Source: Kotaku

Gaming blog service Kotaku reports that Nintendo might be shipping a new version of its critically successful handheld later this year. This new DS would feature a built in camera as well as support for music playback. Now this may sound as another fanboyish joke, but their source is the official Nikkei newspaper, which is a respectable source of information.

Source: NeoGAF

The news may have some weight into it as the current line of DS, the DS Lite has been around for quite some time now. Moreover, Apple’s iPod Touch is also trying to tap into the touchscreen gaming market. So it seems a wise move for Nintendo to put features of a Camera and a music player into its device. Other expected features include:

• Enhanced wireless connection (able to communicate with other devices too)
• Larger Screens (possibly a wide screen)
• Data exchange from Wii and SD cards

It would be interesting to see how Nintendo and other third party game developers come up with new innovative ideas to use the camera. We might have games that do object recognition or motion detection based on inputs from the camera, something we see in cell phones these days. Another interesting factor would be its price. According to that report, the new model would retail under ¥20,000, which is approximately $188.

The report also suggests that the new model would initially be launched only in Japan, with international release a few months later. Nintendo are yet to confirm this news, and if such a device is in works, it can be alarming for the new PSP-3000 series.

1/3 of a MacBook Air

Ok who else was busy drooling over the new iPods? Well I was there too, which made me completely miss this piece of innovation I bring today. On DEMOfall this week, Plastic Logic debuted its brand new technology; the Plastic Logic Reader. In short, it a extremely lightweight (in ounces), very flexible, touch sensitive display, which can be a great alternative to all the paper (be it books, files, documents, presentations, newspaper, magazines etc) you have to carry around.

Company’s CEO. Joe Eschbach delivered the keynote welcomed by roars of appreciation. According to him, plastic electronics would soon cost just about 40% of their silicon counterparts. This is due to the fact that these devices are actually made of plastic, which doesn’t have to go through such a long fabrication process as silicon. The result is a lightweight, robust, and flexible technology that can truly take the load of your shoulder. Technology analysts have long predicted that the plastic electronics would be around about $30 billion industry by 2015.

The future is here today

You actually don’t have to wait that long, as that technology is here today. Most of the keyboard manufacturers use flexible plastic circuit boards to capture key-press. This takes a lot of mass of the board. I remember back in early 90′s, my keyboard easily weighed a lot more than something I could easily carry, way too much than they weigh today. With that said, electronic readers aren’t new either. When this device comes out around Q2 2009, it would be going against eBook readers from Amazon, Sony and others. But it has a clear advantage of technology, which all others lack; plastic design.

For this purpose, the Mountain View, CA. based company has developed a manufacturing facility in Dresden, Germany. Most of the technology used in the reader is developed in house through years of R&D. The result is a product, that recognises touch gestures, is fast and responsive, has a battery life in days (not hours), and weighs around 1/3 of a MacBook Air. There were no words on the internal capacity of the device, but since it is mean for documents, even 512 megabytes would be like infinity. Other notable features include annotations that you can add on the screen, as well as built in organizer for managing the documents.

I’ll now leave you with their presentation video presented at DEMOfall, so you can also be amazed by this technology marvel, which so much resembles something from a futuristic sci-fi movie.

In their comic book, Google claimed that the web is their home, and they “live on the web”. So its no surprise that Google is up working with various engineers making their applications compatible with Chrome. The latest Java Runtime release candidate fixed various Java related issues in Chrome, while Flash Player 10 preview, codenamed Astro, now also fully supports the Google browser.

A Video Object Manipulated in Realtime 3D

Chrome’s main competitor would be the recently previewed Shiretoko (aka Firefox 3.1) which is based on Gecko 1.9.1. It will be featuring TraceMonkey, which is a native code compiler for Mozilla’s JavaScript engine SpiderMonkey. This new engine is expected to go head to head with Chrome’s V8, meaning that if standards aren’t in place, our favorite site are going to fall to pieces.

While most sites (including Facebook) still have issues on Shiretoko, Chrome has all the advantage it needs to take over the #1 spot in Web Browsing technologies. For now you can feel safe and assured that your favorite sites will not break on Chrome anymore.

Microsoft had rushed to confirm this news, stating that it plans to shut down Ensemble after Halo Wars launch early next year. The Xbox 360 exclusive title is a spin-off to the immensely popular Halo franchise. Microsoft however claimed that the top management [of this studio], will form a new studio next year and continue to support and further develop the Halo Wars project.

While this move did come as a surprise, one can easily trace the origins to be revolving around Microsoft’s recent trails with its Xbox 360. The $1 billion warranty extension, and the recent price cuts (due to fact that PlayStation 3 was outselling the console for a couple of months now) had added to the woes of the software giant. While one can’t argue over the fact that Microsoft has indeed developed a strong position in the industry, it still has a lot more maturing to do, before it would be able to claim the throne.

The new features released are designed to enhance the functionality of mail labels. For example you can now rearrange the order of your left hand pane to your liking. Everything below the folder view is interchangeable giving you options to customize your mailbox view. Just drag and drop the contents as you like, and remove those annoying little boxes from your sights.

Another cool new feature is the ability to search through labels using keyboard shortcuts. Pressing ‘g’ followed by ‘l’ will trigger the Goto Label shortcut and you can then start typing the name of the label you want to go to, in the pop up box. And you now also have the option to set any color combination for the label by using a handy palette of colors. Not like you need a wide variety of colors as there were already plenty to choose from.

Checkout the official blog for more information, or if you are a Gmail user, then try them out yourself.

The new interface for Facebook expected to go public in October.

Facebook’s popularity grew tremendously, beating Orkut in August 2007, to become the No. 2nd Social Networking site on the planet. In April 2008, it had overtaken MySpace in terms of unique visitors every month and became the #1 social networking service on the Internet. (Source)

While founder Mark Zuckerberg had estimated about $350 million in revenues this year, VentureBeat estimate that nearly a $100 million will be due to its virtual economy. That is, the revenue generated by applications like Gifts. Mostly all the applications have now introduced their own virtual economy, in form of credits or points, all these add up to generate about a $100 million every year now… and this is still growing.

These relatively inexpensive virtual toys actually contribute to a major portion of Facebook’s revenue which also includes Social Ads. While a lot of free social networking applications are pooping up these days, Face book has proved it be a true leader when it comes to business strategy.

The new iPod nano-chromatic comes in 9 different colors with aluminium and glass finishing. It also features a built in voice recorder and an accelerometer which responds to motion. The best bit however was its price; the 8GB version retails at $149 while the 16GB variant goes for only $199.

This wasn’t the only surprise from the show, as Apple unexpectedly uncovered their next generation iPod Touch, declaring it the funnest iPod ever. The 2nd generation iPod Touch features a “stunningly thin, contoured stainless steel design” along with multi-touch input and (my favorite) support for full 3D games. The built in accelerometer can be used to as an input to games. It was also introduced at a lower price (due to lower capacity model) than the previous generations, with 8GB retailing at $229, 16GB for $299 and the 32GB model for $399.

As always, a new iPod also means a new iTunes. This edition of the Apple media player brings a grid based Library navigation made popular by Windows Media Player 11. Much like the default player for Windows, selecting Albums in Grid View, iTunes will displays your entire music library using cover art. Select Artists, Genres, or Composers and iTunes automatically creates groups of albums based on your selection in stacks.

Another new feature introduced is rather a Genius one. It works on the recommendation principles, and tags. Genius can generate a playlist on the fly, based on the music you are playing, or even show a side bar with related music from iTunes. You can download iTunes 8 here (direct link). If you are wondering how the new Zune 16 compares to the new iPods then Redmond Pie did a nice job. Dont forget to leave your comments below.

The web based game creation tool allows you to create a game by dragging and dropping objects into a 3-D world editor. There is a large library of objects and environments to choose from, including some basic primitives to particle systems. There is also an option to import images in the editor from your computer or the web.

The official press release states:

With an easy to use interface and innovative social features such as collaborative game development, a user-generated digital marketplace, and embed tags for viral game distribution, Wild Pockets gives game creators of all levels everything they need to create the next breakthrough game online.

Paul Preece, Founder/CEO of CasualCollective.com further added:

“The Wild Pockets platform provides fast and easy 3D content generation capabilities and makes it simple to distribute the games created. The platform could help us make the leap to next generation 3D casual games.”

While this promotes the concept of Open Source Gaming, there is still lots to cover to get to my Open Source Gaming paradise (will do a report on it soon). Sim Ops weren’t the first to present this concept either. Microsoft presented PopFly earlier this year that uses its Silverlight technology, and even export it to number of social networks including Facebook. Electronic Arts also has a SimsCarnival site where you can create your own game. And then there is XNA Game Studios, which is a set of tools for more professional game developers to easily create games for Windows or Xbox 360.

Wild Pockets is much simpler though, and builds on the concept of Social Networking. You can start building a game and invite your friend to join you as you both colaborate simultaniously. The technology is not aimed at hardcore console gamers but rather casual players on the PC. When your game is finalized, you can embed it on any website. It requires a special plugin to be installed in order to run. The company is releasing its developer tools today and expects a full launch in early 2009.

Feel free to share your comments about this, and stick around as I write about my idea of Open Source Gaming.

Prism applications maintain their own session and are not bounded to Firefox. So you can sign in as a different user in the same service at the same time. This is a huge advantage if you want to check two Gmail accounts at the same time. You can be logged in to both simultaneously.

The normal browser context menu also disappears leaving you with the pretty basic edit options (Cut/Copy/Paste etc). This however didn’t appeal to me as I wanted to use Ubiquity here. But since this is at a early development stage, we can hope to see that extensions would find their way into Prism. Note that prism does present an option to install addons but there aren’t any available at this time.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts about this new extension, which is pretty much an application on its own right.