Hasta La Gadget!

Back at Gamescom 2013, Sony made it known that select cross-generational games, like Call of Duty: Ghosts, purchased for the PlayStation 3 would be upgradeable for its forthcoming PS4. At the time, Sony kept general pricing details for the program under wraps, although Activision did announce its qualifying CoD title would set PS4 users back $10 bucks for the next-gen upgrade privilege. Now, Sony’s coming clean with the full spate of its limited run upgrade program, adding Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, Battlefield 4 and Watch Dogs to the list — all for $10.

So how does it work? Well, for those gamers that insist on purchasing a physical copy of any of the above games, they’ll receive a redeemable pack-in code which they can enter into the PlayStation Network for a digital copy of the PS4 version. That’s not all though. In order to unlock that next-gen copy, the physical disc has to be in the console to activate it. The process is much simpler for those that opt for the all-digital route, as a PS3 purchase made on PSN will automatically qualify gamers for the discount, at which point the game will be available for download. You have to hand it Sony: with news of this expanded upgrade program and the PS4’s Gaikai-powered PS3 backwards compatibility, it seems the company’s well learned from the lessons of the previous gen’s past.

Filed under: Gaming, HD, Sony

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Source: PlayStation Blog

The phrase “virtual book club” may not conjure romantic visions of low-lit rooms and vintage wines, but you don’t necessarily need those things to throw fancy words around. Amazon-owned Goodreads hosts user-created online clubs, but a Google patent application that’s surfaced today imagines a different way of bringing bookworms together. It describes a system that automatically prompts the buyer of a new title, presumably acquired through Google Books, to join a club. To make this virtual version a little more like the real thing, it’ll suggest specific groups based on your age, location, interests, preferred club size, reading speed and literary tastes. Furthermore, you’ll only be coupled with those who’ve bought the work recently, so your new-found chums aren’t on page 400 before you’ve even started.

It’ll all be managed through a social network, of course (we hear Google has one of those), and members will be able to fill specific roles within the club hierarchy. They’ll also be able to schedule “activities,” which we assume is patentese for Hangouts and the like to foster discussion. The patent filing also talks of financial rewards to tempt participation, which sounds like the perfect strategy for building millions of inactive G+ pages.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: USPTO

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer at TechCrunch Disrupt 2013 in San Francisco.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

If you switch your home page to Yahoo, Marissa Mayer might retweet you.

Is that enough of a reward to make the switch? For a number of people this morning, the answer seems to be yes. For about an hour, Mayer, Yahoo’s CEO, has been retweeting Twitter users who have been saying that they’ll switch their home page to Yahoo if she retweets them.

She even retweeted someone who posted that, “If she retweets me, I will stop making fun of Yahoo’s new logo in public.”

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Three of the biggest mobile carriers in the U.S., Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, are backing a mobile payments solution called Isis. Based on NFC technology, the solution allows people to pay when required at participating locations by simply tapping their smartphones. Last year, a trial was launched in Salt Lake City and Austin, and Isis plans to roll out across the country by the end of this year. Unfortunately, it has lost one of its primary banking partners, Capital One.

The bank says that their pilot tests with Isis will soon be ended, however it does say that it will “continue to engage with Isis on the future of mobile payments.” It wouldn’t make sense for Capital One to pull out of the trial phase and rejoin the other banking partners after the nationwide launch. The other partners include Barclayscard, Chase and American Express. Isis is capable of working with Windows Phone, BlackBerry and Android smartphones. iPhones are left out of the fray because Apple’s smartphones don’t come with NFC technology. Isis did say last month that iPhone support will be coming soon, many thought it was a subtle hint that the new iPhones will have NFC, but the new iPhones have been announced last week and they most certainly do not have the required technology.

Isis Mobile Payment Solution Loses Banking Partner Capital One original content from Ubergizmo.

The Goron tablet cushion.

(Credit: John Chan/CNET Asia)

Hold that iPad above your head with no effort at all.

(Credit: John Chan/CNET Asia)

TOKYO — File this one under “problems you didn’t know you had till now.” The Goron tablet cushion from Japan lets you use your handheld device longer while lying down as it takes away the difficult task of holding said device. Basically a cushion with an adjustable arm, the Goron lets you clamp something as small as a smartphone to a monitor for your game console so you can look at the screen with your head comfortably on the cushion.

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