Activision Blizzard, the largest independent maker of video games, announced that it had better-than-expected quarterly earnings for the third quarter. That’s a bit of a surprise since recession fears have dogged the company, as well as rumors that some of its games were not selling well.

The company credited a good reception for its major franchise games: Guitar Hero 5, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, and its World of Warcraft online subscription game.

Revenues for the quarter Source: VentureBeat RSS Feed

We’re only a few hours into the official Droid era, but already it appears that Motorola’s bet on Google’s mobile OS was a good move. The first Android 2.0 device is conjuring memories of the iPhone’s debut, prompting techies to line up by the dozen in Manhattan, inspiring a tweeting frenzy on Twitter and helping to boost shares of the Schaumburg, Ill.-based phone manufacturer. But to fully leverage all the hype, Motorola should invest in ads that push its brand and increase consumerSource: GigaOM RSS Feed

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes kicked off his quarterly earnings call by explaining why the company is cutting hundreds of jobs in its Time Inc. magazine unit.

But if you’re impatient, you can simply look at the following table, which details the publisher’s Q3 performance:

Bewkes has a less drastic spin on the cuts, of course: He argues that among other things, they will help “increase consumer utility.” How’s that? Well, Fortune magazine, for instance, will publishSource: All Things Digital RSS Feed

We spotted the IdeaPad U150 sitting pretty as far back as CEATEC, but now it seems the 11.6-inch beaut is finally finding its way out into the wild, wild… wilds. The suave folks over at Netbooked were able to wrap their paws around a retail unit, and aside from just unboxing it on video (which was a nice gesture in its own right), they also ran it through some basic tasks and spit out a few general opinions. Hit the links below if you’d like to follow the journey from undressing to batterySource: Engadget RSS Feed

If you haven’t heard, the PlayStation Wii is so successful, it pretty much prints money. Wait, Sony didn’t make the Wii? Then how did the market analysts of DFC Intelligence come to the conclusion that “Sony was saved by the success of the Wii?”
According to DFC, the Wii’s mainstream appeal forced Microsoft into a successful, but not entirely dominant position. “The main danger Sony faced was that the Xbox 360 would become embedded as the system of choice. Instead consumers flocked to Source: Houstonist RSS Feed

Since Michelin’s been dragging its wheels forever on the Tweel project, Resilient Technologies announced a competitor called, unimaginatively, the Non-Pneumatic Tire (NPT), which is being developed with US Military cooperation with planned prototype delivery scheduled for late 2011.

We spoke with Resilient Tech’s Vice Pres of Business Affairs Edward Hall, who filled us in on this interesting new product. The US military Humvees currently operate with a pneumatic tire with a run-flatSource: Jalopnik RSS Feed

We may be veering off too far into sports territory here, but the World Series is a video event, so we’ll go ahead and post the news that not only are the New York Yankees up 3 – 1 over Philly, A-Rod and Co. are also being out-Tweeted over the Phillies. According to Trendrr, the Yankees dominated the social media buzz last week, averaging roughly 35,000 Twitter posts a day, and the Phillies have averaged just 20,000. New York peaked early in the week with more than 76,000 Tweets about theSource: GigaOM Network RSS Feed

The Foo Fighters’ live show on Friday night came with little fanfare outside of the band’s core fanbase, but it delivered 2 hours and 45 minutes of greatest hits to more than 150,000 viewers around the world. The video drew 440,000 total live streams, with a max of 20,000 at any one time.

Watch live streaming video from foofighters at livestream.com

Airing on Livestream (both web and iPhone) and Facebook and produced and powered by Livestream out of the band’s privateSource: GigaOM Network RSS Feed

One of our really solid connects just had some information for us and we think you’re going to love it. With the Motorola DROID being Verizon’s hot handset at the moment, you’d figure that the Moto would be it for a while, right? Well, if our guy is right, we could soon be bombarded with a lot more handsets. Apparently if the DROID launch/sales go really well, (is probably will) Verizon will push up handset releases and practically aim for the smartphone crown. Were talking HTC Passion,Source: TechBlogger RSS Feed

Geohot, creator of the popular blackra1n that will jailbreak your iPhone OS 3.1.2, has announced the blacksn0w tool to unlock your iPhone 3GS with baseband 05.11.07. The blacksn0w will be part of blackra1n and will be released on November 4th for free at blackra1n.com with install instructions. Click inside for a video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

[via geohot/boygeniusreport]

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