MOSCOW — A Russian Proton-M rocket completed the successful launch Saturday of an advanced Chinese communications satellite that should help expand television coverage in parts of Southeast Asia. The Roscosmos space agency said the AsiaSat 7 satellite was placed in its designed orbit at 0423 GMT after being launched from the Baikonur space centre in ex-Soviet Kazakhstan on Friday evening. The mission was accomplished after a recent string of Russian space failures that included the botched launch this summer of what was billed as Europe’s largest telecommunications satellite. The Hong Kong-based Asia Satellite Telecommunications Company (AsiaSat) said in a statement tha

Microsoft has bought video discovery service Videosurf to “evolve search and discovery of entertainment content” on Xbox 360. The press release sent out by Microsoft this morning in the US confirms the company will be integrated into Xbox 360 “ecosystem” in some form, noting that it’ll “evolve search and discovery of entertainment content” via Xbox Live. “This holiday we will launch voice search across our entertainment partners on Xbox Live. Over time, as we integrate VideoSurf’s technology into our system, we are excited about the potential to have content tagged in real time to increase the speed and relevance of the search results,” said Xbox Live director, Alex Gar

Back the day when we were thankful to play whatever Japanese RPGs we were given, we looked wistfully at all the huge titles that never came to the US, including Final Fantasy V. English-speaking players couldn’t officially familiarize themselves with the game until it was released on the PlayStation, but by then it looked fairly dated compared to games like Final Fantasy VIII and Parasite Eve. Few bothered to play it, which is a real shame, and it’s a mistake you can now rectify should you download the game off PSN starting today. Above: The main reason why this one ruled Though it’s graphics aren’t as good as FFVI, and the story is one of the weaker ones in Final Fantasy

Last year, there were plenty of rumors that Facebook was working on building a phone of its own. Ultimately, a pair of humdrum devices with a simple “Facebook button” ended up hitting the market, and the rumors stopped… until now. On Monday, AllThingsD said it has learned that Facebook is working closely with HTC on a new phone currently codenamed “Buffy.” The device will supposedly run a modified version of Android that, obviously, will put Facebook’s services smack in the faces of its users. The two companies are also working to add support so that developers can write HTML5 apps for the phone. “Our mobile strategy is simple: We think every mobile device is better if it is

The new desktop software will offer Windows 7 Facebook users access to Chat, the ticker feed and notifications. The standalone application is targeted towards users of Facebook’s chat service. Facebook’s most popular application on its platform is the Windows Live Messenger client which has 18.2 million daily active users. The new Messenger application was developed entirely by Facebook according to TechCrunch. The application only works on Windows 7 and Microsoft has reportedly not been involved in the development process. Facebook and Microsoft have both been working together closely over a number of features on the popular social networking site. Facebook announced a video callin

Apple has admitted that 15 of its Chinese suppliers are violating environmental regulations and poisoning the local population. Apparently Jobs mob has sent five employees to meet with five different Chinese environmental groups on November 15, only to learn about several troubling environmental issues at as many as 22 parts suppliers. Chinese environmentalist groups claimed the factories were releasing toxic gasses, heavy metal sludge and other pollutants. It is the first time that Apple has admitted wrongdoing in relation to environmental pollution from any of its Chinese supply chains. Jobs mob has always claimed it was committed to “the highest standards of social responsibility

HP announced the Folio 13, its first business Ultrabook with a thin and light design. According to HP, the new laptop offers up to 9 hours of battery life, the highest performance available among Ultrabook devices currently on the market. The 13.3-inch Ultrabook measures just 18mm thin and weighs only 3.3 pounds. The Folio 13 is powered by Intel’s Core i3 1.4GHz or Core i5 1.6GHz processor with 4GB of RAM and 128GB SSD for storage. The ultra slim notebook comes with a HP TrueVision HD webcam, a backlit keyboard, a 3-button touchpad, Ethernet LAN port, USB 3.0 connector, and HDMI output. You can also find WiFi connectivity and Dolby Advanced Audio. Coming on 7 December 2011, the HP Folio

Mozilla’s latest version of it’s popular Firefox web browser saw rapid adoption following its release last week. Firefox 8, the fifth major release of the Mozilla browser so far this year, became available for download on November 9th. Within one day, the new iteration had already grown to account for 7% of all Firefox traffic across Chitika’s ad network, the company reported on Tuesday. By the end of the browser’s first week of availability, Firefox 8 claimed 35% of all Firefox traffic. “This is yet another testament to Mozilla’s recently adopted rapid release process, particularly made evident by the fact that first seven versions of the browser took seven years to release,�

Amazon recently quietly purchased Yap, a Charlotte-based company that specializes in voice-to-text technology. CLTBlog, a Charlotte-focused website, discovered a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that doesn’t actually name Amazon as the purchaser of Yap, but it does attribute the acquisition to a company called “Dion Acquisition Sub,” and the “Surviving Corporation” listed by the SEC has the same address as an Amazon.com office located on 410 Terry Avenue in Seattle, Washington. Read on for more. According to Yap’s website, it appears the company’s voicemail service was shut down during October of this year, a month after the SEC documents say

Sprint and Clearwire are close to inking a deal that will extend an existing network-sharing agreement an additional 3-5 years, Bloomberg Businessweek said Friday. The current agreement will terminate at the end of 2012. Allegedly, the deal is not final and could still fall through. If it is finalized, Sprint is poised to pay less for access to Clearwire’s network than it currently does. Clearwire has been seeking additional funding to help it build out a 4G LTE network, which is expected to cost $600 million, but Sprint will not provide any of the financing. “This would likely help [Clearwire] get funding, because it would provide increased visibility into revenue-getting opportunit