Corporate stuff

Several weeks after the surprising announcement of losing 400,000 players in mere months, BioWare CEO Ray Muzyka and co-founder Greg Zeschuk noted in a forum post that the company is bidding "farewell to some talented, passionate, and exceptionally hard-working people who helped make Star Wars: The Old Republic a reality."

The layoffs affect the Austin, Texas, division of BioWare an Electronic Arts-owned studio largely responsible for the creation of the game. The announcement lacked any specific information regarding the number of employees let go in the restructuring, and EA did not immediately respond to CNET's request for comment. … Read more

Another day, another Apple victory.

At $183 billion, Apple is the world's most valuable brand, according to Millward Brown Optimor's annual BrandZ study. Apple was last year's most valuable brand, as well, though the company's value jumped 19 percent over last year's $153.3 billion tally.

Millward Brown Optimor's findings, which were released today, are based on a company's financial data, market intelligence, and consumer opinions related to brand equity.

Aside from Apple, technology firms fared quite well in the BrandZ study, with IBM taking the second spot with $116 billion in value. … Read more

Electronic Arts announced solid financial results today, including fourth quarter net income gains of $400 million -- a rather sizable difference compared to $151 million in same quarter last year. The massive gaming company pegged revenue for the quarter at $1.37 billion, a figure several hundred million higher than the year before.

EA's net income for the year ending March 31 amounted to $76 million, perhaps an uplifting number in comparison to the $276 million loss in 2011. Total revenue for the 2012 fiscal year amounted to a staggering $4.1 billion, up from $3.5 billion a year prior. Revenue strictly from digital content rose to $1.2 billion, an increase of nearly 47 percent in comparison to 2011. Investors seem wary of EA's projected 2013 earnings, though, as MarketWatch points out, the assumed revenue for the future falls below expectations. … Read more

EVERETT, Wash.--Get ready, aviation fans. Seats aboard Boeing's new 747-8 Intercontinental are almost ready for you. And today, at an event here, Boeing finally handed over the keys to the first of the next-general planes to a commercial airline customer.

The new airplane, which Boeing first unveiled at a huge ceremony here a year ago, has been in testing since then. But today, Lufthansa became the first airline to officially own one of the aircraft, the first of 20 it has ordered, and of 130 total orders Boeing has received for it. … Read more

Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his wife, 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki, have committed to giving $1 million to a Bay Area charity, but only if the organization can get other Silicon Valley titans to pony up another million.

In an interview with CNET last week, Tipping Point Community CEO Daniel Lurie, whose charity distributes donations to dozens of nonprofits throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, said that Brin and Wojcicki have agreed to the gift, assuming Tipping Point can find matching funds from others in the technology world.

Lurie said that Brin and Wojcicki have been long-time supporters of Tipping … Read more

"Hey, George Lucas: Come on and cross the Bay. The water's just fine."

That appears to be the message from hundreds of people who have signed an online petition urging the "Star Wars" filmmaker to locate his new 260,000-square-foot technical production facility at Vallejo, Calif.'s Mare Island.

The petition comes after Lucasfilm decided to abandon long-held plans to build the new facility on a piece of property it owned in bucolic Marin County, about 30 minutes north of San Francisco and across San Pablo Bay from Vallejo.

That decision was the result of … Read more

Sometimes, trends happen beneath our noses, because our eyes are focused on some distant horizon -- or on this morning's fine YouTube video featuring a cat, a baseball bat, and a bowl of cereal.

So I am grateful to a piece of research conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of a company called TeamViewer, which reveals to me that women would prefer not to have so many physical meetings.

Indeed, apparently womens' preference for online meetings far exceeds that of men.

You might imagine, given that one of TeamViewer's purposes in life is to sell you online-meetings software, … Read more

Q: What do you call a vacuum cleaner that doesn't suck?

A: A race car.

That seems to be the refreshingly unexpected answer Dyson's U.K. engineers would provide.

The crew got together earlier this month to shake the dust off with the "Dyson car challenge," a Pinewood Derby of sorts wherein the engineers competed to -- as the company puts it -- "create the fastest go-kart using a few Dyson spare parts and all the torque they could eke out from one of our handheld motors."… Read more

Game maker Electronic Arts is adding more diversity to its new multiplayer online role-playing game Star Wars: The Old Republic -- characters in same-sex relationships and plot lines.

Because of this, the company is coming under fire from some unlikely contingents for the gaming world -- anti-gay conservative groups such as the Florida Family Association and the Family Research Council.

"There were no LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender] characters in any of the Star Wars movies," the Florida Family Association declared on its Web site. "So if BioWare, the maker of Star Wars video games, adds LGBT … Read more