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Users looking for "haute couture" in a "hot computer" need search no further. Dell hit the runway today with notebooks cloaked in Sunshine Yellow and Flamingo Pink. The first notebook to feature the new colour schemes is the XPS M1330, with a 13.3-inch widescreen.
For more information about the products and technical specifications go to www.dell.com/yoursishere
Skype today announced the launch of Skype Pro, a subscription package offering zero cents per minute calls to domestic landlines.
Also part of the Skype Pro package is the new Skype To Go, allowing you to nominate a best friend who lives abroad and call them cheaply from your mobile phone.
To use Skype To Go you'll need to download the Skype software and then sign up to Skype Pro for $3.55 per month. As a Skype Pro customer, you'll receive a Skype To Go number, which you activate by entering the international number of your chosen friend. Skype To Go will then give you a local number to use instead.
Having a Skype To Go number makes international calling from a mobile significantly cheaper. For instance, calling a friend in the UK now costs the same as calling across the street plus the SkypeOut rate for the UK, which for landlines can be as little as 3 cents per minute.
To see what other features Skype Pro offers in New Zealand, surf to www.skype.com.
Hot on the heels of the well publicised failure of AACS copy protection on high definition discs comes a brand new scheme designed to protect Blu-ray movie releases called BD Plus (BD+).
Despite personal reservations about the futility of overly technical copy protection schemes that only ever seem to punish legitimate customers with all kinds of hardware and software incompatibility problems, in this instance the arrival of BD+ may well prove to be a good thing. How come? Well, when AACS was cracked earlier this year the end result, other than lot's of smug geeks sounding off on internet forums, was the sudden delay to many high definition movie releases. Companies like Fox, Disney and MGM all pushed back their initial release dates for big name titles (Star Wars, all the Pixar films, the 007 back catalog...) while they waited for a better, more secure form of content protection to become available. Looks to me like BD+ could be it.
Here's how DailyTech describe the basic operation of the new BD+ copy protection:
BD+ differs from AACS in its complexity. Effectively an embedded virtual machine inside player hardware, BD+ allows content providers to include executables on Blu-ray Discs to perform specific, content protecting functions. For example, the BD+ virtual machine could run diagnostics on the host environment to see if the disc player has been modified, or to verify that the keys have not been changed.As part of the BD+ scheme, video may be deliberately corrupted or modified to prevent the ripping of the data stream for piracy purposes. The BD+ environment, once verified, will correct and descramble the content to render it viewable.
Executables on discs that allow the software to perform diagnostics on the host machine? How very Rootkit of them. Sounds dodgy to me.
So even though the music industry seems to be slowly realising that DRM and copy protection simply doesn't work, it looks like the movie industry is still listening intently to the righteous spiels no doubt spewing forth from the CEO's of the companies that actually build the copy protection. You know, the guys that make tons of money producing half-cocked DRM schemes that the movie studios seem to lap up.
Microsoft today launches Games for Windows Live, their first attempt at cross platform online gaming between PC’s and Xbox 360.
The Redmond-based giant is banking on the success of their Xbox Live subscription gaming service translating into success on the PC, although convincing PC gamers to cough up the $80 cash for a 12 month Games for Windows Live Gold membership won’t be easy. Especially given the fact there’s only one game right now — Shadowrun — that supports cross platform play and PC gamers can get most of their online gaming fix for free already. As it stands the Games for Windows Live Gold service will likely appeal most to existing Xbox 360 Live subscribers who happen to also own a PC, the reason being their existing Gold membership will also work on the PC. Games for Windows Live is also restricted to Vista equipped machines making the initial prospective market for Microsoft a rather small one.
Still, the concept of cross platform gaming itself is a great one and we hope Microsoft pulls this one off.
The dreaded ”red ring of death" is a sight many Xbox 360 owner hope they never have to bear witness to. You see, when the ring of lights on the front of your console turn from their usual shade of soothing green to an angry red, it means your 360 has just gone to console heaven and your gaming days are over. Temporarily at least.
Turns out that when Microsoft is repairing the broken consoles it’s actually replacing the existing heatsink with a new, presumably more efficient, design. How do we know this? Well in a shocking display of recklessness and showing blatant disregard for those little silver ”void your warranty" stickers, some overly keen readers over at Team Xbox have ripped open their freshly repaired consoles to have a nosey at the insides. To their surprise they found a completely new cooling mechanism installed.
Does this mean that the original heatsinks were faulty? Could the original coolers be the cause of the rising number of (anecdotally) reported console failures? And are these new coolers being installed into brand new Xbox 360s?
We’ve not heard any official word from Microsoft about this nor have we heard if any locally repaired consoles have this fancy new heatsink installed. Without wanting to be seen encouraging people to void their warranties, please let us know if you’ve been bold enough to crack open your newly repaired Xbox 360.
After Steve Jobs left the stage at WWDC07 there was much to talk about. Hardly anything to actually play with mind, but still, lots to talk about. However, it seems most media outlets are focusing their attentions on the wrong areas. Who cares that Leopard has transparency effects? That iPhone thingy is just another mobile phone and Safari just another, *yawn*, web browser. That's all boring stuff. The real news was that the Mac is finally going to get some games (you Mac lovers out there do remember what games are right?).
EA has announced they're releasing a few of their major titles for Mac, games like Need For Speed Carbon, Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars and Battlefield 2142. Then, amazingly, EA will release their 2008 sports titles at the same time as PC and game consoles.
How can this be? Well, the move to Intel processors was the ultimate catalyst for the MAC gaming revolution but more immediately it's the efforts of a company called TransGaming who develop Cider, a "wrapper" that allows games written for Windows to run on OSX. Whereas game developers used to have to completely redevelop their game for Macs (few bothered with the lengthy and expensive process for small returns from the relatively small Mac market) now they can simply develop the game for Windows or Xbox 360 or PS3, then let TransGaming work their magic on it. Mere days or even hours later said game is ready for release on Mac.
TransGaming say the process works by directly loading a Windows program into the memory of an Intel-Mac and linking it to an optimised version of the Win32 API's. Not only is this great news for Mac owners who should now get to play some decent games but game developers only need to develop and maintain a single code source. This of course translates into more incentive for game developers to get Mac versions of games onto shelves...not to mention get one back on those smug PC gamers out there. Rockin.
Sony's PSP handheld gaming console has been selling well since it launched, but it hasn't exactly taken the world by storm and it certainly isn't a patch on Nintendo's hugely popular DS. But Sony aren't content with their lot and are putting considerable effort into re-energising the device. First they tied it in closely to the PS3 and as of the latest PSP and PS3 firmware releases the two consoles can talk to each other over the internet and the PSP can even act as a remote portal dialing into your PS3 at home while you're out and about. Today sees another addition to the PSP accessory list with the pending release of the Go!Cam.
The Go!Cam is a tiny 1.8 megapixel attachment that lets you turn your PSP into a mini camcorder or digital camera. It plugs into the USB port on top of the PSP. Now, the positioning of this USB port has always bugged me, you see, if the port was on the bottom it'd be much, much easier for third parties to make nice looking docks for the PSP, as it is the only practical way to plug into your PC is via a poxy old USB cable...no fancy iPod style docking culture for the PSP. Obviously when Sony put the USB port on top of the PSP they weren't thinking of docks, they were thinking of all the little gadgets they could clip onto the top of the thing, like the Go!Cam.
According to the press release you can shoot 2.5 hours of video or take 40,000 photos -- if you have a 4GB Memory Stick that is. If you're still struggling along with the token 32MB card that comes with the PSP you may find those figures reduced somewhat dramatically. But memory cards are cheap these days and you can nab 4GB for about $120.
The Go!Cam itself costs $94 and comes with Go!Edit software that lets you edit your videos and pics directly on the PSP. Sounds tricky, if we ever get one to review we'll be sure to let you know if it is or not.
World War II real time strategy game Company of Heroes, the masterpiece that it is, has notched up another milestone by becoming the worlds first commercially available DirectX 10 game.
Relics community manager "Buggo" has reported on her blog that the 1.7 patch for CoH brings the game up to DirectX 10 standards. Since the game looked pretty damn slick to begin with I'm really looking forward to seeing exactly how good it looks in its fancy new DirectX 10 outfit. Sadly I've not reinstalled the game since my PC had a meltdown a couple of weeks back and since my copy of the game is safely tucked away in the office at work -- which is of course locked up tight for the long weekend -- I'll have to wait til Tuesday to see for myself. Curses! Anyway, check the two screenies below for a direct comparison of video quality. I've also listed the DirectX 10 features as posted over at Buggo's blog for your reading pleasure.
DX10 Features
- Edges of particles are softened where intersecting 3D objects.
- Thousands of additional ‘litter’ objects in the world.
- Improved user control over anti aliasing settings.
- Alpha to coverage anti aliasing to improve quality of alpha test objects such as shrubs.
- Lighting quality has improved by moving all calculations per pixel.
- More precise point light calculations.
- Point lights can now cast shadows.
- 3D short grass on the terrain.
- Vertical refresh synchronization is enabled by default to improve visual quality by preventing tearing of the display image, use ‘-novsync’ to disable.
DirectX 9
DirectX 10
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