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Thursday, 2 October 2008 2:05 PM
Original article located at: The Official Google Blog
At Google, we have a saying: "launch early and iterate." While this
approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to
our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit
"send" a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source
browser, Google Chrome. As we believe in access to information for
everyone, we've now made the comic publicly available -- you can find
it
here. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.
So
why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value
for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.
All
of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We
search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare
time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends -- all
using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began
seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started
from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that
the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive
applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What
we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for
web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.
On
the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and
simple. To most people, it isn't the browser that matters. It's only a
tool to run the important stuff -- the pages, sites and applications
that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome
is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want
to go.
Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a
browser that runs today's complex web applications much better. By
keeping each tab in an isolated "sandbox", we were able to prevent one
tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue
sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also
built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next
generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's
browsers.
This is just the beginning -- Google Chrome is far
from done. We're releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader
discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work
building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it
even faster and more robust.
We owe a great debt to many open
source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path. We've
used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others
-- and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as
well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive
the web forward.
The web gets better with more options and
innovation. Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes
to making the web even better.
Click here to view the original article.
Filed Under: News
Wednesday, 30 July 2008 4:57 PM
Read the full article from Brisbane Times...
GOOGLE has snatched what is believed to be its biggest single client in the world - the NSW Department of Education - away from its rival Microsoft to claim up to 1.3 million new users of its free email product.
The NSW Director-General of Education, Michael Coutts-Trotter, said the department had exploited its size to get the best deal for students and teachers, who will each receive customised Gmail accounts.
"Our new email contract was so big that global players like Google were prepared to put together a world-class package of services for the children and young people in NSW public schools," he said.
The acting Minister for Education, John Hatzistergos, said the new system would cater for 1.3 million users and be in place by the end of the year.
The $9.5 million, three-year contract with the Google partner SMS Management and Technology will displace the department's previous $30 million contract with Microsoft partner Unisys, which ran over five years.
Although Google offers Gmail to education providers free, SMS Management and Technology said there were significant costs associated with providing tight security and integrating the email system with the department's existing portal.
"This will be one of the biggest Gmail deployments in the world," said its spokesman, Matthew Kaufman, who said Macquarie University had also recently signed up for Gmail.
The US-based information technology analyst Matthew Cain, from Gartner, said it was no secret why Microsoft and Google are "assiduously courting" the .edu community with free email services.
"If the vendors can get students to sign up for email accounts, the hope is they will then use those accounts for life," Mr Cain said. "Students, alumni, staff and faculty all represent a highly desirable demographic that advertisers will pay top dollar to reach."
The department's chief information officer, Stephen Wilson, said there would be no advertising on the new email accounts, which would be supported by tough filtering and security software.
Students will be able to log on from home. But whereas each had access to 35 gigabytes of memory on their account previously, they now have six gigabytes.
"I think we are the largest single-enterprise user of Gmail," Mr Wilson said.
"[The deal is] a first in Australian education and a lot of other states are very interested."
Click here to view the original article...
Filed Under: News
Wednesday, 9 July 2008 9:30 AM
Taken From the Seagate Website
To address the growing consumer need for storage in the home, Seagate
(NYSE: STX) today announced the Maxtor® Central Axis™ network drive, a
network storage drive that can be used by the whole family. This latest
drive from Seagate provides a terabyte of storage that every computer
in the home can back up to. In addition to media streaming capabilities
for video, photos and music, the new Maxtor Central Axis network drive
also includes an easy-to-use remote access service that allows people
to easily and securely retrieve content stored on their network drive
through any Internet browser.
A concept once only reserved for the small business and enterprise
space, networked storage is increasingly becoming a viable option for
multiple-computer homes. According to Yankee Group's 2008 Device
Survey, of those who purchased network routers for the home, 75.9% did
so with the intent of providing multiple computers with access to the
Internet. The challenge of these multi-computer households is the
ability to share and back up files from each computer. Maxtor Central
Axis network drive allows for each computer in the home to be
automatically backed up, so important files and precious memories are
sheltered from virus infections or disc drive failures. Sharing files
from computer to computer is easy when there is one repository for any
file that you would like to share. Additionally, since the storage
device is connected to the router and not formatted for an individual
computer, files can be accessed and stored from both Mac OS X and
Windows operated PCs.
"The days of external storage simply
serving as an extension to a full hard drive are over - the era of
personal digital content has seen to that," said Josh Martin, senior
analyst of Yankee Group's Media and Entertainment devices. "Survey data
indicates that over 41% of recent external storage buyers did so to
back up their data not because they ran out of room on the primary
computer. With the emotional connection people have to their photos and
videos, I believe the trend will only continue."
The Maxtor
Central Axis network drive liberates content that was once trapped on
individual computers. This easy to use solution enables multimedia file
sharing from every computer in the home as well as from common
entertainment devices, which are DLNA compliant, such as Microsoft®
Xbox® 360™ and Sony® PlayStation® 3™. Watching home movies, viewing
pictures of the last family vacation and listening to music can now all
be enjoyed in the living room through networked console players instead
of having guests crowd around a computer monitor in the den or a small
laptop computer screen. This storage device helps put your digital
entertainment back in a room where the whole family can enjoy it.
"Our Central Axis solution is a snap to set up and use for nearly every
member of the family. Any household with a network would benefit from
having a way to back up every PC in the home and share files between
them," said BenHur Castor, director of product line management for
Seagate's Consumer Solution Division. "Back up is essential to make
certain photos, videos and other important files live beyond the life
of an individual computer. The Central Axis network drive provides a
complete solution for back up storage as well as file sharing in the
home and from the road."
In addition to providing networked
access to important files, Maxtor Central Axis network drive provides a
way to easily share and access files when you are not on the network.
With the ever-growing dependence on access to information and digital
content, whether that be multimedia content, spreadsheets or
business-related documents, you'll find there are times when you'll
need to access these files remotely. Retrieving content that is saved
to a network drive when you are not local to the network has always
raised concerns about security and complexity. Most applications
involve installing software on the computer accessing the drive. Many
remote access applications also require a breach in a firewall, leaving
the network and your data open and vulnerable to attack.
With
Maxtor Central Axis, you can easily log into the remote access service
from an Internet browser to securely access and share the files stored
on the networked storage drive. There are no applications to download
or plug-ins required. Central Axis establishes a secure connection to
the service without the need to disable firewalls. All that is needed
to access the drive from any Web browser is a username and password.
Read the full article.....
Filed Under: News
Tuesday, 24 June 2008 3:17 PM
Taken from the Australian IT website
ONLY laptop suppliers will be eligible to
jostle for $56 million worth of NSW government funds as part of the
national schools PC program, leaving desktop and thin client suppliers
lamenting.
NSW has decided to supply high school students solely with laptops due to their portability and features.
"The portability of laptops provides students with flexible learning
options," a state Department of Education and Training spokesperson
said.
Independent and Catholic schools in NSW would receive $4.8 million and $13.8 million, respectively.
"The department intends to release a call for expressions of
interest with detailed requirements for a specialist educational
laptop."
The tender would be made available once negotiations with the commonwealth had been finalised, the spokesperson said.
The funds have been allocated on paper but the Iemma Government and
other state governments are said to be concerned about the operating
costs of managing and maintaining the computers.
Among the main points raised with federal Education Minister Julia
Gillard is who will pick up the tab for electricity, software
licensing, security and technical support.
The department, like its counterparts in other states, is using its bulk-buying power to negotiate better rates from suppliers.
"If individual schools bought computers off the shelf they would pay at least double the price," the spokesperson said.
"The department's solution ensures schools of an integrated system
with the best educational outcome and the best value for the
investment."
Industry heavyweight Intel and laptop manufacturer Asus welcomed
NSW's plan. Intel Australia chief Philip Cronin said the Government had
made the right decision, as laptops consumed far less energy than
desktops.
"With laptops you can get a 50 per cent reduction in power
consumption," Mr Cronin said. "I'm not at all surprised that NSW has
chosen this path."
He said laptops would eventually replace textbooks as more curriculum went online.
Several schools in NSW, Victoria and Queensland have been testing a
low-cost, rugged and colourful ultra-portable PC, dubbed Classmate,
designed by Intel and assembled by local vendor Optima, since late last
year.
The Classmate PC trials incorporate Intel's global teacher-training
program, which aims to educate teachers in how to use information
technology to meet curriculum requirements.
Asus Australia also has a few of its popular Eee PC sub-notebooks on trial in Queensland.
Asus business development manager Michael Serdiuk said the feedback
had been positive, but NSW's decision to embrace laptops was a massive
boon.
"We built the Eee PC for the education market so we'll be very keen to partake in the tender process," Mr Serdiuk said.
When the $500 Eee PC was launched it only ran on Linux but the
company has since added a Windows flavour to the mix, which would
please large Microsoft users such as the NSW education department.
"The ultra-low form factor of laptops and sub-notebooks is more
favourable than desktops. Space is a premium, so that would be an
immediate saving," Mr Serdiuk said.
Virtualisation specialist VMware, whose software powers thin clients, was unfazed by the department's decision.
VMware was banking on thin clients supplied by partner Sun
Microsystems to impress government officials, but local head Paul
Harapin said state governments would ultimately opt for a mix of
laptops, desktops and thin clients.
Read the full article....
Filed Under: News
Tuesday, 24 June 2008 3:08 PM
Taken from the Australian IT website
GOOGLE has edged out some of the biggest brands in the
enterprise IT services market to pick up another major contract win in
Australia's education sector.
Google partner SMS Management and Technology has emerged as the leading
bidder to supply the NSW Department of Education with 1.5 million
student email services using a customised version of the search giant's
Gmail service, Acting NSW Minister for Education and Training John
Hatzistergos said.
"This commitment is a further demonstration of the NSW Labor
Government's commitment to equip teachers and students with the best
possible means to compete successfully in the constantly evolving world
of information technology," he said.
NSW education department chief information officer Stephen Wilson
said the department was yet to finalise its contract with SMS but
confirmed that it had lodged the winning bid.
SMS will be the prime contractor alongside Google and Telstra to fulfil the contract, valued at $9.5 million over three years.
The department rejected bids from Hewlett-Packard, Telstra
subsidiary Kaz, and incumbent provider Unisys, to award the contract to
SMS.
It's understood that the contract will be one the largest private deployments of Gmail in the world.
The win is Google's second major victory in the academic sector
after Macquarie University signed up for Gmail in September last year.
It could have massive implications for the Australian software market,
as it places Gmail's online word processing software, Google Docs, in a
strong position to challenge Microsoft's Office software suite in the
education sector.
Mr Wilson said the agency had no plans to switch on Google's online word processing software at this stage.
"We haven't made any decision there. This contract was just email," Mr Wilson said.
SMS chief executive Tom Stianos said the trend towards providing software as a service was "unstoppable".
However, the Gmail deployment at Macquarie University hasn't been without controversy.
Gmail is hosted offshore and the university chose not to extend the
service to staff due to concerns that it would generate excessive
bandwidth bills retrieving messages.
The education department's Gmail roll-out will increase current
email storage allocated to students by a multiple of 170 times from
35MB to 6GB.
The department is also deploying extra security filtering, which will be carried out locally.
"You have to remember we're the largest consumer of internet traffic in NSW by a long way.
Read the full article......
Filed Under: News
Monday, 23 June 2008 11:48 AM
Taken from the Nvidia Website.
Imagine instead of taking over five hours to convert a video for your iPod, it only takes 35 minutesi.
Imagine using your PC to simulate protein folding to help find a cure
for debilitating diseases. Imagine that your PC can dramatically
accelerate everyday tasks, and deliver an exciting visual experience in
the process. Today that imagination becomes a reality now that the
leader in visual computing technologies, NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA), has
introduced its new family of GeForce® GTX 200 graphics processors
(GPUs)-which includes the GeForce GTX 280 and GeForce GTX 260
GPUs-taking graphics beyond gaming and gaming beyond anything that's
ever been possible before on a consumer computing platform.
"The advances NVIDIA continues to make in visual computing are simply
incredible, and we are excited to be one of the first companies in the
world to offer the technology in the new Exhilaration Edition of the
award-winning HP Blackbird 002," said Rahul Sood, chief technology
officer, HP Voodoo Business Unit. "Exceptional graphics quality and
performance is important to our customers, and now the GeForce GTX 200
GPUs are bringing something else into the mix. By using the GPU to
enhance everyday applications such as video encoding and manipulating
photos, HP Blackbird 002 is one of the most cutting-edge PC platforms
ever designed."
Graphics Beyond Gaming
One of the most powerful processors in
the PC is the GPU. Rendering 3D images in real-time is just about the
most mathematically intensive task your PC will ever undertake, but
it's not the only one. As PC applications become increasingly visual,
many ordinary tasks will benefit from the graphics horsepower provided
by the GPU, including encoding and playing high-definition videos,
editing photos, getting driving directions off the Internet, or simply
running a new operating system like Windows Vista.
"Millions of users around the world know how time consuming it is to
convert their home videos for use on video sharing sites such as
YouTube or for downloading to popular media players such as the iPod,"
said Sam Blackman, CEO of Elemental Technologies. "Elemental has
developed the BadaBOOM™ Media Converter, a consumer video application
scheduled for release in August. By taking advantage of the massively
parallel, general-purpose computing architecture of a GeForce GPU, we
are able to transcode high-quality video 18 times faster than with
CPU-only implementations. This unprecedented performance scaling is the
reason why we have made sure that our RapiHDTM Video Platform takes
advantage of NVIDIA GPUs."
By recognizing that the value of a GPU transcends gaming, an increasing
number of applications are also being written that use the GPU for
straight, non-graphical computational tasks. For example, Stanford
University's distributed computing computational program Folding@Home,
combines the computing horsepower of millions of consumer GPUs to
simulate protein folding to help find cures for diseases such as
Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. With the computing processing power of the
GeForce GTX family, applications such as Folding@Home and others can
run upwards of 140 times faster on an NVIDIA general-purpose parallel
processor than on some of today's traditional CPUs.
Gaming That's Beyond
The CUDA general-purpose parallel processing mode will usher in a new
generation of ultra realistic games. Developers can use the
supercomputing power of the "CUDA Computing" mode to simulate
realistic, physically accurate effects then render beautiful images
using the "GeForce GPU" mode. NVIDIA GPUs are also the only ones to
support PhysX™ technology, the world's most pervasive physics engine
that is already delivering dynamic 3D realism to more than 140 games
across multiple platforms, and is being used by more than 25,000
developers worldwide. With PhysX, developers can incorporate effects
such as rigid body dynamics, collision detection, and cloth simulation
that dramatically change the way the games are played and how the
on-screen stories unfold, and then accelerate those effects using the
processing power of the GPU.
Read the full article...
Filed Under: News
Monday, 16 June 2008 9:12 AM
Toshiba's New 1.8-inch HDD Achieves 160GB, the Industry's Largest*1 Storage Capacity for Drive with a Serial ATA Interface
Taken from the Toshiba website.
Toshiba Corporation today announced a new line-up of 1.8-inch hard
disk drives (HDD) adopting a serial ATA interface, including the
industry's first*1 drive of this type with a capacity of 160 gigabytes.
The new 160GB drive, MK1617GSG, and an 80GB drive, MK8017GSG, will
enter mass production in August.
Toshiba's new 1.8-inch HDDs
boost interface speed to 1.5Gbps and offer a rotation speed of 5,400
rpm, faster than the current generation of Toshiba 1.8-inch HDD
(MK1214GAH, parallel ATA, 120GB). By realizing the industry's first
160GB 1.8-inch drive with a serial ATA interface, Toshiba assures that
mobile PCs will be able to meet the most demanding user needs.
The new MK1617GSG drive is more environmentally efficient than
Toshiba's current MK1216GSG (120GB) model, and raises energy
consumption efficiency, as defined under the Japanese legal standard,
to 0.00281W/GB, a 25% improvement. The drive improves the maximum
internal data transfer rate by approximately 17%, and supports faster
data access in reading and writing that enhances overall performance.
Alongside Toshiba's 1.8-inch HDD of 80GB and 120GB serial ATA interface
drives already in the market, the new drives will provide product
manufacturers with a broad line-up that supports diverse applications.
The new drives will also contribute to achievement of environmentally
conscious products in full compliance with the EU's RoHS directive*2.
Read the full article....
Filed Under: News
Monday, 26 May 2008 10:26 AM
Web users 'getting more selfish'
Original article taken from BBC News.
Web users are getting more ruthless and selfish when they go online, reveals research.
The annual report into web habits by usability guru Jakob Nielsen shows people are becoming much less patient when they go online.
Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave.
Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention.
Instead, many are "hot potato" driven and just want to get a specific task completed.
Success rates measuring whether people achieve what they set out to do online are now about 75%, said Dr Nielsen. In 1999 this figure stood at 60%.
There were two reasons for this, he said.
"The designs have become better but also users have become accustomed to that interactive environment," Dr Nielsen told BBC News.
Now, when people go online they know what they want and how to do it, he said.
This makes them very resistant to highlighted promotions or other editorial choices that try to distract them.
"Web users have always been ruthless and now are even more so," said Dr Nielsen.
"People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience," he said.
"I do not think sites appreciate that yet," he added. "They still feel that their site is interesting and special and people will be happy about what they are throwing at them."
Web users were also getting very frustrated with all the extras, such as widgets and applications, being added to sites to make them more friendly.
Such extras are only serving to make pages take longer to load, said Dr Nielsen.
There has also been a big change in the way that people get to the places where they can complete pressing tasks, he said.
In 2004, about 40% of people visited a homepage and then drilled down to where they wanted to go and 60% use a deep link that took them directly to a page or destination inside a site. In 2008, said Dr Nielsen, only 25% of people travel via a homepage. The rest search and get straight there.
"Basically search engines rule the web," he said.
But, he added, this did not mean that the search engines were doing a perfect job.
"When you watch people search we often find that people fail and do not get the results they were looking for," he said.
"In the long run anyone who wants to beat Google just has to make a better search," said Dr Nielsen.
Click here to view the original article.
Filed Under: News
Tuesday, 13 May 2008 8:58 AM
View the original article at washingtonpost.com
Making Web Pages Social
To socialize these days, hundreds of millions of people every month turn to social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook.
But what if the Web itself worked as a social network?
Google announced today another step in what its engineers see as that inevitable evolution. A new free service from the Mountain View, Calif., tech giant will allow any Web site to become a social site.
Using Google's new Friend Connect product, any Web page, whether it is devoted to curling or pizza or a folk singer, can allow visitors to make and connect with other "friends" who visit that site. Like any major social network today, any Web page using Friend Connect could easily present to each user the names and pictures of friends and potential friends. Those people could then post messages to one another.
The announcement from Google comes at a time of ferment and speculation over how people will socialize on the Web.
While large social networks such as Facebook and MySpace are judged to be worth billions, they have also drawn criticism for being "walled gardens" -- places that allow members to connect easily only while at those sites.
The Friend Connect service raises the possibility that the kind of kibitzing now largely contained in a handful of mega-sites could be easily spread anywhere.
"We're in the middle of a huge change," said David Glazer, an engineering director working on Google's social initiative, in an interview. "Wherever people go on the Web, they want to have their friends with them, and this makes it possible."
Friend Connect is aimed at the millions of Web sites that could benefit from having members interact, but are unable to open their Web pages to such connections because of a lack of technical expertise or hardware.
With Friend Connect, the owner of a Web site would add a snippet of code to its page. Google's servers would handle the rest.
For example, one of the first Friend Connect customers will be independent musician Ingrid Michaelson, who like most entertainers has an official Web site ( http://www.ingridmichaelson.com). Now her fans can befriend one another if they visit her MySpace page.
But using the Friend Connect service, Michaelson will be able to allow fans who visit her site to connect with their friends, or make friends among fellow fans, without having to leave the site. Visitors will be able to see which of their friends are posting comments or attending concerts, all at her site.
Friend Connect is "about helping the 'long tail' of sites become more social," Glazer said. "Many sites aren't explicitly social and don't necessarily want to be social networks, but they still benefit from letting their visitors interact with each other."
Friend Connect for now will be available only to a limited set of Web sites. While Google will receive no immediate financial reward for Friend Connect, Glazer said the company benefits when "the Web is healthy." When more people use the Web, more people see the ads that Google runs on Web sites.
Many companies have come to believe that to survive the changing social evolution of the Web, their products must remain relatively open, allowing users to easily transport their list of contacts and other information from one Web site to another.
Last week, MySpace and Facebook announced plans in this regard, in a sense lowering the walls of their walled gardens.
At the same time, Web businesses have begun to create standards for social site interactions on the Web -- OpenId, OpenAuth, OpenSocial -- that has further enabled users to move easily, and socially, from one Web site to another.
Such changes seem likely to alter the nature of the big social sites, people in the industry said, as the social aspects they are known for become accessible across the Web.
"The real question for a Facebook or a MySpace is: Is it best to think of them as a place like Studio 54 -- a place where everyone wants to get in because all their friends are in -- or is it more like some kind of utility?" said John McCrea, vice president of marketing for Plaxo, a company that maintains relationship information for 20 million members. "This is the evolution of the walled garden to the social Web."
Click here to view the original article.
Filed Under:
Tuesday, 13 May 2008 8:18 AM
View the original article at SMH.com.au
Girl gamers are on the rise, so why isn't anything being made for them?
Wander into any videogame store and you could be forgiven for thinking that women do not play games at all but the statistics paint a different picture.
More than 40% of game players in Australia are female, yet most games on the store shelves are of little interest to them.
Despite this, the profile of the typical gamer has changed drastically over the past decade, with middle-aged housewives now as likely to play games as teenage boys.
The average gamer in Australia is now 28 years old, up from 24 just two years ago. And despite being largely ignored by the game industry, 41% are female.
Women and older Australians are the fastest-growing audience for computer and video games and if trends continue, by 2014 the average age of Australian gamers will be the same as non-players - 42 - with an equal number of male and female players.
Trends are similar in the US, where 38% of gamers are female, spending an average 7.4 hours a week playing, according to the Entertainment Software Association.
The popularity of video games has led to astonishing growth.
Australians spent a whopping $1.3 billion on video games and consoles last year - a rise of 43% from 2006.
Much of the recent growth in the Australian game market and the dramatic shift in gamer demographics is due to the success of a small number of non-traditional games such as the SingStar karaoke range (more than 520,000 sold), the Buzz trivia titles (more than 280,000 sold), Wii Sports (more than 350,000 sold) and the hugely popularly hand-held games such as Nintendogs and Brain Training.
The Sims, the world's most popular computer game, has also been hugely popular among women, as has the multiplayer online game World of Warcraft.
Both are largely about building relationships.
Even a cursory glance at some of the many internet forums and websites highlights the fact that many women enjoy games from all genres, some even forming female clans such as "Girlz", "Frag Dolls", "War Sisters" and "PMS" playing testosterone-fuelled shoot-'em-up titles such as Counter-Strike and Unreal Tournament.
Women have no interest in the majority of commercial games that are released, particularly when they are being marketed almost exclusively to males. Instead, studies show most women gravitate to "casual" titles such as online puzzle and card games, trivia, word challenges and action arcade games.
The Casual Games Association reports that 74% of paying customers for these games are female.
And when it comes to mobile phones, women are just as likely to play games as men, with Forrester Research suggesting that 19% of Australian mobile phone users are playing games at least once a week on their phone, while another 24% play less regularly.
It's not surprising that women tend to shy away from most of the games on the store shelves when publishers routinely use semi-clad female characters to ply their wares, appealing squarely to adolescent male fantasies. And invariably the type of game that gets most media attention are violent and aimed at young men, such as Grand Theft Auto IV, which hit the streets last week amid the usual critical outcry.
The industry's response to luring women gamers has often been cynical and heavy-handed. Many of the games aimed at females are unimaginative, such as Ubisoft's new (paradoxically titled) Imagine range of hand-held games that feature stereotypical "pink" subjects such as dressing up, cooking and nurturing babies and pets.
Many industry insiders believe the key to creating more games that appeal to women is to get more women into the industry. By diversifying the workforce, developers hope to create products that appeal to a wider audience.
In Australia, female game developers make up only 5% of the industry while the International Game Developers Association puts the worldwide figure at about 12%.
To fix the imbalance in Australia, a "Women in Games" group was established to promote development as an exciting career choice.
Eve Penford-Dennis, an art tutor at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment, has worked in game development for 15 years. She says that although most people in the industry assumed that gender inequity would eventually balance itself, "it never did".
"It became obvious that we needed to do something," she says.
Moran Paldi, a designer at local game studio Tantalus, says women tend to be better at communication and conflict management - crucial in the studio environment. Most games are built by teams of 30 to 100 people, including programmers, artists and designers.
One of the big problems with games often cited by women is the lack of characters with which they can identify.
While action heroines such as Lara Croft may inspire debate among girl gamers for having a bit each way - showing some hick-kicking girl power while at the same time displaying plenty of cheesecake sex appeal - many female game characters are merely ornamental and inevitably scantily clad.
Ms Paldi argues that "until we (women) start making games ourselves there is no way we will be able to see representations on screen that we can recognise and identify with. We need to start making a generation of games that women want to play and get them excited about creating their own content," she says.
But there is hope that change will come. More than 100 million games in the enormously successful Sims franchise have sold since its launch in 2000. Its astonishing success is due in no small part to the fact that it appeals strongly to both sexes.
Publisher Electronic Arts says more than 60% of Sims players are female.
Sims designer Will Wright says his team deliberately tried to make the game appeal to women. "I think the main reason we were able to do that successfully was that about 40% of our development team, and my two other designers, were women," he says.
One of the members of EA's Sims division, passionate game designer Robin Hunicke, recently completed work on MySims and is working on a game with Steven Spielberg for EA. She believes there are many ways the industry can attract more women into development.
"You can market more games to women," Ms Hunicke says. "You can have more women being shown in game commercials. You can have articles in women's magazines that talk about women who are successful in the field. You can showcase women in the advisory boards for conferences.
"You can feature recent work of prominent women developers, even when they're not in lead roles on projects, so that up-and-coming young women can be shown a little bit of attention and have a chance to (have a) dialogue with people about the process of evolving as developers themselves."
Although game development has never managed to shake its geeky boys-coding-in-the-garage image, many behind the scenes roles are highly creative - something the industry is keen to emphasise in its attempt to lure more young women.
Game developer Ms Paldi agrees: "It's not just jobs for code geeks any more. There are all sorts of jobs available, from production and design, to art and animation."
She says another major hurdle is stereotypes: "There is an awful lot of negative press surrounding the type of games being made. But not all games are about shooting people in the head."
Like many of her female colleagues, Ms Paldi believes the stereotypes are damaging because they affect the number of female game players, what publishers invest in and female interest in game development.
"Many women react to this tired old stereotype by thinking 'this game doesn't interest me' and so never explore the exciting opportunities the industry offers," she says.
"At Tantalus we make positive, kid-friendly games. I am excited by the work I do as a designer and feel I am making a positive impact on people's lives by encouraging them to engage in thought-provoking game play."
One strategy the game industry could learn from is a free book being distributed to high schools around the country by the IT industry called Tech Girls are Chic, not Just Geek. It features 16 of the IT industry's hottest young female professionals who are on a mission to change their industry's image in the minds of teenage girls.
The book follows an even more controversial approach in 2006 - the racy Screen Goddess IT Calendar - that featured young women from the IT industry in sexy poses based on popular Hollywood films. The calendar sold well but hit criticism for objectifying women.
The woman behind both projects, Sonja Bernhardt, says the technology industry's "nerd image" is a problem that must be tackled.
While the academy's Ms Penford-Dennis acknowledges that gender imbalance is not unique to the game industry, she's not sure her IT colleagues have the solution.
"This is a huge problem across IT in general - and IT has a way bigger budget to look at this problem - and still there isn't a magic answer that we've found," she says.
"It's also difficult for individual developers to put forward initiatives to solve the problem themselves. There needs to be that push from the industry as a whole to encourage more women into development."
Ms Paldi says awareness about the roles in the game industry should start in schools. "We need to let young girls know that they are not strange or alone, and that they don't have to emulate men to succeed," she says. "It is an awesome industry to work in and it's still small enough for people to be able to make global impacts with the work they do."
She says some benefits are high wages and work in cities such as Tokyo, London and San Francisco (instead of just the main Australian game development hubs of Melbourne and Brisbane).
One local developer having success in creating games just exclusively for females is the new Adelaide studio Champagne for the Ladies.
Its new mobile-phone game, Coolest Girl in School, was nominated for four awards in the recent Game Developers Association of Australia awards.
"Coolest Girl in School is the world's first mobile role-playing game made specifically for girls and the potential audience is huge," says Holly Owen, who co-produced, wrote and directed the game.
"Well over half (60%) of casual mobile gamers are women but very few games are made specifically for female audiences. Giving girls a different gaming option made specifically for them is what Coolest Girl in School is all about."
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