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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Intel Producing 32nm Processors Next Year!


So you heard them! Intel has completed the development phase of its next-generation 32 nanometers (nm) processors. They are now planning to roll out an entirely new 32nm processor in the fourth quarter of 2009! No sign of slowing down in processor development despite cutting its next year revenue forecast by 1 billion.

In fact, it’s always the plan in Intel to introduce an entirely new processor micro-architecture with a cutting edge manufacturing process about every 12 months. They proudly claimed such achievement to be an effort unmatched in the industry, this I totally agree with no doubt at all.

Besides, producing 32nm chips next year would mark the fourth consecutive year Intel has met its goal.

You may ask what’s so fascinating about 32nm?

Well, it simply means by using such technology Intel is able to use more energy-efficient, denser and higher performing transistors on a processor. Hence, giving you more power with less energy consumption.

Hopefully we’ll also see price dropping for older processors, which will be a bargain for the consumers.

On a side note,AMD just released their first 45nm Opteron server processor last month, now Intel is talking about manufacturing 32nm processors next year. Looks like AMD still have a long way to catch its main competitor’s tail!!

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Programmer unlocks hidden Windows 7 features


Tool disables protection scheme blocking some unfinished features in upcoming OS

A programmer has unlocked several still-unfinished features of Windows 7 that Microsoft Corp. has hidden from users who received the alpha build at two recent developer conferences.

Over the weekend, Rafael Rivera, a developer for a Virginia-based company that sells secure messaging software to the U.S. government, posted a utility he dubbed “Blue Badge” that patches nine system files in Windows 7, including “explorer.exe” and “shell32.dll.” The tool disables the protection scheme that Microsoft added to the alpha to keep eyes off some features that still need work.

The utility’s name is a nod to the background color of card keys given to full-time Microsoft employees. According to Rivera’s analysis, Windows 7 checks the user’s allowed domain and username, then unlocks the features if it decides the user is a full-time worker. Microsoft is currently testing Windows 7 internally.

Rivera’s tool lets users access Windows 7’s new taskbar — a feature that Microsoft heavily promoted at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in late October — as well as other unfinished bits of the operating system, including multitouch gestures and a dynamic desktop slide show that pulls images from Web-based feeds.

Blue Badge can be downloaded from Rivera's blog in a version suitable for the 32-bit version of Windows 7. A 64-bit edition of the unlocking tool has been delayed, he said Sunday.

Rivera started digging into Windows 7’s protection scheme shortly after PDC ended, and posted his first discoveries two weeks ago.

Windows 7, which Microsoft has repeatedly said will ship in late 2009 or early 2010, has been branded as “Windows Vista, a lot better,” by CEO Steve Ballmer. Although only a small number of people have the alpha — including attendees of PDC and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, which wrapped up Nov. 7 — the successor to Vista will move into public beta testing early next year.

Pirated copies of the Windows 7 alpha leaked to the Internet only hours after it handed out the code at PDC.

Pirates Prey on Blu-Ray DVD Format






















Movie pirates are going after Blu-ray, using a technological twist that makes their illicit copies both cheap to make and tough for consumers to spot.

Pirates are taking advantage of the fact that many viewers can't tell the difference between Hollywood's new high-definition, higher-priced Blu-ray movie format and a bootleg format -- called AVCHD -- that's a grade lower: AVCHD uses 720 horizontal lines of resolution instead of Blu-ray's 1,080, but still offers a sharper picture than an ordinary DVD on high-definition television sets.

The movies are pulled off Blu-ray discs using easily available software. Because of the lower resolution, they can be put on ordinary blank DVDs instead of more costly blank Blu-ray discs. That makes them quite profitable for pirates to make, warns the Motion Picture Association, the industry group that battles piracy on behalf of the studios owned by Walt Disney Co., Viacom Inc., Sony Corp., News Corp., Time Warner Inc., and General Electric Co.

"We are concerned and are assigning priority to this issue," said Mike Ellis, the Asia-Pacific managing director for the MPA.

Some eBay Inc. merchants are warning customers to look out for counterfeit Blu-ray discs, or ordinary DVDs passed off as Blu-rays. One tip-off: Real Blu-ray discs attract fingerprints more easily than the pirated discs.

The industry took notice last month when authorities raided a big stash of the new pirated discs in China, which is often at the leading edge of piracy trends. Authorities in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen last month unearthed a pirated warehouse collection with 800 of the discs, with titles ranging from "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" to "Transformers." The pirates had packaged them in Blu-ray's recognizable blue boxes, including holograms to try to make them look like the real thing.

"Pirated DVDs from this region...have been exported all over the world in the last few years. These syndicates are very quick to spot market opportunities," said Mr. Ellis.

The MPA estimates that within the next six months the high-definition discs could account for 10% of $224 million that its member companies lose from piracy in China. While a legitimate Blu-ray discs costs about $30, a pirated Chinese disc goes for as little as $7.

The new piracy threat comes as the industry tries to push Blu-ray to compensate for softening sales of regular DVDs. Entertainment companies hope consumers will upgrade their libraries to the newer discs. In the four weeks ended Oct. 26, Blu-ray discs accounted for 6% of the home-video market, according to Nielsen VideoScan. Retailers and electronics companies recently cut prices on Blu-ray players to spur adoption.

The pirate discs haven't yet appeared outside of Asia. But the industry worries they could find a market in places with lower penetration of broadband Internet access. In those markets, downloading high-definition video files -- legitimate or illegitimate -- can be lengthy and cumbersome.

"When we created the specifications for Blu-ray, we were very serious about trying to stem the tide of pirate discs regardless of where they were in the world," said Andy Parsons, a senior vice president at Pioneer Electronics Inc.'s Home Entertainment Group and the U.S. chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association Promotions Committee.

The association built two layers of copyright protection into their discs. One layer unique to Blu-ray, called BD+, checks to make sure that the disc isn't being played somewhere it shouldn't be. "To make a pirated Blu-ray disc is pretty difficult," said Mr. Parsons.

Pirates use software to pull high-definition video off Blu-ray discs. One software company, Slysoft Inc., claims to have cracked Blu-ray's protection software last year and sells a program to extract Blu-ray movies called AnyDVD HD for the equivalent of about $100. Slysoft said in a statement in March that it enabled "backup security copies of Blu-ray discs." The U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act bans DVD copying, but Slysoft has said its software is legal in Antigua and Barbuda, the Caribbean nation where it is based.

Mr. Parsons said he was aware of Slysoft's claim but declined to comment on it. Slysoft didn't respond to requests for comment.

The technical protections built into Blu-ray can be changed by encoding a software update onto new Blu-ray discs. But those updates, too, will be cracked, said Peer van Heuen, head of SlySoft's high-definition technologies, in an earlier press release. "The worst-case scenario then is our boss locks us up with only bread and water in the company dungeon for three months until we are successful again," he said.

AMD's Fusion Delayed Until 2011


When it comes to AMD, the tech world is currently focused on the chip maker's Shanghai processors, which have started showing up at online resellers. Initially planned for a January 2009 release, AMD bumped up the launch of its first 45nm CPUs. But AMD isn't ahead of schedule across the board and the company's 45nm Fusion chip finds itself pushed back once again.

Initially planned for a 2009 release, AMD previously moved the tentative launch date to sometime in 2010 but has now canceled it altogether in its 45nm form. Instead, AMD's senior VP Randy Allen said the CPU/GPU combo won't materialize until 2011 in a 32nm version with the company's Llano core. Llano will sport four cores, 4MB of cache, DDR3 memory support, and an integrated GPU.

On a related note, AMD will actually start producing 32nm chips in 2010, but products won't start to hit the market in any quantity until 2011 starting with the Orochi core, another four-core chip but with 8MB of cache and aimed at the enthusiast desktop sector.

Opera 10 alpha 1 released, brings Acid3 victory

Opera announced the availability of the first alpha release of Opera 10, the next major version of the company's web browser. The new version, which is built on Opera's Presto 2.2 rendering engine, includes some significant improvements to rendering and standards compliance.

This release expands Opera's native support for CSS3 and HTML5. One particularly nice feature that has been introduced in this release is support for RGBA colors in CSS, which makes it possible to describe colors with a translucent alpha channel. This feature, which is already supported in Safari and Firefox 3, facilitates some nice styling effects. Unlike the CSS opacity property, which is applied on top of content areas as a filter, the RGBA color feature is a lot more flexible and can be used, for example, to do transparent backgrounds.

Another really exciting feature that has arrived in this version of Opera is support for web fonts, a CSS3 feature that enables web sites to load fonts from a path or URL. It allows web designers to use whatever fonts they want instead of being forced to rely on the fonts that are already available to users. Safari was one of the first to introduce support for this feature last year, and Firefox will be adding it in version 3.1. Opera will support several font formats, including TTF, OTF, and SVG.

The Presto JavaScript engine got some improvements too, with a new faster RegExp implementation and support for the W3C selectors API, which provides a concise CSS-like syntax for selecting page elements in JavaScript.

A hit of Acid3

Opera's improved standards support has given the browser a big boost on Acid3, a test devised by Ian Hickson that evaluates the renderer's compatibility with various advanced web standards. The Opera and WebKit developers have been racing to completely implement support for all the standards required to pass the test. They both announced support for completing the test with 100/100 at roughly the same time earlier this year. Opera has previously released a highly experimental technical preview of the renderer in order to publicly demonstrate its completion of the test. Opera 10 alpha 1 is the first actual Opera release that includes this functionality in the browser itself.

In addition to significant improvements to the underlying rendering engine, Opera 10 alpha 1 also adds a few new features that improve the quality of the user experience. One long-overdue improvement is support for automatic updates. The browser will now notify the user when new versions are available and can automatically install the latest version. Another nice improvement in the browser is support for inline spell-checking.

This is a good release with a lot of important enhancements under the hood. It will help Opera keep up with Safari and Firefox while also delivering rock-solid standards compliance to its end users. The software is available for download from the Opera snapshots web site. For more information, check out the official changelog.

Facebook Virus Turns Your Computer into a Zombie


Hey, I have this hilarious video of you dancing. Your face is so red. You should check it out.

If you've received a message like that through Facebook or MySpace, you may have been exposed to the "Koobface" virus. "Koobface" comes through an e-mail sent by one of your social networking site friends inviting you to scope out a video.

Once the URL is clicked, "Koobface" prompts you to update your Flash player before the video can be displayed. Therein lies the virus, cloaked in a "flash_player.exe" file. According to the Kaspersky Lab, an antivirus organization working closely with Facebook, "the worms transform victim machines into zombie computers to form botnets."

The McAfee Security Blog explains that when "Koobface" infects your computer, it prompts a downloaded service named Security Accounts Manager (SamSs) to load on start-up. SamSs then proxies all HTTP traffic, stealing results from popular search engines and hijacking them to lesser-known search sites.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Stevens Advacnced UNIX Programming





The Art Of UNIX Programming




Friday, December 26, 2008

Nokia Gun Cell Phone


Though just a concept (for now), this gun-inspired Nokia phone concept may come in handy for military and law enforcement agencies. However, we would like to see a newer model integrated into the device.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Disable Shutdown in Windows XP

To disable shutdown in XP first of all you have to
i.Remove shutdown from start menu and also from all other possible options.
ii.Hide shutdown from start menu
iii.Disable shutdown all together.

Follow the steps given below:
a)Start àRun and type gpedit.msc . gpedit stands for group policy and you can do wonders using this.
b)Navigate to:User configuration Administrative Templates Start Menu and Taskbar 3.This option opens up a pane on the right hand side.
c)Identify the option named remove SHUT DOWN from the start menu.
d)Double click remove SHUT DOWN from the start menu option.
e)A small screen pops up and you may like to read about the explanation in the
EXPLAIN TAB before you change the settings.
f)Just change the radio button TO ENABLED and click on apply.
g)DONE.
h)No need to log off or restart the system. (You may however have to find
a way to restart your system).
i)This option disables the log off option from the system.
j)From the start menu, also from the life saver – three buttons CTRL - ALT - DEL options.
k)This option goes well with the HIDING THE LOG OFF FROM START MENU. (To shut down your system:-without using from shut down menu) The solution is that you can switch user through task manager (alt+ctrl+del) or by pressing winkey+L where u get the option to turn off your computer/restart/stand by.
l)Or you may create a shortcut using this shortcut location to shutdown your system: %windir%\system32\shutdown.exe -s to restart, u can use this shortcut %windir%\system32\shutdown.exe –r to shutdown your PC

20 hidden applications in Win XP

To run any of these apps go to Start > Run and type the executable name, for example: charmap WINDOWS XP HIDDEN APPLICATIONS:
1. Character Map = charmap.exe (very useful for finding unusual characters)
2. Disk Cleanup = cleanmgr.exe
3. Clipboard Viewer = clipbrd.exe (views contents of Windows clipboard)
4. Dr Watson = drwtsn32.exe (Troubleshooting tool)
5. DirectX diagnosis = dxdiag.exe (Diagnose & test DirectX, video & sound cards)
6. Private character editor = eudcedit.exe (allows creation or modification of characters)
7. IExpress Wizard = iexpress.exe (Create self-extracting / self-installing package)
8. Mcft Synchronization Manager = mobsync.exe (appears to allow synchronization of files on the network for when working offline. Apparently undocumented).
9. Windows Media Player 5.1 = mplay32.exe (Retro version of Media Player, very basic).
10. ODBC Data Source Administrator = odbcad32.exe (something to do with databases)
11. Object Packager = packager.exe (to do with packaging objects for insertion in files, appears to have comprehensive help files).
12. System Monitor = perfmon.exe (very useful, highly configurable tool, tells you everything you ever wanted to know about any aspect of PC performance, for uber-geeks only )
13. Program Manager = progman.exe (Legacy Windows 3.x desktop shell).
14. Remote Access phone book = rasphone.exe (documentation is virtually non-existant).
15. Registry Editor = regedt32.exe [also regedit.exe] (for hacking the Windows Registry).
16. Network shared folder wizard = shrpubw.exe (creates shared folders on network).
17. File siganture verification tool = sigverif.exe
18. Volume Contro = sndvol32.exe (I've included this for those people that lose it from the System Notification area).
19. System Configuration Editor = sysedit.exe (modify System.ini & Win.ini just like in Win98! ).
20. Syskey = syskey.exe (Secures XP Account database - use with care, it's virtually undocumented.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Recieve Orkut Scraps on your mobile Via sms


This will be one of the things all Indians would have thought in their dreams. Every one would be in eager to check their scraps to Know whether he/she has scraped me. Here is an end to that!!!
Follow the steps carefully to get scraps on you mobile for Free


1. Login to your orkut account and click on your profile itself.

You will get see something like this in your browser address bar
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=10961323513766675899
In the place of 10961323513766675899 will be displayed your ID no. Make a note of this Number.


2. Now go to http://www.mytoday.com/ and register your mobile. This can be done by sending sms REG to
9900145368 or 575758. This will cost you 2 to 3 Rupees based on the operator.


3. Now Mytoday will send you your password to your mobile.


4. Login to you Mytoday account using

Username: mobile no
Password: you got in sms


5. Click on the Manage Feeds

Now you would see like this

Manage Feeds
Folders:
* Default
* Email
* SMS


6. Click on SMS

Now You will find an option to
Add Feed
Name:
URL:


7. Now insert your orkut id in the space 10961323513766675899

http://www.orkutfeeds.com/feed.php?uid=10961323513766675899

So now this link will look like

http://www.orkutfeeds.com/feed.php?uid=10961323513766675899
---PR

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Google Earth Aided Terrorists In Plotting Mumbai Attack

Google Earth provides free Internet satellite pictures to sensitive locations in India, which can be misused by terror agents. According to a PIL filed by Amit Karkhanis, Google Earth should be banned for India's security and safety.

WINDOWS 7 SCREENSHOTS

Microsoft’s Sinofsky had a pretty good dance with CNET about Windows 7, really not saying much of anything. But a picture’s worth a thousand words, right? Howzabout a ton of pics?

We can confirm these are indeed screen shots of the current build of Windows 7 as it will be introduced in 2010, but keep in mind that’s three years away and many changes might be made. We’re hoping it’s better than Vista.

Click the jump for lots of screen grab goodness.

A Microsoft rep has pointed out that these are older versions of the concept renderings for Windows 7 and, as stated above, not likely what we’ll see when it’s released in 2010. In other Windows 7 UI news, the latest version will be demoed later tonight at the All Things D conference. It’ll be interesting to see how close to these older renderings it turns out to be.

710251817

Report: Yahoo CEO search narrowing, with Arun Sarin in sight

Yahoo's search for a new CEO is narrowing, with former Vodafone Group PLC chief Arun Sarin reportedly on the list, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal

Yahoo has authorized reference checks for a few candidates in order to narrow the field even further so the informal search committee can make a recommendation to the board of directors, according to the report.

And while the CEO selection process has moved at a rapid clip since co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang announced in mid-November he would step down as soon as a replacement is found, the process could very well spill into the New Year, the Journal noted.

Sarin, 54, retired from Vodafone Group in May, after serving approximately five years as CEO of the European telecommunications giant. While at Vodafone, Sarin was credited with realigning the company's focus on emerging markets, such as India.

And earlier this year, Sarin delivered a keynote speech at CTIA, where he touted the increasingly popular notion of the mobile Internet.

And prior to his role as Vodafone CEO, Sarin had previously served a brief stint of less than one year as CEO of InfoSpace in 2000 to 2001. He resigned due to the rigors of commuting between InfoSpace's offices in Washington state and his family's home in the Bay Area, the company said at the time.

Sarin apparently has a number of the qualities that Yahoo is seeking in a CEO.

Back in mid-November, one source familiar with Yahoo's thinking noted the company sought:

Someone with prior CEO experience who's got both operational and strategic skills, someone experienced in technology, and somebody energetic and young--which apparently means in his or her 40s or 50s.

The company expects to come up with a pool of about a dozen candidates and settle on one within six months, though there's no hard deadline.

For Yahoo, which has seen its search market share heavily eroded over the years by Google and faces investor wrath for failing to seal a buyout deal with Microsoft at $33 a share, this CEO search could very well be one of its most important search projects to date.

Google gives Gmail users a to-do list


Google has added a to-do list to Gmail to help users be more productive.

When the new Tasks feature is enabled, a box shows up on top of the Gmail window. In it, users can add, reorder, and delete tasks. It's also possible to assign a due date to each action and even convert e-mails into tasks.

The feature--announced Monday on a company blog--will also run outside of the e-mail program. Adding items is as simple as clicking on a vacant part of the box and typing.

This may sound like a rehash of the many Post-It Note-like programs popular in the mid-'90s, but because most of us have morphed into e-mail junkies, this list is constantly in our face, reminding of things we wanted to get done.

Since e-mail is where and how many of us get things done, both in our personal and professional life, why not add a list of things that we may not be able to get done via e-mail, such as a reminder to make dinner reservations?

To enable Tasks, go to Settings in the upper right of the Gmail window and click the Labs tab. Click Enable next to the Tasks selection, click Save Changes. After refreshing Gmail, a Tasks link will appear under the Contacts link. Just click that Tasks link and you are ready to be productive.

Google chat afflicted by spotty service


Google's instant-messaging service suffered intermittent outages Monday, behaving inconsistently for several hours.

The issue began about 10:30 a.m. PST and affected a subset of users of both the Web page-based Gmail Chat and the installed Google Talk software, spokesman Andrew Kovacs said. Because of the problem, sometimes when people sent a message they'd get an error message it wasn't sent and the recipient didn't receive it, but often resending the message worked, he said.

"This issue has been resolved for most users, and we expect a resolution for all users within the next couple of hours," Kovacs said about three hours after the problem began.

Google's core business is in search and advertising, but it's trying to expand to be a fuller-featured Internet destination with Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs, which collectively are offered to paying customers as Google Apps subscriptions. Google offers a service level agreement to those customers.

Yahoo BOSS just behind Ask.com for search

Yahoo BOSS statistics

Search queries served by Yahoo's BOSS service have been steadily growing since the program's July launch.

(Credit: Yahoo)

Yahoo's BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service), which lets others use the company's search technology, is getting some traction.

The service, announced in July, now handles 10 million queries per day, Yahoo announced Monday. And with Google still king of the heap, and Microsoft breathing down Yahoo's neck, the company needs every scrap of influence it can get in the search market.

"We believe growing to more than 100 queries a second in just over 5 months says something about the demand for an open search platform," Bill Michels of the BOSS Team said in a blog post.

"As a point of reference, the total queries from these developer-built, BOSS-powered search engines would rank ahead of the combined searches done on both Facebook and Amazon, and just behind Ask.com," Michels said, citing ComScore statistics.

BOSS queries don't count toward Yahoo's market share, but they could help the company out. That's because heavy-traffic partners using the search infrastructure must either show Yahoo search ads or sign some form of revenue-sharing partnership.

More changes will come to BOSS next year, including the revenue-sharing initiative. "Since launch, we've been focused on adding features and building up the ecosystem. We'll maintain that emphasis in 2009, as well as adding monetizing capabilities to the platform," Michels said.

With BOSS, partners get extensive leeway with Yahoo search results. They may reorder them, mix them with their own results, or filter out particular results, for example. Yahoo handles much of the heavy lifting, including crawling the Web, indexing the pages, and delivering the search results through the BOSS API (application programming interface).

MySpace 'Connects' with Google for MySpaceID

As part of the Le Web conference in Paris, News Corp.'s MySpace announced that it has taken a deeper plunge into the data portability pool.

The social network has announced its support for Google Friend Connect, which launched in full last week, and is using the standard to help power a new set of tools called the MySpace Open Platform. In conjunction, MySpace has ditched the distinctly unsexy moniker of "Data Availability" in favor of the new sobriquet "MySpaceID"for its universal log-in project. The Open Platform, in addition to MySpaceID, encompasses its OpenSocial-compatible app platform and the Post To MySpace sharing feature.

Right now, with MySpaceID, members can log in to partner sites with their MySpace usernames and find which of their MySpace friends use those partner sites. In the future, it'll also synchronize feed activity much like the rival Facebook Connect and allow MySpace members to register for third-party site accounts with their MySpace URLs.

Along with Google Friend Connect, MySpaceID was built with open standards OAuth, OpenSocial, and OpenID. MySpace, as well as Google, is one of the founding partners of the OpenSocial Foundation.

MySpace also announced the first two partners for MySpaceID: European mobile giant Vodafone and personalized home page service Netvibes. It still hasn't yet rolled out log-in credentials for the original Data Availability launch partners--Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo--but product manager Max Engel says those are still in the works.

Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect both launched last week, spurring a return to the social-networking turf wars and power struggle for control of the almighty "social graph."

Microsoft's Massive ratchets up in-game ads

NEW YORK--"Even in a down year that we're all facing, this industry's growing," said J.J. Richards, the newly appointed general manager of in-game advertising company Massive, at an advertiser event Wednesday.

"Versus other mediums," Richards said, "in-game advertising has unparalleled engagement."

Massive, which has been owned by Microsoft since 2006, took over a below-ground nightclub in Manhattan's West Village for its first "upfront" event, modeled off of the eponymous television ad pitch events for advertisers and media buyers. It also marked Richards' debut as head of Massive; he served as the head of Microsoft's Xbox Live division for several years and then Microsoft's advertising division.

The mantra of the afternoon: In-game advertising, despite still being an emerging medium, is an effective spot for ad dollars at a time when budgets are getting alarmingly tight. Or at least that's what the execs say--and game sales seem to agree for the time being. "As the demographics go, it hits this very elusive target audience around 18-to-34-year-old males, hard to find anywhere else," Richards said. "They spend more money on games than they do in music or movies."

There was little talk of the dire advertising climate, but an undercurrent of practicality ran through the event as speakers stressed in-game advertising's effectiveness. Massive executives boasted research statistics that suggest exposure to a brand via in-game advertising improves its perception by 31 percent, and that 60 percent of gamers remember ads that they see. Massive can reach 27 million gamers, they said.

The company simultaneously announced that it had forged a multi-year ad partnership with Activision, which just closed its merger with Vivendi to become Activision Blizzard. It'll be the exclusive ad provider for 18 Activision titles for the PC and Xbox 360, including Guitar Hero and Transformers.

A parade of advertising representatives from Massive partners like Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, THQ, and Activision took the stage to explain how their titles are choice spots for advertisements, from product placement to mini-contests to streaming videos.

But the easiest form of in-game advertising, it appears, remains basic display ads, often in the form of virtual billboards and signs in settings like cityscapes and sports arenas. "Sometimes the developers decide (a game's) going to take place in a swamp, and then there's no advertising," joked Jeffrey Dickstein, digital ad sales director at Ubisoft, as he showed off the "realistic urban settings" in games like the impending I Am Alive, which takes place in Chicago.

Massive made headlines shortly before last month's presidential election, when Barack Obama's campaign team bought in-game ads in some Xbox 360 games--a first for a political campaign.