LG Electronics will introduce today the first networked Blu-ray Disc player with the integrated ability to access and play back Netflix instant-streaming video content.

The LG model BD300 will be only the second set-top device compatible with the Netflix instant-streaming offering. The first was a dedicated $99 Roku player introduced earlier in the year. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 will also add the capability this fall.

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The size of Pakistan’s Information Technology & IT-enabled Services industry stands at two billion dollar annually with a 50 per cent growth rate. IT Exports stand at one billion dollar according to a Research Study commissioned by Pakistan Software Houses Association (PASHA)

This was stated by Jehan Ara, President PASHA, while talking to the Media during a one-day Career Expo for IT students and professionals organised by PASHA in a local hotel. However, she said that, Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) claimed a higher figure with 2.8 billion dollar industry size and 1.8 billion-dollar exports.

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Microsoft dropped the price of its 20 GB Xbox 360 Pro (Premium) game console by $50 to $299.99. However, the price drop isn’t permanent as it is designed to quickly clear the inventory of these models to make room for a new 60 GB version. As soon as the 20 GB consoles are gone, you will be paying just as much as you would have before.

Weekend flyers of all major consumer electronics resellers confirmed what had been widely reported last week: Microsoft’s hard drive-equipped Xbox 360 will get cheaper: A $50 price reduction means that the device now costs $299instead of $349, which means that the console is now $100 cheaper than Sony’s 40 GB PS3 and just $50 more expensive than Nintendo’s Wii ($249). But on a closer look, it isn’t a simple price reduction of the Xbox 360, it is a marketing move.

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Dell has released a new line of notebooks aimed at multimedia creators and connoisseurs.The Studio laptops will sport a number of features designed for high-end multimedia users, such as an optional blu-ray drive and a high-resolution 17-inch screen.

The new notebooks will also sport Intel Core 2 Duo processors up to 2.5ghz and offer the option of up to 3GB of memory and a 256MB ATI Radeon graphics card. Dell hopes that the Studio line will appeal to users who lead what the company calls “high-def mobile lifestyles.”

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Google wants to make it easier for marketers to pick appropriate Web sites for their online ads with a new tool it announced Tuesday called Ad Planner.

The tool, first reported about by The New York Times on Monday, is aimed at advertising agencies’ media planners, whose job is to decide where to place their clients’ ads.

By feeding Ad Planner with their target audience’s demographic information, media planners will get a list of sites that should prove effective marketing vehicles.

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Firefox 3, the recently released open source browser from Mozilla, has claimed that over 8 million copies of the software were downloaded on Download Day. The company stated early that their goal was to surpass the initial release of Firefox 2, at 1.6 million downloads in 24 hours, and hit 5 million downloads. The goal of the marketing campaign is to set a Guinness World Record for most downloaded software in a single day.

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NEW YORK–The inaugural Internet Week New York was eight days of open bars and missed opportunities. On the red carpet at the 12th Annual Webby Awards on Tuesday night, the final event of the week-long city-sanctioned festival, I called out to Internet Week executive director David-Michel Davies and asked him what he’d do next year to change it. “We’d like to do a better job with the schedule,” he said to me after hesitating for a moment. He added a few more words about how a better calendar could help Internet Week-goers connect, before publicists snagged Davies for a string of photo ops. That was the problem with Internet Week: connecting. But it’s an issue that can’t just be solved by hiring a few extra Ruby developers for the festival calendar.

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MUMBAI: World Wrestling Entertainment’s (WWE) new marketing stunt revolves around its chairman Vince McMahon giving away a million dollars every week.
A tongue ‘n’ cheek McMahon says, “This is my own version of an economic stimulus plan for our viewers, which will no doubt increase television ratings as well.”
To participate, viewers must register on wwe.com each week and then watch Monday Night Raw on USA Network to acquire the code necessary to win. Winners will be contacted live throughout each broadcast.
More than 650,000 fans have registered for the promotion earning over a million sweepstakes entries in the four days.

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Time Warner Inc’s AOL is set to expand Platform-A, its integrated ad buying platform, in Europe with an aim to further its business opportunities in the field of global display ad.
AOL (formerly America Online, Inc.), an American Internet services and media company, has a publishing network in Europe that includes owned and operated sites in 13 countries in the region.
The company has named Brendan Condon as the head of Platform-A’s International operations, based in London. Condon will report to Platform-A president Lynda Clarizio.

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Google CEO Eric Schmidt has advised sceptics convinced of the limitations of search engine marketing that his company still has plenty ideas for improving the technology and targeting advertising more effectively. In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung he predicted that the mobile internet would be the next major advertising platform. The iPhone was the first mobile device with a good web browser, said Schmidt, and more such devices will follow. Advertising will then become very personal, he continued. In a few years, mobile advertising will generate more revenue than advertising on the normal web.

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LAHORE: Samsung Electronics consolidated its presence in the global colour laser printer market by releasing the world’s smallest colour laser printer.

“The newly-released personal colour laser printer CLP-315 is about 20 percent smaller than the world’s previous smallest model CLP-300. With black and high glossy edges, the CLP-315 is based on Samsung’s NO-NOISTM technology, there by reducing the printer noise to 45dBA, lower than those created by general dialogue (50dBA). The CLP-315 is capable of printing as many as 16 sheets (black and white) and 4 sheets (colour printing) per minute. Compared with its previous version CLP-300, the cutting-edge model boasts a great improvement in photo printing capability,” said Samsung Head of Marketing Shahid Khan.

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