Author: Nicholas Deleon

EXCLUSIVE PHOTO~!

There will be a PSP 2. No, not some sort of halfway sequel, à la the PSP Go, but an actual, holy smokes PSP 2. That’s the rumor, and you’d have to assume that’s the case. But the specifics of the rumor, today’s incarnation of the rumor, that is, is that the device will be “[expletive] powerful.” That’s pretty powerful!

How powerful is “[expletive] powerful”? We’re talking a four-core Cell processor (the PS3 has an eight-core CPU).

Other juicy bits of Internet gossip:

• It will have two cameras

• It will have a touchsreen, if not touchscreens

• There won’t be any physical media, but a 3G wireless connection instead

Those are the big bullet points.

One word of warning: it probably won’t be at E3 next month. Apparently certain developers have started receiving demo units, but they’ve been sworn to secrecy in the form of a non-disclosure agreement. A lot of good those did, what with all these leaks…

The most shocking thing about the news that there will be a second season of “WCG Ultimate Gamer” on SyFy is that there was ever a first season. Could have fooled me. But alas, it has been picked up for another year. This calls for a celebration of some sort. Wee!

Yes, the network now best known for carrying WWE SmackDown (well, starting this fall) will air eight episodes of “WCG Ultimate Gamer” beginning this August. It sounds like the typical reality show: there’s a house, there’s people in the house who may or may not get on with each other, and they solve their differences by [filling in the blank]. The blank being filled in here is that they’re all gamers. Presumably they’ll solve conflicts by playing best of 10 in Super Street Fighter IV. I mean, that’s how I’d run the show; I don’t know if that’s actually what happens.

Says the fancy press release:

The challenges in “WCG Ultimate Gamer” include dramatic video game battles using Samsung’s leading edge technology and real-life scenarios inspired by best-selling games. Over eight weeks, the next Ultimate Gamer will need to demonstrate top-notch skills while excelling under the pressure of head-to-head elimination rounds and successfully navigating the drama and twists of this unique reality TV show.

During the first season, contestants faced large-scale real-life challenges that took them beyond the game. For example, in the episode featuring the game Rock Band, the gamers had to form a band, create a look, learn to play a song by The Donnas, and then perform it using real instruments in front of a live audience as the band judged their performance.

We all know that the best reality show in history was “Bug Juice” on the Disney Channel. Every other show feels so empty compared to the drama of the one team against the other team. (I actually did like that show, so if that came off negatively, well, it wasn’t supposed to.)

The winner of the show gets $100,000. That’s probably pre-tax, though, so…

Oh, and starting today you can visit the show’s Web site and vote for who you want to be the twelfth contestant. They have 11 set in stone, and it’s your job to pick number 12. That’s the young lady up there who’s in the lead as of 1:30pm ET.

Is there an age limit to this show? I don’t know if I’m as good at Rock Band as those whiz kids, but Man Alive would I be annoying. I’m cackling at the idea as I type these words. MWAHHHHAAHHH~!

Do you have a nook or the less elegantly named iRex DR800SG? If so, get thee to a Barnes & Noble store to participate in the new Fun and Free e-books promotion. It’s a pretty simple concept: you waltz into a Barnes & Noble store, get an access code, then download a free e-book. Done and done.

The promotion runs for the next five weeks, and is also compatible with the B&N e-reader software that runs on your laptop, BlackBerry, or iPhone (or whatever).

The first free book is “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series #1)” by Alexander McCall Smith.

Nothing wrong with free summertime reading.

Looks like your car is one dumb “hacker” kid away from careening into a pole, or, more comically, into a big bale of hay. Researchers have demonstrated how to take control of a car’s engine, brakes, and fiddle with the instruments. Is there anything you can do about this?

Yeah, actually. The attacks require physical access to the car, so the only people who would be able to cause you grief would be, I don’t know, your family, your friends, and your mechanic.

Cars aren’t connected to the Internet, so you don’t have to worry about some Russian hacker holding your car’s ignition system hostage after a success phishing attack.

The team of researchers come from the University of California San Diego and the University of Washington. By inserting fake data packets into cars’ electronic control unit using a piece of software called CarShark, they were able to cause all sorts of chaos.

In one attack, the team transformed the instrument panel into a clock that counted down to zero from 60 seconds. In the final seconds the horn honks and as zero is reached the car engine shuts off and the doors are locked.

That’s simultaneously hilarious and terribly dangerous, especially considering that most (all?) new cars have enough on-board electronics to something something. I’ve sat here for a good ten minutes trying finish that thought, but here we are, unfinished.

But again, unless the attacker has physical access to your car and knows how to write code, you probably don’t have anything to worry about.

via BBC News

You’re an animal. You’re a living creature not too dissimilar from a chimpanzee—well, I guess chimps don’t wear sneakers—, and yet you constantly fight your natural instincts. Like, you’re meant to be awake, alert and on the ready, during the daytime. The moment the sun begins to set you should be winding down your day. If the sun is down, you should be down, sleeping a deep sleep and giving your body’s chemistry a chance to gear up for a new day of hunting and gathering. But no! You lie in bed late at night, staring into your brand new iPad, destroying your circadian rhythm in the process. Look out, there’s a lion behind you!

It’s not a new story, but there’s a very real danger of today’s technology destroying your ability to sleep. While it’s probably unrealistic to expect people these days to wake up at sunrise and go to bed at sunset, your reading www.somewebsite.com on your iPhone or iPad or laptop while in bed really isn’t a good idea. The deal is that your brain reacts to the amount of light that enters your eyes. When there’s low light, or no light, your brain goes, “Oh, it must be nighttime, time to shut down.” So if it’s midnight and your body is physically tired, holding an iPad (or whatever) six inches from your face will totally screw everything up. Your brain sorta freaks out: “Well, it’s late, I’ve been conscious for 15 hours, and yet there’s still an incredible amount of light coming through the eyes. Guess I need to stay awake.”

That’s not healthy.

You have alternatives! If you find yourself having difficulty falling asleep at night, try the following:

• Leave your gadgets on your dresser. You don’t need to be on Twitter while in bed (no one reads your tweets anyway).

• If you need to be “doing something” in bed, break out a book—they still make regular books, you know!—and read a few pages. The less light your lamp outputs, the better. (Electronic readers like the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble nook are fine, too, since they emit zero light.)

• Count sheep!

I don’t know if that last suggestion is legitimate or not. But really, when it’s time to go to sleep, just go to sleep already. You’re only hurting yourself when you do otherwise, bub.

Flickr’d

What to make of this WebOS exploit? It was discovered by the Intrepidus Group security firm, and it has to do with the way the operating system handles SMS messages. Basically, WebOS doesn’t perform a common security check on incoming SMS messages, meaning that any craftily formed SMS can essentially take out the entire phone.

There’s a video that explains what’s going on. That’s it up there, yes.

It should be noted that this flaw only affects WebOS versions older than 1.4, so if you’re plugging along on an older revision of the operating—why?—be sure to upgrade ASAP.

Shame, too, since WebOS is the nicest-looking of the modern phone operating systems (Android, iPhone OS, and BlackBerry).

via Bit-Tech (love the new layout, guys!)

It took WWE almost two years to release an iPhone App, but here we are. That’s right, today the company, which fancies itself as some sort of catch-all, cutting-edge entertainment juggernaut, has bequeathed upon the world WWE Latest [iTunes link], a 99 cent App for the iPhone and iPod touch. It’s fairly basic, but should help those of you itching for, I don’t know, Diva photos or Raw results. You do know your iPhone has a perfectly viable Web browser, right?

No, 99 cents isn’t a lot of money—it’s pretty much free, guys—but what would compel someone to pay one cent for something that’s freely available via Safari (or Opera Mini)?

There’s not too much going on in the App. You’ve got News, Photos, and Videos to choose from, and that’s it. Again, you can find news, photos, and videos on the Internet just fine.

For something that took two years to come out, it’s sure a little lackluster.

You look at other sports Apps, most notably the MLB App [iTunes link], and think, “Well, now this is something that I can show my friends.” It really makes use of the iPhone’s hardware, whereas WWE Latest seems like WWE.com in a self-contained window.

Push the cruiserweights, etc.

I guess Apple is serious about gaming now. It just announced, as one of its many iPhone “pillars,” the development of GameCenter, which our man on the scene, Greg Kumparak, described as “Xbox Live for the iPhone.” Match-making, leaderboards, achievement points, the works.

You don’t see The Stig driving and texting, do you?

A new study from the University of Utah suggests that a very small percentage of people are able to drive safely while using a cellphone. The actual percentage, 2.5 percent of the population, isn’t high enough to affect policy, but it’s interesting nonetheless. Well, kinda.

The study looked at 200 undergraduates, and had them carry out one task, simulated driving, while subjecting them to a second task, listening to a cellphone conversation involving numbers and memorization.

97.5 percent of the kids couldn’t do both effectively—the second task overwhelmed their ability to carry out the first task.

Of course that means 2.5 percent can do both effectively. Meanwhile, 95 percent of people think they’re a part of that 2.5 percent group.

Yes, I just made that last stat up, but when you consider that, at any given time, some 10 percent of U.S. drivers are on the road while on their phone, and that nearly 30 percent of all traffic accidents last year were caused by cellphone-using drivers…

Just don’t drive and use your phone at the same time. I really don’t see why this is such an issue.

You can read the entire study here (PDF).

Real or fake? It’s a question often asked in the San Fernando Valley, and it’s been thrown around quite a bit lately with respect to videos purporting to show off the WP7S interface. Here is yet another such video, showing the interface on an HTC Touch Diamond. If, indeed, this is fake, may I ask why? Why put the effort into making such a video? Use your video-making talents for good, not evil.

The Transportation Security Administration, ominously known as the TSA, wants to be able to track your cellphone while you go through airport security. It wants to do so in order to better understand how airport security lines work in order to streamline the process. That’s the official reason. We could always jump to conclusions and assume the TSA just wants to know where you are so the government can control your every move. Not even I am that conspiratorial.

The device, which was developed by researchers at Purdue University (and has been on trial at Indianapolis International Airport), keeps track of cellphones’ unique serial number. Every phone out there has a unique number, so officials are able to record, to a pretty accurate degree, how look it took you to go through security. If the findings show that it takes, like, an hour to go from beginning to end, well, then maybe something needs to be fixed about that particular security area.

Not all phones are set to broadcast their serial number all day long, though, so the system is only able to keep tabs on around 10 percent of all passengers. Not everyone has a cellphone (I don’t, woo!), not everyone’s phone is turned on while they go through security, etc.

Again, the idea is to map the situation at the security line. All the information the system collects is deleted as quickly as possible. So they say, of course.

It’s sorta similar to the story, from a few days ago, that showed that the average person only travels within a six mile radius 93 percent of the time. I used to drive 10 miles to go to high school, so already I’m cooler than the study suggests. Well, was cooler.

Wiki’d

In the fine tradition of lazily naming any sort of controversy after Watergate, I hereby present AppGate. It seems that certain iPhone App developers are paying low-rent “review” sites for favorable reviews, thereby creating the false impression that their App is cool and everything.

Wired gets the gold stat for unearthing this scandal, which has centered on two sites (so far), ThePhoneAppReview.com and AppCraver.com. The gist of it is that these sites charge App developers for the “privilege” of being reviewed. You want us to review your App? Sure, just give us $X-Amount first. That is literally the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life, and I don’t use the word “literally” in the watered down sense of the word. No, I mean it’s the Billy Madison most insanely idiotic thing I’ve ever heard.

The money comes in one of a few forms. Sites will charge developers in order to “expedite” any review. So, Site A asks Joe Developer for $X-Amount in order to review his App before it reviews Jane Developer’s App. (Funny story: I remember once being asked by a public relations person where their App review was in my review queue. Amazing, considering I don’t have an iPhone and never agreed to any App review in the first place!)

Sometimes a site will say, “Well, we’ll review your App, but you need to pay in order to help defray the costs of writing said review.” If that’s the case, an App developer should merely say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Then again, I’m not an iPhone App developer, so I don’t know the pressures these folks are under to get the word out there about their cool new App.

Flickr

Oh man, strap yourself in for a complete mind-freak. THQ Wireless will release next month Star Wars: Light Saber Duel, an iPhone App that works with Bluetooth. You can see where this is going. Since it works with Bluetooth, you’ll be able to duel your other iPhone-owning friends. Adios, productivity.

You can almost picture all the videos that will be posted all over the Internet. It’s a real shame that this wasn’t released in time for SXSWi, because I think the whole conference would have stopped functioning. People at the digg party flailing about, people trying to Lightsaber duel the bouncer who wouldn’t let them into the Facebook party, and so on.

No idea how much the App will cost, but I imagine THQ Wireless could charge, like, $100 and people would still buy it in droves.

As luck would have it, I’ll be in the market for a brand-new phone in the coming weeks. Terribly exciting, yes. But there’s a bit of a problem: the two “biggest” phones out there, the iPhone and all those Android-based ones, rub me the wrong way. Longtime readers will know that I’m fairly neurotic, sorta like George Costanza from Seinfeld. Does the phrase Jerkstore mean anything to you? That’s 100 percent me. (Yes, the irony in linking to Google-owned YouTube is not lost on me.) So what’s a person to do when, for reasons I’ll describe, he wants nothing to do with Apple or Google phones?

I’ve had an iPod touch since last autumn, and there’s no way I could envision using that as a phone. It’s just so cumbersome, I think. I feel like I’m holding a brick in my hand whenever I use it to check WoW.com before going to bed. Plus, I’ve soured on Apple’s attitude in recent years. Again, George Costanza says hi.

On to Google. There’s another company I’ve grown tired of in recent years, the most recent offense thinking it can bully China—China!—into bending to its will under the guise of the free flow of information. Does Google think it’s the East India Company, making demands left, right, and center?

I simply don’t like the companies enough to support them in this fashion.

What are my options?

People love the iPhone, but again: it’s not for me, and that’s based on using the iPod touch for several months. The Droid got high marks, and the Nexus One should be hitting Verizon Wireless (the only wireless provider that has reliable service in my area) in the next few days, but do I really want to spend money supporting Big, Bad Google? Note that I already support Big, Bad Google with my use of Gmail, and don’t think I haven’t thought of weening myself off that!

Or maybe I should take a ridiculous stand and just go without a phone from here on out?

Don’t get mad at me—I wanted to go to GDC, but The Man said no. So now we’re relying on CNET to bring us word of Epic Games’ efforts to bring the Unreal Engine to the iPhone. You may not have even played Unreal for several years, but plenty of big games are based on the engine. Mass Effect and BioShock are based on versions of the engine, as is EA’s upcoming Medal of Honor. Just think: playing Unreal on your iPhone. It’s almost… unreal.

The engine is written entirely for the PC, and it goes from PC to Mac to iPhone. It’s quite a bit of work to port over, yes. Just think: on the PC, the engine can count on multi-core processors to drive the whole show. One core for this, one core for that. The iPhone 3GS, fast as it is (by smartphone standards), cannot compare with the likes of the Intel Core i7. Breaking news, I know.

It does seem that the hardest part is getting all those high-resolution textures down to iPhone size. Epic uses something called DXT to compress the textures, a technology that Apple doesn’t support on the iPhone. So Epic has to both shrink the textures beforehand and then drop the quality by quite a bit. Will you really care when you’re playing the latest FPS on your iPhone at a steady 30 frames per second? I doubt it.

This is the Unreal Engine 3.0 we’re talking about, remember, not some 1999 technology nonsense.

Anyone who’s been to SXSW in the past few years, ever since the iPhone’s release, knows that the AT&T network absolutely explodes during the festival. Texts, if they ever make it through, take hours; calls are dropped at an alarming rate, even by AT&T standards; and Internet access is essentially impossible. It’s hard for AT&T to keep up because Austin, any other week of the year, isn’t absolutely flooded with iPhone users mucking about, asking where the Facebook party is, or if they’re on the list for the Gawker party. (I’m on the list, but I’m not going this year so it doesn’t matter.) The point is, AT&T has its hands full that week, so let’s give them an A for effort for trying to prevent another iPhone meltdown this year.

SXSW starts on March 12, and runs through March 21. It’s a couple of days worth of tech, music, movies, and open bars. It’s sort of an exaggeration, but every single attendee rocks the iPhone. It brings AT&T’s network, already sorta meh, to it knees. This year, though, AT&T has prepared itself for the huge influx of users.

AT&T has installed a distributed antenna system at the Austin Convention Center. In a perfect world, it adds the equivalent of eight cell towers to the covered area. AT&T has also three temporary cell sites for good measure. These things are typically installed during big, but temporary events. Think Super Bowl or, well, large conventions.

The company also says it has “added fiber-optic connections to more than quadruple the backhaul capacity of each of the eight cell sites that serve the event area, and temporary sites will also be served by extensive backhaul.” Whatever that means!

Fingers crossed, every SXSW attendee will be able to FourSquare till their battery dies. That’s all you can ask for.

Flickr

At what point do you consider something “unreasonable”? Let’s say you’re pulled over while speeding—do the police have the right to search your mobile phone? And let’s say they do, and they find other verboten material on the phone? Should you also be on the hook for that, on top of your speeding ticket? It’s a pretty important debate, and it’s one that going on right now.

A judge in San Mateo county, in California, is in the midst of a just such a case. A man there went to buy 30 BlackBerry phones, something that piqued the curiosity of the store clerk. The clerk called the police, and he was arrested on charges of felony identity fraud. His iPhone was confiscated, too,

There’s a case going on right now in California where a man was arrested at a store for felony identity fraud. His phone was later confiscated and searched by police without a warrant. There’s really no law on the books that says police can or cannot search your phone during an arrest. Some people make the case, “Well, if the police can search you wallet, then why shouldn’t they be able to search your phone?” What if you password protect the phone—do the police have the right to crack the password?

I think the overall issue when you deal with the intersection of high technology (let’s just consider your mobile phone to be “high technology”) and law is that law simply hasn’t evolved to the point where it adequately takes technology into account. Let’s say there’s a law that covers wire taps on phone lines—does that cover mobile phones? What about Skype, or instant messages? IRC? Message boards? Can a police officer sit outside a café while running something ettercap, capture you planning some sort of bank heist, then arrest you on the spot?

I actually had this conversation with an Electronic Frontier Foundation senior staff attorney at CES. The gist is, yeah, law simply doesn’t take into account of all the complexities of today’s technology. Let’s say you’re brought to court by the one of the record labels, and you try to argue your case in front of a 70-year-old judge who wouldn’t know the difference between “upload” and “download” if his life were on the line. It’s going to take quite a while before people with more than a basic understanding of technology are sitting on courtroom benches.

The mood in Barcelona must be somber, for the city’s team lost to Atletico Madrid yesterday. Granted, Atletico Madrid is Barcelona’s bogey team, but come on, Atletico Madrid?! Team CrunchGear could beat those guys on the pitch. Still, the Mobile World Congress soldiers on. Here’s something that caught my interest—something aside from Windows Phone!—is the Vodaphone 150. It’s for the developing world.

Vodaphone will launch the phone in places such as India, Turkey (since when are India and Turkey developing countries?), and eight African countries, including Ghana and Kenya. It will launch at “well below” $15.

The idea behind the phone is that, as mobiles become increasingly important all over the world, it’s vital to get them into as many hands as possible. Hence, the phone’s inexpensive. You see, in places outside of the comforts of San Franciso and Williamsburg, where people use their phone to play Four Square and post silly videos to Twitter, mobile phones are used to access banking services, medical information (an afternoon SMS saying, “remember to take the blue pill at 5pm today”), and other such legitimate outlets.

Can you imagine a day without access to the Internet at this point? That’s sorta how mobile phones are in these places.

Vertu, French for “virtue,” has a pink phone just in time for Valentine’s Day. It’s the Constellation Ayxt, only it’s pink. Fascinating.

There’s really not too much to say about the phone. It originally launched late last year, and it’s Vertu’s first “fold phone,” which surely must impress those of you living in the year 2006.

I’m going to venture a guess: if you buy your lady friend a pink phone for Valentine’s Day, you’re probably a jerk.