Hasta La Gadget!

Eidos Montreal has seen the future for its Deus Ex franchise and it’s ready to shed some light on its connected vision. On the company’s community blog, studio head David Anfossi revealed that the next phase for the franchise builds upon lessons learned from Deus Ex: Human Revolution; something Eidos Montreal is calling Deus Ex: Universe. No, it’s not a standalone title for the next-gen, but rather a new, unifying approach to “create an ongoing, expanding and connected game world” that spans all upcoming titles. And that’s cross-platform, too, as this persistent world and the additional experiences it’ll deliver will encompass traditional platforms like the PC and console, as well as the portable space, mobile and even graphic novels. Work’s apparently already underway on the project, with the first title in this new Universe slated to hit the PC and next-gen console space.

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Via: Joystiq

Source: Eidos Montreal

Many attempts to supply broadband to US students, on- and off-campus, have been imperfect at best: they either leave gaps in coverage or carry woefully inadequate bandwidth. The White House is aiming for much, much better service through its ConnectED initiative. The proposed five-year program would rework the FCC’s E-Rate subsidies to offer at least 100Mbps broadband (and ideally 1Gbps) to 99 percent of American students. Schools could also use their funding to set up WiFi, although they would have to pay for any computing power themselves. ConnectED would add about 40 cents a month to phone bills, but it could put most schools on an equal plane — and keep pace with increasingly faster connections at home.

[Image credit: Johan Larsson, Flickr]

Filed under: Networking

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Via: White House Blog

Source: White House (PDF), FCC

Traveling is great — nay, amazing. And travel that requires a passport can be even more fulfilling for those willing to open their minds to new cultures (and, perhaps, deal with entirely too much security screening). But here’s the thing — travel is a lot better, generally speaking, with an internet connection within arm’s reach. Things are never more likely to go awry than when you leave your comfort zone (or, you know, home nation), and we here at Engadget have been investigating the best methods for maintaining a connection whilst abroad for the better part of our lives. To date, you’ve got a smattering of options: rent a MiFi from XCom Global, pick up a rental SIM from iPhoneTrip, pray that you can find a shop that rents data SIMs upon your arrival or pony up for whatever absurd roaming fees that your home operator deems fit.

All of the above options have their pros and cons, but the good news here is that your choices are expanding. As the market for ubiquitous connections continues to grow, another player has recently entered the market. Tep Wireless began as a hotspot rental service that mainly looked after those traversing the United Kingdom, but recently, it expanded its coverage umbrella to include some 38 countries across Europe and 50 nations total. This here editor recently had the opportunity to cross through four of those on a single journey, with a Tep hotspot in hand the entire way. Care to see how things turned out? Let’s reconvene after the break.

Continue reading Tep Wireless review: another great option for international mobile hotspot rentals

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Tep Wireless review: another great option for international mobile hotspot rentals originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ARM isn’t content with dominating the mobile space. It’s been by the far the most vocal about an Internet of Things where everything is connected — and to make that happen, it just established an industry forum in the UK that it hopes will establish common ground for all those internet-linked light bulbs, refrigerators and thermostats. Home energy firm Alertme, cloud-aware sensing outfit AquaMW, lighting maker EnLight and white space wireless guru Neul will start meeting with ARM from August 24th onwards to hash out our automated, eco-friendly future. There’s a certain urgency in this for the chip designer: it expects 50 billion devices on the grid by 2020. With IDC estimating a billion new connected devices just in 2011, the clock on that connected device transition is ticking very loudly.

Continue reading ARM forms UK group to foster an Internet of Things, put 50 billion devices online by 2020

Filed under: Household, Internet

ARM forms UK group to foster an Internet of Things, put 50 billion devices online by 2020 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jul 2012 19:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Back in the mid-80s, the idea of transferring funds, checking your email, buying stocks and booking a trip online was all a faraway dream. But if you happened to be in France at the time, you might’ve already been wired up and doing these things for years — thanks to the state-subsidized Minitels that were in each and every household. The country was far more interconnected than any other and proud of the text-only terminals, even though government-owned France Telecom monopolized access and you had to be newspaper company to supply any content.

It took off anyway, and soon faux-newspaper companies sprung up everywhere for the not-so-secret purpose of delivering paid Minitel services. They supplied information, financial access, ticketing, online shopping, and even some naughty text-based services (sacré bleu!). At its apogee in 1998, the system generated over a billion dollars a year in revenue, and accounted for nearly 15% of the annual income for online retailers 3 Suisses and La Redoute, to name a couple.

But France can be an insular nation, and Minitel never really spread anywhere else. The internet gave the coup de grace to the system and displaced it, and though it’s still accessed by millions each year, France Telecom will pull the plug once and for all this Saturday. Some regret that the nation didn’t build on its technological lead, but most French folks will probably remember the boxes nostalgically, knowing that they beat the internet by almost 20 years.

[Image credit: Musée De l’Informatique]

Minitel to be shut down tomorrow: France bids adieu to the internet’s precursor originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jun 2012 08:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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