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In San Francisco, the World Cyber Games Championship is offering a total of $400,000 in prizes for its finalists. Players are pit against each other in a variety of first-person shooters including "Counter-Strike: Condition Zero," "Unreal Tournament 2004" and "Halo", along with other titles such as "FIFA 2004" and "Need for Speed Underground." The World Cyber Games began in 2001 with players from 37 countries in its first year. This year is the first time it has been held outside of Korea, and from now on organizers plan to hold it at different cities worldwide, including Singapore next year. Good to know that you can make a living doing almost anything you love. The little fella here on the right is supposed to be the WCG Mascot.
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| CNN
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Finally, Verizon Wireless is adding a GSM phone to their product line. In fact, it is the first phone in the United States that can roam on both GSM and CDMA networks. Not bad. The reviewer notes that while it is nice to finally have GSM on Verizon, GSM roaming is going to cost you a pretty penny. It seems Verizon is slowly starting to offer the features that those on other carriers already have, starting with the Motorola V710 with Bluetooth. Now if only they would make these things as user friendly as the other carriers. And what the hell is up with the keypad?Read More | CNet
The music industry is going through a serious transformation and resurgence these days. Part of the reason for this is the popularity of portable digital music players, such as the Apple iPod and the Rio Carbon. In fact, a recent study found that the global market for mp3 players will generate $58 billion by 2008. You have to wonder, what is it that makes digital audio so enticing in the first place? Today Gear Live takes a look at the allure and the functionality of the MP3 world, so that we could all understand what the fuss is all about.
Click to continue reading The Joys of Digital Audio
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Exactly one year from when it was originally announced (with a version that was never actually released to the market), Nokia is going to take another crack at entering a new market. Just like with the N-Gage handheld convergence device, this item also had to be redesigned before retailers and consumers were willing to accept it. The new phone, the Nokia 7710, is designed to be used as (hold on to your seats) a phone first (not many single use devices anymore, remember when a cell phone was a cell phone?), and second, as a mobile television (the quality is not yet known). Due to the massive market share Nokia has (1 out of every 3 phones sold around the world), there is almost no better company to push this new technology. The service will first be used in Britain on a trial basis before it is hopefully released elsewhere.
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| Reuters UK
Yahoo! released a preview version of its new homepage design which they are claiming will be simpler and more intuitive to what the user wants to see. The web-site directory section, which used to dominate much of the Yahoo home page, will now take up much less room. The news headlines are higher on the page and the entertainment section will be updated more frequently throughout the day. The redesign of the home page coincides with Yahoo's big push of the new "My Yahoo" section which has been extremely popular since its introduction. Customization and listening to its users is definitely something Yahoo is placing plenty of importance on.
Read More | Yahoo! News
So we are now in the maturation phase of the online music world, past the infancy when there was a mad rush to Napster, Kazaa and their brethren. Although those P2P options still exist, there are now legal download options such as iTunes, legal Napster and several others. Even audiobooks have gone MP3, with sites like Audible.com offering the newest novels in formats ready for MP3 players. But I want to look at a niche that has been flourishing since the beginning of the web, and still is an incredible, legal and mostly free option when you want to hear some great music. I am talking about downloading the concerts of bands that are "taper-friendly", which means the band allows fans to record concerts and distribute them freely. So we'll take a look at the history of this concept, what it looks like today, and how to get your hands on some great shows.Click to continue reading Legal Concert Downloads: A Look at the Tech
I was as surprised as you were when I found out the PDA we hinted at last week was actually going to be palmOne's Tungsten T5. For $399 you get: 215 Megs of storage space, portable drive functionality, a 320 x 480 display, MP3 playback, and Bluetooth. While I love the form factor, I still find it a little steep, plus it's sorely lacking Wi-Fi. And this is supposed to be their high end model.
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| PalmOne
Well, it looks like SpaceShipOne has won the $10 million Ansari X-Prize as it reached over 368,000 feet above the Earth. A couple of months ago we reported on the ships first trip to space, which was a success. The prize rules require the winning team to send a piloted craft up to the 100-kilometer altitude (the accepted official distance of outer space) twice within a two week period. The craft must also bring with it enough baggage to represent the weight of two average passengers. On today's flight, that baggage was in the form of teddy bears, toys for charity, and other personal mementos. Mojave Aerospace Ventures, the company that funded the SpaceShipOne project, spent over $20 million to get this far. While a $10 million prize does not sound like much of a reward, there are already many companies that are ready to license the technology, one of which is Virgin Atlantic. Virgin plan on investing $25 million into a commercial space flight division called Virgin Galactic which will be based on SpaceShipOne technology.
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| CNN
In yet another OIJ (only in Japan) story, we now introduce you to "The Sound Princess," the first real attempt to world peace (not really). Everyone can relate to being in a quiet bathroom waiting for someone near you to flush a toilet, turn on the faucet, or leave the room so you can "mask the cruder noises of nature," now this most awkward of situations seems to be a thing of the past thanks to "The Sound Princess" from the leading Japanese toilet producer Toto Ltd. The way the Sound Princess works is the user passes her hand over a sensor, and the convincing sound of a torrent of water comes from a speaker, thus eliminating the awkward silence. Now, the waiting game in the cut throat world of toilet manufacturers to see who tries to take back the crown of most creative "plug-ins" for the toilet.
This toilet does in fact have a good purpose, statistics have shown that women flush the toilet several times to cover up the "crude noises" and they are using much more water than they should be so The Sound Princess will cut down on water use as well as related utility costs.
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Read More | Yahoo! News/AP
Seems like a match made in heaven, right? According to USA Today, the two companies are joining forces to deliver movies on demand to TiVo's set-top boxes via the interent. Netflix is really playing its cards right though, by stating that the deal will not be exclusive to just TiVo. They would be free to deliver movies to other boxes, including those offered by cable and satellite companies. While this will certainly help cut down on all the DVD skipping we get from the scratches on shipped discs, we're also wary of the waiting time it would take for movies to be downloaded to the box, which might be as long as the movie itself.
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| USA Today
