It’s not very often  you would see a public and personal letter from CEO of the corporation, but Sir Howard came through and addressed the PSN nation with the following letter today:

Dear Friends,

I know this has been a frustrating time for all of you.

Let me assure you that the resources of this company have been focused on investigating the entire nature and impact of the cyber-attack we’ve all experienced and on fixing it. We are absolutely dedicated to restoring full and safe service as soon as possible and rewarding you for your patience. We will settle for nothing less.

To date, there is no confirmed evidence any credit card or personal information has been misused, and we continue to monitor the situation closely. We are also moving ahead with plans to help protect our customers from identity theft around the world. A program for U.S. PlayStation Network and Qriocity customers that includes a $1 million identity theft insurance policy per user was launched earlier today and announcements for other regions will be coming soon.

As we have announced, we will be offering a “Welcome Back” package to our customers once our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are up and running. This will include, among other benefits, a month of free PlayStation Plus membership for all PSN customers, as well as an extension of subscriptions for PlayStation Plus and Music Unlimited customers to make up for time lost.

As a company we — and I — apologize for the inconvenience and concern caused by this attack. Under the leadership of Kazuo Hirai, we have teams working around the clock and around the world to restore your access to those services as quickly, and as safely, as possible.

I know some believe we should have notified our customers earlier than we did. It’s a fair question. As soon as we discovered the potential scope of the intrusion, we shut down the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services and hired some of the best technical experts in the field to determine what happened. I wish we could have gotten the answers we needed sooner, but forensic analysis is a complex, time-consuming process. Hackers, after all, do their best to cover their tracks, and it took some time for our experts to find those tracks and begin to identify what personal information had — or had not — been taken.

As a result of what we discovered we notified you of the breach. Our investigation is ongoing, and we are upgrading our security so that if attacks like this happen again, our defenses will be even stronger.

In the last few months, Sony has faced a terrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan. But now we are facing a very man-made event – a criminal attack on us — and on you — and we are working with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies around the world to apprehend those responsible.

In the coming days, we will restore service to the networks and welcome you back to the fun. I wanted to personally reach out and let you know that we are committed to serving you to the very best of our ability, protecting your information better than ever, and getting you back to what you signed up for – all the games and great entertainment experiences that you expect from Sony.

With best regards,
Howard Stringer

As we reported earlier Sony has come through and announced its first ever Sony Store that recently opened its doors in Los Angeles, California (Century City). Following the success and lusciousness of recently opened Sony Store in Nagoya, Japan, the new LA store will bring a totally new experience that customers will be pleasantly surprised with. The overabundance of Sony products will allow customers to play around, experiment as well as witness some future technologies that are still to come (you won’t see the hybrid VAIO or a Sony branded tablet just yet). The openness and spaciousness is definitely a huge improvement over the current SonyStyle stores, and hopefully the future roll out of this venture will follow the trend. Pretty much all 29 current SonyStyle stores will be simply re-branded and remodeled to Sony Stores and possibly move to bigger spaces at the malls, however there were quite a few of those stores that were recently closed for good. So even though the Style is going to be gone in the wording, it looks like it is far from being gone in the philosophy and aesthetics of the new stores to come.  We will probably see a new website name as well that will replace sonystyle.com as a shopping online destination.

If you are in LA, definitely pay a visit to this new store as you may end to win cool prizes. Check out the latest blog post and view a video above where SGNL host takes you around the store.

Here is another video of Sony USA executive introducing the store:

I came across these old pictures I snapped of the Sony Fire vehicle at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California. The 45-acre lot has many studios and side streets, which makes a vehicle like this necessary as a first responder. It features an large surface for people to lay on, heavy duty fire extinguishers, medical supplies, lights, sirens, and so on. I wonder how many HP it has.

Sony Corporation of America (SCA), Sony DADC, Sony Electronics, and Sony Pictures in the U.S. have come together to purchase more than 143 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of green power annually for 2011, which is enough green power to sustain most of energy demands of the company.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term kilowatt hours, using a 60 watt light bulb for one hour consumes 0.06 kilowatt hours of electricity. Using a 60 watt light bulb for one thousand hours consumes 60 kilowatt hours of electricity.

Sony’s on-site solar installations in the U.S. also produce more than 600,000 kWh/year. The company’s green power purchase and on-site solar generation are part of its ongoing commitment to reducing its environmental impact globally and supporting renewable energy.

I really think Sony can eventually operate without zero environmental impact within my lifetime. Personally, I think that we must evolve towards that direction, otherwise we face obsolescence.

Late last month Sony Network Entertainment President Tim Schaaff discussed the changing content delivery landscape and the intersection of consumer electronics, music and video content, and network services at MidemNet 2011. He was interviewed by Ralph Simon.

Over the next week, we’ll be taking a behind-the-scenes look of the incredible CGI in the film Alice in Wonderland (2010). In these videos, we learn about the enormous complexities of creating the mischievous Cheshire Cat.

During 2009-2010 SPI made transition from traditional biased, multi-pass rendering system to a largely singlepass, global illumination system incorporating modern ray-tracing and physically based shading techniques. They have achieved that with Arnold Renderer, an unbiased stochastic ray tracer, which is used in Alice.

Animator Ryan Page speaks in more detail about animating the cat’s expressions in the video below.

Videos courtesy of Sony Pictures Imageworks.

Indian cricket team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni poses for photographers during a press conference in Mumbai earlier this month. Sony India announced Dhoni as their new brand ambassador, ahead of the ahead of the Cricket World Cup 2011. Dhoni believes his players will cope with the expectation of being co-hosts and favorites at the World Cup, saying they have “changed the meaning of pressure into responsibility.” The 14-nation tournament, which is also co-hosted by Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, starts on February 19.

Columbia Pictures announced today that the title of the next Spider-Man film will be The Amazing Spider-Man. The film, which is now in production and is being shot entirely in 3D, will be released on July 3, 2012.

The film stars Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Campbell Scott, Irrfan Khan, Martin Sheen, and Sally Field. The film is directed by Marc Webb from a screenplay by James Vanderbilt and Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves based on the Marvel Comic Book by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Laura Ziskin, Avi Arad, and Matt Tolmach are producing the Marvel Entertainment production for Columbia Pictures. The executive producers are Stan Lee, Kevin Feige, and Michael Grillo.

The Social Network is a 2010 drama film about the founding of the social networking website Facebook and the resulting lawsuits. The film was directed by David Fincher and features an ensemble cast including Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Brenda Song, Armie Hammer, Max Minghella, Rashida Jones, Joseph Mazzello, and Rooney Mara.

Aaron Sorkin adapted his screenplay from Ben Mezrich’s 2009 nonfiction book The Accidental Billionaires. Sorkin also makes a cameo appearance as a would-be investor. No Facebook personnel, including founder Mark Zuckerberg, were involved with the project, although Eduardo Saverin was a consultant for Mezrich’s story. The film was released in the United States by Columbia Pictures (Sony) on October 1, 2010 to critical acclaim.

The film won the award for Best Motion Picture – Drama at the 68th Golden Globe Awards on January 16, 2011. The film also won the awards for Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Original Score (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross), making it the film with the most wins at the 68th Golden Globe Awards.

Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes reports that 97% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 261 reviews, with an average score of 9/10 and a critical consensus of: “Impeccably scripted, beautifully directed, and filled with fine performances, The Social Network is a riveting, ambitious example of modern filmmaking at its finest.” It has a 100% among “Top Critics”.

The film also holds a score of 95 based on 42 reviews on Metacritic, indicating “universal acclaim” and making it one of the site’s highest rated movies of all time.

Film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, giving it four stars wrote: “David Fincher’s film has the rare quality of being not only as smart as its brilliant hero, but in the same way. It is cocksure, impatient, cold, exciting and instinctively perceptive.” Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, gave the film his first full four star rating of the year and said: “The Social Network is the movie of the year. But Fincher and Sorkin triumph by taking it further. Lacing their scathing with an aching sadness, they define the dark irony of the past decade.”

The Social Network has been nominated for over 180 awards, winning 104, and has several nominations still pending.

Here is a Q&A with some of the major players of The Social Network after the Golden Globes:

Spider-Man is an upcoming superhero film currently in production. A fourth entry in the Spider-Man film franchise was planned for release in 2011; however, in 2010 the film was cancelled due to Sam Raimi’s withdrawal from the project. Sony announced that the franchise will in turn be rebooted with new director Marc Webb and a new cast which includes Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker, Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, and Rhys Ifans as the Lizard. The reboot’s intention is to have Peter Parker back to developing his abilities in high school. It is scheduled to be released in 3-D on July 3, 2012.

Sony Pictures sent out an e-mail last week to the press with the first exclusive photo of Andrew Garfield in the Spider-Man costume, as seen above.

The film began shooting on December 6, 2010 in Los Angeles. The film is the first Hollywood production to be filmed with the RED Epic camera, and is being shot in 3D at 5K resolution. The 90-day film shoot will include two weeks in New York City, while the bulk of filming will occur in and around Los Angeles, including such locations as the Henry Fonda Theater in Hollywood, Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Mid-Wilshire, and various locations around South Pasadena, San Pedro, and Woodland Hills.