* U. S. price same as current Wii U console
* Japanese price up 20 pct from Wii U
* Price too steep considering number of games -fund manager
* Shares end at two-month low
(Recasts with price reaction; adds comments from industry watchers, details on game titles)
TOKYO, Jan 13 (Reuters) – Nintendo Co Ltd on Friday priced its first console in about four years above market expectations, disappointing investors and clouding its prospects of winning back gamers who have shifted from consoles to smartphones.
The Japanese firm said it will launch the Switch, a hybrid home console and handheld device, on March 3. It will be priced $299.99 in the United States, the same as Nintendo’s current Wii U console, whereas in Japan, it will cost about 20 percent over its predecessor at 29,980 yen.
Nintendo, which began by making playing cards in the late 19th century, is counting on the Switch to revive its earnings which rely heavily on console sales.
But the pricing left Nintendo shares ending at a two month low after falling as much as 6.3 percent. That compared with a 0.8 percent gain in the benchmark Nikkei 225 share price index .
« Pricing at around 25,000 yen would have been received well but the pricing is on the high side, » said Fumio Matsumoto, senior fund manager at Dalton Capital in Japan.
« The machine can be used both as a home console and handheld device so the higher price is understandable to some extent, but there aren’t really enough software titles to justify that start price, » he said.
Nintendo’s Wii console, which debuted in 2006, captured casual gamers with popular fitness and sports features, propelling the firm’s profit to record highs.
But the succeeding Wii U flopped due to a dearth of popular game titles and a consumer migration to smartphone games, pushing the company into a loss for three consecutive years through March 2014.
The company finally entered mobile gaming last year by bringing its Super Mario Bros franchise to Apple Inc’s iPhones, but it still sees console gaming as central to its business.
Analysts said the Switch is likely to offer a richer game lineup than its predecessor as the new console is powered by processor chips based on game developer-friendly architecture by designer ARM.
Nintendo said more than 50 game software makers are developing 80 titles for the Switch. Of those, eight will be available at the time of launch in Japan, including « The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.  »
But some industry watchers are cautious about potential difficulties for developers.
« It is a console with a complicated controller setup and that means game makers have to create titles to fit with that, which is a problem, » said Kenji Ono, an independent gaming journalist.
« Also it is unclear how it connects with online gaming and there was no announcement of how it links up with (smartphone games) Pokemon Go or Super Mario Run.  »
Nintendo previously said it expects to ship 2 million Switch consoles by the end of March.
(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Additional reporting by Yoshiyuki Osada, Tim Kelly and Daiki Iga; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

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Sushovan Hussain, the former chief financial officer (CFO) of software company Autonomy, is to face charges of « conspiracy and wire fraud » after being indicted in a court in San Francisco, California last…

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Stack Overflow recently announced making its dataset available through Google’s BigQuery. Using regular SQL statements, developers can query the full set of Stack Overflow data including posts, votes, tags, and badges. Using BigQuery’s REST API developers can export data on demand using their tool of choice. Available datasets in BigQuery can be JOINed using plain SQL allowing developers to derive useful insights across domains.
Along with Stack Overflow dataset, BigQuery provides access to Hacker News dataset and GitHub dataset which together with Stack Overflow can give useful insights. Also added recently are three datasets around New York City data, regarding motor vehicle collisions , Citi bike trips and non-emergency municipal service requests calls to 311. These complement an existing BigQuery dataset with every taxi and limousine trip in New York City from 2009 to 2015.
Other BigQuery datasets currently available include weather information dated for some data as far as 1763 , Medicare data, 3.5 million digitized books , an image dataset with metadata and labelling for 9 million URLs, IRS and Major League Baseball data. A dataset with worldwide news and events, updated every 15 minutes is also available through the GDELT project , along with Genomics datasets through the Personal Genome Project , Wikipedia page views data and almost 2 billion Reddit comments.
Stack Overflow dataset is available through the BigQuery console here and further discussion is available in the reddit community .

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Adobe has released an interesting 30-second concept video that demonstrates a digital assistant making minor changes to an image.
The video begins with a user opening an already edited photograph on an iPad, proceeding to tap on a microphone icon triggering a response from the digital assistant – which sounds similar to Cortana or Siri.
Instead of actually using your fingers, the desired effects are activated upon voice command, allowing a user to make minor edits such as cropping, flipping, and the ability to undo those changes. While there may be future scenarios where having a digital editor could prove to be helpful, the demonstration is rather simplistic.
What is more interesting is that most of the verbal commands used natural language structures, such as « Now flip it sideways » and « I would like to reframe this picture ». Following each command, the assistant responds and executes each action.
In the video description accompanying the YouTube video, Adobe said:
Adobe states this is only the first step, and that it may be quite a while before users can take advantage of the assistant? However, Adobe has been working on introducing an AI for its Adobe Creative Cloud suite, called Adobe Sensei for quite some time. The service was announced back in November last year and it may assist users by matching fonts and help identify faces in the Liquify tool.
While the video is only a concept, it could open up some interesting possibilities at least in the creative market. One can assume, however, that the digital assistant may be better off residing and assisting users of Adobe’s Photoshop Express , than within the company’s professional suites.
Source: TechRadar

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For many mobile laptop users, tethering from their smartphone to get Wi-Fi is a fact of life. While this is convenient, there are some downsides. The data used by the laptop will count against the mobile data allowance, meaning potential data overages. Another pain point is that it can drain your phone’s battery.
A good alternative to smartphone tethering is using a separate mobile hotspot. Today, Verizon announces the latest such device for its network — the MiFi 7730L Jetpack by Novatel Wireless. This product is quite impressive, as it features a color display, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and USB-C storage support. It can even be used as a battery bank to charge your smartphone. Yeah, this thing looks incredible.
« With a 2.4-inch full-color touch screen display packed with features and onscreen help, the MiFi 7730L makes it easier than ever to change settings. MiFi Share provides a new way to share files with connected devices on the local, secure, Wi-Fi network using any mass storage device with a type-C USB connector, » says Verizon.
The Type-C storage sharing is quite a handy feature, and it could prove very valuable. Imagine this — you plug a Type-C flash drive into the MiFi 7730L Jetpack. Then, by sharing the connection with friends, family, or coworkers, you can opt to share the files with them too. A mobile hotspot with shared storage — how cool is that?
Steve Linke, Novatel Wireless Director of Sales explains, « The Novatel Wireless MiFi team is excited to deliver the next premium MiFi product to Verizon’s industry-leading device portfolio. The MiFi 7730L is built with the latest technology to leverage Verizon’s network advancements and has the ability to stay connected all day making this Jetpack essential for individuals and businesses looking for secure, reliable connectivity wherever and whenever they need it.  »
Verizon shares the following notable specs.
At $199, the MiFi 7730L Jetpack is reasonably priced. With that said, you can save $100 by signing up for a two-year connection plan. While I am not a huge fan of contracts, you will need Verizon service for it anyway, right? It may be worthwhile. In other words, if you plan to use it every month for two or more years, the contact could make sense.
Ready to buy it? You can get it here immediately.

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