Software developers who want to come up with their own software for Microsoft’s touch-based Surface technology can now do so for free, as the Microsoft Surface SDK is now free for all at the Microsoft Download Center.

Surface was announced by Microsoft at the D5 conference in 2007, and is aimed at the retail/hotel/hospitality marketplace, but not for the home consumer, yet. The multi-touch technology is different from ‘regular’ touch-screen tech in that it can recognize different gestures, can track up to 52 different touches at a time and can also keep track of different users, too.

So far, Microsoft Surface has been used in AT&T Wireless stores, Harrah’s-owned bars and resorts, and is featured in Disneyland’s Futureland exhibit in California. Surface is also highly featured in television shows like CSI: Miami and EXTRA! Entertainment, in what is likely product placement paid for by Microsoft.

The Microsoft Surface is not selling cheap, with a regular commercial unit costing $12,500 and a developmental debug unit costing $15,000 (with 4 developmental licenses). But if we’re to consider the company has said in 2007 that they hope to get the units cheap enough to make a consumer home version by 2010, maybe there’s light at the end of the tunnel for us, mortals.

If you wanted to get your hands on a Barnes & Noble Nook eBook reader but didn’t order one yet and decided to get a better price during the holiday season, we have some bad news. Apparently the pre-orders for the Nook have exceeded all expectations (who would’ve thought) and the Kindle-competitor has now run out of stock with forthcoming models being promised to ship only next year, around January 4th.

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Super hero-themed MMORPG Champions Online is having its second free-play weekend, after only being released two months ago and having its first free-play weekend one month ago. The upcoming free-play weekend, which will be based around Thanksgiving, will coincide with an in-game content update called ‘Nemesis Confrontation’, and will feature new player costumes and quests.

The developers of the game hope that it will lure new players in, as the new quest kidnaps the player to an intergalactic prison where you have to fight your way out to freedom. However, as good as it may sound and despite a lukewarm launch reception,the folks from Cryptic Studios had several adverting campaigns, like reduced subscription deals, price drops and free-play weekends, which leads one to wonder if the game is actually struggling for subscriptions. But since exact numbers of active subscriptions are rarely released publicly by a MMO developer, and usually only when the game is doing well,  all these are only speculation.

Champions Online faces competition from City of Heroes, Cryptic’s first super hero-themed MMO that is now being run by NCSoft, and a pending DC Universe Online, a game with the popular DC Comics license.

The ‘executive producer’ of Cryptic is Bill Roper, formerly of Blizzard Software and Flagship Studios, who worked on such critically acclaimed games like Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3, but also worked on MMO bust, Hellgate: London.

Just when we thought the OpenOffice Mouse debacle and the Sony Vaio X “dead rat” are going to be the most popular models this month, we laid our eyes a new mouse introduced by the folks from Smartfish Technologies. The Smartfish Ergomotion mouse functions like any other run-of-the-mill wireless laser mouse, with some pretty large left and right buttons and a big scroll wheel.

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AT&T has a brand new phone for us and this time it’s coming from Pantech. The Impact will be available starting this Sunday, November 22, and it will cost $99.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate when purchased with a new 2-year contract.
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If the BlackBerry Pearl lineup has been lacking media attention as of late because RIM has been more interested in their QWERTY mobiles, apparently the Canadian manufacturer has been working behind the scenes and plan to revive it with the new BlackBerry Pearl 9100.

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Just yesterday we showed you the first leaked picture of the upcoming Motorola Motus Android phone and today we already have more details for you. Motorola hasn’t announced the handset yet but it looks like the full specs and features have been also leaked.
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Cloud Engines has announced today the second generation Pogoplug. That’s all fine and dandy but what’s a Pogoplug most people will ask. A Pogoplug is an interesting device that will let you access all the content you want from your USB drives over the Internet. That means you don’t have to carry with you portable hard drives anymore. Instead just get a Pogoplug and access everything on those USB drives from anywhere in the world. It’s like setting up your own cloud.
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Google have officially confirmed that they have revamped their Google News for Mobile service for the iPhone, Palm Pre and Android phones which, according to Google, “provides the same richness and personalization on your phone as Google News provides on desktop”.
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Verizon Wireless are doing everything humanly possible to rake in the best smartphone carrier title for this year. Although officially introduced in North America last month by Bell, it looks like Big Red is also interested in carrying their own version of the new Samsung Omnia II, with the handset debuting on their network weeks ahead of Christmas — around December 2nd,”in all channels” (telesales, online, and in-store).

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Whilst I’m less then enamoured with the iPhone’s camera and the quality of its imagery, if you regularly use your iPhone 3G/3GS’s camera and you hanker after a little more reach, you may be interested in this zoom lens developed specifically for the iPhone 3G/3GS which offers up to 8x zoom.
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Microsoft have officially confirmed that, by way of celebrating the integration of new Xbox Live services such as the Xbox Live Facebook and Twitter functionality, they are offering up a free upgrade to their Xbox Live service for Silver members in all Xbox Live regions expect for us Europeans (quite why Europeans are excluded is not explained but that’s sure to get a few people’s back up, and understandably so).
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The AT&T – Verizon war keeps on going no matter what. After today’s truth about the 3G ads, we caught wind that there’s a race for netbooks, too. If last month we found out that Big Red has announced availability for the new HP Mini 110 netbook, today AT&T has done the same announcing that they’ll add to their range of 3G mobile broadband equipped netbooks with the new Mini 110.

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Microsoft is no stranger to the inside of a court room in its 34-year history, and another is potentially coming what with Law firm Abington Law having announced that they are investigating a Class Action Lawsuit against the software giant, representing people who have been unfairly banned by the Xbox Live service.

Abington admits in the second paragraph of its brief that hacking your Xbox is against Xbox Live’s terms of service, yet, their issue with Microsoft is the timing of these bans. Abington is alleging that Microsoft waited until Halo 3: ODST and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 were out to ban the users from the online service, hooking them into purchasing the games then kicking them off the online network.

The law firm alleges that sales of the two games (including Modern Warfare 2 and its record breaking sales) would be considerably less if, allegedly, Microsoft hadn’t pulled this bait and switch trick to lure modders into buying the games. As reported earlier here on TFTS, the only way to‘unban’ yourself from Xbox Live is to buy a new console.Further, Abington says that Microsoft’s goal in banning modded consoles is combating piracy, and they have banned users who modded their Xbox for other reasons, although it was stingy on what these other reasons might be. The law firm simply listed, “Altering your Xbox functionality not related to Xbox Live or piracy”.

On top of that, they also insist that by using Xbox Live bans to punish these pirates, they sometimes target ‘innocent’ users of the service. One wonders how ‘innocent’ these users are when even the law firm admits in its own brief that, modding your Xbox is against the terms of service.

Game developers have recently favored the consoles over the PC because off the added difficulty of pirating games on the console, but if Microsoft finds itself unable to enforce its term of service the way it wants, that could change.

Mercedes Benz owners that dream of an iPhone/BlackBerry application to control some of the stuff that have cost them dearly, should be delighted to hear that the German car maker has partnered with Hughes Telematics and have announced a new telematics system dubbed mbrace, that brings “unprecedented connectivity and customization options for drivers” who’re looking to change the in-vehicle experiences to fit their daily needs.

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Logic3 have now released their new iStationGO Portable Speaker System which, aside from offering a particularly compact design that’ll easily fit into all but the smallest of bags, thanks to utilising line-in input, will work with just about any audio equipment that offers up a 3.5mm headphone socket – so you can factor in iPods, the iPhone, music cell phones, the PSP, et al.
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Those who have been lucky enough to escape being killed by the wife after spending a huge load of money on photo gear (oh I bet you know who you are), should know that they can take their chances once again as the Germans from Hasselblad have officially announced that their High-detail H3DII-50 Multi-Shot camera has become available starting today.

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If up until now the much anticipated Android-powered Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 has done a great job in teasing us with its amazing specs and the far away February 2010 release date, today we finally found out what the handset is expected to retail for, and we can confirm that that the high-end smartphone won’t come in cheap.

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Verizon Wireless have officially announced the immediate availability of a new ultra durable phone in their line-up in the form of the Casio G’zOne Rock – pronounced Jeez_wun, incidentally, in case you were wondering – which conforms to military standards in terms of durability (specifically MIL-STD-810F) whilst offering a host of features aimed to appeal to the outdoors type.
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Better late than never right? That’s how the saying goes and it looks like Sony clearly qualifies for that. The company has realized that Apple’s iTunes idea is a goldmine and therefore it’s preparing to launch its own iTunes version which will sell music, movie and books to its customers. Mobile applications could also be included in the future Sony Online Service but let’s not get ahead of ourselves!
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When it comes to immortalizing a yet to be released mobile phone, spy photographers have their own way of taking a picture. There’s no flash, no autofocus, extremely low light and seems like their hands are trembling, as most of the times we get to look at blurry images that lack details and won’t disclose and specs. That’s the case with this image of a Motorola CLIQ-alike smartphone, that could actually be the new Motorola Motus.

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Imation are now shipping their M-Class SSD Upgrade Kits which is aimed specifically at users looking for an all-in-one SSD upgrade solution for those wishing to swap out their HHDs for SSDs with the minimum of fuss.
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Despite the large shadow of censorship looming over the Chinese internet, the iPhone and it’s library of apps have become very popular in the People’s Republic. Backing that up, mobile application company 9thQ has reported that this year the legitimate Chinese iPhone apps have accounted for about $1 million, with projects to hit $6 million USD next year.

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If earlier reports have pointed out that the new ThinkPad X100e is actually Lenovo’s first Thinkpad netbook, today we caught wind that the computer manufacturer is not going to introduce only one, but two models. Guilty for the whole thing is the new Lenovo ThinkPad Edge ultraportable, a rather powerful machine that feature sa choice of AMD and Intel processors (ranging from the AMD Turion X2 or AMD Neo to the Pentium SU4100 or the Core 2 Duo SU7300) designed for the ultra low power segment.

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Toys R Us has decided to pleasantly surprise us and tempt us with a few pre-Black Friday game deals. And we certainly love pre-Black Friday deals, don’t we? The company will offer you a couple of extra savings on various products starting with Sunday, November 22 and ending on Thursday, November 26.
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Lexar has announced today new storage solution for your gaming consoles. These are the Memory Stick Micro M2 and the Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) memory cards.
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Just as we told you a few days ago, Google has decided to unveil its own computer operating system this year. Although we were expecting it to arrive at some point in 2010, Google execs must have realized that now’s the time to make Google OS official.
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If you’re looking for a sizable laptop that offers portability whilst happily serving as a desktop replacement and you fancy getting in on a little mulittouch action then Dell hope that their new Studio 17 multitouch touting laptop will prove tempting enough to part you with your hard earned cash.
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Archos have acted to confirm that shipping of its latest tablet PC, the Archos 9, is now set to be delayed with those who have pre-ordered the Archos 9 now having to wait till next month before potentially getting their hands on the 8.9” Windows 7 powered UMPC. And, it’s worse news still if you haven’t pre-ordered as its not not set to hit shelves until 2010.
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iBuyPower captured some attention earlier this year by unveiling their Chimera gaming PC. Built using one of the company’s signature custom cases, it looked really awesome with some great glossy fire graphics and some amazing performance on the inside. Today, however, the company has announced the slick Chimera 2 desktop and it looks like it really does the part about being a true gaming PC.

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