Sony announces next entry to the PlayStation Family, Codenamed NGP
Upon months of rumors and speculations, Sony finally pulled the cover over their “Next Generation Portable” or NGP for short. The most notable new feature of the NGP is the welcome inclusion of a second analog input which makes those third and first person games that much easier to play.
Other features revealed are the 5” Touch OLED screen, back touch panel, front facing and rear cameras, 3G support, and processing power that nearly rivals Sony’s PlayStation 3 console.
Pricing and available have not been announced although Shu Yoshida, Sony Computer Entertainment President of Worldwide Studios, claims that the NGP will be available by Holiday 2011 and for less than $599.
http://kotaku.com/5744790/the-complete-guide-to-sonys-next-big-portable-playstation?skyline=true&s=i
Paying by Phone takes one more step into reality
Richard Doherty of Envisioneering Group claims that Apple is on the way to streamlining purchases in the real world with digital means like an iPhone or iPod touch. Similar technology is being used already in countries like Hong Kong and Japan where customers pre-load cards with hard earned money to which they can pay for transit, newspapers and small convince stands food items.
The technology used is called “Near Field Communication” where it acts much like a swipe card that you would use in an apartment building or parking lot. A lot of modern credit cards now carry magnet “tabs” which offers a means of payment at a vending machine. This technology is slowly starting to kick off starting in New York City in where a passenger could pay with cash or just swipe the credit card.
What Apple is planning to do is to tie this technology in with all iOS enabled devices and have the consumer pay right out of their iTunes account. What does this mean for the consumer? Not a whole lot as of yet, but you could very well see this technology brought to the consumer in mass in the near future and if it’s something that Apple is good at, it’s taking an existing technology and making it readily available to the general public.
http://gizmodo.com/5742880/imagine-paying-for-everything-with-your-iphone-and-itunes-account
Lights don’t help find remotes, fires do
A 19 year old in Medina, Ohio earlier this week set his house ablaze while on the search for his remote control. Using a lighter in place of a flashlight to look under the bed was the cause here. Honestly though, who doesn’t have a flashlight in their house by now, or a light from anything for that matter?
While the whole family escaped unharmed, the same could not be said for the family’s three dogs.
http://gizmodo.com/5741937/search-for-tv-remote-ends-in-house-fire
Egypt cut off from Porn library, also the Internet
Earlier this morning, Egypt has been effectively cut off from the internet. Egyptian government and the people have been at a quarrel and protests the past week and to prevent the general public from posting anything hatful or resentful, the Egyptian government pulled the plug on the mass majority of the country’s access to the internet.
We’ve seen similar media blackouts before such as in China when there was a dispute during the Olympics where there were broadcasting concerns between the Olympic committee and the government.
If you do live Egypt and are capable of reading this post, the best thing to do now is to get a 56k dial up modem and access the internet that way. While such a connection may be slower, there has been no indication that phone lines have been cut.
While it’s not far-fetched to think that a government could do this to the whole country, it’s even wilder to think that any country could do that anywhere at any time.
As of this post there has been no word yet as to when or if the internet will be returning to Egypt.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/egypt-unplugs-itself-from-the-internet/article1885879/
That’s what I thought was interesting and fun for the week of Jan 24th. Stay safe and game hard!
PS. This is for all those people in Egypt. Stay strong!
