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Flying courier drone can drive up to your door
Delivery drones have more than a few challenges, not the least of which is dropping off the package in a convenient place. Do you really want to head out to your yard to collect a box? You might not have to. Advanced Tactics has successfully tested delivery with a drone, the Panther sUAS Air/Ground Robot, that can both fly and drive up to your door. When it's too dangerous or costly to travel by air, the machine just has to touch down and wheel its way to its destination. It promises more considerate (not to mention less theft-prone) shipping to homes and offices, and it could also lead to faster deliveries in areas where no one transportation method is particularly speedy.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist aims to take Conviction's promise to the next level and then some
"I'm not going to go into the whole story," says Splinter Cell: Blacklist creative director Maxime Béland during an interview with Joystiq at PAX 2012, "but Conviction was kind of a rescue job for me." As the last game in the Splinter Cell series (that also served as a more action-oriented reboot), Conviction ended up doing fairly well at retail. But Béland says that he and another producer were "brought in because it wasn't going well. We changed the direction and kind of shipped the game in two years. So Conviction is very sweet and sour for me."Soon after Conviction's release, Béland says he and his team sat down to put together a spreadsheet, going through over 80 reviews of the game and marking out what features were most mentioned, and which were most positively or negatively received. The black-and-white graphics during gameplay weren't well liked, so this past E3 when Béland announced Blacklist, one of the first things he said was that black-and-white was out.Players felt the single-player part of Conviction "was too short, and the scope of the game wasn't big enough," so growing the world of Sam Fisher has become a priority for Blacklist. And the least-liked feature of Blacklist? Fans really missed the spy vs. mercs competitive gameplay mode. That's why for Blacklist, it's implemented right back in there. "Easiest decision of my life," says Béland.%Gallery-156954%
Meet the new million-gold jewelcrafting mounts
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. I had an absolute blast with Mat McCurley, Mike Sacco, and Alex Ziebart at PAX East 2012 this weekend. If you've been living under a rock, the four of us put on a great live panel discussion in front of about 200 to 300 excited fans. We met our fans (you!), gave away a ton of crazy awesome prizes (including immortality as a WoW Trading Card Game card), and had a lot of fun. We also discussed the big news of the day, which was the new Mists of Pandaria beta patch. There's a lot of news in there for class columnists. But of interest to us as those who make and break the WoW economy, we've unearthed a new mount for jewelcrafters. And another mount for jewelcrafters. And another. And another. And yet a fifth. Yes, you heard me -- there are no fewer than five new JC mounts in the beta files. If any jewelcrafters in the audience are salivating, they have a right to be. These new mounts could be a veritable bonanza for those who take the time to craft them. And they could wind up saving the World of Warcraft economy at the same time.
Orange / Deezer strike mobile music streaming deal
When it comes to music subscription services, Spotify isn't the only game in town -- but you knew that already. Here in the States we've got Rhapsody and Rdio to name but a couple, and in Europe, Deezer has been making a bit of a name for itself over the past few years. The French service will likely be expanding its reach in the UK, thanks to a deal struck with Orange. Deezer is now available as part of the carrier's Panther plan -- Orange customers on other plans will have to pay £9.99 a month to get their stream on. Press release after the break.
Report: 68% of Mac users running Snow Leopard
As GigaOm points out, a new report from Net Applications shows that 68% of Mac users are running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Mac OS X 10.5 is a distant second at 24%, while Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger holds just 6% of the Mac market. The remaining 2% is made up of Macs running Mac OS X 10.3 or below. For those of you keeping track, the highest ever adoption of a Mac OS was 10.5 Leopard, which reached a 71% Mac market share in July 2009, a month before Snow Leopard shipped. Net Application's numbers are interesting, but I'd like to find out what OS a majority of our readers are running. Vote in the poll below -- and if anyone is still running OS 9, you're gonna have to let me know why in the comments. %Poll-63270%
Wasteland Diaries: Bosses and battles
This week in Fallen Earth has been, for me, a good mix of PvP and PvE action. I've gotten plenty of both. I literally wished that I had more time to play. Alas, real life was standing in the way again. I haven't played any other games all week. Unless you consider the Fallen Earth forums a game (which I sometimes do). Between protecting territory that rightfully belongs to the CHOTA and cracking the skulls of world bosses for their precious volatile chemicals, I've found myself pretty busy. I know that everyone feels that Sector 4 is long overdue; it's probably the reason most people haven't come back to Fallen Earth. If you are on the fence about re-subbing or are waiting for Sector 4, there is still plenty to do, especially if you left before Deadfall Point and Deadfall were released. Even if you left in the past couple of months, things have changed, and new content has been added. There is plenty of PvP action if you know where to look, and new faces are joining the fray every day. After the cut, I'll give you some examples of what I've experienced this week, and it may help you decide to come back... or to keep holding out for Sector 4.
Wasteland Diaries: Glad to be back
It's been a couple of weeks since I was able to visit the Fallen Earth wastelands. My absence wasn't by choice. But now that I'm connected to the internet once again, I can stop wasting my time away playing Minecraft (actually I enjoyed every minute of that!). I also played a little Mount & Blade in between huge construction projects. Still, it's good to be back in my favorite (though not quite so sandboxy) world. And what a glorious time to come back. I came back to Fallen Earth to find a good deal of new content. Unfortunately, the level cap was not raised to ago along with that new content, but it's still new stuff, and that's what matters. To be honest, I had already seen some of it on the PTS, but not everything. One thing I enjoyed about the new stuff is that it's fairly difficult. I died more times than I'm willing to admit. There's enough content to keep a casual player busy for a while, but just like any other PvE content, it will be chewed up and spit out by the PvE crowd and leave everyone asking for more. Hopefully, it will be enough to keep us all interested until the unveiling of Sector 4. After the cut, I'll tell you a little about what I've seen in Terminal Woods.
Eurocom serves up GTX 480M SLI and HD 5870 CrossFireX options, seasons with Core i7-980X
It boggles the mind to think that one Fermi GPU could be fit inside a laptop, but two? Eurocom has just outed its 17.3-inch Panther 2.0 mobile gaming station -- which looks like a straight rebadge of the Clevo X7200 -- with the most overpowered set of component choices we've yet seen. You can go SLI with the GTX 480M or NVIDIA's more professionally minded Quadro 5000M, crank up CPU speed to 3.33GHz and beyond with the Core i7-980X from Intel (yes, the desktop variant), stash up to 24GB of onboard RAM, and jack in up to four storage drives, our preference being for the 2TB of SSD goodness option. Of course, if you prefer ATI's Evergreen side of the fence, dual Mobility Radeon HD 5870 GPUs are on tap as well. Sadly, we've no idea how much these spectacular specs will set you back, but launch is set for later this month and you can always call up and get yourself a quote; we're guessing it'll be in five figures.
LG's Windows Phone 7 phone caught in the wild, looking good
Been wondering how that LG proto unit debuted on The Engadget Show is doing? Pocket-lint got to see the QWERTY slider up close and personal in London yesterday, and their takeaway from the meetup was that the device and OS are well on their way to stardom. Calling it the LG Panther, they delve into its deep Facebook integration, which throws up status updates when you hit on a contact in your address book, ability to recognize addresses and provide relevant links to Bing maps, as well as its quick and clear Zune media player. The latter was accompanied by confirmation that the Zune Store will be hitting the UK in time for Windows Phone 7's release, which could happen as early as September -- it all depends on who you talk to. Hit the source for more imagery and impressions.
NVIDIA GTX 480M will bring Fermi to laptops this June, crazy power requirements and all
We had an inkling NVIDIA wouldn't keep the Fermi goodness just to the desktop and here's our first pseudo-official confirmation. Rushing in ahead of any announcements, Eurocom has started listing a GeForce GTX 480M part, replete with 2GB of GDDR5 memory and a $345 markup relative to ATI's Mobility Radeon HD 5870. It's not clear whether the 100W number refers to the TDP or power requirements of NVIDIA's new GPU, but it's safe to expect both to be pretty high. The MXM 3.0b interface provides a 256-bit linkup between the GPU and CPU, lending plenty of bandwidth, but it also demands plenty of PCB real estate. As a result, Eurocom is offering the GTX 480M on its 17-inch Cheetah and Panther and 18.4-inch Leopard desktop replacements, but not on its 15.6-inch Cougar. Man, no love for the Cougars. According to the listing, we're only a month or so away from release. [Thanks, Jacob]
Mac OS X 10.3 installed on Nokia N900 via PearPC, barely usable for impatient geeks
Curious folks around the world enjoy a bit of hackintosh every now and then (although once is enough for many), but no geek has successfully ventured as far as Toni Nikkanen of Finland, who became the first person to run OS X on a phone -- the Nokia N900. As you can see in the video after the break, Toni's hack relies on PearPC -- a PowerPC emulator -- to install good ol' OS X 10.3 (Panther), but the mammoth sluggishness means it's far from usable. Still, if you can spare 90 minutes for each boot-up plus plenty more for the snail-paced cursor, then head to the source to learn from Herra Nikkanen. [Thanks, Matija]
POLL: Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, and...
Oh my. There's nothing we blog monkeys like more than casting our minds forward to the next greatest thing. Now that Leopard is about here and soon to be common place, what's next? What's Apple's codename for Mac OS X 10.6? You know it's already in development. So what do you TUAW readers think the next great codename will be? Let us know in this unspun poll.
Software Update: Security, Final Cut, Web Objects, Java and More
Apple just posted a new Security Update (2007-002) at its download site. The update addresses security in CoreServices, iChat and the User Notification Center and is available as a PPC download, a Universal download and a Panther download -- see Mike's post for more detail. Other software updates today include Final Cut Pro 5.1.3, Web Objects 5.3.3, Java for OS X 10.3 update 5, Java for OS X 10.4 update 5, Daylight Savings Time Update for Tiger, and Daylight Savings Time Update for Panther. Most of these updates are to allow these components to recognize the changes in the way the US and Canada will be observing Daylight Savings Time starting in March 2007; however, the core OS X DST logic has been right on with the new rules since 10.4.5, released about a year ago.
Pocketlight brings (some) Spotlight to Panther
If you're still using Panther for one reason or another but drool when you hear the word 'Spotlight,' an app by the name of Pocketlight can bring a little bit of Tiger to your Panther. Pocketlight isn't nearly as all-encompassing as Spotlight, but it can search Mail.app mailboxes, iCal events, Address Book contacts and files in a specified folder. In an odd turn of events, Pocketlight is only available for Mac OS X 10.3; not 10.4.Pocketlight is free, but the author states that it isn't going to be updated or enhanced from here on out, so grab it while you can.[via Hawk Wings]
Safari 1.3.2 for Panther is available
The software updates just keep popping up this week. Today, Apple has released Safari update 1.3.2 for Panther via Software Update. According to Apple, "Safari version 1.3.2 for Mac OS X Panther improves website compatibility, application stability and support for 3rd party web applications." Also note that Safari 1.3.1 must be installed prior to running this update. You can grab it via the web here.
Skype 1.4 for Mac OS X ships
Skype version 1.4 for the Mac has begun shipping. Despite my own failure to see the appeal of Skype and its cousins, I know I'm in the minority. This version includes a number of cool changes, like automatically pausing iTunes when a call is answered. Other changes include: Drag-and-drop contacts to calls and chats Emoticons and iTunes track listing Notification of new messages at log in/outSkype requires Mac OS 10.3 or later and is free.[Via Macworld UK]
YAMTT - Yet another Mail theme for Thunderbird
Hawk Wings has tracked down another Mail theme for Thunderbird by the name of TigerMail. While I know we've blogged one before, I can't track it down. From what I remember though, TigerMail is a much more accurate reproduction of the Tiger Mail look and feel. But if Panther Mail's look and feel is more your style, CrossOver might just be the Thunderbird theme for you.
