Archive for: halo

Cisco Systems Acquires Norway’s Tandberg Video Communications for $3 billion

Cisco Systems has announced today that its buying Norway’s Tandberg video communications business for $3 billion.

The deal should enhance Cisco’s own TelePresence business where it sells room-sized video conferencing systems that make you feel like you’re talking to people in the same room. These systems costs hundreds of thousands of dollars each but executives feel they can use them to save on travel costs. Tandberg is one of the chief rivals in the business and it makes specialized software for managing the conferencing systems and managing the connections between them.

This new deal is going to put a lot of pressure on Hewlett-Packard who have a very strong video conferencing business with their Halo product. In theory, video conferencing creates a lot of Internet traffic, which in turn helps Cisco’s core business of selling networking gear.

Cisco has bought 40 companies over the past five years, according to the New York Times. In the past week, merger mania has erupted, with Dell buying Perot Systems for $3.9 billion and Xerox buying ACS for $6.4 billion.

Grand Theft Auto IV Sells 6 Million Copies in First Week!

It has been reported that Grand Theft Auto IV sales have been much higher than expected. In the first week of sales there has been over 6 million copies sold which has reportedly raked in over $500 million in sales. That first week performance blows away the previous record held by “Halo 3″ which sold about 2.6 million units and earned $300 million. First day sales for “Grand Theft Auto IV,” including all pre-orders, totaled 3.6 million copies.

Even those guys at the Pirate Bay got on the Grand Theft Auto bandwagon and posted a nice logo and with some cheeky rips.