Illinois
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AT&T upgrading network, spreading U-verse in Illinois
Looks like Wisconsin isn't the only state getting gifted with more U-verse, as AT&T is expected to dump some $1.3 billion over the next several years to "upgrade its network in Illinois." Furthermore, it'll be bringing U-verse to even more Illinois suburbs, bringing the total communities served in the state to 230. Unfortunately, that's about it for details -- no word on which suburbs will be on the receiving end of new U-verse access, but we're sure the plans will get fleshed out before too long.
Comcast drops 22 new HD channels on Bloomington, IL
Finding out that you'll be receiving 11 new high-def channels makes for a fairly enjoyable day -- discover that double that will be arriving and you might as well spark up a formal celebration for the entire neighborhood. Reportedly, Comcast subscribers in the Normal / Bloomington, Illinois region (formerly Insight territory) -- including Bartonville, Bellevue, Creve Coeur, East Peoria, Norwood, Peoria Heights, Peoria, Tazewell County (Peoria), Wasthington and West Peoria -- will be seeing 22 new HD channels as of April 30th. We're also keeping our fingers crossed that this is a precedent that will extend to other areas of the country in the not-too-distant future. Think you can handle the list? It's waiting after the jump (and shown above).[Thanks, Mike and Adam]
aloft opening HDTV-equipped hotel in Chicagoland
Sure, a trio of aloft hotels opening halfway across the world is fine and dandy, but how's about getting one right here in the US of A? Sure enough, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide has announced plans to construct an aloft facility in the outskirts of Chicago -- Bolingbrook to be precise. The venue is slated to house 155 guest rooms and be located in The Promenade on the Windy City's southwest side. Of course, each room will feature wireless internet and a smattering of connectivity options all linked into a flat-panel HDTV. Unfortunately, it'll be July of 2009 before you can check in for a night or two, but at least you know where to steer your travel plans if heading this way.
Joystiq live-ish at the U. of Illinois SSBB midnight launch
What started with around five people milling around an Urbana-Champaign, IL Gamestop at 6 p.m. became a throng of about 200 clamoring for the midnight launch of Nintendo's newest fighting extravaganza. But don't take our word for it -- check out our video report from the scene last night.
Cubs Forever documentary coming to WGN HD
Alright, Cubbies fans -- this is your year. What better way to end the streak than on the 100th anniversary of your last World Series win, right? In preparation for the upcoming season, WGN-Channel 9 is gearing up to air a two-hour documentary called Cubs Forever, which is in celebration of the 60th anniversary of WGN airing its first Cubs baseball game. For the historians in the crowd, that April 16th, 1948 matchup between your beloved Cubbies and the cross-town White Sox was actually an exhibition, but on April 20th of this year, fans will be able to witness "interviews with more than 60 Cubs players, fans and team staffers" that have been a part of the WGN / Cubs partnership. No word on an exact airing time just yet, but you can rest assured that it'll be beamed out in glorious high-definition.[Image courtesy of VacationsByRail]
AT&T brings U-verse to Northeastern Illinois: largest launch market to date
No sooner than Southern Illinois gets gifted with a handful of new HD channels on Mediacom, the opposite side of the state now has access to U-verse. You heard right -- Northeastern Illinois has just been dubbed AT&T's largest U-verse market launch to date, giving more than 175 communities the ability to acquire its fiber-based services. More specifically, residents in Bellwood, Buffalo Grove, Crystal Lake, Dolton, Elmhurst, Harvey, Hoffman Estates, Melrose Park, Oak Lawn, Orland Park, River Grove, St. Charles and Waukegan (among many, many more) can all phone up AT&T and get U-verse headed to their abodes. And yes, Big Ten Network is indeed included in the lineup, so you can let loose that pending sigh of relief.
Mediacom gears up to add four new HD channels in Southern Illinois
According to The Southern Illinoisan, Mediacom is getting set to unveil a new HD-centric plan for junkies like us, but better yet, it's readying four new high-definition channels to boot. Reportedly, customers in the area will soon be able to sign up for HD Family Basic, which "adds seven channels to the company's Family Basic plan at no charge." The first three stations to debut on the plan will be ESPN HD, ESPN2 HD and Discovery Theater HD, and "within the next 45 days," subscribers will also be treated to TNT HD, TBS HD, CNN HD and Fox Sports Midwest HD. Oh, and if you really needed one more wild promise from a carrier about future HD offerings, Mediacom Director of Operations Dale Haney has stated that the outfit "plans on doubling HD channels throughout the year." We'll see about that, now won't we?[Thanks, Peter S.]
Chicago's NBC 5 (WMAQ-TV) airs first newscast in HD
Hard to believe that Chicago's local news on NBC 5 (WMAQ-TV) wasn't already airing in HD, but nevertheless, it finally made the leap to high-definition this week. Not that staring at talking heads in 720p / 1080i is that much more enjoyable or anything, but at least it justifies that HDTV purchase a touch more, right?[Thanks, Brian]
Gambling on games bill passes Illinois legislature
Tired of playing games for near-meaningless Gamerscore points or leaderboard rankings? If you live in Illinois, you may soon be able to play games for cold hard cash instead.The Illinois legislature recently passed HB1124, which would allow residents to place bets on "a contest of 2 or more individuals" in "an electronic video game simulating a contest requiring skill, experience, dexterity, and precision." The key clause here is "requiring skill," so traditional luck-based gambling games like blackjack or video poker are out while games "requiring speed and accuracy of response to factual questions," for instance, are in.While the law is likely intended to allow gambling on the touchscreen games often seen in bars, we can't see why it wouldn't also allow Illinoisans to legally place bets on Halo 2 matches, for instance. The bill still has to be signed into law by Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, though, so don't go placing money on your skill with headshots just yet.[Update: Law of the Game has further analysis of what is and isn't allowed under the bill. We'll take his word over ours since he actually seems to have some legal experience.][Via Gaming Today]
Ionatron building laser guided energy weapons for US Navy
Apparently, the the artillery development budget for the US Navy is bursting at the seams, as the branch is complimenting the myriad of other dazzling weapons that it's collaboratively developing with a LGE-based rendition from Ionatron. The company, which focuses on developing "directed energy weapons," has recently landed a contract just shy of $10 million in order to "fund the development of an advanced Ultra Short Pulse Laser, physics modeling related to laser guided energy requirements, a transportable demonstrator, and effects testing." The firm's website compares its devices to that of "man-made lightning," useful in disabling "people or vehicles that threaten our security." Moreover, it was noted that both lethal and non-lethal versions are available, but we've no idea when this literal lightning in a bottle will end up hitting the test floor (or some poor sap's torso) in Los Alamos.[Via El Reg]
Nanotube breakthrough creates scalable transistors
Nanotubes have certainly played their part in various forms of swank gadgetry over the years, but researchers at the University of Illinois, Lehigh University, and Purdue University seem to have upped the ante for future nanotube implementations. Their approach utilizes "dense arrays of aligned and linear nanotubes as a thin-film semiconductor material suitable for integration into electronic devices," which essentially means that the arrays can be transferred into devices where silicon isn't entirely comfortable, such as "flexible displays, structural health monitors, and heads-up displays." Interestingly, the creators aren't expecting their discovery to overtake silicon, but they did mention that the linear arrays could be "added to a silicon chip and exploited for particular purposes, such as higher speed operation, higher power capacity, and linear behavior for enhanced functionality." Sounds like these gurus are just the type Intel would be scouting right about now, eh?[Via TechnologyReview]
Researchers working on Cell processor supercomputer
For years, Sony and IBM have talked up the power of the Cell processor that's at the core of of every PS3. Now, some University of Illinois researchers are working on finally unlocking that power for the next generation of highly parallel supercomputers. The Illinois News-Gazette has a report on the efforts of user interface experts Marc Snir, Laxmikant Kale and David Kunzman, who say that a computer with a cluster of Cell chips could offer 50 times the performance of a similar sized PC. Squeezing out that performance is no small task, though -- Kale admits "it's going to be a challenge to program it." Despite the team's inside access to Cell technology and tools, the N-G article ends with a joking complaint that the team members "haven't received a PlayStation 3 yet, either." Hey, if you want one that badly, just go to your local store, guys.
South Korea loosens game censorship
Game censorship is a big news item in the past few months. Political types of all walks of life enjoy trying to stifle the medium by passing laws that don't hold up in court in the US and even get through without much of a hitch in Europe. On the other side of the world, one nation is going the opposite direction. South Korea, which recently proposed an anti-gold farming bill, has pulled censorship on games depicting military action against their northern neighbor. Under the ban, any game that was negative toward North Korea was not permitted for sale in the South, citing they would only inflame the existing tension. However, wiser South Korean lawmakers finally realized video games have little impact on the real world, cut the rule and games like Ghost Recon 2 can now be sold. Lawmakers from the West take note; South Korea has the right idea. When they're sitting right next to an unstable tin-pot dictator and decide that games aren't going to cause a mass invasion, we should start reassessing this whole "games make people violent" kick. Our only hope is wiser people end up in leadership positions who actually try to solve problems instead of deflecting the responsibility on an unrelated party.
Transistors nearing the one terahertz barrier
Tossing the all-too-common "world's fastest" label on your latest gig seems to happen entirely more frequently than necessary, but researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are make this claim legitimately. While we've seen those wee transistors ratchet up in speed, these gurus have shattered any previous records that may have been standing by crafting a transistor "with a frequency of 845GHz," which is "approximately 300GHz faster" that those built by "other research groups." While the terahertz barrier is arguably the "Holy Grail" of transistor speed, this leap forward doesn't leave them too far off from the ultimate goal. In addition to the pseudomorphic construction, the crew also used tinier components in order to "reduce the distance electrons have to travel, resulting in an increase of speed." Notably, the chip "only" runs at 765GHz while ticking along at room temperature, but chilling it to minus 55-degrees Celsius bumps it up to the record-holding 845GHz mark. Developers are quite pleased with the results, but as expected, aren't entirely satisfied, and seemingly can't wait to push the envelope a bit further and break their own record sometime soon.
New Illinois robot seeks and destroys pesky weeds
Oh robots, is there anything they can't do? Apparently they can now search for and completely obliterate weeds, which really is something that we've always wanted them to do. A team of scientists at the University of Illinois have developed a robot that searches for weeds, chops them off, and then sprays herbicide all over the weed stump. The as-yet unnamed robot (which we'll be calling the weedinator for the time being) packs a Windows box with a 80GB hard drive (including WiFi), stands at about two feet tall, is a little over two feet wide and is nearly five feet long. Dr. Lei Tian, the lead scientist on the project, says that his new robot will improve efficiency of herbicide use by being precise about the amount of chemical use. We're not sure exactly what the WiFi is for, but it's probably used to brag to nearby robots about how many weeds it's just fragged.[Via Robot Gossip]
State loses case against videogames and taxpayers pay bills
Something called the Safe Games Illinois Act was shot down in, you guessed it, Illinois, recently. The Act would have banned the sale of violent videogames in the state. Re-read that sentence and check your nose. Is it bleeding from the affliction "mind-numbingly ignorant and stupid"? Not only was the proposition denied, but it was deemed unconstitutional. Here's the kicker: the state of Illinois has to pay the Electronics Software Association over half a million dollars in attorny fees. If you live in Illinois -- that's your tax money being tossed around. That sucks. Other pieces of the proposal were also denied but weren't quite as laughable. Posting an explanatory ESRB table in stores isn't too extreme, but forcing retailers to do it is. No one would look at it anyway, really. The judge held back his own laughter and sad that, ultimately, "If controlling access to allegedly 'dangerous' speech is important in promoting the positive psychological development of children, in our society that role is properly accorded to parents and families, not the State." If Illinois did pass the act into law and violent videogames were banned, what's to stop violent movies? Angry music? Cursing? Tripping old people? Okay, maybe not that. But it seriously was a very unfair thing to do, State of Illinois, and making the taxpayers (and violent game players) pay for the cost of the trial is really, really lame.
Video Games Live seats in Indy up for sale
Tickets are now on sale for the two Video Games Live shows planned in conjunction with Gen Con Indy Friday & Saturday, August 11-12.After a stop in Philly earlier this month, the VGL tour is moving on to Houston July 14th, Chicago August 5th, and then Indianapolis the weekend after that. More on reserving seats for the Hilbert Circle Theatre can be found on the official announcement page (via the pic to the right or the Read link below).Judging by the reviews of the Philly show so far, Video Games Live sounds like it could be a lot of fun. If they keep providing public access to Guitar Hero II, they may have sold this blogger on going already. We hope Midwestern gamers not attending the Chicago show can make a pitstop in Indy to keep Tommy's show on the road. So, yeah ... rock on.See also: Official VGL report from Philly (with some local links to boot) Video Games Live ticket purchases opened a bit early The official page for Gen Con Indy PS2 impressions: Guitar Hero II
