Centipede and Asteroids on Xbox via Xbox LIVE Game Room
Come spring 2010, Microsoft plans to dust off a plethora of arcade titles and to make them available to Xbox console owners via the upcoming Xbox LIVE Game Room. At the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the past week, the Redmond company announced that Xbox LIVE Game Room would go live this spring and that it would bring to the table no less than 30 classics, including Centipede and Asteroids Deluxe.
“There’s a generation of people who grew up with a set of games like Centipede that are favorites,” says Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division. “They look almost like casual, fun games today, (but) at the time they were high-end, edgy games. Game Room is the idea of bringing that back to the market and bringing that to a very broad audience.” Read more
Invisibility One Step Closer?
Only a very small step mind you, as Japanese professor Yutaka Tamaru of Mie University unveils his newest creation, a transparent goldfish. Apparently the hapless creature was developed to make it easier for Japanese school students to study, so they wouldn’t have to cut them open, which has a certain irony considering some Japanese culinary practices… The skin and scales have no pigment so the heart, brain, eyes and other organs can clearly be seen. Since there’s no need for this animal to go under the knife it’s whole life cycle can be closely monitored and the good news for this specimen is that it is expected to live for around 20 years. Incidentally, this isn’t the first see-through animal developed in Japan and transparent frogs are apparently going to go on sale in the next few months.
Free Virus Protection from Microsoft goes Live
As reported earlier this year Microsoft’s very own free anti virus program, Security Essentials, has now finished its beta trials and is ready for download. The finished version doesn’t look significantly different from the beta but behind the scenes a various bugs and quirks have been fixed. First impressions are very good, it’s reasonably fast, unobtrusive and doesn’t hog resources and according to the experts provides a high degree of protection. Only time will tell if there are any gaps in it defences but if you’re a reasonably low risk user (you avoid dodgy websites, pirate downloads and opening unexpected attachments), and you’re unhappy with your present anti-virus program then it’s worth giving it a whirl. Incidentally, despite warnings about not getting along with other AV programs it didn’t seem to mind sharing disc space with Avast! and AVG on our test machines.
Infants Get Learning Lag from Watching TV
Infants who spend a lot of time in front of the TV may set themselves up for difficulties in learning later on in life, a new scientific research shows. It would appear that even babies under 1 or 2 years of age are capable of “zoning out” in front of the screen, and that this type of behavior may translate into less time spent with their parents, and, possibly, difficulties paying attention and learning when they grow a little older. The investigation was ordered and paid for by the LENA Foundation.
“We’ve known that television exposure during infancy is associated with language delays and attentional problems, but so far it has remained unclear why,” shared for LiveScience University of Washington School of Medicine professor of pediatrics Dimitri Christakis, who was also the lead researcher on the new study. Read more
12 Euphemisms Used to Mislead You
Here is a list of the 12 most misleading sets of words that we could find in use, most of them in the United States, which seems to have a real appetite for calling things by names they have nothing to do with. These are just a few examples.
Binocular Deprivation means no more no less than to sew an animal’s eyes shut during an experiment, for various purposes. The technique is widely used in research labs worldwide, and is meticulously described in each paper featuring the procedure.
Biosolids is just another word for sewage sludge, and is employed in official documents instead of other terms. This word, like many others from the list, is only meant to make a bad thing sound good, and has nothing to do with being politically correct. It’s all about PR and image. Read more
MS Firefox discovered!
Once the most preferred browser is Internet Explorer, Firefox, especially with the support of its plug-and users, and software developers are happy. Many independent programmers and users for Firefox, is developing its own plug-ins offer. In this way, and has made their introductions, and facilitate business users. The new Firefox add-ons that enhance the company’s very difficult for independent programmers, because these firms with IT giant Microsoft.
“Heavy on demand, we have to integrate Live Search to Firefox” and speaking of Live Search software manager Ray Debapriya own blog, Microsoft’s add-in was announced by the official. Read more
Description from Google, but …
Google announced yesterday lived and here we have a problem, all the sites listed in search results led to malicious sites were shown in the category. This problem enough damage to a web site has on it an attack description added.
Google, the official blog, the first statement, that they work together to identify malicious sites and non-profit StopBadware.org site occurs because of the announced list. StopBadware.org is that with their own blog pages, this claim was rejected. Summarized in the following definition was told: “Google’s problem is causing us to list the claim is false. Google the list of sites that identify themselves, and this list we know that has nothing to do. With Google, a new description to do is to call.” Read more
Windows Live Messenger 9.0 (2009) RTW
Microsoft is gearing up to make available for download the gold version of Windows Live Messenger 9.0/2009. The Redmond company has so far managed not to indicate a delivery deadline for the next version of its instant messaging client. In this regard, Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc only mentioned that the next version of Windows Live Messenger, along with the additional services and applications making up the Windows Live Wave 3 release, would start being rolled out to end users soon.
“Windows Live Messenger, the No. 1 instant messaging service worldwide with more than 330 million active customers, now includes more personalization, a “what’s new” feed with updates from contacts across the Web, drag-and-drop photo sharing in the conversation window, a favorites list to designate the most important contacts, and group IM to chat simultaneously with up to 20 people at the same time,” Microsoft revealed. Read more
Insight on the Virtual Earth
Live Search Maps/Virtual Earth has grown with the integration of content from Photosynth. Essentially, Microsoft is now integrating synths into its mapping, location and search platform. This means that Virtual Earth users will no longer be able to explore only aerial, Bird’s Eye and satellite imagery, but also 3D environments put together with 2D pictures with various locations around the world, namely synths. Microsoft has blended together two of its services making available Photosynth content from Live Search Maps.
“In order to find Photosynths in Live Search Maps you’ll search for a location. In the welcome pane, you’ll see a link for ‘Explore Collections’ which you click and begin seeing all kinds of collections. Read more
Live Season for FIFA 2009
EA Sports has recently announced that it plans to introduce a new update system, called Adidas Live Season, which should bring the characteristics of the in-game players in line with those of real life players. The service will have a subscription price which is not yet determined and will cover the most important leagues present in FIFA 2009.
It seems that the Live Season service will gather player data as it is provided by the same soccer experts who now determine the initial stats of the players. They will now watch the players perform on the pitch and rate their appearances as being bad, poor, neutral, good or excellent. Based on the centralized ratings, the attributes will be modified by the update service from EA Sports. Read more
