phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica has put together a round up of three high-end iPod speaker systems, including the new Apple iPod Hi-Fi. From the article: 'With the seemingly unending success of the iPod, accessories for the popular digital music player have become a more and more popular option for companies looking to hop on the bandwagon and make a quick buck. Companies that once had no business selling product accessories for consumer electronics are now jumping into the game because of the success of the iPod. With the growing number of stores carrying the personal audio device and a growing crop of users desiring to hear their music in more places, speaker systems have become an increasingly popular accessory.'"

rishimathew writes writes to tell us The New York Times is reporting that RealNetworks recently received a patent for a specific way to stream multimedia content over the internet. From the article: "The patent, which is described as being for a 'multimedia communications system and method for providing audio on demand to subscribers' (No. 6,985,932), describes the idea of permitting a PC user to play back audio, video and other information on a PC. RealNetworks executives said the technology was distinguished from other similar systems by the fact that it permitted "intelligent" streaming of data in potentially congested networks."

Hack Jandy writes "The HyperTransport consortium just released the 3.0 specification of HyperTransport. The new specification allows for external HyperTransport interconnects, basically meaning you might plug your next generation Opteron into the equivalent of a USB port at the back of your computer. Among other things, the new specification also includes hot swap, on-the-fly reconfigurable HT links and also a hefty increase in bandwidth."

Eurogamer reports on claims by George Harrison (NoA's Senior VP for Marketing) that the Revolution will feature extensive third-party support in the coming years. From the article: "'One of the lessons we tried to learn from GameCube was that we kept things too close. And so as we got ready to launch, we had some of our own great games but third parties were kind of behind the eight ball in terms of being able to have games ready,' Harrison stated. In terms of early support for the Revolution, which launches this year alongside Sony's PS3, third party software ought to be available in abundance, Harrison confirming 'We've got more than 1,000 developer kits including the controller kits, out, so there should be plenty there.'"

MirrororriM writes "According MSNBC article, a judge has ruled in favor of a worker that was repeatedly warned for surfing the internet on company time. Only a "reprimand" is a fitting punishment - not termination. From the article: 'It should be observed that the Internet has become the modern equivalent of a telephone or a daily newspaper, providing a combination of communication and information that most employees use as frequently in their personal lives as for their work.'"

With E3 coming up on us fairly fast now, we're going to start seeing some of the larger company's expected lineups for the event. eToyChest has the titles Square/Enix will be showing off at the event. Gamastura reports on one additional title that didn't make the list; A collaboration between Square/Enix and Nintendo. From that article: "The application in question combines an email application with virtual pet-like interaction abilities, and features various Pokemon characters heavily. Although Nintendo has been relatively reticent to enter the burgeoning mobile content market, which is particularly active in Japan, it has recently started to enter the segment, with the recent licensing of ring tones and animated images for a 'Nintendo Mobile' service on Japanese cellphone providers, and now this announcement of a Square collaboration."

BusinessWeek's cover story for May 1st has to do with a little place called Second Life. BusinessWeek Online has several stories related to their exploration on online living. My Virtual Life is a first-time exploration of Second Life, with some examination of the property and financial aspects of the gameworld. It's Not All Fun and Games explores the serious side of virtual businesses, as they interview Ashne Chung (notable real estate baron) in a piece called Virtual Land, Real Money. Ed Castronova has his say in a more general article on virtual economies. Finally, for an outside perspective, the obligatory Terra Nova discussion is always useful.

With the success of Bethesda's Oblivion featuring so prominently in the headlines of late, EA's announcement of 'Project Gray Company' comes as little surprise. From the Gamespot blurb: "The action takes place in a massive open world where you can go anywhere you want, and the characters in this world are powered by an incredible simulation [artificial intelligence] based on the same technology used by the makers of The Sims 2. The story of the game is built around a series of Story Quests. You can choose to follow specific Story Quests, embark on a range of other types of quests, or set off on your own adventures in the massive open world environment."

NewScientist is reporting that scientists have discovered complex nanoscale structures that have successfully protected rats from anthrax. From the article: "The technique relies on using tiny 'peptide' molecules, stuck onto one large molecule, which bind to toxins and prevent them from causing damage. They do this in much the same way that two Lego bricks might fit together - with several studs from the binding molecule slotting into, and so blocking, the sites on a toxin molecule which are needed to cause damage."

The always interesting GamerDad site is running a 'LongShot' column wondering if perhaps the 360 wasn't expensive enough? From the article: "The beginning of a console generation has typically been for those with deep pockets or an unhealthy hardcore jones for videogames. These people are willing to smack down big bucks for the latest technology. The price of 360 was too low to keep the launch confined to that group and it was a big mistake in my opinion. With a higher price tag, Microsoft would have made more money, made sure sellouts wouldn't have lasted for months after Christmas and still sold through all the units they had to sell before the holiday. The demand for a new system was far higher than most people anticipated, especially given the early demise of the original Xbox, a system that will probably be gone from store shelves by February 2007."

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo! News is reporting that in the military's continuing search for better sensory input they have started looking at the tongue as a 'superior transmitter'. From the article: 'A narrow strip of red plastic connects the Brain Port to the tongue where 144 microelectrodes transmit information through nerve fibers to the brain. Instead of holding and looking at compasses and bluky-hand-held sonar devices, the divers can processes the information through their tongues, said Dr. Anil Raj, the project's lead scientist.'"

cyrus_zuo writes "Game Tunnel has just published its April Independent Video Games Round-Up. This article looks at ten indie games from the last month with four different people reviewing and rating each game to provide a variety of insights into each one. In addition, each month the best Independent Game wins the Game of the Month award. This month's winner is Titan Attacks, a 'retro-modern' fusion that puts out some of the best action we've played since Geometry Wars."

smooth wombat writes "Several cities around the country are considering implementing free wi-fi for its residents. Currenly, St. Cloud, Florida is the only one that can make that claim. However, the 28,000 residents are still experiencing hiccups in the system more than a month after implementation including being able to see receivers but not being able to connect or connecting at different times with weak signals or not being able to connect at all. As a result, many residents are still paying for monthly landline connections. HP, which has been contracted to build the project and provide customer support, says it is working to resolve the issues by adding more access points to improve signal strength in isolated parts of the city. Despite these issues, HP says that there were only 842 help-line calls out of more than 50,000 user sessions in the first 45 days of service."

kukyfrope writes "Many people dream of being videogame beta testers but, in reality, a lot of us already are. GameDaily's Greg Atkinson discusses how developers are using the ability to patch games as a crutch for launching games ahead of schedule, using a 'we'll patch it later' mentality, as opposed to extensive play testing." From the article: "What's going on lately that so many games are being released unfinished? Why are the people now paying to essentially beta test the games rather than purchasing completed games? ... If you scan through the PC reviews, on this and any other site, you will notice an overabundance of games that lost points or otherwise hampered their players' experience by being unpolished, full of bugs, and sometimes downright annoying to play. Everything from controls and camera movements to balancing issues, broken quests, and of course graphical errors are abundant in probably half the titles on the shelf these days. It's become habit to look for any patches to a game while I'm installing it, and that's not right."

neelm writes "The EFF is reporting that EMI and Universal Music Group may have been caught lying to the Department of Justice in the 2001 antitrust investigation involving MusicNet, and pressplay. The 2001 investigation found no evidence of illegal efforts to monopolize digital music distribution, but new evidence presented by Hummer Winblad and Bertelsman ("original napster" investors) in their on-going defense from the RIAA suggests otherwise. The judge ruled that the documents to be turned over were not protected by attorney-client privilege because '[the court] finds reasonable cause to believe that the attorney's services were utilized in furtherance of the ongoing unlawful scheme.'"