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Half-Life 2 Orange Box -- console owners get a steal [update 1]
For the uninitiated, Valve initially intended to release Half-Life 2 in two different options for the consoles. One was the Black Box that contained HL2: Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. The other is the Orange Box that contained the aforementioned plus Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 expansion. Notice our tenses. One was. One is. That's right -- the Black Box is gone. Doug Lombardi, Valve's marketing director confirmed it. "The Black Box has been cancelled. We're going to have one package, The Orange Box, available on the PC (US$49.99) as well as the 360 and PS3 (US$ 59.99)." While we're sad to see a cheaper alternative go down the garbage disposal, it's for the better. Getting the whole package is always a better alternative to getting a partial package. The only ones who seem to get screwed here are the PC owners. If they've already got the original game, they've got to buy it again if they want to get all three new products. Buying them separate might prove more expensive, anyway. Well, at least the console-lovers get everything at once, right?[Update: Changed the title of the article to better reflect the idea of the post -- indeed, the Black Box was due out only on PC, as it would be silly to not give console owners the actual game. But console owners get a fantastic deal with the Orange Box, no?]
EA's pure 'Skate' campaign
EA's been selling Skate without gameplay footage (pre-rendered or not). With a series of 'confessional shorts' -- featuring lesser-known, and therefore skaters' skaters like PJ Ladd, Chris Cole, Jason Dill, Jerry Hsu, and Dennis Busenitz -- EA is a building a thinly veiled promise. Skate will be pure; skateboarding without the "X," Gatorade, and lot of corporate sponsors. EA wants us to believe it's building art, not its next perennial sports franchise. This is smart advertising. But is it genuine?
SET readies in-car black box / crash recorder for release
Although Sindan Electrical Trading (SET) prefers to draw similarities between its forthcoming RoadBOX Driving Recorder and the infamous black box contraptions that are finding their way into vehicles everywhere, this accident recorder actually relates more closely to the DREC1000 and TS-1L. Slated to hit the Dubai market in mid-March, this in-car recording device is mounted atop and inside the vehicle's windshield where it continuously captures video of whatever's happening in front of the car. If an impact is detected, or if the driver slams on brakes, the machine stores the video, as well as acceleration data, 14 seconds before the incident and 6 seconds after. As expected, the video file and speed data can be transferred to a computer via USB (if the box isn't too mangled, that is), and specialized software creates charts to match the acceleration / braking data and get closer to the "truth" behind an accident. Interestingly, it seems the company is actually marketing these to corporations who rely on employee-driven vehicles as a way to accurately place (or remove) blame on peon screw-ups while behind the wheel of a company car. Nevertheless, those of you interested in making any future traffic cases a bit easier on a lawyer (be it yours or the other guy's) can snap this up in about six weeks for Dh1,500, or around $176.[Thanks, Paul S.]
Nokia's aeon "full surface screen" cellphone concept
Nokia's research and development team have kicked it up a gear with an attractive "aeon" concept phone showing up in the R&D section of the company's website. The most prominent design feature of aeon is a touchscreen that stretches over the full surface area of the phone, similar to BenQ-Siemens's Black box concept phone we saw recently. Currently mobile technology isn't quite up to realizing this fantasy, but we'll sleep better tonight knowing that at least one of the cellphone industry's biggest names shares the same dream as we do -- BenQ's dream didn't count, unfortunately.
The BenQ-Siemens Black Box concept phone that never was
You know, it's too bad that BenQ-Siemens' European operations had to go under before it managed to get this slick handset out the door. From what we can make out based on these photos spotted on a Czech website, BenQ-Siemens had developed a "Black Box concept phone," which took home some Chinese design award earlier this year. The idea apparently is to turn the phone into one large screen, and change function depending on whatever application you need at the time: a calculator, an FM radio, the phone itself (duh), and something that looks like a game involving a goldfish and possibly a bathtub drain (we're not really sure). You know, this reminds us a lot of that possible iPhone patent we spotted earlier this month -- hopefully Apple can pick up where BenQ-Siemens left off?[Via Slashphone]
Drivers to be notified of vehicular black boxes in 2011
Since the National Transportation Safety Board "recommended" that all new vehicles be equipped with some form of black box -- more appropriately known as an Event Data Recorder (EDR) -- manufacturers have slowly but surely been sneaking them in. Deliberately or otherwise, a vast majority of automakers have neglected to inform customers that their vehicle has such a device installed in it, and as you'd probably expect, it's driving privacy advocates up the wall. As these EDR boxes become more popular, some form of control and notification system apparently needed to be devised, thus the NTSB stepped in and threw down some uniform regulations. Beginning in 2011, all automakers must include "information in the owner's manual" about the specific data that the EDR collects. Fortunately for car companies, the mandate goes a step further by standardizing the data collected by each box, so everyone's privacy is invaded equally. We'll just have to wait and see if those newly disclosed deets include a step by step guide to de-activating the incriminating evidence data collection, but we don't have a good feeling about all that.[Via Slashdot]
Is HDTV in David Stern's black box?
An even bigger mystery than who will go #1 in this year's NBA draft has emerged. A mysterious black box is on NBA.com, accompanied by the cryptic message that when David Stern unveils its contents it will "change the way you see the game". A big and unusual promise. Of course, we hope it contains high-def skycams for every NBA arena, or maybe a Bill Walton verbal restraint device. We certainly hope something 720p or 1080i is coming this way, but unfortunately we will have to wait. June 28th 11:30 a.m. all will be revealed (and likely be wildly underwhelming, but we're still excited).