April 18, 2008 Archives

I've recently made a couple of minor tweaks to the blog:

• Category archives now display all the entries in a category rather than just the last 20 entries.
• The links and blogroll navigation on the left now uses a cascading menu rather than displaying a huge, long list.

The category display change was a 5 minute job but the blogroll menu took most of the afternoon to get it the way I wanted, and is accomplished totally within CSS; I've used no javascript at all to create it. I'd appreciate feedback over whether the new blogroll menu is preferable to the old style. I've noticed it's easier to navigate if you move off a section sideways before trying to open up a different section rather than trying to move straight down between the sections.

The merger of Vivendi Games with Activision has gained approval from the EU. Amid claims that it could prove to be anti-competitive the EU has argued that the combined company would still face stiff competition in the marketplace from the likes of EA, Sony & Nintendo amongst others.

Under the terms of the deal, Vivendi would hold a roughly 52 percent majority of the merged company by contributing Vivendi Games, valued at $8.1 billion, including Blizzard Entertainment, and $1.7 billion in cash. Activision would then be renamed Activision Blizzard and continue to operate on the Nasdaq as ATVI. Within five days of the deal closing, Activision Blizzard would launch a $4 billion all-cash tender offer to purchase up to 146.5 million Activision shares at $27.50. Vivendi has agreed to purchase up to $700 million of new shares at the same price.

• Current Activision CEO Robert Kotick will be president and CEO.
• Bruce Hack, current CEO of Vivendi Games, will serve as vice-chairman and chief corporate officer.
• Mike Griffith will be president and CEO of Activision Publishing (including the Sierra Entertainment, Sierra Online and Vivendi Games Mobile divisions in addition to the Activision business).
• Mike Morhaime will continue to serve as president and CEO of Blizzard Entertainment.
• Thomas Tippl, currently CFO of Activision, will become CFO.
• Jean-François Grollemund, currently CFO of Vivendi Games, will be appointed chief accounting officer of the new company.

The new company will be the largest of the third-party games publishers ahead of the likes of EA, Ubisoft and Take Two, with an estimated value of approximately $19 billion.

Back in January 2006 I blogged about wanting a new keyboard; the Optimus Maximus. Well, it's now officially available.

Unfortunately, it's a wee bit out of my price range and I can't see too many everyday PC users buying one. If you had £800 spare would you spend it on a new keyboard for your PC? No? Neither, would I! I think I'll stick with my current Cherry keyboard until I can get around to buying myself a Saitek Eclipse II instead.

£800 for a keyboard; I could build a decent quad-core PC for that...