Content and news by Rob Williams

For all those Xbox 360-owning Tony Hawk Pro Skater fans out there, stop what you are doing, turn on the console and promptly download the Proving Ground demo. I’m bordering on Tony Hawk Pro Skater fanboy, so I expect to give it a try in just a short bit. For the first time in a while, the series finally has some competition with EA’s skate., which was recently awarded an impressive 90% at IGN. I can’t remember the last time any Tony Hawk game has had such high scores, so here’s to hoping that Proving Ground seriously impresses and has a chance to retain it’s reign.

In other semi-related news, Joystiq relays information from the Tokyo Gaming Show conference where announcements were released of Rez, Ikaruga, Exit, Omega Five and Triggerheart Exelica all coming to Xbox Live Arcade. No dates have been laid, but Ikaruga in particular has my interest piqued. That game was gorgeous as is when released on the Sega Dreamcast, so I’m curious to see if it will be upgraded at all for XBL. It’s also one of the most difficult top-down shooters out there (is there an easy one?), and should definitely prove worthy of your cash once released.

Microsoft confirmed that Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s melodic shooter will soon make you hear everything you see and see everything you hear on Xbox Live Arcade. Other things you’ll see are waves of hypnotic bullets (Ikaruga), saviors adorned with fine hats (EXIT), pulsating geometric shapes (Every Extend Extra Extreme), flying robots (Omega Five) and… er, some sort of Japanese car (Triggerheart Exelica)? No release dates have been announced for any of the games, though we suspect none of them are likely to come soon enough.

Source: Joystiq (TH Proving Ground), Joystiq (Ikaruga)

Over the years, Microsoft have launched numerous campaigns and techniques to combat piracy. After all, if you are using Windows, you should pay for it. There’s no disagreeing there. However, some of their methods up to now have not only not worked well, but have been intrusive and poorly designed. WGA comes to mind, as it was a system in particular that had a strikingly high number of false positives. So in essence, their piracy-killing techniques not only affect pirates, but legit users as well.

Microsoft is done playing softball though, and plans to up the ante a little bit further. According to Computer World, a large Vista distributor received an e-mail notifying them that a “Reduced Functionality” function in the OS had been activated. What does this mean to those using pirated versions? “A black screen after one hour of browsing; No start menu or task bar and No desktop”. Well… then. As if Vista wasn’t difficult to use in the first place! Hopefully all legit users of the OS will be able to evade potential false positives this time around.

“If Windows Vista is not activated with a genuine product key, your customers will experience reduced functionality,” according to the ad. “The blocking of nongenuine product keys is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. To help protect honest partners and fight piracy, Microsoft will continue to block product keys that are determined to be pirated, stolen or otherwise deemed nongenuine.”

Source: Computer World

Some six months ago, we made a post about an online version of Photoshop that Adobe was apparently working on, but since then not much has progressed. Adobe’s Jack Nack has posted an update regarding a first showing at the Photoshop World convention. One thing is clear… this is not meant to be a Photoshop replacement, but that much was obvious to begin with.

What I find most interesting about the screenshot below is the small cube in the bottom, that contains a lot of Adobe’s product icons. Now, it’s hard to imagine that other Adobe products would also see small clones online, but it’s possible. It could simply be a quick method to export the file you are working on to an Adobe program on your computer. Of course, if you have Photoshop already installed, why would you be using a feature-restricted online version? I guess the only option right now is to wait it out and see.

I can’t share a ton of additional detail at the moment, but here’s a screenshot of the app in action. Adobe Sr. VP John Loiacono showed that it was possible to adjust an image just by rolling over the different versions shown at the top, previewing the results & then clicking the desired degree of modification. I’ll post more info as it becomes available.

Source: John Nack Blog

If there is one thing that I dislike about the internet, it’s the MySpaces and Facebooks. I’d begin to list every reason, but it would require far more space than a simple news post. The main one though, is the fact that many people don’t understand the dangers of exploiting insane amounts of their own information. Like a naive six-year-old who thinks $600 for a game console is equivalent to that of a candy bar, many users of these services find absolutely no risk of offering a thousand images of themselves or updating what they are doing at any given time of the day.

So what the heck am I getting at? It turns out that Facebook believes all forty-million of their users wouldn’t mind having their basic profiles spidered by search engines everywhere. If you are a Facebook user, then you know that no one can see your profile until you add them. However, with this move, Facebook will allow search engines to grab both your profile image and name, so that potential friends can find you outside of the website itself. What this means essentially, is that whether or not you want to be in a search engine, you are going to be. Of course you can disable this default security option, but how many non-computer savvy users are going to even know better?

For some Facebook members, however, the policy change is troubling, because many chose the service because it is private. “I’m amazed that they seem to be opting-in literally millions of people who never asked for Facebook to put listings out in the public,” says Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineLand.com and a Facebook user.

Source: USA Today

Is there any Xbox 360 owner out there who isn’t planning to pick up Halo 3 at launch? If so, the number might be low. To prepare for what could be the fastest-selling video game of all time, Microsoft is holding absolutely nothing back. If you don’t have an Xbox Live subscription, you will be treated to three days free: Sept 25 – 27, just in time considering the game comes out on the 25th.

Of course that’s not all. There will be four major launch events, one in NYC, Seattle, Los Angeles and also Miami. But you can hang outside any Wal-Mart the night of the launch instead, if that’s what floats your boat. I don’t often get excited over any game release, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that Halo 3 is only TWO WEEKS AWAY!

You can check out more details at X3F. For those who just want their damn copy of the game without all the pomp and circumstance, remember you can just stop by 7-Eleven at midnight for the game and a Slurpee, or the “over 10,000 stores [which] will be open to sell Halo 3 in the biggest entertainment launch in history.” Remember, the Halo 3 launch has lofty goals to attain.

Source: Joystiq

Sony, in their ongoing quest to keep people up to date, have released a new firmware update for the PSP while a new PS3 update is on the way. The latest PSP firmware is 3.70 and adds quite a bit of functionality. Most notable is the addition of themes, in case you find the XMB becoming a little boring. The new included theme is “Cookies”, with all icons being shaped out of various cookies. It sounds ridiculous, but it actually looks sharp. Future themes will be released on various websites, but primarily the official PSP site.

Other feature-additions include the ability to listen to music while browsing photos or a slideshow and also a scene search for movies. The PS3 will be launching firmware 1.93 later this week which will simply patch up a few problems that were unveiled with 1.92.

Taking into account customer feedback and some internal testing, we will be making available in the next few days a firmware update for the PS3 (1.93) that fixes the network disconnect issue that some of you have experienced as a result of downloading Firmware 1.92. In addition, we are adding a new firmware update for PSP (3.71) as well, which adds many features that readers of this blog have requested.

Source: Playstation Blog

Oh, the sick irony. We found out just last week of a huge $200 price-drop, to much angst by all of the early adopters. Then yesterday we finally saw the release of iPhoneSIMFree. However, the downside was that some people were having to pay upwards of $100 for the privilege. Well, if you were one of those people, you might want to turn away from the computer since a completely free iPhone unlocking method has since been released. The lesson here? Don’t be a first-adopter when it comes to Apple products if you want to save cash.

Engadget has a quick look at how the hack is performed, but it’s not for the faint of heart and requires pure terminal usage. If you are willing to follow the instructions though, you can have a completely unlocked iPhone in a matter of minutes. As Apple releases more iPhone updates though, they could easily wipe out the effects from this hack. If they choose to do so, then follow-up hacks would have to be performed each time they try to patch it up. Apple has been pretty lenient about hacking of their hardware lately though, so hopefully once you unlock, it stays unlocked.

Depending on activation method, YouTube might not be working after the unlock — ours isn’t. This is, of course, expected behavior. There’s a Windows script here that should hopefully fix you up (again, we don’t make any guarantees), but Mac users will have to look elsewhere. Also, alongside the Mac GUI iUnlock app in the works, the iPhone Dev Team is prepping a Windows version, a simple bash script and an iPhone app — and eventually an all-in-one app that can do everything from the Jailbreak to the unlock.

Source: Engadget

We first posted about Nero 8 at the end of August when the release date was first announced, that being October 1. Well it sure didn’t take long for the executable to be leaked, as it’s now floating around the web, at Softpedia specifically. This is rather humorous to me, as I signed an NDA a few weeks ago and began preparing a review for launch… seems a tad foolish now!

In the odd chance that this was by design, I’ve e-mailed Nero to get their thoughts, though I haven’t heard anything as of yet. I imagine that this was not meant to happen, but nothing is going to stop it now. If you want a sneak peak at what’s fresh, be prepared to tackle a download that’s close to a gigabyte in size. Just realize that serial keys will not likely be available until the first of October and that there are multiple features that will not function until then, as well.

Source: Softpedia

When we reviewed Half-Life 2: Episode 1 last June, I don’t think anyone expected to have to wait another sixteen months before getting our grubby hands on the next installment. Finally, Valve released dates for the Orange Box release: October 10 in NA and October 12 for the rest of the world. It will retail for $49.95 both online and off and include Half-Life 2 (The full game, and then the two episodes), Portal and of course, Team Fortress 2.

If you pre-order via Steam, you not only save 10% and receive a copy of the highly-addictive Peggle Extreme from PopCap, you also get beta access to Team Fortress 2 when it launches next week. You might be asking yourself, “I already own HL2 and HL2: Episode 1, what’s the deal?”, and well, that’s a great question. Upon launch, if you already own those games, you are able to “gift” them to a friend for free. At this point, I am not sure who doesn’t own those games, but it’s a nice feature to have. You can read the full press release below.

September 11, 2007 -The Orange Box-featuring Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2, and Portal, as well as the complete Half-Life 2 experience to date-is now available for pre-purchase via Steam, a leading online platform for the distribution of PC games. Those who pre-purchase the PC edition via Steam before October 10th will save 10% off the $49.95 regular price and get exclusive access to the Team Fortress 2 beta.

Source: Valve Press Release

Here’s something that didn’t come up in our interview with CCP last week! According to ShackNews, EVE Online will have both a Mac OS X and Linux client by years-end, with the help of TransGaming. Apparently, the game was already playable in Linux via Cedega, but this catered solution should prove more reliable.

Although I am not a fan of EVE personally, I have to hand it to CCP for knowing how to push and market their game. When it first launched, it “flopped” by many people’s considerations. Even I thought it would be shut down rather quickly. But CCP took the game, turned things around and now the game has over 200,000 players. If only other MMO publishers took a lesson (aka Turbine with their Asheron Call series). The fact that they are now going to cater to all three operating systems is a big step forward also one that should be mimicked by others.

The move is the result of a partnership with TransGaming, a Canadian company specializing in platform redevelopment. EVE Online was already playable on Linux through Cedega, a Windows shell for Linux users. Now the game will be totally converted using TransGaming’s tasty Cider engine. “By integrating TransGaming’s excellent technology, we are able to keep our laser-focus on evolving EVE Online, while sim ultaneously expanding the EVE universe to even more players,” quipped CCP chief technical officer Halldor Fannar.

Source: ShackNews

I admit that I am still a huge fan of the audio CD, but the fact is, it’s a dying breed, especially in an age when downloading a track you want can be done in under a minute. The record industry also realizes this, so to spice up holiday sales, they plan to release “Ringles”. Essentially, these would be similar to CD singles, another product that is dying off rather quickly. The Ringle would feature a popular artists hit track, an older track, perhaps a remix track and also a ringtone. The average price would be between $5.98 and $6.98.

I’m up for new ideas, but this one seems hilarious at best. It’s almost as humorous as the picture below. First, these Ringles are not going to be cheap. $6.00 is the minimum price, meaning that each track and the ringtone would be $1.50 each… according to simple math. That’s far from inexpensive, considering that one track will be older and another a remix. Coupled with the fact that the same hit song most people will be after will cost $0.99 on most music e-tailer sites, and the ringtone at around $2.00 – $3.00. Sounds like a unique idea, but it comes off as being more of a novelty than anything. The record industry is going to have to try harder.

Universal Music Group and the major labels are about to begin rolling out something called a “RINGLE.” You know, like a single? Except this will be 3 songs packaged together with a ringtone and wallpaper image for your cell phone. The truly idiotic part? These will be physical shipped goods that will be stocked in retailers across the country. Wal-Mart and Best Buy have already jumped on board to start carrying RINGLES.

Source: Boy Genius Report

Apple unveiled their new iPod lineup last Wednesday, and the reviews began trickling out on the web immediately. The most in-depth review thus far would have to be Ars Technica’s look at both the Nano and Classic. They go a bit further than simply telling you what’s new and showing pretty snapshots. Included are benchmarks of boot times and navigation speeds as well.

Their overall thoughts are definitely in the favor of both iPods, which by this point in time, is not that surprising. The main gripes are that the UI is very slow on both models, but worse on the Classic. Another big hit is the fact that video-out is no longer possible via the audio jack. It seems that Apple wants to give people extra incentive into getting the iPod touch, which I will just assume has the support given the fact that they are pushing YouTube capabilities. The review is a worthwhile read if you are in the market for either model.

We believe that Apple introduced the iPod classic so that it wouldn’t have to kill off the traditional iPod style just yet. It’s also the only game in town if you have a massive music collection and want to be able to take most or all of it with you. The scroll wheel and the massive storage capacity have long since become trademarks of the iPod. However, the iPod classic can’t go through too many more revisions without radically changing how the device functions, and so we expect this to be among the last “major” updates to the player—the vestigial tail, so to speak.

Source: Ars Technica

Dell has begun offering 64GB solid-state hard drives for both their laptops and also their Alienware division. The price sits at $920 as the title suggests… not that easy to stomach considering hard drives of much higher density are far, far less expensive. By comparison, the 32GB flash-based drive is a $540 upgrade on the Latitude D620.

From my personal browsing, I notice that Dell not only offers solid-state storage, but it will be enclosed in a shock-proof mount. In addition, they are also offering 1.8″ hard drives with the same mount, however they might prove slower than the flash-based counterparts. On the same notebook as mentioned above, the 32GB solid-state drive was a $540 upgrade while the 80GB 4200RPM drive was $390. I think I will just risk dropping my laptop rather than pay such an extreme premium. But that’s me. If you back up each night, you could save yourself a load of cash. Of course, if you really care about battery-life, that premium might be your only choice.

Dell is expanding its options for notebooks with drives built around flash memory. Earlier this year, the company began to sell a 32GB flash drive from Samsung as an upgrade option on some notebooks. This week, it has officially begun to sell Samsung’s 64GB drive. You can swap out a regular hard drive for a 32GB or 64GB flash drive on the Dell XPS 1330 consumer notebook or get a 32GB or 64GB solid state drive on the Alienware Area 51 m9750 notebook. Alienware will also sell you a notebook with two 64GB drives in it to bring the total to 128GB.

Source: News.com Blog

According to a rumor given to Ars Technica, a $399 40GB PS3 is going to be delivered just in time for the holidays. At the same time, the 80GB model will have a price drop to put it down to $499, the same price as the current 60GB model. As we found out last week though, those models will not be lasting for much longer. In addition, Spiderman 3 is supposed to be packed in with the 80GB, but possibly the 40GB as well.

The big question… how many would be willing to lose 40GB to save $100? Chances are good that many will never use even 40GB to begin with, but it could happen. The downside of the 40GB model would be the same as the 80GB, that PS1/PS2 emulation would be software-based and not hardware-based, leading to complications in a fair amount of titles. Before you decide whether or not to wait, read our news post from yesterday which discusses the benefits of the 60GB over the others.

The 80GB price drop isn’t that shocking, but a new $400 40GB system would be huge news. Would people be willing to part with 40GB to save $100? I think so, and having a $400 PlayStation 3 option would be a great weapon this holiday season. If they get to show off the Blu-ray capabilities of the system with Spider-Man 3 bundled? That’s a nice package.

Source: Ars Technica

Is this the week of the “Millions”? Yesterday, we found out that Apple had sold it’s one millionth iPhone, and today we find out that Wikipedia has added it’s 2 millionth English article. This is a massive accomplishment and really goes to show what community involvement can achieve. I visit Wikipedia every single day, and appreciate greatly all of the hard work of the volunteers (including my little brother!). Kudos to Wikipedia on this accomplishment and here’s to another million!

Initial reports stated that the two millionth article written was El Hormiguero, which covers a Spanish TV comedy show. Later review of this information found that this article was most likely not two million, and instead a revised list of articles created around two million has been generated, and is believed to be correct to within 3 articles. The Wikimedia foundation, which operates the site, is expected to make an announcement with a final decision, which may require review of the official servers’ logs.

Source: Slashdot

In case you were asleep all yesterday, this is a note to let you know that the highly-anticipated Quake Wars demo has finally been released and you can download it from every website on the internet. Well not really, but Gamers Hell, Internode and FileShack all have it, and I am sure there are many others who do as well.

From what I gather, this is both a single-player and multi-player demo, taking place on the Valley map. For those not ready to make the trip online, you will be pleased to know that bot support is included to give you plenty of time to prepare for making a fool of yourself in front of others.

The Strogg and GDF experience is quite different. GDF have to attack on this map, and Strogg defend. The GDF must build a bridge, move a mobile base, kill a tower thing, launch a bunker-busting missile, and then assault an installation. Meanwhile the Stroggs must fight a retreat. Although the classes are paralleled on either side, they are not mirror-images of each other, and every single class has a wide range of different equipment.

Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

It has been well over a year since NVIDIA first launched their EPP (Enhanced Memory Profiles) specification, but until now there hasn’t been any real “competition”. I put that in quotes, because it’s not really a technology that has competition involved. However, NVIDIA’s profiles only worked on NVIDIA-chipsets, naturally, so users of other Intel motherboard offerings were left in the dark, if they wanted that functionality.

Well thanks to a new OCZ press release, we find out that Intel will be releasing an EPP-like technology with their X38 chipset, called “Extreme Memory Profiles”. It functions similarly to the way EPP did, by using spare bytes on the memory module’s SPD to store enhanced profiles. In XMP’s case, there are three profiles: Profile 0, Profile 1 and Profile 2. Profile 0 is JEDEC’s standard, while Profile 1 is Intel’s-preferred settings. Profile 2 will be up to the memory manufacturer to fill, in this case, OCZ.

That said, these modules will work in any computer, but XMP will only function when using an X38 motherboard. The stock settings for these particular modules is DDR3-1333 7-7-7, but Intel’s special settings overclock them to DDR3-1600 8-8-8. OCZ further tweaks this setting by refining the timings to 7-6-6, although I am unsure at what voltage this is accomplished. EPP and the like have limited usefulness to enthusiast overclockers, but for those who don’t want to dabble with overclocking at all but still want super-fast settings, XMP could prove to be quite a hit. We will have a review of these modules sometime next month, so stay tuned. Hit up the press release below for more info.

Sunnyvale, Calif. – September 10, 2007 – OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today announced production of the industry’s first Intel Extreme Memory modules, a new memory solution that implements a high-performance specification optimized and predefined for the impending Intel X38 chipset.

Source: OCZ Press Release

Yes, iPhone news truly never ends. It was starting to feel like iPhoneSimFree was a hoax by the constant delay, but today that theory has been proven wrong. Engadget is reporting that the software is now available and can be purchased by anyone who owns an iPhone. As mentioned last week, regular customers can’t purchase the software, rather, resellers have to buy in bulk. What this means is that you are going to pay way, way more than you should have to.

One reseller in the US is selling each license for $99, which would be a $61 profit if they bought the smallest bundle from the iPhoneSimFree developers. There are others that are even cheaper though, such as an Aussie site that is selling them for $50 USD. At this point, no one knows if Apple is going to allow this to continue. Future iPhone firmware updates could easily render this hack useless, so purchase at your own risk.

In other related news, Apple has announced that they’ve hit the 1,000,000 unit mark for the iPhone, a truly impressive feat for something that hit the market only 74 days ago. That amounts to 13,500 per day, and one heck of a profit. It’s unknown how much of a boost the recent price drop helped out here, but there’s no doubt it played a role.

CUPERTINO, California—September 10, 2007—Apple today announced it sold its one millionth iPhone yesterday, just 74 days after its introduction on June 29. iPhone combines three devices into one—a mobile phone, a widescreen iPod, and the best mobile Internet device ever—all based on Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface and pioneering software that allows users to control iPhone with just a tap, flick or pinch of their fingers.

Source: Engadget (iPhoneSimFree), Apple (1,000,000th iPhone)

Reports were released a few weeks ago finding that AMD Opteron-based servers were far more power-efficient when compared to Intel’s offerings. Intel refuted those reports, stating that they put no thought into overall efficiency. Essentially, their thoughts are that an AMD Dual-Core server might use lower power than an Intel Quad-Core, but the latter would obviously be more efficient overall.

Come early next year, such reports could be more accurate thanks to an upcoming SPEC application that’s designed for this exact reason. In development for over 18-months, this tool would be used to measure not only power consumption, but also overall efficiency. The SPEC committee includes HP employees who no doubt want to find out information that would produce better servers for their customers, so the application will certainly have some merit once out the door.

Currently, there’s no way for IT managers to choose among servers based on the energy efficiency of the systems, Koomey said, adding that the new benchmark will allow “sensible decision-making.” He said the benchmark may also lead to improvements of more than 30% in the power efficiency of servers as vendors respond with lower-power chips, better power supplies and other improvements.

Source: Computer World

Have you ever received a cell phone bill that included charges you didn’t expect? Chances are if you didn’t, then you don’t use a cell phone. All too often, providers will sneak hidden charges onto your phone bill in hopes you won’t notice. Too often, it works. Finally, US senators have realized that this is a huge problem and have unveiled legislation that would stop this from ever happening.

If passed, it would require cell phone service providers to offer you clear and concise outlines of your commitment, a thirty-day window that would allow the customer to cancel service without cancellation fees and also greater flexibility to exit contracts with services that don’t meet your needs. I think it goes without saying… this needs to happen.

The Cell Phone Consumer Empowerment Act of 2007 will require wireless service providers to share simple, clear information on their services and charges with customers before they enter into long-term contracts; a thirty-day window in which to exit a contract without early termination fees; and greater flexibility to exit contracts with services that don’t meet their needs.

Source: Slashdot