Hasta La Gadget!

Reaching the round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament is always special, but advancing even further is far sweeter.

After dominating No. 16 North Carolina A&T on Thursday, No. 1 overall seed Louisville will take on the veteran Colorado State Rams with a berth in the Sweet 16 on the line. Will Rick Pitino’s Cardinals continue to roll or can Colorado State bust those brackets still in good shape?

One of the biggest bracket busters of the Tournament (so far), Harvard, is back in action on Saturday afternoon. Fresh off a historic upset over No. 3 New Mexico, the No. 14 Crimson will face an Arizona club that rolled in the round of 64.

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Gameplay footage for the PlayStation 3 version of Diablo 3 has been released. The video shows the PC-game with a very different UI. Gameplay is smooth (for the most part), the new control system seems very user-friendly, and the new dynamic camera system seems very appealing (the fight against Belial looked very entertaining). All in all, the PlayStation 3 port seems very well done and should appeal to Diablo 3 fans.

Diablo 3 on the PlayStation 3 will feature all of the current offerings of the PC version of the game. There will be Paragon levels after you reach level 60, Monster Power settings, PvP, and more. Along with those additions, there is also one, very important selling point. The game will have 4-player split-screen co-op. So you, and 3 of your friends, will be able to join together to take on Diablo in a nostalgic, Champions of Norrath/Gauntlet Dark Legacy-like way.

Diablo 3 has seen great commercial success, selling over 12 million PC copies to date, however the game had received a lot of negative criticism shortly after its launch.  It received negative criticism for its Always-on DRM, previously difficult gameplay (like floors blanketed in desecration and plague), and lack of end-game content. Many consumers complained that it was the worst Diablo, if not the worst game, ever. The developers were able to make the game more enjoyable by adding a lot more content (like the Infernal Machine), dramatically reducing the difficulty of monsters and their affixes, and by allowing players to choose the difficulty of their gameplay via Monster Power levels.

There isn’t any specific release date for the Playstation 3 version of Diablo 3, but we do know that it will be released for the PlayStation 4 in the future as well. The developers of the game have also stated that the game isn’t necessarily a Sony-exclusive, so we could be seeing the game on other consoles like Nintendo’s Wii U and the Xbox 360/720. And many of you will be pleased to know that the console game will have an offline mode.

Diablo 3 gameplay footage for the PS3 unveiled is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Zynga has announced that it will no longer be requiring people to log into their Facebook accounts when entering its site. Zynga wants to distance itself from Facebook in order to become a more independent game developer. You are now able to access your favorite games, like Farmville, Chefville, Draw Sometihng, and more via a stand-alone Zynga account.

Of course, you can still sign in with your Facebook account if you want. Zynga will keep your games’ progress as well as your Zynga friends list in its database. While Zynga wants to distance itself from Facebook, it doesn’t want to burn that bridge entirely. It relies on Facebook for a huge chunk of its traffic, even though it already has a dedicated fan base of over 3 million people.

Along with removing the Facebook login requirement, Zynga plans on implementing a feature next week that will allow players to find fellow gamers through their Gmail or Yahoo contacts list. Zynga will also be implementing its own payment system for its games, instead of relying on Facebook for its transactions. Before, people would be able to purchase premium content on Zynga through Facebook, however Facebook would take a 30% cut from all transactions.

Facebook isn’t too happy about the change, however both companies knew that this move was inevitable. For people who still connect to Zynga via their Facebook accounts, they will only be find fellow gamers that they have previously interacted with. They will no longer be able to see if one of their Facebook friends has just started playing a Zynga game. This change will most definitely hurt Zynga’s transition, but is no way a deal breaker for the game developer.

[via Zynga]

Zynga distances itself from Facebook is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

One tweet can lead to a disastrous onslaught of consequences, as Adria Richards has recently found out. While attending the PyCon Technology Conference last week, she overheard two male developers behind her talking about “big dongles” and “forking someone’s repo”. She was offended by the jokes and she stated, “I was telling myself if they made one more sexual joke, I’d say something.”

However, Richards didn’t say “something” to the developers, but instead stated her opinions in the public land of Twitter. She decided that public shame would be the best route for the two developers behind her, so she snapped their pictures and tweeted, “Not cool. Jokes about forking repo’s in a sexual way and “big” dongles. Right behind me #pycon”. The two developers were escorted out of the conference, and one of the developers (the one on the left side of the picture) was fired from his position at PlayHaven.

While the two men may have been acting immaturely, Richards did no better by publicly shaming them. She should have confronted these men directly in order to achieve a more peaceful resolution, or she should have reported the incident directly to the staff (whom she said she was contacting through text messages). As many people and sites have said, public shaming should always be a last resort.

Richard’s tweets led to an online debate over sexism as well as privacy concerns. Many people have condemned her actions, while others stated that she did the right thing. The developer, who was fired, apologized for his comments, but also stated that a person like Richards, and her social following, should have been more responsible. He said, “As a result of the picture she took I was let go from my job today. Which sucks because I have 3 kids and I really liked that job.”

A group on Reddit has started a fund called the “Feminist Victims Fund” to help raise money for the fired developer. Anonymous threatened SendGrid and asked the startup to fire Richards for engaging in “malicious conduct to destroy another individual’s professional career”. To ensure the validity of the message, Anonymous launched a DDOS attack against SendGrid.

Shortly following the attack, SendGrid terminated Richard’s position, stating that her actions and the consequences that ensued caused her to “no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid”. This whole situation could have been handled more efficiently and peacefully, but instead it spiraled out of control and ended up backfiring for Richards.

One person’s tweets leads to disastrous results is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you know someone who refuses to type on anything but a typewriter despite being born in the mid-90s, that person will love the latest camera from the crazy folks at Superheadz. The Japanese company’s Sun & Cloud camera can be charged via USB, but it also has a solar panel and even a hand-crank to juice it up. It’s always ready to go. Your friend’s food, cat and latte foam that vaguely resembles his beard don’t stand a chance.

The Sun & Cloud has a 3MP CMOS sensor and an LED flash in front, an LCD screen and button controls at the back and the solar panel up top. From the looks of it, it seems like the hand crank folds neatly into the camera’s case. The camera can also record video and uses micro SD and micro SDHC cards for storage. Finally, what’s a hipster camera without some filters? The Sun & Cloud’s 15 built-in filters has your bicycle-loving behind covered. Judging from the sample shots below, they range from My Recommended Daily Allowance of Sadness Black & White to The Past Was Brighter Than The Future Washed Out.

You can order the Sun & Cloud camera from AC Gears for $199 (USD). But if you want to be extra hip you should buy it straight from Superheadz itself. Seriously though it could be a fun first camera for kids.

[via Freshness]