Playstatiton Information For Tonight

Competition: We’ve Got Five Copies Of Spectral Souls: Resurrection Of The Ethereal Empires For PSP Up For Grabs!

We've Got Five Copies Of Spectral Souls On PSP Up For Grabs!

We’re clearing out the closets here at PushSquare. Ghostlight’s been kind enough to send over five copies of Spectral Souls: Resurrection Of The Ethereal Empires for PlayStation Portable. If you want to own a copy of this strategy RPG with the best name in PSP history, hit the jump.

We’re keeping this one super simple. All we want you to do is fill in your name and e-mail address below. We’ll drop all the entrants into a big metaphorical hat and pick out five winners. Remember to use a valid e-mail account please — if we can’t contact you then there’s no way for you to receive the prize. S’life.

Aside from having the best name ever, Spectral Souls: Resurrection Of The Ethereal Empires is a competent strategy RPG set in the alternate world of Neverland. The game’s dark plot should keep you hooked to your PSP until the NGP rolls around later in the year.

Fill in the form below by Sunday 17th April 2011 at 12:00PM BST and you might be in with a shot at winning. Please note, you’ll need an active European PlayStation Network account to redeem the prize.

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Best of luck!

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iOS Game of the Day: Mos Speedrun

Jump, dodge, and race Mos, the colorful insect girl, as she navigates 20 stages of retro platforming action. GamePro Score: 4.5

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A brand new trailer for Battlefield 3 showing off brand new gameplay.

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Gadget Tech Info For Today

Interpreting Google Search Results Ranking

[Via]

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GigaOM Review: BlackBerry Tablet, PlayBook, a Notable Debut

Research In Motion, the company behind the iconic BlackBerry devices, is finally taking the veil off its much-anticipated tablet, the PlayBook. The device will cost between $500 and $700 and will be available April 19.

I have been playing around with the device for a couple of days, and I’ve also been comparing it with three tablets currently available to me: the iPad 2, Motorola XOOM and Samsung Galaxy Tab. Like most reviewers, I don’t tend to read the review guides that manufacturers send us with the review units. Out of the box intuitiveness is — or should be — par for the course when it comes to tablets and new smartphones. When I bought the iPad, I didn’t need any outside help to get started. A few exploratory gestures, and I was off to the races. I used the same approach with the PlayBook.

Watch this video for free on GigaOM

To be clear, I don’t really consider myself a professional device reviewer like, say, our excellent gadget guru Kevin Tofel or the fantastic David Pogue. I consider myself a discerning buyer, someone who is not shy about spending the dollars as long as the product is worth buying and scores high on my own abstract metric of the happiness quotient.

After spending about 20 hours on the device, I am sharing my early impressions of the PlayBook — broken down into ten key segments with a quick summary at the end.

1. Looks & Design: The experience of a device starts with the looks, and here the PlayBook scores high marks. Though not as elegant as the original iPad and not as thin as the iPad 2, the device is solid and well engineered. The black body, rubber back, clean lines and a functional placement of buttons and ports add up to a great first impression. My only quibble: It doesn’t look much different from many of the Android tablets.

2. Interface & Experience: The new PlayBook is based on QNX, the new operating system RIM acquired in April 2010. As an old BlackBerry fan, I found the OS, interface and even the icons for various apps felt very familiar, and the menus are clean and easy to use. The home screen is divided into three panes: status bar, apps list and, when you have apps open, an open app panel. The whole experience feels very natural.

The TI OMAP that powers the device runs at 1 GHz and is extremely fast, and the device puts that oomph to maximum use. The fluid interface makes switching from one app to another smooth and easy. The overall experience feels superior to some of the Android-based tablets I have used. The two built-in cameras — the 3 megapixel (front facing) and 5 megapixel (main camera) — are high-quality and are tightly integrated

3. Size: I love the iPad and its bigger screen. The big screen is one of the things I actually like about the XOOM. I have often argued with Kevin about the merits of the bigger screen so, I wasn’t quite prepared to like the PlayBook’s 7-inch screen with 1024 X 600 resolution. But I did. Weighing less than a pound, the PlayBook is very comfortable to hold and use, especially when playing video games or watching video. The diminutive size makes it easier to type out quick notes with your thumbs, something that is virtually impossible on a bigger tablet.

4. Connectivity: The PlayBook has built in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It was easy to connect to Wi-Fi networks, and the radio even worked in corners of my apartment where the signal was the weakest, such as my balcony. Here it easily beat the two Android devices and the original iPad. The iPad2 had the same powerful connection as the PlayBook. Once you connect to the network, the device automatically shows up on your network as a drive. As a Mac user, I could easily transfer files such as photos to it without plugging into a computer.

With Bluetooth, you can tether the device to your 3G phone, and I had no problems doing that with my Verizon iPhone. (You can also just use the Wi-Fi to connect to the phone via the Verizon iPhone Personal Hotspot option.) If you use a BlackBerry phone, the Bluetooth connection gives your tablet a constant 3G connectivity option without sucking up too much power.

5. Browser: RIM has been making a lot of noise about the PlayBook’s Webkit-based browser — and specifically its ability to run Flash. I can see why –- the browser is Playback’s single best feature.

You can hardly tell the difference between a desktop browsing experience and the Playbook. I have been watching YouTube videos off the YouTube website on the Playbook without much of a problem. There is no doubt that Adobe and Blackberry have spent a lot of energy on getting this right — even though Flash does start sucking down the battery pretty fast.

6. Apps: PlayBook has links to websites of popular services such as Twitter, Facebook, Gmail and Hotmail, and they all look like “app” icons. Why? Because RIM says “you don’t need an app for the web.” That may be true, but users expect devices to use apps, and apps often define the potential of a platform.

RIM executives claim that the BlackBerry apps store has nearly 3000 PlayBook apps, but that is nowhere near what Apple and Google’s Android OS-based tablets offer. I am underwhelmed by the specific offerings. Where is a Kindle native app or the Netflix? Without those apps, Playbook feels less useful. Apps are RIM’s Achilles heel and will remain so, and they need to motivate popular app makers to develop for their platform.

7. Media: I collectively call music, photos, videos and books “media.” To me, they represent the most important features of a tablet. The PlayBook music app is adequate but nothing to write home about. RIM is offering a built-in music store (via Seven Digital), but again the buy, download and playback experience isn’t as smooth as iTunes on the iPad. The Kobo Books service offers an option to buy books, but frankly having already spent hundreds of dollars in the Amazon store, this is a non-starter for me. I bet there are many more who would rather wait for the Amazon app than start fresh with Kobo.

But when it comes to photos and video, the PlayBook is simply outstanding. No, they don’t match up to the floating image feeling you get when watching photos on an iPad, but the PlayBook offers a whole different experience that’s in a class of its own.

PlayBook ships with an HDMI port which allows you to take any generic HDMI cable and plug the device into your television, making the PlayBook extremely versatile as an HD media center. There is no stutter, delay or jumpiness with videos; the playback on the PlayBook is akin to watching movies on your DVD player.

If you asked me what I love about PlayBook, I would say it is the video playback features.  Damn shame that it doesn’t have many popular video download services at this time.

8. Productivity & Communications: For me this is the deal-killer: I wouldn’t buy a device that doesn’t have a standalone email client, calendar or a to-do list. Need Google Talk? Tough luck. Skype? No mas, amigos. Sure you get Office apps, thanks to RIM buying DataViz, but frankly I want a good email client in my tablet more than anything else.

RIM would argue that you could use BlackBerry Bridge, a piece of software that allows you to pair your tablet with your BlackBerry. It’s not the smoothest process, but once you establish the connection, you can mirror BlackBerry apps such as BBM, contacts, messages, memos and calendar on the big screen. The PlayBook gives you full access to the data in those apps.

If BlackBerry wants to sell PlayBook to existing Blackberry owners, then the Bridge might suffice. But what if you don’t have or don’t want a BlackBerry? RIM says the email client is going to be offered later this summer as an OTA download, and for me that is enough of a reason to refrain from buying this device — at least until then.

9. Multitasking: All I can say about the multitasking abilities of this device is — wow. You could output a movie via HDMI to your big-screen TV while looking at a PowerPoint, then switch to web browsing. Playbook does it all smoothly.

10. Gestures: As a longtime iPad owner and someone who’s tried Android devices for a long time, I have to say, it took me a few hours to get my gestures right on this device. But then not all PlayBook users will be swtiching between different devices. If you are a first-time buyer, you won’t have natural inclination to use the iPad/Android gestures. PlayBook’s gestures are simple, though you might want to check out the tutorial to get the basics down quickly.

My Overall Impressions: PlayBook is perhaps one of the best tablets I have used, but it has some glaring shortcomings. What works for PlayBook is what works for iPad –- the chip, the hardware and the operating system are very tightly coupled. You can feel the cohesion, which in turn adds up to a fluid and satisfactory feeling.

Android tablets have a worthy rival in the PlayBook. It lacks the overall polish of the iPad 2, but give it a little time and RIM could get the hardware and experience right. Even with this first release, it is among my top three tablets picks. I am glad they are in the market and will prove to be a worthy competitor.

Disappointed as I am in the limited number of apps, the deal-breaker for me is the lack of independent communication tools. I understand that RIM wants to sell more BlackBerry devices (just as Apple wants the halo effect for its other gadgets), but to leave out a standalone email client makes little or no sense.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

A Media Tablet Forecast, 2011 – 2015Fixing Fragmentation: Google’s Key to the Enterprise Tablet SpaceCan Anyone Really Compete With the iPad?

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Contemporary Solid Wood Wardrobe Design by Team7

VALORE wardrobes by TEAM 7 characterizes the major elements of green non-toxic furniture by featuring refined mix of precious solid wood and the elegant high gloss sheen of glass. The inside of the wardrobes feature a selection of highly practical elements, like a shirt lift and retractable hanging pants element, drawers with tie compartments or [...]

Decorative Double Chair with Floral Pattern

The Italian furniture brand AltaModa is presenting the BigBaboll double chair, and the first impression I get is resembling that of cheerful emotion as depicted by the light, bright color tones and the myriad crossing lines that spice up the feel. It is all about a bright day in the sun where everybody is having [...]

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Welcome to the handheld entertainment revolution! The PSP is a dynamic entertainment medium that utilizes a broad range of digital content. Toysrus and Sony are pleased to bring you THE entertainment experience that fits in your pocket. With a diverse line up of games and video, audio, and photo capabilities, the PSP is truly a system without boundaries. Among the exciting features the PSP offers are a 16:9 widescreen display, USB 2.0 and 802.11b Wi-Fi LAN connectivity, and the ability to play games, video, and MP3 audio.

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Playstatiton News For Tonight

The Dispatch: Game Developers Conference 2010 in Austin, TX

“Conference” is something of a misnomer. The GDC is a developer’s retreat. Outside of the expo no one is here to sell anything. No one is here to promote their game. The developers are here to exchange ideas and give others the benefit of their wisdom. Like the bearded guru’s of legend these men and women are humble fonts of knowledge who are here to spread the good word, and the good word is video games.

The Austin Convention center is packed with sessions, and you can’t go to them all. I chose sessions that ran the gamut of the gaming industry, but with overlapping times there is still so much I had to miss. Sessions at the GDC are lectures. Much like their collegiate counterparts, leaders in the industry use PowerPoint presentations to discuss aspects of the video game industry: Social Networking Games, the MMOFPS problem (massive first-person shooter), micro payments, international markets, data mining, net neutrality, service retrospectives, the list goes on.

While few outside the expo are trying to sell anything and much of the conference is academic, don’t be fooled, there is business going on at the GDC. Hands are shaking and cards are being traded. If there is selling at the GDC; the product is first impressions. College students, recent grads and even the gaming initiated are looking for any opportunity to advance their career.

It’s not as cutthroat as it might sound. While many would sell any organ they could do without for a chance at a job or internship, there is a polite and inclusive nature in the chatter. Industry leaders surprisingly alleviate tension. When they aren’t offering up friendly free advice at the conference, they’re out at the great local Austin bars inviting attendees to have a beer and talk video games for a chance to network even further.

One embarrassing caveat: Every attendant wears a low-hanging badge that identifies who they are and for whom they work. What became eventually clear to most attendees was the average human height (especially the average female, to my embarrassment) caused the badges to hang just around crotch level. Everyone wants to know who you are because you are always a potential contact. So you effectively have a flock of professionals making passing glances at each other’s junk… for business reasons.

Mostly I attended what interested me personally, but I tried to keep everyone in mind. Here’s a look into the GDC experience in 2010.

Game Design and Video Game Writing

Many of the sessions available at the GDC focused on game design and a significant portion of those were about game writing. What was once a tertiary consideration in gaming, writing is now included as a key element to game design. If the trend continues, writing is likely to become its own subject and not just an implied component of a game design team. As in any field, good writers are hard to vet. New writers are doubly so. Many of the lectures on writing tried to inform potential applicants on what the industry is looking for in a writer.

It’s Not in the Writer’s Manual: A Q&A for New Writers

Twenty or so aspiring writers were allowed unfettered access to the advice of industry leader: John Gonzalez (Creative Lead Designer, Obsidian Entertainment, Fallout: New Vegas), Chris Metzen (SVP of Creative Development, Blizzard Entertainment, World of Warcraft), Rhianna Pratchett (Independent, Mirror’s Edge), Andrew Walsh (Freelance, Prince of Persia), Evan Skonick (Vicarious Visions) and Toiya Finley (Schnoodle Media, LLC). The session was a remarkably inclusive environment where the successful gave generously from their experience to those with only aspirations of success. Speakers gave frank and even heartfelt advice to new writers. Chris Metzen, in a moment of reflection implored writers to tell their stories from the soul, “We’re full up on clever. Clever hooks are done; the tank is full. Write soul. Sing though your writing.”

Writing the Whirlwind: 10 Years on the Frontlines of Halo Storytelling and Beyond

Joseph Staten (Creative Director, Bungie) gave a retrospective on writing the narrative for Halo over the last 10 years. Equally impassioned, Staten described how to keep an intellectual property (IP) fresh over time, “Pour all of your blood into it, leave nothing in the tank.” While maintaining reverence for the creative process, Staten mentioned in a sobering moment that, “[Halo]’s about shooting stuff. Killing aliens is relaxing” and that story is always beholden to gameplay.

Narrative Design Between the Lines: Game Development Conversation Standards

It’s not all heart and soul, sometimes its grammar and spelling. John Gonzalez (Creative Lead Designer, Obsidian Entertainment) walked attendants through the labyrinth of conversation standards required to keep the dialogue and narrative of Fallout: New Vegas in check. From faction details to the proper spelling of “Stimpak,” Gonzalez scrolled through the actual New Vegas documents while those in the audience strained to read at lightning speed to steal what little details they could.

Game Writing Workshop

Richard Dansky (Manager of Design/Writer, Red Storm) held a writing workshop focusing on peer feedback. It was an opportunity for one new writer to have a dialogue tree reviewed and critiqued by an industry professional and for several new writers to get a better understanding of how to give and receive criticism. What could have been a wolf pack tearing the unlucky writer’s prose to bits was instead an encouraging and well meaning critique that truly helped her and everyone in the room to write better dialogue.

Narrative Mechanics: An Approach to Crafting Emotion in Games

Writing is far from the final frontier in eliciting emotional responses in players. Jeremy Bernstiein’s (Independent, Dead Space 2) lecture on crafting emotion through the use of game mechanics highlighted an often underutilized tactic for crafting emotion. Via the very tools a we use to interact with the game Bernstein laid out the blueprints for not only putting fear into the player, but vulnerability, tension, helplessness and empathy. Citing examples such as the Andrew Ryan forced resolution in Bioshock (helplessness) to the hand-holding mechanic in Ico (empathy). The possibilities for dynamic emotional triggers was limited only to the creative power of the game designer.

All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Conquest Endgames in MMOs

The developers of EVE Online presented a retrospective that focused on the use of territory conquest for MMO endgame content. EVE Online has been a tireless prize fighter in the world of MMO’s, outlasting all of the major sci-fi space massives while producing an astonishing thirteen expansions in its seven year run. With a plethora of successes and failures under their belts, the developers at CCP were frank about both. The EVE community has notoriously sunk its collective teeth into EVE’s PvP conquest content, which caused a number of challenges. Chief among them was sheer player number in a given zone. On June 6th, 2010 EVE Online reached 60,453 players on a single server. It’s not hard to imagine enormous alliances clashing in a zone and crashing the server. Through clever incentives and a bit of social engineering the developers made great strides in solving the crowding of space, but what about time?

With the competitive popularity of EVE the very time zones of our own tiny planet played a major role in the graying of hairs at CCP. Sooner or later the players in Europe would have to go to sleep, and that’s exactly when American players would be lying in wait with an armada of enormous warships. The developers suggested several options for dealing with this fundamental issue: Segregate time zones, synchronize combat with scheduled combat, or overlap time zones to reduce exploitation.

With the coming release of EVE Online: Incursion in November 2010 it doesn’t appear that CCP has any plans to rest on their laurels. Even with the coming World of Darkness MMO in the pipeline, nothing seems to be slowing them down.

How Online Gaming Adopted the Grind

The Grind. It’s the elephant in the MMO room. More precisely, it’s the elephant in the MMO room that sits squarely on the face of the player while suggesting that the player relax and come to terms with this arrangement to better facilitate reaching maximum level and endgame content. Damion Shubert (Lead Combat Designer, Bioware, Star Wars: Old Republic) feels our pain. Generally speaking, Shubert sees the use of the grind as a crutch. It’s cheap, it’s easy and it’s rarely goes wrong “killing ten rats never fucking breaks.” Grind exists as a kind of membrane between moments of “gold content” or quests that are central to the title and therefore receive the most effort and scrutiny. Often between pitch battles with featured characters and scripted events are large stretches of killing a number of things that are at least within the hazy boundaries of the narrative.

Shubert considered tactics to break up the grind that presumably are being applied to Star Wars: Old Republic, many of which probe into the deep psychological framework of operant and classical conditioning as it applies to the average MMO player who is, by and large, a rat in a box. They pull the lever for the pellet and hope against engineered odds for the occasional epic pellet drop. However, Shubert is not dogmatic in his view of the grind. There are ways to apply the grind appropriately without wearing down the will of the player: Consistent leveling curves, multiple objectives in similar areas or similar enemy types and keeping numbers reasonable (avoid confusing 1,000 killed bandits with a challenging gaming experience).

The 256+ Player Real-Time Server Architecture: Making the MMOFPS a reality

This is my personal holy grail. Too long the RPG has ruled the massive online market with their turn-based tyranny. Sony Online Entertainment attempted to pull the sword from the stone with Planetside, but its efforts were unworthy. Since that time the MMOFPS has remained something of dream for the future. A plan for when technology could meet the demands of such an ambitious endeavor. Lin Luo believes he has designed a solution that will bring the future to the present making the present the past and the past some kind of enriched super-past.

In any FPS there is simply too much going on for any server to handle more than 16-32 players per team. Should they all be in close relation to one another, the server would likely lag or crash altogether. Luo postulates that he could fix this issue by dividing the work load. A central hub server would synchronize 4-8 “battle servers” that would be responsible for populating and coordinating various object requests or physics calculations individually when relevant. Let’s say that MastaKilla69 fires a rocket in an attempt to kill Spartan420 in a crowd of over 100 players. His client would request a rocket be populated. That request would travel to the hub server and then be populated by a connected battle server then routed back through the hub server to each connected client within view of the rocket so that MastaKilla69 and the 100+ throng of players all bear witness to Spartan420’s exploding demise. Thus, no one server pulls the entire load. It appears, on the surface, as a rather elegant solution. While Luo admits to a small increase in latency due to inter-server communication, he’s confident that there are ways to reduce this during development.

Got Gold? An Inside Look at Chinese Gold Farming Markets

One of the more entertaining lectures was given by Jason Psigoda an American expatriate in China who has taken a deeper look into a problem encountered by all MMO players: The Goldfarmer. Crime is always fascinating, and video games are always interesting. If you combine complicated crimes and video games you’ve got my attention pretty well nailed to the projection screen. Gold farming in China is an enormous business, and for the most part, it’s legal. Complete with multi-tiered operating structures, clandestine delivery services and even a gold trading index that gives the worth of an amount of gold in a given game in real time. This prompted me to describe the whole process as “some pretty nefarious shit” and I request an interview with Mr. Psigoda at his earliest convenience. So keep a look out for my interview with Jason Psigoda on the Chinese goldfarming market. There really is so much more to it than chat spam.

Networking with the Pros

After a short awards ceremony where many of the awards went to Riot’s “League of Legends” (deserved) the last lecture was strangely on how to make contacts at the GDC. After all the fumbling attempts by eager students not to make an enormous ass out of themselves in front of major designers and producers, they were treated to a well produced “Here’s what you did wrong” by Jeremy Gibson from USC. While well-meaning and with good intentions, and admittedly containing a lot of good advice, the whole lecture was marred by the hanging resentment of being told something too late at literally the last moment of the conference. Better luck next year, kids.

The Takeaway

If you want to make an honest shot at the video game industry, you need to attend the GDC. The ticket isn’t cheap ($149-$1195 depending on level of access, discounts for early registration), but you get every dollar back in advice, experience and contacts. The people you talk to are real designers of top grossing games and they are willing and enthusiastic to give you advice with little exception. You can go to an expo, but there the same people are basically at work. At the GDC everyone is relaxed and filled with enthusiasm for video games. You can’t buy a better opportunity.

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One Piece Colosseum (Mugen)

A great mugen game with 24 full playable characters from the One Piece Universe!

Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

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The Best of Big Download: April 4 - 10

All's quiet on the PC gaming news front -- it seems like the entire industry decided that the past seven days were a darn good time to take a bit of a breather. There was still some news and downloads to report on, however. So, we did that. We did just that.

Continue reading The Best of Big Download: April 4 - 10

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Hot News For Tonight

15+ free Windows apps to help you tackle Thanksgiving tech support

Filed under: Features, Troubleshooting, Lists

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The holiday season has always been a time for gathering -- but in recent years, it's also been a time when family and friends come bearing gifts of computer troubles. Their computer friends -- people like the Download Squad team and you, our readers -- get asked to do everything from installing RAM upgrades to the annual computer tune-up. We're happy to oblige, of course, because there's a decent chance someone will pay us in beer or baked goods. Cash is welcome too, but never seems to be offered quite as readily.



To make your holiday tech duties a bit easier, I've put together a list of some of my favorite troubleshooting apps for Windows.

Where download links for the files aren't on the application's main page, I've included a link to the appropriate download page. I've provided a handful of FileHippo links as well -- they're an excellent mirror site and they don't surround download links in advertisements or "recommendations."

Continue reading 15+ free Windows apps to help you tackle Thanksgiving tech support

15+ free Windows apps to help you tackle Thanksgiving tech support originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 21 Nov 2010 10:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

    

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The Crossbow Machete: The Most Badass Way To Accidentally Kill a Family Member [Video]

If you happen across a giant bald man of some vague Eastern European provenance wearing a blue ESPRIT t-shirt, do not provoke him. Because chances are he is carrying on his person the most ridiculous weapon of the modern age: the crossbow machete. Don't try this at home, or outside, or anywhere, ever. [Geekologie] More »






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This Is the First Image Ever Obtained from Mercury Orbit [Astronomy]

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Review: Meet The Facebook Phone, INQ Cloud Touch

There has been a lot of speculation about a Facebook phone, but we still don’t know what it quite looks like. However, a new device from INQ, a London-based phone maker, dubbed INQ Cloud Touch, shows the possibilities of a Facebook phone, something I wrote about last year.

For the past week, I have been using the phone, which takes its inspiration from the first version of the iPhone. It is hard to tell that this handsome featherweight smartphone is based on Google’s Android operating system. Your first, and most of the important, interactions on the phone are with Facebook services, though there is nothing preventing you from using the Android applications.

Google, Android & Facebook: Oh My!

The phone, which is GSM/WCDMA, is able to work across the planet and I tested it on the T-Mobile USA network. There were hardly any dropped calls and the call quality was pretty solid – I am guessing that it is thanks to both the radio engineering and the network. Given how slow the 3G networks are in the US, I decided to use Wi-Fi as my primary Internet connection on this device, which was perfect when using some of my favorite Android OS apps such as Amazon Kindle, Nimbuzz, Evernote and Dropbox. You can access the Google Apps’ marketplace just as quickly as you can sign-in to your Google account, and you can access various Google services including Google Voice like you would on any normal Android device. However, this phone is for Facebook lovers.

So, let’s talk about the Facebook experience. After booting up the phone, you come to the welcome screen and all you need to do is enter your Facebook login. The phone populates your address book (you do need to select what kind of syncing you want to do) and logs you into Facebook’s messaging and other services.

Single Sign-On Rocks

The single sign-on removes the need for you to individually sign-in for every Android app – and there is a ton of those — that uses Facebook Connect. As an end customer, this single sign-on is going to make the phone inherently useful. You can check-in to places from the home screen, you can send messages from the home screen, and you can use your calendar from the home screen. One click access to the camera allows you to upload photos directly to Facebook photos.

They are all shown as separate apps, leveraging the recent consumer behavior of using dedicated apps for specific functions. I would argue that if you are a Facebook addict, then you pretty much don’t have to leave the home screen.

It seems INQ got access to an extended/new Facebook Mobile API, which allows it to do some amazing things with the Facebook data. INQ’s phone has borrowed a visual feed metaphor from apps like Flipboard and now allows you to directly see elements such as YouTube videos and photos right on the home screen. After using the Facebook visual feed for six days, I find the web-version of Facebook downright dowdy, slow and well, not fun.

Facebook + Spotify + Android = Fun

As someone who has trial access to Spotify, I have thoroughly enjoyed the integration of Spotify, Facebook and this phone. So if Shak (Spotify’s super evangelist) shares a song with me on Facebook, I can now click on the link and it plays in the Spotify app, which incidentally is fully integrated into the INQ phone. What does that mean for you? Fewer clicks and your home screen becomes the launch pad for your Facebook life as most apps are now cross-linked with each other.

However, here’s the app that is going to blow your mind: the People App. Think of your friends as featured on always updating baseball card. INQ says they got Facebook to extend their social graph API and then are using behind-the-scenes wizardry to suggest top 5/10/20 friends you interact most with.

This is a perfect way for one to manage the friend circle and get rid of some of the noise in your social graph. I am addicted and I want this feature on a desktop app.

The company spokesperson explained that all the Facebook services are based off APIs and Facebook for Android App, because when FB updates their app, the company can take advantage of it right away.

What do I think?

There is a lot to like about INQ Cloud Touch – from the packaging to all the accessories and even set-up handbook are top notch, colorful, and are bursting with energy. The phone itself is light and the touch screen is very responsive.

However, the device at times felt underpowered and sluggish, mostly because it was doing too many things at the same time on a puny processor (Qualcomm 7227 chipset, 600MHz) limited onboard memory (4 MB).

I found it ran out of power after a few hours – between 3 and 4 – when I turned on Wi-Fi and was using the Spotify service in tandem with other mobile apps.  The Facebook app kept crashing on the test device, which at times soured me on the experience.

The toughest challenge for me personally was that I found the home screen a tad too busy. There are just too many calls to action, which are kind of contrary to the experience you get on an iPhone. I bet folks who are half my age are going to have no such problems and probably would appreciate busyness.

That said, it stands out in a sea of Android phones that are hard to distinguish and if you love Facebook and want to live inside the social network, this is the smart phone for you.

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Sorry, Fellows: The iPad 2 Marriage Proposal Has Been Done

A fellow drops on one knee, hands a girl an iPad 2 with a wedding proposal engraved on the back, and the rest is history. After all, you know what they say: diamonds may be forever, but fresh-off-the-assembly-line iPads are a girl's best friend. They do say that, don't they?



This latest techy proposal may not be as rollicking as that iPhone one, or as supremely nerdy as the Pokemon question, but it's certainly not a bad addition to the geek engagement canon.



Of course, the technological obsolescence factor basically ensures the couple will get blank stares if they ever share the story with future kids. Still, it's cute.

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Best News For 29.03.2011

Round-Up: Gamasutra Network Jobs, Week Of March 25

In the latest postings over the last seven days, Gamasutra's jobs board plays host to roles across the world and in every major discipline, including opportunities at Square Enix, High Moon Studios, Capcom, . Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly. It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which ...

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News Flash: 3DS launch: highest one day sales of any Nintendo portable console

According to a report from Gamasutra, the Nintendo 3DS launch produced the highest one day sales of any portable console Nintendo has ever made. Were you surprised it beat the DS and GBA?

Source: Gamasutra

Obrazky

Mass Effect 2 Arrival DLC out today

Mass Effect 2′s latest piece of DLC is now available. As fans of the game will already know as they’ve probably been counting down the days for the past week, the pack is called ‘Arrival’. The episode revolves around an imminent Reaper invasion and features to voice talents of Sci-fi legend Lance Henriksen as Commander Hackett, who sends your character, Commander Shepherd off on a secret mission to rescue an undercover operative.#

Bioware have unveiled a video to go out with the downloadable content’s release, so check that out below if you’re interested. You can schedule the content to your download queue, for a fee of 560 MSP, HERE

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Best Tech Info For This Week

Google Testing Google Music Internally, Still Needs Music

CNET is reporting that employees at Google have begun internally testing Google Music, meaning that the music streaming service could be ready for launch. There is, however, one slight problem: that Google Music needs music. Sources close to the company say that Google is still negotiating with the four major record labels, and that the talks have been delayed primarily because of the complexity of the issue. Google is reportedly pursuing the rights to store users' existing libraries on its cloud servers, but the labels are treading carefully.

Google Testing Google Music Internally, Still Needs Music originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 10:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

    

Dokumenty

DIY Scanning Electron Microscope

There are lots of electronic projects that can be made at home but I would have never thought I would see a Scanning Electron Microscope that was made at home! The results are able to be watched on an oscilloscope. The comments of the article are great also and worth a read.  You can see the system in operation in the video at 9:53.

Via: Make

“The lock washer is only being magnified 10 or 20x. In this test video, I wasn’t too concerned with focus, so the resolution is probably 50um or more. Eventually, I hope to achieve resolution of about 1um. I will probably experiment with different objective lens placement, final aperture size (currently 100um), deflection plate placement, etc.

I originally� wanted to use a microprocessor to generate the raster scan pattern and capture the data for storage/display on an LCD. I may still do this, but there are a few problems: finding a microprocessor with enough RAM to store the image matrix, using a DAC to generate the raster scan pattern at live video rates, and interfacing with a nice LCD (ie generate SVGA video). The Parallax Propeller seems like it might work, but needs a lot of development.”

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Aircell’s First Android Phone For Business Jets

In the past year, Aircell has seen a lot of success, having extending its reach as one of the biggest suppliers of in flight web connectivity. Their service is available on both commercial planes as well as on private business jets and now the company has a new product that has been specifically developed for the latter market segment.

(...)Read the rest of Aircell’s First Android Phone For Business Jets

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Aircell’s First Android Phone For Business Jets
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News: Apple highlights gaming in new iPhone 4 ad

Apple has released its fourth TV advertisement in its “If you don’t have an iPhone” series. Entitled “Game Center,” the 30-second spot touts “the largest selection of games on any phone,” with notable appearances by Scrabble and Infinity Blade. The spot also prominently features Apple’s Game Center social gaming network, showing the user finding friends, inviting them to a game, and playing online. As…

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