Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Brian Reynolds answers 10 Questions from the Academy

And now, 10 Questions from the Academy: A weekly feature from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences wherein significant figures in the video game industry provide their input on past trends, current events, and future challenges and goals for the entertainment software community.
Brian Reynolds is a member of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences and will speak at the D.I.C.E. Summit in 2010. After working with Sid Meier at both MicroProse and Firaxis, Reynolds went on to create Big Huge Games, where he served as CEO until the sale of the company to 38 Studios earlier this year. He now heads up the newly established social gaming team at Zynga East in Baltimore.

AIAS: What's your favorite part of game development?
Brian Reynolds: The last 25% of the project, when you're polishing and tuning the thing to make it perfect for release. Of course it's never actually "perfect," but the game starts to feel like a real game rather than a prototype - all the parts start working well together and you finally realize "hey now we have something I want to play!"

What game are you most jealous of?
Half Life 2 - totally wish I had meaningful skills for making games like that. It's got such an amazing combination of good writing, good technology, good level design, and just overall great craftsmanship.

Continue reading Brian Reynolds answers 10 Questions from the Academy

JoystiqBrian Reynolds answers 10 Questions from the Academy originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gerry Nicholls: One-time <b>conservative</b> lion now a pussycat - Full <b>...</b>

Here at Full Comment, you'll find an eclectic mix of commentary on news, politics and pop culture � plus the occasional dig at a Star or Globe pundit who's gone off the rails.
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FCC Fridays

We here at Engadget Mobile tend to spend a lot of way too much time poring over the latest FCC filings, be it on the net or directly on the ol' Federal Communications Commission's site. Since we couldn't possibly (want to) cover all the stuff that goes down there, we've gathered up all the raw info you may want (but probably don't need). Enjoy!

Phones
Read - Samsung B5722C
Read - Samsung E1086L
Read - Samsung E1155L
Read - Samsung S3650W
Read - ZTE X990
Read - Pantech P2000
Read - LG LN620
Read - Kyocera S2300

Peripherals
Read - Sierra Wireless W801
Read - ZTE MF633T
Read - ZTE MF688

FCC Fridays originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WiGig Alliance completes multi-gigabit 60GHz wireless specification: let the streaming begin

The WiGig Alliance captured our imaginations back in May, but now it seems that the world of multi-gigabit streaming is so close, we can taste the data slipping over our tongues on their way to the next access point. Put simply, the specification that the group has been toiling on over the past few months is finally complete, and while some of its members have been prototyping wares along the way, this 1.0 announcement effectively opens the flood gates for partnering outfits to implement it into their gear. In case you're curious as to how 60GHz will help you, have a listen: WiGig enables wireless transfer rates more than ten times faster than today's fastest wireless LAN, and it's completely backward compatible with existing WiFi devices. As we've already seen with those totally bodacious dual-band (2.4GHz / 5GHz) routers, having another band with this kind of speed potential can only mean great things for the future.

We had a talk with Dr. Ali Sadri (the group's chairman and president) as well as Mark Grodzinsky (board director and marketing work group chair) in order to get a better idea of what's at play here, and frankly, we're anxious to see this get implemented into... well, just about anything. WiGig v1.0 supports data transmission rates up to 7Gbps, and if living in a house full of WiGig-enabled devices, you could finally envision streaming HD content from a bedroom PC to an HDTV and a living room netbook without any wires whatsoever. In the case of the netbook, there's even a chance that the embedded WiGig module could support faster transfer rates than the sockets around the edges, which would simultaneously enable wireless to be faster than the wired (at least in this scenario) and your brain to melt.

Finally, the group has picked up four new members -- NVIDIA, AMD, SK Telecom and TMC -- though unfortunately, WiGig wouldn't comment on the future availability of 60GHz products. We were told that they would be shocked if anyone had a prototype 60GHz device on the CES show floor, but you can bet that won't stop us from looking. Oh, and if we had to take a wild guess, we'd surmise that companies interested in speeding up their own offerings will be jumping on this quick, so hopefully you'll be ditching 2.4GHz once and for all come next summer(ish).

Continue reading WiGig Alliance completes multi-gigabit 60GHz wireless specification: let the streaming begin

WiGig Alliance completes multi-gigabit 60GHz wireless specification: let the streaming begin originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tory lead cut to nine points in Guardian/ICM poll - guardian.co.uk


Channel 4 News

Tory lead cut to nine points in Guardian/ICM poll
guardian.co.uk
After 12 months of unbroken Conservative dominance in the polls, today's figures � showing the Tories on 40%, down two, Labour on 31%, up two, ...
Tory lead 'falls to single figures'The Press Association
UK Conservative Lead in Poll Narrows, Sparking Election TalkBloomberg
Trouble For The ToriesNewsweek (blog)
BBC News -Financial Times -Telegraph.co.uk (blog)
all 182 news articles »

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Conservative group eases its opposition to Salt Lake City ordinances - Salt Lake Tribune


Conservative group eases its opposition to Salt Lake City ordinances
Salt Lake Tribune
A conservative Utah think tank now says Salt Lake City's anti-discrimination ordinances can stay on the books as long as the Legislature ...

and more »

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Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 8 Beta

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Microsoft Releases Beta of Internet Explorer 8These days, the Internet browser wars are hotter than they've been since the late-90's (when Microsoft challenged Netscape and, eventually, killed the competition). Today, the battle is between Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox. Mozilla is currently putting the wraps on its 3.0 version of Firefox, a major update with many stability and usability improvements, but Microsoft isn't sitting idle. Yesterday it released the first public beta of Internet Explorer 8.

IE8 promises a suite of improvements, with the usual visual refresh that major releases receive, but of course going much deeper than that. IE8 will now include integration with Facebook and eBay out of the box, meaning you can make and check status updates quickly and keep tabs on a set of auctions right from a browser menu. You can view maps from Microsoft's Live service just by highlighting an address on any page, and the browser can remember its current set of displayed pages so if you close the browser (or if it crashes) it'll come right back to where you were.

As of now, unfortunately, that functionality is apparently especially useful as, according to early reports, the browser isn't very stable at this point. It seems that many of the problems are related to incompatibilities with Yahoo's and Google's popular toolbars. So, like many betas (early and largely untested versions of software), the thing isn't quite ready for prime-time. But, if you're brave and want to give it a shot head on over to Microsoft's IE8 page.

From Digg, Read Write Web, and Washington Post

Related Links:

SwitchedMicrosoft Releases Internet Explorer 8 Beta originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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