Hasta La Gadget!

It’s shaping up to be a big week for everyone’s favorite sling-shooting fowl. Earlier today we took note of the fact that Angry Birds is set to hit the PlayStation Network. Now it seems that the wildly popular mobile gaming phenomenon will also be making its way onto laptops everywhere, courtesy of Intel’s AppUp store.

Rovio created an exclusive version of the game, which is available through the Intel store and AppUp storefronts from Best Buy, Best Buy Canada, Future Shop, Dixons, Asus, Croma, HSN, NewEgg, TigerDirect, and more. The app store runs on Windows XP and 7.

The PC version of the game is quite a bit pricier than its mobile counterpart, running $9.99 — though AppUp is offering a limited time discount of $4.99. Probably best to get on that, ASAP, considering all of the paid work you’re likely to miss playing the thing.

Sure, you’ve probably seen countless scientific studies involving video games — but have you have you ever wondered what your brain actually looked like while your playing video games? Well, feast your eyes on the image above. That’s an MRI scan of New York Times writer Matt Richtel’s brain that was captured while he played a simple driving game — all in the name of science (and journalism), of course. As Richtel notes, however, that’s just one example of the ways researchers are using such technology to “map the ethereal concept of attention,” and scientists have turned up some other interesting findings as of late. Researchers at the University of Utah, for instance, have found that people’s ability to juggle two tasks begins to drop off in their 30s and then sharply drops in their 40s, which contradicts earlier suspicions that people’s ability to multitask only began to degrade when they’re much older. Some other researchers are still suspicious of those findings, however, and Dr. Gazzaley of the University of California at San Diego is quick to point out that all of this research is still in the earliest stages — he’s expecting some more detailed findings next year when his team expands their tests and begin to incorporate EEG monitoring as well.

This is your brain. This is your brain on video games originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Dec 2010 20:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Try as I might, I can’t really come up with a video game I’d recommend emulating in real life–for whatever reason, there aren’t too many titles based around cleaning your room or eating all of your vegetables. Whenever someone gets it in their head to reenact a game, it’s nearly invariably a terrible idea.

Take, for example, the recent story of a 23-year-old South Carolina man, who decided it would be a good idea to translate Frogger into the real world, ala Seinfeld. The man is in stable condition after attempting the feat, running across the street after his friends shouted “Go,” only to be struck by a Lexus SUV.

According to the local chief of police, the similarity to the popular Atari game isn’t coincidental. The man and his friends were really attempting to act out the game. His name has not yet been released.

Rovio may have introduced its wildly successful game Angry Birds to the Android platform, but make no mistake which operating system the company prefers to develop for. In a recent interview with the site Tech Marketing, Rovio executive Peter Vesterbacka let it be known that Apple’s iOS is still the top dog in his eyes.

“Apple will be the number one platform for a long time from a developer perspective, they have gotten so many things right,” he told the site. “And they know what they are doing and they call the shots. Android is growing, but it’s also growing complexity at the same time.”

Android also has a fragmentation problem, according to Vesterbacka. “Device fragmentation not the issue, but rather the fragmentation of the ecosystem,” he explained. “So many different shops, so many different models. The carriers messing with the experience again. Open but not really open, a very Google centric ecosystem. And paid content just doesn’t work on Android.”

Not that he’s saying that Apple is, you know, better, or anything. It’s just that, in the mobile world, fragmentation is sort of a way of life,

That doesn’t mean that model is superior, it’s just important to understand that Apple is Apple and Google is Google. Different. And developers need to understand that. Different business models for different ecosystems. And wouldn’t forget about Nokia and MeeGo either, new leadership always tends to shake things up and create opportunity. And HP-Palm. And RIM. And even Microsoft. It’s a fragmented world.

Rovio’s Angry Birds was the number one paid app for the iPhone in 2010.

It’s never too early to start thinking about next year’s Christmas wish list, right? Good news for those of you who didn’t get exactly what they wanted from Santa–GameStop has opened up preorders on Nintendo’s eagerly anticipated 3DS portable gaming device.

The console, which was formally announced in the US at E3 this summer, has yet to be priced (Engadget is guessing that it’ll run around $300–sounds about right to us), but by plunking down some cash, you can be the first on your block to score one.

The magic SKU number is 020132 for those who can’t wait to spend money on the thing–of course you won’t actually be able to get your hands on the thing until March…