GadgetsDownunder

PlayStation Move: everything you ever wanted to know

from engadget - 2 hours, 17 minutes ago

Sony dropped a lot of knowledge on us yesterday, at long last replacing rampant speculation with some cold hard facts -- and even a name! -- for its new PlayStation motion controller. The PlayStation Move is being described as a "platform" and a "virtual console launch" by folks at Sony, and we think they mean it, so prepare for a motion-controlled ad war later this year, as Microsoft and Sony set themselves up for a real three-way fight with Nintendo for your physical living room activity of the gaming variety. While some of the high-level Wii-like functionalitie ...

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OpenGL 4.0 arrives, brings more opportunities for general purpose GPU action

from engadget - 5 hours, 17 minutes ago

What's a Game Developers Conference without some sweet new tools for developers to sink their teeth into? Khronos Group, the association behind OpenGL, has today announced the fourth generation of its cross-platform API spec, which takes up the mantle of offering a viable competitor to Microsoft's DirectX 11. The latest release includes two new shader stages for offloading geometry tessellation from the CPU to the GPU, as well as tighter integration wit ...

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Microsoft Shows Full 3D XNA Games On Windows Phone

from slashdot - 13 hours, 2 minutes ago

Microsoft has shown off XNA games running on Windows Phone; full 3D is a go. From Engadget: 'Microsoft just showed us a pair of 3D games running on its ASUS Windows Phone prototype and built with its brand new XNA Game Studio 4.0 9. The two titles are The Harvest, a good looking touch-controlled dungeon crawler with destructible environments, being developed by Luma Arcade; and Battle Punks. Microsoft spoke to the ease of its Direct3D development platform, which was built by the same folks responsible for the first-gen Xbox. What we saw of The Harvest was built in "two or three weeks," mostly from scratch, and folks who've already built games for XNA in VisualStudio shouldn't have much trouble with a port from the sound of things: "very, very easy," said Microsoft. Right now developers can do their testing in Windows, but there should be a Windows Phone 7 Series emulator out for devs eventually."

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Nokia Symbian^3 UI demonstrated in detail, seeks multitouch devices (video)

from engadget - 13 hours, 17 minutes ago

Nokia VP, David Rivas, was in San Francisco yesterday touting Symbian^3 improvements. While we've heard and seen plenty about Symbian Three's enhanced user experience already, it's still worthy of another look considering Symbian's dominant marketshare. Besides, David provides a very detailed look as he walks us though elements like the customizable (and more finger friendly) homescreens meant to provide ...

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Motorola partners with Microsoft, will use Bing search and maps on Chinese Android phones

from engadget - 19 hours, 17 minutes ago

Uh, whoa. When we heard Google's threatened pullout of China had prompted Motorola to seek out an alternative search provider for its China-bound handsets, we can't say we were expecting a partnershi ...

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Motorola i1 gets clearer: 5 megapixel cam, Opera Mini default browser?

from engadget - 22 hours, 17 minutes ago

We've been slipped some additional information on Motorola's imminent Android-powered i1 for iDEN networks today -- actually, one correction and one interesting note. First, the correction: we're now being told (by the same tipster as before) that it's actually got a 5 megapixel camera on board, a nice upgrade from the 3 we'd previously been told to expect. More interestingly, though, we're also hearing that Opera Mini has been tapped as the i1's default browser -- a move that Moto is more than welcome to make since this is a

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HTC HD2 said to be launching March 24th for $199, no Windows Phone 7 support

from engadget - 1 day, 1 hour ago

Well, we'd already had a pretty clear indication that the HTC HD2 would be launching on T-Mobile on March 24th (or possibly the 23rd), and Laptop Magazine is now reporting that a "very close T-Mobile source" has confirmed that the 24th is indeed the date, and that the phone will run $199 on a two-year contract (or $449 off-contract). The March 23rd date that recently cropped up is apparently just the day the MobiTV software will go live. Just as notably, Laptop also sa ...

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Computing pioneer Chuck Thacker wins Turing Award

from engadget - 1 day, 2 hours ago

Chuck Thacker may not be quite the same household name as some other computing pioneers, but it's pretty hard to overstate the influence he's had on the industry, a feat for which he's now be honored with the A.M. Turing Award -- widely considered to be the "Nobel prize of computing." While Thacker is now a "Technical Fellow" at Microsoft, he first made a name for himself at Xerox PARC, where he not only helped design and realize the very first modern computer, the Alto, but co-invented Ethernet, and contributed to a range of other projects that have had a lasting impact on computing to this day. Later, while at Microsoft Reseac ...

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Zune HD2 Will Be Like iPod Touch for Windows Phone 7 (Read: Apps! Also, Zune HD Is For Suckers) [Rumor]

from gizmodo - 1 day, 4 hours ago