Message date: 2009-03-25

Wolfenstein 3D released for iPhone, break a Nazi jail on a jailbroken iPhone

id Software’s seminal 1992 Wolfenstein 3D, the game that’s widely accepted as the granddaddy of FPS games, has been ported onto the iPhone by the game’s original programmer, id’s John Carmack. A 10MB download, the game is fully-featured but is mostly intended as a technical demo, as Carmack has open-sourced the game and released it as [...]
Publication date: 2009-03-25 more

Sony slices off nose to spite face, charges publishers for DLC hosting

Sony has mucked up the PlayStation 3 pretty much since the get-go. While its predecessor was the most popular console of its generation, the PlayStation 3 is struggling for last place in the current gen console wars. You’d think that would make Sony smart as they scramble to leverage their console’s assets to regain some [...]
Publication date: 2009-03-25 more

Vuze 4.2 automatically converts torrented films to iPhone, 360 and more

Vuze (nee Azureus) has long been a dollop of cream floating atop the Bittorrent bisque, and while the lightweight uTorrent may be a more svelte client — the parsley on the cream — no client beats Vuze for features. The latest bullet point on Vuze’s already impressive feature list? As of version 4.2, available on [...]
Publication date: 2009-03-25 more

It's market strategy, but in a virtual world of its own

University lecturers have come up with a novel virtual stock market in a bid to understand the boom and bust cycles of financial markets.
Publication date: 2009-03-25 more

Boxee delivers new web browser, API, and Pandora

During Boxee’s meetup tonight in NYC the company is unveiling some new features straight out of alpha. According to the company, it will be showing off a new Pandora app, built using a new boxee API. Basically, it was built using XML pages and Python scripts, and a host of other things. Bundled in this [...]
Publication date: 2009-03-25 more

Dell eschews branding stickers from luxury Adamo laptop

Almost every laptop or CPU out there has a tattoo problem. The unsightly blemishes of contractual licensing agreements: an EnergyStar logo slapped on the battery case, a Windows Vista capable branding seared into a chassis, a Dolby SoundRoom marker emblazoned above the speakers, or an Intel Inside logo smashed into the side. It’s not a [...]
Publication date: 2009-03-25 more

Steve Ballmer:

The Zune is not nearly so poor a digital audio player as its prominent embedding in the stinking, corpulent flesh of the infamous “Zune Guy” would have you believe. While the initial Zune was a solid piece of hardware betrayed by some mystifying firmware fubars, Microsoft’s plucky Zune team has plugged away at the software [...]
Publication date: 2009-03-25 more

'Nationalise Eircom to solve broadband problems'

The government is being urged to consider nationalising Eircom in a bid to solve Ireland's broadband problems.
Publication date: 2009-03-25 more

YouTube blocked in China over disputed video

YouTube, the video-sharing Web site owned by Google, is inaccessible in China for at least a second day, about a year after the country limited access to the site following protests in Tibet.
Publication date: 2009-03-25 more

Ditch the recipe box for the Demy Digital Recipe Keeper

I like to cook around the home from time to time, so having quick access to recipes often involves pulling out my file folder which contains stained and often disorganized recipes. Of course, most recipes can be easily found on the Internet these days, but who wants to take the chance of getting your laptop [...]
Publication date: 2009-03-25 more

Enable Visual Effects in Ubuntu to Increase Performance

For a while now, I'd been running Ubuntu 8.04 on my Thinkpad T61 (work machine) with Visual Effects disabled. Why? There were weird bugs with compiz and xterm that caused corruption at times. So I shut it off and never thought about it again. But a few days ago, I upgraded to 8.10 despite the apparent increase in WiFi related lock-ups I can expect to see (apparently I don't have the Intel wireless in this machine... grumble). Switching virtual desktops, or "Workspaces" as they're called, seemed to be even slower than before--almost intolerable. Just for kicks I decided to go play with the settings. Imagine my surprise when switching that selection from "None" to "Normal" resulted in an dramatic increase in virtual desktop redraw perfomance. Yay! Counterintuitive, but yay anyway. (comments)
Publication date: 2009-03-25 more

Why are video games so expensive?

Long before they see the "game over" screen, Xbox, Wii and PlayStation fans have already taken a big blow – to their wallets. The average price of console games makes them seem an exorbitant luxury in these recession-hit times, although the industry that creates these technological marvels tends to disagree.
Publication date: 2009-03-25 more

Nintendo DSi to get Virtual Console

The Nintendo DS has been a pirate’s playground virtually since launch, when the DS-Xtreme flash cart was first released, allowing even the most Ludditical of pirates to simply download the latest games and drag-and-drop them onto their Nintendo DS. Cheap Hong Kong knock-offs soon came down the pike, each more nefarious than the last, [...]
Publication date: 2009-03-25 more

Cyberclinic: Why don't batteries last as long as they're supposed to?

As much as we can be certain of anything, we know that there are 100 pence in a pound, six eggs in a box and 53 seats on an executive coach. But one hour of battery life in a cutting-edge gadget contains substantially less than 60 minutes – to a point where the word "hour" has become as meaningless as, I dunno, "squilp".
Publication date: 2009-03-25 more

Upgrade your iPod to 240GB

One of the biggest shockers of last year’s Apple iPod refresh announcement was the elimination of the iPod Video 5G’s 160GB model in favor of a 120GB model. My mouth was filled with gnashing teeth: it not only marked the first time Apple had not only failed to up the storage on its market-defining line [...]
Publication date: 2009-03-25 more