Hasta La Gadget!

Seriously? Fox & Friends host Elisabeth Hasselbeck did suggest in the wake of the recent mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard required a tougher stance on video game purchases, namely creating a registry to track just who purchased what, and that the entire is a whole lot less about “gun control”. I suppose if one were to extrapolate such a line of thought, it would also mean tracking who purchased the different driving games, and less about not drinking/texting/chatting on the phone while driving.

In Hasselbeck’s own words, “You know, certainly, this topic has already taken a turn again, the left’s already making this about gun control.” It goes without saying that such a comment or statement is going to raise a whole lot of buzz, whether you are for or against her. Co-host Brian Kilmeade followed up with a question, “Is this about gun control or is this about a guy who has a history of drinking a lot, playing video games a lot and a few shooting incidents?” What do you think of the entire situation? If one were to have this huge obsession with shooting games, but gun control laws were tighter than they should be, then such a tragedy would not have happened, right?

It takes two hands to clap, and in this case, the “weight” of one hand is different from the other.

Are Video Games To Blame For The Recent Navy Yard Shooting? original content from Ubergizmo.

BlackBerry has just announced that it expects to post a net operating loss of roughly $1 billion for the fiscal second quarter, the figure is expected to range between $950 million to $995 million. It was reported a few days ago that the company was contemplating laying off 40 percent of its entire workforce. BlackBerry has now confirmed that massive job cuts are going to take place, nearly 4,500 employees will be laid off from all departments. Trading of BlackBerry shares halted for a while in the U.S. prior to the announcement, trading has now resumed but the stock is down 16 percent as of this writing.

Total smartphone sales in the quarter are expected to be around 3.7 million units, as opposed to 7.4 million this time last year. No word as yet on service revenues and remaining number of subscribers. The situation isn’t expected to get better anytime soon. In fact, many analysts are of the view that perhaps BlackBerry’s phone business will have zero value if the company is sold. There’s also been chatter today that BlackBerry has retained PriceWaterHouse for a leveraged buyout. Recent reports suggest that the company is looking for a quick sale, which it hopes to close by November. Apparently, there’s thin interest in the market right now for a whole acquisition of BlackBerry. The company says that it will focus on offering two high end and two entry level devices from now on, with focus on the entreprise market.

BlackBerry Q2 Operating Loss Roughly $1 Billion, Job Cuts Confirmed original content from Ubergizmo.

A building that can actually disappear? Well, “disappearing” here does not involve any kind of invisibility cloak, but rather, it will be on the receiving end of LED rows that will help create the illusion of invisibility. In a nutshell, whatever is seen behind the building will be projected onto the front of the building, which means whoever is looking in the building’s direction will think that they are seeing through it, when in fact, it is just covered by a projection of the back of the building.

This particular building has already picked up an approval for its plans by the South Korean government in order to give them the green light to construct an invisible tower outside of Seoul near the Incheon International Airport. Hmmm, having an invisible building located near the airport does not quite sound like a good idea at all, after all, what if the planes do not see this building?

This building will be under the purview of GDS Architects of Pasadena, California, where they are the ones who have installed cameras which will capture real-time views from behind the building, before showing them off on the front thanks to the wonders of a bunch of LEDs.

South Korea To Build Invisible Tower original content from Ubergizmo.

Mergers and acquisitions are nothing new in the business world, and sometimes, they are seen as crucial as well as essential so that the industry is able to consolidate and offer a better range of services to its customer base. For instance, we do know that Microsoft has purchased Nokia quite recently, but what other buzz do we hear where the mobile world is concerned? Apparently, there are whispers going around that Acer and ASUS could potentially merge. Both of these companies hail from Taiwan, and ASUS Chairman Johnny Shih did respond to a question concerning a possible merger between the two, where he mentioned that the industry happens to be in a transition period, and people should keep “an open mind” when it comes to mergers.

Shih did have a penchant to talk about organic growth for ASUS in the past, but this is a refreshing turnabout. ASUS’ bread and butter, the sales of motherboards, isn’t exactly doing gangbusters, and ASUS seems to focus more on mobile devices recently, so a merger with Acer might benefit both companies. Of course, these are just rumors as at press time, but the market did react favorably to this rumor, with the respective share prices of both companies going up.

ASUS And Acer Merger Rumor original content from Ubergizmo.

There has been a lot of speculation these days about BlackBerry’s future. The company announced a few weeks ago that it has formed a committee to probe “Strategic Alternatives,” the alternatives include alliances, partnerships and even a sale of the company. There hasn’t been any chatter about a partnership, speculation is focused on the sale. There is said to be thin interest for the company, some believe that it might even be broken up in parts just to be sold off. However, despite all the rumors, the Canadian government hopes that BlackBerry can “make it on their own.”

Talking to reports in Ontario, Canada’s Industry Minister James Moore said that the issues BlackBerry were approaching them with a month ago were quite different “than the news that came out yesterday.” It was rumored yesterday in a WSJ report that the company may be laying off 40 percent of its entire workforce, the job cuts are expected to affect all departments. Moore says that he wants BlackBerry to grow and “to continue to employ Canadians.” Just yesterday, BlackBerry announced its new phablet, the Z30. Its the fourth BB10 powered device it has released this year, the platform was supposed to be the company’s saviour, but it hasn’t managed to bring back its lost market share as yet.

Canadian Government Hopes BlackBerry Can ‘Make It On Their Own’ original content from Ubergizmo.