Mar 24

Duke Nukem Forever Delayed Again

Posted in: Today's Chili, video games

duke-nukem-forever.jpg

Are you sitting down? We’ve got some pretty shocking news. You may want to strap yourself in and put your helmet on for this one. Duke Nukem Forever is getting delayed. The game’s developers have pushed back the release of the title yet again. On the upside, it’s only a little over a month this time–the previously announced May 3rd date has been pushed back to June 14th in North America.

The title’s publisher seemingly has a sense of humor about the whole thing (and really, after a decade and a half, how could you not?). Said 2K president, Christoph Hartmann, “We thank Duke’s fans for their continued patience–I promise this won’t take another 15 year.”
It seems a pretty safe bet that there’s some validity to that statement. I mean, at least this time out we’ve actually had the opportunity to play the game (and for the record, it was pretty damn fun). 
Developer Gearbox was also pretty jokey about the whole thing. Video of that after the jump.

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Mar 24

Samsung Apps store crosses 100 million downloads

Posted in: app, apps, samsung, Today's Chili
Alright, so it may have a bit of an advantage being on both cellphones and TVs, but that’s not stopping Samsung from boasting that its Apps store has now joined the 100 million download club. That comes just ten months after it launched, and it looks like Samsung can largely thank Europe for reaching the milestone — France had the most number of downloads followed by Germany and Spain, and the three countries combined accounted for 40 percent of all downloads from the store, which now has more than 13,000 apps.

Samsung Apps store crosses 100 million downloads originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Mar 2011 10:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceNetwork World  | Email this | Comments

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Mar 24

What the Amazon Kindle Tablet Might Be Like [Amazon]

Posted in: amazon, amazon kindle, Android, Today's Chili, top

I’m not one to over-specunosticate, but sometimes things are what they are. Like the Amazon tablet. More »

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Mar 24

Alexander Graham Bell’s sketchbook reveals ridiculously wonderful imaginings

Posted in: Today's Chili
The image above is a page from Alexander Graham Bell’s sketchbook, a self-portrait from the 1870’s, is just one page from the large collection of the inventor’s papers, now housed at the Library of Congress. Bell’s sketches which document the invention of the telephone are the most fascinating of the lot, and happily, the Library has digitized them and made a large selection of them available online.

Alexander Graham Bell’s sketchbook reveals ridiculously wonderful imaginings originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Mar 2011 10:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceThe Atlantic  | Email this | Comments

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Mar 24

Avaak Vue Gen 2 wire-free video monitoring hands-on

Posted in: camera, hands-on, Today's Chili
Peeping Toms and would-be spies, rejoice! The Vue wire-free video cameras have reached the second generation and now add motion detection and a more rugged outdoor version to the mix. Pricing is a mixed bag: kits start at $199 and include a motion detection camera, the base station, and the mounting base. Extra cams can be had for $159 for an individual outdoor camera with motion detection, indoor camera with motion detection is $129, and a run of the mill indoor camera is $99. The brilliant bit here is this is pretty much a zero setup affair: attach the cameras to the included magnetic mounts (with adhesive, no less), fire up the base station, and off you go. As with many devices launched recently, mobile apps are key, and the Vue’s apps are a decent bunch. We had a peek at both the BlackBerry and iPhone flavors — Android is also supported — and either will allow video from the remote cameras to be recorded, some small amount of zoom and pan, grab screen shots, and have a peek at all your cameras at once. The required online service to manage it all is free for the first year and $19.95 per year after; you can keep opting for the free version after the first year, but lose the mobile app support, pan / zoom, and all recording features. What’s the fun in that? More pics in the gallery below!

Gallery: Avaak Vue Gen 2 wire-free video monitoring hands-on

Avaak Vue Gen 2 wire-free video monitoring hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Mar 2011 09:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 24

Yahoo Revamps Search

Posted in: Today's Chili, Yahoo
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Yahoo’s search for meaning in a post-Google world continues this week with the introduction of Search Direct, a new feature aimed at speeding up search results and “giving you the answers you’re looking for right there in the search box as you type.” It’s certainly similar to Google Instant–a fact we’re not the first to point out.

Begin typing a query into the search box over at search.yahoo.com (where the feature is currently live), and a dialog box will drop down. The left-hand side offers up search suggestions as you type, and right-hand side offers links and related content–begin typing “weather,” for example, and the local forecast will pop up.

The company is banking on the new feature to help give it a leg up in a field dominated by Google–and, increasingly, Microsoft’s Bing, which has actually been providing back end search results for Yahoo for the past two years.
It’s a cool feature, certainly–we advise you to go over to Yahoo to take it for a spin. The feature alone, however, likely won’t bring too many back to Yahoo’s side.
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Mar 24

A closer look at LG’s charging pad

Posted in: Today's Chili

LG rolled out a new charging pad at CTIA 2011 that can deliver a wireless charge to your cell phone. CNET takes a closer look.

Originally posted at CTIA 2011

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Mar 24

Air Traffic Control Abandoned as Two Passenger Planes Try To Land [Wtf]

Posted in: Today's Chili, top

Shortly after midnight on Wednesday, two DC airliners approached Washington DC’s Reagan National Airport. They waited for guidance from air traffic control. And waited. And waited. And waited. They never got a response. More »

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Mar 24

NVIDIA’s dual-GPU GeForce GTX 590 emerges, can’t slay the Radeon HD 6990 titan

Posted in: breaking news, GraphicsCard, launch, NVIDIA, official, performance, release, review, Reviews, roundup, Today's Chili, video

1,024 total CUDA cores, 94 ROPs, and 3GB of GDDR5 RAM on board. Yup, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 is indeed a pair of GTX 580 chips spliced together, however power constraints have meant that each of those chips is running at a tamer pace that their single-card variant. The core clock speed is down to 607MHz, shaders are only doing 1.2GHz, and the memory clocks in at 3.4GHz. Still, there’s a ton of grunt under that oversized shroud and reviewers have put it to the test against AMD’s incumbent single-card performance leader, the Radeon HD 6990. Just like the GTX 590, it sports a pair of AMD’s finest GPUs and costs a wallet-eviscerating $699. Alas, after much benchmarking, testing, and staring at extremely beautiful graphics, the conclusion was that AMD retains its title. But only just. And, as Tech Report points out, the GTX 590 has a remarkably quiet cooler for a heavy duty pixel pusher of its kind. Dive into the reviews below to learn more, or check the new card out on video after the break.

Read – AnandTech
Read – HardOCP
Read – Tech Report
Read – PC Perspective
Read – Guru 3D
Read – X-bit labs
Read – Hot Hardware
Read – techPowerUp!
Read – TechSpot

Continue reading NVIDIA’s dual-GPU GeForce GTX 590 emerges, can’t slay the Radeon HD 6990 titan

NVIDIA’s dual-GPU GeForce GTX 590 emerges, can’t slay the Radeon HD 6990 titan originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Mar 2011 09:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 24

Coldest Star Could Have Water on its Surface

Posted in: science, space, Space Tech, Today's Chili

cold star.jpg

Here’s the answer to a question you probably never thought to ask: how cold is the coldest star? Two-hundred and six degrees Fahrenheit. Or, as a National Geographic puts it, “no warmer than a freshly brewed cup of coffee.” Granted, it’s not the sort of place you’d want to, you know, spend vacation time, but in star terms, it’s downright chilly. So cold, in fact, that scientists suspect the planet may be able to support water on its surface.

The brown dwarf christened CFBDSIR 1458 10b is 75 light-years away. Scientists estimate its mass is between six and 15 times that of Jupiter–again, a speck of a star. The star is actually the smaller of two brown dwarfs in a binary system.

The University of Hawaii’s Michael Liu explains, “this new object is so much colder than anything else seen that it now enters the regime where it may actually have an atmosphere with water clouds.”

Liu adds that the star may cause scientists to redefine the way small stars and large planets are defined. “The most exciting aspect of this finding is that we might be on the threshold of finding a new class of objects that blurs the line between gas-giant exoplanets and brown dwarf stars previously seen–something I think that is really surprising the astronomical community.”

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