November 13, 2008, 11:06 AM — NEW YORK (AP) _ Following in the footsteps of Nintendo's popular "Wii Fit," the video game publisher known for the "Madden" football games is jumping into fitness software targeted mostly at women.
Electronic Arts Inc. on Thursday announced a new line, EA Sports Active, that runs on the Nintendo Wii console and aims to complement, not compete with, Nintendo's "Wii Fit" exercise title.
Peter Moore, president of EA Sports, called the new brand, whose first title launches next March, a "somewhat radical departure from the normal game experiences we provide customers."
EA's sports audience has been mostly young men, who have flocked to football, soccer, basketball and hockey titles to make the company the world's dominant player in sports video games.
But to stay competitive with rivals such as Activision Blizzard Inc., whose success with games like "World of Warcraft" and "Rock Band" seems to be weathering the recession, EA needs to continue to expand its audience.
The company's new brand seeks to take advantage of the popularity of the Nintendo console and of exercise games. While the "Wii Fit" is already enormously popular, Moore, a former physical-education teacher, said EA's sports software will run people through an exercise routine with a more Western approach than the Japanese company's product.
"Wii Fit" includes activities like running, skiing as well as yoga, and it emphasizes balance as well as fitness. EA's products will include exercises like running and lunges, as well as simulations of sports such as tennis.
The games use straps to attach the Wii's controller and "nunchuk" attachment to a player's body, so the fitness routines can be performed without holding the controls. It also includes a resistance band. Titles in the line will cost about $60, the same as a regular video game.
?Barbara Ortutay, AP Technology Writer.
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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) ? How fast is the new supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory? If everyone in the world performed one mathematical calculation per second, it would take 650 years to do what this machine can do in one day.
That makes the $100 million computer, nicknamed "Jaguar" by scientists, the fastest in the world for unclassified scientific research. At more than 1 quadrillion mathematical calculations per second, it is about 55,000 times faster than your typical PC.
Only one other supercomputer is faster, and it's devoted to classified research on nuclear weapons at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Global climate change, space matter that can't be seen, and alternative energy ? everything from improved gasoline combustion to fusion ? are some of the subjects Jaguar will be used to research.
In June, Jaguar, a Cray Inc. system, was rated fifth-fastest in the world by researchers who track the 500 top supercomputers. The Oak Ridge lab, a Department of Energy facility, announced this week that it had upgraded Jaguar since then, and achieved its four-year goal of 1 quadrillion calculations per second ? or 1 "petaflop" ? six months ahead of schedule.
Jaguar recently achieved sustained performance of more than 1.3 petaflops while churning out calculations on superconductivity and has hit a peak speed of 1.64 petaflops, the lab said.
It is still undergoing final trials but should be ready for research by January. Thomas Zacharia, Oak Ridge's associate director for computing, anticipates a waiting list of proposals and near full-time operation when the computer begins work. All users must share their results with the broader scientific community.
?Duncan Mansfield, Associated Press Writer.
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SEATTLE (AP) ? The U.S. military, with help from Seattle startup Delve Networks, has launched a video-sharing Web site for troops, their families and supporters, a year and a half after restricting access to YouTube and other video sites.
TroopTube, as the new site is called, lets people register as members of one of the branches of the armed forces, family, civilian Defense Department employees or supporters. Members can upload personal videos from anywhere with an Internet connection, but a Pentagon employee screens each for taste, copyright violations and national security issues.
Part of Delve's work was to build speedy tools for approving and sorting incoming videos. Its technology also crunches video files into several sizes and automatically plays the one that best suits viewers' Internet connection speeds.
But the startup's real forte is making sure site searches turn up the best video results. Delve's system turns a video's sound into a text transcript. It pares unimportant words like "this" and "that," then compares what's left against a massive database of words commonly uttered in proximity to each other, collected from crawling hundreds of millions of Web pages.
The result: Even if speech recognition software trips on the one word someone is searching for, there's a good chance Delve can still deliver relevant results.
In May 2007, the Defense Department banned employees and soldiers from accessing sites including YouTube and MySpace, citing security and bandwidth issues. Delve Chief Executive Alex Castro called TroopTube a "retention tool" aimed at a generation of soldiers who bring laptops to the front lines.
"A lot of people are excited in the company to be doing something for the people who make sacrifices," said Castro, his eyes tearing. "We're proud of this."
?Jessica Mintz, AP Technology Writer.
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DECATUR, Ga. (AP) ? Mayor William Floyd pulled up to a parking space, dialed a number into his cell phone and watched as two hours of paid time flashed on the meter in front of his car.
And with that, the Atlanta suburb launched one of the nation's first pay-by-phone parking systems, part of a strategy designed to encourage more turnover and ultimately more revenue.
For the last year, Decatur has used a system from StreetSmart Technology LLC that uses sensors to detect whether a car has moved. This blocks drivers from plopping in more coins when the two-hour time limit runs out. It also connects parking attendants to a database that alerts them when meters expire ? or points them toward drivers parked in spaces without paying.
Decatur ramped up its efforts this week with the pay-by-cell system, which let drivers call a local number plastered on each meter. After entering the parking space number, they get a text message with a Web site address to create an account using a credit card. Once an account is created, drivers can just call the number each time to draw down their account.
A handful of other cities around the nation employ similar systems. But Decatur is the first that uses technology that flashes the time bought on a meter instead of, say, a printed ticket, said Eric Groft, a StreetSmart project manager.
To entice drivers to use the system, the city is offering the first two hours of pay-by-cell parking for free. After that, it will charge cell phone users an additional 25-cent transaction fee.
About 50 of Decatur's 385 meters are outfitted with the pay-by-cell equipment, which costs an estimated $200 per meter. Each has radios that can transmit data and sensors for detecting cars. It also lets drivers pay the old-fashioned way using change.
Parking monitors seem especially focused on the way the system helps them rest their legs.
"We walk around the city all day," said Janice Monroe, a Decatur "parking liaison." ''This lets us know where meters expire so we can walk directly to them ? and cut down on our walking."
?Greg Bluestein, Associated Press Writer.
