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Early Venue Pro adopters get free Bluetooth headsets, the infinitely rewarding lesson of patience
Still bummed to be waiting for your Venue Pro? Dell's amended its December 14th shipping update -- henceforth known as (this time only, and then never again) as "VP Day" -- to let yearning customers know that, if they had ordered the device before that day, a present was coming in due course. Nay, not a present, a Thank You in the form of a free Plantronics Explorer 240 Bluetooth headset. That's shipping in four to six weeks, excusing any ironic bouts of delay of its own. Let's just hope it doesn't beat your Windows Phone 7 device to the doorstep. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Dell: bigger Venue Pro launch coming, keep hands off microSD
Didn't get a Venue Pro when Microsoft threw a few on its store shelves? Why, that'd be enough to make us mad, too -- Ballmer mad, in fact. Fear not, though: as Dell tells it, the company has production ramped up for a "timely" launch on T-Mobile's network. When? Won't say. Holiday season, at least? No release windows is given. And one more thing, too... Dell read our piece on the Windows Phone 7 microSD and wants you all to know that, no, you shouldn't mess with the Venue Pro's card, either. There's no eject mechanism, and that's supposed to be a not-so-subtle hint to stay back. Consider yourself warned, again.
Philadelphia Eagles going self-sufficient on stadium energy from 2011, 30 percent of it renewable
Let's skip right past the cringe-worthy "Declaration of Energy Independence" slogan and look at what the Eagles are actually doing with their pro sports venue. The franchise that dresses in midnight green is aiming to smarten up its eco-green credentials with a new partnership with SolarBlue that will provide all of the Eagles' stadium energy needs for the next 20 years, after which point the team will be free to resell any surplus electricity back to the grid. 15 percent of the total output with be generated with spiral wind turbines erected around the top rim of Lincoln Financial Field, another 15 will come from 2,500 solar panels to be installed near the stadium, and the rest will be obtained from a biodiesel / natural gas plant. So it's not all renewable, but a nice step in the right direction, nonetheless.
Dell Venue hits FCC again, this time with a soothing 1700MHz aroma
We've already seen one variant of the Dell Venue -- formerly Thunder -- pass through the FCC, but that was a WCDMA Band II / V version ripe for use on AT&T, Rogers, Bell, and Telus. What about T-Mobile? No worries! Dell's got your back, it seems, with a second version going under model code "V03B002" that features 1700MHz AWS 3G in place of 850 and 1900MHz. Of course, you might recall that the Streak got approval in an AWS version that has yet to see the light of day, so we wouldn't call this a slam dunk for retail availability... but it's a start.
Dell Venue hits the FCC: is this the Thunder's new name?
Yes, that's right, just "Venue," not Venue Pro -- and from a glance, it looks to us like this might be the new name for the Thunder Android phone we played with a little while ago judging by this FCC filing that just crossed the wires. As far as we can tell, this thing is basically a carbon copy of the Venue Pro, except it's running Android instead of Windows Phone 7 and drops the sliding portrait keyboard in favor of a full-touch setup. Notably, the curved glass 4.1-inch AMOLED display carries over, so that should make the design nerds in the audience swoon a bit. Additionally, turns out there's a Bluetooth SIG certification under the same model name -- V03B -- that confirms the display's specs and the fact that it's a "smartphone" (whew!). Stay tuned on this one -- something tells us we won't be waiting terribly long for an announce.
Dell Venue Pro gets Expansys listing: £499.99 for November 8th (update: Amazon, too)
Don't take this as the gospel, but online retailer Expansys has gone ahead and listed Dell's Venue Pro -- affectionately known as "the Windows Phone 7 device with a portrait QWERTY slider" -- with pricing and availability date in tow. Which, if you're wondering, is £499.99 (or about $783 in US dollars, when crudely converted) and Monday, November 8th, respectively. That's just over two weeks away, which means if it is true, you won't have long to wait... and if it's not true, you'll know soon enough, anyway. Update: PC World's spotted the same date and price for the Venue Pro on Amazon UK. You lucky Brits.
Darkmoon Faire France cancelled
Upper Deck has posted on their site that they have canceled the upcoming Darkmoon Faire event in France for the TCG. They've been having events all over the world of this kind, featuring tournaments, exhibitions, and interaction with the game's officials and designers (I checked out one such event when it was in Chicago last year). And while they had planned to hold a Faire in Paris in 2009, apparently it's not going to happen -- they say there was "complications" with the "venue," and the event has been shut down. They are still trying to come to France, however: they're hoping to hold an event called the Tournois du Voile d'Hiver ("Tournament of Winter's Veil" in English) in Toulouse in November.And this really does just look like a schedule conflict, as they are still holding events in Amsterdam, Austin, and Vegas later on in 2009, and from what we've seen at various conventions this year, Upper Deck's WoW-related TCG and minis games are bigger than ever (in fact, given what I saw at Gen Con and have heard from various UD employees, it's possible that the WoW games are the company's biggest-selling non-sports product). They're planning to bring the Darkmoon Faire back to Paris next year, and that's probably exactly what they'll do.
Taiwan's National Stadium gets solar panel roof, hug from Ma Earth
Oh sure, we've seen photovoltaic panels strewn across rooftops before, but this takes things to a whole 'nother level. Taiwan's $152 million National Stadium, which will proudly host the 2009 World Games, is home to no fewer than 8,844 solar panels. With under a month to go before the events kick off, construction on the Toyo Ito-designed arena wrapped just in time, and we're told that some 55,000 observers will soon be spectating underneath the eco-friendly shelter. Early reports have noted that in optimal sunlight, the solar panels can cover around 75 percent of the stadium's energy needs, and on days when the facility is dormant, the power generated is simply fed into the grid in order to help the local community. So, who's down for a trip to Kaohsiung? Sunscreen's on us.[Via Inhabitat]
FFXI devs adjust Einherjar with accessibility in mind
Square-Enix revealed today that the next update to FInal Fantasy XI will make several adjustments to the Einherjar venue.Players have complained that the structure of the battlefield makes it inaccessible and unworthy of the trouble. One of the chief complaints was that new party members could not be introduced into the mix after the progression has begun, and that a player who missed one or more chambers would not be able to continue. The FFXI team is making the following changes to remedy that.After the next patch, Therion Ichor will be given to players based on how many monsters they've killed, not on whether or not they completed a chamber. Also, only the "organizing player" will need to meet the old requirements for entry into Wings I, II, and III, or Valgrind. Other players will be able to follow him or her into each chamber regardless of their past progress.
iConcertCal updates with iCal exporting, better listings and more
This must have slipped under our radar back in March, but iConcertCal, the both clever and useful iTunes plug-in that scans your artists to find local concert dates, has updated to v1.2. In addition to "greatly improved" concert listings in both the US and UK, iConcertCal can now export calendars to an iCal format (note: this isn't exactly 'iCal syncing.' Hopefully that's on its way). For those shows that might still slip through iConcertCal's fingers, the plug-in allows you to edit its calendar and add shows you just gotta keep track of.Also on the list of changes is the ability to chose which iTunes library to monitor for artists and show dates, an "easy way" to list shows from artists that aren't in your library and city + date venue info now placed in the header information. Amazingly, iConcertCal is still free and available for both Mac OS X and Windows.
