Sega’s third-person action game Bayonetta was playable today at the first day of the Tokyo Game Show, both on Xbox360 and PS3. The game looked fine on both consoles and features a bespectacled female (“Bayonetta”) as the main character. Judging from the demo versions and previews I’ve read so far, Bayonetta isn’t much different from other third-person action games like Devil May Cry. → Read More
A bit of an update to that whole AT&T-linked senators story from the other day. Well, our complaining must have worked because the senators will no longer try to block Net Neutrality. USA! → Read More
Want the multi-touch experience without the expense or hassle of building your own using touchscreens, infrared cameras, or clockwork? Wacom has a deal for you. → Read More
So yeah, the PS3 motion controller will be available this Springtime, and the first “big” games to make use of it will be Resident Evil 5 and LittleBigPlanet. High Velocity Bowling will also use the controller, and it sounds absolutely thrilling. → Read More
It appears that a few days ago there was a slight change to Flickr’s logo: an addition of a small Yahoo logo to the right side so it reads “Flickr from Yahoo.” In response, many Flickr users have taken to the photo-sharing site’s forums to express their horror at Yahoo’s branding on Flickr.
The underlying fact is that Flickr users, many of whom are techy hipsters, just don’t mix well with “middle America Yahoo” as Bartz put it a few days ago at the unveiling of Yahoo’s $100 million marketing campaign about “Y!ou.” Bartz said to a roomful of journalists and bloggers: → Read More
http://static.themis-media.com/media/global/movies/player/flowplayer.commercial-3.1.1.swf Look for the Wheel o’ Babies! → Read More
(With the image above, close your eyes and pretend that instead of bottles of shampoo, the price cut signs are pointing at a shelf full of MyTouches. Our photoshop talents only go so far. And by “so far”, we mean not very.) If you were on the cusp of buying a T-Mobile myTouch but just felt it was a little too expensive, we’ve got good news: it just got cheaper. Early this morning, ol’ magenta decided to chop 25% off the going price of $199.99, bringing the total on a two-year contract down to just $149.99. There are too many reasons why they might have dropped the price (for example, the fact that T-Mobile is prepping to launch the Android-powered and purportedly dirt cheap Cliq ) to make any assumptions. With that said, folks don’t tend to drop the price of things when they’re expecting them to sell like hot cakes on a winter’s eve. [Via TmoNews] → Read More
So before we get into this, let’s build the case for the defence. Nokia has been acquiring lots of small startups lately (Plum, Cellity and Bit-Side this year) and TechCrunch.com now has a source that says they’ve bought boutique travel social network Dopplr. This appears to have occurred while Dopplr was fundraising – something which often happens when deals are being thrashed out. Dopplr is not commenting on the story. Dopplr is headquartered in London but owned and operated by Dopplr Ltd. in Helsinki, Finland. The service is based on the idea of “intention broadcasting” where you publish your intention to visit somewhere in the future, thus making happy coincidences in your social network less and less coincidental (and thus happier, more efficient). Where or from whom the original idea came from is lost in the mists of time (perhaps someone can enlighten us in the comments?). Anyway, the purchase price is said to be between €10 million and €15 million. We first covered Dopplr in 2007 when it closed on seed funding. Supposedly it has raised just €1.25 million or so in total funding although exact figures were never announced, even though they assembled a stellar groups of backers who have much deeper pockets than that. → Read More
Widgets. They’ve been all-the-rage slowly simmering as the go-to “next big thing” in mobile since 2004. Though no one has yet to launch a massively successful widget engine, some are still banking on the idea as a means of competing in a world suddenly filled with full-fledged Apps coming out of full-fledged App Stores. Now, thanks to a handful of ingenious developers out of Switzerland, they’re coming to the iPhone. → Read More
Alienware announced yesterday they will “shake the gaming world to its foundation” at the Tokyo Game Show 2009. Well, the show started today, I went there and played Resident Evil 5 (and a bunch of other titles, for example Streetfighter 4) on Alienware hardware. I’m not sure if the gaming world is really that different when compared to yesterday, but all the games did look damn impressive on the Alienware notebooks and desktop computers. → Read More
EXCITING TIMES, MY FRIENDS! Meritline just dropped a headphone bomb of awesome-tastic proportions with these – WAIT FOR IT – double-sided earbuds! One side is a cruddy, cheap earbud like you’d find included with a cruddy, cheap MP3 player while the other side is a fancy earbud that goes into the deepest depths of your ear for the ultimate in fancy sound, just like all the cool kids from Party Town, USA get to listen to all the time! Now you can too! → Read More
I just came back from this year’s Tokyo Game Show and must say I am pretty disappointed with the show this year. There were hardly any highlights, Sony didn’t show their motion controller anywhere after the announcement during their keynote (picture of the device below/more info later) and staff members often didn’t let me shoot any pictures or videos (which I did anyway if there was the chance).
Here are some pictures from two booths of the show. The picture on the left shows the final event of the first day (Sunday is the final day). More material from the Tokyo Game Show follows today and tomorrow. → Read More
Circumstantial rumor > confirmed rumor > official confirmation. Such is the storied life of a mobile gadget these days. It was just last week when word of a September 27 launch date for Sprint’s Samsung Instinct HD leaked onto the Internethers, and today that rumor became substantiated. → Read More
Here’s a little more info on the Archos 9 Tablet. Apparently it’ll be available here in the US on October 22nd, the same day Windows 7 is available. The price tag is pretty aggressive at $499, too. → Read More
After locking down pretty much the entire story on the VX8575, from the first shots to a launch date, PhoneArena has gone ahead and sealed the deal with a pre-announcement hands on. Here’s what we walk away knowing: → Read More
While this certainly isn’t the first time — we’ve seen a music video shot on an iPhone (or even the first time one has been shot with the 3GS), it is the first time we’ve seen it done by someone with.. you know, money. → Read More
Twitter is about to raise a boatload of cash. Last week we broke the news that Twitter is raising another round of funding at a $1 billion valuation and that one of the new investors in that round is Insight Venture Partners. Initially, Twitter was trying to raise $50 million, but demand for its shares is so great that it is raising even more.
The WSJ is reporting that the round may close as early as later today, and that Twitter may end up raising close to $100 million. In addition to Insight Venture Partners, another new investor is T. Rowe Price. In February, 2009, Twitter raised $35 million at a $250 million valuation. → Read More
The Palm Pre is coming to Germany on October 13 and will pop up on October 16 in UK and Ireland. The UK model will cost 96.89 pounds for the 75 and 600 minute plans and will be free for the 44 and 73 pound plans (1,200 and 3,000 consecutively). Other countries should be just about the same. Click through for the UK release. → Read More
The PS3 Slim is a hit, but hopefully Final Fantasy diehards haven’t already purchased one. Sony has a special white and pink edition coming that will honor the franchise. Plus, it will come rocking a 250GB HDD. So far the special edition is only announced for Japan though. It’s slated to be released on December 17 for ¥41,600. (That’s a ¥11,620 premium over the standard PS3 Slim) → Read More
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