Roaming Fees May Apply...

the register reports server crashes from the paris hilton/carl's jr. web site.

at what point do you think the pr plan scheduled this news release? server crashes are nothing more than poor planning and cheap pr attempts.

but have no fear, we can always rely on the reg to keep things real:

Why on earth anyone would bother checking out Paris Hilton with her clothes on is anyone's guess, since practically every bloke on the planet has seen her going at it like a two-bit hussy in the highly-regarded "Paris Hilton gets naked then gets shagged senseless" internet skinflick.

wireless usb took a InformationWeek >major step forward last week as an official specification was released for the first version of the protocol.

texas instruments and atheros are leading the pack in the area of wi-fi chip supply for makers of next generation mobile phones that provide wireless phone service, wireless voIP, and WLAN connectivity.

the race is on to develop these phones and also to provide chipsets to non-phone products such as gaming devices that support wireless game play.

the explosion of consumer voIP penetration should be considered a lead factor in this race.

apple demonstrated the next generaton of its itunes applications during a wall street journal conference and showed off one of the new features of itunes 4.9 - poscast management. according to the article from reuters, podcasts will be manageable through the itunes music store and users will seamlessly be able to manage their movement from their itunes library to their ipod. hey its called "pod"casting, so apple needs to own it :)

according to the article, apple now has a "podcasting organization"

this press release reveals reindeer group (sydney and nyc) as the ideation agency behind the popular bstv hoax program. nice work from a very innovate group of thinkers..

so its official, and to no great surprise, its called the ps3, and ign is all over it with links to everything that was announced earlier today. launch titles that have the message boards buzzing are "devil may cry 4" (capcom), grand theft auto next (rockstar), and tekken (namco). a new metal gear game was also announced but im not sure if its considered a launch title.

in case you want to get right to it and see what it looks like, here it is. there are still no official details on what the official color of the system may be.

joystiq has more photos, including images of the dangerous looking new controller design. the controllers are wireless so its nice to see the nintendo gamecube feature (they were the first console to officially support wireless controllers as a first party) become today's standard as both the ps3 and the xbox 360 support wireless controllers.

engadget offers up these specs:

It will support Blu-ray (obviously), DVD±R/W, CD-R/RW
Backwards compatible with the PlayStation 2 and original Playstation
One 3.2GHz Cell processor—total system performance rated at 2.18 teraflops (uh, that’s actually about twice what Microsoft is claiming the Xbox 360 will do); it will have 256MB system RAM 3.2GHz, and 256MB GDDR VRAM at 700MHz
The nVidia graphics will be called the RSX (”Reality Synthesizer”), and will trump the Xbox 360 with 1080p (yes, that’s a p) graphics support.
There will be a 2.5-inch hard drive (i.e. laptop hard drive) attachment—a first for a Sony launch (no, we don’t count the PSX and/or the FF add-on)
Memory Stick Duo slot, and very surprisingly, an SD and CF slots
Bluetooth support with up to seven wireless controllers
Six USB system ports

still no info on pricing and availability

so the mtv xbox 360 special is over and all i can say, if i was an advertiser, would be "can i have my money back."

what a waste of time and a waste of marketing opportunity. if microsoft is going to beat sony to the bunch with a pre-e3 announcement, then announce something - dont just confirm online speculation from the gaming community. all microsoft did with this announcement was do the following:

- confirm the leaked photos from the field and the images released through the ourcolong arg
- show footage from perfect dark zero which were already floating around
- show running cinematics and replays from xbox 360 titles
- confirm the name and the logo that was already leaked online
- vaguely mention an online marketplace for changing your online persona or "character" (while shamelessly dropping a plug for ecko)
- confirm wireless controllers

i can understand that there is a reason to hold back information so people will still attend the e3 press conference and not abandon ms in favor of the sony announcement, however, more could have been done with this time as ms had a chance to speak to the gaming audience, not just the gaming business. ms blew the opportunity to get word of mouth (aka m2m) marketing going in every gaming store around the world - 5 days before any confirmed sony announcements.

all i can say is, "can i have my time back"

Game Reactor Magazine, an apparent scandinavian gaming publication has leaked pages of its xbox 360 story which was apparently set for an embargo until after the mtv unveiling this evening.

engadget has scans from the issue which also shows screen shots from ghost recon which looks quite awesome.

looks like there are two blogs out there that have leaked information from the upcoming mtv/xbox event which had some elements taped last night in los angeles.

for those of you not in the know, ms has decided to officially announce the xbox 360 (rumored, and likely to be the real name of the next generation xbox) via an mtv event to be broadcasted live this thursday (5/12, 930pm EST). the live event will likely show clips from the event that was taped last night (celeb interviews, etc.)

there is a logo for the xbox which can be seen on the pr wall of the "green carpet." trixieblog has these images, while more information can be found on major nelson.

as for the console design, this picture seems to be consistent with what we've seen all week. no official source on this photo but engadget claims it was also taken last night.

psp hacks reports that the cracking group "paradox" has cracked vampire chronicles (jp), wipeout pure (usa), and ridge racers (jp) and released the ISOs presumably via bittorrent.

it should be noted that while paradox was able to rip the UMD format, the files are still NOT PLAYABLE, not even via copying the files to the memory stick.

its not uncommon for console games to be cracked and released via ISOs, but it gets complicated when you want to play the actual games. most consoles required a mod chip to play back the ISOs and bypass the system's built in game validity check. the fact that the PSP plays a proprietary disc format (the UMD) that is not available to the public should help protect sony, unless people find a way to boot off the memory stick