Hezbollah stands strong
In a private and highly secure interview, Hezbollah leader Nassarullah recorded the message that claims of Israel destroying half of their force is wrong. They stand strong and aim to take the war to the end, if Israel wants it that way.
Hezbollah would not be release prisoners even “if the whole universe comes against us”. He said that the soldiers would be freed only as part of a prisoner exchange as mentioned earlier
“I can confirm without exaggerating or using psychological warfare that we have not been harmed.”
Complete Interview @ AlJazeera
Worst week in history of TV
Last week was the least-viewed week in the history of broadcast network television in the USA.
CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox averaged 20.8 million viewers during the average prime-time minute last week, according to Nielsen Media Research. That sunk below the previous record, set during the last week of July in 2005.
TV keeps losing to gaming, the Internet, youtube, blogs etc, and yet our elected representatives are willing to kill innovation and open source.
Original News @ Boing Boing
The new Sony Walkman
Sony will release a completely redesigned sports series flash memory-based network Walkman in the September/October timeframe. It will be available in two versions, the silver-colored 1GB NW-S203F ($150) and the black-colored 2GB NW-S205F ($120).
These metal S-series players are built for sports, and they’re water resistant with a spiffy “collar knob” for music navigation. The G-Sensor inside enables a pedometer, and there’s also a calorie counter and a stopwatch, too.
Not only does it also have an FM tuner, but its one-line organic EL display is easy to see in the dark, and it takes just three minutes to charge up the batteries for three hours of playback, or total of 18 hours of battery life on a full charge. These look like some innovative players. They’re both now available for pre-order at Amazon.
Original news @ Gizmodo
VideoGames sales jump 25% in June
Games marketing department make some very wise decissions as of how to build hypes, controversies and appropriate shipping dates to relase the games. The holiday season (Nov~Dec) is one particular season when game sales boom too much, and publishers take full advantage of it.
But one thing that they usually ignore is the summer season. Its hot and humid outside and most teenagers go on summer vacations, so what else way is better to spend time other than enjoy Hot Games in cool Air Conditioner’s breeze. This summer is again going very slow in releases. Not much variety of games are avilabale on shelves. But still the sales jumped by a whopping 25%. Any Publisher reading this should take note that the should not just wait for holiday season, the summer may give the second best sales record if you release your games in it.
Complete Sales Report @ 1UP.com
Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor
Concerned whether you will be able to run the new Windows vista or not. Considering the heavy duty requiremenst like 64mb video ram, which is serious bad news for office based PCs (with built in video chip by mostly intel. And also More than a Gig of physical Ram may be a problem for most of the non-gamer world. The gamers may already fulfil all these requirements. To checkout wheter you can run Aero (the high end front end) or Non-Aero based interface or whether you will be at all able to run windows vista or not, Microsoft has released a tool which tells you which compoenents of your current machie needs upgrading, so that you are well prepared when the “Gates” unleashes its new “Windows”.
Download Vista Advisor @ Download.com
More Gaming Handhelds
PSP wasn’t as much a big success as it was hoped, Sony must be scratching their heads to find where they went wrong. While Nintendo DS which was termed a kiddy handheld was preferred by casual and hard cores alike. There were few other handheld consoles which again were a flop. So, considering it is a risky market, would others venture in it?
Both Microsoft and Apple do seem interested. Microsoft’s XBOX divison is working on a “Argo” project, and would actually cover an entire range of Xbox-branded devices, covering music, games and beyond – to be released this Christmas. A wireless MP3 player has also been implied, intermittently. The gaming prodcut will be termed as “Zune” No further information is available regarding it.
Apple on other hand recently gave contract to Nvidia for graphic chips for newer iPod. These maybe just new versions of video iPod, but rumors are that Nvidia came into the loop because now 3D graphic capabilities were to be implemented in iPod. Nothing official has been announced.
War Footage on YouTube
Google Video and YouTube allows anyone to share their recorded videos with millions of viewers. And In current Lebanon crisis, this utility is now for the first time being used on this scale. CNN also did a story and showed 3 videos on TV from YouTube, regarding the first hand experiences of people on both sides of border. If you search for Lebanon and Israel war tags you will find many such videos.
War footage @ YouTube
Turn-based Sims.
Kudos is a turn-based life simulator. There is a demo available for trying out this realistic game, didn’t get much time myself to try it but here is a preview:
Sony Licenses Unreal Engine 3
I have always been a fan of Unreal Engine, as it is most stunning engine of its eras and also because it is not limited to a particular theme. e.g. Doom 3 engine has such limited feel to its environments and models that on first glance a casual gamer would not be able to differentiate between Doom 3, Quake 4, Prey or upcoming Quake wars. But Unreal games vary from World War’s Brothers in Arms to Turok the dinosaur hunter. That is why more and more developers are shifting to Unreal Engine.
Sony Online Entertainment today announced that it has entered into a licensing agreement with Epic Games to use Unreal Engine 3 for some its upcoming console and PC-based games. Word is: “SOE will utilize this technology for a number of future projects, including the DC Comics-based game currently under development”.
More @ GameGuru Mania
Bill Gates announce $287 for AID vaccine research
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced $287 million in grants on Wednesday to create an international network of 16 labs to try new approaches to making a vaccine against AIDS.
This is the foundation’s largest-ever investment in HIV vaccine development. In fact, it’s our largest-ever package of grants for HIV and AIDS.
More @ Yahoo News
