Gamer Update

Here's a post for all you gamers! This Tuesday (today), Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II comes out! The story of Darth Vader and his apprentice Starkiller continues with this game for PS3, Xbox, PC, Wii, DS, and iOS. The story continues from the original game, with Vader having made many clones of Starkiller. These clones have been killed off by Vader because they have flashbacks of the original Starkillers life. This leads to them having thoughts of rebellion and turning on Vader.

For the most part, the game seems to remain mostly the same. If you like running around destroying everything in sight with the force, you will still love this game. If bringing pain to others by slicing them with two light-sabers, and using force lightning on them, you will still love this game. The makers did improve many aspects of game play, like I said two light-sabers, and this one seems to just be a continuation of the previous one. One of the major changes the makers made in the second game is that they took away support for the PSP platform. So as long as you have another platform to use, feel free to buy the game today, and run around the Star Wars universe using the force to your heart's content.

New eReader coming soon.

With Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPad, Barnes and Noble's Nook may seem like a pale imposer. However, soon that may be subject to change. An "overzealous" accessory designer seems to have revealed a secret that B&N has been hiding for a while. The Nook color. The screen protector product was advertised on the B&N website and CNET quickly copied it before it could be removed. As surprise about the image seen below is that there is seemingly no buttons.

If it has no buttons, then it would be a touchscreen, color e-reader. And if that means it has eInk than it would be a total domination over the kindle. Currently, kindle has the edge on price, for iPad is a whopping 500+ dollars. Plus Kindle has been praised for the enjoyable reading experience, with no light shining in your eyes from the backlight. If the Nook Color manages to be color AND eInk, than it would be a fantastic product. Another leaked secret about this new Nook is something called "Nook Kids". It is a dedicated kids library of books with a interactive pictures. This could be another great addition to an eReader which could put it into the spotlight.

Read more 
-Mason

Google, meet the TV.

Google TV is Google's latest product. From where they first started by dominating the search engine world, to taking over web browsing with Chrome, introducing Android to smartphones, and a slew of other programs such as GMail, Blogger, Google Reader, Google Docs, and more. Google TV has the potential to completely revolutionize the way we watch and use TV, for good or for worse.

Back to the Mac

October 20, 2010. In Cupertino, California at Apple headquarters, Apple had its "Back to the Mac" event. At this event, Apple announced a number of new products, among them the new version of the MacBook Air.This new laptop is available in two sperate versions, both an 11.6" screen version weighing 2.3 lbs and the larger 13.3" screen weighing 2.9 lbs . Steve Jobs announced that he intended to merge some of the best features of the iPhone/Pad with the new Macs being released. The laptops will be beginning at $999, but could reach up to $1599, depending on the features/screen size you choose. Apple also announced the release of their new Mac OS X version, which will be dubbed Lion, intended to be released in September 2011. Alongside of this release, Apple intends to be adding the App Store to this new Mac OS, although there will be other ways of getting apps. Apple finally announced a new version of iLife, costing $49 for Macs already in service, and will be included in the charge of new posts. This is the first time in a while that Apple has chosen to specify on the Mac, rather then branching off in numerous directions, and could lead to increased profit. I personally believe this event was held in order to counter the rising sales of Windows 7 in the market and to combat microsoft further. More information can be found here.

--Karl J.

The Google Car

Google has begun testing its self driving car, to ensure that it is driver safe and friendly. This ground breaking car combines a lot of the features Google already uses, such as the databases that share known road blockages, the maps of the city to plot the best route, and finally speed limits in order to prevent speeding. The car has several video cameras in order to see what's around it, along with radar sensors to gain information while driving. This car has a very large convenience factor, as all you have to do is get in, enter your final destination, and then wait while the car does all the work and you can do whatever you choose.  Although this car has not been mass-produced yet, a few prototypes have been designed and tested on the roads of California. Although the car is not quite advanced enough to be given to the general public, one such car has managed to log 140,000 miles on its own. Google stated the reason for producing this car was to help people overcome everyday problems with technology, such as by developing a safe, efficient, reliable car to begin patrolling the roads. Despite this car's ability to drive itself, it is never driven around unmanned, for security reasons, as humans can effortlessly and quickly, whether to avoid danger, or merely to get that hands on feel of driving a car. To read more, look here

--Karl J.

Apple TV not up to par.

Recently, the new Apple TV was released and engadget reviewed the item. The new version has many new features and is a smaller unit at a much lower price.

• The hardware consists of many aspects alike to the iPad, iPod, and iPhone. It has around 1GHz like an iPad, the A4 CPU chip like all the iDevices, and it has WiFi compatibility. 

• The remote is small, and has 3 buttons. According to engadget, it is a chore to use. They believe the best way to control the Apple TV is through an iDevice with the "remote" app. 

• The interface is much like the previous version, extremely easy to set up and navigate. One flaw is the on-screen keyboard, since it is not QWERTY. 

• The actual act of renting and viewing a purchase is great, and if you are a netflix user then the iTunes store and netflix are integrated well. 

A few problems: The channels affiliated with apple TV are limited. Also, only M4V, MP4, or MOV files can be read through apple TV. This means one cannot just rip a dvd and upload it. Another issue is the high cost of video on the iTunes store. This brings the competitors that use Amazon direct a step above, for the cost of renting and buying digital content is much less. Sadly, the Apple TV does not really deliver, but that does not mean it isn't good. It just isn't above Roku and the competitors.
-mason

LEDs. In your skin.

Yep, that's right. LEDs in your skin. While there have already been flexible displays like this E-Ink and OLED, normal LED's are very brittle and cannot be bent easily. 

LED's are cheap and reliable, and one of the technology powerful light sources out there on a small scale. With this new development by John Rogers into flexible LEDs, their technologic advancements really shine.

Skype five has five person calling

Skype 5.0 has introduced a few new features. Besides the change in design of their home screen, they have integrated Facebook into their interface. You can now access your news feed and update your status while in Skype. You can also start calls with your Facebook friends (read this article). Skype has new competition with Google, who recently added a calling feature to Gmail (Google's email service) so that all users could make internet phone calls. Because Skype is basically an internet calling and chatting service, this could develop into a major rivalry. The developing of Facebook into Skype could be a new way to have a step up on Google, by getting Facebook users.

Finding Skype friends on Facebook goes along with 

the new Skype features.

Skype has also greatly improved their video calling service. Now you can have a video chat with up to ten people. Skype says that 40 percent of their minutes last year were used for video calling, so with this new advancement, Skype will probably used more and more, even with businesses for things like conference calls.  Skype has worked hard to make the video calling better, and has come up with new designs and formats. These are things like having the person that is talking the most in a video chat on a more prominent position on your screen, and gauging audio and video quality throughout the call.

The new video conference calls.

-Scotty

Space Travel Anyone?

Back in July the SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic's newest suborbital spaceplane (to take tourists into space), went on a flight with the full crew. The flight lasted for 6 hours, but the SpaceShipTwo remained attached to it's mothership, the VMS Eve.

Now more recently on Sunday October 10th, the SpaceShipTwo went on its first solo glide flight. The ship took off with the VMS Eve carrying it to an altitude of 45,000 feet, at which point the SpaceShipTwo disconnected from the mothership and glided for 11 minutes before safely landing at the Runway 30 in the Mojave Air and Space Port.

The purpose of this flight was to establish a clean release from the mothership, and to free glide and land back at the Mojave Air and Space Port. Both of these goals were accomplished, and will help Virgin Galactic meet its goals to have a commercial flight into space next year.

So far, the company has 370 customer deposits, totaling to a value of $50 million. The company plans to have future operations in New Mexico's Spaceport America.

In case you're curious, tickets cost $200,000 and have a deposit of $20,000. If you just so happen to be interested in booking a flight, you can do that here.

In other news...

-Teguh

The World of Multiple Search Engines

I have long been looking forward to a world of multiple search engines, where we can turn different places to  find the information that we want to find. Bing has shown that it has the potential to be a major competitor of Google. It  has always been developing fast, even merging with the web giant Yahoo to form an alliance to rival Google. This alliance is now found to be very effective at advertising, which has marketers excited, because they would want a broader advertising world than just Google. If the search engine world had more than one place for marketers to go, there would be more competition between Google and Bing.

This article has many interesting statistics and logistics about the search engine advertising world. Having the advertising world play a part in deciding major search engine's successful is something that I haven't really thought about. At the same time, this could be used to help diversify the search engine world. I find the quote at the end of the article stands out to me. It sums up the point that if the Yahoo/Bing alliance can master advertising, they can start to be a major rival of Google.

-Scotty

ra1n and pois0n.

Last post I introduced you to greenpois0n, a jailbreak making use of the SHAtter vulnerability. It was to be released this week, or a couple days ago but old-time favorite hacker "geohot"/"geohotz" came back from retirement with what he called an "unpatchable" jailbreak. This new jailbreak is called "limera1n", and it is currently windows only (mac and linux coming soon). limera1n has attracted a lot of controversy and angered jailbreakers, for it delayed the release of "greenpois0n". The dev-team, another group of hackers, was working on a top-notch unlock, but with the unexpected return of geohot and release of limera1n, Apple now can patch what is being used to jailbreak. The dev-team wisely decided to keep SHAtter hidden and thus saving a jailbreak for when apple patches to hole used by limera1n.
Limera1n is much like blackra1n, the very popular unlock that geohot made for the iOS 3 system. However, the user-friendly, one-click jailbreak of blackra1n is no more. I believe that limera1n resembles blackra1n, with the rain symbol (but now it's green), and the "make it ra1n" program. All I really know is that limera1n is legit, and that when it comes for mac, I will be using it.
Read more.


EDIT: greenpois0n was just released using the same vulnerability as limera1n, SHAtter being preserved for later. 
-mason

Windows 7 Phone

Microsoft intends to release it's new Windows Phone 7 Series phone ( to use it's official name) just at the beginning of the 2010 holiday season. Microsoft has alluded that they will be cooperating closely with Zune, so if you are familiarized with that interface then Windows 7 will be right up your alley. This mobile phone has an effective history system, which allows easy access to the apps you use most frequently. The phone comes  complete with it's own social connection App, called The People Hub, which gives you the ability to connect with all of your friends quickly and effectively. Parallel to this App, there will also be The Photo Hub, which allows you to manage and share your photos, and also The Office Hub, probably one of the most exciting Apps, which gives you the ability to manage the documents on your PC from your phone. In addition, you have the ability to take notes, prepare a presentation, and have a method of flagging emails, all from your phone. Probably one of the largest features is that Zune has linked with Xbox live, allowing hardcore Xbox players to connect with their friends on the go. Unfortunately, this new phone will be released with Bing as it's primary search engine, despite Google's superiority. More about the Windows Phone 7 Series can be found here

-- By Karl J.