5 Clubs Agree to Pay Neymar Release Clause of €45 Millions

Santos president Luis Alvaro de Oliveira Ribeiro has confirmed five clubs in Europe have agreed to pay Neymar's €45 million release clause.

The clubs - named in widespread reports throughout Brazil as Real Madrid, Barcelona, Chelsea, Manchester City and Russian side Anzhi Makhachkala - will now be given permission to speak to Neymar.

"We don't want to sell the player, but of course there is a release clause in his contract that can be paid," he told ESPN Brasil. "Five European clubs have offered to match the clause.

"I cannot name them because there is an agreement between Santos and the clubs, but they are the most important European clubs. They have asked to speak to the player and obviously we've allowed them to."

He added: "The clubs have behaved ethically. They sought out Santos first and were willing to pay the clause. With this ethical approach, they can talk to anyone - with Neymar's father, with [agent] Wagner Ribeiro, and with the representatives of Neymar."

Chelsea had seen a number of bids rejected for Neymar last summer before the 19-year-old Brazil international signed a new long-term deal with the club.

Ribeiro added: "Last year, Chelsea's attitude was different. Their first action was to seek out the player's representatives."

The news comes just a day after Ribeiro said Neymar wanted to become the best player in the world while remaining in Brazil, and he remains confident that the forward will opt to stay at Santos.

"These clubs can come and make their offers, but if he wants to stay at Santos then he'll say no and stay at Santos," he said. "It's not a good time for him to leave.

"The 2014 World Cup is coming and the eyes of the world will be on Brazil. If he stays, and wins the Club World Cup, the Olympics and maybe the World Cup, he will become an idol and can go to Europe having done it all.

"Right now, he lives close to his family and friends in the city he loves and is at a club that is right for him. There's no reason for him to go now. I think he'll stay."

New Wii Bundle with Mario Kart Wii Pack (with Wii Wheel)

Nintendo will release a new current generation Wii bundle to replace the
present pack that comes with Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort. The Mario Kart with Wii Wheel is currently sold at $39.96 at Amazon. I think this would be a better attraction to potential Wii buyers, because you will be getting one of the best selling game of the Wii era in Mario Kart although some may argue that you will be losing 2 games which represent the flagship of motion sensor gaming from the Nintendo Wii.



This new bundle pack also comes with a price slash bringing the Wii MSRP officially to $149.99 amid the news that Sony will release the next generation Wii in 2012 and it will be showcased at the E3 in June 2011. Retailers like Toys R Us and Best Buy had started their own price cuts prior to Nintendo's official price cut in a move to sell as many Wiis off their shelves and inventories as they expect sales to slow down towards the launch of the next generation Wii. Many rumors are guessing that the new Wii a.k.a Wii 2 or Wii HD will finally bring HD graphics to the popular console with some even suggesting that the remote would come with a video graphics screen.

With Sony and Microsoft getting into the act of motion sensor gaming with the PlayStation Move and Xbox Kinect respectively, gaming enthusiasts are eager to know what Nintendo will pull out of its hat this time.

How to Check Wii Firmware Version

I saw a post offering modding services for the Nintendo Wii 3.0-4.1 (any region) and I realised I don't know what version is my Wii. And to add insult to injury, I have no idea how to check the version on my Wii because there's no Help > About tab. I quickly searched on Google "how to check Wii firmware" and it returned some results, mostly linked to Yahoo! Answers page. In the end, I did manage to find out what's my Wii's version. It's version 4.3U. All you have to do to check for your Wii firmware version is to go into the Wii settings box and then it's on the top right corner of page 1!

Haley Reinhart Rolling in the Deep mp3

I never knew the song Rolling in the Deep by Adele until I saw Haley Reinhart singing it on Americal Idol. For fans of Haley Reinhart who love her rendition of Rolling in the Deep, a quick search online will lead you to a working link easily.

2011 NFL Draft 1st Pick: Heisman QB Cam Newton Goes to the Carolina Panthers

2010 Heisman winner QB Cam Newton of Auburn has emerged as the first overall pick in the 2011 NFL draft. The Carolina Panthers, who finished last season with the NFL's worst record were given the first choice and as widely expected, they took the Auburn University quarterback and 2010 Heisman Trophy winner as the No. 1 pick.
The 21-year-old Newton is part of the 2010 Auburn Tigers who finished the season with a 14-0 record in 2010, culminating with a win in the BCS National Championship game in January, while setting several individual records.

Sony PlayStation Network (PSN) Hacked and Customer Information Stolen

Sony has been dealt a major blow last week when its PlayStation Network (PSN) was hacked and personal information of about 77 million accounts was stolen. After the PSN was down for a week plus, Sony belatedly made the official announcement that they are a victim of some hacker who obtained information such as name, address, date of birth, password and even credit card information if you have it stored in your PSN account. Obviously PSN users all over the world are pissed at Sony’s late actions and severely damaged their reputation and their CEO’s goal of having all Sony media electronics connected and unified in a common shared platform. This security breach has put a serious dent on the users’ trust in Sony’s system. Sony’s slow reaction and late disclosure has angered users who were not aware of the details of the breakdown and could have executed their personal mitigation steps in protecting their personal information like cancelling the credit card linked to the PSN account.

People are starting to file lawsuits against Sony for this matter and we expect there are more to come. Sony is going to pay a very heavy price on this. Do not forget that the downtime has cost Sony millions of dollars considering the revenue which they gain from the PSN activities of approximately $10 million per week. Even if they ended up paying $1 for each customer/account, that’s $77 million. If they pay $2 each, an additional digit is added to the payout amount ($154 million). And quoting the $1 and $2 price is merely to cite examples. I would feel really devalued if I get paid only $2 for them risking my personal information.

The ripple effects of identity theft would be hard to assess in terms of the true damages. All the hassle they caused me could have cost a lot of people a lot of time and money. I am not going to put my credit card info on PSN anymore.

Sony PSPGo Discontinued?

Sources have revealed that the Sony PSPGo is discontinued after the product page was removed from Sony’s website. So all that are left of the PSPGo are those in the shelves.
The PSPGo which was introduced back in 2009 after the PSP-3000 series failed to garner much market attention in its attempt to do away with the UMD and shifted focus to digital media download instead.
This move nicely paves the way for the Sony NGP introduction which is rumored to be sometime around Fall 2011. Will it be another shot at scrapping physical media in favor of digital media download? Most likely not. The market is still too young for full digital content. Unless, of course, Sony chooses to push through this barrier and give it one more try. The Sony NGP release may be delayed due the supply chain being affected by the 311 Japan earthquake.

Wii Price Drop to $150 and Arrival of Wii HD (Wi 2)

The rumors of Nintendo finally giving in to a price drop has appeared on various sites in recent weeks. More interestingly, the rumors of the possible upcoming announcement of the Wii HD (Wii 2) has gain traction and it does seem like it’s going full steam ahead with some expectations from Nintendo at the E3 conference this June.

Ever since Nintendo brilliantly made the first step of the gaming breakthrough with motion sensing gaming through its revolutionary Wii console in 2006, the price tag has never had an official price slash. The notable “discounts” would be through regular sales and also Black Friday sales. For e.g. I snagged a Nintendo Wii White Bundle with Motion Plus for $199.99 with $50 free credit from Amazon.com just this past Christmas shopping. That would drop the actual value of the Wii to $149.99. That’s as close as you can get to a cheap Wii. There were also offers seen previously for $170.

The Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 have both introduced price cuts and also improved slim editions. Sony introduced the PS3 in 2006, the PS3 slim in 2009 and price cut in 2009. Microsoft meanwhile launched the Xbox 360 in 2007, Xbox slim in 2009 and price cut in 2009. Everyone has been thinking it’s got to be Nintendo’s turn to take a step down in terms of retail pricing.

The most expected outcome would be a Wii HD which is backwards compatible to the current Wii. The Wii has been widely known to be behind the pack when it comes to graphics quality and has taken some bashing for the lack of details and focus on the kiddy games. But guess what, people kept buying it and it’s the best selling console ahead of the PS3 and Xbox 360! And Sony launched the Move and Microsoft launched the Kinect in 2010 to try and get a piece of the motion sensing gaming pie sector. This only proves that Nintendo got it right way back in 2006 and after much delay, Sony and Microsoft followed.

What Wii-ll Nintendo bring to the table this time? Let’s wait and see…. It should be interesting.

Best of Both Worlds: Street Fighter X Tekken Game Coming to PS3

This is gonna get the Street Fighter fan pumped up and the Tekken fans excited at the same time. Capcom and Konami have teamed up for a new release: Street Fighter X Tekken crossover game for PS3. The Street Fighter franchise has been a great tradition dating back to my kiddo days when the NES was the game console that every kid on the block wanted. Ryu and Ken are still the living legend in fighting games uptil today. With this collaboration, fans of fighting genre can have the best of two worlds with Street Fighter X Tekken (SFXT). This joint venture however will cast some questions on which franchise is the main star of the game. Obviously nobody wants to take any trademark moves or original features out of both the characters and the settings. To find the midway point of balance between the Street Fighter combo moves and Tekken’s settings can be quite a task in order to satisfy both sets of fans. Put this in your to-buy list. Better still, pre-order your copy at Amazon.com and be ready for the unleashing of SFXT come release date (TBD).

How to Disable Firefox Portable Splash Screen

For users of the Firefox portable, the splash screen is displayed everytime you open the program. There is a way to turn off the Firefox portable splash screen. In order to hide the Firefox portable spash screen, you will need to do an easy edit of the "FirefoxPortable.ini" file which you can find in the \Other\Source directory. In my case it was C:\FirefoxPortable\Other\Source. You can change the "DisableSplashScreen=false" option here. Just change "false" to "true". Save the file and then copy that file to the root directory where the Firefox portable launcher is. In my case it was in C:\FirefoxPortable.

It is important that the FirefoxPortable.ini has to be in the same folder as the launcher (FirefoxPortable.exe). This was tested with Firefox Portable 3.6.13.

Get the latest version of Firefox Portable from PortableApps.com

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