Content and news by Geek Girl

Expensive cameras are not for everyone, but everyone does want a camera with ample qualities to get the job done. DXG realizes this and as a result, they have released their 506V digital camera. To call it a digital camera is an understatement though, as it can act as a web cam, MP3 player and even a voice recorder.

We’ve known for a while that Sierra Online has been planning to bring a Battlestar Galactica game to Xbox Live Arcade but the company has now finally slapped it with an official announcement. Reported on Team Xbox, the game’s a top-down shooter featuring a single-player campaign and multiplayer human versus Cylon space battles that support up to eight players in Firefight, Skirmish and Domination modes.

A number of the game’s single-player missions are based on action in the TV series, with four ships from both factions – including the Viper II and the Cylon raider – present and pilot-able.

It’s expected to release this autumn.

Source: CVG

On June 17th, Nick Yee, creator of the Deadalus Project, graduated with his PhD from Stanford University. He started his research in MMOs in 1999, and the Daedalus Project was created in 2003 to effectively index findings and allow for public comments.
In this issue of the Daedalus Project, he presents some reflections on all that has happened as well as provides links to some high-profile media appearances and reports he has been involved with recently.

As a thank you for being a part of the Daedalus Project, Nick invites everyone to celebrate this moment with him at http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus. He states that “this wasn’t something I could have done alone and your interest and participation in this project have meant and continue to mean a great deal to me” and although there isn’t a new survey for this phase, he has absolutely no plans of ending this line of research. Look out for a new survey phase in a few months.

“The Daedalus Project” by Nick Yee, available at:
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus

Today NCsoft is announcing that it will be closing down service for Auto Assault at the end of the summer. The service will close at midnight on August 31, 2007. As of today, any player currently in the service with an active billed account will not be billed again. If players have previously purchased time via multi-month billing or time cards that extends their service past July 31, NCsoft will reconcile these accounts appropriately. There will be more announcements coming soon regarding the shut down of Auto Assault and its impact on current accounts. Please check back at www.autoassault.com for more information.

When is the last time you actually purchased music in a store? “The major labels are struggling to reinvent their business models, even as some wonder whether it’s too late. “The record business is over,” says music attorney Peter Paterno, who represents Metallica and Dr. Dre. “The labels have wonderful assets — they just can’t make any money off them.” One senior music-industry source who requested anonymity went further: “Here we have a business that’s dying. There won’t be any major labels pretty soon.””

Source: Rolling Stone

We’ve known for a while that E3 would be cutting back significantly. The only way to get tickets is to get invited, the attendees from the press will be a much smaller number than previous years, and of course there will be fewer exhibitors this time around. All positive things. That is, until we started trying to plan our coverage.

Let’s look at this: 32 companies will be showing their games or products, and the show lasts for two ten-hour days and one seven-hour day. Many companies have hotel meetings, a press conference, and playable games on the show floor. So that’s three different areas where their games could be. But wait, it gets better! The hotel suites will be spread between eight hotels, with eight to twenty minutes of travel time between the hotels and the showroom floor. Much of this week has been spent talking to game developers and publishers with a spreadsheet in front of us trying to figure out when we have time during the show to cover the games we want to.

Let the games begin!

Source: Ars Technica

I have to agree with a post on Evil Avatar, “Microsoft has tech like this they are hiding away while they show us a $10,000 coffee table computer?”

Using photos of oft-snapped subjects (like Notre Dame) scraped from around the Web, Photosynth (based on Seadragon technology) creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation. Its architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, shows it off in this standing-ovation demo. Curious about that speck in corner? Dive into a freefall and watch as the speck becomes a gargoyle. With an unpleasant grimace. And an ant-sized chip in its lower left molar. “Perhaps the most amazing demo I’ve seen this year,” wrote Ethan Zuckerman, after TED2007. Indeed, Photosynth might utterly transform the way we manipulate and experience digital images.

See the demo and read more about Photosynth

The Federal Trade Commission’s Internet Access Task Force today issued a report, “Broadband Connectivity Competition Policy,” which “recommends that policy makers proceed with caution in the evolving, dynamic industry of broadband Internet access, which generally is moving toward more – not less – competition. In the absence of significant market failure or demonstrated consumer harm, policy makers should be particularly hesitant to enact new regulation in this area.”

Source: Federal Trade Commission

Funcom introduces virtual item sales in Anarchy Online.

The first virtual items to kick off the program will be the introduction of jetbikes and hover boards, giving players the chance to cruise around Rubi-Ka in an all new fashion. In addition Funcom will offer previously released scout-mechs, luxury apartments, Leet pets and various sets of social clothing. By using points the players can also get access to previous and upcoming expansion and booster packs, as well as new services like changing in-game names or moving to another server.

For more information about the game please visit Funcom

There is a new DocuPen model added to PLANon’s ever-growing lineup. The RC800 is a full color document scanner that can store up to one hundred pages on its internal memory. If you have the need for a portable scanner, you won’t want to miss this one.

To be honest, I’m not sure which part of this article disturbs me the most, suffice it to say, it makes me want to run screaming.

MySpace has more registered members than Mexico has people. If it was a country it would be the eleventh largest in the world. So while it may be a major marketing event for MySpace to say it’s holding a presidential primary next January, you can be sure the candidates will take it seriously.

The MySpace primary will be held on January 1 & 2, 2008, before any of the official state primaries. Every user will be asked to vote for their favorite candidate.

Most of the candidates already have MySpace pages. See, for example, Hillary Clinton (7,468 friends), John Edwards (16,921 friends), Rudy Guiliani (private profile), John McCain (3,596 friends) and Barack Obama (89,465 friends). See all of the candidates here.

Source: TechCrunch

People can spend most of their time online, but it is very difficult to spend all of it there. Sometimes people have to work, go to school, or eat. Or sleep. And who will be there to chat with everyone while you are away? Until now there was no answer for this difficult problem. Now, there is MyCyberTwin.

The company, which is based in Australia, creates an online “clone” of users based on a 79 question personality quiz and hundreds of additional training questions. Once it’s complete, a chat bot is created for that user, which has it’s own web page, can be embedded into MySpace or another website, or can log into Microsoft Messenger on your behalf and pretend to be you.

No it doesn’t come with a goatee and a sash.

Source: TechCrunch

Scientists have found a way to “bend” and direct liquid using only the force of light. The discovery could one day offer a new way to control the flow of fluids through extremely narrow channels in devices used for in biomedical analysis.

A team of US and French scientists used a laser to produce a surprisingly long and steady jet of liquid in two fluids. With one fluid sitting on top of the other, the jet – about 10 microns wide – extended from the fluid above into the one below in the direction of the beam. When the direction of the beam was reversed, it just pushed the liquid below upwards slightly.

It is the first time light has been used to affect the flow of a fluid in this way, the researchers believe.

Source: NewScientistTech

If you’re bothered about the security (or lack there of) of your Wi Fi connection you’ll soon be able to paint a solution thanks to EM-SEC Technologies Wi Fi blocking paint.

The paints is said to block various electromagnetic transmissions so along with Wi Fi it could also be used to block mobile phones. As well as the obvious security and social benefits (no more annoying crazy frog ring tones in the middle of a movie), it could also be great for pranks, imagine a mate trying to troubleshoot his Wi-Fi connection after you helped him decorate.

Source: Cool Gadgets

A transatlantic team of number-crunchers announced they had built a theoretical structure in 248 dimensions, resolving a 120-year puzzle that could be used to test theories about the structure of the cosmos.

The human genome is less than a gigabyte in size, but the E8 calculation is 60 gigabytes, enough to store 45 days of continuous music in MP3 format. The printout would cover an area the size of Manhattan.

Source: PhysOrg

Brando offers a wide range of special, useful and helpful technology products. Alongside the myriads of USB products are a wide selection of LED items, which will also be illuminated in this spotlight.

Everything last-gen is new-gen when it comes to the PS3 and its suspiciously absent rumble feature — at least that’s the impression we got from God of War Game Director Cory Barlog, who apparently told 1UP that God of War 3 for PS3 will be 1080p and, more importantly, have vibration (aka rumble, aka force feedback, aka what Sony’s been making piss-poor excuses for not having in the PS3 for quite some time). Obviously this is absolutely not a shock considering that Sony and Immersion finally settled and made nice; and we’re more than happy to finally have the feature, we’re just experiencing a dash of lingering resentment about the facts that a) Sony hadn’t been so disingenuous about why the feature wasn’t included in the first place (including claims of technical infeasibility) and b) everybody’s going to have to buy expensive new controllers for that “last-gen” feature.

Source: Engadget

Open-Xchange on Monday unveiled the opening of its Open-Xchange Community project and the availability of source code and development documentation for its latest AJAX-based e-mail and groupware technology.

The open source collaboration software provider and 1&1 Internet, a Web-hosting firm, recently announced the availability of MailXchange, 1&1’s hosted e-mail and collaboration solution based upon Open-Xchange’s Smart Collaboration technology.

Open-Xchange is releasing the MailXchange server components’ source code under General Public License and the AJAX-based user interface under the Creative Commons License “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5.”

Gamespot is reporting that Midway Games is being sued by William L. Crawford III on grounds that the plot for Midway’s games was not wholly original, and in fact is a rip-off of one of his own screenplays – also called Psi-Ops.

The premise for the Psi-Ops screenplay is government soldiers with paranormal abilities, or ‘Psi-Agents,’ that fight terrorists that also have paranormal abilities,” according to the lawsuit. It mentions a number of characters, including a foreign-born pyrokinetic with a troubled past; a cool and menacing mind control specialist with a slender masculine build, black hair, trench coat, and sunglasses; and a rogue Psi-Agent who establishes his own underground terrorist organization using other Psi-Agents.

Uh yeah cause his story was SO original to begin with….

Europe’s second-largest car manufacturer on Tuesday announced a contract with Novell to install the Linux operating system on thousands of its desktop systems and servers. Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop integrates seamlessly in Peugeot’s Windows-based infrastructure, according to a statement by Novell. The announcement coincided with the release of Microsoft’s Windows Vista.

PSA Peugeot Citroen and open source software giant Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL) have signed a multiyear contract that will deploy the Linux operating system on thousands of company computers that already run Windows. The French car manufacturing company will install Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop on up to 20,000 of its desktop computers and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on 2,500 of its servers, Novell announced Tuesday at the Solutions Linux 2007 show in Paris. The announcement coincided with the release of Microsoft’s (Nasdaq: MSFT) new Windows Vista operating system.

Peugeot’s decision to roll out Linux may likely be a sign that the company wants to lower corporate IT expenses via open source software. Peugeot selected Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop because of Novell’s open source expertise and collaboration with hardware and application vendors to help support the company’s IT requirements. In addition, Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop integrates seamlessly in Peugeot’s Windows-based infrastructure , according to a statement by Novell.

Source: Linux Insider