Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Right on schedule, Nokia has announced its latest addition to the multimedia-centric (and game-riffic) Nseries line, the N82 candybar. The phone clearly bears a striking resemblance to its recently announced cousin — the N81 slider — but the N82 ups the ante with a 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens paired with autofocus (naturally) and a xenon flash. Other features include microSD expansion, support for Nokia’s own Ovi goodies, WiFi, assisted GPS, a 2.4 inch QVGA display front and center, and an honest-to-goodness 3.5mm headphone jack like the N95 before it. The GSM / EDGE radio does the quadband thing, but HSDPA’s available only on the 2100MHz band — so North Americans with an appetite for data need not apply. Others can buy the N82 starting today for about €450 ($657).

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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The king of simplicity is revisiting the new frontier in business competition.
John Maeda’ shoe design accompanies Reebok’s trend for mass customization and brings his perspective on what can be done on the shoe “canvas”.

In mass customization, firms have thrown away the old paradigm of Mass Production by creating a variety and customization through flexibility and quick responsiveness. This is a new logic more suited to a world in which stability and control can no longer be maintained.

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Filed under: Food Gadgets, Thanksgiving

Chances are that if you’re a Slashfoodie, your kitchen’s drawers and cabinets are overflowing with gadgets, tools and equipment that you use all year already. However, for those of us who rely on a single chef’s knife and a pair of chopsticks to do just about everything in the kitchen, there are some certain tools that you might want to pick up between now and the Big Day to help with the Thanksgiving preparations. Things like brining bags and flavor injectors aren’t necessary, but they do enhance, and other things like turkey slings and fat separators aren’t required, they’re just nice to have to make roasting turkeys and making gravy easier.

The one thing I’m just not so sure about? The Stuffing Cage. Just the name alone…

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The ultra-light Macbook might be coming soon, but our friends from uneasysilence say that they have successfully installed Mac OS X Leopard on their Asus Eee PC, based on the LifeHacker tutorial. The downside is that Leopard is slow on the Eee’s processor and tiny 512MB of memory, but it works. Head to their article to see how it’s done and ask additional questions.

Permalink | Comment | Uberbargain | Uberphones

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So! It’s final assignment time! The semester’s about up, and stress is at an all time high. On the one hand, classwork intensity is reaching an all-time high, while my boss at work bears down with more and more “off the clock” projects for me to work on…my second job gives me no hours though, which for once is a blessing, and this website, my favorite thing, requires my consistent care.

My job, my hobbies, my social life, my grades are hanging in the balance these next few weeks, with little chance of a break from anything. what i need to do is buckle down and do some good old-fashioned work and time management.

Instead, I cannot for any reason stop playing this game (thanks again, armorgames. I personally hold you responsible for all failed classes).

WHY?!

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Filed under: News

The recent launch of the 40GB PS3 system worldwide has supposedly caused quite a bit of a stir. The 40GB model loses a few key features, but comes at a significantly reduced price. “Although Sony’s game business has not been performing strongly, the first indications of the new lower-priced model’s sales look likely to alleviate overly negative impressions of the business,” said Nomura Securities analyst Eiichi Katayama.

In previous weeks, the system sold under 30k units on a regular basis. However, the first-week sales for the new PS3 are encouraging, beating forecasts with a surprising sell-through of 65k in Japan. Dynasty Warriors 6, a brand new PS3 exclusive, also performed surprisingly well with 180k units sold. Worldwide, however, sales reached a total of 100k in a single week.

“It’s the breakthrough we’ve been anticipating,” Sony CEO Howard Stringer said. “We’ve been holding our breath.” This is a rare occasion where the one-week sales of the PS3 have surpassed Nintendo’s tiny behemoth, the Wii. “Obviously, we’ve taken so much heat over the year on PS3 … Finally, the turning point has been passed.” Hopefully, the price cut will help continue Sony’s slowly growing momentum.

[Via Digg, NeoGAF]

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Filed under: Video Games, Reviews

In 1985, ‘Super Mario Bros.’ defined what the next decade of 2D-platform games would and should be on home consoles. Mario did it again for 3D games in 1996 with ‘Super Mario 64′ on the Nintendo 64. And while we may have to wait a bit longer for 4D games, this week’s ‘Super Mario Galaxy‘ seems to have, according to a plethora of pro-plumber reviews, set the bar unbelievably high not just for Wii games but all “next generation” action titles.

With a current metascore (an average of all review scores) of 97 out of 100, ‘Super Mario Galaxy’ is garnering critical acclaim not only for its adherence to what’s made Mario great in the past, but also for its innovative use of the Wii control, outstanding visual presentation, and orchestrated score (a first for Mario games). It’s not ALL good news of course as no game is perfect, but here’s what the critics say:

Yahoo! Games

The Good:

• ‘Super Mario Galaxy’ is a reminder that games don’t have to be ultra-violent, make clever social statements or ride the marketing machine to succeed. They simply have to be fun, and you’d be hard pressed to find one as genuinely enjoyable as Mario’s latest.

The Bad:

• …a little disjointed from time to time.

  …it would be nice to hear Mario say something other than ‘Woo-hoo!’ from time to time.

Game Informer

The Good:

• …the best Mario game since the NES classic, ‘Super Mario Bros.’ It innovates in a genre that we had thought we had seen everything from, and in doing so delivers some of the most entertaining gameplay to date.

The Bad:

• While it’s nice that you rarely have to fuss with the camera, there are times where walls will obstruct your view, or you won’t be able to rotate the perspective to see where you are supposed to jump next. And worst of all, for a game that puts such an emphasis on going out of your way to get an extra life, all of your lives are reset when you turn the Wii off.

IGN

The Good:

• One of the greatest platformers I have ever played, Wii’s best game, and an absolute must-own experience.

The Bad:

• Every so often … you will find yourself in a situation where the camera isn’t quite right … When that happens and you can’t center yourself, you have no recourse, which is unfortunate … It’s not perfect.”

1UP

The Good:

• ‘Galaxy’ proves that Mario matters just as much today as he did 25 years ago, and that makes him one of a kind in this medium. But don’t play ‘Galaxy’ simply because Mario is the timeless godfather of gaming. No, play ‘Galaxy’ because it’s fantastic.

The Bad:

• With the health power meter now reduced from six sections to three, experimenting with new enemies and tactics can be a little fraught - try the wrong thing twice in a row and you’re in immediately danger of dying.

It’s great to see Mario still kicking ass among such big titles this year like ‘Halo 3‘ and ‘Mass Effect‘. Mysteriously, our copy seems to have gone missing in the mail. But, we are more than excited to see Mario return to the throne. And we don’t mean that in the plumbing sense.

Related Links

• Video Gaming Makes for Hit Japanese Reality TV Show
• Guitar Hero for Your iPod

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That’s the prediction of tech veteran Philippe Kahn, (who founded Borland in the 80s) now CEO of FullPower Technologies, a company with motion sensing expertise. We don’t know if this prediction is based on more than a personal feeling, but given his position in the industry, it is certainly worth listening at what he has to say.

Ever since the iPhone was announced, we thought that a “nano phone” would be the real killer (although the actual iPhone is doing very well)

On motion sensors, he said: “… the Wii and iPhone are just the beginning. Sensors will soon enable all kinds of functions, such as shaking your cell phone to pick up a call. No buttons, no fingers, just simple, natural gestures”. Well, Samsung has phones that react to gestures, but at this point it doesn’t look like gestures can be used to convince customers to drop the money.

Head to Uberpulse to get the rest of the story.

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Filed under: Newspapers, Magazines, Google (GOOG), Time Warner (TWX), Sprint Nextel Corp (S), Wendy’s Intl (WEN)

MAJOR PAPERS:

• FCC chairman Ken Martin may use an obscure portion of the 1984 Cable Act to force cable companies to cut the rates they charge programmers who lease spare channels, reported the Wall Street Journal.
• The sale of Wendy’s International Inc (NYSE: WEN) may be delayed due to the turmoil in the credit market, the New York Times reported.

OTHER PAPERS:

• The UK Times reported that Baugur Group has hired NM Rothschild and Financo to help advise on the takeover of Saks Incorporated (NYSE: SKS). The takeover bid is said to be worth between $3B and $4B.
• Time Warner Inc’s (NYSE: TWX) AOL division acquired question-and-answer-service Web site Yedda for tens of millions of dollars, Haaretz reported.

WEB SITES:

• According to TMCnet.com, the recent news of Sprint Nextel Corporation (NYSE: S) no longer working with Clearwire Corporation (NASDAQ: CLWR) only adds to the rumors of an acquisition by Google Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG).

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