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Nokia C7 given a full video preview -- still not announced
And now the cycle is complete. What started as a single mention on a leaked slide has slowly evolved into a full-blown video preview of Nokia's unannounced C7 handset. The cats at the Chinese site zol.com.cn took the time to fuss over the Symbian^3 candybar's stereo speakers, 3.5-inch multitouch display, support for Flash banner ads (presumably via Flash Lite 4.0 like the flagship N8), and the ability to charge off Micro USB or Nokia 2-mm connectors (also like the N8). It's also demonstrated to easily handle a 720p H.264 video file at 2.7Mbps. Without giving reason as to why, the handler speculates that we might see the C7 launch before Nokia's own N8 finally makes it to retail. Click on through to see a fairly extensive preview replete with a soothing Chinese narration.
Motorola Droid gets early Android 2.2 ROM, ready to download... now!
What shall we call this, Frodroid or Droyo? Either way, an Android 2.2 update has been made available for Motorola's all-conquering slider, and it awaits eager firmware upgraders at the download link below. Produced by the good folks at My Droid World, this includes almost everything you'll need to get your Froyo on in style, though it excludes WiFi support at this stage. Such is the way with unofficial upgrades, but if you really need consolation, there's a whole set of superuser privileges to explore as this bad boy comes pre-rooted. You could of course skip this whole community business and wait for Moto's official update, but that company's idea of the "near future" is about as precise as the length of a piece of string.
Blizzard and how they deal with ninjas
Wojtek sent us this thread in which he posted a long series of emails between him and Blizzard about the ninja of an Onyxia Drake. There's a lot of back and forth, but eventually, the bottom line is that Blizzard was not able to help him, whether that's because he didn't have the information right, they couldn't find what they needed in the chat logs, or they just didn't want to. Later on, the thread is locked, and Wojtek is given the usual feedback address for the GM actions. So what does all this mean? We've heard in the past that Blizzard will occasionally help with ninjas, and we've even heard unofficially that if you get the main looter in a PuG raid to state the looting conditions ahead of time, Blizzard can go back, look that up, and then reward loot based on who really deserves it. But of course, all of that is unofficial, and there are so many variations and issues in situations like these that there can't really be a hard and fast rule -- sometimes Blizzard can help, sometimes they can't.
WoW latex Elf ears on Amazon
It's that time of year again -- I just saw a seasonal costume store opening up near my apartment here in Chicago, and that means that we're almost to October, when all kinds of official and unofficial Halloween costumes from all of the year's biggest brands appear. Last year we had some Orc masks and old-school armor and gear (and we may see some of that stuff again this year), but so far the only new thing we've seen is these latex ears, in Night Elf and Blood Elf style, over on Amazon. For just $12, you too can have inordinately large pointy ears, signifying that you're a magical creature from Azeroth.Cheesy? Maybe so, but then again, that's pretty much what dressing up on Halloween is all about these days. If you happen to see any other Warcraft-related costumes during the season (either officially licensed by Blizzard or knocked-off by some shady costume designer), make sure to take a picture and send us a tip. And of course if you enjoy seeing real people dress up as fictional Warcraft characters, you'll love our pictures from BlizzCon. Enjoy.%Gallery-70668%
The question of emulators
Gizmodo recently posted this video, which is beautiful to any PSX-era gamers: it's Final Fantasy VII running right on the iPhone, like buttah thanks to the 3GS hardware. How is this possible? Through the magic of emulation -- ever since computers got powerful enough to pretend to be other computers, people have resurrected old consoles and hardware by writing code that makes old games and software think its right at home in the computer it belongs in (an old NES system, a Genesis, or even a Playstation or Nintendo 64). As a result, by loading up ROMs into an emulator program, you can play old games you can't find (at least working) in the store any more.But the problem, as it usually does, lies in the legality. Even though those games are hard to find, companies still often own the copyrights on them (Square, for example, just released FFVII in an official emulator on the PSP, and they wouldn't be very happy with someone else releasing it on the iPhone). So while it's very easy for someone to write software that pretends to be an old NES (and there are lots of jailbroken apps around that will do just that), it's not easy to get all the rights and legal sign-offs to make it legit. Legit enough for Apple to keep it in the App Store, anyway. And while the video Gizmodo shows is awesome, and is possible on a jailbroken phone, it's not likely we'll ever see that app make it through Apple's approval. Not to mention that even when people jump through the legal hoops, Apple isn't happy with running other systems' code on their hardware anyway. Lame.That doesn't mean that the old games are gone forever -- there are certainly emulators of open-sourced or expired hardware on the App Store (here's one for Chip-8), and obviously there's a commercial reason for companies who do own the copyrights on popular games to bring them into the App Store officially. But as great as it would be to have a GBA emulator that automatically played any GBA game ROMs you loaded into it, that kind of stuff will have to stay in the jailbreak underground for now.
Caption Contest: unofficial Obama MP4 player is officially awesome
Friendly tipster and man about town Ben spotted this Obama-branded MP4 player ("with built-in speaker!") in Washington D.C. recently. Paul: "Yes we can buy cheap Chinese iPod knockoffs!"Chris: "Introducing the iPod hussein."Tim: "Sadly the John McCain gramophone was deemed too risky for today's economic conditions."Laura: "There's not a Zune America and an iPod America. There's a United States of generic Obama MP4 player America."Nilay: "They would give it an African name, DIGITAL MP4 PLAYER, believing that in a tolerant America a terrible interface and weird format support are no barrier to success."Joe: The Audacity of KIRFRichard: "Whew, for a second people thought he was using a Zune again"Josh: "On Obama's Digital MP4 Player, it's not shuffle. It's change."Ross: "Next on the O'Reilly Factor: is president-elect Barack Obama funneling funds through a Shenzhen, China-based shell company?"Sean: "Who is that black bald guy anyway?"**Sean is Canadian, we can't take responsibility for him or his silly little country.
Patch 2.4: The unofficial patch notes
Yesterday, we sent out a call for unofficial changes, and you guys responded with plenty. The official patch notes were posted earlier this week, but here are the unofficial patch notes for patch 2.4 we've found so far. Raid reset timers are showing the wrong times. (known bug) Various weapons are showing up as the wrong sizes. (known bug) A number of AV changes were made, some of them documented, some not. We've confirmed that yes, the Chocobo squawk (press spacebar when standing still on the Blood Elf racial mount) is new to the game. Sound effect for Power World: Shield has changed in volume (thanks, Matt), as have some other sounds in the game Netherstorm mobs have had their health tuned down, and frostbolts seem to go faster (thanks, Nick) Blizzard has adjusted things so that the walljumping exploit is no longer valid in many places (thanks, Jacob) Motes of Water drop rate seems to be nerfed (thanks, Tancred) More after the jump.
Ad: New York loves the iPhone
Or so says this ad. Mac Rumors isn't sure what the deal is on this either, but this unofficial ad by Alec Sutherland, Anthony Hechanova, and Todd DosSantos is a neat little tribute to both New York and the gadget that's going to take over the world at the end of the month.And forgive me if I'm reading a little too much into this, but how cool is all of this? It's 2007, and we're going to be walking around carrying little multitouch screens with "no buttons." Say what you will about the whole "Sweet Solution" fiasco, but dude-- we're living the future.
Mogopop iPod content publishing community releases Macworld 07 guide
Mogopop is a content publishing community that publishes everything in an iPod-friendly format. From their own explanation: "Mogopop rolls your video, audio, pictures and text into a single piece of iPod content that anyone can download." Anyone can sign up to publish content, and while most items, AFAIK, are free to download, you need to use their Mogopop Manager software to manage the content on your iPod. To be clear, however: this Manager app works *with* iTunes, and does not interfere with your main library of music, videos and games. Also of note at mogopop is a recently-released Macworld 07 Unofficial Guide, ripe for bringing along on everyone's favorite DAP just in case you don't snag enough maps, guides and directories at the Macworld event itself. The guide lists exhibitors, featured presentation schedules, keynote info, restaurants and - of course - obligatory speculation of what we might see released this year.
Test your MacBook for random shutdowns
Some MacBook owners around the web are reporting a 'random shutdown' issue, where the machine will - as you might guess - seemingly shutdown at random; either during work or patiently idling for your next command. If you haven't experienced this issue yourself yet but are still concerned about it, The Apple Files has devised an unofficial test to see if you might be a victim. The test involves entering a few simple commands into the Terminal and testing a few things over roughly half an hour of your time. Just to be thorough, the author recommends running this test two or three times to be sure, but it's really up to how paranoid you're feeling. Again, this is an unofficial test, and we haven't seen any official reports or announcements from Apple on this issue, its cause or how widespread it might be, but it's simply nice to have options, hey?[via digg]
$40 XBL Vision camera & UNO bundle detailed by MS source along with prices & dates for other 360 accessories
Our friendly anonymous source at Microsoft has provided us with a few more details concerning the 360 accessories announced back at E3.Perhaps the most important involves the bundling of the Xbox Live Vision camera with a wired headset, the popular Live Arcade title UNO, and a month of Live Gold service for $39.99 when it releases in the States on September 19, 2006.Granted, this is still an unofficial report (based on a leak of "official" info), so understand that you're probably not gonna get much confirmation from MS until they're good and ready to give it. If you'd like information on what other peripherals are coming out "Holiday 2006" (so sometime in the 4th quarter) and at what price, read on for more.
