Amid some controversy, the group has set numeric limits for seven of the nine so far (chemical pollution and aerosol loading are still being pinned down). And the researchers have determined that the world has already crossed the boundary in three cases: biodiversity loss, the nitrogen cycle and climate change.

Jon Foley, director of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, and a leader of the group, lays out the limits and their implications for human action in an article in Scientific American’s April issue.

He also discusses the issues in a podcast with our own Steve Mirsky.

Foley’s team was so moved by the research effort that it put together a compelling video (see below) dramatizing the situation, generated entirely with typography, graphics and energizing music.

The new improved Google Maps now sports tabs so that you can access the information that you want to a lot easier, just by tapping on the new buttons you can see a place on the map get directions or view it through street view.

Google Maps 4.1 also includes syncing with Google Account regardless of whether or not you are on the phone or at your computer. Google Maps 4.1 is now available for download from the Android Market and can be used by all users that have their own android handset powered by Android 1.6 or above.

When you install Google Maps for Android 4.1, a new widget becomes available – the Latitude widget – along with a new live wallpaper that puts the map on the homescreen and tracks your position. This sounds cool and all, but it may put a lot of strain on your battery.

The Latitude widget


The search result page: before and after

The final tweak that comes with v4.1 of Google Maps is that if your Android phone is syncing with several Google accounts, you can pick which one Google Maps should use.

The update to Google Maps 4.1 is available to Android 1.6+ devices in the same countries and languages that Maps is currently available.

Here’s how they work: When you get to a restaurant, party, concert or museum you can choose to broadcast your location, using your smartphone’s GPS capabilities, to other network users as well as to your Twitter or Facebook feeds.

Some location networks involve gaming aspects, when users can earn virtual goods and promotional discounts for checking in often. Location services are believed to be the next big feature for social networks since many people now own smartphones with Internet and GPS capabilities.

Facebook changed its privacy policy late last year to get ready to introduce its location services, and the social network is expected to unveil its location-based plans in April. Apple’s rumored move into location was a little unanticipated; however, as the blog Patently Apple points out, Cupertino has recently been showing signs of interest in social networking.

Here’s what’s going on:

Apple’s iGroups

Patently Apple, a blog dedicated to scouring the United States Patent Office’s records for recently filed Apple patents, uncovered evidence of a new location-based network from Apple called iGroups. With iGroups, users attending the same event such as a concert, wedding, conference, or other function would be able to share data with each other, such as photos and messages. The data could also be uploaded to the cloud and viewed on the Web.

If the rumors are true, Apple’s plans sound very similar to Hot Potato, a new location-based network where users can check in at events and see real-time Twitter streams, and share photos and other information from an event.

Facebook Check-in

Details about Facebook’s location feature are still a little murky, but TechCrunch is reporting that the social network will use Quick Response codes (QR) to make it easier for users to check in.

QR codes are basically square-shaped barcodes that can be used to store information like a Website URL, address, or business name. Using a Facebook mobile app, you would take a photo of the QR code at participating locations, and the app would then use the information embedded in the code to check you in at that location. It’s not clear if Facebook and its partners will follow the lead of location-based network Foursquare, and offer promotional discounts after you gain a certain number or check-ins.

QR codes have been in wide use in Japan for several years, and the trend is just starting to catch on in the United States. Google now uses QR codes for a number of things, including URL substitutes for Android application downloads and its new Place Pages service. PCWorld’s Mark Sullivan reports that QR Codes were widely used in Austin this year during SXSW 2010. Disney is also offering its own spin on the concept of QR codes with its Click2Life mobile device feature.

While location-based networks have been popular with early adopters, these services have yet to gain mainstream adoption. But that may all change if the trend proves to be popular with Facebook’s 400 million users.

What do you think? Are you interested in broadcasting your location when you’re at the mall, sipping a latte or hanging out at the new bar in town? Or does the whole idea of letting the world know where you are at any given moment creep you out?

Interestingly, HP doesn’t acutally see these panels being used in truly flexible or rollable displays the material itself would only survive being rolled up about a half dozen times but instead sees them mostly being used to make displays thinner and lighter.

Using a a production method called Self-Aligned Imprint Lithography (SAIL), these displays can be mass manufactured in the form of rolls instead of sheets, which manages to make the production method more cost effective.

The displays are flexible enough to be “rolled, folded like a newspaper, or bent to fit around a building or car”, not only that they are more environment friendly, as these displays use 90% less material than the displays today. As Carl Taussig, director, Information Surfaces, HP Labs says, “In addition to providing a lower-cost process, SAIL technology represents a more sustainable, environmentally sensitive approach to producing electronic displays.”

“We want to lower the costs of traditional flat panel displays and increase their functionality,” says Carl Taussig, director of information surfaces for HP Labs.

Flexible displays are paper-like computer displays made almost entirely of plastic. They are easily portable and consume lower power than current displays.

Taussig says HP has been able to create a manufacturing process for the prototype that would allow the fabrication of thin film transistor arrays on flexible plastic materials. The displays would be created using roll-to-roll manufacturing, much like how a newspaper is printed in the press. That compares to a batch production that traditional displays use, similar to the process of cutting individual cookies.

“Roll-to-roll is about reducing costs ultimately,” says Taussig.

The prototype display is black and white but Taussig says the process can be used to create flexible color displays. HP has licensed the technology to PowerFilm Solar, a company that specializes in flexible solar panels.

Though HP doesn’t as yet have an estimate of what a flexible display will eventually cost consumers, the company says it expects the first displays to be available to the U.S. Army for trials in the next three years.

The secret sauce is the material the disc is made out of, and how it reacts to light. On a broader level, where GE’s holographic storage differs from the other major approach to holographic storage (called page-based), and what allows it to reach densities of 1TB per disc, is that it uses even tinier micro holograms that store less data per individual hologram, but more in aggregate.

While GE is mostly pitching the tech to archivists for now—like our friends at the Library of Congress, who wanna hold onto stuff for a real long time—since the discs, GE says, last for 30 years, what makes it viable as a storage tech you might get your hands on soon after it launches in 2012 is that it’s designed to fit in with the current optical media infrastructure, meaning it’ll be cheaper and easier to roll out than some radically different tech. That is, the discs are the same physical size and shape as CDs and DVDs, and they use a laser that’s very similar to Blu-ray’s, even using the same wavelength. On a hardware level, it just uses a slightly different optical element, but the rest basically comes down to software/firmware, meaning you might still be able to play your Blu-ray discs in a holographic storage drive. (This exploded view of a disc being read, that orange spinning thing, is what all readers look like in a laboratory, even Blu-ray drives—because it’s easier to tweak settings than in their actual product form).

Whether you’re fighting solo or hunting in packs, it’s obvious when Lost Planet is at its best: during the Big Battles. Capcom have long had a reputation for delivering the most epic boss fights in all of gaming, and they’re on top form again this time around. The wars with the Category G Akrids (which punctuate the action around twice per level) are remarkable not for their size but for their sheer emotion. No, really.

Although like all gaming bosses, Lost Planet’s Akrids are only capable of drawing from a small number of behavioural patterns, they do it with such force, purpose and unpredictability that they demand respect from the player. They’ve got character, too. A giant skeletal sea-horse thing might not seem the most obvious vessel for sympathy, but wait until you see and hear it flail and wail in anguish once you lop one of its limbs off*. The attention to detail helps maintain the illusion that you’re fighting a living thing, and one worth fighting for that matter.

You’d be surprised by how much variety they’ve managed to squeeze into their ‘horrible insect-y beast’ remit, too. The next Akrid you meet takes the form of an armoured platypus-like creature, complete with retractable spikes hidden within its club-shaped tail, with which it can mace you into the ground in the time it takes to hurriedly plug the Play & Charge kit into your controller. In the third episode, you’re greeted by a horrific train-eating moth mega-beast, just going about his daily business, not expecting to be drilled with holes by small pink bastards. Every one’s unique, every one’s a winner.

Akrid Vicious

During these battles, Lost Planet 2’s brewing tension finally bubbles over, delivering the balls-out adrenaline rush of a shooter that the Lost Planet series has always wanted to be. Sadly, these glimpses of genius are few and far between, and early indications suggest that the rest of the game is forever doomed to play catch-up. Replace the dozy AI bots on your side with real people, of course, and LP2 will inevitably liven up and maintain that same frantic pace throughout. But the game relies too heavily on multiplayer being its saviour, and this may eventually lead to offline players feeling a little, well, unplugged.

The menu screen offers the first hints to the lone player that they’ve unwittingly entered a couples-only club. It offers no distinction between multiplayer and single-player, instead merging them into a single option. This makes setting up a split-screen or online game a piece of cake, but the unfortunate side-effect is that when playing on your own, you’re still working under the constraints of an online game’s structure, which affects the game negatively in many different ways.

Superficially, it gives rise to a number of incongruous moments, such as at the end of each level where, upon reaching the goal, you’re forced to watch a ten-second countdown (during which time you can ’strike poses’), before you’re returned to the lobby. On a far more serious level, Lost Planet 2 kills a huge slab of its suspense stone dead by having you ‘respawn’ rather than restart after a death.

Dropped dead halfway through a critical gunfight? Don’t worry – after a few second’s grace you can hop back into the action from the nearest (or, at times, not-so-nearest) checkpoint without any more punishment than a 500 experience point penalty (which is a deterrent, but not nearly by enough). It’s a design quirk which takes a lot of the intensity out of the experience, and we hope it’s something that might yet be addressed in the final version.

Gears of a Brown

Without the distractions of multi-man horseplay, it also becomes apparent, throughout the opening Episode, at least, that the level design can be uninspired at times. Lost Planet 2 struggles to spice up the level objectives beyond the likes of ‘activate all data posts’ or ‘kill all targets’, and while the Snow Pirates try, bless their little planet-plundering socks, they are ultimately disposable, causing problems by headcount rather than by heart, and can’t hold a candle to the Akrid sections.

The pace does heat up considerably come the second Episode, in spite of it being set in the dullest, brownest industrial city ever conceived. We can tell Gears of War was an influence (the games even now share the same ‘vindaloo sprint’ when b is held), but one of the original Lost Planet’s aces was its unique setting. We can’t help but feel that it’s lost its identity in the chase for approval from the American gaming market.

The setting may be guff, but it’s also the moment the designers come out of their shells, offering new challenges such as roaming spotlights, a battleground split in two by an over-active train line and an Acme-style playing ground packed with grinding spikes and slamming metal doors that, with a bit of canny timing, can be used to your advantage. It hints at better things waiting in store beyond the confines of our three-level build, but do be warned: it will only be when enjoyed in company that Lost Planet will truly find itself.

Lost Planet 2 Xbox 360 Trailer:

The 99 cent app, Football – Real Kick, is a clever twist on the “blower” concept we’ve seen before. In a nut shell: sound pushes air around. Certain sounds that the iPhone speaker can emit push enough air around that you can just baaaarely feel it, making it just strong enough to blow out a candle — or in this case, blow around a little Styrofoam ball.

Unlike past blower apps, this one doesn’t emit a constant stream. It only putts out air when you tap that “kick” button; combine this with a hand drawn soccer field, a couple of iPhones, and a whole lot of beer, and you’ve got the world’s most expensive game of foosball that doesn’t actually involve a foosball table.

The GameBone is an external gamepad for the iPhone platform that hopes to add buttons (and therefore gaming cred) to the buttonless devices, but we’re just not confident it’s been fully thought through.

First of all, games would have to be compatible with the controller, and given that so many games are dependent on the accelerometer (hell, the “looka that!” sensation of the accelerometer is the driving force behind a ton of these games), the GameBone wouldn’t work with a lot of the most popular games in the App Store. Plus, the GameBone doesn’t physically attach to the iPhone itself; it probably connects via Bluetooth. The makers say they’ll supply a vertical and horizontal stand for the iPhone, but that’s still sort of awkward for what’s supposed to be a handheld device.

But these guys have a great grassroots feel: They’re asking users to suggest a price point for the Gamebone’s hopeful release in September, and we’re all for expanding the iPhone’s gaming capabilities. Let’s hope they quell some of our concerns before then.

Microsoft used to configure Internet Explorer as the default browser for its Windows operating system, but under pressure from the European Commission, it agreed last October to test-market measures to give Europeans an option to download and install competing browsers like Opera, Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox.

European Windows users are getting a choice through a browser screen that is displayed automatically and lets users make any browser the default. Users can even turn Microsoft’s Internet Explorer off, although Microsoft has said there’s no need to do that to make another browser the default.

“This confirms that when users are given a real choice on how they choose the most important piece of software on their computer, the browser, they will try out alternatives,” said Håkon Wium Lie, CTO of Opera Software. “A multitude of browsers will make the web more standardized and easier to browse.”

According to Opera, the increase represents more than a doubling from the normal download numbers — even only after a short period with the choice screen. The choice screen rollout will continue well into May for existing Windows computers and for five more years on new Windows installations, giving Opera reason to believe it will continue to see more downloads.

Of course, Internet Explorer remains dominant with 61.58 percent of the browser market. But Opera is nevertheless rejoicing over the browser screen and has rolled out Opera 10.50, which it bills as the fastest-ever browser for Windows computers. Opera 10.50 also has a new design and private browsing.

Opera is also pressing to compete in mobile browsers. Opera released final versions of its Opera Mini 5 and Opera Mobile 10 earlier this week. With the Mobile 10 release, Opera is focusing on features like speed dial, password management, bookmark synchronization, and tabbed browsing.

Opera’s mobile browsers are designed to speed up the mobile search experience, and Opera Mini’s compression technology promises to reduce the amount of data downloaded by up to 90 percent, which drives down costs on pay-per-megabyte plans or while roaming.

As Opera moves to compete more fiercely in the mobile market, the Norwegian company offered a preview of announcements planned for the CTIA Wireless show next week. Opera said it will roll out the latest Opera Mini 5 product running on the Android platform and allow video recording and photography on Opera Mini for the iPhone.

Opera also plans to showcase Opera Widgets and cross-platform solutions, and conduct real-world speed tests across multiple handsets to showcase its latest Carakan JavaScript engine, the Opera Presto 2.5 rendering engine, and Opera Turbo compression technology.

Opera 10.50 press kit

“When we released the iPhone application, we inadvertently made it available to all countries in which the Apple Marketplace has a presence,” Microsoft said in a statement posted on enthusiast site Neowin.Net.

“We are planning to release international versions of the Bing iPhone application, but we have no dates to share at this time,” the company said. “Similar to our larger international strategy with Bing, we don’t want to take a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, we want to be thoughtful and ensure we’re customizing the product for specific markets.”

Earlier this month, Motorola said it was working with Microsoft to deliver Bing in China in the current quarter–but on phones using the Android operating system, as an over-the-air update for existing handsets.

Microsoft released the Bing app for the iPhone and iPod Touch in December. The program includes standard searching, image search, mapping and other features.

Spanish language blog Movil Zona reported that Vodafone said it was immediately sending new memory cards to people who bought phones using those cards.

After malware related to the Mariposa botnet was discovered on a second HTC Magic phone from Vodafone this week, a Vodafone spokesperson saying it was a “local incident in Spain.”

In response to questions about the latest report, the spokesperson provided an e-mail statement on Friday that said: “Vodafone Spain has identified customers that could potentially be affected by the incident and Vodafone Spain will be sending these customers a new memory card. Additionally, Vodafone Spain will provide these customers with tools to verify and fix the integrity of their devices.”

The original report by Elinor Mills, Edited by Sojib2BD

“Color quality and brightness are critical aspects of video calls. Through our research we know that a large number of video calls are held in either low light conditions or uneven lighting, and these are challenging situations for any webcam and represent a common pain point for webcam users,” said Daniel Anguiano, product marketing manager of Microsoft Hardware. “Our engineers at Microsoft Hardware created TrueColor Technology to improve the video experience, combining software and firmware to help people look bright and natural in virtually any lighting situation.”

Features of Microsoft LifeCam HD-5000 and LifeCam HD-6000:

• Records true 720p (1280×720 pixels resolution) HD-quality widescreen video at up to 30 fps
• Auto Focus ensures images stay sharp and detailed
• New TrueColor technology automatically controls exposure for superior color quality and brightness
• Optimized for Windows Live Messenger
• Compatible with Windows Live, Yahoo! Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger and Skype
• Flexible attachment base bends to fit on most surfaces (LifeCam HD-5000 only)
• 360° (degree) lens rotation for an all-around view (LifeCam HD-6000 only)

According to Microsoft, LifeCam HD-5001 includes all the same features as LifeCam HD-5000, but sports a custom design with a white faceplate.

The new Microsoft LifeCam HD-5000 and LifeCam HD-5001 will be available later this month for around $50, while Microsoft LifeCam HD-6000 for Notebooks is scheduled to hit the market in May 2010 for about $60.

Watch the promo video of new Microsoft LifeCam with groundbreaking TrueColor technology below.

Source: Mydigitallife

The document, authored by a senior software development engineer at Microsoft, states that due to “increased market penetration of high-capacity, high throughput USB mass storage devices, a 2010 Xbox 360 system update” will allow consumers to save and load game data from USB devices. The update is purportedly coming in Spring 2010.

We’ve contacted representatives at Microsoft to confirm the information. Joystiq claims two unidentified sources vetted the document, and we have to agree with them that the logic of allowing USB storage options is sound — especially with all these rumors of an Xbox 360 Slim model floating around.

According to the document, the USB mass storage device must be at least 1GB and the system will do a compatibility check. “The system partition occupies 512 MB of space, and by default the consumer partition occupies the remainder of the device capacity, or 16 GB, whichever is smaller.” Upon inserting a blank USB storage device, “consumers are offered two choices: ‘Configure now’ or ‘Customize’.” The “Configure now” option will use “the entire device capacity, up to the maximum of 512 MB plus 16 GB” meaning, regardless of the overall size of the device you’re using, the Xbox will only enable 16 GB of usable, non-system storage. The “Customize” option will allow you to “preserve some pre-existing, non-console data on the device” such as music.

It should be clear by now that Microsoft is simply pulling out of the Memory Unit business and not the highly lucrative Xbox hard drive business. With an artificial cap of 16 GB – still shy of the 20 GB hard drive that shipped with the original 2005 Xbox Pro and a fraction the size of the currently shipping 120 GB hard drive – USB storage support simply removes the onerous requirement for a Memory Unit on Xbox 360 Arcade units, and brings the Xbox 360 platform a feature that’s been present on the PlayStation 3 since that console’s 2006 launch.

If you’re intent on circumventing Microsoft’s cutthroat hard drive pricing the Xbox 360, you can use two USB storage devices for a maximum of 32 GB of usable storage; however, the console “has a fixed limit of two external USB mass storage devices” regardless of whether they’re “formatted for the Xbox 360 or not.” If you fill all three USB ports on the console, only the first two to be connected will be recognized.

With talk of a new (slim?) form factor for the Xbox 360 picking up, and plans to abandon (or at least obviate) Memory Units underway, we’re guessing those Memory Unit slots could be cut entirely from future iterations of the console.

In it, Sony’s new “It Only Does Everything” campaign front-man, played by Jerry Lambert (Everybody Loves Raymond, Malcolm in the Middle, That 70’s Show) delivers a video-cast from the “future” to thank PlayStation 3 owners for making the PlayStation Move a success.



On the Wii:

[The PlayStation Move] is about as futuristic, or now-a-ristic as it gets. You’ve got the controller and camera with microphone working together to give you total control over your gaming experience. Not just like this… [Butler waves the PlayStation Move wand left and right] …but this way too [Butler delivers a haymaker]. Because real boxers don’t hit like this… [Butler whines and paws the air].

On the Xbox 360:

[The PlayStation Move]’s also got what we in the future call buttons, which turn out to be pretty important to those handful of millions of people who enjoy playing shooters and platformers, or, well, anything that doesn’t involve catching a big red ball. So…I mean…come on, who wants to pretend their hand is a gun? What is this, third grade? [Butler mimics a gun with his hand and makes "pew-pew-pew" sounds].

Beneath a frozen city ruined long ago by its own weapons of destruction, humankind clings to survival. In dirty overcrowded stations, women haggle for scraps at the market as old men mourn the world they lost and children run underfoot, knowing no life beyond their meager subterranean existence. The hardier souls stand at the gates, vigilant against the beastly offspring of Armageddon, while the bravest venture out into the tunnels to trade, scavenge, and scout the dark reaches of the man-made underground wilderness. This is the world of Metro 2033, where the oppressive atmosphere fills every corner and is so well cultivated that the relentless gloom can begin to wear you down. Yet your journey is a lengthy and intriguing one, full of dramatic moments and tense action. Particularly hectic encounters can stress the game’s performance, but the richness of the environments more than makes up for any small hitches. The immersive world of Metro 2033 is not for the faint of heart, but those whose brave it will find a fresh and entertaining new adventure into the postapocalyptic future.

And make no mistake, this future is bleak. The aforementioned station-villages are dreary, but you’ll come to regard them as welcome beacons of light in the pervasive darkness of the tunnels. As you venture away from the comforting firelight and busy soundscape of the crowded stations, you enter tunnels that echo with the howls of murderous beasts, where the only illumination is provided by glowing radioactive fungi or your own headlamp. Light, or lack thereof, plays a huge role in creating Metro 2033’s engaging atmosphere. Passing through a dark, foggy tunnel can be harrowing, and entering the warm glow of an electric lamp can relieve the palpable tension, until you look down and see a freshly mutilated body at your feet. Grim scenes, inescapable shadows, and an omnipresent sense of desperation help create a powerful sense of gloom and doom. Though this world is not without hope, it is a dark one, and it can be overbearing at times. Soldiering on can be difficult, but sometimes all it takes is a worn out record player to lighten your spirits. Darkness can also be your ally, providing you have some night-vision goggles handy, allowing you to sneak past foes or position yourself for a silent kill. Lightscape is just as important as landscape in Metro 2033, because not only do they combine to create the rich subterranean atmosphere, but each is an important tactical consideration.

Though much of your adventure plays out in the subway, don’t expect to see the same tunnels over and over again. Human outposts are cobbled together from scrap and salvage, but there’s a big difference between a bandit settlement and an entrenched military outpost. Some areas you traverse belong to the beasts, as evidenced by chewed corpses and ominously narrow dirt tunnels. Still others belong to neither men nor mutants, and the eerie silence will make you wonder what has kept them away. And just when the endless tubes are becoming too oppressive, you strap on a gasmask and venture out onto the surface to pick your way through the frigid skeleton of Moscow. Thoughtful details make exploration tempting, as does the prospect of stumbling across a dead adventurer or ammo cache ripe for the looting. Metro 2033 rewards you for paying attention to the little things, not just with precious ammunition, but with thoughtful touches that make this dilapidated world truly come alive.

Most of the living things that you encounter on your journey are quite nasty. Winged fiends and quasi-yetis get very territorial, while loping, long-nosed beasts stage regular assaults on humans in most areas of the Metro. Theses hideous creatures are rendered in vibrant detail, and aiming down your sights into their livid, snarling faces will make you want to pull the trigger even sooner. As you travel the tunnels from station to station on your quest to deliver an important message, you have to fend off these fierce mutants who would like nothing more than to rip the flesh from your bones. Combat can be challenging, but you have a good array of weapons at your disposal. Powerful prewar weapons are rare and valuable, and clever postwar improvisations provide intriguing alternatives. Shooting mechanics are sharp and allow you to easily utilize your arsenal to slaughter your monstrous foes, and for every time that a creature keels over lamely from a killer revolver bullet, there will be two others that whip back from the impact of a headshot or tumble away from a satisfying shotgun blast.

In addition to the always enjoyable shotgun (which comes in two varieties), there are a few fun guns (like the pneumatic crossbow/revolver), and the action is usually solid enough to make combat enjoyable. Some of your fiercest enemies are your fellow men who are spurred to violence by ideology or desperation. Using stealth is a great way to get the drop on or just sneak by human enemies, and the quiet approach allows you to overhear some fascinating conversations that add interesting layers to the world. Movement mechanics are also solid, though even if you are careful to avoid making noise, shining light, and triggering traps, your movements may still alert the enemies for reasons unknown. Startled foes launch scrambled attacks that can showcase some pretty wonky AI, but for the most part you are dealing with competent foes that will vigorously try to put bullets in you. Hectic firefights can cause some slowdown, especially when a whole squad of enemies has just realized you are infiltrating their camp. How bad this is obviously depends on your system and what settings you are running, but even the worst lurches dissipate quickly, leaving you to continue fighting for your life.

The reason for all your under- and aboveground adventuring is established early on, but the vague urgency doesn’t coalesce into a clear mission until much later. Though the narrative can be patchy, Metro 2033 fills in the blanks by slowly unveiling its rich, multifaceted world. Everywhere you go, from bustling stations to lonely tunnels, you will find clues that broaden and enrich your understanding. Eavesdropping on an enemy conversation will shed light on Metro mythology, while bioluminescent flora raises questions about postnuclear biology. You glean a lot of information from just paying attention, and through this observation you create a kind of patchwork, discovery-fueled narrative that eventually comes to an intriguing conclusion.

Metro 2033 is a well-paced shooter that will likely take you more than 10 hours to complete. It is punctuated by emotional and dramatic moments (a surprising encounter with a child, a few intense railcar sequences), though these aren’t without their own idiosyncrasies (the immersion-busting “quickly tap E” prompt). The Metro and surface worlds are superbly detailed, and though how much of this detail you see depends on your system, rest assured that the game scales well and offers impressive visuals across different settings. The pervasive atmosphere fuels your whole experience, creating a grim, enthralling world that you feel compelled to explore. Metro 2033 is a very worthwhile game for anyone craving a uniquely rewarding journey into man’s dark future.

The plan, called “The Mind’s Eye,” is going to be outlined next at a one-day conference in DC in late April. The hope is to make up for human weaknesses, like fatigue or bias, that can result in unreliable intelligence. These cameras will be endowed with both the intellect to process a scene and the imagination to contextualize and describe it.

It’s a reminder, also, that even those events that we capture on video are prone to memory bias. We choose where we point the camera and where we don’t. When we narrate, we often say what we think we’ll want to hear later instead of what we’re actually thinking and feeling. A cognitive camera couldn’t care less. It couldn’t care at all.

Aside from being incredibly cool, if successful these Mind’s Eye cameras would keep soldiers and advance scouts out of harm’s way. If it seems like science fiction, that’s because it is—for now. But on April 20th we’ll find out just how close we are to it being science fact.

We’ve got the ability to take in our surrounding, interpret them and learn concepts that apply to them. We’re also masters of manipulation, courtesy of a little thing called imagination: toying around with made up scenes to solve problems or make decisions.

But, of course, our intellect and decision-making skills are often marred by emotion, fatigue or bias. Enter machines. Darpa wants cameras that can capture their surroundings, and then employ robust intellect and imagination to “reason over these learned interpretations.”

State-of-the-art cameras can already recognize objects — the “nouns” of cognition. What Darpa wants is the verb: “To add the perceptual and cognitive underpinnings for recognizing and reasoning … enabling a more complete narrative of action in the visual experience.”

Darpa’s end goal is a “smart camera” that can report back on war-zone activity with the same detail a trained human operative could offer. Or, perhaps, replace those troublesome reporters?

The cloak they developed was made using photonic crystals with a structure resembling piles of wood, to conceal a small bump on a gold surface, they wrote in Science.
“It’s kind of like hiding a small object underneath a carpet — except this time the carpet also disappears,” they said.

“We put an object under a microscopic structure, a little like a reflective carpet,” said Nicholas Stenger, one of the researchers who worked on the project.

“When we looked at it through a lens and did spectroscopy, no matter what angle we looked at the object from, we saw nothing. The bump became invisible,” said Stenger.

The “cloak” they used to make the microscopic bump disappear was composed of special lenses that work by bending light waves to suppress light as it scattered from the bump, the study says.

The invisibility cloak was minute, measuring 100 microns by 30 microns — one micron being one-thousandth of a millimeter — and the bump it hid was 10 times smaller, said Stenger.

The researchers are working now to recreate the disappearing bump but on a larger scale, but Stenger said Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak would not be hanging in would-be wizards’ wardrobes in the near future.

“Theoretically, it would be possible to do this on a large scale but technically, it’s totally impossible with the knowledge we have now,” he said.

The company was showing off the app at the recent GDGT Live event in Austin, and confirmed that it will be available sometime this summer, and support streaming over both 3G and WiFi — yes, even Friends streaming. Head on past the break for a quick demo video.

It’s pretty hard to make out in androidandme’s video below, but Sling are showing the client running on both a Google Nexus One and a Motorola DROID. According to the company rep, the UI for the app hasn’t been completely finished, but it’s expected to resemble the interface on their iPhone version.

No word on how much the SlingPlayer for Android app will cost, though the iPhone, Windows Phone, Symbian and BlackBerry are all priced at $29.99.

Skype Access lets anyone pay for WiFi access per minute using Skype Credit, so that they can surf the web, email and make free Skype-to-Skype voice and video calls in a massive network of WiFi hotspots including cafés, hotels and airports worldwide.

All that?s needed is a connection to a Skype Access Hotspot and the latest version of Skype (Windows 4.2 or Mac 2.8) which can be downloaded from www.skype.com/go/download

In a special promotion for travellers around the world impacted by the industrial action by British Airways cabin crew, the offer will be extended in the UK to 23.59 Monday 22 March 2010. Anyone stuck in a UK airport will be able to stay online free to work, adjust holiday bookings or better still, make a free video call home to the family with Skype.

Skype Access is provided by WiFi hotspot operators around the world. For a complete list of compatible WiFi networks click here.

According to Joystiq, they’ve confirmed that Microsoft has put into motion a software update that’s supposed to be issued this Spring. There aren’t any other details about the update to mention, but the addition of USB storage is pretty big news. Microsoft was pretty determined to push their Memory Units (which amass to 512MB), so this means you can use a USB memory stick of any size to move your files.

So, what can you move? Xbox LIVE Arcade games, Xbox LIVE Indie games, Games on Demand, DLC, and Title Updates. Oh, and you can put full Xbox 360 games on there. Yes, you read that right. Instead of installing the game on the hard drive, you’ll be able to put it on the memory stick and go on your way. Of course, just like installing the game to the hard drive, the disc will have to be in the disc try to authenticate the product, but that’s nothing new. Anyone else as excited as we are for this?

via Joystiq

Prison Break: The Conspiracy is a stealth adventure game in which players take on the role of Tom Paxton, an undercover agent sent by the Company to investigate new Fox River inmate Michael Scofield.

As the escape day is approaching for the famous Fox River prisoners, here is a new Prison Break trailer. The game is expected  for the end of this month.

Facebook is surely the most popular social networking site in current world, with millions of people using facebook to connect with friends, colleagues, school mates, buddies and other contacts everyday and every times. While many features of Facebook are addicting, generally Facebook registration only allow one email address to be entered.

Over the life, one person may have or had used one, two, three, four, five or more and many e-mail addresses. For example, schoolmates, college mates or university mates may have known or contact with you with email address which supplied by the high school, college or university. Workers and employees may have company or office email addresses used to communicated with business associates, vendors, customers, partners and colleagues. To make matter worse, there are plenty of free email addresses available, especially emails that registered and associated with instant messaging programs such as Windows Live Messenger with Hotmail, Yahoo! Messenger with Yahoo! Mail, AIM with AOL Mail, Google Talk with Gmail and etc.

With a person can be reached with so many email accounts, it’s highly likely that one may receive invitation to join Facebook in order to connect with a person at some obscured or age-old email address that you may not even remember. Or the Facebook invites may go to more than one or multiple email accounts, while only one main email address is been registered and associated with Facebook.

The problem with been contacted at multiple email addresses through Facebook is that user cannot add the new friend directly into his or her existing Facebook account by just clicking on the link in the invitation email, without manually searching and adding as friend in Facebook again. When existing user sign in or login on the Facebook joining web page, it will load the Facebook homepage instead.

It’s more troublesome and impractical to sign up for multiple Facebook accounts just to accept invitations that arrived at lesser used email addresses. Unknowingly to many Facebook users, Facebook actually allows more than 1 email address to be added to user’s account. By registering and associating all email addresses that a user has or ever used, any people who search for any email address can automatically and instantly request for confirmation to add as friend, instead of sending out invitation to join Facebook to connect with friend mail message.

Here’s the steps on how to add additional or multiple email addresses in Facebook:

1. Log in to Facebook account.
2. Click on Account menu, and click on Account Settings in the drop-down menu.

3.   Click on Change link on the Email section to expand the Email options.
4.   In the text box next to New Email:, enter the new email address that user wants to associate and register in the Facebook account. Then, click on Add New Email button.

5.  In the “Change Email” dialog box, enter the password for the Facebook account, and click Confirm button.

6.  A message “A confirmation email has been sent to your new contact email address” should be displayed on top of the web page. The email is to make sure that it is a valid address. Check the mailbox for the email, and click on the confirmation link inside the email.

Tip: Look for spam or bulk folder if there is no mail from Facebook with @facebookmail.com domain. Else, it’s possible to resend confirmation email or cancel request from the same option page.

7. Once the email address is confirmed, all existing pending friend requests to the just registered new email address will be automatically retrieved to the Facebook account and shown to the user. User can then choose to confirm or ignore the friend requests.

In addition, the new email address will be set as default Contact Email. The existing email address is not deleted nor removed. For user who wants to use the original email address as Contact Email, just click on the email address’ radio button, and click on Change Contact Email button.

Facebook can accept multiple email addresses by following instructions above. By adding all email addresses that one ever used to Facebook, users can ensure that they never miss a single friend requests, and easily get back all pending friend requests sent to previously not-registered email addresses.

Truth be told, the device is being designed with older drivers in mind, though we don’t see why younger motorists won’t benefit all the same. Unfortunately, it sounds as if you’ll have to keep those toothpicks in your eyelids for a few more years, but at least we’re one step closer to full-on autopilot.

* Projects brilliant 60” and 90” diagonal images from close distances
* Up to 2200 ANSI lumens (max) and 720p high-definition (HD) resolution
* Provides for shadow-free presentations

Check our a short review bellow.
Ideal for classrooms and conference rooms, the 3-D capable Dell S300w Short Throw Wireless Projector makes presentations easier and more convenient for presenters and audiences alike.

* Don’t be grounded. Go wireless: Enjoy advanced wireless features and experience mobility and flexibility by driving and hosting live presentations wirelessly from virtually anywhere in the room.
* Plug-and-Show via USB: Direct and hassle-free projection via USB flash drive plugged into PC using the Application Token wizard.
* Shadow-Free Capability: Unlike some projectors, the S300w doesn’t cast shadows on the presentation screen when the presenter is between the projector and the screen. This makes for clear, understandable presentations.
* No More Squinting: Up-close projection capabilities allow presenters to face their audiences without being “blinded” by bright projector light.
* Ideal Short-Throw Distances: Even in tight spaces, you won’t miss a thing with the S300w. From approximately two feet away, it projects a crisp 60” diagonal image, and from approximately three feet away, it produces an astonishing 90” diagonal image.
* 3-D-Capable: The S300w is capable of adapting to 3-D, ensuring that you’re ready for the next generation of powerful presentations.
* Closed Captioning: Built-in closed-captioning capability allows users with hearing disabilities to read the audio portion of select video and TV programs as on-screen text.

With large, brilliant images and incredible up-close projection power, the 3-D-capable Dell S300w Short Throw Wireless Projector can deliver persuasive, winning presentations in any room.

*Exceptional Brightness & Contrast: 2200 ANSI lumens (max) brightness and high 2400:1 typical (full on/full off) contrast ratio help to ensure that your presentations retain their impact in a wide variety of rooms and environments.

*Riveting Resolution: WXGA (1280×800) native resolution with native 16:10 aspect ratio offers superb image quality with up to 30% more pixels than XGA (1024×768) and high-definition viewing at 720p.

*DLP® & BrilliantColorTM : Equipped with DLP® and BrilliantColorTM technology, the S300w offers impressive picture reliability.

*Superb Monitoring Capabilities: Crestron RoomViewTM Express comes free with the S300w. This software allows administrators and support staff to perform remote system diagnostics, monitor lamp life, log network activity, and automate tasks through event scheduling. Tasks that once required days are completed in a few mouse clicks, helping save time and money.

Designed to control classroom and conference room presentations, the 3-D capable1 Dell S300w Short Throw Wireless Projector enables multiple users to wirelessly2 share images and audio from where they sit.

* Wireless 4-to-1: With standard 4-to-1 split-screen projection, the S300w simultaneously projects up to four different user screens, conveniently allowing real-time side-by-side comparisons that can increase productivity in meetings and classrooms.
* Multi-PC Sessions: The S300w can wirelessly connect up to 20 PCs simultaneously, bringing people from various locations together and creating outstanding efficiencies.
* Conference Control: Using the conference-control function, a moderator can control and streamline presentations via a Web-based control page.
* Flexible Connectivity: The S300w offers multiple connectivity options to enhance multimedia presentations, including a HDMI connector, a microphone port and dual VGA connections that enable seamless transitions between presenters.
* Wired Networking: RJ-45 allows for network manageability, including power management, updating firmware, checking status, receiving email alerts and more.
You can get Crestron RoomView Express software bundled with the projector for remote operation and monitoring, and some decent enough all around specs, including 2200 ANSI lumens of brightness, a 2,400:1 contrast ratio and, of course, 3D capability all for $999.

It’s available now for $0.99 from the App Store.