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Tuesday’s session of the Game Developers Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco opened with a provocative topic: Why the iPhone Has Changed Everything. For an industry that has long regarded Apple as an afterthought when it comes to serious gaming, it was an eye-opening presentation.

The talk was delivered by Neil Young, founder and CEO of ngmoco, one of the leading developers of games for the iPhone and the iPod touch. Among the company’s titles are the popular Word Fu, Rolando, Topple, Dropship, and Dr. Awesome, Microsurgeon M.D.

Functionality is the Key

As an introduction to the power of the iPhone in the gaming industry, Young reviewed the market battle between the handheld Nintendo DS and the Sony PlayStation Portable. He argued that although the PSP may have superior technical specifications, the DS proved more popular because it offered greater functionality.

That positions the iPhone to be a particularly powerful platform, Young suggested, because of the enormous number of features built into the device. Future games will be able to take advantage of the iPhone’s social-networking capabilities, its camera, the contact list, the weather app, and so on. In Young’s words, game developers will be able to “leverage every surface of the device.”

ABI research analyst Zippy Aima agreed with Young. “In the current scenarios,” she said, “the iPhone indeed is a revolutionary product. Earlier gaming was limited to portable video-game devices, and then came along the likes of Nintendo and now we have the iPhone, which is a complete package, including gaming.”

Superheated Market

If ngmoco is any indication, iPhone games are a significant part of the success of Apple’s App Store. Young told the audience that ngmoco games have been installed on more than seven million devices.

“The market is superheated. The pace of adoption is going way faster than the DS,” he said….

Michael Dell may have been speaking from halfway around the world, but the voice of the CEO for a $20 billion company carries a long way. The topic was small-screen devices and specifically smartphones, a market with which Dell has flirted with but never quite taken the plunge. But Dell said that may change.

“It is true that we are exploring smaller-screen devices,” he said. “We don’t have any announcements to share today, but stay tuned, as when we have new news we will share that with you.”

Crowded Market

The biggest question surrounding the possibility of a Dell smartphone product is whether it’s simply too late. “The smartphone market is cluttered and crowded,” said Greg Sterling, founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence. Moreover, Sterling added, the market is overwhelmingly dominated by Apple’s iPhone, which makes it very difficult for new entries to distinguish themselves.

In fact, there are reports emerging that last year, Dell built a prototype smartphone that was rejected by the major cellular carriers for a variety of reasons, including a thin set of features, lackluster design, and cost.

Now new rumors are circulating that Dell might try to leapfrog into the smartphone race by purchasing Palm, a company increasingly short on cash and in need of a major boost from the soon-to-be-released Pre.

“I think the possibility that Dell might buy Palm is an interesting story,” Sterling said. “Palm’s predicament is that too many expectations are being heaped on the Pre. It’s an interesting phone, but it can’t carry the whole company, which will undoubtedly disappoint investors.”

Mobile Internet Device?

A more interesting possibility, Sterling suggested, would be for Dell to consider manufacturing a device larger than a smartphone that might have more capabilities.

“In the field of mobile Internet devices,” he said, “there are some really interesting possibilities. If you solve the connection problem,…

A new wireless video game console is debuting in Brazil. Dubbed Zeebo, its makers are billing it as the first affordable 3-D game console designed specifically for emerging global markets — and it’s backed by Qualcomm.

Secure 3G wireless game delivery is one of Zeebo’s hallmarks. The console fills a gap in emerging markets where content for the Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, and Sony PlayStation 3 is too expensive for the middle class, or is not culturally or locally relevant. Software piracy also makes these markets unattractive for content providers.

“The Zeebo console will deliver a truly engaging and entertaining gaming experience to a potential billion new consumers around the world, many of whom have never experienced gaming in the home,” said John Rizzo, CEO of Zeebo. “The system provides an intuitive, quick and easy-to-use home-shopping user experience featuring popular, culturally optimized content from leading game publishers and developers around the world. It also delivers high value and warranty protection compared to gray-market products, with no need for a separate wireless access plan.”

Untapped Consumer Markets

The Zeebo system ships with four embedded games and gives users the ability to download a fifth title free. It carries a suggested retail price of US$199 in Brazil. That’s nearly one-fifth the price of mainstream leading consoles. In other international markets, Zeebo is expected to retail for less than US$179 this year and well below US$149 in volume next year.

Game publishers and developers like Capcom, Com2uS, Digital Chocolate, EA Mobile, Gameloft, Glu, Id Software, Machineworks Northwest, Namco Networks and THQ are porting console, PC, dedicated handheld, and high-end mobile titles to the Zeebo platform.

“Zeebo is bringing an innovative console and distribution model to untapped consumer markets with significant potential,” said Michael Pachter, director of research for Wedbush Morgan Securities.

BOSTON, MA – March 23, 2009 – Core Security Technologies, provider of CORE IMPACT solutions for comprehensive enterprise security testing, today issued an advisory disclosing multiple vulnerabilities that could affect millions of organizations using HP’s OpenView systems and network management software.

An engineer from CoreLabs, the research arm of Core Security, determined that a trio of vulnerabilities in HP OpenView Network Node Manager (NNM) can be exploited remotely via buffer overflow to compromise mission-critical servers within an organization using the software. Upon making the discovery, CoreLabs immediately alerted HP’s Software Security Response Team to the vulnerabilities and the two companies have since coordinated efforts to ensure that a patch could be created and made available to protect users of the program.

CoreLabs experts uncovered the trio of reported vulnerabilities in HP OpenView NNM, which offers remote network system event and performance monitoring, while investigating other previously reported flaws in the software, and an HP-issued security patch meant to address those issues.

HP OpenView NNM is one of the most widely-deployed remote network management technologies used throughout enterprise organizations today, allowing network managers to monitor their physical networks, virtual network services and the relationships between those assets. The software aims to help administrators identify, diagnose and predict potential problems before they affect network performance and availability.

“While remote network management technologies offer substantial value in terms of allowing organizations to maintain constant vigilance and control over their networks, the flipside is that attackers can potentially use available vulnerabilities in these systems to wreak havoc on internal infrastructure,” said Ivan Arce, chief technology officer at Core Security. “It is vitally important for remote systems management solution providers to minimize these easily exploitable security flaws that can allow for remote system compromise.”

Successful exploitation of the vulnerabilities requires that attackers send specially crafted HTTP requests to HP OpenView’s…

Can Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web browser reclaim chunks of market share swiped by upstart Firefox?

The arrival last week of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), just two years after Microsoft’s last major browser upgrade, IE7, should help answer that question.

IE8, which can be downloaded free, has cool new features: “Web slices” let you quickly call up selected content from a Web page — such as updates from an eBay auction page — via the IE8 favorites bar; “accelerators” make it easier to cut and paste text from one page and insert it on another.

Beyond that, IE8 has restored some of Microsoft’s lost bravado. Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Windows product management, insists IE8 is uniformly faster at loading Web pages than Firefox 3, despite debate in tech circles about this claim.

“I feel very good that IE8 will be a reason to keep using IE,” Nash said in an interview. “And for our previous customers, who may not be using IE today, IE8 will be a compelling reason to come back.”

Web browsers were once so mundane that Microsoft took five years to upgrade IE6, introduced with Windows XP in 2001, to IE7. Millions still use IE6. Meanwhile, Firefox, introduced in late 2004, has racked up significant market share and popularized features, such as tab browsing, which lets you quickly click back to several open Web pages.

As of last month, Firefox commanded a 22 percent global market share vs. 68 percent for IE, according to Net Applications. Meanwhile, Opera, Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome are staking out potentially huge new turf for browsers on computing devices other than laptops and desktop PCs.

Web browsers have emerged as the doorway to an interactive Internet, which people are increasingly accessing on mobile devices, cars, TV recorders, even video gaming consoles. “We’re really happy to see Microsoft…

Covering Apple’s corporate activities is similar to watching the Vatican cardinals select a new pope. You’re reasonably certainly something is happening, but it’s hard to know exactly what or when.

One of the consequences of Apple’s notorious secrecy is that the slightest change to its Web site can spark rampant speculation about future developments. A good example is the latest microscopically examined (and microscopically sized) event: With little fanfare, Apple put an electronic discontinued sticker on Web sales of its Bluetooth headset for the iPhone.

The news that the $99 accessory (which originally debuted for $129) has been taken off the shelf has raised speculation that Apple is planning to do one of two things: Get out of the Bluetooth market altogether or introduce a new stereo version of the Bluetooth headset with the upcoming iPhone OS 3.0.

Mixed Reviews

When the Apple Bluetooth headset first debuted a couple of years ago, it received only mixed reviews. Some praised its hallmark Apple design elements of simplicity and elegance, its lack of garish lighting, and a thoughtful charger design that allowed both an iPhone and the headset to be charged at the same time. Others, however, complained that the device had poor battery life and range, and lacked controls for voice dial and volume.

The lackluster performance demonstrated by Apple’s headset created a great opportunity for third-party manufacturers, who were able to step in with lower-cost products that offered better performance and more features. Those manufacturers may be playing catch-up this summer if Apple does release a new model with stereo capability.

Michael Gartenberg, vice president at Interpret, said the Bluetooth headset is an example of Apple’s periodic efforts to enter the accessories market, and the discontinuation has more to do with software changes than a disinterest in selling add-ons.

“Given the new BT capabilities in iPhone 3.0,”…