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'Angry Birds' turns 10 years old today
If you're already struggling with the idea of entering a whole new decade in a couple weeks' time, here's something that's going to make you feel even older: Angry Birds is 10 years old today. In kid terms, it's on the cusp of middle school and it's probably started answering back.
Microsoft teases a 'modern OS' with 'seamless updates'
Microsoft made a nod towards a possible new operating system at Computex in Taipei this week, when corporate vice president of consumer and device sales Nick Parker took to the stage to outline the company's future OS ambitions. While the event would have been a prime opportunity to reveal the much-rumored Windows Lite, no official announcements were made, but the company did discuss -- albeit cryptically -- what's in the pipeline.
Where to buy the HTC 10 in the UK
A succession of middling flagships has seen HTC's reputation plummet in recent history, but the company seems to have got its mojo back. The new HTC 10, available in the UK from today, is a classic blend of beauty and raw power. While it doesn't have the best camera on the market and battery life is distinctly average, HTC has cleaned up its Android skin and included a few attractive extras like hi-res audio support and AirPlay compatibility. If you've been waiting for HTC to return to form, then the new 10 will've undoubtedly piqued your interest, so join us as we explore the carriers, resellers and retailers that have you covered.
HTC's M10 will have an online launch event on April 12th
April is turning to be a super busy month for HTC. In addition to shipping out the first lot of Vive to consumers, the company will also be launching its next flagship smartphone, the M10 or simply the 10, on April 12th. More interestingly, HTC's email tells us that this will be yet another online event, just like the one it did with the One A9 (but hopefully with more camera angles and close-ups on the device this time). To watch the stream, tune in at 8am New York time or 1pm London time or 8pm Taipei time that Tuesday.
Windows 10 launches on July 29th, here's how to get in line
Microsoft has announced that Windows 10 is coming on July 29th, and you don't even need to get out of your chair to get a spot in the upgrade line. Take a gander at your Notification Area in the Taskbar and you should find a Windows icon that, when clicked, reveals a shiny new Windows 10 upgrade panel. It's currently being rolled out to select users, since plenty of you have emailed in screenshots, but we've yet to see it ourselves. As before, users will have a year to climb onto the Free Windows 10 bandwagon, but once they do, they'll get free security upgrades for the life of the device.
XBMC celebrates 10 years, latest build works in mainline PVR and Raspberry Pi support
First, we must congratulate the entire XBMC team on reaching the tenth anniversary of one of the project's first betas hitting the internet, when Yet Another Media Play (YAMP) and Xbox Media Player joined forces to create something beautiful. It's outlived the original console by far, powered other projects and spinoffs (Boxee, Plex, GeeXBox -- just to name a few) and is still going strong. Just to show how much progress it's making there's a new monthly build that adds two features most will have to wait for XBMC 12 Frodo to try out. If you like to live on the edge, the September cycle includes mainline PVR support, which pulls in TV broadcasts thanks to PVR add-ons like MythTV or MediaPortal, as well as integrated support for the Raspberry Pi. Other tweaks include performance enhancements on Android, better picture zooming and rotation on mobiles and much, much more. Hit the source links for a full changelog and details on what dangers running a build hot off the presses may entail.
Toshiba's new 2.5-inch AL13SE hard drives: up to 900GB of 10,500RPM storage
A 2.5-inch drive spinning at speeds up to 10,000RPM? Sure, we've seen it before, but only with enough room for 600GB worth of data. Toshiba, however, has trumped its forebears by upping the capacity to 900GB with its new 2.5-inch HDD, dubbed the AL13SE. 300GB, 450GB and 600GB flavors are offered as well, and all of them spin at up to 10,500RPM and promise a 32% increase in sustained transfer rates over previous-gen drives. Additionally, the AL13SE sends and receives data via a 6Gbps SAS 2.0 connection to make life easier on IT guys than those SATA drives most of us use. Unfortunately, Tosh isn't telling how much the new drives will cost, nor when they'll be available for purchase, but you can dig into all the drive details you can handle in the PR after the break and at the source link below.
Samsung's new SD cards look too good to hide inside a DSLR
We've never been too fussed with how our storage looks -- it's rare that our SD cards linger too long outside the camera anyway. However, for you genius-level aesthetes who demand your internals are as beautiful as your externals, Samsung's got your back. It's releasing a line of SD and microSD cards with a stylish brushed metal body in silver or black that, frankly, looks shinier than whatever they'll be nestled inside. Just like Ryan Gosling, the cards are both pretty and pretty tough -- able to withstand 24 hours in water, 3,200 pounds of pressure or being left in an MRI machine with a power of 10,000 gauss, which we're always doing. After the interval, we've got pricing and stats for each unit (speed improves greatly if you plump for a 4GB card or higher) plus a little PR paperwork.
Switched On: A Three-Headed Lion
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. Kerberos, the hound from Hades that lent its name to an MIT-developed network authentication protocol, is often visualized as having three heads. But if dogs can have multiple heads, why can't other technology species? Many of the features in Lion have impact for different kinds of users, and the value users see in them may well depend on which face they tend to view. The new user. Lion represents the biggest user interface change to the company's desktop experience since the debut of Mac OS X. With the Mac hard drive hidden by default, full-screen apps that hide the menu bar, and omnipresent scroll arrows put out to pasture, it even dispenses with some user interface conventions that have been around since the original Mac. The focus on multitouch gestures -- while enabling more fluidity in the user interface -- are not as self-evident. Overall, though, the gradual shift away from contrivances such as windows, menus, and cluttered icons should make things less intimidating for new users. The iPad user. One can only wonder what features the successor to Snow Leopard might have sported had Apple not launched the iPad. The most prominent design theme in Lion has been bringing user experience elements of Apple's tablet to the Mac. This is highlighted best by Launchpad, the iPad-like collection of sliding home screens, and full-screen apps, but also includes support for full-screen apps and bundling of the Mac app store introduced with Snow Leopard.
Motorola Android tablet prototype makes a cameo at D: Dive Into Mobile running Honeycomb
Google's Andy Rubin brought more than just a Nexus S in his bag of goodies tonight. On stage at D: Dive Into Mobile, the man has brought with him a prototype Android tablet from Motorola. It's got video chat, an NVIDIA processor, a "dual core 3D processor," and... oh yeah, it runs Honeycomb, not Gingerbread. Little else is known -- Rubin immediately turned his attention to a new release of Google Maps -- but we wouldn't be surprised if we were looking at Stingray, a tablet rumored for a launch on Verizon shortly. Is it seven inches? Ten? We honestly don't know -- but our gut tells us on the bigger side of the spectrum, which would line up with rumblings that the Stingray would in fact be a full ten inches diagonally. Feast your eyes on our pics below! %Gallery-109387% Updated: Video after the break!
Raid Rx: 14 patch 3.2 trinkets to check out
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related. It's been a while since I looked at trinkets. What options are there available since then? Yes, the linked article goes to the Priest column on trinkets. Not every healer's going to use them. But truth be told, there aren't that many new options for healers in the current game since Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader opened up. Let's look at everything available since Malygos. So what do we have to work with?
Video: Opera 10 promises Turbo browsing using Scandinavian flat-packing knowhow
We've got to hand it to the kids at Opera who somehow manage to maintain relevance while battling Microsoft, Apple, Google and Mozilla for browser market-share. Opera 10 is now available for download featuring a redesigned UI, a resizable tab bar with Visual Tab thumbnail previews of each loaded page, and Opera Link synchronization for keeping bookmarks and more synchronized between all your Opera devices. It's biggest feature, however, is Opera Turbo: a new compression technology that Ikea flat-packs web pages for fast transport over slow connections. See it demonstrated in the video after the break.
Australian PS3 Ultimate Blu-ray Movie Kit isn't as ultimate as you might expect
Sony's PlayStation 3 already only does everything, so what more could you possibly need? Australians can find out for themselves with the Ultimate Blu-ray Movie Kit. Don't let the name fool you, it's really just the PS3 remote and two discs, but at $60 AUD (that's $51 for US), it's only one Banjo Paterson / $10 AUD more than what the remote retails on its lonesome. Both bundles include 300 as the first film, so you're really choosing between 10,000 B.C. and Batman Begins. Not exactly a tough decision unless you already own Batman, but then again, you still might opt for a second copy instead. [Via Kotaku] Read - Batman Begins / 300 bundle Read - 10,000 B.C. / 300 bundle
Dell Mini 10 shows up at Tesco for 349
Well, Dell might have been super cagey about pricing and release dates for the new Mini 10 during its CES Adamo non-event, but you can't keep the kids locked up forever, and Dell's netbook middle child seems to have shacked up at Tesco for £349 ($480). Basic specs are generic netbook -- 1.6GHz Atom Z530 (it lists a Z520, but we know it's a Z530), 1GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive, Windows XP, and a sesame seed bun -- but we were actually quite taken with Dell's "perfect 10" when we played with it at CES, and the addition of a multitouch trackpad, built-in GPS and optional WWAN certainly make the Mini 10 a little more interesting than the competition. We'll see how pricing looks when Dell sees fit to bring this guy Stateside -- let's hope this mix of features doesn't end up costing $900 like a certain not-a-netbook competitor with a similar spec sheet.[Thanks, Fry]
Spiritual Guidance: Level 5 to 20
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is now Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. For the next few weeks (unless it's something game breaking), Matt will do his best to guide you through the Priest leveling process! Wrath is almost upon us. As a result, you may have decided that you have nothing better to do then to roll a Priest! A quick glance at the WI leveling guides shows completed class guides for every almost every other class but Priests! This must be changed. The countdown has begun.
Warner includes download-only iTunes Digital Copy with 10,000 B.C. Blu-ray
BD-Live isn't the only thing Warner's adding to its Blu-ray releases, with the news that 10,000 B.C. comes with an iTunes Digital Copy. Unlike previous Fox and Lionsgate releases, this one isn't on the disc, apparently due to space considerations on the single-layer 25GB disc. DVD buyers don't even get that option, and in the absence of an official announcement by Warner or Apple about inclusion going forward, it seems to us this is a way for the studio to dip a toe in the water before making a decision on possible wider inclusion. However, if cost is a concern, the choice between copies to take on the road and bonus online features on the disc itself is an interesting one. [Disclosure: Engadget is part of the Time Warner family][Via iLounge]
EGM so-so over Phoenix Wright, anoints Hotel Dusk
While we haven't seen it, word is that the upcoming issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly has some very interesting scores (and reviews) for a pair of upcoming DS titles. The March issue takes a look at both Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All and Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (it's long title month around here), and offers a lackluster-to-good range of scores for one, and great scores to the other ... and it's not the way that you may think.Word on the street forums is that the scores for the two games in the issue are as follows:Justice for All: 6.0, 7.0, 8.0Hotel Dusk: 8.0, 8.0, 10 (yeah, that's a ten)Now, it's true that this edition of Phoenix Wright is not judged to be the best by those who've played deeper into the series, and those are decent and respectable scores (which mean nothing, since we're all playing it anyway, and probably twice). But the scores for Hotel Dusk are surprising, and something of a relief as well. Whether or not you're a fan of EGM, it's nice to see such enthusiastic review scores. As a point of comparison, Trace Memory (often invoked when mentioning Hotel Dusk) scored much lower with EGM -- that game posted an average score of 6.17. [Via Go Nintendo]
My spin on 10 apps every new Mac user should download
I normally wouldn't post this, because I don't tend to agree with the list, but the Digg kids are all piling on top of it, so I thought I should share here: it's a list of 10 apps every new Mac user should download. Here's my take on the list: AdiumX is nice, but I'll stick with iChat. I like iChat. If I need to use all those other protocols, maybe I'll launch Fire. Cyberduck rocks. I like it. *But* I've been using Fugu recently. It rocks better and harder. Safari is a better browsing experience on OS X than Firefox. Firefox is great and all, but it doesn't integrate nicely with all the OS X goodness like the built in Dictionary and spellcheck, not to mention Services. Until it can do that nicely, Safari wins (especially if you load up Saft). iBackup.... eh. I'll stick with Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper, thanks. Nvu... uh, no. This is not something that every new Mac user should download. There are lots of people not coding websites who don't need this one. Quicksilver rocks, but I find if you get used to Spotlight and don't mind the slight delay, you don't use it as much. Stuffit Expander? I mean you need it, but isn't it already on the System when you buy it? TextWrangler is nice, but I'll have to say they should have mentioned SubEthaEdit. VLC is good. Windows Media Player?! Why is this on a top ten? That's my take on it. Head on over and have a gander for yourself. [via Digg]
