Author: Sean Patterson

Over the past few weeks it has become almost mandatory that every office with a video camera create a Harlem Shake video. It’s a trend that has hit Groupon, The Daily Show, and even Google and Facebook have gotten in on the silly action.

Quite frankly, it’s beginning to get out of hand. The trend might have his its peak this weekend, though, as Nintendo of America finally released its Harlem Shake video.

Now, you might expect Nintendo to lead with Mario, since that character is one of the most recognizable in the world. However, during the company’s Nintendo Direct last week it was declared that 2013 will be the “Year of Luigi,” with titles such as Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon coming later this year.

So, Nintendo instead used Luigi and lots of green in their Harlem Shake video. Be on the lookout for Yoshi and Link plushies, but make sure you also spot the bearded guy in the back. His dead-arm flailing is really the highlight of the video.

For the handheld console market, price is everything. Both the games and the portable consoles themselves cost less than their living-room counterparts.

Both the Nintendo 3DS and the PlayStation Vita were considered overpriced when they launched, and both consoles failed to sell the way Sony or Nintendo would have wanted. Nintendo promptly dropped the price of the 3DS last year, leading to increased sales and making the 3DS the most popular console in Japan. Sony, on the other had, had maintained that their price was fair for the Vita’s powerful on-the-go gaming.

Today, though, Sony has finally capitulated to the demand of the portable console market and the pressure from Nintendo. The company has announced that it is dropping the price of the PS Vita in Japan from ¥ 29,980 (around $323) to ¥19,980 (around $215).

This pricing announcement comes just days before Sony is expected to announce its newest PlayStation console at an event in New York on Wednesday, February 20. The hype for that event is immense, and a Vita price drop for the U.S. and Europe can now be added to the list of possible announcements for the 20th.

Even if a worldwide price drop is imminent, U.S. gamers shouldn’t expect a $100 price drop for the Vita. The console is already relatively less expensive in the U.S. than in Japan. A $50 price drop is more likely, which would put the Wi-Fi model of the console at around $200 – the same price as Nintendo’s 3DS XL.

When Bungie abandoned the Halo franchise, gamers worried that the future of the series would be in jeopardy. Luckily, Halo landed in the capable hands of 343 studios, and the legend of Master Chief will continue for years to come.

What could possibly entice Bungie into giving up Halo, its baby and one of the most successful game series ever? This week the studio finally revealed what it has been working on for these past few years.

Destiny is the next title from the studio, which released a short video documentary filled with concept art, story teasers, and a very few second-long snippets of gameplay.

Destiny will be a first-person shooter and feature science fiction elements such as space ships, aliens, and future technology. It will take place on a post-apocalyptic Earth in which humans live in one city that was saved and is protected by a giant sphere called “The Traveler.”

Though the world-building stuff sounds similar to Halo, the gameplay will not put characters into the shoes of “The One.” Players will instead take on the role of a guardian of the human city. Three different character classes are available, the Titan, the Hunter, and the Warlock. Warlocks will use “magic” derived from the power of The Traveler.

The game will be always-online and feature multiplayer gameplay that shares qualities with MMO gaming and Borderlands-style co-op. Players will group up to take on dungeons such as derelict space ships and moon bases. Bungie expects players to be playing Destiny, or its sequels or updates, for at least the next ten years.

Backwards compatibility is a popular feature for new game consoles. The ability to have one console under the TV that can play multiple generations of games is valuable for a certain kind of gamer.

The rumored hardware architecture of Sony’s new PlayStation and Microsoft’s new Xbox makes it unlikely the new consoles will be backwards compatible. The Wall Street Journal, however, is reporting that Sony’s new console may provide backwards compatibility by streaming games through the cloud.

Citing “people familiar with [Sony’s] plans,” the Journal states that the next PlayStation console will offer PlayStation 3 games and stream them to users online.

This rumor seems credible because Sony last year purchased cloud gaming company Gaikai for $380 million. At the time, Andrew House, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, said that the company would use Gaikai to “deliver a world-class cloud-streaming service that allows users to instantly enjoy a broad array of content ranging from immersive core games with rich graphics to casual content anytime, anywhere on a variety of internet-connected devices.”

If the rumor is true and the next PlayStation console does include streaming games, the challenge for Sony will be keeping server and bandwidth costs down. Just last year, Gaikai competitor OnLive had to re-form its company and lay off half of its staff as a measure to stave off bankruptcy.

LinkedIn, the social network for professional networking, is set up to be the online, social alternative to the old resume system. Though the website as a whole is set up to get people hired, the social network also provides a streamlined way for users to search for their dream job.

LinkedIn today announced that it has updated its job search page with a new look and new features.

Job searchers can now use advanced search options to narrow their search by industry, position, country, and zip code. A salary level filter is also available for users who subscribe to LinkedIn’s “Job Seeker Premium” service.

The new layout also prominently displays a “Jobs you may be interested in” section (with a sponsored sub-section) that surfaces jobs related to a LinkedIn member’s talents and previous work. A section at the bottom of the page now also lists companies where LinkedIn connections are employed, and a sidebar section automatically provides new results for saved job searches.

The social network has created a SlideShare presentation that highlights the major changes. A small privacy warning before viewing it, however: SlideShare announced earlier this week that its presentations can now include new tracking tools that can track metrics such as how long an individual user spends on each slide.

A meteorite only a few meters long fell to Earth above Chelyabinsk, Russia early this morning. The shockwave caused by the object shattered windows and caused hundreds of injuries.

A video of the event has quickly become one of the most-watched videos on YouTube today. It shows the object appear in the sky over the Russian city and break up in a flash of bright light.

While astronomers today were watching asteroid 2012 da14 as it made its close miss of the Earth, the object depicted in the video was too small for scientists to have predicted today’s event.

“Current information, which is not yet complete nor confirmed, points to a small asteroid,” said Detlef Koschny, head of Near-Earth Object activity at the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Space Situational Awareness (SSA) program. “There is no way it could have been predicted with the technical means available today. What can be said with near certainty is that this object has no connection with asteroid 2012 DA14.”

The SSA program, along with NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Program (“Spaceguard”) are both searching the sky for objects that could pose a danger to Earth in the future. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx program will launch a probe in 2016 that will visit an asteroid that has a 1 in 2,400 chance of hitting the planet in the late 22nd century.

“Today’s event is a strong reminder of why we need continuous efforts to survey and identify near-Earth objects,” said Thomas Reiter, ESA’s director of Human Spaceflight and Operations. “Our SSA programme is developing a system of automated optical telescopes that can detect asteroids and other objects in solar orbits.”

(Image courtesy Eumetsat/ESA)

The U.K.‘s Food Standards Agency (FSA) today revealed that horse meat was found during the DNA testing of beef products. The beef products tested would have been found in school and restaurant meals.

The DNA testing, so far, covers 2,501 samples. Of these, 29 of the samples were found to be positive for presence of horse DNA at or above the level of 1%.

“Since this incident began on 16 January, businesses have been carrying out a large number of tests,” said Catherine Brown, FSA Chief Executive. “We said that industry should share those results with us, and the public, and we asked for the first results to be with us today. The results so far date from when businesses began their testing four weeks ago. They include results which were received by companies up to around 10am this morning.”

Companies were asked to test composite beef products, such as burgers. The FSA report shows that horse meat was found in beef burgers, beef lasagne, and spaghetti bolognese.

Though those 29 positive samples make up less than 2% of all the samples tested, that’s still too much for the FSA.

“We’ve asked industry to test for horse DNA down to a level of 1%,” said Brown. “There are two reasons for this. First, that’s a pragmatic level above which we think any contamination would be due to either gross incompetence or deliberate fraud; it’s not going to be accidental. Second, some laboratories can only test accurately down to a level of 1%.

“But that does not mean that we’re not concerned with, or that we accept, levels below 1%. In terms of faith groups, there remains a significant issue about trace levels of other species below 1%. So we have a separate programme of work under way with Defra to look at the issues around that, too.”

The horse meat scandal in the U.K. began in January, when horse meat was found in beef products sold in Ireland.

Though the cases were not explicitly linked to the horse meat scandal, police this week have arrested several individuals from the Peter Boddy Slaughterhouse in Todmorden, West Yorkshire. Police have also conducted related raids in Hull and Tottenham, where they collected “computers and documentary evidence”, as well as “meat samples.”

The San Francisco Zoo this week announced that a rare sumatran tiger cub was born on Sunday, February 10.

The cub hasn’t been named yet and even its gender won’t be known for some time. It is currently spending time bonding with its mother, Leanne, at the Lion House in the Zoo. The cub’s father, Larry, is continuing to live a normal zoo tiger’s life.

The Lion House has been closed “until further notice,” and it will be a while before the cub will be on display for the public.

The announcement of the birth came via the San Francisco Zoo’s Twitter and Facebook pages.

Follow @sfzoo

San Francisco Zoo
@sfzoo

Congrats to our Sumatran tigers Leanne and Larry on the birth of their cub last Sunday!! http://t.co/2bQ9wK7phttp://t.co/Y7Y6tskp

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A San Francisco Chronicle report on the event quoted a San Francisco Zoo zookeeper as saying that Leanne is “responding very well to motherhood” and grooming the cub.

Sumatran Tigers are considered “critically endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The worldwide population of the species is estimated by the group to be less than 700 tigers, total. That minimal population is still declining due to the loss of the tigers’ habitat in Sumatra, a western Indonesian island.

(Image courtesy the San Francisco Zoo)

Last week, Red Thread Games Kickstarted the sequel and finale to its The Longest Journey series.

The developers promised to create Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey, a new tale featuring protagonist Zoë Castillo. The game will supposedly feature three different playable characters, a 3D point-and-click interface, and an “interactive and living world” that combines bits of cyberpunk and “magical fantasy.”

This week, with over 90% of the $850,000 goal funded, Red Thread has updated the game’s Kickstarter page and provided a more in-depth look at the early development of Chapters. The new video features developers showing off a playable version of the game. Though the already looks servicable, Red Thread was quick to preface the video with the statement that the gameplay and graphics shown are from a very early prototype version of the game and “does not reflect the final quality of the art, animations, frame-rate, or UI.”

Earlier this week, Namco Bandai released an action-packed trailer for the upcoming Star Trek video game based on the rebooted J.J. Abrams movie franchise. It appeared to imitate

A new look at the game released today shows that the game won’t be completely a cover-based shooter (though it still appears much of it will be). Brian Miller, SVP at Paramount Pictures narrates the video and talks a bit about the co-op aspect of the game that allows players to take on the role of both Kirk and Spock.

It turns out that the co-op characters will have different play styles and abilities. While Kirk focuses on honing his phaser skills and appears to play very similarly to a Mass Effect 3 Commander Shepherd, Spock is able to use stealth and perform Vulcan nerve pinch takedowns to defuse situations.

Since the game is scheduled to come out on April 23 – one month before the release of Star Trek Into Darkness – Star Trek fans shouldn’t expect it to have any spoilers about the upcoming movie. There will be plenty of Gorn blasting, though. Also, if the the developers have any sense they will have included a crafting system that allows players to create their own Gorn cannon.

It’s still unknown whether the Star Trek video game will be fun or a classic thrown-together movie tie-in. The animations and graphics don’t seem spectacular, but the ability to stealthily perform a Vulcan nerve pinch is at least evidence that there will be one good thing in the game.

Anyone over the age of about 25 will remember Tamagotchis. The little electronic keychain pets became very popular for a few year in the late 90s. Caring for, disciplining (smacking), and eventually neglecting the virtual animals was a short-lived fad that spawned imitation toys and an anime TV show.

Since that time, the toys settled into a comfortable niche market while staying relatively popular in Japan. Now, though, Namco Bandai is bringing back Tamagotchis, this time to the devices we hold even more dear than our keychains.

Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. was released this week for Android smartphones.

Fans of the original “games” will be happy to learn that the character designs of the Tamagotchis has not improved significantly since they were first introduced. The major upgrades are that the pets are now in color and are made up of a (very) few extra pixels. This appears to be a conscious decision on the part of the developers.

It’s a free app that can be downloaded through Google Play by Android users in the U.S. and Canada. It features the original “characters” in the series and allows users to collect Tamagotchi wallpapers or share their virtual pets via Facebook.

As a slice of nostalgia, Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. is sure to be installed on thousands of smartphones in the coming weeks. What that game needs to become long-lasting, however, is a home screen widget. That way, users can see the pile of poo their creature has left on the floor every time they unlock their smartphone.

That seems like a silly headline until you realize that LG’s 55-inch OLED TVs sell for over $10,000. That means those 100 TV sets brought in over $1 million for LG.

The Korean electronics manufacturer has begun selling pre-orders for its OLED TVs, which it debuted at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. At the time, the TVs were reported to cost $12,000 and rumored to begin shipping in March 2013.

Now, Reuters is reporting that over 100 pre-orders have already been logged.

While LG’s OLED TV sets are expensive, early adopters of technology are used to paying a premium for such showpieces. The cost of the TVs comes from new manufacturing processes, and the difficulty of packing in the OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology into an ultra-thin screen where LCD (liquid-crystal display) screens were once found. The new OLED TV screens are, according to LG, only 4mm thick.

LG’s Korean rival Samsung was rumored last year to be preparing to launch its own lineup of OLED TVs before the end of 2012, but that prediction didn’t pan out. Samsung did, however, show off a curved OLED TV set at CES 2013, leading to speculation that the company is more interested in implementing the display technology into its Android smartphones.

(via BGR)

Angry Birds is popular. How popular? Well, what if I told you that Rovio has managed to take its first three mobile games, package them for consoles, price them at $20, and sell over one million copies?

That’s precisely what Activision and Rovio have announced today. Angry Birds Trilogy for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo 3DS has sold over one million copies worldwide.

The game, released last fall, combines Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, and Angry Birds Rio. DLC for the title that provides over 100 new levels has already been released for the title.

Since the title has seen such success on consoles, Rovio has now decided to put Angry Birds Trilogy on all modern consoles. The developer has announced that the game will be coming to Nintendo’s Wii and Wii U consoles sometime during 2013.

“It was certainly satisfying to see Angry Birds gameplay adapt so well to other platforms in 2012,” said Petri Järvilehto, EVP of Games at Rovio. “The features specific to the Wii U are very intriguing to us, so we’re excited to release this version to fans.”

No doubt the Wii U’s touchscreen GamePad controller will be better suited to the Angry Birds game design than more standard console controllers. Also, off-TV GamePad play would provide an experience similar to the one people can get on smartphones. For Free.

Today at around 2:20 pm EST an asteroid named 2012 da14 will come within 17,200 miles of the surface of Earth. Almost one year ago NASA was able to determine that the asteroid definitely does not pose a danger to the planet, at least not on this approach.

With the asteroid’s approach so near and the public’s growing awareness of the event, NASA has released another video to try and reassure people that doomsday is not on the way. It’s similar to the “Why the World Didn’t End Yesterday” video the agency released more than a week before the Maya Apocalypse doomsday scenarios predictably fell flat. Besides the obvious duty to assuage public fears, it’s clear NASA finds it valuable to have a record of using science to make predictions that actually come true.

The new video features James Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, and Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for the OSIRIS-REx mission, describing just how scientists know da14 isn’t a danger (hint: they use math) and what an exciting event today’s record-setting close flyby is for astronomers. The OSIRIS-REx mission is scheduled to launch a probe in 2016 that will visit an asteroid that actually might hit the Earth in the late 22nd century.

NASA will be streaming live commentary of the asteroid’s approach starting at 2 pm EST.

In the bizarro lawsuit news of the day, webOS Nation is reporting that a lawyer representing singer Chubby Checker has filed a lawsuit against HP.

The case revolves around an app for Palm OS called “The Chubby Checker,” which estimated penis length based on shoe size. Palm was acquired by HP in 2010, and the app remained in the webOS catalog until September 2012.

Though webOS Nation reports that the app was downloaded less than 100 times over the years, the lawsuit claims that HP and Palm violated the musical artist’s “Chubby Checker” trademark and associated it with “obscene, sexual connotation and images,” damaging the man’s reputation significantly.

The lawsuit is clearly ridiculous, as Chubby Checker’s reputation is almost entirely based around the early 60s song and dance craze “The Twist.”

It has, however, brought to light the fact that penis length estimator apps are rather popular, at least for Android devices. An app called the Penis Size Calculator, for example, has over half a million downloads and a few hundred of the funniest app reviews that can be found in Google Play.

If the WebProNews office is any indication, the lack of knowledge about the Chubby Checker app, as well as the nostalgic glee induced by the video below, mean that Chubby Checker’s reputation was probably not damaged by Palm’s penis estimator in any way. The lawsuit is probably more about reminding people that Chubby Checker is still touring rather than repairing the singer’s reputation.

A new study has found that the leftover material from supernovas could be the source of mysterious cosmic rays.

The paper, to be published tomorrow in the journal Science, used data from NASA‘s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope to examine the fast-moving particles and determine their origins.

“Scientists have been trying to find the sources of high-energy cosmic rays since their discovery a century ago,” said Elizabeth Hays, a member of the research team and Fermi deputy project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Now we have conclusive proof supernova remnants, long the prime suspects, really do accelerate cosmic rays to incredible speeds.”

Cosmic Rays are some of the fastest-moving particles ever detected. They are made up of subatomic particles such as electrons and atomic nuclei, though around 90% of them are protons. They travel at very close to light speed and are easily deflected by magnetic fields.

The Fermi Telescope was used to observe the IC443 (the Jellyfish Nebula) and W44 supernova remnants, where gamma rays are emitted by high-speed particles as they leave the remnants. Fermi researchers looked at four years of Fermi data and found that the gamma rays are a result of neutral pion particles, which are formed when cosmic rays (specifically the protons) hit non-cosmic ray protons.

“The discovery is the smoking gun that these two supernova remnants are producing accelerated protons,” said Stefan Funk, the research team leader and an astrophysicist with the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University. “Now we can work to better understand how they manage this feat and determine if the process is common to all remnants where we see gamma-ray emission.”

On February 15, tomorrow, an asteroid named 2012 DA14 will fly within several thousand miles of the surface of the Earth. At its closest approach the asteroid will come within 17,200 miles of the Earth’s surface – a harrowingly close miss that comes well within the ring of man-made geosynchronous satellites that orbit the Earth. The flyby will set a record for closest approach by an object of DA14′s size.

Though researchers have determined there is no danger posed by the object, the event will be a spectacle for astronomers around the world. Though the asteroid won’t be bright enough to see with the naked eye, those with a telescope or even a good pair of binoculars will be able to spot it.

For those who can’t observe the asteroid on their own, NASA announced this week that it will be live-streaming coverage of the object’s approach. The broadcast will provide commentary from scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and real-time animation to demonstrate exactly where the asteroid is. A Live view of the asteroid itself will also be featured, assuming the weather over observatories isn’t cloudy.

The half-hour live-stream will begin tomorrow at 2 pm EST, and can be seen on NASA TV or on the JPL Ustream page. The JPL Ustream will also begin showing footage of the asteroid from Australian and European observatories starting at 12 pm EST. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center will stream footage of the asteroid from one of its telescopes starting at 9 pm EST, and researchers there will be taking questions via Twitter.

(Image courtesy LCOGT/Faulkes)

New Jersey officials confirmed this week that the Miss America Pageant will be returning to Atlantic City.

The pageant had been held in Atlantic City for its first 85 years, but was moved to Las Vegas in 2006.

“We are so very proud to bring Miss America back to her birthplace in Atlantic City,” said Sam Haskell, chairman of the Miss America Organization. “We are grateful to Governor Christie and his staff for helping make this possible. Throughout the decades, Miss America has evolved into an organization that enables over 12,000 young women to enter and participate in our scholarship program each and every year. Today, Miss America remains an iconic symbol, and our roots have always stayed connected to Atlantic City. Our proud heritage is rich in history, having been named by USA Today as one of the Top Ten pieces of Americana remaining in our great country today.”

Atlantic City is expected to sign a multi-year contract to hold the Miss America pageants in the city.

The official announcement of the pageant’s return was made by Kim Guadagno, lieutenant governor of New Jersey. A ceremony, today made it clear that New Jersey officials consider the pageant an opportunity to lure tourists to the state, and particularly to Atlantic City’s Boardwalk.

“For decades, the Miss America organization has awarded scholarships to thousands of young women to help further their goals of higher education and achieve their dreams,” said Guadagno. “New Jersey is proud to once again host the Miss America Pageant here in Atlantic City.”

(Image courtesy the Miss America Organization)

Last month, Maxis teased The Sims 3: University Life with a trailer that showed off frat parties, bonfire keggers, and beer pong. Today, the developer of The Sims games has released a much longer preview that delves into the details of the upcoming expansion.

The new video is actually a walkthrough of some of the new features of University Life. A Maxis producer uses the example of several very different student sims

The new expansion will include social groups for sims to join, different majors that offer activities for sims, and smartphones that sims will use to keep track of their many responsibilities. Sims 3 players with the Seasons expansion installed will also be able to see the university town change with the weather.

Fox News this week announced that former U.S. Senator Scott Brown has been hired to provide political commentary across a variety of Fox News programs. He will appear on both daytime and primetime programming for the cable news network.

Brown is a former “half-term” U.S. Senator from Massachusetts who won a special election for the seat in 2010, after Senator Ted Kennedy died. Brown was defeated by now-Senator Elizabeth Warren in last year’s election after a relatively close and well-publicized campaign.

“I am looking forward to commenting on the issues of the day and challenging our elected officials to put our country’s needs first instead of their own partisan interests,” said Brown.

Brown made his debut on Fox News on Sean Hannity’s primetime show last night, February 13. In his appearance he explained his decision not to run in a special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by John Kerry, who became U.S. Secretary of State at the beginning of this month. Brown cited his many recent campaigns and the massive fundraising that would be needed for such a run as factors, but also called congress “dysfunctional and extremely partisan.”