interweb ink

Call Of Duty MW2 Stimulus Package to be released to Xbox LIVE

Savan Thongvanh — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:06:13 +0000

Activision announced today that on March 30th they’ll be releasing to Xbox LIVE a Multiplayer Map Pack their calling the “Call of Duty(R): Modern Warfare(R) 2 Stimulus Package”. What’s the stimulus?

The map pack to be released at the end of this month will be the first multiplayer map pack releasedy by Activision/Blizzard. ADDITIONALLY, the map pack will be available on a trial basis from March 12 to March 15th to Silver (free) Xbox LIVE members.

Developed by Infinity Ward, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 became a cultural phenomenon when it launched to the world in November. The epic title set new entertainment records for the greatest one-day and five-day openings in history* on the way to topping $1 billion in sales and becoming the best selling title ever on the Xbox 360(R) video game and entertainment system from Microsoft. Additionally, Xbox LIVE celebrates having the largest Call of Duty community than any other entertainment system.

See more from the Activision release http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=450953

AMD Sponsors Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Game Design Category

Savan Thongvanh — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:02:00 +0000

AMD Foundation to Sponsor Video Game Design Category for The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards
Game development serves as tool to promote STEM education, social issues

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — 3/10/2010 – AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the AMD Foundation, in support of AMD Changing the Game, has awarded a grant to the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. The $65,000 grant will be used to help fund the Alliance’s new video game design category for the 2010 and 2011 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers is a nonprofit organization that runs The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the most prestigious and longest-running competition in the United States recognizing teenagers’ intellectual creativity, innovation and artistic talent. Through this competition, scholarships and other activities, the Alliance annually reaches more than three million students in seventh through 12th grades, and 400,000 Art and English teachers. Including the new video game design category in the competition increases the reach of the program to math and science teachers and presents video game production as an art form requiring imagination, technical skill, planning and storytelling.

AMD’s partnership with the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers will help to significantly broaden the reach of the AMD Changing the Game signature education initiative to its target audience. The AMD program is designed to promote the use of youth game development as a tool to inspire learning and improve science, technology, education and math (STEM) skills.

“The Alliance’s addition of a video game design category to its annual competition validates the growth of game design as a creative learning tool for teens,” said Allyson Peerman, President, AMD Foundation. “Digital gaming is the universal language of teens, and teaching them in that language can result in more engaged and better prepared students.”

“The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards have always represented the cutting edge of student creativity,” said Virginia McEnerney, Executive Director of the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. “That tradition is well-represented with the addition of the video game design category.”

During its 87-year history, The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards has recognized more than nine million creative teenagers, including Andy Warhol, Robert Redford and Sylvia Plath. For the 2011 program year, the Alliance anticipates receiving 700 student submissions for the video game design category. The AMD Foundation grant also will help the Alliance host game design workshops and help fund cash awards and summer program scholarships for students. Each year top video game submissions will be showcased online.

“The ability to design computer and video games taps into a deep-seated passion for today’s youth and fosters critical 21st Century skills such as creativity, collaboration and critical thinking,” said Alan Gershenfeld, Chairman, Games4Change. “The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards video game design competition is a phenomenal outlet to spotlight teens’ passion and talent for shaping this powerful new medium. I tip my hat to the AMD Foundation for recognizing that when kids are motivated to learn they can move mountains.”

AMD Changing the Game

AMD Changing the Game is designed to take gaming beyond entertainment and inspire youth to learn critical education and life skills by equipping them to create digital games with social content. The program’s purpose is to promote the use of youth game development as a tool to inspire learning and improve science, technology, education and math (STEM) skills. The initiative is rooted in AMD’s commitment to and experience
in supporting education, and the company’s passion and expertise in the graphics processor and gaming industries.

Since its launch in June 2008, AMD Changing the Game has:

Funded 13 organizations that enable youth game development
Funded the development of a youth game development curriculum with PETLab and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America (BGCA). Earlier in 2010, BGCA chapters in Larimer County, Colorado and Marlborough, Massachusetts kicked off new “Game Tech” programs that teach club members how to understand game design and create their own games.
Co-sponsored the Malaysian Cybergames Festival 2010, including the “Dare to Create” digital game design and development workshop
Co-sponsored the 2008 and 2009 Games for Change Festival
Funded an online toolkit to help nonprofits create games on social issues
Sponsored a video contest exploring the intersection of education and gaming

About the AMD Foundation

The AMD Foundation connects and empowers individuals with knowledge, thereby opening doors to opportunity. The Foundation’s signature program, AMD Changing the Game, supports initiatives designed to help youth harness the power of digital games with social content, while learning critical Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) skills and life skills. The Foundation also funds the AMD Employee Giving Program which supports AMD employees’ community interests by matching their personal donations of time and money to local organizations and schools.

Supporting Resources

About AMD

Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is an innovative technology company dedicated to collaborating with customers and technology partners to ignite the next generation of computing and graphics solutions at work, home and play. For more information, visit http://www.amd.com
AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Contact Information

Catherine Greenlaw
AMD Public Relations
512-602-2292
catherine.greenlaw@amd.com

Source: amd.com

Bike trails now available on Google Maps

Savan Thongvanh — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:02:02 +0000

Google announces today on their blog they bike trails are available on Google Maps. When you search for directions now on Google Maps you’ll have an option in addition to driving, public transportation, and walking. You can chose to map the route by bicycle.

Google has been sitting on this feature waiting for it to evolve. They’ve built the features with the support and cooperation of sites like Googl Maps Bike There and Rails to Trails contributing to the information.

Here is some key information when you’re reading the maps:

Routes avoid hills!
Dark green indicates a dedicated bike-only trail
Light green indicates a dedicated bike lane along a road
Dashed green indicates roads that are designated as preferred for bicycling, but without dedicated lanes

This is great news for the bicycling community and Google Map greenies! Head over to http://maps.google.com/biking and check it out. Find your way to work today!

Alien Vs Predator Swarm Pack DLC available March 18th

Savan Thongvanh — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:31:40 +0000

Happy St Paddy’s Day to all you AVP players out there. On March 18th Sega will release downloadable content for Xbox360, PlayStation3, and Steam!

The dlc will include four new maps and several new modes of play, it’s called the “Swarm Pack”. Here’s what’s inside:

Docks: The caustic alkali waters of BG-386 put an end to Weyland-Yutani’s planned shipping activities. But this dockyard soon became an historic battleground.

Machine: As well as processing exotic ores, the BG-386 Refinery provided electrical power to the colonists at Freya’s Prospect. The lights may still be on, but nobody’s home. Yet.

Two new Survivor maps in which up to four Marines battle to stay alive against increasing swarms of Aliens:

Outpost: The site of the original Weyland-Yutani colony on BG-386 was abandoned, and soon reclaimed by the planet’s voracious jungle plant life. It is now the perfect hunting ground for all manner of wildlife.
Hive: Deep in the heart of the Freya’s Prospect Refinery lays the Xenomorph Hive. Beware all who enter here.

The “Swarm Map Pack” will be available on March 18th for $6.99 or 560 Microsoft Points.

For more information see the AVP blog www.sega.com/avp

Microsoft security bulletin: Security Bugs in Producer, Excel, and SharePoint

Savan Thongvanh — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:07:38 +0000

Microsoft announced yesterday that they’ve found more bugs. Surprise. Microsoft annouced via security bulletin on the TechNet site that vulnerabilities were found and patched in various versions of Office, SharePoint, and it’s movie making software Producer. All of the vulnerabilities found allow what microsoft calls “Remote Code Execution”, which means that malicious code can be planted and run on your computer. This is not a new thing for Microsoft and they fix them as the find them but, the just keep finding them.

Here’s a rundown of the affected software:

2007 Microsoft Office System Service Pack 1
2007 Microsoft Office System Service Pack 2
Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 3
Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac
Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats Service Pack 1 and Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats Service Pack 2
Microsoft Office Excel 2002 Service Pack 3
Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Service Pack 3
Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Service Pack 1[1]
Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Service Pack 2[1]
Microsoft Office Excel Viewer Service Pack 1 and Microsoft Office Excel Viewer Service Pack 2
Microsoft Office for Mac
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (32-bit editions)[2]
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (64-bit editions)[2]
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (32-bit editions)[2]
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (64-bit editions)[2]
Microsoft Office XP Service Pack 3
Windows 7 for 32-bit Systems
Windows 7 for x64-based Systems
Windows Vista x64 Edition, Windows Vista x64 Edition Service Pack 1, and Windows Vista x64 Edition Service Pack 2
Windows Vista, Windows Vista Service Pack 1, and Windows Vista Service Pack 2
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Service Pack 2
Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows XP Service Pack 3

Note that all currently supported versions of windows are affected and that Windows and Mac versions of Office are affected. From the links below you can download the patches or they can be downloaded through Windows.

See the Producer Bulletin for more
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms10-016.mspx?pubDate=2010-03-09

And the Office and SharePoint Bulletin
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms10-017.mspx?pubDate=2010-03-09

Rock Band 3 Dated for Holidays

David Thongvanh — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:31:36 +0000

With a franchise as successful as the Rock Band series, you knew there was never a question of if there would be another one, only when it would come. Harmonix has delivered, announcing on Facebook that Rock Band 3 will be out in time for Christmas this year.

Harmonix hasn’t announced any of the songs yet which isn’t surprising, but there’s already rampant speculation. While fans drool and dream about that though, they can tide themselves over with Green Day Rock Band, slated for June this year. They haven’t announced platforms yet, but you can expect titles for Xbox360, PS3 and Wii.

One big question is whether or not RB3 will have the option to import songs from previous games as RB2 did, though there was a $5 price tag attached to that. Details are scant right now, but we’ll keep an eye out and our fingers ready for more info.

3D TV: HDMI Consortium Releases HDMI 1.4a Specification

Savan Thongvanh — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:34:21 +0000

The HDMI Consortium recently released a new specification to support 3D TV for HD televisions. The consortium (made up of electronics companies Hitachi, Panasonic, Philips Consumer Electronics, International B.V., Silicon Image, Inc., Sony Corporation, Technicolor, S.A., and Toshiba Corporation) released the HDMI 1.4a specification to give some guidance to hardware vendors as to how displays could render 3d images.

“We published these latest enhancements to support the market need for broadcast 3D content,” said Steve Venuti, president of HDMI Licensing, LLC. “When we launched 1.4 in June of 2009, we deferred the selection of mandatory 3D format(s) for broadcast content until the market direction was more clearly defined. The market has spoken and the HDMI Consortium has listened and responded to accommodate those market needs.”

The specification includes, as you would expect, hard core information about frequencies, resolutions, bits and bytes, pixel alignments, and other minutia for engineers.

Here are a few implications for consumers.

You need an HDTV, obviously. The lowest grade “Primary Format”, as it’s referred to in the spec, for 3d is 720p all the way up to 1080p.

You need a *new* HDTV, not so obvious. Part of the upgrade for 3D is the requirement for two color pixels for every one 2D color pixel. According to the spec there are three ways HDMI allows pixels to be arranged but any way you order it, it will require twice as many dots.

The most popular format implied by the 3D specs are, a you might guess, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. Although 4k is supported by the HDMI spec no mention of it was made in the extract.

HDMI 1.4 was released with features such as an integrated data channel (internet access), integrated bi-directional audio (in and out), 4k, a micro and automotive interface, and expanded color depth. 1.4a was release specifically to address implementation details of 3D.

You can download the spec at http://www.hdmi.org
See the full press release at http://www.hdmi.org/press/press_release.aspx?prid=120

ATI’s new card for netbooks, the ATI Radeon™ HD 5570

Steam now on Mac: Leading Gaming Service Expands to Mac Platform

Savan Thongvanh — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:20:59 +0000

Valve announced today it will bring Steam, Valve’s gaming service, and Source, Valve’s gaming engine, to the Mac.

Steam and Valve’s library of games including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series will be available in April.

“As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients,” said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. “The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services.”

“Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac,” said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve. “Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge. For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play.”

“We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation,” said John Cook, Director of Steam Development. “The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward. We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360. Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows.”

Portal 2 will be Valve’s first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows. “Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step,” said Josh Weier, Portal 2 Project Lead. “We’re always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac.”

Support for the Mac in Source and Steamworks is available to third parties immediately. Interested developers should contact Jason Holtman at jasonh@valvesoftware.com.

Source: steampowered.com

Batteries 100 times Better than Lithium Ion?

Jason Patocka — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:34:43 +0000

A great deal of our civilization’s happiness depends on a steady stream of electrons. Global demand for these quantum mechanical physics darlings is insatiable, and 20th century electron production and storage methods are getting expensive and dangerously unsustainable.

Fortunately, nanoscientists are working hard to address this persistent need.

Carbon nanotubes have been a hot area of materials science research for a couple of decades now. Yet, recent news from MIT declares that a new dimension of novel properties related to carbon nanotubes may be emerging, which may lead to tantalizing new applications for those yearning for better battery life, or perhaps more precisely – a solution for those in need of their daily electron fix.

Researchers Wanjoon Choi and Michael Strano have taken advantage of a combustion phenomenon called *thermopower waves* where they have found a new method to propagate an electrical current along a surface. In fact, it produces an energy yield 100 times greater when comparing it to a block of lithium ion of proportional weight. A report of their work is featured in Nature Materials.

While applications for this discovery is still in the early stages, its safe to say that research potential of carbon nanomaterials is quite robust and accelerating. This is especially true in addressing energy demand and storage. Who knows where similar studies may lead when applying this newly discovered phenomenon to molecular cousins like graphene, graphane, and fullerenes.

Exciting new physics is exciting.

iPad release date April 3rd, Pre-orders March 12th

Savan Thongvanh — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:27:44 +0000

Apple announces today that the long awaited iPad can be ordered starting March 12th. The actual release date will be April 3rd. There have been rumors of production until late summer but this, at least for now, negates those.

Beginning a week from today, on March 12, US customers can pre-order both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G models from Apple’s online store (www.apple.com) or reserve a Wi-Fi model to pick up on Saturday, April 3, at an Apple retail store.

The pricing we heard earlier still stands: $499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB, $699 for 64GB. The Wi-Fi + 3G models will still be $629 for 16GB, $729 for 32GB and $829 for 64GB.

International pricing will differ but is not yet known.