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Over the Haste Cap: What keeps Olympic gold medalist Aries Merritt hurdling raids?
You might imagine that an Olympic gold medalist and world record holder would take a competitive approach to gaming -- and in the case of hurdler Aries Merritt, you'd be absolutely right. Aries comes in over the haste cap both on the track and in Azeroth. Want to see how a true competitor tackles a game like World of Warcraft? Take a look at this guy's beastly activity feed: progression raiding, rep grinds, quest lines, rated battlegrounds, arena PvP, holiday events, maxed-out professions, pet battles, multiple characters at the level cap with more not far behind, farming, fishing -- even finding lore objects. This guy takes his DPS parses as seriously as he takes his world records. He dashes it all off in a good-natured, down-to-earth manner that makes talking shop about shadow priests feel as natural as ticking down the to-do list of a phone interview. Aries lets us look into the life of an Olympian with a glimpse of how his competitive spirit propels his gaming hobby, including how he maintains his world-class winning edge and how he got through a potentially devastating injury with career-saving advice from a guildmate. WoW Insider: One look at your character profile online, Aries, and it's obvious that you're really into WoW! Aries Merritt: Actually, I have three 90s. My lock is 90, and my mage. My priest is my main, who's 90. And I have my 87 paladin I'm working on probably next, and then my druid. I'm probably going to try to get everything up to 90 eventually, but I'm kind of slowing it down a little bit (laughs) because I'm starting back training.
1.5 GHz Scorpion and quartet of HTC Windows Phone 7 handsets headed to North America?
Conflipper is a regular in the underworld of HTC ROM cooking. So when he tweets about unreleased devices and their respective carrier support you really outta listen. First up is the HTC Scorpion (aka, Olympian) which he claims is going to Verizon and Bell Mobility -- a device previously rumored to be packing Froyo with WiMax and a 1.5GHz Snapdragon whipped topping. Conflipper also claims to have the inside scoop on a quartet of Windows Phone 7 devices and their respective North American launch partners: the HTC Spark_W (Bell Mobility and Verizon), HTC Gold_W (Sprint), HTC Shubert (Telus), and the HTC Mondrian (Telus, Rogers and AT&T). Note that the "_W" in those handsets signifies a worldphone device with dual-mode CDMA and GSM radios. And in the immortal words of Klaus Meine, "Time, it needs time." So true.
HTC Scorpion with 1.5GHz Snapdragon, WiMAX tipped in build file of dubious provenance
Sure, this next item might be a little bit of a stretch, but why the hell not: according to MobileCrunch, there's a build file from an-as-yet unknown device called the HTC Scorpion making the rounds. If the tea leaves are being read correctly (and, more to the point, if they're real tea leaves and not some sort of bogus tea leaf substitute) we're looking at a 1.5GHz Snapdragon device with WiMAX support, which means it could potentially be HTC's long-rumored Android smartbook, or at least a spiritual successor to the Shift. We're also told that the mysterious device is codenamed Olympian, and that it could sport a new version of Android (build ID FRE65C -- being billed as Android 2.2). Since you're adults, and we feel that we can trust you, we're placing the alleged file after the break, so you can make up your own mind -- handset, smartbook, or nothing at all? Just remember, it was a leaked HTC that broke the news of Android 2.1's existence.
