TECH ROUND-UP: IPHONE 5, GODADDY GOES DOWN, NINTENDO REVEALS NEW TACTICS IN CONSOLE WAR

I’m going to attempt to not just talk about the iPhone 5 in all of its … um … shininess, but it’s kind of all that filled my news feeds last week.

I’m amazed that anything else got reported. AMAZED!

APPLE UNVEILS IPHONE 5, BECOMES FASTEST SELLING IPHONE EVER
Everybody knew this was coming. In a press event last week, Apple unveiled the specs for their new iPhone, promising a September 21 release date and a whole slew of new features.

Also as expected, within a couple of days, pre-orders have reached two million in the first 24 hours, surpassing the sales record set by the iPhone 4S, and all expectations surrounding how desperate Apple fans can get when a new product is released.

The main feature of the new iPhone is its larger screen and improved processor. The display is a four-inch diagonal retina display, a half-inch larger than the iPhone 4S, a size comparable to newer rival smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy Note. The iPhone 5 is also the first smartphone to feature the A6 processing chip, which will feature faster speeds and a longer battery life.

The new iPhone will also include LTE 4G coverage, but after that and a few other cosmetic changes, the iPhone 5 remains relatively the same as before, leaving some to wonder if there is any innovation left in the company. Although by some, I mean me.

Whether people agree or not, Apple is still going to make big bucks on the new design, so in the end they win. Now Samsung has even more of a reason to be pissed.

GODADDY GOES DOWN, REVEALING WHICH WEBSITES USE GODADDY
GoDaddy.com seems to be the joke of the web hosting industry. The infamous advertisements are trashy and outdated, and after backing SOPA then rejecting, the service’s reputation has taken a nose dive.

Last week, many users noticed that GoDaddy had gone down, taking millions of sites with it.

The service was out for almost an entire business day, leaving many businesses scrambling to try and explain to their users why they used GoDaddy. Talk about embarrassing.

Soon after the news hit, a Twitter user called @AnonymousOwn3r took credit for a distributed denial of-service (DDoS) attack that allegedly brought down the site, although later Anonymous distanced themselves from the user, calling it a solo venture.

Despite this, GoDaddy says that the outage was not the result of an attack, calling it an internal issue. I do not know what is worse. The fact that GoDaddy may have been hacked and isn’t admitting it, or that an internal issue caused it all to go down for an entire day.

NINTENDO REVEALS LAUNCH DATE FOR WII U, AND ITS RANDOM TELEVISION VENTURE
Depending on who you talk to, the Wii U is either the most interesting addition to the console market, or the lamest. No matter what, the world is going to be getting it in November, starting at $299.99 for an 8GB basic version.

At a press event last week, Nintendo also announced that they would be trying out a web-based television called the TVii (har har), that aims to be the core of the entertainment room. The TVii (that pun. Ugh) will feature cross-platform search between video services such as Netflix and live television, and will be able to stream information to the GamePad provided with the Wii U.

At first this seems like a random venture, but it actually incorporates more features into the Wii U, which at a glance lacks a lot of what other successful pieces of technology have brought to the table, and costs just as much.

This is huge news for the former gaming giant, as it recently posted its first loss in three quarters, and has been publicly struggling against bigger names like Microsoft and Sony. I guess we’ll see on November 18 if it’ll be enough.

WINKLEVOSS TWINS WILL NEVER GIVE UP
The Winklevoss twins, famous for getting outsmarted by a dweeb in a hoodie, are now trying again at backing a social networking site. This time, I’m hoping they won’t have to go to court.

The new project, SumZero, is a social network for investors founded by their Divya Narendra (known as that other guy in Social Network). The twins have already put $1 million into the project. Some of that money was apparently from the $65 million settlement from Facebook. They will not be involved in the day-to-day process, but will be backing the company financially.

I can at least give them points for effort. Maybe now they will have something legitimate to brag to Zuckerberg about. I assume that’s what they do on their downtime.