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Samsung expands Galaxy S III colors: yes, you can get brown
Samsung just couldn't relegate itself to a two-tone, blue and white Galaxy S III universe -- the company is using the run-up to IFA 2012 to triple the size of its smartphone's palette. We've seen the Garnet Red model arrive early at AT&T, but it now looks to be spreading abroad; the previously leaked Sapphire Black is equally official for those who don't think the original blue is dark enough. We're also seeing two more colors that have been relatively undiscovered, including a Titanium Gray and an unconventional Amber Brown. No, not that kind of brown, although it may be the first time in awhile that earthy hue has claimed such a high profile. Color choices will vary depending on the carrier or store, which leaves a distinct chance that you'll be switching networks or hunting down importers if you've got to have just the right shade of Hyperglaze in your life.
NVIDIA touts 30 Tegra 3 smartphones set for this year, teases next-gen Grey SoC with on-board LTE
We're nearly halfway through 2012, but for NVIDIA, it seems the best is yet to come. The company's GM, Mike Rayfield, announced today that 30 smartphones with Tegra 3 chips are now slated for availability this year, which is double the success that the company had with its Tegra 2 platform during 2011. Perhaps more interesting, Rayfield also let it be known that the Grey platform -- not due for arrival until next year -- will be the first of NVIDIA's system-on-chip designs to include a built-in LTE radio. Specifically, we can expect it to include the Icera 500, a next-gen LTE modem that's set to supersede both the Icera 410 and 450 designs. The Icera 500 will initially debut as a standalone unit, but will later be integrated into the Grey platform. All things considered, perhaps its 2013 that NVIDIA should be most excited about.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: iSplash
It's great to have lots of options of apps, and today's Daily Mac App adds to the plethora of colorization apps. iSplash is a selective color app just like Colorize and ColorWash, which we've covered before. iSplash is probably the simplest of the colorization apps we've played with so far. It's got an "open from iPhoto" dialog (although it'll open photos using Finder too), simple "Splash" painting tools (a brush) and undo/redo. There aren't any fancy fill features, or even a simple fill tool for that matter, but you can do just the same manually with a resizable brush tool that's managed with the "Splash size" slider on the tool bar. You can zoom in for precision work, and when you're finished you can export the image as a PNG. There aren't any options to speak of (you can't change the output format for instance), but iSplash will accept photos from anywhere and in PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF and BMP formats. If you're looking for a load of features and output options, you should look elsewhere. In fact, feature for feature, ColorWash is a better pick, especially since they're both on sale for US$0.99. It's good to have options, though, and that's just what iSplash is: another option. It'll do the job, just not as well as some others.
TalkTorque robot gets day job as creepy museum guide, TalkTorque 2 is now the future (video)
As if there weren't enough Greys flying around in saucers and conducting strange experiments on us at night, a team at Tsukuba University went ahead and created their own. Two of them, as a matter of fact. It started with TalkTorque, a short, white bot with swoopy arms and head designed to help research in non-verbal communications. That poor guy is old news now, relegated to guide duty at the school's Groupware Lab. TalkTorque 2 has come along with slightly refined looks and a chunky collar containing a trio of motion- and range-sensing cameras to help the thing figure out who it should be talking to. Of course, it still has no mouth, so the "talking" will be in broad arm gestures, which it will surely use to guide you to his ship's examination chamber. There's a video of that communication technique below, along with some dramatized footage of the TalkTorque 2 in action.
One Shots: Full moons bring out the crazy
With the last of several Halloween events wrapping up, we figured we'd put out one of the last few screenshots for the recent in-game events folks have sent in to us. Today's One Shots comes to us from Grey, who captured this bit of silliness in Champions Online. Why silly when it looks relatively peaceful? Check out the note that came along with it: Hi guys. Thought this might interest you. Here is a screenie of my character, essentially a robot, musing under the red moon (not quite Blood Red) during the event in Champions Online. As the bard, Christopher Cross said, "If you get caught between the Bloodmoon and Millennium City, I know it's crazy, but it's true..." If you've got a bad pun lurking in relation to one of your screenshots, get it out and into an email to us. Those things can hurt you if you leave 'em unpunned too long. Email the punbomb (and screenshot) to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, the name of the game, and a quick description. We'll unleash the pun-ishment on the world and let them know it was all you. %Gallery-9798%
The Queue: Grey guilds
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's (almost) daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky be your host today.I'm just going to let that video speak for itself today, and get started on the questions. @sammagher asked... "Why do grey items even exist, if only to be sold to vendors or occasionally used as RP gear?"
WoW Rookie: Save everything, sell everything
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic, and be sure to visit the WoW Rookie Guide for links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's.It's clean-up time around here. Now that the WoW Rookie Guide is up and running to shuttle you to precisely the information you've been wondering about, we're poking through our older pieces to bring them up to date. (If there are any WoW Rookies whose datedness you find especially galling, shoot me a link at lisa [at] wow [dot] com and I'll prioritize it for updating.) Sometimes during the updating process, I uncover little gems, like this excerpt from Elizabeth Harper's 2007 piece Money-making 101. Be sure to visit the entire article, by the way; it's an outstanding resource to make sure you arrive at your character's more costly milestones with gold in your pockets.In the meantime, let's talk about what's worth selling and what's not. First of all: keep everything. Make buying or making big bags a priority; after all, you can't make money if you can't bring home loot to sell. If your bags get full, sure, go ahead and destroy grey items (items with their names listed in grey letters). (To destroy an item, left-click it, drag it to an open spot on your screen, and left-click again to drop it; reply "Yes" to the dialog box that pops up.)
MSI Wind U120 looks classy, classic in gray
MSI's Wind U120 just went on sale last month here in America, and already we're being presented with yet another hue from some other corner of the globe. The stark gray version looks to posses the very same innards as the white and black model already out, but externally, it's an entirely different animal. 'Tis a shame we haven't a clue where this is headed for release, but we'll put our bucks on somewhere not named USA -- at least at first.Update: Well, what have we here? It's on sale now at Amazon for $349.99.[Via Slashgear]
Terra Nova looks back (and forward) at the Diku legacy
EverQuest, World of Warcraft, The Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online and many other MMOs all have one important thing in common. Well, okay; they have a lot of things in common -- like about 85% or more of their gameplay mechanics. But the main thing -- indeed, the reason why they have so much in common -- is that they are all descendants of a kind of text MUD game called Diku.Acknowledging that, virtual worlds blog Terra Nova published a "State of the Diku" article for the year 2008. The article was written by Timothy Burke. It's mostly a dispassionate look at game design -- serious business. Burke starts out questioning the purpose of "vendor trash" drops (or grey items as they're generally known in many popular contemporary MMOs). Then he analyzes the public quests of Warhammer Online, viewing them as a positive variation on traditional Diku design.If you're into thnking critically about MMO design, it's worth checking out. We take for granted the fact that most of today's MMOs are based on the Diku formula; maybe that means we're clinging to old ideas that don't make a lot of sense in today's world.
New Rockman ZX Advent screens and character art
Capcom released a ton of screens today for the new Megaman ZX sequel, Rockman ZX Advent, and they show exactly what we want to see in our Megaman games: running from left to right and shooting at robots, all delivered in gorgeous hand-drawn 2D. We could look at stuff like this all day. Coincidentally, that's kind of our job.In the first ZX, kids use "Biometals" ("Livemetals" in the Japanese version) to transform into robots similar to X and Zero from the Megaman X series, as well as a fused ZX form. The kids from last time, Vent and Aile, have been replaced by a pair of functionally-identical crimefighting children, called Grey and Ashe.They operate a new Biometal, called Model A, which enables transformation into a dual-wielding robot seemingly based on Axl from Mega Man X7, a game that we're glad is on the PS2 (so we don't have to like it).We've included character designs and a selection of screens for you. Bask in their 2D-ness after the break, won't you? We shrunk them down a bit from Dengeki's original display, to make the basking more successful. Over-enlarged DS screens are not cool.
The greatest Wii gamer EVER
We have to admit, we've seen a lot of people playing Wii. Young, old and family relatives all the same; people playing Wii is so engraved in our minds that we see it every time we close our eyes. Now, we have an image (right) that will destroy all the others. Don't misunderstand us, we dare not poke fun at a fellow gamer, no matter what they're wearing or how old they are, but this lady needs to be the spokesperson for Wii 'grey gaming' forever. We love the big smile on her face (a testament to what we're calling the fun power of the Wii) and she's obviously dressed for a serious session of gaming (the suit is for less wind resistance). That's commitment you can't beat!Have you found other grey gamers during your travels through the tubes of the internet? Do you have pictures of older relatives playing the Wii? Let us know!
Wii lures in the seniors
An account of a recent visitation from his parents, Livejournal user zubkavich tells of his father and mother's love of the Wii. In hooking in the seniors with its intuitive, pick-up-and-play nature, Nintendo's estimations of appeal to seniors is true, at least with this family.Have any of you out there hooked in parents, grandparents, or other 'grey gamers?'
Motorola Q officially launches on Sprint, gets reviewed
Those of you patiently waiting for Sprint to officially launch (and make available) its rendition of the Motorola Q can finally breathe a sigh of relief, but you'll still have to wait just a bit longer to actually grab one. Slated to hit webstores "around mid-January" and retail outlets the month after, Sprint's Q isn't quite available to the masses just yet, but LAPTOP Mag got their palms around a pre-production release and promptly threw it on the testing block. Mimicking remarks we made earlier, reviewers noticed the lack of upgrades aside from the Sprint splash screen, logos, and unique "dark grey" hue, and they also found the "less rubberized" feel compared to Verizon's black version less enjoyable to handle. Noting the possibility of including a dedicated volume switch (as on the BlackJack), the crew was also let down by the omitted backlight underneath the keyboard, which Verizon's unit is blessed with. Additionally, surfing the web proved quite a bit slower when compared to Verizon's flavor, but Sprint suggested that "finalized units" wouldn't suffer the same fate. Nevertheless, not all was doom and gloom, as they did take note of the exclusive NFL Mobile functionality as well as the bundled Handmark application -- dubbed On Demand -- that loaded up "news, weather, directions, and other information optimized for the Moto Q's screen within seconds." Overall, this Q proved to be a bit of letdown considering what it could have been, and if only Sprint would've taken the time to add support for its Sprint TV and Music services, at least something would've stood out from the competition. As it stands, however, the Q still isn't a bad choice, and it was noted that Sprint's cheap unlimited data could swing contract-less buyers in its direction, but if you were hoping for a revamped, refreshed offering from big yellow, you'll be sorely disappointed.Read - Motorola Q officially launches on SprintRead - LAPTOP Mag reviews Sprint's Motorola Q
