Sony Corp. slashed the price of its current PlayStation 3 by $100, or 16.7 percent, and introduced a high-capacity model in an effort to spur sales of the struggling video game console. Starting Monday, the current 60 gigabyte model will cost $499, down from $599.

The Japanese electronics maker also said it is introducing a new version of the PlayStation 3 with a bigger hard drive for storing downloaded content such as video games and high-definition movies.

The new PS3 increases the system’s storage capacity to 80 gigabytes from 60 gigabytes and also includes a retail copy of the online racing title "MotorStorm," a company spokesman said. It will be priced at $599.

The larger capacity machine won’t be available in the United States and Canada until August.

It plays into the company’s upcoming strategy of eventually offering downloaded high-definition movies, video games, movie trailers and demos, Sony spokesman David Karraker said.

Karraker said further details on high-def movies for download would be released at a later date.

The announcement comes two days before the E3 Media & Business Summit in Santa Monica, Calif., where dozens of industry heavyweights including Sony rivals Microsoft Corp. and Nintendo Co. are expected to show off their latest games and related products.

Sony has said it sold 3.6 million PS3s in the fiscal year ending March 31 and expects to sell another 11 million in the current fiscal year. Microsoft said in its most recent quarterly earnings report filed in April that it had shipped 11 million Xbox 360s.

Nintendo, meanwhile, claims it has sold nearly 6 million Wiis worldwide as of March 31, and more than 40 million Nintendo DS handhelds. The company has predicted it will sell another 14 million Wiis and 22 million additional DS systems by the end of the current fiscal year.

The Wii and PS3 were released within days of each other late last year. Microsoft had a head start in the current generation of consoles, having launched its Xbox 360 in 2005. Last week, the software company announced an extension of the warranty due to the high number of systems suffering from hardware failure, also called the "red ring of death."

In April, Microsoft began selling a version of its Xbox 360 with a 120-gigabyte hard drive and a souped up high-definition video connection. Called Xbox 360 Elite, the black-colored system sells for $479.99.

Xbox gamers who already own the $399.99 20-gigabyte model can buy a snap-on 120-gigabyte hard drive for $179.99.

Karraker said Sony would use the E3 show to focus on two areas: ways to increase the number of consumers who own PS3s and other products such as the PlayStation Portable handheld system, and expanding the system’s library of available games.

He said Sony would be releasing 100 new video games during the current fiscal year, including 15 titles that are exclusive to the PS3 such as the hack-and-slash action title "Heavenly Sword."

DALLAS - In the most serious admission yet of the extent of Dell Inc.’s financial woes, the company’s internal audit committee said it has found a number of accounting errors and evidence of misconduct in its months-long review of previous earnings statements.

In a short news release, the Round Rock, Texas, company said that the audit also found "deficiencies in the financial control environment." Dell shares fell 56 cents, or 2.4 percent, to $22.83 in after-hours trading, when the announcement was made. The shares had closed up 4 cents to $23.39 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Dell also said Thursday that it would miss an April 18 deadline to file its annual 10K financial report to the Securities and Exchange Commission until the internal review is completed. The company added in the statement that it was working with management and the company’s independent auditors to determine whether the errors would require the restatement of previous earnings reports. "As we move toward the conclusion of our investigation, we are committing the time and resources required to ensure a thorough and comprehensive review and resolution of all identified issues and the implementation of appropriate remedial measures," Thomas W. Luce III, chairman of Dell’s audit committee, said in the statement.

The company did not say how much longer the internal investigation would last, and further details were not provided. Dell spokesman Dwayne Cox said the company was unable to comment further. In August, company officials said Dell received a letter from the SEC in August 2005 asking broad questions about some revenue recognition. Company executives initially shrugged it off as an informal investigation and something that happens to hundreds of other companies.

It has since grown into a formal look by federal investigators into Dell’s finances. Dell also faces a slew of shareholder lawsuits, and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York has subpoenaed documents related to Dell’s financial reporting since 2002. Dell’s earnings statements from the second, third and fourth quarters remain preliminary and have yet to be filed with the SEC.

One analyst who said he has talked to top Dell management about the ongoing investigation in general terms called it "serious" but "not life threatening" and said he doubted the investigation would rise to the criminal level. "It’s a bad thing to have happened," said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates Inc. "Clearly, they did something that they should not have, but in terms of the company, I think it’s going to be more of an annoyance."

In recent months, Dell has seen a management shake-up that included the departure of several top executives — including ex-Chief Executive Officer Kevin Rollins and Chief Financial Officer Jim Schneider — and the return of Michael Dell as CEO. With Dell at the helm, the company has been trying to orchestrate a turnaround plan to improve customer service and combat Hewlett-Packard Co. and other electronics manufacturers who have eaten into Dell’s market share with low-cost, low-profit PCs.

ORLANDO, Fla. - Philips Electronics is introducing a mobile phone with a built-in compartment for an ordinary AAA battery to power the device when the main battery runs low.

The Xenium NRG handset was developed in collaboration with battery maker Energizer Holdings Inc. and Techtium Ltd., an Israeli chip maker specializing in battery management technology. The AAA battery inserted into the phone can be of any brand or type, whether rechargeable or disposable. In the case of a rechargeable, the phone will recharge both the main battery and the backup AAA when it is plugged into an electrical outlet.

The companies say the AAA battery can provide up to three extra hours of talk time. They did not disclose how much the Xenium NRG would cost, when it would go on sale, or in which countries.

The new handset is based on the same Techtium technology that was used to develop Energi To Go, a portable backup phone charger that Energizer introduced last year. That device is also powered by standard AAA batteries. "Service providers tell us they want to increase (revenue)," said Itai Green, Techtium’s chief operating officer. "But when people run out of power, the providers can’t make money" from calls, text messaging and other non-voice services.

Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics NV announced in February that it was selling its remaining cell phone operations to China Electronics Corp.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) plans to offer unlimited e-mail storage to its roughly quarter of a billion users, starting in May, it said on Tuesday. The world’s biggest e-mail service is scrapping its free e-mail storage limit of 1 gigabyte, or about a billion bytes of data, responding to explosive growth in attachment sizes as people share ever more photos, music and videos via e-mail.

Microsoft has a 2 gigabyte free e-mail storage limit, while Google caps its Gmail service at 2.8 gigabytes. "We are giving them no reason to ever have to delete old e-mails," Yahoo co-founder David Filo said in a phone interview. "You can keep stuff forever." Officials said the decision to remove e-mail storage limits reflects the plunging cost of storage as new personal computers store up to a trillion bytes of data and owners of 80-gigabyte iPods can carry 100 hours of video in their pockets.

By contrast, when Yahoo first introduced its e-mail service a little under a decade ago, it capped individual storage at 4 megabytes per user. At that time, an "ultra high-density" floppy disk for personal computers then held 144 megabytes. "People should think about e-mail as something where they are archiving their lives," said Filo, who remains active in managing technical operations at the Sunnyvale, California, company and carries the honorific title of Chief Yahoo.

Starting in May, the changeover to unlimited storage should take a month, said John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo Mail.
"We have been closely monitoring average usage. We are comfortable that our users are far under 1 gig(abyte), on average," Kremer said by phone. "What we see are an increasing number of rich media files as consumers send more photos."

One caveat Yahoo makes is that the offer is for personal use and subject to guidelines against abuse that apply to Yahoo Mail. No one can build a business giving away unlimited storage to other consumers using Yahoo Mail, executives said.
Two countries — China and Japan — are excluded. "We will continue working with these markets on their storage plans," Kremer said in a statement. Yahoo is a minority owner with partner Softbank in Yahoo Japan Corp. and a part owner with Alibaba of the Yahoo business in China.

Filo said Yahoo is looking at lifting caps on storage for other services such as its Flickr photo-sharing service. "We are looking at those on a case-by-case basis," he said. It’s a far cry from when giving away 2 megabytes of data was considered a big deal, said David Nakayama, Yahoo’s group vice president of engineering and developer of RocketMail, which Yahoo acquired and relaunched as Yahoo Mail in 1997.

In a posting to Yahoo’s corporate blog, he said capacity when Yahoo Mail started was 200 gigabytes for all customers. "I remember getting in a room to plan our RocketMail launch over a decade ago and worrying that our original plan of a 2 megabyte quota wasn’t enough, and that we needed to be radical and DOUBLE the storage to 4 megabyte per account!" he wrote.

By Jefferson Graham

LAS VEGAS - This year you’ll finally be able to get the digital camera you’ve always wanted, but couldn’t afford.

Popular digital SLR cameras from Canon and Nikon generally set you back around $1,000. But discounters will likely drive that down to $299 by year’s end, says Chris Chute, an analyst at researcher IDC. That’s just a tad higher than most people pay now for compact point-and-shoots. "This will dramatically reshape the digital camera market," Chute says. "It will give consumers a reason to jump into features they’ve always wanted, but didn’t know they could get."

Professional-looking digital SLRs (single-lens reflex) can stop action on a dime, without annoying shutter lag. They produce better-looking photos in low light and are much simpler to use than novices might think.

Chute says the point-and-shoot market peaked in 2006 at 29.8 million cameras. He expects flat sales this year. Meanwhile, 1.7 million digital SLRs sold in 2006, which he expects to jump to more than 2 million for 2007.

At the Photo Marketing Association trade show that concluded over the weekend, Olympus and Nikon introduced new SLRs for $799 that are expected to greatly fall in price in the coming months.

They compete with Canon’s market-leading $799 EOS Digital Rebel XTi, which has a 10-megapixel sensor (a megapixel is a measurement of a camera’s resolution).

Nikon’s lineup includes the $599, 6-megapixel D40. Its new $799 D40x matches Canon’s 10 megapixels. Olympus’ 10-megapixel Evolt E-410, also $799, offers built-in image stabilization, which helps make shots steady for those with shaky hands.

The E-410 is small and an ultralight 10 ounces. "Portability is the key for the female demographic," says Olympus product manager Sally Smith Clemens.

On the other end of the spectrum, Canon unveiled its latest super-high-end SLR. It’s a $4,000 model aimed at professionals, mostly sports and news photographers.

The EOS-1D Mark III is "the fastest camera we’ve ever had," says Chuck Westfall, a Canon customer service executive. The Mark III can shoot 110 pictures in 11 seconds.

Now that’s fast.

The new SLRs are expected in stores later this month. Elsewhere at the PMA show:

•So many cameras. In the heyday of SLRs, iconic cameras such as the Nikon F and Nikkormat were around for decades. Now Nikon, like its rivals, introduces about 20 cameras a year, only to kill them off the following year with new ones.

The average Nikon camera lives on for just six to eight months, says Nikon senior product manager Steve Heiner.

Why the constant reshuffling? "The stores demand it; the consumer demands it. They want to see ‘what’s new,’ " Heiner says.

Olympus’ Smith Clemens says that unlike the film era, when cameras rarely changed, "In electronics, the technology is constantly evolving, and we want to bring the new innovations to our customers as soon as we can."

•Big zoom, small size. Most compact cameras come with a 3X zoom, which brings you a little closer to the action from your seat. A new breed of "super zoom" tried to bring people even closer, with a 10X zoom. The drawback was that these cameras were big and bulky and couldn’t fit into your pocket.

Not anymore. Panasonic’s Lumix TZ3 is a typical compact size, but also has a 10X zoom. The $349, 7-megapixel camera is expected in stores later this month.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, and the American Medical Association, using a program like SugarStats will reduce the complications associated with diabetes by as much as 40%.

Volcano, Hawaii - Marston Alfred, founder and chief architect of SugarStats.com, himself a diabetic since he was 9 years old, has developed a web based self-management application in which users can track, manage and monitor the most essential and important of their diabetic information online. Through a user-friendly web interface using the latest in web and information technology, SugarStats.com also enables the Diabetic to selectively provide friends, family, educators and health care professionals ‘read only’ access to their statistics. Primary elements affecting blood sugar levels including medication, food intake and physical activity are addressed in a manner that is not overly complex or too feature rich, enabling the end user to expediently self-manage via the Internet and Internet-enabled mobile devices. The core of this system will be available free to the public.

20.8 million people, approximately 7.0% of the U.S. population, have diabetes. Diabetes was the sixth leading cause of death listed on U.S. death certificates in 2002. The prevalence of diabetes is increasing at an alarming rate, as are the associated personal and societal costs, including long-term complications such as blindness, kidney damage, cardiovascular disease and lower-limb amputations. Further studies show diabetes and its complications cause substantial loss in quality of life, are the fourth most frequent reason for ambulatory physician visits, and incur $132 billion dollars in U.S. health care expenditures, directly and indirectly annually. There is now abundant evidence that complications of diabetes are preventable.

According to Dr. IM Stratton, Al Adler, HA Neil, et al, management of glycemia in diabetes is crucially important to the prevention of both acute and long-term complications. In general, every percentage point drop in A1C blood test results (e.g., from 8.0% to 7.0%) reduces the risk of micro-vascular complications (eye, kidney, and nerve diseases) by 40%. When programs like SugarStats were used regularly by the diabetic, they showed an average of a 1 point drop in the A1C levels.

Web-based tools have been emerging as effective methods for lowering HbA1C levels and several other key health markers in diabetics such as blood pressure however, to date, none have been available to the public. SugarStats.com provides a proven means to substantially lower these important health markers while also supporting the important opportunity to shift the focus of diabetes management toward patient self-management.

Alfred was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes as a child. He always felt dissatisfied and uninspired with the various ways to monitor and track his blood sugar levels and trends, finding them either over complicated and involved, or pedantic and & ‘boring’. Now 24 years old, Alfred’s professional expertise in the field of computers, networking and Internet technology/programming provided the foundation from which he developed for himself an engaging, informative, time saving and means to effectively address his diabetic management needs. From his personal quest, SugarStats.com has now emerged to support Internet-accessible diabetics the world over an alternative means to effectively address, control and ultimately improve their health.

Alternate Contact: Daerick Lanakila at dlanakila [@] sugarstats.com SugarStats POB 909 Volcano, HI 96785

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Need a screenshot of what a diabetic would see on their personal SugarStats page along with more info regarding SugarStats is available at http://www.sugarstats.com/tour

CONTACT: Marston Alfred at 619-573-4071
SugarStats
PO Box 909
Volcano, HI 96785
http://www.sugarstats.com

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While the acquisition in the nearby country is likely to be announced very soon, the one in China is expected to be sealed before end-Q1 FY 08, a source close to the development told PTI here on Sunday. According to the source, Zicom, a Rs 100-crore, Mumbai-headquartered listed entity, is close to acquiring a 49 per cent stake in a firefighting equipment manufacturing company in a nearby country.

The acquiree company enjoys an order-book position of Rs 75-crore and its products will be introduced into the Indian market under the brand name of that company so that the high brand value of Zicom in the Indian electronic security space does not get diluted, the source said. Zicom presently enjoys around an 18 per cent marketshare in the domestic electronic security equipments segment. In China, Zicom is looking at a JV or a complete buy-out of a company manufacturing electronic security equipment. "In China, there is economy of scale which is not available in India and besides, labour costs too are economical," the source said.

The Chinese acquisition will enable Zicom to manufacture all its equipments under one roof and then sell them not only in the domestic market but also overseas. Presently, Zicom sources its components from various players before assembling them into a product. When contacted, Zicom’s Managing Director, Pramoud V Rao, refused to comment on the acquisitions. He, however, said that his company was not averse to adopting the inorganic route for fuelling growth. "The security equipment business is growing rapidly and is presently estimated at around Rs 1,300-crore. With security threat perceptions increasing, this business has immense potential and I am very bullish on growth prospects," Rao said.

Earlier, this business was mainly restricted to corporates but now it has expanded to cover many other segments as well, he said, pointing to the huge potential demand in the transportation sector such as railways, buses, airports and ports which would need highly sophisticated electronic security equipment to meet emerging threats. The company is also scouting for venture capital funding to fund its retail foray. When asked, Rao again refused to comment on the issue.

The company has already opened 11 shops showcasing its products and plans to open 20 more within the next two months. "This is a capital-intensive business with a long gestation period and besides, involves a huge capex on advertising. Hence, the company is considering VC funding," the source said. According to Rao, the retail business had met with an encouraging initial reception and was in line to contribute 50 per cent towards the company’s total revenues in FY 08.