There’s a rather awesome Halo 3 video cruising round the internet at the moment that’s well worth checking out. It’s a live action short called Combat: Part 1 and was shot by Neil Blomkamp (yes, the director Peter Jackson pegged for the Halo movie that’s currently on hold), it makes use of the talented people down at Weta Workshop and features a real-live, working Warthog. Check it out at this address and then stamp your feet impatiently at the fact 20th Century Fox got cold feet in funding the Halo movie.

If you’re a Wellington local you may well recognize the T&T Landfill doubling as a battle scarred warzone. In fact, Microsoft’s Xbox PR supremo has a pair of mud encrusted shoes from her secret behind the scenes junket, er… work trip to the set. Watch out for them on eBay, I’m sure they’ll go for thousands.

Posted by Scott Bartley at 4:46 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 12 )

Telecommunications and internet service provider Orcon has successfully unbundled New Zealand's first customer from the Telecom network. The first trial customers went live on the Orcon Broadband and Telephone network this morning in the Auckland suburb of Ponsonby. Delivering broadband speeds up to 24Mbit/sec -- some four to five times faster than the best available from Telecom. All this comes just three weeks after Telecom granted access to the exchange.

"This is a momentous occasion for Orcon, and a moment in history. We are really excited to finally get a trial customer on our own network, and can't wait to share this new experience with our customers," said Orcon Chief Executive, Scott Bartlett.

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 4:15 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

Recognising the fact that under-18's can't get a credit card in their own name, local music download store digiRAMA has introduced a pre-pay download card to buy music online, the first legal download site in New Zealand to do so. The re-chargeable plastic cards are available right now from over 1000 stores around the country.

Good on ya digiRAMA.

Here's the complete release:

News release
27 August 2007

digiRAMA trumpets new music download card

Buying music online just got a lot easier for under-18s and anyone without a credit card.

In a first of its kind for New Zealand, Kiwi-based music site digiRAMA has launched a rechargeable music download card that eliminates the need for a credit card.

Under-18s can’t get credit cards in their own name, a major obstacle for them when they have wanted to legitimately download music using the internet.

The new digiRAMA Music Download Cards are simple to use, the company says, and work just like a phone card.

The plastic cards are now available in more than 1,000 stores nation-wide and can be recharged through the EFTPOS-based EZIPAY network.

digiRAMA managing director Shaun Davis says he expects the new cards to be popular with music fans. He also believes it will help in the fight against illegal downloading.

”Part of the problem with illegal downloading has no doubt been a lack of access for young people without credit cards to many legal download sites,„ Davis says. ”The digiRAMA Music Download Cards get around that problem by making it simple to legitimately purchase your favourite music for a great-value price.

”The digiRAMA Music Download Card also makes a great gift idea - perfect for Christmas. You can select the amount you want to give and charge it up on the card. The recipient can then use it online whenever they like.„

Davis says the advanced security features of the digiRAMA site means card users can be confident there is no risk of downloading viruses or being inundated with unwanted ads or spam.

The digiRAMA Music Download Cards give music lovers access to one of the biggest music ”stores„ in the country with more than 500,000 singles and thousands of albums available for download from the digiRAMA site, including content exclusive to the digiRAMA site.

Download prices on digiRAMA are better than in physical stores, Davis says. New release albums cost $17 while individual songs are just $1.75.

The minimum amount chargeable to a digiRAMA Music Download Card is $20 and the minimum recharge amount is $10. Card owners can use them to download music, videos, ringtones and more.

Posted by Scott Bartley at 5:26 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

The launch of Xtra/Yahoo's offspring, Bubble, was officially launched today to a gallery of journalists covering web, print, television and radio.

After what has undoubtedly been a tough week for Xtra, the launch was a subdued affair with the ISP doing it's best to reassure everyone that it was on the right track. Kevin Kenrick, COO at the consumer division, Telecom, says the company was "hugely disappointed in how things have started."

"Until we have everyone connected, we have a lot more work to do. We will compensate people, but first order of business is to get people connected. The we can look at a fair and reasonable compensation."

According to Telecom, this is Yahoo's seventh time of cooperating with a national ISP, and the first time it has experienced the trouble. The testing before launch was done by Yahoo, with some problems requiring Telecom to fly in expert help from overseas.

Xtra will have its hosting situated in Australia from now on, meaning traffic to and from New Zealand on their servers will be dependent on the Southern Cross cable. Jobs have moved from New Zealand to Australia as a result, but Kenrick says it was more a question of moving staff, rather than jobs.

"Truth is that we are hosting in Australia, as it is significantly better than anything offered in New Zealand. We certainly aspire to eventually hosting everything here, but right now Australia is the better option."

Posted by Jan Birkeland at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 13 )

Troubled game publisher Take-Two's sagging share price has been given a welcome boost thanks to the recently released, and now, wildly successful game BioShock.

Reuters are reporting a 10 percent jump in Take-Two's share price following the almost universal critical praise being heaped upon it just a couple of days after the games release. In a widespread bout of unabashed warm-fuzzies rarely seen in the video game industry, reviewers and critics the world over are dishing out scores of 10/10 and 100% like there's no tomorrow.

This is great news for Take-Two who've been hammered lately by dodgy accounting practices scandals and the delay of the latest installment in their flagship Grand Theft Auto franchise. GTA IV has been delayed until 2008, a move that means the company misses out on reaping the financial benefits of releasing a new version of one of the worlds biggest selling games in time for the Christmas rush. BioShock looks like it'll sell hundreds of thousands of copies and fill the yawning gap in Take-Twos bank account nicely in the meantime.

In a cruelly ironic twist, BioShock is currently released only for Xbox 360 and PC, not Sony's PS3 console. The loss of GTA IV from the PS3's Christmas release schedule is likely to hurt Sony -- who were counting on GTA IV to help sell more PS3's -- more than anyone else.

BioShock, for those who may have been living under the virtual equivalent of a rock this past week, is a new action game set in a fantastical and secret underwater city built during World War II but falling rapidly into chaos as all manner of weird, creepy and deadly events take place. Your character has the misfortune of surviving a mid-ocean airliner crash and being plunged into the midst of it all. You must then not only try and figure out the mystery of what happened in this wonderfully atmospheric environment under the sea...but survive. We've played the demo on both Xbox 360 and PC and can't wait for the full thing to arrive.

Posted by Scott Bartley at 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

With a look only William Shatner could love and more bells and whistles that a marching band, the G9 laser mouse is Logitech’s latest offering in the lucrative gaming peripherals market. Why is it a lucrative market, you might ask? The answer is simple; paying NZ$180 for a mouse should yield some pretty good margins for Logitech.

The mouse comes with two interchangeable outer covers, each slightly changing the look and feel of the mouse. The covers differ little from each other, although different materials and slightly different sizing will see gamers choosing one and quite probably never ever touch the other again. The shape and size of the mouse is radical when compared to other gaming mice, and will most likely suit gamers playing with a ‘claw-like’ style.

The G9 sports the usual suspects of buttons, with two thumb buttons, two buttons for dedicated dpi switching and a side tilting mouse wheel. The mouse wheel can switch between standard and ‘free spin’ mode, presumably for the game playing Excel junkies out there.

Despite an odd appearance, the G9 does have the numbers on its side. It has a dpi range of 200 to 3,200, and processes 6.4 mega pixels per second. According to Logitech’s specifications, the mouse buttons are good for 8 million clicks, and the mouse feet should cover 250 kilometers before they pack it in.

The jury is still out on the final scorecard for the mouse; check the October issue of PC World. I will say this though, Logitech has chosen an unusual design for its mouse, and combined with the price that could end up being its pitfall.

Posted by Jan Birkeland at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 3 )

We picked this story up over at the official Sony Playstation Blog, where the Sony-ites are understandably chuffed about their sturdy wee console.
What happened is a bunch of guys (presumably with PS3’s to spare) decided to perform some unofficial and slightly off the wall stress testing on it. This included placing the thing in the back of a freezer truck for four days straight and then for another four days in a sauna of all places. Along the way they subjected the unsuspecting console to a rigorous regime of gaming and movie playback with temperature extremes ranging from a brisk minus 17C all the way up to a sizzling 49C — amazingly the PS3 suffered no ill effects along the way and is now back in its usual spot in the lounge and working perfectly.
This must really rip Microsoft’s nightie, because their beleaguered Xbox 360 has suffered all manner of reliability problems including overheating, disc scratching and outright failure, all of which has resulted in warranty extensions, lawsuits and a US $1 billion repair bill for Redmond. In spite of all this, Microsoft has remained frustratingly tight-lipped on what they’re doing to fix the problems (other than extending the warranty period to 3 years that is) or even how many Xbox 360’s are affected. Sony on the other hand have come out swinging with news that the failure rate of the PS3 (in Europe at least) is a minuscule 0.2% — well below the industry standard 3-5%. Just another day in the ding-dong battle between console manufacturers then.

Posted by Scott Bartley at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 4 )

Microsoft New Zealand has today announced a price cut for the Xbox 360 game console. The Xbox 360 Pro now retails for $649, a $70 chop from the previous price, while the Xbox 360 Core console (the one without the hard drive) drops $100 to $449. Nice one Xbox, now hurry up and get some content up on our local Video Marketplace, that Mission Impossible III trailer is getting a little tiresome.

Xbox 360 Pro System (RRP $649.95): Includes the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system, 20GB Hard Drive, Wireless Controller, Media Remote, Component HD AV cable, an Ethernet Connectivity Cable and a complimentary 30-day trial Xbox LIVE® Gold membership.

Xbox 360 Core System (RRP $449.95): Includes the Xbox 360 Core console, Xbox 360 Controller and Composite AV cable.

Posted by Scott Bartley at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Apple has refreshed its iMac desktop line, dropping the model with the smallest screen, cutting the price of the top-end system, and tweaking the design for a thinner, trimmer look.

In an event held at Apple's Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, CEO Steve Jobs introduced three new iMacs -- two with 20-inch LCD screens, the third boasting a 24-inch monitor -- priced between $1899 and $2799.

The entry-level iMac includes a 20-in. screen, a 2.0-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of memory and a 250GB hard drive. The $2298 middle model, which also has a 20-in. screen, features a 320GB drive, a 2.4-GHz processor and a faster ATI graphics card. At the top of the lineup, the 24-in. iMac, which sells for $750 less than the previous top-end model, contains the same innards as the $2298 model but features a larger screen. if you want to build to order you can bump the processor up to 2.8GHz on the 24-inch model and both the 20-inch and 24-inch will take up to 4GB of RAM and bigger hard drives.

The 20-in. screens offer 1680x1050-pixel resolutions; the 24-in. screen has a resolution of 1920x1200 pixels.

All three sport FireWire 400/800 connections and a CD/DVD optical drive, they also support Bluetooth and 802.11n wireless. A new keyboard -- which was the focus of rampant internet speculation over the last week -- is more MacBook-like and comes in an optional wireless version.

Jobs also demonstrated new features in iPhoto, part of the revamped iLife '08 suite; new links between both iPhoto and Apple's iPhone, and the company's .Mac online service; and other iLife '08 applications, including a refreshed iWeb and a totally redesigned iMovie. "We're still calling it iMovie," quipped Jobs, "but we're giving it a new icon to show it's a whole new app." The iLife '08 suite, which retails for $109 separately, ships with all new Macs.

Apple's second major suite -- iWork -- received an update, too. The entry-level application bundle, which last got an upgrade in January 2006, now includes a spreadsheet, dubbed Numbers, to complement the Keynote presentation maker and the Pages word-processor-cum-document-designer, which made up earlier editions. Numbers, according to the slide Jobs threw up on the screen, is "the spreadsheet for the rest of us," a reference to the original 1984 Macintosh advertising tagline. iWork will retail at $109

Some scuttlebutt, which included rumours of the demise of the screenless Mac Mini and enhanced MacBook notebooks, didn't pan out. The Mini remains in the Apple portfolio, and in fact has been slightly enhanced, said Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook in a short Q&A near the end of the rollout. (The new Minis come with faster CoreDuo processors.) The portables, meanwhile, which were last updated in June when the MacBook Pro shifted to Intel's Santa Rosa chip set and began shipping with screens backlit by LEDs, stayed static.

Report compiled by Gregg Keizer

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Toshiba today launched an across the board revamp of its entire notebook range including a major upgrade for the Qosmio AV notebook in the form of the G40, a dedicated gaming machine dubbed the Satellite X200, and the truly compact and innovative Portege R500 with a solid state 64GB drive.

Mark Whittard, general manager of Toshiba ISD, said, Toshiba's desire to differentiate itself in the mobile market through technological innovation remained as strong as ever and the new line up reflected that. He also said, that an obvious shift was taking place in the notebook market with a greater emphasis on style in addition to pure productivity. Whittard attributed this to the fact that notebooks were increasingly being seen as personal devices and that in a high-employment environment, companies saw the provision of desirable tech tools as a way of attracting and retaining good employees.

Qosmio G40

A giant amongst notebooks, the G40 boasts a full 1920 x 1200 high-definition 17-inch widescreen capable of 1080p display. It comes with twin digital TV tuners (DVB-T) and can record programmes to both its twin 200GB hard drives and world-first built-in HD DVD recorder.
Dolby virtual surround sound is provided via four Harman Kardon speakers and an HDMI port allows for full 5.1 audio and high definition video output.
A dedicated circular AV controller resides to the right of the keyboard and a remote is also provided if you're doing your viewing from a distance.
A top spec means the G40 is no slouch and it also has a microphone and 2-megapixel camera for VoIP.
Suggested retail is $5999.

Portege R500

The R500 represents the state-of-the-art for notebook innovation. Weighing only 999g and just 19.5mm thick, the R500 absolutely packs in the technology. A 12.1-inch transreflective LED backlit screen is made to be viewable in direct sunlight outdoors with just the touch of a button, and this machine will do a full 12.5 hour day running Windows Vista before its 6-cell battery needs charging. The keyboard is spill-resistant and the DVD drive is protected by the ribbed magnesium alloy chassis.
The R500 is also available with a 64GB solid state drive, which offers longer battery life, faster boot times, faster read-write, less noise, less heat and greatly enhanced resistance to bumps and knocks.

At present, the solid state drive option represents a $1000 premium on the R500 as compared to the HDD option, but prices are predicted to drop as volumes increase, and Mark Whittard also believes we will see solid state drive sizes of up to 200GB by the end of next year.
The HDD R500 is to retail at $4027 and the SSD model is $5040.

For further information visit toshiba.co.nz

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

In this age of instant global communications and online shopping it’s harder than ever for big companies to treat individual markets, well, individually. Realising that many Kiwis will be looking enviously at the PS3 price cuts and bigger hard drives those spoilt Americans are enjoying and feeling left out, Sony New Zealand have today released the PS3 Starter Pack. Priced at the usual $1199 point, gamers now get two Sixaxis controllers instead of one plus two of the best selling games; Resistance Fall Of Man and MotorStorm. Oddly, the Starter Pack will only be available until September 30, Sony probably figure a little time limited offer like this will spur sales during the traditionally quiet lead up period before the Christmas buying frenzy. It’s not a price cut, but it’s something.

Posted by Scott Bartley at 2:17 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )