sony aims to integrate its smartphone operation with its businesses in tablets, handheld game machines, and personal computers to save on costs and better synchronize development of mobile devices," says the Journal.
CNET

New Eye Clinic to Solve the Headache of 3D Movies?
For everyone who gets a headache watching a 3D movie, it's worth remembering that you're far from alone. In fact, according to the American Optometric Association, it's likely that your headaches mean that you're one of somewhere between 3 million and 9 million people who have trouble with their binocular vision, meaning that you compensate by relying on one eye over the other...which makes 3D viewing troublesome. Thankfully, help may be on the way. Today sees the opening of the new 3D Vision Performance Eye Clinic by Beaverton, Oregon's Pacific University College of Optometry that will serve as a research facility into this issue, as well as a walk-in clinic for those with eye coordination problems. The clinic is being supported by the 3D@Home Consortium, an organization dedicated to "accelerating the adoption of quality 3D into homes worldwide," and by THX, which is providing $40,000 worth of equipment to help research.
TechLand

Oracle and Autonomy CEOs in public cat-fight
Top CEOs didn't get where they are today by reining in their egos, and one of the biggest - in both senses - has been beating his chest in public once more. It's no secret that Oracle boss Larry Ellison has little affection for HP. The animosity was probably catalysed by one of its main hardware partners deciding to go big on software and services itself, with the acquisition of companies such as EDS. But it got personal when the HP board messed with Ellison's mate - Mark Hurd - last year.  Since then Ellison had taken Hurd on himself and wasted little time in laying into is replacement - Leo Apotheker. Now that he too is gone,  the clearly bored Ellison has retrained his sights onto Mike Lynch - the CEO of UK database giant Autonomy, which HP is acquiring - in what seems to be a proxy attack on HP.
Hexus

Microsoft considering fresh bid for Yahoo, say sources
Microsoft is considering a fresh attempt to take control of Yahoo, sources close to the situation have told Reuters, more than three years after its first bid for the internet business failed. The software giant launched a $44.6bn hostile bid for Yahoo in 2008 that was vigorously rebuffed by the company. Yahoo's share price has subsequently collapsed and the firm was valued at less than $18bn before Microsoft's renewed interest was reported. Yahoo's shares soared by 10% on the rumour, which neither company would comment on, before falling back in after-hours trading. Peaking at $15.94, the shares were still barely half the value of Microsoft's $31-per-share offer in 2008. Yahoo axed chief executive Carol Bartz last month and said the company was conducting a strategic review of its business, prompting speculation that it was a takeover target. Goldman Sachs and media specialist Allen & Co are working with the firm and are believed to be sounding out potential buyers. Last month, several Yahoo employees in were told in a memo that the company's financial advisers were "fielding inquiries from multiple parties that have already expressed interest in a number of potential options."
Guardian

Scribol Surges To 26 Million Uniques
Scribol, a London-based bootstrapped startup, is less than a year old, and there’s a good chance you haven’t heard of it. But it’s already getting a lot of traffic. As in, 140 million page views and 26 million uniques per month. But many of those users never meant to go there in the first place. Here’s how it works. Head to one of their publisher sites, like Break.com, and you’ll notice a widget beneath the video (or article) you’re viewing. This widget offers a series of thumbnails of related stories — which are pretty standard on content sites these days. But these related links have a catch: when you click on one, instead of being directed to the article you’re expecting, you’ll actually see a page hosted at Scribol.com. This Scribol page will include a large thumbnail for whatever link you just clicked on. Click that thumbnail, and you’ll arrive at the article you thought you were clicking on in the first place. Alongside this large thumbnail, you’ll see thumbnails of other content that Scribol thinks you’ll like.
TechCrunch

Unreal Engine 3 gets Flash support
At the Adobe MAX 2011 conference in Los Angeles this week, Epic Games' CEO Tim Sweeney demonstrated the Unreal Engine 3 running in fully inside Flash as part of his keynote address. The live technical demonstration saw a version of Unreal Tournament 3 running in Adobe Flash Player 11, which was also released this week. Adobe says the development could lead to console-quality 3D graphics in games running directly in the browser, such as Facebook social games. Running Unreal Engine 3-based games in a Flash environment is possible due to Adobe Flash Player 11's new hardware-accelerated Stage 3D APIs, with Adobe stating the eleventh edition improves 2D and 3D graphics rendering performance by a factor of up to a 1,000 times over Flash Player 10 and runs at up to 60 FPS on Windows and OS X. It still isn't clear just what kind of graphics card one will need to ensure smooth gameplay, however.
GizMag